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He should, reason they ditched them for coal and gas was because big daddy Exxon and BP are pushing for it so they don’t go out of bussiness. FUCK BP AND EXXON!
That is an extreme over simplification of a very complicated subject, it’s never that simple.
Having said that: yeah. It was stupid to stop using nuclear energy
It’s sad that the coal lobby has convinced so many people that the most reliable clean energy source we’ve ever discovered is somehow bad.
It’s sad that the coal lobby has convinced so many people that the most reliable clean energy source we’ve ever discovered is somehow bad.
Its bad in the sense that is a crazy expensive way to generate electricity. Its not theoretical. Ask the customers of the most recent nuclear reactors to go online in the USA in Georgia. source
"The report shows average Georgia Power rates are up between $34 and $35 since before the plant’s Unit 3 went online. " (there were bonds and fees on customer electric bills to pay for the nuclear plant construction before it was even delivering power.
…and…
“The month following Unit 4 achieving commercial operation, average retail rates were adjusted by approximately 5%. With the Nuclear Construction Cost Recovery (NCCR) tariff removed from bills, a typical resident customer using 1,000 kWh per month saw an estimated monthly increase of $8.95 per month. This follows the previous rate impact in 2023 following Unit 3 COD of $5.42 (3.2%).”
So another $5.42/month for the first reactor built on top of the $35/month, then another $8.95/month on top of all that for a rough total of $49.37/month more just to buy electricity that is generated from nuclear.
Maybe the power company is greedy? Nope, they’re even eating more costs and not passing them on to customers:
“Georgia Power says they’re losing about $2.6 billion in total projected costs to shield customers from the responsibility of paying it. Unit 4 added about $8.95 to the average customer’s bill, John Kraft, a spokesman for the company said.”
So that $49.37/month premium for electricity from nuclear power would be even higher if the power company passed on all the costs. Nuclear power for electricty is just too inefficient just on the cost basis, this is completely ignoring the problems with waste management.
The next biggest problem with nuclear power is where the fuel comes from:
“Russia also dominates nuclear fuel supply chains. Its state-owned Rosatom controls 36 percent of the global uranium enrichment market and supplies nuclear fuel to 78 reactors in 15 countries. In 2020, Russia owned 40 percent of the total uranium conversion infrastructure worldwide. Russia is also the third-largest supplier of the imported uranium that fuels U.S. power plants, accounting for 16 percent of total imported uranium. The Russian state could weaponize its dominance in the nuclear energy supply chain to advance its geostrategic interests. During the 2014 Russia-Ukraine crisis, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin threatened to embargo nuclear fuel supplies to Ukraine.” source
So relying on nuclear power for electricity means handing the keys of our power supply over to outside countries that are openly hostile to us.
Particularly since coal power stations emit FAR more radioactive material, routinely, than most nuclear “leaks”.
there are millions being poured into propaganda against using anything but fossil fuels, much of it stems from there. But i wonder if its better this way or the alternative way where we would use more nuclear energy but since there would be so much money to be made, the rich would use their money to make all safety regulations null. I wish we could just get rid of the source problem.
Europe’s regulations are strict and robust. However, the German Greens convinced lots of people that they aren’t enough.
That’s a crazy oversimplification almost all German party’s had a part in the phase out and shut down of German nuclear energy. To point at the Greens and say it was them, is a right wing talking point pushed by Springer media.
If there was a way to make good money with nuclear we would have it all around to say a grass roots movement was able to push this through is laughable, if we look how everything else works in this world. While surely way better to handle securely it’s simply not easy to build and operate. Just look at all the plants currently under construction in Europe they all struggle to get finished take years to decades longer then planned and are way more expensive to build then initially estimated. Why is France struggling so hard when they have a population that is definitely way more open minded towards nuclear?
The curse of Private-Public Partnerships (P3s) means middle-men sapping all the value out of long-term government projects. We simply cannot trust these organizations with our energy infrastructure.
is that party in the pockets of oil companies?
I hate this thread.
I bet you’re working for BP and Exxon, shill.
In Soviet Lemmy this thread hates you
I feel this is all moot. When we run out of fossil fuels and go off the energy cliff, the nuclear facilities will basically build themselves, assuming there will be anyone around that will even know how to build a nuclear reactor
The problem is that nuclear reactors can’t be built fast. We’ve also lost a lot of the expertise to age and retirement.
Nuclear should have been a major factor in dealing with climate change. Unfortunately, we no longer have time for it to take up the slack. It will need to catch up with other renewable energy sources, we can’t wait for it.
Anon is dumb. Anon forgets the nuclear waste. Anon also forgets that the plants for the magical rocks are extremely expensive. So much that energy won by these rocks is more expensive than wind energy and any other renewable.
Anon forgets the nuclear waste.
Nuclear waste is pretty tame. Compare gloves that were used once to turn valve on pipe in reactor room to shit from coal in your lungs. Even most active kind of waste everyone thinks of - spent fuel - consists from about 90% of useful material.
EDIT: 95-98% of useful material.
Anon also forgets that the plants for the magical rocks are extremely expensive.
Actually not. Especially cost of energy compared to one of coal.
What nonsense is this?
Compare gloves that were used once to turn valve on pipe in reactor room to shit from coal in your lungs.
No shit, Sherlock… The reactor room is shielded by the water. Something you had in there once shouldn’t be overly radioactive and the fact that it isn’t doesn’t say anything about the dangers of radioactive waste.
Even most active kind of waste everyone thinks of - spent fuel - consists from about 90% of useful material.
What does that even mean? How is that saying anything about the dangers of radioactive waste?
Actually not.
new nuclear power costs about 5 times more than onshore wind power per kWh […]. Nuclear takes 5 to 17 years longer between planning and operation and produces on average 23 times the emissions per unit electricity generated […].
Something you had in there once shouldn’t be overly radioactive
It still counts as radioactive waste. It was example of something regular people don’t associate radioactive waste with, but still counts as one.
Something you had in there once shouldn’t be overly radioactive and the fact that it isn’t doesn’t say anything about the dangers of radioactive waste.
“This waste shouldn’t be overly dangerous and the fact that it isn’t doesn’t say how dangerous it is”. Wow. How did you do this?
What does that even mean? How is that saying anything about the dangers of radioactive waste?
Did you read what I write?
I will rephrase you:
What does that even mean? How is that saying anything about the amount of radioactive waste?
“This waste shouldn’t be overly dangerous and the fact that it isn’t doesn’t say how dangerous it is”. Wow. How did you do this?
Here I thought you’re just slow and didn’t read what I wrote so I was already preparing to just explain what I said.
What does that even mean? How is that saying anything about the dangers of radioactive waste?
Did you read what I write?
I will rephrase you:
What does that even mean? How is that saying anything about the amount of radioactive waste?
This is where I realised you’re just trolling.
And even if we just buried all of it, all nuclear waste ever produced could easily be buried in one square mile.
Anon isn’t dumb, just simple. Nuclear energy can be the best solution for certain situations. While renewables are the better choice in every way, they’re effectiveness isn’t equally distributed. There are places where there just isn’t enough available renewable energy sources year round to supply the people living there. When energy storage and transmission methods are also not up to the task, nuclear becomes the best answer. It shouldn’t be the first answer people look to but it is an answer. An expensive answer but sometimes the best one.
Also nuclear waste doesn’t have to be a problem. If anyone was willing to cover the cost of burning it in a breeder reactor for power or burry it forever. It just is because it’s expensive.
Also nuclear waste doesn’t have to be a problem. If anyone was willing to cover the cost of burning it in a breeder reactor for power or burry it forever. It just is because it’s expensive.
But it is a problem. Finding a place that can contain radioactive waste for millions of years is incredible difficult. If you read up on it, you get disillusioned pretty fast.
When energy storage and transmission methods are also not up to the task, nuclear becomes the best answer.
Obviously, the best answer is to improve energy storage and transmission infrastructure. Why would we waste hundreds of millions on a stupid toy power plant when we could spend 10% of that money on just running decent underground cables.
You really don’t understand how expensive underground cables are. You know those big, huge steel transmission towers that you see lined up, hundreds in a row?
Those towers costs hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars each. And the reason they’re used is because that’s way cheaper than underground.
Shit - just the cable is a couple million per mile per cable.
Are you fucking serious? Nuclear power plants cost way fucking more than some cables. You people are fundamentally so unserious. Pull your head out of a reactor for ten seconds and take reality as it exists
Yes. They cost more than some cables. But we aren’t talking about wiring a stereo.
A new nuclear unit (4 billion-ish) costs about as much as 2,000 miles of transmission-grade cable (about 2 million per mile). Considering that there’s about 30 cables on a tower run, you’re looking at around 65 miles’ worth of cable for the cost of a nuclear unit.
And that’s just the cost of the wire. No towers, no conduit, no substations, no land acquisition (aerial easement and underground are very different things), no labor.
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I think you need to touch grass. You sound very angry about some cables.
Maybe take a break from the doomscolling/doomposting and try to relax.
You do realize that all that is also expensive, and limited? We haven’t invented room temperature superconductors yet, and battery technology is far from perfect. There is only so much lithium and cobalt in the entire world. Yes we can now use things like sodium, but that’s a technology that’s still young and needs more research before it’s full potential is realized. There is also a reason we have overground cables and not underground. Digging up all that earth is hella expensive.
Because superconductors are even more expensive than breeder reactors.
and breeder reactors are more expensive than faerie magic, I prefer to use technologies that are actually real rather than things I wish were real
I prefer to use technologies that are actually real rather than things I wish were real
Wake up, 80-ies were 40 years ago!
USSR figured it out long time ago: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-600_reactor
But if the magic rocks (facility) cost more than creating energy from the water the magic rocks need for cooling…
Do both then
.
Don’t feed the troll 💩As long as you don’t care when the electricity is produced
Nuclear: As long as you don’t care about the magic rocks once the magic has decayed to a level where they’re not boiling water anymore
90% of magic rocks that no longer boil wsater is magic rocks that can boil water.
If you’re talking breeder reactors, do we have any in the US?
If you’re talking breeder reactors
I was talking about reusing uranium from “spent” fuel, not about using plutonium. Found source that says “spent” fuel is 95-98% is mix of uranium isotopes that were there. Sadly, source doesn’t say how much of each isotope, I expect very low amount of U-235. Yes, you can also use plutonium in MOX fuel, but only Russia~~, France~~ and China do that, as far as I know.
do we have any in the US?
Dunno. Do you? If you don’t, you can buy them from mentioned above countries.
EDIT: France no longer has working breeder reactor? How did it happen?
Storage is a solvable problem. Whereas we don’t have the resources to power the world with nuclear plants.
The second half if most important. It doesn’t produce enough electricity. Renewables are getting cheaper and cheaper and are taking up the mantle to take over majority of power production in some nations. But it is harder to monetize and can be democratized and made pretty easily. It’s like weed. It can be taken away from bigger producers and therefore there is significant push back/lobbying against it.
Storage is a solvable problem
I’m not convinced it is. Storage technologies exist for sure, but the general public seems to grossly underestimate the scale of storage required to match grid demand and renewables only production.
Ok but maybe a counterpoint is we are overestimating the ability of the atmosphere and ocean to absorb CO2 and maintain a habitable planet. I’d rather store isotopes in the earth (where they came from anyway) than carbon in the air.
I think you underestimate how much storage power is currently being build and how many different technologies are available. In Germany alone there currently are 61 projects planed and in the approval phase boasting a combined 180 Gigawatts of potential power until 2030. Those of them that are meant to be build at old nuclear power plants (the grid connection is already available there) are expected to deliver 25% of the necessary storage capacity. In addition all electric vehicles that are assumed to be on the road until 2030 add another potential 100GW of power.
Of course these numbers are theoretical as not every EV will be connected to a bidirectional charger and surely some projects will fail or delay, however given the massive development in this sector and new, innovative tech (not just batteries but f.e. a concrete ball placed 800m below sea level, expected to store energy extremely well at 5.8ct / kilowatt) there’s very much reason for optimism here.
It’s also a funny sidenote that France, a country with a strong nuclear strategy, frequently buys power from Germany because it’s so much cheaper.
Another important note about France: They are the second country alongside Germany heavily pushing for an upscaled green hydrogen market in the EU. Because -just like renewables- nuclear production doesn’t match the demand pattern at all. Thus it’s completely uneconomical without long-term storage.
The fact that we seem to constantly discuss nuclear vs. renewables is proof that it’s mostly lobbying bullshit. Because in reality they don’t compete. It’s either renewables+short-term storage+long-term-term storage or renewables+nuclear+long-term storage. Those are the only two viable models.
upscaled green hydrogen market
That’s been the talk in town for 40 years now. Green hydrogen has never gotten beyond proof-of-concept.
The fact that we seem to constantly discuss nuclear vs. renewables is proof that it’s mostly lobbying bullshit.
Sadly, it’s because the political green parties available to me are anti-nuclear.
It’s either renewables+short-term storage+long-term-term storage or renewables+nuclear+long-term storage.
Why is nuclear+short term storage not an option, according to you?
Why is nuclear+short term storage not an option
Because cold winter days exist. Yes you can only build nuclear capacities for the average day and then short-term storage to match the demand pattern. But you would need to do so for the day(s) of the year with the highest energy demand, some cold winter work day. What do you do with those capacities the remaining year as throttling nuclear down is not really saving much costs (most lie in construction and deconstruction)?
Due to the recent nuclear hype uranium price will rise and keep in mind that the resource will not exceed a century.
It’s not just power that’s needed (MW), also stored energy (MWh).
Germany consumes on average 1.4TWh of electricity a day (1). Imagine bridging even a short dunkelflaute of 2 days.
Worldwide lithium ion battery production is 4TWh a year (2).
It’s also a funny sidenote that France, a country with a strong nuclear strategy, frequently buys power from Germany because it’s so much cheaper.
Isn’t that normal? The problems with renewables isn’t that they generate cheap power, when they are generating. Today windmills even need to be equipped with remote shutdown, to prevent overproduction.
The problems arise when they aren’t generating.
Your estimation goes way off because you still believe lithium ion to be the only viable solution. By now Sodium-Ion batteries are already installed even in EVs and can be produced without any critical resource like lithium.
And then of course there are all the other storage solution. Like I said, there even are storage solutions like concrete balls. Successfully tested in 2016, here an article from 2013.
By now it wouldn’t be wise to stifle this enormous emerging market of various technologies by using expensive, problematic technology (not just because the biggest producer of fuel rods is Russia).
I don’t think lithium ion is the only storage technology. I was using it for scale.
The most cost effective storage is pumped storage. But even that wouldn’t reach the scale necessary.
6 MWh pumped storage proof-of-concept won’t l, either.
The watthours is what gas is for. Germany’s pipeline network alone, that’s not including actual gas storage sites, can store three months of total energy usage.
…or at least that’s the original plan, devised some 20 years ago, Fraunhofer worked it all out back then. It might be the case that banks of sodium batteries or whatnot are cheaper, but yeah lithium is probably not going to be it. Lithium’s strength is energy density, both per volume and by weight, and neither is of concern for grid storage.
Imagine bridging even a short dunkelflaute of 2 days.
That’s physically impossible for a place the size of Germany, much less Europe.
is what gas is for
Wouldn’t it be better to go fossil free. Given, you know, climate change. And the fact that the gas needs to be shipped all the way from the US.
That’s physically impossible for a place the size of Germany, much less Europe.
Unless we use a different technology, that is not renewables + storage?
Another problem arises when you’re generation 63.688 after today and still have to keep maintaining deadly waste from nations that don’t exist anymore, because they produced “cheap” and “clean” energy for a couple of decades.
Come on, Jesus died like 2000 years ago, this stuff will haunt us for centuries. Arguing in favor of nuclear energy is just selfish, stupid and shortsighted.
Storage is a solvable problem.
Not in this economy. We need change in consumption too. Make loads opportunistic. Have extra energy - heat more water. Or heat homes. There was video on Technology Connected about it.
No it’s about nuclear waste and where to store it, it’s about how expensive it is to build a nuclear power plant (bc of regulations so they don’t goo boom) and it’s about how much you have to subsidize it to make the electricity it produces affordable at all. Economically it’s just not worth it. Renewables are just WAY cheaper.
Funny how people think waste is why we don’t use nuclear power.
You noticed how we’re all fine breathing in poison and carcinogens? Still haven’t banned burning fossil fuels.
It’s a money problem and a PR problem
And much of the PR problem is related to waste. The main push towards alternative energy sources comes from people worried about the long term consequences of burning fossil fuels. These same people worry about the long term consequences of nuclear waste production, so nuclear sabotages itself on this front.
Exactly, bad PR.
Waste isn’t actually much of a problem - it’s just been portrayed as one.
You noticed how we’re all fine breathing in poison and carcinogens? Still haven’t banned burning fossil fuels.
Who is “we”? How “fine” are you with breathing poison and carcinogens?
No it’s about nuclear waste and where to store it,
Is this video inaccurate? This isn’t meant as a gotcha comment. https://youtu.be/4aUODXeAM-k
Fire’s waste is just all particulates in the air which we all share.
Yeah but we got lungs to filter that all out … or smth idk how this works
I am Jack’s Lungs. I breath in soot and particles and eventually they cause cancer and I kill Jack.
That’s how that shit works, homes. Not a thing to “idk whatev” about.
Renewable are so cheap, especially when we don’t need as much energy! Fortunately we won’t need as much energy in winter now. :-)
Gotta be on 4chan to equate a nuclear meltdown with a person’s hut catching on fire.
Bonus points for the ableism. Upvoted here ofc.
I mean in terms of effect on population (which is kind of the point), the analogy still holds.
Funny how nuclear power plants are taboo, but building thousands of nuclear warheads all over the globe is no issue.
Funny how building nuclear power plants that can only (if you have dipshits running them) kill a nearby city is taboo, but climate change that will kill everyone is acceptable to the moralists.
Funny how solar, wind, and batteries are way cheaper and faster to build yet people are still talking about nuclear.
Solar and wind are cheaper yes. Batteries, no. If batteries were that cheap and easy to place we’d have solved energy a long time ago. Currently batteries don’t hold a candle to live production, the closest you can get is hydro storage, which not everyone has, and can’t realistically be built everywhere.
Look at the stats. The second largest battery storage in the US (and the world) is located near the Moss Landing Power Plant. It provides a capacity of 3000 MWh with 6000 MWh planned (Which would make it the largest). That sounds like a lot, but it’s located next to San Jose and San Fransisco, so lets pick just one of those counties to compare. The average energy usage in the county of San Clara, which contains San Jose (You might need to VPN from the US to see the source) is 17101 GWh per year, which is about 46.8 GWh per day, or 46800 MWh. So you’d need 8 more of those at 6000 MWh to even be able to store a day’s worth of electricity from that county alone, which has a population of about 2 million people. And that’s not even talking about all the realities that come with electricity like peak loads.
For reference, the largest hydro plant has a storage capacity of 40 GWh, 6.6x more (at 6000 MWh above).
Relative to how much space wind and solar use, nuclear is the clear winner. If a country doesn’t have massive amounts of empty area nuclear is unmissable. People also really hate seeing solar and wind farm. That’s not something I personally mind too much, but even in the best of countries people oppose renewables simply because it ruins their surroundings to them. Creating the infrastructure for such distributed energy networks to sustain large solar and wind farms is also quite hard and requires personnel that the entire world has shortages of, while a nuclear reactor is centralized and much easier to set up since it’s similar to current power plants. But a company that can build a nuclear plant isn’t going to be able to build a solar farm, or a wind farm, and in a similar way if every company that can make solar farms or wind farms is busy, their price will go up too. By balancing the load between nuclear, solar, and wind, we ensure the transition can happen as fast and affordable as possible.
There’s also the fact that it always works and can be scaled up or down on demand, and as such is the least polluting source (on the same level as renewables) that can reliably replace coal, natural gas, biomass, and any other always available source. You don’t want to fall back on those when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow. If batteries were available to store that energy it’d be a different story. But unless you have large natural batteries like hydro plants with storage basins that you can pump water up to with excess electricity, it’s not sustainable. I’d wish it was, but it’s not. As it stands now, the world needs both renewables and nuclear to go fully neutral. Until something even better like nuclear fission becomes viable.
Ok let’s compare real data then. Vogtle 3&4 are the latest nuclear plants to be completed in the US. They cost over 30 billion dollars for a capacity of 2.106GW. That’s >14.2 dollars/watt. Let’s be generous and assume nuclear has a 100% capacity factor (it doesn’t).
I can’t find real numbers for Moss Landing specifically, but NREL has data on BESS costs up to 10 hr storage at $4.2/watt. Let’s ignore that no grid in the country actually needs 10hr storage yet.
Utility scale solar has well known costs of ~1 dollar/watt. Let’s assume a capacity factor of 25%, so for equivalent total energy generation we are looking at $4.
$4 for solar, $4.2 for BESS, and since you’ll complain about not having 24hr baseline let’s add another equivalent 10hr storage system at $4.2. that’s a total of $12.4, compared to Vogtle’s $14.2.
Add in that the solar plus BESS would be built in 1-2 years, while Vogtle took well over a decade.
Also consider that BESS systems have additional value in providing peaking ability and frequency regulation, among other benefits.
Also consider that PV and batteries have always gotten cheaper over time, while nuclear has always gotten more expensive.
2.160 GW is it’s rated capacity. I’m not sure how you got from there to 14.2 dollars per watt, but it completely ignores the lifetime of the power plant.
Vogtle 3&4 are really a bad example because unit 4 only entered commercial activity this year. But fine, we can look at what it produces just recently.. About 3335000 MWh per month, or about 107 GWh per day. We can then subtract the baseline from Reactor 1 & 2 from before Reactor 3 was opened, removing about 1700000 MWh per month. Which gives us about 53 GWh per day. The lifetime of them is expected to be around 60 to 80 year, but lets take 60. That’s about 1177200 GWh over it’s lifetime, divided by the 36 billion that it cost to built… Gives you about 0.03 dollars per kWh. Which is pretty much as good as renewables get as well. But of course, this ignores maintenance, but that’s hard to calculate for solar panels as well. As such it will be somewhat larger than 0.03, I will admit.
Solar panels on the other hand, often have a lifetime of 30 years, so even though it costs less per watt, MW, or GW, it also produces less over time. For solar, and wind, that’s about the same.. So this doesn’t really say much.
But that wasn’t even the point of my message. As I said, I agree that Nuclear is slightly more expensive than renewables. But there are other costs associated with renewables that aren’t expressed well in monetary value for their units alone. Infrastructure, space, approval, experts to maintain it.
Let’s ignore that no grid in the country actually needs 10hr storage yet.
Because they cannot. They can’t do it because there’s not enough capacity. If the sun is cloudy for a day, and the wind doesn’t run. Who’s going to power the grid for a day? That’s right. Mostly coal and gas. That’s the point. Nuclear is there to ensure we don’t go back to fossils when we want to be carbon neutral, which means no output. If you are carbon neutral only when the weather is perfect for renewables, then you’re not really carbon neutral and still would have to produce a ton of pollution at times.
I’m glad batteries and all are getting cheaper. They are definitely needed, also for nuclear. But you must also be aware of just how damn dirty they are to produce. The minerals required produce them are rare, and expensive. Wind power also kills people that need to maintain it. Things aren’t so black and white.
Also consider that PV and batteries have always gotten cheaper over time, while nuclear has always gotten more expensive.
This is not true, and it should be obvious when you think about it. Since this data fluctuates all the time. Nuclear has been more expensive in the past, before getting cheaper, and now getting more expensive again. Solar and wind have had peaks of being far more expensive than before. These numbers are just a representation of aggregate data, and they often leave out nuance like renewables being favored by regulations and subsidies. They are in part a manifestation of the resistance to nuclear. Unlike renewables, there are many more steps to be made for efficiency in nuclear. Most development has (justifiably) been focused on safety so far, as with solar and wind and batteries we can look away from the slave labor on the other side of the world to produce the rare earth metals needed for it. There is no free lunch in this world.
For what it’s purpose should be, which is to provide a baseline production of electricity when renewables are not as effective. A higher price can be justified. It’s not meant to replace renewables altogether. Because if renewables can’t produce clean energy, their price might as well be infinitely high in that moment, which leaves our only options to be fossil fuels, hydro, batteries, or nuclear. Fossil fuels should be obvious, not everyone has hydro (let alone enough), batteries don’t have the capacity or numbers at the scale required (for the foreseeable future), and nuclear is here right now.
If only people weren’t fearmongering about nuclear 50 years ago we’d have clean energy today.
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, second best is now”
That saying works for trees. We didn’t make trees obsolete with better technology.
Reliable clean energy isn’t a solved issue today either. Until we have grid-level storage we need something that can provide a reliable base and had enough mass/momentum to handle grid fluctuations.
Stopping nuclear from being built is the problem.
We would have had a lot more clean energy than we do by now if we let the nuclear power plants that “would take too long to build!” be built back then, because they’d be up and running by now.
More letting perfect be the enemy of good.
Nuclear may have been good 10 years ago, but it isn’t really good anymore. This is like saying “if I had bought a PS2 in 2002 then I would have had fun playing Final Fantasy XI Online. Therefore, I should buy a PS2 and FFXI Online so I can have fun in 2024”. That ship has sailed
You can still play FFXI in 2024 officially on PC. Just don’t need the PS2.
and we can have 100% clean, renewable energy in 2024, we just don’t need the nuclear reactor
Funny how whataboutism makes your audience defensive.
Funny how being polite didn’t convince you so now you’re trying to sell that being mean is going to stop you. You were always useless.
Hey, I hear you, life is stressful and there’s a lot going on. It’s okay to be upset, I hope whatever you’re going through gets easier.
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Is there a particular reason you think everyone, here specifically, believes those things?
Edit: I absolutely share your passion about climate change, as a preface. Calling someone, who agrees with you or not, “useless” makes them dismiss your opinion. It just means we can’t engage in any meaningful discussion and others are less likely to take action.
A nuclear power plant cannot destroy a city.
I guess destroy != Make unlivable
People don’t put reactors next to cities for a reason. Meaning this scenario wouldn’t happen. Nuclear is also one of the safest energy sources overall in terms of deaths caused. It’s safer than some renewables even, and that’s not factoring in advances in the technology that have happened over the decades making it safer. This kind of misinformation is dangerous. It’s also not a good reason not to do nuclear. The reason why renewables are used more (and probably have a somewhat larger role to play in general) is because they a cheaper and quicker to manufacture. Nuclear energy’s primary problem isn’t safety but rather cost. It’s biggest strength is reliability and availability. You can build a nuclear plant basically anywhere where there is water.
Depends on where you live, Germany that gets the beating for phasing out nuclear, is so densely populated that these remote areas hardly exist!
I know nuclear is super safe but we have actual examples of accidents happening and making cities unlivable, you can’t deny that.
Which cities? I haven’t heard of any cities being made unlivable, only towns and villages.
🙄 I’m sorry, I was unaware of the population requirement
And that cannot happen. It’s a fear people have because they equate a nuclear power plant with a nuclear bomb. That is as wrong as considering the earth flat.
Chernobyl
But that was a really old tech, the plants built after 1990s shouldn’t allow this scale of pollution even if all the stops are pulled and everything breaks in the worst way possible
Chernobyl yes, let’s talk about it : after the catastrophy, 2 reactors were used until very recently (like until 10 or 20 years ago).
After the catastrophy, Chernobyl was made into an exclusion zone where people wouldn’t be allowed to live. But people came back 10 years after and it’s a small village now.
BTW even Hiroshima and Nagazaki that were annihilated with atomic bombs, that is weapons meant to destroy whole cities, were quickly inhabited again.
So much for the permanent destruction and millions of years of contamination. CO2 is a far more deadly compound for mankind than any radioactive material. Anti-nuke militants are merely ignorant fanatics.
Fukushima?
Fukushima, in 2024,is a city of 272569 inhabitants. If that’s unlivable, I’m fine with it. Hiroshima, Nagazaki and Chernobyl are all inhabited too.
Saying that nuclear stuff makes places unlivable is plain wrong, it’s anti-science. It’s comics level of bullshit science. Travel in time is a more serious theory than nuclear stuff destroying the planet.
I’m in Missouri so apparently I’m surrounded by silos
How many fingers do you have?
The problem isn’t that they exploded one time. The problem is that that one explosion is still happening and likely will be for quite a while.
On the other hand, modern rock exploding plant designs are so much better that it’s very unlikely to repeat itself, so there’s that.
A hydro damn breaking has killed more people than Chernobyl before, and probably will again. Renewables are not perfect either unfortunately. Though some are slightly safer than nuclear.
Most are safer than nuclear, but until the environmental cost of manufacturing them is outweighed by the benefit of their use then nuclear is the least intolerable stopgap.
Nobody wants dams. It’s not just dangerous, It’s also ecocide.
Since when? There are dams all over the place.
I’m sure the other rock/liquid/gas burning plants have had no issues along their lifetime and had no hand in demonizing the “new” slowly exploding rock technology after extreme negligence let the one big one happen. /s
I’d take the band aid of nuclear in my backyard vs what we rely on now after learning all of the insider knowledge of someone who personally worked in energy generation that did all of this plus renewables almost their entire professional life.
Paraphrased but this is right.
And the people were taught to talk about the horrible nuclear accidents that killed a few but completely glance over the unimaginable millions perished in the name of oil, mustn’t even mention the mass extinction events we launched with oil.
We even spread exaggerated bullshit about radiation mutation (wtf? thats superhero comic books fiction!!) and cancer rates (only one really), ignoring how much overwhelmingly more of the both we get from fossil fuel products.
We are like prehistoric people going extinct bcs of the tales how generations ago someone burned down their house so fire bad. Well, actually not like that - we are taking with us a lot of species & entire ecosystems too.
An argument against fossil fuels is not an argument for nuclear.
It’s more like “Bob and Jim died in a fire a while ago, so everyone decided to put up with heaps of people dying to hypothermia and uncooked meat”
The local undertaker family tells the story about Bob and Jim once a week to the whole village (attendance is mandatory).
We’re all stories in the end.
“Ted Kennedy killed more people than Three Mile Island” - Bumper sticker.
That’s said, I facepalm at Fukushima. And desperately want more modern systems
