5 ms·

Sure, someone can be both concerned about climate change and oppose nuclear power. But it's a largely self-defeating stance: nuclear is the only non-intermitten

Sure, someone can be both concerned about climate change and oppose nuclear power. But it's a largely self-defeating stance: nuclear is the only non-intermittent geographically independent form of clean energy. Dams and geothermal are geographically constrained. Solar and wind are intermittent, as well as varying in output depending on location.

sunaookami 6mo ago
Everyone is entitled to their opinions.
- yawaramin 6mo ago
  But they're not entitled to their own facts.
  - TheOtherHobbes 6mo ago
    The facts are that all large nuclear plants require a stable water supply, and climate change directly threatens that. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X24000725 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X2...
    - Manuel_D 6mo ago
      To be clear, all thermal plants - be they nuclear, fossil fuel, biofuel, etc. - require water for cooling. But this doesn't need to be freshwater, many nuclear plants are cooled with seawater. In non-costal arid areas, nuclear plants can be cooled with sewer water: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_... Electricity demand is concentrated in population centers, which themselves require water and produce sewage as a byproduct. Thus it's pretty rare for a place with strong electricity demand to simultaneously have a shortage of water available for cooling. In places with limited freshwater supply, this results in plants using wastewater. Again, thermal plants of all kinds need cooling. Nuclear changes nothing relative to the status quo in this regard.
    - Moldoteck 6mo ago
      water isn't an issue. You can use cooling towers, wastewater or even dry cooling
  - frollogaston 6mo ago
    There's not much trust in anyone who says nuclear is completely safe, "we fixed it now," etc. That shouldn't be the motto. But fossil fuel is already killing more people, coal puts more radioactive uranium dust into the air even, and that's before getting into climate change. I think people who are anti-nuclear and environmentalist are wrong, but it's not an insane opinion to have. There's no fact you can point to that says nuclear is safer than renewables. I just don't see how the world is realistically going to switch to renewables. We've already seen oil companies use those as distractions from nuclear.
    - deleted 6mo ago
      [deleted]
    - mpweiher 6mo ago
      Nothing man-made is "completely safe". No such thing. However, nuclear energy is the safest form of energy production we have. By far. And that includes Chernobyl and Fukushima. People overestimate the danger from nuclear energy by incredible amounts. That doesn't mean that close exposure to a running nuclear reactor won't kill you in short order. That's why we build these things with shielding. A lot of other things will kill you in short order if exposed to them: cars/trains in motion, for example.
    - Moldoteck 6mo ago
      nuclear isnt fully safe, but it's fine https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy And enviromental impact is low too https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2022-04/LCA_3_FINAL%20March%202022.pdf https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2022-04/LCA_3_FINAL%20...
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
tialaramex 6mo ago
Nuclear is also in practice significantly geographically dependent. Cities basically won't let you put a nuclear power station within a stone's throw, never mind in their midst. Have you ever visited London? There's a wonderful modern art gallery, on the side of the Thames called Tate Modern, and it has this enormous space which is called the "Turbine Hall". Huh. Tate Modern's shell was a 300MW oil fired power station named "Bankside". They burned tonnes of oil right in the heart of London until the 1980s to make electricity. People weren't happy about it, but they designed, built, and operated the station because although any fool can see there's toxic smoke pouring out of it into your city, electricity is pretty useful. In practice nuclear power stations get built somewhere with abundant cheap water, far from population centres yet easily connected to the grid. England has more places to put a Nuke than say, a Hydro dam, but they are not, as you've suggested, "geographically independent", unlike say solar PV which doesn't even stop you grazing animals on the land or parking vehicles or whatever else you might want to do.
- Manuel_D 6mo ago
  What you're describing is substantially different than, say, attempting to build a dam in a flat place with no rivers. "It can function here, but people choose not to" is a very different kind of geographic restrictions than "it is physically impossible for it to work here" Nuclear power is definitely more geographically independent than solar. There's easily a factor of 3 or 4 difference in output between a solar panel in Australia vs Northern Europe: https://www.altestore.com/pages/solar-insolation-map-for-the-world?srsltid=AfmBOoqj6T38MhutG1MX6gYLBJMUHAYfznnRe31rB7DY66vjVXAxJYt https://www.altestore.com/pages/solar-insolation-map-for-the... The only thing a nuclear plant - any thermal plant for that matter - requires is cooling. But that doesn't need to be freshwater. It can be seawater or waste-water, like the Palo Verde plant.
  - rootusrootus 6mo ago
    > There's easily a factor of 3 or 4 difference in output between a solar panel in Australia vs Northern Europe That only really matters if there is some constraint preventing you from building a proportionally larger array at the northern latitudes.
sandworm101 6mo ago
Small thing, dams are not carbon neutral. Depending on location, the plant life they inundate no longer absorbs carbon and, worse yet, the rotting plant life emits methane and other not-good gasses.
- Manuel_D 6mo ago
  Yes, and pouring concrete also emits carbon dioxide. And building wind turbines requires fossil fuel emissions. And the truck driving solar panels out to the solar farm emits CO2, etc. But at the end of the day, the carbon intensity of dams, nuclear, wind, etc. relative to fossil fuels is near zero: https://shrinkthatfootprint.com/electricity-emissions-around-the-world-2/ https://shrinkthatfootprint.com/electricity-emissions-around...

sunaookami 6mo ago

Everyone is entitled to their opinions.

yawaramin 6mo ago
But they're not entitled to their own facts.
- TheOtherHobbes 6mo ago
  The facts are that all large nuclear plants require a stable water supply, and climate change directly threatens that. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X24000725 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X2...
  - Manuel_D 6mo ago
    To be clear, all thermal plants - be they nuclear, fossil fuel, biofuel, etc. - require water for cooling. But this doesn't need to be freshwater, many nuclear plants are cooled with seawater. In non-costal arid areas, nuclear plants can be cooled with sewer water: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_... Electricity demand is concentrated in population centers, which themselves require water and produce sewage as a byproduct. Thus it's pretty rare for a place with strong electricity demand to simultaneously have a shortage of water available for cooling. In places with limited freshwater supply, this results in plants using wastewater. Again, thermal plants of all kinds need cooling. Nuclear changes nothing relative to the status quo in this regard.
  - Moldoteck 6mo ago
    water isn't an issue. You can use cooling towers, wastewater or even dry cooling
- frollogaston 6mo ago
  There's not much trust in anyone who says nuclear is completely safe, "we fixed it now," etc. That shouldn't be the motto. But fossil fuel is already killing more people, coal puts more radioactive uranium dust into the air even, and that's before getting into climate change. I think people who are anti-nuclear and environmentalist are wrong, but it's not an insane opinion to have. There's no fact you can point to that says nuclear is safer than renewables. I just don't see how the world is realistically going to switch to renewables. We've already seen oil companies use those as distractions from nuclear.
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
  - mpweiher 6mo ago
    Nothing man-made is "completely safe". No such thing. However, nuclear energy is the safest form of energy production we have. By far. And that includes Chernobyl and Fukushima. People overestimate the danger from nuclear energy by incredible amounts. That doesn't mean that close exposure to a running nuclear reactor won't kill you in short order. That's why we build these things with shielding. A lot of other things will kill you in short order if exposed to them: cars/trains in motion, for example.
  - Moldoteck 6mo ago
    nuclear isnt fully safe, but it's fine https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy And enviromental impact is low too https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2022-04/LCA_3_FINAL%20March%202022.pdf https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2022-04/LCA_3_FINAL%20...

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

tialaramex 6mo ago

Nuclear is also in practice significantly geographically dependent. Cities basically won't let you put a nuclear power station within a stone's throw, never mind in their midst. Have you ever visited London? There's a wonderful modern art gallery, on the side of the Thames called Tate Modern, and it has this enormous space which is called the "Turbine Hall". Huh. Tate Modern's shell was a 300MW oil fired power station named "Bankside". They burned tonnes of oil right in the heart of London until the 1980s to make electricity. People weren't happy about it, but they designed, built, and operated the station because although any fool can see there's toxic smoke pouring out of it into your city, electricity is pretty useful. In practice nuclear power stations get built somewhere with abundant cheap water, far from population centres yet easily connected to the grid. England has more places to put a Nuke than say, a Hydro dam, but they are not, as you've suggested, "geographically independent", unlike say solar PV which doesn't even stop you grazing animals on the land or parking vehicles or whatever else you might want to do.

Manuel_D 6mo ago
What you're describing is substantially different than, say, attempting to build a dam in a flat place with no rivers. "It can function here, but people choose not to" is a very different kind of geographic restrictions than "it is physically impossible for it to work here" Nuclear power is definitely more geographically independent than solar. There's easily a factor of 3 or 4 difference in output between a solar panel in Australia vs Northern Europe: https://www.altestore.com/pages/solar-insolation-map-for-the-world?srsltid=AfmBOoqj6T38MhutG1MX6gYLBJMUHAYfznnRe31rB7DY66vjVXAxJYt https://www.altestore.com/pages/solar-insolation-map-for-the... The only thing a nuclear plant - any thermal plant for that matter - requires is cooling. But that doesn't need to be freshwater. It can be seawater or waste-water, like the Palo Verde plant.
- rootusrootus 6mo ago
  > There's easily a factor of 3 or 4 difference in output between a solar panel in Australia vs Northern Europe That only really matters if there is some constraint preventing you from building a proportionally larger array at the northern latitudes.

sandworm101 6mo ago

Small thing, dams are not carbon neutral. Depending on location, the plant life they inundate no longer absorbs carbon and, worse yet, the rotting plant life emits methane and other not-good gasses.

Manuel_D 6mo ago
Yes, and pouring concrete also emits carbon dioxide. And building wind turbines requires fossil fuel emissions. And the truck driving solar panels out to the solar farm emits CO2, etc. But at the end of the day, the carbon intensity of dams, nuclear, wind, etc. relative to fossil fuels is near zero: https://shrinkthatfootprint.com/electricity-emissions-around-the-world-2/ https://shrinkthatfootprint.com/electricity-emissions-around...