When it comes to generating electricity, nuclear is hugely more expensive than renewables. Every 1000Wh of nuclear power could be 2000-3000 Wh solar or wind.
If you’ve been told “it’s not possible to have all power from renewable sources”, you have been a victim of disinformation from the fossil fuel industry. The majority of studies show that a global transition to 100% renewable energy across all sectors – power, heat, transport and industry – is feasible and economically viable.
This is all with current, modern day technology, not with some far-off dream or potential future tech such as nuclear fusion, thorium reactors or breeder reactors.
Compared to nuclear, renewables are:
- Cheaper
- Lower emissions
- Faster to provision
- Less environmentally damaging
- Not reliant on continuous consumption of fuel
- Decentralised
- Much, much safer
- Much easier to maintain
- More reliable
- Much more capable of being scaled down on demand to meet changes in energy demands
Nuclear power has promise as a future technology. But at present, while I’m all in favour of keeping the ones we have until the end of their useful life, building new nuclear power stations is a massive waste of money, resources, effort and political capital.
Nuclear energy should be funded only to conduct new research into potential future improvements and to construct experimental power stations. Any money that would be spent on building nuclear power plants should be spent on renewables instead.
Frequently asked questions:
- But it’s not always sunny or windy, how can we deal with that?
While a given spot in your country is going to have periods where it’s not sunny or rainy, with a mixture of energy distribution (modern interconnectors can transmit 800kV or more over 800km or more with less than 3% loss) non-electrical storage such as pumped storage, and diversified renewable sources, this problem is completely mitigated - we can generate wind, solar or hydro power over 2,000km away from where it is consumed for cheaper than we could generate nuclear electricity 20km away.
- Don’t renewables take up too much space?
The United States has enough land paved over for parking spaces to have 8 spaces per car - 5% of the land. If just 10% of that space was used to generate solar electricity - a mere 0.5% - that would generate enough solar power to provide electricity to the entire country. By comparison, around 50% of the land is agricultural. The amount of land used by renewable sources is not a real problem, it’s an argument used by the very wealthy pro-nuclear lobby to justify the huge amounts of funding that they currently receive.
- Isn’t Nuclear power cleaner than renewables?
No, it’s dirtier. You can look up total lifetime emissions for nuclear vs. renewables - this is the aggregated and equalised environmental harm caused per kWh for each energy source. It takes into account the energy used to extract raw materials, build the power plant, operate the plant, maintenance, the fuels needed to sustain it, the transport needed to service it, and so on. These numbers always show nuclear as more environmentally harmful than renewables.
- We need a baseline load, though, and that can only be nuclear or fossil fuels.
Not according to industry experts - the majority of studies show that a 100% renewable source of energy across all industries for all needs - electricity, heating, transport, and industry - is completely possible with current technology and is economically viable. If you disagree, don’t argue with me, take it up with the IEC. Here’s a Wikipedia article that you can use as a baseline for more information: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy
Excellently written!
I am so tired of people who have no idea how good wind and solar are/have gotten smugly declaring that wind and solar will never be good enough to meet energy demands…
Thank you! Please feel free to copy and share. There is so much pro-nuclear rhetoric online, particularly on Reddit, I debate it every time I see it but there’s too much for me to do alone.
This perfectly sums up the problems with nuclear energy an why renwables are the better option
thanks for writting this comment
Thank you for the kind words! Please feel free to copy and share :)
Obligatory Kyle Hill videos because keyword “nuclear energy”:
Some things to note:
Going back to 1965, air pollution from fossil fuels has cost us around 81 million lives. 4,000 people in China die every day due to fossil fuel pollution. 1 in 5 premature deaths can be attributed to fossil fuels.
Radiation in pop culture is portrayed as difficult to contain, but that isn’t the case. We know how to do it well, and we already do it.
Pop culture depictions fail to illustrate the radiation that is released into the air, unable to be properly managed, as a result of fossil fuel production and consumption.
Containing the radiation isn’t the same as resolving the nuclear waste problem.
We would have had that solved a long time ago if it weren’t for a few factors.
The first is that a significant amount of radioactive waste is short-term. Like, literally inert after a couple years. The reason for that is because the vast majority of radioactive waste isn’t actually inherently radioactive. Most of it has become radioactive as a result of coming into extended contact with highly radioactive sources. However my understanding is that despite being short-lived, you must dispose of it the same way you’d dispose of nuclear fuel rods. This is an issue that could be resolved by separating the short-lived stuff from the fuel rods and returning the short-lived stuff to a landfill once radioactivity drops to background radiation levels.
Factor 2: paranoia. We had a potential permanent waste site in the middle of nowhere, in an extremely geologically stable area in the US that has virtually no chance of flooding, however people thought that radioactive waste buried beneath a literal mountain would somehow still poison them. So Yucca Mountain was never fully completed. Afaik it’s technically still on the table but it’s been completely defunded thanks to NIMBYs, so instead nuclear waste is being stored across the US at various nuclear plants which are less geologically stable, have a higher chance for flooding, etc. This also hampers state and national efforts to clean up decommissioned plants and nuclear accidents. The waste has to go somewhere; if you have no where to safely store it, you can’t clean it up.
Factor 3: if I understand correctly, we could hypothetically design nuclear plants with reactor chains that produce dead fuel rods (fuel rods that are completely spent). However, a lot of weapons-grade material would be produced during the intermediate stages. For sooome reason everyone freaks out when they hear you’re making weapons-grade radioactive material, even if you promise you’re just using it to generate power. I can’t imagine why /s
The problems with nuclear storage are actually pretty easily solved, it’s just that no one wants to because they’d rather pretend nuclear doesn’t exist to begin with. I swear, we could have a one-time pill that makes you fully immune to every radiation-induced disease and people would still freak out about nuclear. Hell, there was an article I saw a month or two about how a bunch of researches discovered that turning used graphite control rods into diamonds resulted in low-power batteries that could be used for things that require a small amount of power over long durations (like SSDs or RAM). Iirc something about the diamond’s structure meant it contained its own radiation as well, meaning it didn’t need any radiation shielding either despite generating energy via radioactivity.
Factor 1: Not quite accurate. Yes there are categories of waste; the names change depending on the regulator. The lower level wastes are already disposed of in the US (there are already four such facilities). The politically charged problem is always the spent nuclear fuel itself.
Factor 2: Senator Reed (D-NV) was a former Senate majority leader. He extracted the defending of Yucca Mountain from the Obama administration as a concession to pass Obamacare. It’s still technically viable and not disposing of waste costs enormous amounts of money. The federal government is legally obligated to take spent fuel off the hands of operators. Obviously they have not, so the government is sued (and loses). This has cost the government roughly $20b for their inaction see here..
Factor 3: You can recycle spent fuel but there’s no concept as spent fuel with zero radioactivity.
Two largest problems in the US: Inability to manage waste and inability to execute on large scale construction required for nuclear.
On factor 3: I thought that there were cyclic reactor chains, where the fuel produced at the end of the chain could be reused at the start. If followed long enough, wouldn’t that theoretically result in fully spent fuel rods? It might take a long time, but it’s not impossible and in the meantime, they’re still being useful and generating power when they’d normally be discarded.
It’s still better than the totally uncontained pollution and carbon dioxide of fossil fuels.
No. It’s kicking the can down the road. And when there is a real, viable, cleaner, cheaper option already up and running, nuclear is simply not the answer.
And the non insurable nature of nuclear power besides its distant break even point is the reason only governments have ever build nuclear plants, or had to give huge guarantees. There are financial problems with nuclear, too.
Containing the radiation isn’t the same as resolving the nuclear waste problem.
ITT oil and coal propaganda proving propaganda and fear mongering work.
Nuclear is safer in every single regard. Even including weapons nuclear energy has harmed fewer humans than coal or gas by far.
Is nuclear safer than solar and wind?
IMO, it is if you factor in the fact that it’s currently the fastest way of actually replacing the energy generated by fossil fuels before the earth becomes totally incompatible with human life.Nope, I’m wrong, see replies.… but that’s literally not true?
Actually, seems you’re right though it’s obviously still more complicated than either one or the other. I was using outdated information, my bad.
Did some more research. A few links:
https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-is-nuclear-energy-good-for-the-climate/a-59853315
https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2020/Q2/can-renewable-energy-really-replace-fossil-fuels.html (Talks only about renewable energy but not nuclear, though I still found it helpful)
Hey, I just wanted to say thank you for looking into this further and being brave to admit when you’re wrong. That’s a really admirable quality which is way too uncommon these days!
For the safety aspect, I don’t think deaths is the most helpful comparison - considering for nuclear that many, many thousands of people will have to deal with health problems caused by radiation exposure over decades. Lots of people argue that the Chernobyl death toll should include people who die from the effects of that radiation, which would push the numbers from ~300 dead to tens of thousands.
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Technically yes, people keep dieing on the windmills.
This is not me saying we need to build less solar or wind. We still need to build more and we also need small modular reactors to provide base load. If we had the battery capacity to store renewables at scale I would be for it however we do not.
Do you have a source for the claim that wind and solar are more dangerous than nuclear?
I looked myself and from what I saw Solar and wind were safer than nuclear, not to mention cheaper and cleaner.
It is close but Nuke wins. Note I’m being pendantic. I think we should be building small modular reactors when farms and solar farms to compliment each other. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
Even according to your source (which is really biased, by the way), renewables are just as safe as nuclear.
Why should be waste money on expensive, dirty nuclear power when we can get double the return on investment with much cleaner renewables?
There is no sensible reason to mine limited uranium unless you want us to continue to be dependent on exploitative, extractive industries?
Did you read my comment or did you just derp
it’s all fun and games if you just compare the deaths and ignore the fact that there is still a 2600km² area in Ukraine that is so toxic that no one can live in it, and that almost 40 years later.
and that will be that way for thousands of years to come.
Imagine taking the time to have a nuanced opinion and actually read what I wrote. Small modular reactors are not RBMK unhoused unshielded reactors…
Furthermore that power plant is still operational. The major issue with that area is long-term exposure but only if you disturb the ground you should ask the Russians that invaded Ukraine about that.
Your opinion is not nuanced. Maybe practice what you preach.
Just saying anyone who disagrees with you is a shill is the absolute most pathetic argument, it’s what conspiracy loons do.
No one is saying use coal or gas that’s a red herring all the nuclear proponents love to try and throw in there, nuclear is hugely expensive and very slow to build with lots of complex supply chain, waste management issues, and security issues where as renewables are able to be installed far faster, cheaper and safer.
It’s either waste huge sums on building nuclear reactors while we continue to burn gas and oil for the ten to twenty years it takes to get a reactor online OR invest in renewables and get off fossil fuels quicker, cheaper and safer.
I love how people will blindly support nuclear power plants so strongly that any argument made against them is automatically called propaganda.
My power electronics professor told us the same thing you did, that nuclear power plants are dead because they’re too complex and expensive to maintain in the long run, and that renewables are the better choice at this point. Maybe this will change as fusion reactors improve, but we’re probably decades out before industrial fusion plants start showing up, if they ever do.
Two issues here. The fear of nuclear energy was astroturfed by Oil and Gas. This means any irrational arguments against nuclear are propaganda which 99% are.
The second is there is no reason nuclear projects have to be big and complex. We could easily have small reactors to power towns and remote location. The reason we don’t has a lot to do with fear.
Simply put we are foolish not to be utilizing more nuclear power.
Love that the meme format uses water and hydro isn’t fuckin mentioned
offshore drilling could be jammed in the background, too
geothermal is there, we just can’t see it cause it’s underground
The thing with hydro is that it is limited by the hydrography of the country.
Once you’ve built all damns it was possible, that’s it. And that usually only covers a just small portion of a country’s energy needs.
That applies to availability of fossil fuels too, though. Everyone acts like it’s never gonna run out, but the number one producer of oil and gas in the world is literally causing thousands of miniature earthquakes and poisoning groundwater in a desperate effort to get to the worst quality fossil fuels.
That’s true about fossil fuels. But it seems you’re interpreting my comment as if I was defending the use of fossil fuels.
What I’m pointing out here is that the fact that hydroelectric energy production (although very clean) is not really an alternative for many countries as a substitute for fossil fuels. It is not a matter or decision lack of attention or investment. Many developed countries actually have most of their potential capacity installed, yet that accounts for very little of their electric demand. Take Germany as an example:
Germany had a hydropower installed capacity in 2016 of 11,258 MW (…). In the same year, the country generated 21.5 TWh from hydroelectric plants, representing about 3% of the country’s total electricity generation.
The hydropower capacity in Germany is considered mature and the potential already almost completely exploited, with limited room for growth. In recent years, growth in capacity has mainly come from repowering of existing plants.
Source: Hydroelectricity in Germany
Of course, there’s exceptions (% of total domestic electricity generation): Canada (59.0%), Norway (96%), Paraguay (100%) or Brazil (64.7%).
Actually, from what I can tell, hydro seem to be so convenient (it can be ramped up/down on-demand, used for storage, cheap) that most countries that can afford it tend to maximize their installed capacity to the extend their hydrography allows them to.
@racsol @Viking_Hippie, Eliminating oil is not so simple and must start with stopping manufacturing SUVs and Supercars, eliminating continental flights and changing maritime traffic. That is where it fails, what’s more, on top of that the politics and lobbies promote them. They limit themselves to raising the prices of gasoline and diesel, making life impossible for transporters and consumers who see food prices, instead of skyrocketing instead of subsidizing fuel and ecological vehicles.
ITT: People regurgitate oil company propaganda verbatim.
Nobody wants to maintain anything.
When you fail to maintain coal, gas, wind, or solar, it just stops working for the time being.
When you fail to maintain nuclear systems (be that poor understanding, lack of training, negligence, whatever), things go very bad very quickly.
This is before you get into wider issue’s like waste management and environmental concerns.
Oh boy, another hot take from a well educated and informed source, I’m sure.
80% of what you think about nuclear is fossil fuel propaganda, 10% is because the soviets are dipshits, and the last 10% are reasonable concerns that redundant safety system upon redundant safety systems address.
While we’re criticizing sources, do you have a source on those percentages?
This is the internet, where 90% of percentages are made up. Including this one.
Every safety system makes it more expensive to run and they’re already not profitable, do you really think they’ll just keep throwing money into it without cutting corners? One little economic downturn and we start getting problems…
Why even risk it when we could have far better systems from the start? Nuclear is nice in science fiction but when you actually have to plug the numbers into the real world it doesn’t look good at all, especially not compared to wind, solar and tidal
Insulting people you disagree with is a rather poor way to win them over and/or create productive discourse.
Let me tell you about the “Asse” in Lower Saxony, Germany…
There is no way to safely store nuclear waste. It makes entire landscapes unusable, it lasts nearly forever and… the waste management is done by the state, not the company!
Nuclear power is some capitalist bullshit that outsources the waste and risks to the state. Only in that case its profitable in any way.
Solar and Wind are so much easier, solar extremely. If we could change out loads, focus everything on the day and simply not use that much at night, we wouldnt even need that much wind. Decentralized, local networks of Solar Power are the future.
sigh I posted this elsewhere in the thread, but it sounds like you might need to hear this too:
We would have had [the storage of nuclear waste] solved a long time ago if it weren’t for a few factors.
The first is that a significant amount of radioactive waste is short-term. Like, literally inert after a couple years. The reason for that is because the vast majority of radioactive waste isn’t actually inherently radioactive. Most of it has become radioactive as a result of coming into extended contact with highly radioactive sources. However my understanding is that despite being short-lived, you must dispose of it the same way you’d dispose of nuclear fuel rods. This is an issue that could be resolved by separating the short-lived stuff from the fuel rods and returning the short-lived stuff to a landfill once radioactivity drops to background radiation levels.
Factor 2: paranoia. We had a potential permanent waste site in the middle of nowhere, in an extremely geologically stable area in the US that has virtually no chance of flooding, however people thought that radioactive waste buried beneath a literal mountain would somehow still poison them. So Yucca Mountain was never fully completed. Afaik it’s technically still on the table but it’s been completely defunded thanks to NIMBYs, so instead nuclear waste is being stored across the US at various nuclear plants which are less geologically stable, have a higher chance for flooding, etc. This also hampers state and national efforts to clean up decommissioned plants and nuclear accidents. The waste has to go somewhere; if you have no where to safely store it, you can’t clean it up.
Factor 3: if I understand correctly, we could hypothetically design nuclear plants with reactor chains that produce dead fuel rods (fuel rods that are completely spent). However, a lot of weapons-grade material would be produced during the intermediate stages. For sooome reason everyone freaks out when they hear you’re making weapons-grade radioactive material, even if you promise you’re just using it to generate power. I can’t imagine why /s
The problems with nuclear storage are actually pretty easily solved, it’s just that no one wants to because they’d rather pretend nuclear doesn’t exist to begin with. I swear, we could have a one-time pill that makes you fully immune to every radiation-induced disease and people would still freak out about nuclear. Hell, there was an article I saw a month or two about how a bunch of researches discovered that turning used graphite control rods into diamonds resulted in low-power batteries that could be used for things that require a small amount of power over long durations (like SSDs or RAM). Iirc something about the diamond’s structure meant it contained its own radiation as well, meaning it didn’t need any radiation shielding either despite generating energy via radioactivity.
Also,
the waste management is done by the state
Maybe in Germany, but afaik in the US it’s done by the company until it’s time to move it to a permanent storage facility. Because permanent storage facilities don’t exist in the US, that means the company has to take care of it indefinitely. I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather have it in the indefinite care of the US government than in the indefinite care of a company.
Decentralized, local networks of Solar Power are the future.
You’re partially right imo. Those would be great, but you’re offloading cost on the individual, who are already being squeezed by capitalism. Additionally, iirc centralized wind and solar can cause a significant disruption to the local ecosystems. Are they preferable to coal and gas? Hell yeah! But you cannot convince me that miles of turbines and solar panels are less disruptive than a properly maintained nuclear plant.
Ideally we’d be building fusion plants at this point, but I feel like I haven’t heard any major fusion-related news lately which makes me worried that funding might be falling off.
Really interesting things. Nuclear power is still non regenerative though. And I have no clear opinion on if its safe or not, just that its not really necessary.
No, costs for decentralized Solar would not be on the Individuals. Individuals are a Product of Capitalism, if you want to phrase it like this. They are consumers of electrical power and also now Producers. There should simply be an amount of solar power everyone can have, per capita for example. And for every person this power is then produced, on their roof or elswhere if its not fitting.
I have no clear plan, as consumers need to pay the consume. But for example having a tax-free lending (non native no idea how its called) would help
Ah yes, all those capitalist nuke plants they built in the Warsaw Pact countries…
We tend to forget the negligence humans are capable of.
But to be fair, abolishing nuclear was a trick to expand oil, gas and coal afaik. At least the funding came from there iirc.
True, but there were also concerns about the proliferation of nuclear technology and the risks of nuclear war.
If we could power the earth without nuclear or fossil fuels, that would be objectively better. But it just doesn’t seem possible.
And trying to achieve an impossible goal while simultaneously burning even more carbon is irresponsible.
So we need to quickly build out the required nuclear capacity.
Yes, I agree that there are risks involved.
I think the risks with Fossil fuels are a lot higher:
- instead of putting nuclear waste in the ground, we pump it in the air (fossil fuel waste is radioactive)
- instead of nuclear proliferation, we support barbarist states such as saudi arabia
So, the question between fossil and nuclear was never there. It was always nuclear and people that lobbied against it should go to jail for the rest of their lives for murder.
Now, I have no clue how far along we are. This (site)[https://wisevoter.com/country-rankings/renewable-energy-by-country/] says we‘re at 17% global coverage and some people argue that rn we should invest every dollar/euro in renewables instead of nuclear.
I can understand that argument. Not sure which makes more sence though.
Waste management and environmental concerns are already bad with coal power (even worse than nuclear power, in the sense that nuclear doesn’t launch waste into the air as far as I know, feel free to correct me if I’m wrong)
Although, yes, security has to be higher for nuclear power, but nuclear is not as bad as most people think
There is no solution for nuclear waste. It’s buried underground it takes millennia to disperse the radiation. Don’t think there is anything worse environmentally.
Can’t think of anything worse than radiactive material that has been solidified and shielded and buried far away from any living creatures, in the same way that tons of naturally-occurring radioactive material has for millennia?
I mean… It could be dispersed into the atmosphere… like what happens when we burn coal, which inevitably has some radioactive materials in it cuz we dug it up from deep underground.
Yeah, cos that radiation dispersal from fossil fuels, which is failing to turn us all into mutants since it is so low in concentration compared to nuclear waste, great comparison.
Best check your nuclear storage. It hasn’t been doing well of late. B109 Hanford Nuclear Reservation leaking 1300 gallons a year. 200000 gallons already leaked from 67 tanks leaking.
75% of US nuclear sites have leaks.
Plenty more examples of your “safe” waste storage around.
yeah, so let’s continue as we do until we can’t !
Suppose I should clarify:
I like and support Nuclear power, I’m just listing one of the biggest reasons it’s not hugely prevalent in our societies over other sources: The large risk involved.
In theory it’s a fantastic energy source, but in practice I don’t really trust those that manage it. Stuck between a rock and a hard place really.
New nuclear reactors are fully or nearly fully automated I think. If humans disapeared overnight, they can fully shut down by themselves. Also newer reactors are made so that you need to actively monitor the reaction to even keep it going unlike old reactors (that are not in use anymore I think) that had you monitoring it to prevent it blowing up.
Playing devils advocate here:
Automated systems are not maintenance or error free and the costs of mistakes are vast. It may have been designed to detect problems and shut itself down; but has it been maintained well enough to successfully do so? Maybe, maybe not.
Given how well maintained most public infrastructure is, I’m not very confident.
A shut down nuclear power plant is a problem though. Especially when you consider that many people here advocate for a massive increase in the number of nuclear power plants. A river going dry, a shore line that moves, future wars or pandemics that we can’t even foresee now. All these are huge risks for nuclear energy. For really no reason since there are renewable energy sources that do not share these risks.
The overhype of nuclear power seems completely surreal to me.
Seriously. A finicky system which requires constant monitoring is a bad idea. People have problems maintaining their cars.
Simple, robust, and capable of absorbing neglect is better.
I wouldn’t say that’s true for gas. Without the right maintenance and/or shutdown procedures, refinery systems can reach dangerous pressures and literally explode.
Even shutting down a refinery is a very calculated process. If the refinery teams decided to walk away doing nothing, people would be in danger. The sheer amount of toxins released could kill quite a few, let alone explosions or fire.
I’m not a big fan of gas power, but it’s surely deadly in the wrong hands.
My
firstsecond… paragraph was a bit of a simplification.While that is true, a refinery explosion is far less impactful than a nuclear meltdown.
Don’t get me wrong, both are really bad; but a refinery gone wrong doesn’t leave huge amounts of land entirely unusable for decades.
Honestly I’d rather avoid both and go for energy sources like wind, solar, hydro, even geothermal. I think we could go a long way if the majority of homes had panels on the roof and some local storage for night time use.
I’ve said elsewhere; I like the concept of Nuclear energy, I just struggle to trust those that run it, particularly given how neglected much of our existing infrastructure is already.
I don’t get it, didn’t Europe produce like 100% wind power at one point this past week?
Solar is also at a record high and cheaper than ever. I think this is just some weird fossil fuel meme meant to be ignorant.
replace skeleton with cooling rods and this meme gets better tbh 😂
Fantastic!
It’s already got the Cherenkov radiation though.
Correct me if I’m wrong but even though Nuclear sounds cool. In the vast majority of places isn’t it less costly, to go with renewables, instead? And for a greater power output? And also renewables can be created in a fraction of the time without any r&d. That’s not even mentioning the potential hazards and waste management issues with nuclear.
If you only use the faceplate capacity of the facilities and include battery storage for free then yes solar and wind looks pretty good. Once you factor in needing 4-5x the capacity for wind and solar to actually produce power regularly, add cost for non existing storage it gets a lot closer to where the difference isn’t significant.
nuclear is on demand though which is it’s great advantage over renewables
Wind and solar are (mostly) good from a risk/benefit analysis, and I think further investment in battery tech would make them even better. But the problem with nuclear, other than waste, is the fact that noone has tried building like a bunch of reactors that are basically the same. So the training becomes industrialized, repairs and manufacturing, over time it gets cheaper. In France, correct me if I’m wrong, they did this and it was really successful. In general the main problem with both technologies is lack of public investment, i think due to political consequences from oil companies, general bourgeois resistance to public works and investment, etc.,
I don’t know about initial costs, but the main problem with wind/solar is they cannot be scaled up/down on-demand. The depend on the weather and that does not align with energy demands throught the day.
As long as we cannot store energy at-scale, we will have to rely in another source of energy we can ramp up/down depending of the energy demands (being fossil fuels or, preferibly, nuclear)
That’s a taking point that wasn’t very true in the 70s and certainly isn’t close to true now, there are endless methods of balancing a renewables grid for constant power involving endless options for continuous generation methods (solar thermal especially) or battery storage (chemical, gravity, etc) and load balancing using at-peek tied industry (especially e-fuel manufacture)
There’s also a lot of stuff like tidal generation which is hugely promising and drastically underfunded, certainly compared to nuclear.
All technologies you’ve mentioned are in R&D, not ready to use as you seem to imply. Great investment is still required to implement them at-scale. What I’d agree on is that It’s in our best interest to invest heavily in them, and they are probably underfunded given their importance in the survival of humanity.
The idea that we can transition from fossil fuels to traditional renewables (solar, wind, etc) while refusing to rely on nuclear power seems wishful thinking to me. In the short and mid-term (10-20 years) we only have nuclear as a realistic alternative for clean energy. In this transition, we can develop those promising methods of energy storage and also build the necessary infrastructure they require.
Just to provide a real case scenario: Germany vs. France.
Both Germany and France want to reach zero emissions by 2050.
We know how Germany opted to phase out nuclear power already in the year 2000 and completed its ‘nuclear exit’ in April 2023. Compare that to France that since 1974 has been heavily investing in nuclear power with the goal of producing most of its energy from it (Messmer Plan (Wikipedia)).
The results for me are apparent:
Greenhouse gas emissions 2021 in Germany: 665.88 megatonnes (8.0 tonnes/capita)
Greenhouse gas emissions 2021 in France: 302.33 megatonnes (4.5 tonnes/capita)
Source: How energy systems and policies of Germany and France compare .
I’d take a real reduction in green house emissions any day before the “wish” of reducing them while refusing to make any compromise.
Without being disrespectful, I think it is a big mistake to refuse prioritize nuclear power to replace fossil fuels in the near future if the goal is to reduce greenhouse emissions.
In Australia our conservatives run on the promise of nuclear power, but they’ve been in power for 20 of the last 26 years and haven’t ever attempted to implement it, they just use the promise to stymie the development of renewables.
Imo the time to try to use nuclear to suppress oil and gas was 50 years ago.
The lack of love for Hydroelectric makes me sad
Hydroelectric power is the backbone of electricity here in Brazil :P
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There are only so many suitable hydro locations, and pretty much all of them are used in the developed world.
Nuclear had its time. Solar and wind is cheaper, can be distributed and has a fraction of the waste and supply chain issues.
I’m increasingly of the same opinion, however, I dislike the fact that even talking about nuclear as a potential bridge technology is such a polarizing issue.
I am very far from being an expert on the subject and accordingly don’t have a strong opinion either way as to what role, if any, it can usefully play in transitioning to sustainable energy models.
What I don’t like is the immediate labeling of either side of the issue as somehow automatically being indicative of bad faith or “shilling” on behalf of a larger, nearly conspiratorial interest.
its not that nuclear is bad, but it’s very expensive and takes a long time to commission, where the bridge between now and full scale renewable is on a shorter time frame. if the idea of using nuclear as a transition was made 10-20 years ago, absolutely. now, it’s kinda too late.
so pretty much the most economical solution is to go all in on renewable from now on
Thanks for the response. That makes sense and I think I’m probably on-board.
Solar and wind have location, storage and reliability issues. Nuclear completely takes the place of fossil fuel generation on all those fronts.
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What about tidal?
Not a good solution for most of the world, but great for where it can be done, same as geothermal.
Tidal, hydroelectric dams, and geothermal should all together be able to cover a pretty significant part of the Earth, shouldn’t they?
Tidal and hydroelectric aren’t great for nature.
Yeah a dam will wreck a valley. But a nuclear station can irradiate a whole region and coal ruins the planet.
A dam wrecking a valley is a best case scenario. Worst case is thousands dead.
The worst case scenario for a nuclear station is a few dozen dead.
coal ruins the planet.
Also runs the air and water, coal residue is dumped in rivers.
I really don’t want to play top trumps over which tragic disaster is worse by measuring bodycounts, as this is all way too grim and I think we can agree that the worst case scenarios for all of these things are awful in their own distinct ways. But that number you put for nuclear is difficult to believe. Where did you find it?
IIRC Chernobyl amounted to about 46 people dead from the disaster itself, (the Fukushima incident did not kill anyone at the time it occurred IIRC, three mile island didn’t kill anyone) and while it did release a lot of radioactive material that did result it more cancers/excess mortality, coal burning releases about ten times more radioactive material than a nuclear reactor (coal has trace amounts of radioactive material in it). So even if we’re just comparing the hazards of radiation nuclear is probably the better/cleaner option if there’s a robust and quick response after incidents.
deaths per watt hydroelectric is the worst and nuclear is one of the best
Unfortunately tidal is actually not renewable.
This may sound stupid, but tidal probably destroys the environment faster than fossil power.
The nuclear power is in the water because Japan dumped it in there to save a buck.
What do you mean?
Japan is currently dumping contaminated water from the Fukushima reactor into the Pacific and will continue to do so for 30 years.
it is worth pointing out that the Fukishima plant had it’s seawall bellow regulation height and had it’s meltdown after seawater flooded the backup generator. This was an easily preventable disaster if they had just followed the law about nuclear safety
Following the law? When there’s profit to be made?
it wasn’t even a big saving they were cutting cost on a wall
You ever hear of the bikeshed effect? It’s the idea that if you get a committee of laymen to make a decision on something extremely complex, like a nuclear power plant, they’ll hyperfixate in on the one thing that they think they understand - the bike shed. So instead of oversight and planning of the important bits of the plant like the reactor or the safety system, each decision maker will take their turn altering the color and the dimensions and the positioning of the bike shed.
I’m gonna guess that the wall was their bike shed.
There’s a bit more nuance here. Fron this article, the plan is to treat the water to decontaminate it, then dilute it as much as possible because the treatment cannot remove some isotopes which could cause problems. The 30 year plan is actually a good thing since this would dilute the isotopes further making the risk minimal according to IAEA and the US. There are some independent labs that voice concerns for more data though.
The main issue is that the tanks that are supposed to hold the contaminated cooling seawater are filling up quick, so they need to add some space. Unless there’s a better plan, it’s either that or the tanks overflow.
The counter nuance to that nuance is that:
- You can’t undo years of release if theres problems down the line
- Current science says that this release is probably fine, but as you said independent labs and neighboring countries have posed objections based on insufficiency of evidence
- “Current science” is really key here because it wasn’t so long ago that science was convinced that heroin could be given to babies, smoking was harmless, and leaded gasoline is safe. Our state of the art has a habit of becoming the next generation’s “how could they be so stupid?”
- There have been alternative treatment and disposal options proposed and the Japanese government just happened to chose the cheapest one? That doesn’t pass the sniff test.
- Even if the release turns out to be completely safe in retrospect, all of the factors above will cause a significant amount of people to turn their opinions against nuclear power because it sets a precedent for perceived reckless handling of nuclear waste.
These are valid criticisms and they should be addressed. I think the main issue is that this is urgent and we can’t wait to do the amount of surveying or studying enough to guarantee a safe dumping. I’m just assuming here since no one said anything about that. But I think it’s a valid assumption since the disaster is 12 years old. If they are rushing this after let’s say 8 years of studying it, then whatever time they have left to fill up the tanks is probably not gonna be enough.
Every single decision we make is based on “current science” since we didn’t invent a time machine just yet to look at the future. Just because science has messed up in the past, doesn’t mean we should paralyze ourselves now.
What are these alternative treatments that the government rejected? How much more effective are they vs how much more do they cost? If treatment “A” gives us a 5% chance of a better outcome and costs 80% more, then it makes sense. If it was an 80% better outcome for 80% more cost then yeah they did mess up.
“Current science” is really key here because it wasn’t so long ago that science was convinced that heroin could be given to babies, smoking was harmless, and leaded gasoline is safe.
Science as a whole never was, there was just a shitton of money going to anybody publishing studies saying so. There’s not a cannon of grant money fired at any scientist who says “radiation is good actually”.
The lead gas thing is as you described but heroin and tobacco especially were in wide use for many years without anyone really knowing the full extent of damage they caused. Sometimes it does actually just take science a while to gather the data and catch up.
Because it isn’t radioactive enough to be remotely harmful?
Oh yes, let’s focus on an extremely expensive energy source! Let’s get rid of dependencies of dicatotors by making us dependent of other dictators to get uran! Why waste any more time on energy sources that pay off after a few years when we can have an energy source they’ll still have to pay for in 100 generations? So genious!
Not to mention how long it takes to find good spots since noone wants to have one in their backyard and even if you have a spot it takes almost a decade to build m
Also you need to guarantee cooling which is going to be a bigger and bigger problem in the coming years…
So much better than spending a fraction of the money to build renewables much faster with less risk…
Right? I’m pretty sure everyone downstream of Fukushima likes it this way. The people who are hoping we don’t need an actual priesthood, or glowing cats, or whatever, to warn people about nuclear waste thousands of years in the future after the fall of all current civilizations, like it this way.
Let nuclear continue to waste away as the terrible idea it always was.
There are real gold nuggets of useful nuclear tech that we need for the energy revolution. We can make it safe, and we will need all tools at our disposal.
