This comic is pretty bad. It oversimplifies both positions to the point of complete triviality, then uses it to mock a group of people. The comic is not insightful, or funny, or representative or any real people in any sense. It's basically just a jab at some people that the author doesn't like.
This meme is nonsense. Fast reactors do not alleviate the problem; if that were the case, waste would not accumulate around the world, to the point that no one knows what to do with it. There are no geologically safe storages for millennia.
A nuclear power plant has a useful life of about 40, at most 50 years, after which there remains a ruin that must be eliminated, a deconstruction that can last decades to eliminate thousands of tons of debris with medium and high radioactivity. This, adding to the storage problems, is a tremendously expensive process that is also carried out with public money, not by the owner company.
In the event of an accident, see Harrisbourg, Chernobyl, Fukushima and some more, large areas of the country remain contaminated for many years.
The statement spread by nuclear companies that nuclear power plants do not pollute during their operation is a lie. They produce almost as much CO2 as carbon plants, since they require transportation from third countries, if they do not have a Uranium mine nearby, apart from the energy requirements in the enrichment processes in centrifuge plants. The warming of surrounding aquifers due to cooling, with important impacts on local fauna due to the proliferation of algae and lack of oxygen in them. Not to mention the risk of a meltdown due to lack of refrigeration, when the aquifer disappears due to a drought, which precisely now with global warming is a real risk.
The promotion of nuclear power plants has pure economic reasons for certain companies and in some cases weapons reasons to justify the production of the necessary Uranium and Plutonium.
Nuclear energy is only acceptable in medical applications with short half-life isotopes and in space probes.
A nuclear alternative will only exist with fusion plants, the current fission plants are not an option.
The reason for rejection is not hate, but rather knowledge of the cause and consequences.
Do they actually produce as much CO2 as carbon plants? Do you have a source for that claim?
In terms of nuclear waste storage, the IAEA claims 390,000 tonnes were generated between 1954 and 2016, and a third has been recycled.
The US EPA claims the US generated 6,340 million metric tons of CO2, and 25% were for the electric power economic sector.
The nuclear waste is stored on site, but I imagine carbon waste is stored mostly in our atmosphere...
The narrative I have heard is that nuclear energy waste is much more manageable than fossil fuel waste, but if nuclear energy has emissions or scaling problems I'm not aware of, I'd be happy to revise my preconceptions about it.
Pretty much everything OP said is backed up by mountains of evidence, especially in the case of France. Looking it up is trivial. Without proving anything to the contrary, your own comment is lazy and useless to this conversation.
And yet, here you are, being precisely what you accuse me of being. Lazy and useless.
"Pretty much", "Mountains of evidence", yet none presented by them or you.
Also
Nuclear power is a MUST if we want to advance as a race in a "short" period of time. We need alot of energy to be able to have what we all want. Warmth, food, a life... hell even the internet. As long as people take it seriously, nuclear power is very very safe, and efficient.It doesn't mean it is the only form of energy we need to adopt. But we do need it. Unless you think coal, oil or gas is the way to go... And no. Solar and wind won't cut it all-round.
That is an opinion, mostly my own. It is based on many hours of reading articles and watching videos. I didnt study formally for anything to back up that opinion. However maybe read something like this to help you understand some stuff.
I was merely pointing out the fact that your no-effort comment above contributed absolutely nothing to the conversation.
That said, I'm not against nuclear power per se. However, given the fact that we need to cut down on CO2 asap, while at the same time there is a clear lack of available resources to build/research/develop every possible tech at the same time, I find it quite delusional to still push for nuclear when we can use those resources to expand on wind/solar even more aggressively.
In the case of France, the corporation running nuclear power is almost 70 BILLION Euros in debt, while expecting costs upward of additional 50 BILLION Euros for 6 more reactors...numbers that you know will skyrocket once construction begins. That nuclear plant that will be finished next year will produce the most expensive kwh in Frances history. Great outlook! Much convince.
Your numbers are way off. A nuclear power plant generates about a tenth of the emissions of a coal power plant over its full lifecycle. This includes things like:
Plant construction
Plant decommissioning
Uranium mining
Uranium transportation
Uranium enrichment
Fuel reprocessing
Uranium mine reclamation
But none of this really matters in comparing the two. Coal power plants also need to be constructed, and have fuel transported to them! They don't just sprout out of the earth like manna from God!
Is it better than solar, wind, or hydro? No. Those generate about 5 to 20% of the emissions as a nuclear power plant (depending on which you're talking about) when you include manufacturing and construction. Fortunately, functional governments (read: not the West) are capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time! They're doing both! Which is smart—I'd rather have a nuclear fuel storage problem in 100 years than a "whoops, humanity went extinct!" problem. We don't have a lot of time here.
Well, coal plants also need to be constructed and deconstructed in its finl life, but its much easier to do without problems, apart the fuel transport is also less problematic, most countries have own coal mines nearby, no need of importing it with dependency of third countries, which never is a good idea with changing world politics (see dependency of Russian gas in Europe).
But yes, Nuclear Power isn't an option, at least not the fusion power, and fission power maybe in 10-20 years, except in poor countries anyway.
Correct time was 40 years ago when renewable were worse. Instead we built coal and gas generally. Now the worst people want nuclear, except they don't actually want it, they just use it as a cudgel to not build any green infrastructure
So nuclear plants of the future won't be run by companies who cut important corners on safety to maximize shareholder profits while offloading the consequences to the government and public?
It's so annoying that being irrationality afraid of nuclear power is simply assumed to be a leftist position where I live, by leftists and non-leftists alike. No thought goes into it, nuclear power is scary because of nuclear bombs and Chernobyl and that's it.
Yeah that is problem. It did just make me think though: I read recently about a UK project to build a solar farm in the Moroccan desert the size of greater London and lay undersea cables all the way back to southwest England. They claim it will be half the cost of the new Hinkley C reactor, which is just up the road and that includes building from scratch the ship to lay the cables. Now, instead of having this solar farm to the south, in a similar timezone, what if it could be to the east or west? There is already an international grid in this part of the world, so perhaps if it was extended, there could be renewable energy coming in from wherever, whenever it was being produced. The sun is usually out and the wind blowing somewhere. That would reduce the burden of storage. It would also require a high level of cooperation and trust, which has its pros and cons.
If you think about it, the energy coming in from the sun and either heating the ground or stirring the air is constant. A big enough collection network would transmit that underlying steady signal eventually.
Or just bury it miles underground in the desert, but for some fucking reason a state is as likely to store it upstream in a concrete shack as they are to ship it to the mojave where the pit is literally already dug out and designated.
The fact that any nuclear power plant has ever ran anyways is because unspent nuclear materials were transported to the facility. We as a society should have the means to transport these things safely in large sealed containers. The only feasible downside to this idea is that the containers will eventually heat up, so chop fucking chop mates. Get it there.
Yes, but when things go wrong, the boom is relatively small and contained.
We can't run a regular coal or natural gas power plant here without fucking it up and getting people killed. Despite the safety of modern plant designs, I do NOT trust the people in charge here with fissile material.
Like I said, we can't/won't effectively regulate the power plants we have now.
Our government is only good for generating moral panics and building roads. I hope that changes one day, but it has been getting worse for a long time, so I won't hold my breath for it to all be fixed tomorrow.
Go lookup CANDU reactors, we have designs already that can't steam explode themselves and instead will fail safe. Also just to be clear nuclear reactors don't perform a nuclear explosion if they fail, the Chernobyl explosion was a steam explosion that threw nuclear material into the air.
The level of incompetence I've grown to expect of my state government would suggest that they'd have fissile material delivered and stored in a leaky shed, where it will create runoff which contaminates the local reservoir, before a crackhead steals it, takes it to the scrapyard, and it is never seen again.
...and rendered an area the size of a county unsuitable for humans for hundreds of generations.
You're going to have to show me a government that isn't half-full of people who hate education, who hate science, and most of all who hate accountability before I vote for more nuclear power.
When things go wrong? When things go right for coal and gas plants, the "boom" is a humanity-threatening event that already in its extremely early stages has been named the Holocene Extinction.
No. It's because you guys are wrong. Nuclear is more expensive than the others only if the others get subsidies but Nuclear doesn't.
In Canada, Québec is 100% hydro, Ontario is 75% nuclear (the rest is hydro). Yet both provinces have some of the cheapest kWh rates in the western world.
In your own article it says "With existing policies wind and solar are cheaper" Yes, Nuclear is more expensive because the others are subsidized. The article seems to acknowledge that, but only applies the metrics to the price of subsidized wind farms. Unless I misinterpreted the article.
Nuclear is more expensive than the others only if the others get subsidies but Nuclear doesn’t.
That is straight up wrong, the opposite is true. England's Hinkley Point C for example has a Contract for Difference, the british government pays a guaranteed price per kWh so their citizens pay less.
That's completely beside the point. You said, renewables were only cheaper because they're subsidized. I proved you wrong and showed that nuclear is subsidized. That has nothing to do with companies being for-profit.
Even if the government subsidizes it, the company selling it is already for profit selling it at a higher price point. The government can only subsidize so much.
Referencing several sources that consider a vast array of power generation technologies, from offshore wind to biomass, terrestrial wind, solar, gas, coal and nuclear, and nuclear energy has high start up costs and it's also not the cheapest per megawatt of power. It's basically middle of the road on most of the stats I've seen.
Solar, by comparison, has had a much higher LCOE as recently as 5-10 years ago. Most power construction projects take longer than that to plan and build, then operate for decades. Until the last few years, solar hasn't even be a competitor compared to other options.
Beyond direct cost nuclear has been one of very few green energy sources, the nuclear materials are contained and safely disposed of. Unless there's a serious disaster, it's one of the most ecologically friendly forms of energy. The only sources better are hydroelectric, and geothermal. The only "waste" from nuclear is literal steam, and some limited nuclear waste product. A miniscule amount compared to the energy produced.
Last time I checked, all of the nuclear waste that's ever been produced can fit in an area the size of a football field, with room to spare. For all the energy produced, it's very small.
Yet, because of stuff like Chernobyl and Fukushima, everyone seems to hate it.
I live in Ontario, Canada, our entire power infrastructure is hydroelectric and nuclear. I'm proud of that.
Nuclear isn't the demon that people believe it is.
Thanks, that LCOE reference shows that nuclear is on par with several other technologies.
It thoroughly disproves the point that it is more expensive "by a large margin". At most it's a bit more costly than some things, but it's also not far off from some other options, so it's definitely not expensive... At least not by a large margin.
Maybe I shouldn't step in this but here it goes. My personal opinion is that nuclear isn't good or bad, it's an option that's available. I have never heard a nuclear activist say that nuclear energy is superior to renewables. It's not black and white, it's all a complex mix of demands and limitations that dictate if renewables are better for an area or nuclear. It's a whole lot of gray, but nuclear energy isn't as dangerous as some make it out to be.
You're right, you shouldn't have stepped in. At least,you shouldn't have stepped in and build a strawman. The discussion you entered is about costs, not dangers.
You're wrong, I didn't talk about dangers and I didn't put up a strawman. If you wanted to pin a logical fallacy on my argument you should have said I made a generalization fallacy or an informally fallacy because I was so vague. It's actually pretty telling that you're attributing a lot of intention where there was none. I am not going to spend the time or energy to make a legitimate argument with some random jerk on the internet that ultimately just gets us Internet points. I have more important things to do with my time.
And honestly my only reason for posting is to make the comment number go up one tick to keep these communities going. I really don't care about what you think and unless you're in a position of power no one else does either.
Edit: I'll downvote myself, I don't approve of anyone behaving like either of us.
You're right, I was careless. It wasn't a strawman though. It's still a generalization or informality fallacy. If you're going to head in so hot at least have use the right terms.
Your comment is valid, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
I wouldn't say that nuclear is the best option, nor cleanest, nor safest. Like anything, it's all circumstantial. Sometimes it makes sense, sometimes other options are simply better.
From what I've seen, nuclear is the best for base load on a grid scale. Basically: the load that the grid continually has, is well served by nuclear. To my understanding, most nuclear generation is fairly slow to ramp up and down, compared to other technologies, so keeping it at a relatively steady level, with minor adjustments and changes through the day as required, is the best use case for it. It's stable and consistent, which is to say it doesn't vary based on external factors, like the weather, where solar/wind are heavily influenced by external factors.
Yet, because of stuff like Chernobyl and Fukushima, everyone seems to hate it.
Is that a bad reason really? When nuclear goes bad it goes really bad and it can go bad due to human error which is something that will always be present. When a solar panel catastrophically fails it doesn't render the surrounding environment uninhabitable for decades.
I'm not just talking about deaths though. If a bad nuclear accident happens it makes a large part of the surrounding area uninhabitable and the fallout in the air can cause long term very nasty health problems for a lot of people. If that happened near a big city the results would be devastating. Considering that the other clean energy options are comparable in terms of danger per output during general operation it just doesn't seem worth it. Obviously I'm not a nuclear engineer and maybe I need to read up on it more but that's my current thoughts on the matter.
As for the rarity, they may be but we are operating on an indefinite time scale. Sooner or later something is going to happen again with how complex those things are. Especially with corporations involved that are more concerned with making their stocks go up than keeping people safe. Here's a better explanation of what I'm talking about - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_accident
This specific source doesn't highlight it and I don't have the opportunity to find something else at the moment, but when I first heard about it ( in a ted talk that I can't remember the name of... ) they had highlighted that health complications followed similar curves. The worsts of course being burning stuff due to dumping it in the air, but that most renewables had their lot of injuries too, that their just less publicized.
Here's my full take of nuclear/renewables
My understanding is that most power grid depending on renewables need an alternate energy source for when power demands ramp up: they need some energy sources that they can tune depending of needs, at the drop of a hat.
Hydro does that, you can let more or less water through. (I happen to live aomewhere where most of our energy is Hydro)
Things like wind or solar are more complicated.
As an energy appoint source, I think nuclear is a good fit for some use cases.
