5 ms·

Isn’t nuclear more stable and efficient than solar? Why is it not regarded as a solution

• lisper 3y ago
  Things like this make people queasy about it: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-05/zaporizhzhia-nuclear-power-plant-explosives-sabotage-zelenskyy/102567506 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-05/zaporizhzhia-nuclear-... https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/08/japan-fukushima-water-release-nuclear-plant/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/08/japan-fukush...
• earthboundkid 3y ago
  Because Zaporizhzhia is one artillery shell away from irradiating the Dniper River.
  • mirko22 3y ago
    That is completely untrue, one shell would not make a dent… but hey, it easier to spread FUD I guess… Nuclear weapons exist after all…
• jussij 3y ago
  Nuclear power plants seem to take a long time to get right, which means they end up being very expensive. As an example, consider the new Olkiluoto-3 nuclear plant built in Finland. That reactor was commission just a few months ago, but its build was 12 years behind schedule. The delay to that project saw the original 3 billion Euro price tag more than triple with a final cost closer to 11 billion.
  • mirko22 3y ago
    And they will be there for half a century as opposed to wind turbines and solar panels which will have to be replaced and are hard to recycle…
    • pfdietz 3y ago
      It would be perfectly fine if we just landfilled wind turbines and solar panels. It's not like silicon or fiberglass are rare. The whole recycling business here is more fetish than obstacle.
      • jussij 3y ago
        There are problems with recycling in general. For example, the overuse of plastics, with no sensible recycling plan means we have plastic garbage patch twice the size of Texas floating around in the Pacific Ocean. These problems are generally not about recycling, but rather the willingness of governments to legislate sensible solutions.
• pfdietz 3y ago
  What do you mean by "efficient"? Engineering efficiency? They use different inputs, so comparing that is meaningless. Economic efficiency? No, they're much less economically efficient. That's why so much more solar (and wind) are being installed now instead of nuclear.
  • mirko22 3y ago
    I doubt that somehow, reason we are pushing wind and solar is cos people think it is “green” and “renewable” and are scared of nuclear. Take example of Germany where they shut down the nuclear power plants just cos of popular pressure…
    • perlgeek 3y ago
      Speaking of Germany... their subsidies to wind and solar energy helped dramatically drive down the cost of both: https://energytransition.org/2016/01/how-germany-helped-bring-down-the-cost-of-pv/ https://energytransition.org/2016/01/how-germany-helped-brin... This was done due to environmental factors, not as a financial instrument. > and are scared of nuclear. That part is definitely true. After seeing that even a high-tech nation like Japan couldn't keep their nuclear reactors safe, nuclear was no longer seen as a viable option.
    • pfdietz 3y ago
      > I doubt that somehow, reason we are pushing wind and solar is cos people think it is “green” and “renewable” and are scared of nuclear. This is utter nonsense. The reason wind and solar are being pushed is they are so much cheaper than nuclear (and this will remain true even at high renewable uptake when storage is required). This is widely understood; where did you get the bizarre incorrect belief that it was otherwise? Nuclear was so out of the running in the US that many existing NPPs had to be shut down because they were cash flow negative. It wasn't worth running them even with the construction and financing costs completely written off. The remaining reactor at Three Mile Island, for example, had not made an operating profit for six years before it was shut down.
• NickM 3y ago
  Because it's currently much more expensive than solar and wind, even when you factor in the costs of dealing with intermittency. Even if public perception weren't an obstacle, and even if you didn't have to deal with waste storage, and even if building nuclear plants wasn't a glacially slow process, it just doesn't make economic sense to focus on nuclear anymore.
  • mirko22 3y ago
    For example, Germany is pushing for solar and wind cos Siemens is producing those and its popular cos people somehow think there are no drawbacks to them… They could have operated their nuclear plants for at least another decade of there was political will for it…
    • NickM 3y ago
      Continuing to operate existing nuclear plants seems like a good idea, but that’s a totally separate debate than whether we should build new ones.
• mirko22 3y ago
  Cos people are scared of it and that doesn’t go well with elections…