3 ms·

> Building nuclear doesn't stop you from building whatever else you want. If you build the solar and wind you don't need the nuclear. That's the point. > Also

by jmyeet 4mo ago

> Building nuclear doesn't stop you from building whatever else you want. If you build the solar and wind you don't need the nuclear. That's the point. > Also, you're predictably citing a couple of bad nuclear accidents, over like 70 years of nuclear generation. Here we go with hand-waving away all the uncomfortable counterexamples. It's hard to get exact numbers because of plant decmossioning and that some nuclear reactors don't produce electricity (eg they are breeder reactors for plutonium or isotopes for medicine) but an estimate of somewhere between 400 and 440 worldwide seems reasonable. I've also read that fewer than 700 nuclear reactors have ever been built. Not a single one without significant subsidies I might add. Of those 440 (for argument's sake), we've had 3 serious accidents: 1. Chernobyl. The absolute exclusion zone for Chernobyl remains at 1000 square miles ~40 years after the accident with no end in sight. The estimates of the accumulated cleanup costs seem to be at least $700 billion [1]; 2. Fukushima. It'll likely take more than a century to clean this up and the cost may well exceed $1 trillion [2]; 3. Three Mile Island. Far less significant than the other two but still involved a core meltdown. Do you have any idea how much renewable power generation $700B and $1T could've bought instead? But it gets worse. The US nuclear energy doesn't pay insurance representing the true potential cost of a nuclear disaster. The Price-Anderson Act limits liability to (in 2026) $500 million in primary insurance, $15 billion in secondary insurance from an industry-wide fund paid in by operators and there's also another limit I forget on incidents that cover more than one reactor [3]. So how do you get from $15B to $700B or $1T? Why the government of course, which means the taxpayers. [1]: https://globalhealth.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/2016_chernobyl_costs_report.pdf https://globalhealth.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/2016... [2]: https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/16/fukushimas-final-costs-will-approach-one-trillion-dollars-just-for-nuclear-disaster/ https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/16/fukushimas-final-costs-... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear...

orthecreedence 4mo ago
> If you build the solar and wind you don't need the nuclear. Don't forget the enormous battery arrays for winter, cloudy skies, or wildfire smoke. Hope you have enough batteries. But you won't, so ok, now you need gas reactors to fill in the blanks. Isn't that what we're trying to get away from?
- pfdietz 4mo ago
  Ah yes, the ridiculous strawman engineering of saying batteries would be used for seasonal storage.
  - troupo 4mo ago
    Then what would you use for seasonal storage?
    - arkh 4mo ago
      > Then what would you use for seasonal storage? Like Germany: coal and the energy provided by the rest of the EU. So Nordic countries hydro and nuclear, and some French nuclear. While lobbying to make all those interconnections increase domestic prices for the providers.
      - troupo 4mo ago
        > Like Germany: coal and the energy provided by the rest of the EU. So, from actual non-intermittent sources like checks notes nuclear?
        pfdietz 4mo ago
        No, nuclear is terrible for covering seasonality, since unless it's used with high capacity factor the cost per kWh skyrockets.
        troupo 4mo ago
        > No, nuclear is terrible for covering seasonality, wat How is nuclear bad at covering the seasonality of, for example, winter in the Nordics?
        pfdietz 4mo ago
        It's best for covering a constant demand, not a seasonal component of demand. If renewables grow to the point where there is no remaining near-constant unmet demand, nuclear has no place at all.
leonidasrup 4mo ago
1. Lot of nuclear fission products from Chernobyl catastrophe have already decay ed away. There was mapping done for the long term plan of shrinking the Chernobyl exclusion zone. "In the long term, the Ukrainian radiation protection authorities can use the BfS measurement data as a planning basis for reassessing the size of the exclusion zone. The data can be used to assess which areas of the exclusion zone could be reopened for use." https://www.bfs.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/BfS/EN/2022/006.html https://www.bfs.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/BfS/EN/2022... https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47227767 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47227767 The Russian invasion of Ukraine has halted the reassessment of Chernobyl exclusion zone, Ukraine has currently much bigger problems than Chernobyl. One could also say that, the decline of nuclear power in Europe because of Chernobyl accident caused much stronger dependency of Europe on Russian fossil fuels and indirectly supported the Russian invasion of Ukraine by bringing a lot of European money to Russia. 2. They got the currency symbol wrong in the cleantechnica article. "First estimates included costs as high as ¥1 trillion (US$13 billion), as cited by the Japanese Prime Minister at the time, Yoshihiko Noda " "In 2016, Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry estimated the total cost of dealing with the Fukushima disaster at ¥21.5 trillion (US$187 billion)" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_accident_cleanup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_accident_cle... Lot of missing nuclear electricity production after 2011 in Japan was replaced with electricity production from imported LNG. Because of impacts Iran war on LNG gas delivery Japan is now rapidly moving to restart nuclear power plants. https://www.politico.com/news/2026/04/18/japan-nuclear-fukushima-energy-00816474 https://www.politico.com/news/2026/04/18/japan-nuclear-fukus... 3. Three Mile Island was very costly destruction of power generation asset without impacts on the public health, but it caused mass panic amplified by the simultaneous release of the The China Syndrome movie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident#Activism_and_legal_action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident#Act... Other industries also don't pay insurance representing the true potential cost of a large disasters. "US law requires payment of 8 cents per barrel of oil to the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund for all oil imported or produced. In exchange for the payment, operators of offshore oil platforms, among others, are limited in liability to $75 million for damages, which can be paid by the fund, but are not indemnified from the cost of cleanup. As of 2010, before payouts related to the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion, the fund stood at $1.6 billion. The hydroelectric industry is not generally held financially liable for catastrophic incidents such as dam failure or resultant flooding. For example, dam operators were not held liable for the 1977 failure of the Teton Dam in Idaho that caused approximately $500 million in property damage." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act#Compared_to_other_industries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear...
Moldoteck 4mo ago
You can see how you dont need nuclear with your strategy today in Germany https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DE/live/fifteen_minutes https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DE/live/fifteen_min... TMI cleanup costed 1bn, so far lower than the secondary insurance amount. Fukushima cleanup will take less. Most exclusion areas were lifted (with delays but still). JP already wants to extract unmelted fuel elements to gain xp to later do it with the rest. Ukraine is less lucky - recent russian strikes destroyed part of the equipment meant to extract corium. Germany spent so far on EEG alone double the cost of entire french fleet. You can see the results. Not just financial https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10640-025-01002-z https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10640-025-01002-z

by jmyeet 4mo ago

orthecreedence 4mo ago

> If you build the solar and wind you don't need the nuclear. Don't forget the enormous battery arrays for winter, cloudy skies, or wildfire smoke. Hope you have enough batteries. But you won't, so ok, now you need gas reactors to fill in the blanks. Isn't that what we're trying to get away from?

pfdietz 4mo ago
Ah yes, the ridiculous strawman engineering of saying batteries would be used for seasonal storage.
- troupo 4mo ago
  Then what would you use for seasonal storage?
  - arkh 4mo ago
    > Then what would you use for seasonal storage? Like Germany: coal and the energy provided by the rest of the EU. So Nordic countries hydro and nuclear, and some French nuclear. While lobbying to make all those interconnections increase domestic prices for the providers.
    - troupo 4mo ago
      > Like Germany: coal and the energy provided by the rest of the EU. So, from actual non-intermittent sources like checks notes nuclear?
      - pfdietz 4mo ago
        No, nuclear is terrible for covering seasonality, since unless it's used with high capacity factor the cost per kWh skyrockets.
        troupo 4mo ago
        > No, nuclear is terrible for covering seasonality, wat How is nuclear bad at covering the seasonality of, for example, winter in the Nordics?
        pfdietz 4mo ago
        It's best for covering a constant demand, not a seasonal component of demand. If renewables grow to the point where there is no remaining near-constant unmet demand, nuclear has no place at all.

leonidasrup 4mo ago

1. Lot of nuclear fission products from Chernobyl catastrophe have already decay ed away. There was mapping done for the long term plan of shrinking the Chernobyl exclusion zone. "In the long term, the Ukrainian radiation protection authorities can use the BfS measurement data as a planning basis for reassessing the size of the exclusion zone. The data can be used to assess which areas of the exclusion zone could be reopened for use." https://www.bfs.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/BfS/EN/2022/006.html https://www.bfs.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/BfS/EN/2022... https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47227767 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47227767 The Russian invasion of Ukraine has halted the reassessment of Chernobyl exclusion zone, Ukraine has currently much bigger problems than Chernobyl. One could also say that, the decline of nuclear power in Europe because of Chernobyl accident caused much stronger dependency of Europe on Russian fossil fuels and indirectly supported the Russian invasion of Ukraine by bringing a lot of European money to Russia. 2. They got the currency symbol wrong in the cleantechnica article. "First estimates included costs as high as ¥1 trillion (US$13 billion), as cited by the Japanese Prime Minister at the time, Yoshihiko Noda " "In 2016, Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry estimated the total cost of dealing with the Fukushima disaster at ¥21.5 trillion (US$187 billion)" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_accident_cleanup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_accident_cle... Lot of missing nuclear electricity production after 2011 in Japan was replaced with electricity production from imported LNG. Because of impacts Iran war on LNG gas delivery Japan is now rapidly moving to restart nuclear power plants. https://www.politico.com/news/2026/04/18/japan-nuclear-fukushima-energy-00816474 https://www.politico.com/news/2026/04/18/japan-nuclear-fukus... 3. Three Mile Island was very costly destruction of power generation asset without impacts on the public health, but it caused mass panic amplified by the simultaneous release of the The China Syndrome movie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident#Activism_and_legal_action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident#Act... Other industries also don't pay insurance representing the true potential cost of a large disasters. "US law requires payment of 8 cents per barrel of oil to the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund for all oil imported or produced. In exchange for the payment, operators of offshore oil platforms, among others, are limited in liability to $75 million for damages, which can be paid by the fund, but are not indemnified from the cost of cleanup. As of 2010, before payouts related to the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion, the fund stood at $1.6 billion. The hydroelectric industry is not generally held financially liable for catastrophic incidents such as dam failure or resultant flooding. For example, dam operators were not held liable for the 1977 failure of the Teton Dam in Idaho that caused approximately $500 million in property damage." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act#Compared_to_other_industries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear...

Moldoteck 4mo ago

You can see how you dont need nuclear with your strategy today in Germany https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DE/live/fifteen_minutes https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DE/live/fifteen_min... TMI cleanup costed 1bn, so far lower than the secondary insurance amount. Fukushima cleanup will take less. Most exclusion areas were lifted (with delays but still). JP already wants to extract unmelted fuel elements to gain xp to later do it with the rest. Ukraine is less lucky - recent russian strikes destroyed part of the equipment meant to extract corium. Germany spent so far on EEG alone double the cost of entire french fleet. You can see the results. Not just financial https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10640-025-01002-z https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10640-025-01002-z