No, it's not the best we have. Solar and wind are way safer, cost less and don't produce waste.
Sure, nuclear power is safe until it isn't. Fukushima and Chernobyl are examples of that. Nuclear plants in Ukraine were at risk during Russian attacks. Even if you have a modern plant, you don't really think that under capitalism there is an incentive to care properly for them in the long run. Corners will be cut.
Besides that they produce so much waste that has to be: a) being transported
b) stored somewhere
Looking at the US railroad system and how it is pushed beyond it's capacity right now and seeing how nuclear waste sites are literally rotting and contaminating everything around them I'd say it's one of the least safe energies. Especially if you have clean alternatives that don't produce waste.
It may be too late for nuclear. Too much upfront cost, too long to build.
Reneweables are cheaper in the long run, and with storage technologies getting better the problem with base load electricity gets smaller.
Yeah, nothing back there except tons of highly radioactive waste that nobody knows what to do with for the next million years, nothing back there but the risk of contaminating a whole region with radioactive shit like it happened in Chernobyl and Fukushima, nothing back there except for overly expensive energy that's only cheap because governments subsidized the shit out of it because they thought it was the new big thing you need to have, and now they still do just because. Don't get me worng, it's probably still a tiny bit better than burning fossils. But it's still bullshit.
Dig a deep hole into the bedrock, put the waste in dry casks, put the casks in the hole, backfill with clay.
This has been known for decades!
I live in a suburb north of Stockholm in Sweden, here in Scandinavia we have a very stable bedrock, I would absolutely welcome a disposal site for nuclear waste in my suburb, and I am talking about a site that would accept waste from all over the world (for a fee obviously).
It would be simple, create jobs, and allow us to keep using nuclear power to allow for quicker removal of fossil power plants.
As for Chernobyl, TMI and Fukashima, Chernobyl was a bad design which was run by people who lacked access to information about past nuclear accidents, leading to bad management, TMI had a fail deadly indicator system, where a broken light bulb caused incorrect information to be acted on, and Fukashima was built in a bad location.
I recommend you to watch this 2006 BBC Horizon documentary, it is called Nuclear Nightmares and talks about our fear of radiation, and weather or not it is warranted:
A large coal power plant needs at least 10000 tons of coal every day according to Wikipedia.
A nuclear plant needs about 25 tons per year.
That is a huge, massive difference in logistics, pollution and use of resources, that is not even getting into the coal ash that is produced by cosl plants, according to the EPA, nearly 130 million tons of coal ash was generated in the US by coal power plants. None was generated by nuclear power plants.
Please watch the documentary, it is a few years old, but the premise still holds.
Another point is that there are places outside Chernobyl and Fukashima that have higher background radiation that either exclusion zone, and that is places where people live normally, I seem to recall that being mentioned in the documentary I linked.
edit: the tech is cool as hell. go nuts on research reactors. nuclear medicine has saved my sisters life twice.... but i'm sorry, its just not a sane solution to the climate crisis.
One of the saddest bits of the show was when they kinda just gave up talking about socio-economic issues and made the whole show revolve around Homer being a big dumb-dumb.
Some of the harshest criticism they had around nuclear power revolved around its privatization and profitization. A bunch of those early episodes amounted to people asking for reasonable and beneficial changes to how the plant was run, then having to fight tooth and nail with the company boss for even moderate reform.
I would rather see more investment on better renewable tech then relaying on biohazard.
You would be surprised to know the amount of scientific research with actual solutions that aren't applied cause goes against the fossil fuel companies and whatnot. Due to the fact that they have market monopoly.
Nuclear is the best and most sustainable energy production long term. You get left with nuclear waste which we are still figuring out how to deal with, but contemporary reactors are getting safer and more efficient. Not to mention breeder reactors can use the byproducts of their energy production to further produce energy.
What are you talking about? In 2023, solar power alone generated 1.63 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity. Twice as much as was generated by coal, and more than half as much as was generated by nuclear. Solar plus wind out performed nuclear by hundreds of gigawatts.
The only thing holding back renewable power is grid level energy storage, and that's evolving rapidly.
The problem with renewables is the fluctuation. So you need something you can quickly spin up or down to compensate. Now you can do that with nuclear reactors to some extent - but they barely break even at current energy prices, and they keep having the same high cost while idle.
So a combination of grid storage and power plants with low cost when idle (like water) is the way to go now.
I would rather see more investment on better renewable tech then relaying on biohazard.
Modern nuclear energy produces significantly less waste and involves more fuel recycling than the historical predecessors. But these reactors are more expensive to build and run, which means smaller profit margins and longer profit tails.
Solar and Wind are popular in large part because you can build them up and profit off them quickly in a high-priced electricity market (making Texas's insanely expensive ERCOT system a popular location for new green development, paradoxically). But nuclear power provides a cheap and clean base load that we're only able to get from coal and natural gas, atm. If you really want to get off fossil fuels entirely, nuclear is the next logical step.
Every commercial fuel recycling plant in existence releases large amounts of radioactivity into the air and water, so I dont really see them as a good alternative.
Considering how long it would take to build safe reactors, how expensive it would be and how much radioactive contamination would be created both at the production of fuel and later when the storage ever goes wrong after thousands of years, I just dont see any reason to ever invest into it nowadays, when renewables and batteries have gotten so good.
I just dont see any reason to ever invest into it nowadays, when renewables and batteries have gotten so good.
Renewables and batteries have their own problems.
Producing and processing cobalt and lithium under current conditions will mean engaging in large-scale deforestation in some of the last unmolested corners of the planet, producing enormous amounts of toxic waste as part of the refinement process, and then getting these big bricks of lithium (not to mention cadmium, mercury, and lead) that we need to dispose of at the battery's end of lifecycle.
Renewables - particularly hydropower, one of the most dense and efficient forms of renewable energy - can deform natural waterways and collapse local ecologies. Solar plants have an enormous geographic footprint. These big wind turbines still need to be produced, maintained, and disposed of with different kinds of plastics, alloys, and battery components.
Which isn't even to say these are bad ideas. But everything we do requires an eye towards the long-term lifecycle of the generators and efficient recycling/disposal at their end.
Nuclear power isn't any different. If we don't operate plants with the intention of producing fissile materials, they run a lot cleaner. We can even power grids off of thorium. Molten salt reactors do an excellent job of maximizing the return on release of energy, while minimizing the risk of a meltdown. Our fifth generation nuclear engines can use this technology and the only thing holding us back is ramping it up.
Unlike modern batteries, nuclear power doesn't require anywhere near the same amount of cobalt, lithium, nickel and manganese. Uranium is surprisingly cheap and abundant, with seawater yielding a pound of enrichable uranium at the cost of $100-$200 (which then yields electricity under $.10/kwh).
We can definitely do renewables in a destructive and unsustainable way, recklessly mining and deforesting the plant to churn out single-use batteries. And we can do nuclear power in a responsible and efficient way, recycling fuel and containing the relatively low volume of highly toxic waste.
But all of that is a consequence of economic policy. Its much less a consequence of choosing which fuel source to use.
Economicaly might be viable, but there is so much unused experimental tech that has higher potential and scales better (higher scientific development as well).
So, no, sorry, nuclear power isn’t relevant anymore. I know it’s tempting to cling to outdated technologies sometimes, I enjoy using a typewriter for example, but when it comes to solving climate change, I think we should use the best tools available, which nuclear is definitely not. It’s just too expensive and slow to provision.
DOE Announces $2.7 Billion From President Biden’s Investing in America Agenda to Boost Domestic Nuclear Fuel Supply Chain
Wow, some industry lobbyists got government funding, amazing. Global fossil fuel subsidies are at $7 trillion, so I guess those are really relevant to our future as well!
I don’t want developing countries to waste their money on nuclear power when they can get much more cost effective renewables.
Global fossil fuel subsidies are at $7 trillion, so I guess those are really relevant to our future as well!
No of course not. The subsidies at this point at a crime against humanity.
I don’t want developing countries to waste their money on nuclear power when they can get much more cost effective renewables.
If the renewables are cost effective and provide stable power then I too want them to be priority -near zero risks-, but more importantly industry and business will seek them on their own. I just hold that nuclear power should be part of the mix. Take the UAE for example it is investing in both nuclear and solar.
Deep level irony that you used a Simpsons meme, which takes place in a city that suffers from a Nuclear Power Plant that doesn't dispose of nuclear waste properly.
Every form of energy generation is problematic in the hands of capital. Security measures can and are often considered unnecessary expense. And even assuming that they will respect all safety standards, we still have the problem of fuel: France, for example, was only able to supply its plants at a cheap cost because of colonialism in Africa. Therefore, nuclear energy potentially has the same geopolitical problems as oil, in addition to the particular ones: dual technology that can and is applied in the military, not necessarily but mainly atomic bombs.
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Also, I thought memes were supposed to be funny...
It's not completely unfunny because of the unintentional irony. Tough it definitely belongs to that specific category of "meme" commonly seen on r/politicalmemes or any of its variants on the feedverse: usually a frame from The Office with text written on a whiteboard, with the ubiquity of the complete absence of a joke.
Yeah, I'd tend to agree on that.
Even beyond the security issues, nuclear has the potential to be a safe, but it also has the potential to be disastrous if mis-managed.
Now imagine a plant in Texas, where power companies response to winter outages has basically been "sucks to be you, winterizing is too costly".
Or maybe we'd like to go with a long-time trusted company, who totally wouldn't throw away safety and their reputation for a few extra bucks. Boeing comes to mind.
I like nuclear as a power source, but the absolutely needs to be immutable rules in place to ensure it is properly managed and that anyone attempting to cut corners to save costs gets slapped down immediately. Corporate culture in North America seems to indicate otherwise.
I'm sure nuclear can be super safe and efficient. The science is legit.
The problem is, at some point something critical to the operation of that plant is going to break. Could be 10 years, could be 10 days. It's inevitable.
When that happens, the owner of that plant has to make a decision to either:
Shut down to make the necessary repairs and lose billions of dollars a minute.
Pretend like it's not that big of a deal. Stall. Get a second opinion. Fire/harass anyone who brings it up. Consider selling to make it someone else's problem. And finally, surprise pikachu face when something bad happens.
In our current society, I don't have to guess which option the owner is going to choose.
Additionally, we live in a golden age of deregulation and weaponized incompetence. If a disaster did happen, the response isn't going to be like Chernobyl where they evacuate us and quarantine the site for hundreds of years until its safe to return. It'll be like the response to the pandemic we all just lived through. Or the response to the water crisis in Flint Michigan. Or the train derailment in East Palestine.
Considering the fallout of previous disasters, I think it's fair to say that until we solve both of those problems, we should stay far away from nuclear power. We're just not ready for it.
Hi i was a nuclear mechanic, and that's not how it works. I'm on the toilet so I'm not gonna explain it now. Arm chair expert, uninformed opinions like this are part of the reason we're stuck on fossil fuels to begin with.
Everyone brings up Chernobyl like almost 4 entire decades of scientific advancement just didn't happen.
I was a nuclear plant owner and that's not how it doesn't work. I too have a toilet related reason why I won't contribute meaningfully to this discussion.
The reason we're stuck on fossil fuels isn't just because of the people's opinions. The main reason is the same as for most other major problems: money.
The problem is not science, the problem is not tech, the problem is people, making decisions, like making Fukushima's sea barriers 3 or 4 meters shorter than worse case scenario because money. Nuclear can be safe. People and money make it unsafe.
@spicytuna62 It's not the best we got. The best we got is to stop the wasteful overproduction and stop letting society being about building building building.
We should rather reframe society into being about growing and localizing the economy. Focusing on living with nature, not at it's expense.
I don't disagree with you, but this is unrealistic. Starting the whole principles of society from scratch is never gonna happen. We should focus on making sure that, while we still "build and build", it is in a sustainable way, using renewable energy sources, as well as nuclear.
Edit: this is not saying we don't need societal change, there are definitely lots of things that need fixing, but it's never gonna be done all at once, completely different. What needs to happen is we focus on the core of the problems, fix that now, and then it will end up looking completeley different than what we have today.
I don’t disagree with you, but this is unrealistic.
But...we don't have a choice if we are to survive. Continuation with any system like our current system (i.e. exploitation of nature for economic growth) will lead to obvious ecological collapse. Why is certain ecological collapse viewed as the more realistic choice?
This is akin to a person well on their way to a heart attack saying "well, eating healthy is unrealistic, so let's switch to diet coke and pretend that's enough"
Yes, except we shouldn't "pitch" it as a total change if we want it to happen. Unfortunately the general public has been brainwashed into believing we are basically either terrorists or we belong in an asylum. It's insane but it's the world we live in....
Where the fuck we gonna put all the waste product? I'm not saying nuclear power is bad, far from it, but we have two problems here:
Its cost prohibitive to build new Third Generation reactors that are fault tolerant, and moreso to assure that all the Second Generation reactors are fully fault tolerant given how adjacent they are to flood plains and fault lines in the US
Where the fuck are we gonna put the waste at? Yucca Mountain is off the table for good, WIPP is nearing capacity for a pilot plant, and we have nothing like Onkalo planned out despite the funding being there many times over
All the waste a plant ever produces in its lifetime can be contained with ease on site. Waste certainly isn't the main issue, though it's portrayed to be. Cost of deployment and staffing are more prohibitive issues, and both are surmountable. I don't think it's a bandaid for all power issues, but it's a powerful tool that should be used more often, not phased out.
Also we do have the ability to re-utilize waste in different types of reactors until it is essentially entirely spent. There is a complete cycle available. Nobody talks about it though because you know, not as cost-effective
All the waste a plant ever produces in its lifetime can be contained with ease on site.
Won't that create a bunch of targets all over the country? Then terrorists or enemy states can use simple small bombs to make whole areas uninhabitable for the next millennium.
Strong enough to be hit by a train full speed too IIRC, plus if we actually built Yucca Mtn anyone getting within 500 miles of Fallon is getting vaporized over the sand long before they can try busting any bunkers
Or much much longer. It's not going anywhere. It can't escape its cask, and outside human intervention the casks won't be breached. It's just locked-up metal that gives off some radiation, fully contained within the cask. It isn't oozing green goo.
It's interesting watching the discussion in this thread evolving and polarizing. Yesterday the discussion started as 'nuclear is one solution in a portfolio of solutions to combat climate change. vs. nuclear is always bad.' and developed into 'nuclear is good and you're dumb. vs. nuclear is bad and you're evil'.
Seems like that's how every large scale "discussion" on the internet goes, all nuance goes out the window. I guess the platforms don't allow for nuanced takes? Other than maybe longform podcasts, but those aren't exactly large scale discussions like reddit or twitter. Maybe some clever sociologist can figure out why we are like this (or likely already has).
It's also really weird because discussing a topic like this heavily impacted by where you come from. For exemple the discussion about nuclear energy cannot be the same in France, China, USA or Russia and I see almost everyone here talking the thing like the choice between Nuclear Energy or not (because it's should never be about Nuclear Energy or Renewable Energy) was the same everywhere on the planet.
So here we are, a lot of people talking to themselves instead of talking with each other, hammering their idea on the topic without even once considering that others living in others places and living in others conditions will approach the subject differently (and than it should be normal and comprehensible)
