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Nuclear should not be in the same category as wind and solar. It's byproducts are the most toxic elements in the known universe, it's input fuels can be used as

Nuclear should not be in the same category as wind and solar. It's byproducts are the most toxic elements in the known universe, it's input fuels can be used as a cover for rogue nations to produce the most dangerous weapons in the world, and when things go wrong, failed reactors destroy communities and make them uninhabitable for hundreds of years. Solar and wind, including their input materials, do not even come close to that level of potential destruction in their worst case scenarios. Making an a posteriori argument that nuclear is safer is just sticking your head in the sand to the potential harms. Fukushima was hardly over 10 years ago...

bluefirebrand 3y ago
If you want to convince people that nuclear is dangerous, Fukushima is a terrible example. Not one person died during the actual meltdown. Only one death is directly tied to cancer caused by radiation from the disaster. A bit over 2000 deaths are assigned as being caused or related to the evacuation. People already live in the evacuation zone again, it's not "irradiated and unliveable for hundreds of years" or whatever. That's fear mongering nonsense. Here's the thing: every source of energy contains risk. Solar and Wind are never going to be reliable enough to produce a baseload. If we switch 100% to unreliable but safe energy production like Solar and Wind, then the risk becomes "Our power goes out in the dead of winter and we freeze to death" or "our power goes out during a heatwave and our AC fails so the heat kills us" Or maybe we need to store all of this in batteries. But storing Potential Energy is always risky, batteries can explode or start incredibly dangerous fires, including toxic fumes. Even something simple like pumping water up a hill as energy storage comes with risk. Or cutting down a tree to burn for fuel, the tree could fall on someone.
- audunw 3y ago
  Feels like you’re downplaying the tragedy of a whole village having to be abandoned with no warning. Yeah a few people live there now. That doesn’t make the tragedy any better. We don’t need baseload. You can go 100% renewable just fine with existing technology, at a lower total energy cost than what we have today. You can check out Marc Z Jacobsens studies for some concrete details. Whatever technology we get before we reach 100% will just make it cheaper and easier. People who think we need baseload don’t take into account everything else we’d have to do to get to net zero carbon. It’s not just the grid. It’s everything. And a lot of that comes with an insane amount of flexible load and energy storage. Like, all of transportation being battery (or hydrogen for trucks/planes I suppose) electric… you buy a car and you instantly have the energy storage capacity to power your home for a couple of days or so. I’ve got my car set to charge whenever electricity is cheapest right now. It’s dead easy. I don’t care if I charge on Monday or Thursday. South Australia even have vehicle-to-grid up and running already. Steel and fertiliser production needs to switch to green hydrogen. All that hydrogen production will represent a huge amount of buffered energy. Just build some extra storage tanks and you can handle lower electricity inputs for a few days. Hell, you can even keep some gas power plants around and feed the hydrogen into those on very rare days with extremely low sun and wind. You can run gas turbines on 100% hydrogen. It’s already demonstrated. There’s increasingly serious plans about switching gas pipelines in the North Sea to transport hydrogen instead of natural gas. First by making hydrogen from natural gas and storing the resulting CO2 underground. Then later switching to green hydrogen from floating off-shore wind. Seasonal demand changes in the north will be handled with geothermal heat wells and thermal energy storage. There’s already large buildings that just dump their excess rooftop solar energy into geothermal wells in summer. You get a surprising amount of that back in winter. And of course the geothermal wells gives you “baseload” heat energy as well. I suspect advanced deep geothermal will become viable for electricity production in many regions within 10 years as well. All those oil and gas people will dump a lot of investments and engineering efforts in it to attempt to leverage their expertise in a new industry.
- syndicatedjelly 3y ago
  I don’t know why you’re downplaying the Fukushima disaster, that’s a bizarre thing to argue. I hope something like that never happens in your hometown. >> Here's the thing: every source of energy contains risk. Solar and Wind are never going to be reliable enough to produce a baseload. Are nuclear power plants guaranteed sufficient uptime to provide baseload? Germany faced an energy crisis a couple years ago because too many of their nuclear plants were undergoing scheduled maintenance at once, and were unable to contribute to baseload when Russia cut off Germany’s oil supply. At least batteries can be stored in a variety of locations, as opposed to one central location that may be susceptible to natural disasters or a terrorist attack. Same with solar and wind farms. Europe was on tenterhooks during the bombing of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant a year back. I don’t think the wind and solar farms that were destroyed during the invasion even made the news. I agree, everything comes with risk. The point I’m trying to make is that nuclear power comes with unique risks that are inarguably far more horrible than the risk of a tree falling on someone or a solar panel electrocuting a maintenance worker or something.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    One of the most risky sources of electricity is hydroelectricity, because of a very small number of dams collapsing, and all that stored energy being channeled along the river in the form of fast-moving water. So, you say bluefirebrand was downplaying the Fukushima disaster. Sure. I can say you're downplaying the Fujinuma Dam, which I'm mentioning because it was destroyed by the same earthquake as damaged the reactor, killing 8 in a downstream village. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujinuma_Dam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujinuma_Dam It was a very big earthquake. The Fukushima reactor should've been built with that in mind, so nobody gets a free pass on this, I think it is a valid example of "even rich developed nations don't explore and plan for all the risks correctly". But still, the earthquake itself caused way more damage than the reactor.

bluefirebrand 3y ago

If you want to convince people that nuclear is dangerous, Fukushima is a terrible example. Not one person died during the actual meltdown. Only one death is directly tied to cancer caused by radiation from the disaster. A bit over 2000 deaths are assigned as being caused or related to the evacuation. People already live in the evacuation zone again, it's not "irradiated and unliveable for hundreds of years" or whatever. That's fear mongering nonsense. Here's the thing: every source of energy contains risk. Solar and Wind are never going to be reliable enough to produce a baseload. If we switch 100% to unreliable but safe energy production like Solar and Wind, then the risk becomes "Our power goes out in the dead of winter and we freeze to death" or "our power goes out during a heatwave and our AC fails so the heat kills us" Or maybe we need to store all of this in batteries. But storing Potential Energy is always risky, batteries can explode or start incredibly dangerous fires, including toxic fumes. Even something simple like pumping water up a hill as energy storage comes with risk. Or cutting down a tree to burn for fuel, the tree could fall on someone.

audunw 3y ago
Feels like you’re downplaying the tragedy of a whole village having to be abandoned with no warning. Yeah a few people live there now. That doesn’t make the tragedy any better. We don’t need baseload. You can go 100% renewable just fine with existing technology, at a lower total energy cost than what we have today. You can check out Marc Z Jacobsens studies for some concrete details. Whatever technology we get before we reach 100% will just make it cheaper and easier. People who think we need baseload don’t take into account everything else we’d have to do to get to net zero carbon. It’s not just the grid. It’s everything. And a lot of that comes with an insane amount of flexible load and energy storage. Like, all of transportation being battery (or hydrogen for trucks/planes I suppose) electric… you buy a car and you instantly have the energy storage capacity to power your home for a couple of days or so. I’ve got my car set to charge whenever electricity is cheapest right now. It’s dead easy. I don’t care if I charge on Monday or Thursday. South Australia even have vehicle-to-grid up and running already. Steel and fertiliser production needs to switch to green hydrogen. All that hydrogen production will represent a huge amount of buffered energy. Just build some extra storage tanks and you can handle lower electricity inputs for a few days. Hell, you can even keep some gas power plants around and feed the hydrogen into those on very rare days with extremely low sun and wind. You can run gas turbines on 100% hydrogen. It’s already demonstrated. There’s increasingly serious plans about switching gas pipelines in the North Sea to transport hydrogen instead of natural gas. First by making hydrogen from natural gas and storing the resulting CO2 underground. Then later switching to green hydrogen from floating off-shore wind. Seasonal demand changes in the north will be handled with geothermal heat wells and thermal energy storage. There’s already large buildings that just dump their excess rooftop solar energy into geothermal wells in summer. You get a surprising amount of that back in winter. And of course the geothermal wells gives you “baseload” heat energy as well. I suspect advanced deep geothermal will become viable for electricity production in many regions within 10 years as well. All those oil and gas people will dump a lot of investments and engineering efforts in it to attempt to leverage their expertise in a new industry.
syndicatedjelly 3y ago
I don’t know why you’re downplaying the Fukushima disaster, that’s a bizarre thing to argue. I hope something like that never happens in your hometown. >> Here's the thing: every source of energy contains risk. Solar and Wind are never going to be reliable enough to produce a baseload. Are nuclear power plants guaranteed sufficient uptime to provide baseload? Germany faced an energy crisis a couple years ago because too many of their nuclear plants were undergoing scheduled maintenance at once, and were unable to contribute to baseload when Russia cut off Germany’s oil supply. At least batteries can be stored in a variety of locations, as opposed to one central location that may be susceptible to natural disasters or a terrorist attack. Same with solar and wind farms. Europe was on tenterhooks during the bombing of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant a year back. I don’t think the wind and solar farms that were destroyed during the invasion even made the news. I agree, everything comes with risk. The point I’m trying to make is that nuclear power comes with unique risks that are inarguably far more horrible than the risk of a tree falling on someone or a solar panel electrocuting a maintenance worker or something.
- ben_w 3y ago
  One of the most risky sources of electricity is hydroelectricity, because of a very small number of dams collapsing, and all that stored energy being channeled along the river in the form of fast-moving water. So, you say bluefirebrand was downplaying the Fukushima disaster. Sure. I can say you're downplaying the Fujinuma Dam, which I'm mentioning because it was destroyed by the same earthquake as damaged the reactor, killing 8 in a downstream village. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujinuma_Dam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujinuma_Dam It was a very big earthquake. The Fukushima reactor should've been built with that in mind, so nobody gets a free pass on this, I think it is a valid example of "even rich developed nations don't explore and plan for all the risks correctly". But still, the earthquake itself caused way more damage than the reactor.