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> a proven technology with excellent safety record Excellent safety, if you ignore Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island, the Tokaimura accidents, the Church

by crote 1y ago

> a proven technology with excellent safety record Excellent safety, if you ignore Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island, the Tokaimura accidents, the Church Rock spill, the beaches near Dounreay, and dozens more. Nuclear power rarely kills anyone, but when (not if) things go wrong, it tends to create a massive mess which costs billions to clean up - if a cleanup is even possible at all. It is the only power source which has made entire cities impossible to live in. I personally don't believe this is necessarily a dealbreaker with modern nuclear plants in rich countries, but if you want to convince people of its safety you probably shouldn't be mentioning its historical record. > a completely closed fuel life cycle Only if you completely ignore the huge amount of pollution and waste generated by mining, reprocessing, and disposal. Again, I personally don't believe this has to be a dealbreaker, but the waste generated by the nuclear industry is still an unsolved problem. We've been operating nuclear reactors for 80 years now, but permanent waste disposal and reactor decommissioning is still in its infancy. The current state-of-the-art is essentially "let it rot in place and hope nothing goes wrong while we figure out a way to deal with it". I think it can be solved, but unless we've done so you probably shouldn't make it part of your argument. > If we (the West) had built out nuclear to satisfy our electricity needs We did. France hit 80% nuclear, for example. 9% of global power is supplied by nuclear plants. There are over 400 plants currently operational, and 700 have been decommissioned. We aren't on "baby's first nuclear reactor" anymore. > implementing new nuclear power tech as it improved We did. It made the plants too expensive to be commercially viable. > You’d just pay for amps, say 50 amp, 150 amp, 300 amp, all you can consume. Not a chance. Although fuel would indeed be quite cheap, power still isn't going to be free: someone has to pay off the massive construction loans. Consumer power consumption is also a lot more flexible than something like internet. People don't suddenly start to consume a lot more data when their internet gets faster - a single person is still only going to watch one Netflix stream at a time, and that'll work just as fine on a 100Mbps connection as on a 8Gbps one. And all the equipment is already prepared for the faster connection, so it's not like they are saving any money by keeping it slow. But if your power is free, why bother with gas heating? Why go for a heat pump when resistive heating has cheaper equipment? Why bother isolating your home? Why shut off your lights when you leave your home? Making electricity free means we'll be using a lot more of it, which means having to build significantly more expensive nuclear power plants. If this was an option, countries with abundant hydro would be providing free power. And they aren't. > But instead we have expensive electricity Taking all costs into account, nuclear is currently the most expensive form of generating electricity. While building additional nuclear could get us (mostly) off fossil fuel, it is definitely not going to make your power bill any cheaper. Nuclear power is only viable with hefty subsidies - which in practice means turning off dirt-cheap solar and wind to run expensive nuclear plants.

blibble 1y ago
> Excellent safety, if you ignore Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island, the Tokaimura accidents, the Church Rock spill, the beaches near Dounreay, and dozens more. no, these are included in the calculations of "deaths per kilowatt-hour" https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...
jenadine 1y ago
> the waste generated by the nuclear industry is still an unsolved problem No it's not unsolved. There are burial sites. The spent fuel is kept on the power plant for years so it cools down. Also even without nuclear power, there would still be nuclear waste to take care of because of the medical, defence, research, and other industries.
Mawr 1y ago
> Excellent safety, if you ignore Chernobyl, Fukushima, [...] Nope, it's all included, how could it not be? > Nuclear power rarely kills anyone, but when (not if) things go wrong, it tends to create a massive mess which costs billions to clean up Yep, yet it's still the safest, which means your argument has to be wrong. Just to show you the magnitude of your error, the Fukushima accident was directly caused by a tsunami which killed 20,000 people. But your main concern from that event is the cost of cleanup of radioactive material. More people die from falling off roofs while installing solar panels than from nuclear accidents. > but if you want to convince people of its safety you probably shouldn't be mentioning its historical record. Well you're not technically wrong. As you've inadvertently demonstrated with your irrational arguments, since people didn't use reason to arrive at their conclusions, they would not be likely to be persuaded by it. > Only if you completely ignore the huge amount of pollution and waste generated by mining, reprocessing, and disposal. Do you mean to say the waste is significantly worse than for solar panels, wind turbines, etc.? > Again, I personally don't believe this has to be a dealbreaker, but the waste generated by the nuclear industry is still an unsolved problem. Inert solid waste sitting in a barrel somewhere is not a problem that is worth talking about. Again, the magnitude of your error is outstanding. We've been simply releasing all the, radioactive mind you, products of burning coal into the atmosphere for the past few hundreds of years but you're concerned about a tiny amount of solid waste. > > If we (the West) had built out nuclear to satisfy our electricity needs > > We did. France hit 80% nuclear, for example. You cherry-picked the single country with the biggest share of nuclear by far. > > implementing new nuclear power tech as it improved > > We did. It made the plants too expensive to be commercially viable. Ironically, that's because the standards for nuclear plant safety are determined by the sort of irrational thinking you're presenting here. > Taking all costs into account, nuclear is currently the most expensive form of generating electricity. And that's where the issue is buried, I don't believe you're taking all costs into account. Is coal really cheaper when you include the health and environmental damage it creates? It literally can't be, the costs of human created climate change will be eye-watering. Are renewables really cheaper once you consider the end goal of a 90%+ renewable grid? The costs of accounting for the inherent intermittency of solar and wind go up exponentially as you increase the share of renewables in the grid. Adding the first 10% of renewables is trivial, you need no extra storage since the grid itself will simply absorb the difference. Adding the last 10% is horribly expensive and I don't believe you're accounting for that at all.

by crote 1y ago

blibble 1y ago

> Excellent safety, if you ignore Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island, the Tokaimura accidents, the Church Rock spill, the beaches near Dounreay, and dozens more. no, these are included in the calculations of "deaths per kilowatt-hour" https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...

jenadine 1y ago

> the waste generated by the nuclear industry is still an unsolved problem No it's not unsolved. There are burial sites. The spent fuel is kept on the power plant for years so it cools down. Also even without nuclear power, there would still be nuclear waste to take care of because of the medical, defence, research, and other industries.

Mawr 1y ago

> Excellent safety, if you ignore Chernobyl, Fukushima, [...] Nope, it's all included, how could it not be? > Nuclear power rarely kills anyone, but when (not if) things go wrong, it tends to create a massive mess which costs billions to clean up Yep, yet it's still the safest, which means your argument has to be wrong. Just to show you the magnitude of your error, the Fukushima accident was directly caused by a tsunami which killed 20,000 people. But your main concern from that event is the cost of cleanup of radioactive material. More people die from falling off roofs while installing solar panels than from nuclear accidents. > but if you want to convince people of its safety you probably shouldn't be mentioning its historical record. Well you're not technically wrong. As you've inadvertently demonstrated with your irrational arguments, since people didn't use reason to arrive at their conclusions, they would not be likely to be persuaded by it. > Only if you completely ignore the huge amount of pollution and waste generated by mining, reprocessing, and disposal. Do you mean to say the waste is significantly worse than for solar panels, wind turbines, etc.? > Again, I personally don't believe this has to be a dealbreaker, but the waste generated by the nuclear industry is still an unsolved problem. Inert solid waste sitting in a barrel somewhere is not a problem that is worth talking about. Again, the magnitude of your error is outstanding. We've been simply releasing all the, radioactive mind you, products of burning coal into the atmosphere for the past few hundreds of years but you're concerned about a tiny amount of solid waste. > > If we (the West) had built out nuclear to satisfy our electricity needs > > We did. France hit 80% nuclear, for example. You cherry-picked the single country with the biggest share of nuclear by far. > > implementing new nuclear power tech as it improved > > We did. It made the plants too expensive to be commercially viable. Ironically, that's because the standards for nuclear plant safety are determined by the sort of irrational thinking you're presenting here. > Taking all costs into account, nuclear is currently the most expensive form of generating electricity. And that's where the issue is buried, I don't believe you're taking all costs into account. Is coal really cheaper when you include the health and environmental damage it creates? It literally can't be, the costs of human created climate change will be eye-watering. Are renewables really cheaper once you consider the end goal of a 90%+ renewable grid? The costs of accounting for the inherent intermittency of solar and wind go up exponentially as you increase the share of renewables in the grid. Adding the first 10% of renewables is trivial, you need no extra storage since the grid itself will simply absorb the difference. Adding the last 10% is horribly expensive and I don't believe you're accounting for that at all.