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Nuclear energy has so much potential. Pretty sad people are scared of it. It's clean, it's energy dense, and we can make a lot of it. France gets most of it's e
by adityamwagh 4y ago
Nuclear energy has so much potential. Pretty sad people are scared of it. It's clean, it's energy dense, and we can make a lot of it. France gets most of it's energy from Nuclear plants.
- fragmede 4y agoIt is sad that proliferation of material for nuclear weapons is that scary. Not that I'm arguing that it isn't. But the nuclear waste that's radioactive for 200,000 years doesn't have to be. Breeder reactors and fuel reprocessing can reduce that to hundreds of years. Yeah that's still longer than a couple human lifetime generations, but nowhere near trying to put up warning signs that will continue to scare away people through the rise and fall of several civiliations.
- ncmncm 4y agoNuclear is dead not because people are afraid of it. Nuclear is dead because it is way more expensive than alternatives. Always was, and getting moreso as renewables cost continues on down. In the foreseeable future, nukes will be mothballed long short of their design life just because nobody will want to pay enough for their power to enable continuing to operate them. Geothermal might suffer the same fate. When a nuke is mothballed early, every kWh it ever produced will suddenly be found to have cost much more than had previously been reckoned.
- realusername 4y agoIt's only more expensive if you don't factor external costs due to renewables. At the moment, renewables still can't compete on pricing with 70s nuclear designs...
- Lutzb 4y agocitation needed
- Ekaros 4y agoNuclear as base load is rather price efficient. And with enough units it can deliver at that price every hour of the year. Not as cheap as renewables, but still very affordable.
- thatfrenchguy 4y agoRenewables plus storage are incredibly expensive. There is zero grid running on renewables (besides hydro) for base loads today.
- ncmncm 4y agoYou wish renewables plus storage were expensive. But they are, in fact, not.
- lispm 4y agoa) there is a difference between electricity production and energy use. Typically countries don't use electricity for all energy needs. b) are you aware that half of the nuclear fleet in France isn't online? https://www.brusselstimes.com/belgium-news/274261/controlled-blackouts-france-braces-for-winter-electricity-shortage https://www.brusselstimes.com/belgium-news/274261/controlled... > It's clean, it's energy dense, and we can make a lot of it. France gets most of it's energy from Nuclear plants. It's not clean, since the nuclear industry is also polluting the environment. It's not safe, since there is a risk of nuclear weapons, it's also limited (for example one needs water for the production of nuclear electricity - which in dry summers - like right now - can be a problem). Worst: Parts of the nuclear energy production is largely unsolved (nuclear waste storage, clean reprocessing, ...). It's expensive, needs lots of government money and creates huge centralized structures.
- realusername 4y agoIronically, France has issues now because they spent around 120 billions on renewables with very few results. Had this money been spent on the nuclear grid, the gris would be in a much better state now.
- Ekaros 4y ago120 billion... So around 12 new plants at least? And probably more as they would have not screwed up most of those...
- realusername 4y agoYes, that's about half of the cost of the current nuclear grid spent for about 7% of the production.
- lispm 4y agoThey were not even able to finish one new reactor. The EPR is a decade late with massive cost increases. Why would anyone spend more money on that? https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/edf-hopeful-end-sight-long-delayed-budget-busting-nuclear-plant-2022-06-16/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/edf-hopeful-end-sigh... With more than half of the French nuclear fleet offline, nuclear in this energy crisis is just only contributing to the problems.