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Nuclear technology is a dead end. Renewables and saving energy is the future. Nuclear and fossil are in the same boat. They are both more risky and have huge hi

Nuclear technology is a dead end. Renewables and saving energy is the future. Nuclear and fossil are in the same boat. They are both more risky and have huge hidden costs that the general public and future generations will have to bear. The only good reason to go nuclear these days is if you want the bomb, like Iran. Interestingly, it is the same people who supported fossil in the past who are still promoting nuclear today. Those who have always warned against fossil fuels are usually the ones who recommend a complete switch to renewable energies. That should give one pause for thought.

FredPret 1y ago
Renewables have huge hidden costs as well. Solar panels and windmills are low density sources - we need a LOT of them to get the job done, and even then you still need base load somehow. That means a huge amount of extra powerlines and future landfill of defunct panels. Not to mention the very sturdy windmill foundations scattered around the landscape. Say what you will about nuclear, but all of its negatives are concentrated in a small mass and volume. The optimal, nom-ideological solution is probably a mix of nuclear, gas, and solar panels.
- adgjlsfhk1 1y ago
  solar panels actually decrease load on power lines. every house with solar panels on it reduces the amount of power the grid needs to bring to that house
  - eldaisfish 1y ago
    this is false. Power line capacity is designed around the maximum power that must be delivered. Solar power by itself reduces the mean, and possibly the minimum as well, but never the maximum.
    - Scoundreller 1y ago
      Are we expecting peak a/c loads on cloudy days or something?
      - philipkglass 1y ago
        In some places the annual peak demand is for summertime cooling, but in others the annual peak demand is for wintertime heating. It's too strong to say "never [reduce] the maximum" as the parent post did, but there are substantial regions where solar power can't reduce the needed power line capacity.
  - FredPret 1y ago
    In that case, yes. But for solar farms, it's the opposite. That's why I think we should end up with: - gas plants: easy and cheap to spin up, can provide district heating - nuclear: squeaky clean, issues are concentrated in one spot, district heating - solar panels: super cheap, decentralized, and there are lots of opportunities like rooftops and carparks where we are wasting sunlight right now I just re-read Critical Mass by Daniel Suarez (great book if you like hard near-future sci-fi) and that has the idea of solar stations in geostationary orbit and beaming power to where it's needed with a phased-array microwave transmitter on the station, and rectennas where you need them on the ground. We can't do this economically any time soon, but that would be clean, and require no power lines
    - adgjlsfhk1 1y ago
      Solar farms aren't really any worse for the grid than other types of power plants that can't be located near cities.
      - eldaisfish 1y ago
        yes, they are worse for the grid, depending on how you define worse. One interpretation is that solar adds variability to the generation side of the equation and managing that variability is currently a question without a clear answer.
- Jedd 1y ago
  I find that people with strong, pro fission feelings, but no hard numbers, often preface their opinions on the matter with phrases like 'honestly' or 'objectively' or 'non idealogically'. Concentration of power production is just one of the problems that renewables / distributed power generation systems solves.
  - FredPret 1y ago
    I agree with this but going on as if either fission or solar is the One True Electricity Solution is ideological. Every technology has tradeoffs.
- gpm 1y ago
  You do not, ever, need base load power. Base load power is by definition power generation that does not follow the demand curve because it is uneconomical to do so. In this way it is entirely similar to solar and wind in that it cannot, by definition, fill the entire demand for power and it needs to be completemented by dispatchable power sources. You do need dispatchable power sources (which you can pair with solar/wind/nuclear/...). Recently that has mostly been in the form of gas peaker plants. Today, in most places, the most affordable form of new dispatchable power is batteries paired with excess solar generation. The real estate costs for solar and wind are not hidden, you pay those costs up front when you install the projects.
- rcxdude 1y ago
  Nuclear and renewables do not like to share a grid. Their attributes do not complement each other at all, despite their differences, because fundamentally both of them are not dispatchable. In practice what happens is either nuclear has enough subsidies to survive or renewables completely wreck the economics of it by supplying way cheaper power most of the time. Both forms of generation want to be paired with something dispatchable, either gas turbines or energy storage. A mix of renewables and nuclear is a mix that is weaker than the sum of its parts, not stronger.
p2detar 1y ago
> The only good reason to go nuclear these days is if you want the bomb, like Iran. I‘m sorry but this is just absolute nonsense. Nuclear energy is the most dense energy type humanity ever produced. To put it in one line with coal and oil is not serious. Not to mention it’s far less hazardous to human health, again compared to fossil fuels. Here is a basic comparison: > With a complete combustion or fission, approx. 8 kWh of heat can be generated from 1 kg of coal, approx. 12 kWh from 1 kg of mineral oil and around 24,000,000 kWh from 1 kg of uranium-235. Related to one kilogram, uranium-235 contains two to three million times the energy equivalent of oil or coal. https://www.euronuclear.org/glossary/fuel-comparison/ https://www.euronuclear.org/glossary/fuel-comparison/ edit: typo
- eldaisfish 1y ago
  this website is filled with people who believe that the future source of energy is entirely renewable energy. That is false, as many european countries show. I live in a part of Canada with mostly nuclear energy and i am thankful that my electricity rates are low. This helps me reduce emissions via heat pumps and EVs. I don't need solar panels and most people do not either. You are correct, the future is mostly renewable energy where feasible, with a combination of nuclear and hydro.
- stephen_g 1y ago
  Who really cares about density? The biggest thing that means is that blowing up two or three substations can cripple an entire country’s grid. Distributed energy generation and storage is actually quite strategic for national security. It’s also massive cherry-picking to just look at refined fuel. For example, H how many tonnes of ore do you need to mine and process to produce that 1kg of uranium (at least 2.5 tonnes, that is 2500 kg from one random source from a quick google). But to use your metric, I did work out and find it interesting that the solar panels on my roof, per kg of silicon have produced over 1,400 kWh of electricity (multiply your figures by 0.3 to take into account efficiency from kWh of heat to compare) so far. I estimate almost 28 kg of silicon in my whole array, which has generated over 38 MWh so far, and I expect they will generate at least three times that over their life. So 4000-5000 kWh(e) per kg of silicon sure comes in a hell of a lot of better than the 2.4 odd for coal or 4 for mineral oil (assuming your figures are correct).
Flatterer3544 1y ago
You should look at what a proper planned all-in nuclear project looks like before commenting.. See Hualong One nuclear project that's operating at ~90% capacity and is ~1/3 of the price of solar, and 2/3 price of wind when comparing the same operation % capacity and taking into consideration the max life length of each technology.
StopDisinfo910 1y ago
Nuclear and intermitent energy sources have no place in the same sentence. Germany didn't avoid nuclear by switching to renewables. It does so by burning coal and building gas-fired power plants. How to manage a grid fully on intermitent power sources is an open question. There is at this point in time no answer to this. At the moment, Germany fires up extremely dirty power generation capacity every time there is a shortage. Meanwhile, all europeans bear the costs of Germany shortsightedness - as usual - since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. With nuclear, it's pretty clear how to run a grid. Heck, France has been doing so for decades. The question is how to build it cheaply at scale but at least we have some good ideas and experience about how to do that.
- forty 1y ago
  Funny story I like to tell here when nuclear chat come up: this summer (in France) they had to stop some nuclear plant because of the heat, which was causing the river used to cool the reaction to over heat. Right when people needed plenty of electricity for A/C. At least solar was there and working at it's best when we needed it ^^ (this is just for trolling the "renewable are not there when we need it" discourse ;) ) Anyway, the thing we'll need for better using solar is storage, if we can make some clean ones, it will be a solution for intermittentcy. But not matter what we do, we should target using less energy, because the only clean energy is the one we don't have to produce. I think that's the thing people miss (volontarily I think) when they answer anti nuclear discourse. Insulating homes and and designing cities so that people don't have to use cars, rather than producing more and more nuclear reactors doesn't seem dumb to me, no matter what's your opinion on nuclear itself.
  - StopDisinfo910 1y ago
    France was a net exporter of electricity all summer so no idea of what you are talking about. Slowing down some nuclear plants due to this kind of external condition is fully expected. They are not stopped by the way just slowed down. Nuclear is modulable. People barely use A/C in France by the way. > Anyway, the thing we'll need for better using solar is storage, if we can make some clean ones, it will be a solution for intermittentcy Storage is a short term solution. Batteries are ok to manage intra-day variation, two days at most. Long term storage of electricity plainly doesn't exist. Saying some storage solution will somehow at some point solve the issue of intermittency is at best wishful thinking, at worst a dramatic lack of risk management. Before someone asks how China is doing it, I will answer the question: they are not. Despite China being much larger and thus being able to somehow compensate variation by having more production sites, they are using battery storage for short term variation but have to rely on expensive and polluting small thermal power plants when energy is lacking. It's a stop gap while they build a ton of nuclear power plants.
LunaSea 1y ago
> Nuclear technology is a dead end. You should look at CO2 / kWh in Germany vs. France
- forty 1y ago
  You can also decide to look at countries which went 100% renewable and have even better CO2/kWh rating than France (Iceland, Norway, Albania for example).
  - Scea91 1y ago
    In the last 90 days France's CO2 footprint is at 78% of Iceland's. Also, what lessons learned in Iceland, Norway or Albania should we apply in central Europe? We don't have their geothermal and hydro potential (all your examples are not solar+wind but hydro primarily).
  - LunaSea 1y ago
    Iceland has massive volcanoes and a small population. Norway has lots of hydropower and a a small population. Not super familiar with Albania but they seem to be in the same situation as Norway. France already implemented hydropower wherever it was possible years ago, so that's not an option. Also France seems to have pretty much the same CO2 / kWh than Norway.
    - forty 1y ago
      Yes, situations are different I agree :) my point was just that you can pick and choose what you want to look at. We'll see how things evolve, but it's not very fair to compare the situation of France which did their switch to low carbon energy many years ago, to Germany which is currently doing it. When we have more countries with finished transition to full/mostly renewable, we can compare again.

FredPret 1y ago

Renewables have huge hidden costs as well. Solar panels and windmills are low density sources - we need a LOT of them to get the job done, and even then you still need base load somehow. That means a huge amount of extra powerlines and future landfill of defunct panels. Not to mention the very sturdy windmill foundations scattered around the landscape. Say what you will about nuclear, but all of its negatives are concentrated in a small mass and volume. The optimal, nom-ideological solution is probably a mix of nuclear, gas, and solar panels.

adgjlsfhk1 1y ago
solar panels actually decrease load on power lines. every house with solar panels on it reduces the amount of power the grid needs to bring to that house
- eldaisfish 1y ago
  this is false. Power line capacity is designed around the maximum power that must be delivered. Solar power by itself reduces the mean, and possibly the minimum as well, but never the maximum.
  - Scoundreller 1y ago
    Are we expecting peak a/c loads on cloudy days or something?
    - philipkglass 1y ago
      In some places the annual peak demand is for summertime cooling, but in others the annual peak demand is for wintertime heating. It's too strong to say "never [reduce] the maximum" as the parent post did, but there are substantial regions where solar power can't reduce the needed power line capacity.
- FredPret 1y ago
  In that case, yes. But for solar farms, it's the opposite. That's why I think we should end up with: - gas plants: easy and cheap to spin up, can provide district heating - nuclear: squeaky clean, issues are concentrated in one spot, district heating - solar panels: super cheap, decentralized, and there are lots of opportunities like rooftops and carparks where we are wasting sunlight right now I just re-read Critical Mass by Daniel Suarez (great book if you like hard near-future sci-fi) and that has the idea of solar stations in geostationary orbit and beaming power to where it's needed with a phased-array microwave transmitter on the station, and rectennas where you need them on the ground. We can't do this economically any time soon, but that would be clean, and require no power lines
  - adgjlsfhk1 1y ago
    Solar farms aren't really any worse for the grid than other types of power plants that can't be located near cities.
    - eldaisfish 1y ago
      yes, they are worse for the grid, depending on how you define worse. One interpretation is that solar adds variability to the generation side of the equation and managing that variability is currently a question without a clear answer.
Jedd 1y ago
I find that people with strong, pro fission feelings, but no hard numbers, often preface their opinions on the matter with phrases like 'honestly' or 'objectively' or 'non idealogically'. Concentration of power production is just one of the problems that renewables / distributed power generation systems solves.
- FredPret 1y ago
  I agree with this but going on as if either fission or solar is the One True Electricity Solution is ideological. Every technology has tradeoffs.
gpm 1y ago
You do not, ever, need base load power. Base load power is by definition power generation that does not follow the demand curve because it is uneconomical to do so. In this way it is entirely similar to solar and wind in that it cannot, by definition, fill the entire demand for power and it needs to be completemented by dispatchable power sources. You do need dispatchable power sources (which you can pair with solar/wind/nuclear/...). Recently that has mostly been in the form of gas peaker plants. Today, in most places, the most affordable form of new dispatchable power is batteries paired with excess solar generation. The real estate costs for solar and wind are not hidden, you pay those costs up front when you install the projects.
rcxdude 1y ago
Nuclear and renewables do not like to share a grid. Their attributes do not complement each other at all, despite their differences, because fundamentally both of them are not dispatchable. In practice what happens is either nuclear has enough subsidies to survive or renewables completely wreck the economics of it by supplying way cheaper power most of the time. Both forms of generation want to be paired with something dispatchable, either gas turbines or energy storage. A mix of renewables and nuclear is a mix that is weaker than the sum of its parts, not stronger.

p2detar 1y ago

> The only good reason to go nuclear these days is if you want the bomb, like Iran. I‘m sorry but this is just absolute nonsense. Nuclear energy is the most dense energy type humanity ever produced. To put it in one line with coal and oil is not serious. Not to mention it’s far less hazardous to human health, again compared to fossil fuels. Here is a basic comparison: > With a complete combustion or fission, approx. 8 kWh of heat can be generated from 1 kg of coal, approx. 12 kWh from 1 kg of mineral oil and around 24,000,000 kWh from 1 kg of uranium-235. Related to one kilogram, uranium-235 contains two to three million times the energy equivalent of oil or coal. https://www.euronuclear.org/glossary/fuel-comparison/ https://www.euronuclear.org/glossary/fuel-comparison/ edit: typo

eldaisfish 1y ago
this website is filled with people who believe that the future source of energy is entirely renewable energy. That is false, as many european countries show. I live in a part of Canada with mostly nuclear energy and i am thankful that my electricity rates are low. This helps me reduce emissions via heat pumps and EVs. I don't need solar panels and most people do not either. You are correct, the future is mostly renewable energy where feasible, with a combination of nuclear and hydro.
stephen_g 1y ago
Who really cares about density? The biggest thing that means is that blowing up two or three substations can cripple an entire country’s grid. Distributed energy generation and storage is actually quite strategic for national security. It’s also massive cherry-picking to just look at refined fuel. For example, H how many tonnes of ore do you need to mine and process to produce that 1kg of uranium (at least 2.5 tonnes, that is 2500 kg from one random source from a quick google). But to use your metric, I did work out and find it interesting that the solar panels on my roof, per kg of silicon have produced over 1,400 kWh of electricity (multiply your figures by 0.3 to take into account efficiency from kWh of heat to compare) so far. I estimate almost 28 kg of silicon in my whole array, which has generated over 38 MWh so far, and I expect they will generate at least three times that over their life. So 4000-5000 kWh(e) per kg of silicon sure comes in a hell of a lot of better than the 2.4 odd for coal or 4 for mineral oil (assuming your figures are correct).

Flatterer3544 1y ago

You should look at what a proper planned all-in nuclear project looks like before commenting.. See Hualong One nuclear project that's operating at ~90% capacity and is ~1/3 of the price of solar, and 2/3 price of wind when comparing the same operation % capacity and taking into consideration the max life length of each technology.

StopDisinfo910 1y ago

Nuclear and intermitent energy sources have no place in the same sentence. Germany didn't avoid nuclear by switching to renewables. It does so by burning coal and building gas-fired power plants. How to manage a grid fully on intermitent power sources is an open question. There is at this point in time no answer to this. At the moment, Germany fires up extremely dirty power generation capacity every time there is a shortage. Meanwhile, all europeans bear the costs of Germany shortsightedness - as usual - since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. With nuclear, it's pretty clear how to run a grid. Heck, France has been doing so for decades. The question is how to build it cheaply at scale but at least we have some good ideas and experience about how to do that.

forty 1y ago
Funny story I like to tell here when nuclear chat come up: this summer (in France) they had to stop some nuclear plant because of the heat, which was causing the river used to cool the reaction to over heat. Right when people needed plenty of electricity for A/C. At least solar was there and working at it's best when we needed it ^^ (this is just for trolling the "renewable are not there when we need it" discourse ;) ) Anyway, the thing we'll need for better using solar is storage, if we can make some clean ones, it will be a solution for intermittentcy. But not matter what we do, we should target using less energy, because the only clean energy is the one we don't have to produce. I think that's the thing people miss (volontarily I think) when they answer anti nuclear discourse. Insulating homes and and designing cities so that people don't have to use cars, rather than producing more and more nuclear reactors doesn't seem dumb to me, no matter what's your opinion on nuclear itself.
- StopDisinfo910 1y ago
  France was a net exporter of electricity all summer so no idea of what you are talking about. Slowing down some nuclear plants due to this kind of external condition is fully expected. They are not stopped by the way just slowed down. Nuclear is modulable. People barely use A/C in France by the way. > Anyway, the thing we'll need for better using solar is storage, if we can make some clean ones, it will be a solution for intermittentcy Storage is a short term solution. Batteries are ok to manage intra-day variation, two days at most. Long term storage of electricity plainly doesn't exist. Saying some storage solution will somehow at some point solve the issue of intermittency is at best wishful thinking, at worst a dramatic lack of risk management. Before someone asks how China is doing it, I will answer the question: they are not. Despite China being much larger and thus being able to somehow compensate variation by having more production sites, they are using battery storage for short term variation but have to rely on expensive and polluting small thermal power plants when energy is lacking. It's a stop gap while they build a ton of nuclear power plants.

LunaSea 1y ago

> Nuclear technology is a dead end. You should look at CO2 / kWh in Germany vs. France

forty 1y ago
You can also decide to look at countries which went 100% renewable and have even better CO2/kWh rating than France (Iceland, Norway, Albania for example).
- Scea91 1y ago
  In the last 90 days France's CO2 footprint is at 78% of Iceland's. Also, what lessons learned in Iceland, Norway or Albania should we apply in central Europe? We don't have their geothermal and hydro potential (all your examples are not solar+wind but hydro primarily).
- LunaSea 1y ago
  Iceland has massive volcanoes and a small population. Norway has lots of hydropower and a a small population. Not super familiar with Albania but they seem to be in the same situation as Norway. France already implemented hydropower wherever it was possible years ago, so that's not an option. Also France seems to have pretty much the same CO2 / kWh than Norway.
  - forty 1y ago
    Yes, situations are different I agree :) my point was just that you can pick and choose what you want to look at. We'll see how things evolve, but it's not very fair to compare the situation of France which did their switch to low carbon energy many years ago, to Germany which is currently doing it. When we have more countries with finished transition to full/mostly renewable, we can compare again.