I don’t get it. Current nuclear power solutions take longer to set up, have an effectively permanently harmful byproduct, have the (relatively small) potential to catastrophically fail, almost always depend on an abundant supply of fresh water, and are really expensive to build, maintain and decommission.
If someone ever comes up with a functional fusion reactor, I could see the allure; in all other cases, a mix of wind, wave, geothermal, hydro and solar, alongside energy storage solutions, will continually outperform fission.
I suspect that the reason some countries like nuclear energy is that it also puts them in a position of nuclear power on the political stage.
In what universe do those other power generation methods even come close to nuclear power?
And the fissile material can be reprocessed after it’s been spent. Like 90% of the spent fuel can be reprocessed and reused, but the Carter administration banned nuclear waste recycling in the US for fears it would hasten nuclear proliferation.
Wind, hydro, solar, and geothermal are all great. Anything is better than coal or gas power generation. But to say these green power generation methods come close to nuclear… not a chance.
I can set up 20 GW of solar panels to match the capacity of a 4 GW nuclear power plant. And I can set up 20 GW of PV in a year. China installs about 30 GW of solar capacity in a quarter.
It takes about 8-10 years to build a nuclear power plant. In 8 years, I could have installed the equivalent of 8 nuclear power plants using Solar PV that it would take me to build one nuclear power plant.
You can theoretically. Unfortunately, you are not considering the land difference.
More to the point, the absolute political nightmare of buying and getting permission to use so much land.
It is a nightmare for both. But rare to see the amount of land needed for the power station, have to argue about arable use. Whereas, it’s pretty hard in the UK to locate the solar without others claiming land is lost. Farm land mainly as that is the cheap build option. (pricy land, lower labour).
But even brownfield land. Once you have the area to host something like this. You are usually talking about close to populated areas. And just about every NIMBY crap excuse is thrown up about history or other potential use. Meaning, at best you end up with some huge project that takes decades. With a vague plan to add solar generation to the roof.
Honestly I agree. It should be fucking easy to build these plants. Farming should be updating. And honestly can benefit from well-designed solar if both parties are willing to invest and research.
But we have been seeing these arguments for the last 20 years. And people are arseholes, mostly.
And this is all before you consider the need for storage. Again solvable with hydro etc. Theoretically easy. But more land and way way more politics and time. If hydro the cost goes insane. And the type of land become more politically complex. If battery, you instantly get the comparison of mining and transport costs. So again more insane politics.
The performance of nuclear power must be calculated in relation to its cost and risk. And here renewable energy is more than competitive.
This is a much more reasonable argument than most.
But third and fourth-gen nuclear are excellent sources of constant energy that don’t require storage, and some of which have a tiny percentage of the waste stream of prior generations, and what waste they do produce is problematic along the lines of 400 years (as opposed to 27,000 years).
Those 800 wind turbines can be built in a month. Building a nuclear plant takes decades. And nuclear fuel reprocessing had never been economical by a long shot. Your pipe dreams will always regain just that and that’s before we even start talking about proliferation and nuclear waste.
Building a nuclear plant takes decades.
In China they do it in 6 years…
https://www.statista.com/statistics/712841/median-construction-time-for-reactors-since-1981/
That is the point. 30 years ago going nuclear was extremely viable. Now it is a distraction.
Nuclear takes 10 years to build. Renewables are extremely cheap and work directly.
By pretending to advocate for nuclear energy the fossil fuel industry can keep selling their trash for another 10 years. When the plants are almost done they will start fearmongering against nuclear to cancel the plants.
certainly not saying you’re wrong, but the base load problem is still a problem afaik… storage solves some of it, but i think storage isn’t a full solution - we’d still need some other 24/7 generation capacity
Agreed; and it will become more of a problem as water becomes less predictable. Problem is, for most atomic generators, that also holds true.
Investment in research is definitely needed, but building existing systems isn’t going to solve the issues either.
Thorium Salt reactors can recycle their water source and also use water from waste treatment or even sea water as they’re not high pressure water reactors.
When you don’t need the result of power generation to be fissionable material for warheads there are a lot more options available to you, such as using the waste from older reactors to generate energy and output much less reactive material.
Nuclear missiles are an albatross around the neck of nuclear power.
Base load is an outdated concept. It is cheaper, by an order of magnitude, to install surplus generation capacity using renewables and build storage to cover periods of reduced production.
Nuclear reactors actually make terrible ‘base load’ generation anyway, as large swings in output induce thermal cycling stress in their metal components AND the economics of these multi-billion dollar investments depend on running near max output at all times - otherwise the payback time from selling power will extend beyond the useful life of the plant.
The policy wonks shilling for nuclear are not being honest. The economics for these plants are terrible, they are especially terrible if The Plan ™ is to use nuclear as a transition fuel to be replaced by renewables - as then they won’t even reach break even. To say nothing of the fact that a solar installation in the US takes 6 months, while there have been two reactors under construction in Georgia for a decade…
50 years ago, nuclear was a great option. Today, it is too expensive, too slow to build, and simply unnecessary with existing storage technologies.
If y’all were really worried about base load power, you’d be shilling for natural gas peaker plants + carbon capture which has much better economics.
If y’all were really worried about base load power, you’d be shilling for natural gas peaker plants + carbon capture which has much better economics.
Ah there it is. Another anti-nuclear shill for the fossil fuel industry. Sprinkling nebulous “economic” claims.
Storage at grid scale doesn’t exist, and probably never will, but natural gas peak plants exist today and are extremely lucrative for the fossil fuel industry. Every watt of solar or wind has a built in fossil fuel component that is necessary for grid stability. Nuclear eliminates the fossil fuel component, why would you be against that?
The purpose of nuclear power is zero-carbon emissions. That is the most important part. The economic value of them is secondary.
There’s a good youtube video from Sabine Hossenfelder that covers the benefits of nuclear. Definitely worth the watch.
One more aspect to nuclear power is its vulnerability to destructive forces, whether that be natural disasters or acts of war via either cyber attacks or direct bombing.
Given the abundance of safer alternatives, I don’t see why anyone would accept the risk associated with nuclear reactors.
