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This article perfectly exemplifies the arguments in discussions. Lets just concentrate on the waste discussion. The article says heavy metals in solar panels ar

This article perfectly exemplifies the arguments in discussions. Lets just concentrate on the waste discussion. The article says heavy metals in solar panels are a problem (I kind of agree, although the way it is described makes it out like we are talking about huge amounts, in reality the lead in solar panels is largely from soldering so very small amounts. Orders of magnitude more are being used for other applications (like car batteries)). They then say that recycling is currently still a problem (sort of true, although there are companies who say they can 100% recycling solar panels already). Similarly for wind they say we still don't know how to recycle the carbon blades, again sort of correct (but there are many other applications of carbon fibre which produce much more waste). Then when it comes to nuclear waste however, the argument is we can ignore pretty much all long lasting waste, because of some development in the future will make recycling of spend fuel rods feasible. So essentially he is comparing the current state of solar panel recycling to some future potential nuclear waste recycling. That's a dishonest comparison. Moreover ignoring the amount of waste from dismantling the nuclear power plant (which needs to go into nuclear storage because it is radioactive due to irradiation), while talking about the carbon fibre from wind turbines is also disingenuous. We see the same argumentive structure when talking about the economics; the current state of renewables is compared to some potential future state of nuclear. While in reality renewables are on an exponential cost reduction trajectory and all the nuclear potential is completely unproven.

deleted 4y ago
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jaredklewis 4y ago
I agree with some of your criticism of the article, but I disagree that nuclear waste is a problem. Yes, we have to store it somewhere. But all US plants combined make ~5k cubic meters of nuclear waste a year. To put that in perspective, the strategic oil reserve is 100 million cubic meters. A single aircraft carrier is 2 million cubic meters. Political will aside, finding a place to store this stuff doesn’t seem like a massive problem.
- arinlen 4y ago
  > Yes, we have to store it somewhere. But all US plants combined make ~5k cubic meters of nuclear waste a year. And all those extra 5k cubic meters per year of nuclear waste needs to be stored for around a million years until they are again safe.
  - kubami 4y ago
    If you read the article you'd see it's not "million years" but ~300.
    - jpgvm 4y ago
      Even if it was a million years it wouldn't matter. The US has the Nevada desert which is effectively a barren wasteland, just shove it in a bunch of containers and leave it there. They already do that for removed nuclear reactors from military vessels (which is actually so it can be seen in satellite imagery to fulfill international treaty requirements.
      - arinlen 4y ago
        > Even if it was a million years it wouldn't matter. This take is absurd. Humanity barely exists for a few thousand years and you somehow assume that it's feasible and economically justifiable to create a health and security hazard that will exist until the end of times. And all for what? Because you want to shave off a few cents from an energy bill?
      - tekknik 4y ago
        if we solve the clean energy problem, and energy becomes abundant, then that all becomes very usable land.
        jpgvm 4y ago
        And if we don't we all die. Seems like an easy choice to me.
    - 4y ago
godelski 4y ago
> because of some development in the future will make recycling of spend fuel rods feasible. Context: They are responding to a complaint that isn't explicit here. That complaint usually comes in the form of: "we have nowhere to put the waste" or "Yucca Mountain was canceled and we'll never have such a facility because of NIMBY." So the response is more "We can store on site and don't need deep geological depositories, here's others who have done it. But if you really want a geological depository, here's Onkalo." We can already do on sight, and this is already being done, so it makes sense to argue about this. If we want to do some smaller scale DGDs then we can do things substantially smaller than Yucca Mountain and have decades to build it. I think without this context, it comes off as extremely hand-wavy. I'll admit that there is some hand-wavyness, but without something in place all you can argue is "this problem isn't as hard as people think. We can do it, here's real world examples elsewhere." I'm not sure what other argument they are supposed to make.
- cycomanic 4y ago
  > > because of some development in the future will make recycling of spend fuel rods feasible. > Context: They are responding to a complaint that isn't explicit here. That complaint usually comes in the form of: "we have nowhere to put the waste" or "Yucca Mountain was canceled and we'll never have such a facility because of NIMBY." So the response is more "We can store on site and don't need deep geological depositories, here's others who have done it. But if you really want a geological depository, here's Onkalo." We can already do on sight, and this is already being done, so it makes sense to argue about this. If we want to do some smaller scale DGDs then we can do things substantially smaller than Yucca Mountain and have decades to build it. So the argument is: because we haven't managed to actually find a long term storage we can make up numbers about recycling and lifetime of the waste? And just dismissing the reasons as NIMBY is grossly over simplifying things, there are massive uncertainties about not just the storage, but also the logistics of the transport, the maintance etc.. > I think without this context, it comes off as extremely hand-wavy. I'll admit that there is some hand-wavyness, but without something in place all you can argue is "this problem isn't as hard as people think. We can do it, here's real world examples elsewhere." I'm not sure what other argument they are supposed to make. Where are the real world examples? The only place that has now opened a long term storage facility is Finland who just opened it (and that supposedly was largely due to political pressure because the project had run so much over time and budget), we actually don't know if they can run it let alone for 1000s of years. The low energy storage facility in Germany is a mess already after a few 10s of years (in Asse 2 they stored the low intensity waste in meta drums inside a former salt mine. Water got in, not really a good combination).
jokoon 4y ago
Renewables are not baseload. If you add batteries to the mix, nuclear is better. Not to mention the quantity of power produced. Nuclear is expensive because it's long term investment. Renewables also cost more in resources (concrete, steel, copper), there are sourced charts about this. Renewables are better than coal and gaz, but not better than nuclear. There's nothing wrong with renewables, but it's not enough to offset co2 emissions.
- elproxy 4y ago
  Nuclear is expensive first and foremost because of the unreasonable yield demands of capital and the advent of neoliberalism causing states to cave to said demands (source: https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Hinkley-Point-C.pdf https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Hinkley-Po...)
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  It doesn't have to be batteries, it can be pump storage plant or similar installations. Problem that those don't work aren't technical. There are often legislative in nature or the infrastructure for energy transportation is inadequate. We don't know how feasibly we can get Uranium. The market is unstable right now because of political problems. The topic is very complex, there are disadvantages with every form of energy production and nuclear isn't an exception. It is only clean if you reduce the question to CO2.
  - loup-vaillant 4y ago
    > it can be pump storage plant or similar installations. Not sure about the rest of the world, but in the EU we basically maxed out those years (decades?) ago. We won't be getting much more. (I mean, without actual mountains, your pump storage plant is going to be prohibitively expensive.) > The topic is very complex, there are disadvantages with every form of energy production True. In France, we had a very recent report[1] that outlines various scenarios towards 2050, and it appeared that the least risky ones involved a fairly diverse energetic mix. [1]: https://assets.rte-france.com/prod/public/2022-01/Energy%20pathways%202050_Key%20results.pdf https://assets.rte-france.com/prod/public/2022-01/Energy%20p...
bilekas 4y ago
I also don't believe nuclear waste would pose a significant problem. There are many ways of containing waste as well as reducing. Plasma disposal is also feasable for reducing the waste even further. RE : https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/48/050/48050413.pdf https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/... Fossil fuels release about 33 billion tonnes annually in co2 release. And that's not even possible to contain. https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and-the-environment/carbon-dioxide-emissions-from-electricity.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and... So the `~5k cubic meters of nuclear waste a year` mentioned elsewhere really is a grain of sand in comparison.
- Krasnol 4y ago
  > I also don't believe nuclear waste would pose a significant problem. There are many ways of containing waste as well as reducing. And than all you bring up is some technology which is in testing proving OPs argument. Sure there are ways of reducing highly radioactive waste...at the cost of creating more waste you still have to store...and yeah sure you can dispose some of it in the sea. Also it costs a hell lot of money. > Fossil fuels release about 33 billion tonnes annually Nobody questions the bad side of fossils. The topic is renewables vs. nuclear though.
  - bilekas 4y ago
    > The topic is renewables vs. nuclear though. I'm only commenting on a portion of the argument against nuclear based on its waste. The fact is the waste is negligible. Esspecially so when you consider the return of energy from a nuclear reactor Per square meter of real estate versus most viable renewables I'm personally of the opinion why not both. So I'm biased of course, but nuclear isn't something to be afraid of. Purely BECAUSE of technology.
    - Krasnol 4y ago
      > The fact is the waste is negligible. Esspecially so when you consider the return of energy It doesn't matter how much energy it "returns". It doesn't make the waste less worse for generations. > Per square meter of real estate versus most viable renewables You can literally put solar on roofs of private buildings...if your local fossil/nuclear lobby allows it. I don't even get how this is relevant. Especially because of the issue with constantly running nuclear reactors in an old grid clogging it up so cheap renewable energy needs to be turned off. > but nuclear isn't something to be afraid of. Purely BECAUSE of technology. Those jumps you make here from unfunded claims about waste disposal over derailing into fossil, whitewashing of that waste and old school baseload myths make me thing you're the one who's afraid of technology.
belorn 4y ago
> "While in reality renewables are on an exponential cost reduction trajectory " And now we are looking of some development in the future. The usual argument I keep seeing is that with the exponential cost reduction in solar and green hydrogen we will have in the future a combination that will be cheaper than the nuclear costs of today. A comparison of the current state of nuclear to some future potential solar + storage solution. Maybe we should use the same description for this and call that dishonest comparison? The current state in northern Europe are wind and some solar in combination with large capacity gas (and some coal/oil). This is why Russian gas, oil and coal has such a huge impact of the electricity price in Europe, and why countries are currently setting up plans to disconnect part of the grid if the threat of limited gas supply continues to next winter. The grid is built on renewables when they are available, running around 50% on average in some countries, and for the remaining we burn a lot of fossil fuels. All the waste of those burned fossil fuels are put into the environment for society to address at a later date. Maybe it is time for honesty in energy discussions, and also make intention clears. We should ban fossil fuels from being used in the energy grid, and we should set an date for that ban which corresponds to the common scientific understanding of global warming. We should also take in the data from doctors and health scientists that have first hand experience with fossil fuel pollution. With that, we need to build an energy grid that operates without having fossil fuels to fall back on.
- pydry 4y ago
  >The usual argument I keep seeing is that with the exponential cost reduction in solar and green hydrogen we will have in the future a combination that will be cheaper than the nuclear costs of today. Thats what its like today. That's probably why the nuclear PR articles almost never try to compare costs or speed of construction with demand shaping + solar + wind + storage. It does not stack up well.
  - belorn 4y ago
    The average cost of green hydrogen is 6 euro per kg, putting the price per kw/h around 18 cent. That is about 7 times more than the cost of nuclear per kw/h. No one is burning green hydrogen commercially for grid power, through a lot of people would be happy to pay the average nuclear cost (~3 cent per kw/h) if you want to provide it. Selling green hydrogen for $1 per kg would be very welcome in Europe right now, with a basically bottomless demand if someone would be willing to provide it at current nuclear prices. Demand shaping + solar + wind + storage is not economical viable in Northen Europe, but if you have any evidence to support the opposite then provide them. The fact is, if it was then the crisis that currently exist would not be a crisis, it would be an investment rush. Of course, if you personally want to offer green hydrogen for $1 per kg this winter, and sign a liability contract for supplying the many tons needed, then sure. Lets do it!
piokoch 4y ago
It is not about "cleanness", it is not about "costs in future". There are two core points why nuclear plants matter and only they matter so far. First they are practical - unlike all renewables nuclear energy plant provides stable influx of energy to the electric grid, regardless of the weather condition. As long as we don't have good and, again, practical energy storage, renewables usability will be always limited. And so far we don't see any true innovation in the long term, large scale batteries tech - ritual monthly "at last, new battery tech invented in X" article in popular magazines is not enough since those "new" batteries either has to work in 10 Kelvin temperature or would need to have size of the Moon. Pumped-storage hydroelectricity is, unfortunately, not practical as it requires very specific terrain and water sources. It is great we can build them here and there, but that's not the solution for the problem. Secondly, nuclear energy plants does not produce CO2 and this is what we want to get rid off, as I understand. Nuclear wastes are different story, unfortunately for the past 50 years there was almost no innovation in nuclear plants sector as well since everyone who would like to work on this was treated by the Academia like Holocaust deniers and anti-vaccination activists. Nuclear wastes are radiating, which means there is energy there, let's try to find the way how to use is, maybe it is easier than the search for the battery Holy Grail.
- Krasnol 4y ago
  > First they are practical - unlike all renewables nuclear energy plant provides stable influx of energy to the electric grid, regardless of the weather condition. That was "practical" in the 80s. Today it's a problem. You need to have a flexible grid to profit from the cheapest energy available. Having some expensive energy source clog up the grid so you have to turn off solar or wind is a bad thing. > As long as we don't have good and, again, practical energy storage, renewables usability will be always limited That baseload myth is dead these days. Batteries are merely one way to store energy but they’re not the only way. They’re not even the leading way. A combination of efficiency, demand response, transmission, optimal mix of wind and solar, along with some storage will be more than enough to get us beyond 100% of current service demand. And all of this is already working in parts of the world. For example in the EU where all that green and brown energy from Germany is saving Nuclear-Frances ass at the moment and has been every summer and winter for at least the last decade. > nce everyone who would like to work on this was treated by the Academia like Holocaust deniers and anti-vaccination activists. Billions disappear in nuclear research and has been since it's been invented. Billions which could have been invested into renewables which unlike nuclear produces real and fast progress so please...don't spread fake news.
jillesvangurp 4y ago
The solar panel argument is very weak, at best. There are some minor challenges with solar. And they are really very minor. Quite different to "don't touch the nuclear waste for the next few million or so years". Nuclear has several problems. The main one of which is simply its cost. It is complex technology that involves dangerous materials that need protective measures against both technical failures and security measures against people doing things like building dirty bombs with these materials. You don't need a lot of nuclear waste to make a really effective dirty bomb. All solvable, but it adds to the cost. Security generally involves babysitting reactors for their operational life as well as securing any sites where the waste is stored. Solar is about an order of magnitude cheaper and faster to deploy. That's conservative. It's hard to not emphasize just how simple solar panels are in comparison. Mass producing them seems to lead to all sorts improvements in production processes and cost reductions. So they are an order of magnitude cheaper now. It might be two or three in some decades. A solar panel just works for a few decades. You put it wherever and at the end of it's life you either recycle it or not. That's mostly a cost driven decision. We're talking perfectly inert material that you can have on your roof for decades without being exposed to anything harmful. Really, landfills of the stuff would not pose that many challenges. Certainly not compared to the other stuff we dump there like household electronics, old phones, depleted non rechargeable batteries, etc. However, landfills of this stuff seem wasteful and probably the trace elements of various minerals and precious metals will be too tempting for recycling companies for that not to not happen. It will be some decades before we know because most panels in use today just got installed fairly recently and will be operating for some decades to come. Same with lithium ion car batteries. We already recycle lead acid batteries for decades. The value of lead is comparatively low to nickel and lithium. This might be a multi billion dollar industry. Nuclear waste is not very profitable at all. Just cost. People might get smart about lowering that cost is the best you can say about it. I doubt the math will ever add up for nuclear to matter much. When your competition is orders of magnitudes cheaper, it doesn't matter how rosy a picture you paint for dealing with terrorists, nuclear waste, and the potential for area depopulating disasters. It's still too expensive. Mitigating those things will never be free. That's the problem.
- franga2000 4y ago
  That's a great comparison of producing, installing, maintaining and recycling, but what about the thing we're building this in the first place? Generating power? Let's say we shut down a coal power plant, which was 30% of a region's energy mix, and want to replace its output. What's the total cost and environmental impact of doing that with solar vs nuclear? This is the only thing that matters. Even if solar panels are 100x better per-peak-watt, by the time you add all the overprovisioning and storage necessary to cover the baseline during nights and overcast days, the numbers look very very different. The only question that matters is what solution can cover the need, currently met by fossil fuels. That solution isn't just the generation method, it's everything else we need in order to match not just the baseline and peak output, but the entire curve.
LorenPechtel 4y ago
It's not a matter of "some development in the future". We know how to do it now--the obstacles are political. The problem is a reactor + fuel recycling plant look an awful lot like a weapons grade plutonium production plant. People see that word "plutonium" and get scared. The reality is nobody uses power reactor for making bombs. The desired reaction is U-238 + n -> U-239, decay to Np-239, decay to Pu-239. However, if you leave the fuel in for too long you get an increasing amount of Pu-239 + n -> Pu-240. Pu-240 is a neutron emitter that gives bombmakers big headaches. If someone were to make off with a load of plutonium from a reprocessor they're going to have a hard time turning it into a working bomb. However, there's another approach to avoiding theft: Most of these isotopes don't matter. The fuel is "spent" because of a few neutron absorbers. Remove those, don't clean up the rest of it. Leave stuff like that Ba-133. The resulting fuel works just as well but unlike fresh fuel it's very nasty to deal with. The industry will have no problem with it--it's no nastier than the rods were when they came out, they have the machinery to handle it safely. The thief doesn't. You're not walking out with a gamma emitter in your pocket without setting off a bunch of alarms and if you try to steal much it will kill you before you manage to make off with it. There still is one political headache, though--a reprocessor plant + a reactor built for quick fuel changes is the heart of a plutonium bomb program. It's hard to say we can have such plants but places like Iran can't.
TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
I just don't understand why otherwise intelligent people cannot grasp that long lived nuclear waste also means it isn't very radioactive at all.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jaredklewis 4y ago

I agree with some of your criticism of the article, but I disagree that nuclear waste is a problem. Yes, we have to store it somewhere. But all US plants combined make ~5k cubic meters of nuclear waste a year. To put that in perspective, the strategic oil reserve is 100 million cubic meters. A single aircraft carrier is 2 million cubic meters. Political will aside, finding a place to store this stuff doesn’t seem like a massive problem.

arinlen 4y ago
> Yes, we have to store it somewhere. But all US plants combined make ~5k cubic meters of nuclear waste a year. And all those extra 5k cubic meters per year of nuclear waste needs to be stored for around a million years until they are again safe.
- kubami 4y ago
  If you read the article you'd see it's not "million years" but ~300.
  - jpgvm 4y ago
    Even if it was a million years it wouldn't matter. The US has the Nevada desert which is effectively a barren wasteland, just shove it in a bunch of containers and leave it there. They already do that for removed nuclear reactors from military vessels (which is actually so it can be seen in satellite imagery to fulfill international treaty requirements.
    - arinlen 4y ago
      > Even if it was a million years it wouldn't matter. This take is absurd. Humanity barely exists for a few thousand years and you somehow assume that it's feasible and economically justifiable to create a health and security hazard that will exist until the end of times. And all for what? Because you want to shave off a few cents from an energy bill?
    - tekknik 4y ago
      if we solve the clean energy problem, and energy becomes abundant, then that all becomes very usable land.
      - jpgvm 4y ago
        And if we don't we all die. Seems like an easy choice to me.
  - 4y ago

godelski 4y ago

> because of some development in the future will make recycling of spend fuel rods feasible. Context: They are responding to a complaint that isn't explicit here. That complaint usually comes in the form of: "we have nowhere to put the waste" or "Yucca Mountain was canceled and we'll never have such a facility because of NIMBY." So the response is more "We can store on site and don't need deep geological depositories, here's others who have done it. But if you really want a geological depository, here's Onkalo." We can already do on sight, and this is already being done, so it makes sense to argue about this. If we want to do some smaller scale DGDs then we can do things substantially smaller than Yucca Mountain and have decades to build it. I think without this context, it comes off as extremely hand-wavy. I'll admit that there is some hand-wavyness, but without something in place all you can argue is "this problem isn't as hard as people think. We can do it, here's real world examples elsewhere." I'm not sure what other argument they are supposed to make.

cycomanic 4y ago
> > because of some development in the future will make recycling of spend fuel rods feasible. > Context: They are responding to a complaint that isn't explicit here. That complaint usually comes in the form of: "we have nowhere to put the waste" or "Yucca Mountain was canceled and we'll never have such a facility because of NIMBY." So the response is more "We can store on site and don't need deep geological depositories, here's others who have done it. But if you really want a geological depository, here's Onkalo." We can already do on sight, and this is already being done, so it makes sense to argue about this. If we want to do some smaller scale DGDs then we can do things substantially smaller than Yucca Mountain and have decades to build it. So the argument is: because we haven't managed to actually find a long term storage we can make up numbers about recycling and lifetime of the waste? And just dismissing the reasons as NIMBY is grossly over simplifying things, there are massive uncertainties about not just the storage, but also the logistics of the transport, the maintance etc.. > I think without this context, it comes off as extremely hand-wavy. I'll admit that there is some hand-wavyness, but without something in place all you can argue is "this problem isn't as hard as people think. We can do it, here's real world examples elsewhere." I'm not sure what other argument they are supposed to make. Where are the real world examples? The only place that has now opened a long term storage facility is Finland who just opened it (and that supposedly was largely due to political pressure because the project had run so much over time and budget), we actually don't know if they can run it let alone for 1000s of years. The low energy storage facility in Germany is a mess already after a few 10s of years (in Asse 2 they stored the low intensity waste in meta drums inside a former salt mine. Water got in, not really a good combination).

jokoon 4y ago

Renewables are not baseload. If you add batteries to the mix, nuclear is better. Not to mention the quantity of power produced. Nuclear is expensive because it's long term investment. Renewables also cost more in resources (concrete, steel, copper), there are sourced charts about this. Renewables are better than coal and gaz, but not better than nuclear. There's nothing wrong with renewables, but it's not enough to offset co2 emissions.

elproxy 4y ago
Nuclear is expensive first and foremost because of the unreasonable yield demands of capital and the advent of neoliberalism causing states to cave to said demands (source: https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Hinkley-Point-C.pdf https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Hinkley-Po...)
raxxorraxor 4y ago
It doesn't have to be batteries, it can be pump storage plant or similar installations. Problem that those don't work aren't technical. There are often legislative in nature or the infrastructure for energy transportation is inadequate. We don't know how feasibly we can get Uranium. The market is unstable right now because of political problems. The topic is very complex, there are disadvantages with every form of energy production and nuclear isn't an exception. It is only clean if you reduce the question to CO2.
- loup-vaillant 4y ago
  > it can be pump storage plant or similar installations. Not sure about the rest of the world, but in the EU we basically maxed out those years (decades?) ago. We won't be getting much more. (I mean, without actual mountains, your pump storage plant is going to be prohibitively expensive.) > The topic is very complex, there are disadvantages with every form of energy production True. In France, we had a very recent report[1] that outlines various scenarios towards 2050, and it appeared that the least risky ones involved a fairly diverse energetic mix. [1]: https://assets.rte-france.com/prod/public/2022-01/Energy%20pathways%202050_Key%20results.pdf https://assets.rte-france.com/prod/public/2022-01/Energy%20p...

bilekas 4y ago

I also don't believe nuclear waste would pose a significant problem. There are many ways of containing waste as well as reducing. Plasma disposal is also feasable for reducing the waste even further. RE : https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/48/050/48050413.pdf https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/... Fossil fuels release about 33 billion tonnes annually in co2 release. And that's not even possible to contain. https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and-the-environment/carbon-dioxide-emissions-from-electricity.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and... So the `~5k cubic meters of nuclear waste a year` mentioned elsewhere really is a grain of sand in comparison.

Krasnol 4y ago
> I also don't believe nuclear waste would pose a significant problem. There are many ways of containing waste as well as reducing. And than all you bring up is some technology which is in testing proving OPs argument. Sure there are ways of reducing highly radioactive waste...at the cost of creating more waste you still have to store...and yeah sure you can dispose some of it in the sea. Also it costs a hell lot of money. > Fossil fuels release about 33 billion tonnes annually Nobody questions the bad side of fossils. The topic is renewables vs. nuclear though.
- bilekas 4y ago
  > The topic is renewables vs. nuclear though. I'm only commenting on a portion of the argument against nuclear based on its waste. The fact is the waste is negligible. Esspecially so when you consider the return of energy from a nuclear reactor Per square meter of real estate versus most viable renewables I'm personally of the opinion why not both. So I'm biased of course, but nuclear isn't something to be afraid of. Purely BECAUSE of technology.
  - Krasnol 4y ago
    > The fact is the waste is negligible. Esspecially so when you consider the return of energy It doesn't matter how much energy it "returns". It doesn't make the waste less worse for generations. > Per square meter of real estate versus most viable renewables You can literally put solar on roofs of private buildings...if your local fossil/nuclear lobby allows it. I don't even get how this is relevant. Especially because of the issue with constantly running nuclear reactors in an old grid clogging it up so cheap renewable energy needs to be turned off. > but nuclear isn't something to be afraid of. Purely BECAUSE of technology. Those jumps you make here from unfunded claims about waste disposal over derailing into fossil, whitewashing of that waste and old school baseload myths make me thing you're the one who's afraid of technology.

belorn 4y ago

> "While in reality renewables are on an exponential cost reduction trajectory " And now we are looking of some development in the future. The usual argument I keep seeing is that with the exponential cost reduction in solar and green hydrogen we will have in the future a combination that will be cheaper than the nuclear costs of today. A comparison of the current state of nuclear to some future potential solar + storage solution. Maybe we should use the same description for this and call that dishonest comparison? The current state in northern Europe are wind and some solar in combination with large capacity gas (and some coal/oil). This is why Russian gas, oil and coal has such a huge impact of the electricity price in Europe, and why countries are currently setting up plans to disconnect part of the grid if the threat of limited gas supply continues to next winter. The grid is built on renewables when they are available, running around 50% on average in some countries, and for the remaining we burn a lot of fossil fuels. All the waste of those burned fossil fuels are put into the environment for society to address at a later date. Maybe it is time for honesty in energy discussions, and also make intention clears. We should ban fossil fuels from being used in the energy grid, and we should set an date for that ban which corresponds to the common scientific understanding of global warming. We should also take in the data from doctors and health scientists that have first hand experience with fossil fuel pollution. With that, we need to build an energy grid that operates without having fossil fuels to fall back on.

pydry 4y ago
>The usual argument I keep seeing is that with the exponential cost reduction in solar and green hydrogen we will have in the future a combination that will be cheaper than the nuclear costs of today. Thats what its like today. That's probably why the nuclear PR articles almost never try to compare costs or speed of construction with demand shaping + solar + wind + storage. It does not stack up well.
- belorn 4y ago
  The average cost of green hydrogen is 6 euro per kg, putting the price per kw/h around 18 cent. That is about 7 times more than the cost of nuclear per kw/h. No one is burning green hydrogen commercially for grid power, through a lot of people would be happy to pay the average nuclear cost (~3 cent per kw/h) if you want to provide it. Selling green hydrogen for $1 per kg would be very welcome in Europe right now, with a basically bottomless demand if someone would be willing to provide it at current nuclear prices. Demand shaping + solar + wind + storage is not economical viable in Northen Europe, but if you have any evidence to support the opposite then provide them. The fact is, if it was then the crisis that currently exist would not be a crisis, it would be an investment rush. Of course, if you personally want to offer green hydrogen for $1 per kg this winter, and sign a liability contract for supplying the many tons needed, then sure. Lets do it!

piokoch 4y ago

It is not about "cleanness", it is not about "costs in future". There are two core points why nuclear plants matter and only they matter so far. First they are practical - unlike all renewables nuclear energy plant provides stable influx of energy to the electric grid, regardless of the weather condition. As long as we don't have good and, again, practical energy storage, renewables usability will be always limited. And so far we don't see any true innovation in the long term, large scale batteries tech - ritual monthly "at last, new battery tech invented in X" article in popular magazines is not enough since those "new" batteries either has to work in 10 Kelvin temperature or would need to have size of the Moon. Pumped-storage hydroelectricity is, unfortunately, not practical as it requires very specific terrain and water sources. It is great we can build them here and there, but that's not the solution for the problem. Secondly, nuclear energy plants does not produce CO2 and this is what we want to get rid off, as I understand. Nuclear wastes are different story, unfortunately for the past 50 years there was almost no innovation in nuclear plants sector as well since everyone who would like to work on this was treated by the Academia like Holocaust deniers and anti-vaccination activists. Nuclear wastes are radiating, which means there is energy there, let's try to find the way how to use is, maybe it is easier than the search for the battery Holy Grail.

Krasnol 4y ago
> First they are practical - unlike all renewables nuclear energy plant provides stable influx of energy to the electric grid, regardless of the weather condition. That was "practical" in the 80s. Today it's a problem. You need to have a flexible grid to profit from the cheapest energy available. Having some expensive energy source clog up the grid so you have to turn off solar or wind is a bad thing. > As long as we don't have good and, again, practical energy storage, renewables usability will be always limited That baseload myth is dead these days. Batteries are merely one way to store energy but they’re not the only way. They’re not even the leading way. A combination of efficiency, demand response, transmission, optimal mix of wind and solar, along with some storage will be more than enough to get us beyond 100% of current service demand. And all of this is already working in parts of the world. For example in the EU where all that green and brown energy from Germany is saving Nuclear-Frances ass at the moment and has been every summer and winter for at least the last decade. > nce everyone who would like to work on this was treated by the Academia like Holocaust deniers and anti-vaccination activists. Billions disappear in nuclear research and has been since it's been invented. Billions which could have been invested into renewables which unlike nuclear produces real and fast progress so please...don't spread fake news.

jillesvangurp 4y ago

The solar panel argument is very weak, at best. There are some minor challenges with solar. And they are really very minor. Quite different to "don't touch the nuclear waste for the next few million or so years". Nuclear has several problems. The main one of which is simply its cost. It is complex technology that involves dangerous materials that need protective measures against both technical failures and security measures against people doing things like building dirty bombs with these materials. You don't need a lot of nuclear waste to make a really effective dirty bomb. All solvable, but it adds to the cost. Security generally involves babysitting reactors for their operational life as well as securing any sites where the waste is stored. Solar is about an order of magnitude cheaper and faster to deploy. That's conservative. It's hard to not emphasize just how simple solar panels are in comparison. Mass producing them seems to lead to all sorts improvements in production processes and cost reductions. So they are an order of magnitude cheaper now. It might be two or three in some decades. A solar panel just works for a few decades. You put it wherever and at the end of it's life you either recycle it or not. That's mostly a cost driven decision. We're talking perfectly inert material that you can have on your roof for decades without being exposed to anything harmful. Really, landfills of the stuff would not pose that many challenges. Certainly not compared to the other stuff we dump there like household electronics, old phones, depleted non rechargeable batteries, etc. However, landfills of this stuff seem wasteful and probably the trace elements of various minerals and precious metals will be too tempting for recycling companies for that not to not happen. It will be some decades before we know because most panels in use today just got installed fairly recently and will be operating for some decades to come. Same with lithium ion car batteries. We already recycle lead acid batteries for decades. The value of lead is comparatively low to nickel and lithium. This might be a multi billion dollar industry. Nuclear waste is not very profitable at all. Just cost. People might get smart about lowering that cost is the best you can say about it. I doubt the math will ever add up for nuclear to matter much. When your competition is orders of magnitudes cheaper, it doesn't matter how rosy a picture you paint for dealing with terrorists, nuclear waste, and the potential for area depopulating disasters. It's still too expensive. Mitigating those things will never be free. That's the problem.

franga2000 4y ago
That's a great comparison of producing, installing, maintaining and recycling, but what about the thing we're building this in the first place? Generating power? Let's say we shut down a coal power plant, which was 30% of a region's energy mix, and want to replace its output. What's the total cost and environmental impact of doing that with solar vs nuclear? This is the only thing that matters. Even if solar panels are 100x better per-peak-watt, by the time you add all the overprovisioning and storage necessary to cover the baseline during nights and overcast days, the numbers look very very different. The only question that matters is what solution can cover the need, currently met by fossil fuels. That solution isn't just the generation method, it's everything else we need in order to match not just the baseline and peak output, but the entire curve.

LorenPechtel 4y ago

It's not a matter of "some development in the future". We know how to do it now--the obstacles are political. The problem is a reactor + fuel recycling plant look an awful lot like a weapons grade plutonium production plant. People see that word "plutonium" and get scared. The reality is nobody uses power reactor for making bombs. The desired reaction is U-238 + n -> U-239, decay to Np-239, decay to Pu-239. However, if you leave the fuel in for too long you get an increasing amount of Pu-239 + n -> Pu-240. Pu-240 is a neutron emitter that gives bombmakers big headaches. If someone were to make off with a load of plutonium from a reprocessor they're going to have a hard time turning it into a working bomb. However, there's another approach to avoiding theft: Most of these isotopes don't matter. The fuel is "spent" because of a few neutron absorbers. Remove those, don't clean up the rest of it. Leave stuff like that Ba-133. The resulting fuel works just as well but unlike fresh fuel it's very nasty to deal with. The industry will have no problem with it--it's no nastier than the rods were when they came out, they have the machinery to handle it safely. The thief doesn't. You're not walking out with a gamma emitter in your pocket without setting off a bunch of alarms and if you try to steal much it will kill you before you manage to make off with it. There still is one political headache, though--a reprocessor plant + a reactor built for quick fuel changes is the heart of a plutonium bomb program. It's hard to say we can have such plants but places like Iran can't.

TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago

I just don't understand why otherwise intelligent people cannot grasp that long lived nuclear waste also means it isn't very radioactive at all.