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I love nuclear power and know a lot about operating them, however: 1) It's expensive. Very very expensive. 2) It's dangerous when not operated properly, and I
by ok_dad 1y ago
I love nuclear power and know a lot about operating them, however:
1) It's expensive. Very very expensive.
2) It's dangerous when not operated properly, and I don't trust commercial interests operating hundreds of these due to this reason.
3) It's bad for the environment, both the mining to get the uranium and all of the processes to turn it into fuel.
4) There is no answer for spent fuel.
Whereas with solar or wind you can basically remove #1, #2, and #4, however you still have to mine and process the materials.
Anyways, nuclear will be great for some niche uses, I am sure, but it isn't the answer to our green energy prayers.
- wafflemaker 1y ago1) It's actually not that expensive, but the regulations made it so. I remember something from titans of nuclear or some Jordan Peterson podcast. I'll try to write the gist of it here: There was some rule, that the cost of safety (like how thick concrete should be in some places), could be so high, that the usually cheaper fission energy would be equal in cost with the other sources (like burning oil). Then came the oil crisis of the 70's in USA. The safety margins got boosted to crazy levels, without any realistic gains. Moving from 99.999% to 99.9999% safety (just an example). When the oil prices dropped, safety standards stayed and now fission energy is expensive. At least in USA and EU. Not in France or South Korea, which streamlined the regulations. 2) not with the modern technology, it isn't. And there are even safer alternatives like marble balls reactors that can't meltdown even if cooling is shut down. 3) not using it is bad for the environment. Fuel requirements are minimal compared to other plants. Even some types of renewables pollute more per W of energy produced. Like wind turbines that will fill up landfills at some point. 4) Thorium reactors. If we just give the fission energy some research & development, we can burn all the spent fuel up in thorium reactors.
- ok_dad 1y agoMy rebuttal is this: where’s the nuclear plants then? It’s not economically viable. No amount of (ugh) Jordan Peterson whining will change that.
- qball 1y agoThey're all in France, whose construction began under a military dictatorship to ensure energy security whenever the US starts a war in a place supplying it with energy. This strategy was proven decisively correct in 2022, and also applies to solar and wind when the US (and by proxy, the whole West) inevitably gets into it with China and suddenly your degrading solar panels and growing need for energy become major problems (and thus forces you to build out nuclear anyway). Cost isn't the only factor here, and it would be short-sighted to take the cheaper short-term option by buying Chinese rather than paying our own people to regain and retain that engineering and construction experience we foolishly squandered 30 years ago.
- ok_dad 1y agoYes, cost was only 1 of 4 factors I noted.
- MisterMower 1y agoDid you read what he wrote? They’ve been made uneconomical due to excessive regulation and that’s why nobody bothers building them.
- ok_dad 1y ago"Excessive regulation" is always the excuse but I have literally never seen someone show how that is the case. They'll show you one or two low-hanging fruits and then extrapolate that into saving billions of dollars on construction or something. It's ludicrous that anyone even repeats this argument without even knowing what they are talking about.
- wafflemaker 1y agoSame reason why Germany closed it's nuclear plants ahead of time or switched to burning gas in "green" propane gas-burning powerplants. Regulations. You add tariffs and you make steel production profitable in US. China subsidizes it's electric cars industry and they can sell EVs in Europe for half the price of European cars, literally killing the market. You subsidize renewables heavily and you get windfarms that are unprofitable once subsidizing ends. I'm sure that in a free market situation, your comment would make lot of sense. But this is not the case and you should read up a little. I believe that one should aim to, in spite of their political views, try to see the big picture. Like why there's so little nuclear vs sun or wind.
- jrflowers 1y ago> 4) There is no answer for spent fuel. We store it. There are radioactive waste storage sites in 39 US states, for example. https://curie.pnnl.gov/system/files/SNF%20and%20Rep%20Waste%20Inventory%20PNNL%2033938%20Rev.%201.1_0.pdf#page=15 https://curie.pnnl.gov/system/files/SNF%20and%20Rep%20Waste%...
- ok_dad 1y agoHumans haven’t stored anything for twenty thousand years yet.
- qball 1y agoHumans haven't had agriculture for twenty thousand years yet. Also, this line of inquiry is still just tilting at windmills; "somehow, future Fred Flintstone manages to get a hold of equipment capable of digging out a mile of concrete and yet somehow not know what radiation is" is not a productive line of thinking at best and a bad-faith argument at worst. Humanity's mechanical capacity to dig that deep actually post-dates its discovery of radioactivity, too. If they have the technology for it for them digging it up to become an issue, they'll be able to identify, trivially, that it is an issue.