4 ms·

Really interesting to see how much people fight nuclear power. We’ve been complaining about fossil fuels for decades, and now that the US seems to be seriously

• indymike 4y ago
  > I get that there are issues and unknowns, but it’s better than the current death march, isn’t it? This is really what the whole argument boils down to: nuclear, or global warming. There's really not real, feasible renewable answer. It takes over 1300 wind turbines to match the power output of a single reactor. Solar? 1-3 Million panels. Most civilian facilities operate 3-6 reactors. Fission is the only technology that can make a dent in co2 emissions quickly. The only viable argument against nuclear is "cost" and that is only because of the ridiculous level of regulation and litigation surrounding nuclear power.
  • pfdietz 4y ago
    > There's really not real, feasible renewable answer. But there is, and it's likely cheaper than the nuclear answer.
  • cesarb 4y ago
    > It takes over 1300 wind turbines to match the power output of a single reactor. Solar? 1-3 Million panels. Most civilian facilities operate 3-6 reactors. At least for solar, that comparison is specious. It would be like separately counting each rod or even each pellet of nuclear fuel in a reactor's core, and using that as an argument against nuclear power. It makes more sense to compare whole solar power plants, not individual panels. From a quick look at the data for my country, most solar power plants have over 20 MW output each, and they are in facilities with 3-10 solar power plants. Looking at the same data source, wind also seems to use a similar grouping here (power plants containing several turbines with a total output over 20MW, then grouped into facilities with 3-10 power plants). > Fission is the only technology that can make a dent in co2 emissions quickly. The only viable argument against nuclear is "cost" and that is only because of the ridiculous level of regulation and litigation surrounding nuclear power. Cost is not the only argument. If you want to make it quickly, construction time is just as important, and nuclear loses badly here (though I might be a bit biased on that, since the latest reactor being built near where I live has been under construction for decades, with no end in sight). Solar and to a lesser extent wind have the advantage of simplicity and modularity, which tend to not only reduce the cost, but also enable them to be built quicker and in parallel, and make them much less risky to build; if one out of ten 20 MW solar power plants being built hits a problem, you still have the other nine, but if your single 1350 MW reactor being built since the 1980s hits some unexpected problem, you have nothing. As for the level of regulation, it's an unavoidable consequence of how dangerous nuclear fuel (and the materials and fluids irradiated by it in the reactor core) is; you have to make sure it stays contained, so that a nuclear power plant is as safe as (or even safer than) other kinds of power plant. But that's not the whole reason for the high cost; there's the complexity of the reactor itself (including materials which can resist the radiation), and nuclear power plants tend to use things like a single hydrogen-cooled gigawatt-power turbine for each reactor core. Just the electrical infrastructure (transformers, circuit breakers, etc) which can deal with gigawatt levels of power at once is already costly.
• afterburner 4y ago
  > and now that the US seems to be seriously exploring a viable alternative This phrase sounds weird to me, given that US explored nuclear power more than 50 years ago, and is also exploring other viable alternatives now (wind and solar).