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I don't understand the reasoning for phasing out nuclear power. Is that really what we want to aim for? Why? I understand the public as a whole is afraid becau

I don't understand the reasoning for phasing out nuclear power. Is that really what we want to aim for? Why? I understand the public as a whole is afraid because they remember events like Chernobyl and Fukushima, but those were pre-Generation-III reactors (Chernobyl was generation 1, Fukushima was generation 2). Modern designs are far safer. We've learned so much since the mid-20th century. Micro-reactors in particular could become a huge boon to society. All US submarines and aircraft carriers have been nuclear-powered for decades; and it's been decades without any military reactor-related incidents. The conspiracy theorist in my head wants to blame it on *someone* in the US government/industrial complex who stands to make a lot of money from selling other energy sources. :-/

charlieyu1 4y ago
All things work perfectly until they don't. We are at a stage of humanity right before fusion power becomes the norm anyway. No point using a short term solution where an accident makes land of the size of a city uninhabitable for 1000 years.
- notfromhere 4y ago
  There is little evidence to suggest we’re anywhere near fusion power.
  - charlieyu1 4y ago
    Not 10-20 years maybe, but 50 years? Pretty high chance.
    - nippoo 4y ago
      We've been saying it's 50 years away for about 50 years... https://www.engineering.com/story/why-is-fusion-power-is-always-50-years-away https://www.engineering.com/story/why-is-fusion-power-is-alw...
      - charlieyu1 4y ago
        15 years ago AI was pretty much a dead end.
        TimTheTinker 4y ago
        At our stage of world development, mathematical and algorithmic breakthroughs happen at a much faster pace than physical/mechanical breakthroughs.
        afterburner 4y ago
        It's still not that impressive, more a result of computational power than anything fundamental.
      - lucb1e 4y ago
        Fusion milestones have been newly achieved in the past 10 years. You may be right that it'll remain "50 years away" for generations still, but it's not evident to me that this will be the case. We barely had fission energy stable 60 years ago, we now know a lot more about the requirements and limitations for fusion, and we're allegedly still saying 50 years? That's a lot more reliable, and note that n=2 here (a bit more than one set of fifty years having gone by, a second fifty being underway and it still seeming like that). If it were "always 10 years away" since the 50s, that'd be quite a different story.
    - Krssst 4y ago
      We would still need to go from 0W to 2-3TW production once we get actual generation; that's a lot of work planet-wide.
- Georgelemental 4y ago
  > where an accident makes land of the size of a city uninhabitable for 1000 years. It… really doesn't. Even someone with full control of a modern plant, who actively wanted to cause as terrible an accident as possible, would not be able to cause nearly that much damage. Meanwhile, fossil fuels are poisoning people right now
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- okamiueru 4y ago
  > accident makes land of the size of a city uninhabitable for 1000 years Maybe just me, but I would gladly take that risk vs the whole world becoming uninhabitable due to global warming, not to mention the possible nuclear fallout from WW3 due to global unrest. The greatest political disappointment I've felt in recent years was when the Merkele government decided to shut down a bunch of Nuclear power-plants. It made up for it by burning coal.
  - deepsun 4y ago
    Merkele government was played by Kremlin. The previous chancellor, Gerhard Schröder actively lobbied for Russia and had(has?) seats in Russian state-owned companies.
    - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
      >Merkele government was played by Kremlin. She (and Schroeder) wasn't some puppet put there by Putin, the German people voted for her, several times over actually. It's their fault and their responsibility for the choices they made. That's how democracy works. Next time choose your leaders more wisely, but sadly, I feel like no lessons have been learned in Germany and the voters will double down on their flawed ideology over reality.
      - c4mpute 4y ago
        Also, there is no choice in political parties with those issues. After Merkel went back on her promise to strengthen nuclear and changed her mind, there was no party left supporting nuclear power in Germany. The only option one has there is to vote for the far-right AfD (10-15%, shunned by all coalitions, so basically a wasted vote if not >40%) or the capitalist-liberal FDP (5-10%, currently part of the coalition in power, but too small to make a difference). So no matter what you vote for, it won't change anything.
        deepsun 4y ago
        Do Germans vote for measures/provisions? In US voting for positions is only half, if not less, of the total ballot. The most interesting part is measures and provisions. BUT, it's only state and municipal provisions, there's no voting for nation-wide issues. The only country I know where there's a way to vote for particular issues is Switzerland.
- BenFranklin100 4y ago
  The era of practical fusion being deployed at scale is 50 years off no matter how exciting some may find the recent press releases.
kelseyfrog 4y ago
> Chernobyl was generation 1, Fukushima was generation 2 Just extrapolating the sequence, the next disaster will take place in a generation 3 reactor.
- llukas 4y ago
  If we extrapolate then lets also do it for the impact of the disaster. Gen 3 disaster: nobody dies and nothing leaks outside the reactor containment vessel.
  - quacked 4y ago
    Your implication is that a reactor containment vessel in a Gen 3 nuclear reaction is capable of containing radioactive material no matter what physically happens to it (flooding, earthquake, asteroid impact, etc.) Is that accurate?
    - Vecr 4y ago
      Asteroid impact? Is the reaction even going to be critical at that point? Assuming you mean something smaller like a meteoroid, I think most US plants would either be okay, or you have other problems to worry about (like if any people are within multiple miles of the plant in every direction).
      - c4mpute 4y ago
        There would be an intermediate size asteroid that would be able to penetrate the containment and damage the core. That same size asteroid wouldn't be much of a worry if it just hit a field next to a town. On the other hand, that same asteroid could topple over some skyscraper and kill a few thousand people, which is more than the aforementioned nuclear-asteroid accident would.
      - quacked 4y ago
        I was just listing things that could affect the structure of the core. The real question about nuclear disasters isn't whether or not humanity can respond to them given functioning society, it's what happens when a society collapses (extended power outage, etc.) and then something affects the fissile material. Fukushima took a lot of people to clean up.
pydry 4y ago
>I don't understand the reasoning for phasing out nuclear power 1) It's ridiculously expensive. LCOE is 5x the cost of solar and wind: https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/wind/study-wind-solar-5x-costly-existing-coal-nuclear/ https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/wind/st... 2) Yes, still a lot more expensive once you take storage into account. Even for the most inefficient forms of storage: https://theecologist.org/2016/feb/17/wind-power-windgas-cheaper-and-greener-hinkley-point-c-nuclear-plant https://theecologist.org/2016/feb/17/wind-power-windgas-chea... 3) It takes about 12-20 years to build new plants. Solar/wind is 1-4 years. 4) 5x is an understatement. It's even more expensive if you properly account for insurance. Dealing with Fukushima cost $800 billion. This is unaccounted for in LCOE and taxpayers will be fully on the hook for whatever the next Fukushima. 5) New power plants aren't being built because it's too expensive. So, old ones are having their lives extended (the latest law in congress was about this). Older plants = more danger. Fukushima happened in large part because it was old. 6) Despite this many countries still build nuclear power. Why? Two reasons: 1) it shares nuclear military costs 2) it lets you build a bomb quickly.
- chucknthem 4y ago
  It's expensive because no investment has been made to scale it up and make cheaper & safer, whereas a ton of subsidies and investment went into scaling up solar and making that cheaper over the past 2 decades. China will probably make it cheap given the pace they're going building out nuclear plants.
  - natmaka 4y ago
    China is way more active deploying renewables than nuclear. https://www.colorado.edu/cas/2022/04/12/even-china-cannot-rescue-nuclear-power-its-woes https://www.colorado.edu/cas/2022/04/12/even-china-cannot-re...
    - chucknthem 4y ago
      Yep, they have massive energy demand and going full steam ahead in all energy sources.
BenFranklin100 4y ago
People born between 1950 and 1965 come of age as both environmental consciousness started to become a thing and the Three Mile Island accident occurred. This left an indelible impression in many people’s mind that nuclear energy was not compatible with sound environmental policy. That impression has never faded. The answer to question of whether nuclear power ever should return rests with today’s younger generations.
ramblenode 4y ago
> and it's been decades without any reactor-related incidents. I'm not anti-nuclear, but using decades to measure substances with half lifes on the order of tens or hundreds of millenia isn't very helpful. The (legitimate) concern is that even low frequency accidents are frequent enough on the timescale of human civlization that they could present semi-permanent damage to the biosphere.
- shakow 4y ago
  > could present semi-permanent damage to the biosphere. Burning coal, gas or oil present immediate, virtually permanent (at least on a human time scale) damages to the biosphere; hydro electric power already killed at least two more orders of magnitude people than even the most delirious casualty estimations of nuclear power accidents; and air pollution is estimated killing millions of people per year. At some point, people should start learning to count.
  - Krssst 4y ago
    Pretty dark take (by all means feel free to correct me), but I am sometimes wondering if the fact that dam failures kill everybody and most of their families at once helps its public image since there's few remaining affected people that can spread awareness. (not saying that hydro is a bad choice; it looks to be the best when possible thanks to load following and ability to double as storage)
    - zdragnar 4y ago
      They also produce a ton of methane by trapping a valley's worth of vegetation at the bottom of an artificial lake, and need dredging to stay functional, but who's really counting?
      - KennyBlanken 4y ago
        Please provide a citation showing that this is even remotely a significant problem in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. For example, how much methane compared to one cow?
jeremyjh 4y ago
I remember during the Fukushima disaster, every few hours an expert would come onto my television and tell me the next terrible thing could never happen. When it happened a few hours later, they came on my TV and said ok but that NEXT thing will definitely not happen...this repeated at least 3-4 times. I don't remember remember the sequence of events, but I remember the experts were not trustworthy. I wonder if anyone else learned that.
- natmaka 4y ago
  https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/world/asia/projections-during-nuclear-crisis-included-evacuating-tokyo.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/world/asia/projections-du...
grecy 4y ago
Nuclear power is vastly more expensive than solar or wind. Nuclear power plants take decades to build and turn on. Nuclear power has a non-zero risk of very, very bad things happening. We have no long term strategy for storing nuclear waste.
- Krssst 4y ago
  Non-dispatchable renewable require backup power as long as we don't have large scale storage, which we don't. So it's comparing apple to oranges. Let's hope that we get such storage sometime soon since it looks like it's the assumption everybody's making. Otherwise we'll still be burning gas and coal as long as we can get our hands on them when NREs are not generating, making the climate worse in the process.
  - natmaka 4y ago
    This is also true for nuclear. Even France never ceased to burn fossil fuel in order to produce electricity (7 to 10% per year).
    - shakow 4y ago
      This is only true for France because at some point, presidents decided that the electricity production plan was enough and stopped it in the middle.
  - grecy 4y ago
    > Non-dispatchable renewable require backup power as long as we don't have large scale storage, which we don't And in the time it would take to build a single new nuclear reactor we're going to add a massive, massive amount of large scale storage. It's already well underway. How far along is the next nuclear reactor?
- hot_gril 4y ago
  > vastly more expensive than solar or wind No it's not. Maybe for the first plant of its kind.
afterburner 4y ago
It's too expensive. Solar and wind + battery (regular and water storage based) are much, much better. Easier to install, expand, maintain, and sunset, and with no incredible risk attached to it that requires state insurance (the society will clean up the mess). Solar is already CHEEEEEAP and getting cheaper. Nuclear is expensive and not getting any cheaper, in fact quite the opposite. Market forces are already making this apparent (money talks), but there are still pro nuclear lobbies DESPERATE to hold on.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Krssst 4y ago
  Not taking into account seasonal storage makes the comparison of nuclear and NREs not pertinent. > there are still pro nuclear lobbies DESPERATE to hold on. First, caps don't make right. I believe NREs help in getting emissions down to a point, but since you need backup power I am not seeing it working at 80% production share. In order to emissions to get to zero I believe nuclear makes sense on the longer term.
  - pydry 4y ago
    Synthesizing natural gas and using that for season storage is still cheaper than nuclear power: https://theecologist.org/2016/feb/17/wind-power-windgas-cheaper-and-greener-hinkley-point-c-nuclear-plant https://theecologist.org/2016/feb/17/wind-power-windgas-chea...
  - hackerlight 4y ago
    You don't need any storage to get to 80-90% from renewables, which can be achieved by overbuilding renewables and creating an international market for energy. Denmark is a good case study.
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      How exactly do you create power when it's dark and there's no wind? An "international market" doesn't help with electricity: you can't transport electricity feasibly across oceans.
hot_gril 4y ago
> it's been decades without any military reactor-related incidents If there were, I don't think they'd tell anyone. So maybe it's a trust thing. People know for sure that a wind turbine can't poison nearby communities to death no matter what goes wrong. Personally I'd prefer nuclear, but also this kind of distrust is the only way we can get more transparency.
explaininjs 4y ago
> it's been decades without any military reactor-related incidents Excuse me, what? There are quite literally ongoing military nuclear reactor incidents at this very moment. The fact that they started decades ago is hardly a consolation. This kind of wool-pulling makes it very hard to trust the pro-nuclear crowd. Maybe if we could manage to contain the waste we've already created (or at the very least if pro-nucs would admit we can't), I might have some faith in our ability to contain the waste we make in the future. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site
- brightlancer 4y ago
  > Excuse me, what? There are quite literally ongoing military nuclear reactor incidents at this very moment. The fact that they started decades ago is hardly a consolation. > This kind of wool-pulling makes it very hard to trust the pro-nuclear crowd. Maybe if we could manage to contain the waste we've already created (or at the very least if pro-nucs would admit we can't), I might have some faith in our ability to contain the waste we make in the future. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site GP specifically referenced "submarines and aircraft carriers"; Hanford is neither. There is a cleanup at Hanford, which is understandable for one of the earliest reactors. I think calling it "ongoing military nuclear reactor incidents" is misleading, since it was the normal operation. Again, GP: "We've learned so much since the mid-20th century." Nothing is going to be perfect. All the data I've seen is that nuclear power is safer and has fewer casualties. Picking one of the earliest sites from 70 years ago ignores everything since, as well as comparison to fatalities due to other forms of power generation. To paraphrase you, "This kind of wool-pulling makes it very hard to trust the _anti_-nuclear crowd."
  - explaininjs 4y ago
    A semicolon links two independent (yet related) clauses. The first, "all US submarines and aircraft carriers have been nuclear-powered for decades", is roughly true (that is, if you count 15 years as "decades"). The second, "it's been decades without any military reactor-related incidents", is demonstrably false. > calling it "ongoing military nuclear reactor incidents" is misleading, since it was the normal operation. I can't tell what you mean by "it was the normal operation". I can assure you that the plant was not designed to be in a state of constant leakage and need billions of dollars of continuous investment per year to facilitate its cleanup process for decades without end. Well, that's a bit of a lie. The plant was designed to leak radioactive waste into the Columbia River under normal operation. But that was considered safe, at that time. Just as many nuclear things are now considered safe, at this time. For instance the Monticello leak less than 6 months ago, which was covered up for months before the news finally got out. Perfectly safe, at this time. If we've really learned so much since whenever, let's use that knowledge to clean up all the messes we made along the way first. Once we know we can do that well, perhaps we can take on more projects. Until then we're the Junior Dev hopping from greenfield project to greenfield project leaving giant steaming piles of shit behind at every stop and telling ourselves "welp, I definitely learned from that experience! no way I'm doing that again!" > This kind of wool-pulling makes it very hard to trust the _anti_-nuclear crowd. I'm not asking anyone to trust me, I'm not an energy expert and never claimed to be. I'm just asking them to not lie in order to push a nuclear agenda. In general, if a concept is truly with pursuing, it should be able to be presented via a convincing argument without lies.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
You don't understand why a country wouldn't want to go a hundred billion euros in debt maintaining derelict nuclear plants and being wholly dependent on a hostile foreign power for fuel? Or you don't understand why people wouldn't want to be left holding the cleanup bill after the company running a power station or mine or mill declared bankruptcy before finishing decomissioning? Or you don't understand why people wouldn't support ecocide, corruption and worker exploitation in Niger or Uzbekistan to line the pockets of a uranium mining oligopoly?
beezlewax 4y ago
From what I'm aware nuclear power stations that are older need to all be phased out eventually as they reach end of life and are no longer safe. Whether they are replaced or not is another thing
- cinntaile 4y ago
  They can usually be made safe to run past their due date but the investment required is likely substantial.
jillesvangurp 4y ago
It's expensive, that's why. You are wrongly assuming public fear and safety have anything to do with this. It's cost. These reactors are approaching their end of life. Keeping them going requires lots of investments. The return on those investments is poor. So, private investors are not really interested. If it had a decent ROI, they'd be all over it. But there just isn't. These are old, expensive plants. The article is a bit light on numbers and facts, unfortunately. Hard to tell if this is a serious study or paid "study" by some lobby with an agenda. I suspect the latter. It certainly seems to be very selective in what it talks about. And it would explain the hand waviness of the reported "findings". It kind of makes a big point of avoiding talking about investments in renewables because "In 1985, the closure of reactors in Tennessee Valley prompted a spike in coal use". That's nearly four decades ago. Most of those coal plants have probably been closed by now. And conveniently, wind and solar investments were not a thing at the time.
- TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
  It is less expensive than renewables + energy storage.
  - the_cramer 4y ago
    From what I've seen [1] the long-term investment a nuclear reactor is massive and ROI is often measured in centuries. Also we still don't have a good solution for power spike handling with renewables + energy storage. A windless night is the scenario we're talking about here. So most of this discussion is probably addressing nuclear vs. coal / gas [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UC_BCz0pzMw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UC_BCz0pzMw
- otikik 4y ago
  It costs because there has been almost no research or advancement in the technology since the 70s. And that has happened because of lack of investment, which happens because of public fear.
lostlogin 4y ago
> Modern designs are far safer. We've learned so much since the mid-20th century. Have we? There is a nuclear plant being shelled in Ukraine and the US is still arguing over where to dump its waste. Japan is looking to release a million tons of radioactive water into the sea. Those are the ones I can think of that are happening right now. There are plenty more in and out of the news. I don’t think knowledge is cumulative, it has to be re-learned ever so often. In relation to the US navy - here is an accident that was covered up 16 years ago. I do not believe there have been none since. https://apnews.com/article/559da885ca7c3f6252d67e400e92a846 https://apnews.com/article/559da885ca7c3f6252d67e400e92a846
- karmelapple 4y ago
  The date line on that was 1989, so 16 years before that is 1973, which is 40 years ago. Understood about the concern that if they tried to hide a problem once, they’ll probably try to hide one again. But 16 years ago isn’t accurate with the link you shared.
  - lostlogin 4y ago
    > isn’t accurate That’s an understatement, good catch.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

charlieyu1 4y ago

All things work perfectly until they don't. We are at a stage of humanity right before fusion power becomes the norm anyway. No point using a short term solution where an accident makes land of the size of a city uninhabitable for 1000 years.

notfromhere 4y ago
There is little evidence to suggest we’re anywhere near fusion power.
- charlieyu1 4y ago
  Not 10-20 years maybe, but 50 years? Pretty high chance.
  - nippoo 4y ago
    We've been saying it's 50 years away for about 50 years... https://www.engineering.com/story/why-is-fusion-power-is-always-50-years-away https://www.engineering.com/story/why-is-fusion-power-is-alw...
    - charlieyu1 4y ago
      15 years ago AI was pretty much a dead end.
      - TimTheTinker 4y ago
        At our stage of world development, mathematical and algorithmic breakthroughs happen at a much faster pace than physical/mechanical breakthroughs.
      - afterburner 4y ago
        It's still not that impressive, more a result of computational power than anything fundamental.
    - lucb1e 4y ago
      Fusion milestones have been newly achieved in the past 10 years. You may be right that it'll remain "50 years away" for generations still, but it's not evident to me that this will be the case. We barely had fission energy stable 60 years ago, we now know a lot more about the requirements and limitations for fusion, and we're allegedly still saying 50 years? That's a lot more reliable, and note that n=2 here (a bit more than one set of fifty years having gone by, a second fifty being underway and it still seeming like that). If it were "always 10 years away" since the 50s, that'd be quite a different story.
  - Krssst 4y ago
    We would still need to go from 0W to 2-3TW production once we get actual generation; that's a lot of work planet-wide.
Georgelemental 4y ago
> where an accident makes land of the size of a city uninhabitable for 1000 years. It… really doesn't. Even someone with full control of a modern plant, who actively wanted to cause as terrible an accident as possible, would not be able to cause nearly that much damage. Meanwhile, fossil fuels are poisoning people right now
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
okamiueru 4y ago
> accident makes land of the size of a city uninhabitable for 1000 years Maybe just me, but I would gladly take that risk vs the whole world becoming uninhabitable due to global warming, not to mention the possible nuclear fallout from WW3 due to global unrest. The greatest political disappointment I've felt in recent years was when the Merkele government decided to shut down a bunch of Nuclear power-plants. It made up for it by burning coal.
- deepsun 4y ago
  Merkele government was played by Kremlin. The previous chancellor, Gerhard Schröder actively lobbied for Russia and had(has?) seats in Russian state-owned companies.
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    >Merkele government was played by Kremlin. She (and Schroeder) wasn't some puppet put there by Putin, the German people voted for her, several times over actually. It's their fault and their responsibility for the choices they made. That's how democracy works. Next time choose your leaders more wisely, but sadly, I feel like no lessons have been learned in Germany and the voters will double down on their flawed ideology over reality.
    - c4mpute 4y ago
      Also, there is no choice in political parties with those issues. After Merkel went back on her promise to strengthen nuclear and changed her mind, there was no party left supporting nuclear power in Germany. The only option one has there is to vote for the far-right AfD (10-15%, shunned by all coalitions, so basically a wasted vote if not >40%) or the capitalist-liberal FDP (5-10%, currently part of the coalition in power, but too small to make a difference). So no matter what you vote for, it won't change anything.
      - deepsun 4y ago
        Do Germans vote for measures/provisions? In US voting for positions is only half, if not less, of the total ballot. The most interesting part is measures and provisions. BUT, it's only state and municipal provisions, there's no voting for nation-wide issues. The only country I know where there's a way to vote for particular issues is Switzerland.
BenFranklin100 4y ago
The era of practical fusion being deployed at scale is 50 years off no matter how exciting some may find the recent press releases.

kelseyfrog 4y ago

> Chernobyl was generation 1, Fukushima was generation 2 Just extrapolating the sequence, the next disaster will take place in a generation 3 reactor.

llukas 4y ago
If we extrapolate then lets also do it for the impact of the disaster. Gen 3 disaster: nobody dies and nothing leaks outside the reactor containment vessel.
- quacked 4y ago
  Your implication is that a reactor containment vessel in a Gen 3 nuclear reaction is capable of containing radioactive material no matter what physically happens to it (flooding, earthquake, asteroid impact, etc.) Is that accurate?
  - Vecr 4y ago
    Asteroid impact? Is the reaction even going to be critical at that point? Assuming you mean something smaller like a meteoroid, I think most US plants would either be okay, or you have other problems to worry about (like if any people are within multiple miles of the plant in every direction).
    - c4mpute 4y ago
      There would be an intermediate size asteroid that would be able to penetrate the containment and damage the core. That same size asteroid wouldn't be much of a worry if it just hit a field next to a town. On the other hand, that same asteroid could topple over some skyscraper and kill a few thousand people, which is more than the aforementioned nuclear-asteroid accident would.
    - quacked 4y ago
      I was just listing things that could affect the structure of the core. The real question about nuclear disasters isn't whether or not humanity can respond to them given functioning society, it's what happens when a society collapses (extended power outage, etc.) and then something affects the fissile material. Fukushima took a lot of people to clean up.

pydry 4y ago

>I don't understand the reasoning for phasing out nuclear power 1) It's ridiculously expensive. LCOE is 5x the cost of solar and wind: https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/wind/study-wind-solar-5x-costly-existing-coal-nuclear/ https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/wind/st... 2) Yes, still a lot more expensive once you take storage into account. Even for the most inefficient forms of storage: https://theecologist.org/2016/feb/17/wind-power-windgas-cheaper-and-greener-hinkley-point-c-nuclear-plant https://theecologist.org/2016/feb/17/wind-power-windgas-chea... 3) It takes about 12-20 years to build new plants. Solar/wind is 1-4 years. 4) 5x is an understatement. It's even more expensive if you properly account for insurance. Dealing with Fukushima cost $800 billion. This is unaccounted for in LCOE and taxpayers will be fully on the hook for whatever the next Fukushima. 5) New power plants aren't being built because it's too expensive. So, old ones are having their lives extended (the latest law in congress was about this). Older plants = more danger. Fukushima happened in large part because it was old. 6) Despite this many countries still build nuclear power. Why? Two reasons: 1) it shares nuclear military costs 2) it lets you build a bomb quickly.

chucknthem 4y ago
It's expensive because no investment has been made to scale it up and make cheaper & safer, whereas a ton of subsidies and investment went into scaling up solar and making that cheaper over the past 2 decades. China will probably make it cheap given the pace they're going building out nuclear plants.
- natmaka 4y ago
  China is way more active deploying renewables than nuclear. https://www.colorado.edu/cas/2022/04/12/even-china-cannot-rescue-nuclear-power-its-woes https://www.colorado.edu/cas/2022/04/12/even-china-cannot-re...
  - chucknthem 4y ago
    Yep, they have massive energy demand and going full steam ahead in all energy sources.

BenFranklin100 4y ago

People born between 1950 and 1965 come of age as both environmental consciousness started to become a thing and the Three Mile Island accident occurred. This left an indelible impression in many people’s mind that nuclear energy was not compatible with sound environmental policy. That impression has never faded. The answer to question of whether nuclear power ever should return rests with today’s younger generations.

ramblenode 4y ago

> and it's been decades without any reactor-related incidents. I'm not anti-nuclear, but using decades to measure substances with half lifes on the order of tens or hundreds of millenia isn't very helpful. The (legitimate) concern is that even low frequency accidents are frequent enough on the timescale of human civlization that they could present semi-permanent damage to the biosphere.

shakow 4y ago
> could present semi-permanent damage to the biosphere. Burning coal, gas or oil present immediate, virtually permanent (at least on a human time scale) damages to the biosphere; hydro electric power already killed at least two more orders of magnitude people than even the most delirious casualty estimations of nuclear power accidents; and air pollution is estimated killing millions of people per year. At some point, people should start learning to count.
- Krssst 4y ago
  Pretty dark take (by all means feel free to correct me), but I am sometimes wondering if the fact that dam failures kill everybody and most of their families at once helps its public image since there's few remaining affected people that can spread awareness. (not saying that hydro is a bad choice; it looks to be the best when possible thanks to load following and ability to double as storage)
  - zdragnar 4y ago
    They also produce a ton of methane by trapping a valley's worth of vegetation at the bottom of an artificial lake, and need dredging to stay functional, but who's really counting?
    - KennyBlanken 4y ago
      Please provide a citation showing that this is even remotely a significant problem in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. For example, how much methane compared to one cow?

jeremyjh 4y ago

I remember during the Fukushima disaster, every few hours an expert would come onto my television and tell me the next terrible thing could never happen. When it happened a few hours later, they came on my TV and said ok but that NEXT thing will definitely not happen...this repeated at least 3-4 times. I don't remember remember the sequence of events, but I remember the experts were not trustworthy. I wonder if anyone else learned that.

natmaka 4y ago
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/world/asia/projections-during-nuclear-crisis-included-evacuating-tokyo.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/world/asia/projections-du...

grecy 4y ago

Nuclear power is vastly more expensive than solar or wind. Nuclear power plants take decades to build and turn on. Nuclear power has a non-zero risk of very, very bad things happening. We have no long term strategy for storing nuclear waste.

Krssst 4y ago
Non-dispatchable renewable require backup power as long as we don't have large scale storage, which we don't. So it's comparing apple to oranges. Let's hope that we get such storage sometime soon since it looks like it's the assumption everybody's making. Otherwise we'll still be burning gas and coal as long as we can get our hands on them when NREs are not generating, making the climate worse in the process.
- natmaka 4y ago
  This is also true for nuclear. Even France never ceased to burn fossil fuel in order to produce electricity (7 to 10% per year).
  - shakow 4y ago
    This is only true for France because at some point, presidents decided that the electricity production plan was enough and stopped it in the middle.
- grecy 4y ago
  > Non-dispatchable renewable require backup power as long as we don't have large scale storage, which we don't And in the time it would take to build a single new nuclear reactor we're going to add a massive, massive amount of large scale storage. It's already well underway. How far along is the next nuclear reactor?
hot_gril 4y ago
> vastly more expensive than solar or wind No it's not. Maybe for the first plant of its kind.

afterburner 4y ago

It's too expensive. Solar and wind + battery (regular and water storage based) are much, much better. Easier to install, expand, maintain, and sunset, and with no incredible risk attached to it that requires state insurance (the society will clean up the mess). Solar is already CHEEEEEAP and getting cheaper. Nuclear is expensive and not getting any cheaper, in fact quite the opposite. Market forces are already making this apparent (money talks), but there are still pro nuclear lobbies DESPERATE to hold on.

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Krssst 4y ago
Not taking into account seasonal storage makes the comparison of nuclear and NREs not pertinent. > there are still pro nuclear lobbies DESPERATE to hold on. First, caps don't make right. I believe NREs help in getting emissions down to a point, but since you need backup power I am not seeing it working at 80% production share. In order to emissions to get to zero I believe nuclear makes sense on the longer term.
- pydry 4y ago
  Synthesizing natural gas and using that for season storage is still cheaper than nuclear power: https://theecologist.org/2016/feb/17/wind-power-windgas-cheaper-and-greener-hinkley-point-c-nuclear-plant https://theecologist.org/2016/feb/17/wind-power-windgas-chea...
- hackerlight 4y ago
  You don't need any storage to get to 80-90% from renewables, which can be achieved by overbuilding renewables and creating an international market for energy. Denmark is a good case study.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    How exactly do you create power when it's dark and there's no wind? An "international market" doesn't help with electricity: you can't transport electricity feasibly across oceans.

hot_gril 4y ago

> it's been decades without any military reactor-related incidents If there were, I don't think they'd tell anyone. So maybe it's a trust thing. People know for sure that a wind turbine can't poison nearby communities to death no matter what goes wrong. Personally I'd prefer nuclear, but also this kind of distrust is the only way we can get more transparency.

explaininjs 4y ago

> it's been decades without any military reactor-related incidents Excuse me, what? There are quite literally ongoing military nuclear reactor incidents at this very moment. The fact that they started decades ago is hardly a consolation. This kind of wool-pulling makes it very hard to trust the pro-nuclear crowd. Maybe if we could manage to contain the waste we've already created (or at the very least if pro-nucs would admit we can't), I might have some faith in our ability to contain the waste we make in the future. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site

brightlancer 4y ago
> Excuse me, what? There are quite literally ongoing military nuclear reactor incidents at this very moment. The fact that they started decades ago is hardly a consolation. > This kind of wool-pulling makes it very hard to trust the pro-nuclear crowd. Maybe if we could manage to contain the waste we've already created (or at the very least if pro-nucs would admit we can't), I might have some faith in our ability to contain the waste we make in the future. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site GP specifically referenced "submarines and aircraft carriers"; Hanford is neither. There is a cleanup at Hanford, which is understandable for one of the earliest reactors. I think calling it "ongoing military nuclear reactor incidents" is misleading, since it was the normal operation. Again, GP: "We've learned so much since the mid-20th century." Nothing is going to be perfect. All the data I've seen is that nuclear power is safer and has fewer casualties. Picking one of the earliest sites from 70 years ago ignores everything since, as well as comparison to fatalities due to other forms of power generation. To paraphrase you, "This kind of wool-pulling makes it very hard to trust the _anti_-nuclear crowd."
- explaininjs 4y ago
  A semicolon links two independent (yet related) clauses. The first, "all US submarines and aircraft carriers have been nuclear-powered for decades", is roughly true (that is, if you count 15 years as "decades"). The second, "it's been decades without any military reactor-related incidents", is demonstrably false. > calling it "ongoing military nuclear reactor incidents" is misleading, since it was the normal operation. I can't tell what you mean by "it was the normal operation". I can assure you that the plant was not designed to be in a state of constant leakage and need billions of dollars of continuous investment per year to facilitate its cleanup process for decades without end. Well, that's a bit of a lie. The plant was designed to leak radioactive waste into the Columbia River under normal operation. But that was considered safe, at that time. Just as many nuclear things are now considered safe, at this time. For instance the Monticello leak less than 6 months ago, which was covered up for months before the news finally got out. Perfectly safe, at this time. If we've really learned so much since whenever, let's use that knowledge to clean up all the messes we made along the way first. Once we know we can do that well, perhaps we can take on more projects. Until then we're the Junior Dev hopping from greenfield project to greenfield project leaving giant steaming piles of shit behind at every stop and telling ourselves "welp, I definitely learned from that experience! no way I'm doing that again!" > This kind of wool-pulling makes it very hard to trust the _anti_-nuclear crowd. I'm not asking anyone to trust me, I'm not an energy expert and never claimed to be. I'm just asking them to not lie in order to push a nuclear agenda. In general, if a concept is truly with pursuing, it should be able to be presented via a convincing argument without lies.

Schroedingersat 4y ago

You don't understand why a country wouldn't want to go a hundred billion euros in debt maintaining derelict nuclear plants and being wholly dependent on a hostile foreign power for fuel? Or you don't understand why people wouldn't want to be left holding the cleanup bill after the company running a power station or mine or mill declared bankruptcy before finishing decomissioning? Or you don't understand why people wouldn't support ecocide, corruption and worker exploitation in Niger or Uzbekistan to line the pockets of a uranium mining oligopoly?

beezlewax 4y ago

From what I'm aware nuclear power stations that are older need to all be phased out eventually as they reach end of life and are no longer safe. Whether they are replaced or not is another thing

cinntaile 4y ago
They can usually be made safe to run past their due date but the investment required is likely substantial.

jillesvangurp 4y ago

It's expensive, that's why. You are wrongly assuming public fear and safety have anything to do with this. It's cost. These reactors are approaching their end of life. Keeping them going requires lots of investments. The return on those investments is poor. So, private investors are not really interested. If it had a decent ROI, they'd be all over it. But there just isn't. These are old, expensive plants. The article is a bit light on numbers and facts, unfortunately. Hard to tell if this is a serious study or paid "study" by some lobby with an agenda. I suspect the latter. It certainly seems to be very selective in what it talks about. And it would explain the hand waviness of the reported "findings". It kind of makes a big point of avoiding talking about investments in renewables because "In 1985, the closure of reactors in Tennessee Valley prompted a spike in coal use". That's nearly four decades ago. Most of those coal plants have probably been closed by now. And conveniently, wind and solar investments were not a thing at the time.

TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
It is less expensive than renewables + energy storage.
- the_cramer 4y ago
  From what I've seen [1] the long-term investment a nuclear reactor is massive and ROI is often measured in centuries. Also we still don't have a good solution for power spike handling with renewables + energy storage. A windless night is the scenario we're talking about here. So most of this discussion is probably addressing nuclear vs. coal / gas [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UC_BCz0pzMw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UC_BCz0pzMw
otikik 4y ago
It costs because there has been almost no research or advancement in the technology since the 70s. And that has happened because of lack of investment, which happens because of public fear.

lostlogin 4y ago

> Modern designs are far safer. We've learned so much since the mid-20th century. Have we? There is a nuclear plant being shelled in Ukraine and the US is still arguing over where to dump its waste. Japan is looking to release a million tons of radioactive water into the sea. Those are the ones I can think of that are happening right now. There are plenty more in and out of the news. I don’t think knowledge is cumulative, it has to be re-learned ever so often. In relation to the US navy - here is an accident that was covered up 16 years ago. I do not believe there have been none since. https://apnews.com/article/559da885ca7c3f6252d67e400e92a846 https://apnews.com/article/559da885ca7c3f6252d67e400e92a846

karmelapple 4y ago
The date line on that was 1989, so 16 years before that is 1973, which is 40 years ago. Understood about the concern that if they tried to hide a problem once, they’ll probably try to hide one again. But 16 years ago isn’t accurate with the link you shared.
- lostlogin 4y ago
  > isn’t accurate That’s an understatement, good catch.
- deleted 4y ago
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