Do you want to argue, that the construction of a nuclear power plant causes significantly less ecological stress and pollution than solar panels and windturbines?
Think about if you really want to claim that as a thing you actually believe in.
I’m just gonna throw some words in a pool.
concrete, steel, space, deforestation, river, 10+ Years construction time, heavy machinery, dust, natural habitats, fuel, mining, waste, noise, cost, france…
Thank you. i rest my case.
Building dams literally kills whole ecosystems. Reduce biodiversity and razes woodland. They also do tend to take 10+ year of construction, just like nuclear power, while taking several times more materials. Your point is really stupid, nuclear power plants do not cause any more ecological stress than a moderate building in any city. They do consume vasts amounts of water, which can be an ecological issue, but not to the level that a dam creates. Wind turbines, for example, are not recyclable (materials used are too complex and use a lot of plastic) and they disrupt birds population. Just like solar panels, they have a very very short lifespan. Windturbines must be replaced every 5 years or so. So does solar panels but for different reasons. A nuclear power plant can create power for several decades if well maintained.
The thing is, no human intervention in any place is sustainable. Our mere mode of existence is so energy intensive that we are going to destroy the planet’s habitability no matter what we do. The time to change to 100% nuclear was 5 decades ago. The time to stop using fossil fuels was 4 decades ago. The time to change to sustainable energy was 3 decades ago. We lost the train. The planet won’t support us in any form in the long run. Hell, mammals might also be fucked within the next million years. The planet will never ever be the same it was during the past 2 million years. And it’s because of us.
Really well, with the lowest carbon emission dependence index and the cleanest air in Europe? France has also never had a nuclear incident ever. As they are actually one of the rarest events of all the known forms of energy creation. Actually, a joke amongst wind turbine installers is that wind power has killed more people than nuclear power. Because of how frequent incidents with cranes and helicopters are.
Half of those aren’t even relevant.
The actual construction takes about 4 years, but legal issues such as rules changing and politics, legal issues, and additional planning tend to push this up to 6-15 years in extreme cases. To draw a parallel: building a 1GW windmill farm, such as the Thorsminde off shore windmill farm is estimated to take 5 years of pure construction time, and politics and legal issues have so far added 4 years to this from the day it was announced, giving a total construction time of about 9 years without delays.
Cost wise, Thorsminde is projected to cost 2.1 billion USD, and that’s without running costs, possible delays, or deconstruction costs at its 30 year end of life. The construction of a nuclear plant usually ( as in the projects that have been finished and we know the total construction costs of) costs anywhere from 6 to 9 billion USD. So yes, nuclear is more expensive, as you said.
Of course windmills don’t just pop out of the ground, so heavy machinery will also be required, and the sound of the hammers building the foundation will likely drive away any sound sensitive life in a 100-200 km radius, such as whales. This can be partly mitigated by running the hammers at lower power, adding about 30-50% (might be more, foundations take a long time to build) additional construction time and driving up the price.
The windmills will also change the life of the area dramatically throughout its life, VS nuclear, which requires mines that cause decent damage, but do not pollute in any significant way at the reactor site (unless you pump the waste water from the usually closed first loop directly out to the rivers and sea, or swear on running the power plant without cooling towers during droughts).
Also the resources needed to make a 1GW wind farm are immense, and contrary to nuclear, we can’t currently reuse the waste from deconstruction, which there also is quite a lot more of. Furthermore, maintenance will be hell, as you have much more moving parts (not per windmill, but per farm, which has multiple windmills) as a nuclear plant.
Do you realise that you can also build windmills… where you would put the Power Plant? On Land? And that would reduce the time and cost of construction?
You could also fill barren fields with solar panels and use space that not even a solar plant could use, this in turn also gives animals shade and helps biodiversity and bug species.
And doesnt have a third of its construction cost as running costs forever.
You can also scale wind turbines in minutes. Look at France how much it costs to have nuclear plants not running.
In what way can we reuse the nuclear waste?
You do realise how much space windmills would need to produce as much power as a single nuclear plant, right? That is also the reason we try to build them in the water.
And when did I write anything about nuclear waste? I specifically pointed out that I was talking about deconstruction waste, where cooling towers turbines, and general facilities can be reused, and only the core shielding of the nuclear reactor has to be specially disposed of, versus the wings and foundation of windmills, which we don’t really know what to do with right now, so we kinda just bury them wherever and hope it doesn’t come back to bite us later.
Those wind turbines and solar panels also get constructed, and affect a much larger area. It’s not an obvious comparison
Duh, Yes things have to be built. A Windmill is built in a few weeks by way less people and has no risk of exploding into a huge cloud of death.
Obviously building one wind turbine is less disruptive, but you need hundreds to get the same output, and they only work when it’s windy.
A dam has a higher probability of exploding than a Nuclear Reactor. A WIND TURBINE has a higher probability of exploding than a Nuclear Reactor.
