Safe, sure. Efficient? Not even close.
It’s far, far more expensive than renewable energy. It also takes far, far longer to build a plant. Too long to meet 2030 targets even if you started building today. And in most western democracies you wouldn’t even be able to get anything done by 2040 if you also add in political processes, consultation, and design of the plant.
There’s a reason the current biggest proponents of nuclear energy are people and parties who previously were open climate change deniers. Deciding to go to nuclear will give fossil fuel companies maximum time to keep doing their thing. Companies which made their existence on the back of fossil fuels, like mining companies and plant operators also love it, because it doesn’t require much of a change from their current business model.
Australian politicians have been arguing about nuclear energy for decades, and with whats going on now, petty distracting squabbling while state governments are gutting public infrastructure
The most frustrating thing is the antinuclear party is obviously fine with nuclear power, and nuclear armaments, just look at the aukus submarines
labors cries about the dangers to our communities and the environment are obviously disingenuous, or they wouldnt be setting a green light for the billionaire robber barons to continue tearing oil and minerals out of the ground (they promise to restore the land for real-sies this time)
Anyway, a nuclear power plant runs a steam turbine and will never be more than what, 30% efficient?
Photovoltaic cells are even less efficient, I think they’re somewhere between 10-20% efficient. I think the way to go would be a solar collector, like the Archimedes death ray, but much much bigger.
That is already a thing and it’s called concentrated solar power. Basically aim a shit load of mirrors at a target to heat it, run some working fluid through the target and use that to make steam to turn a turbine. There are a few power plants that use it but in general it has been more finicky and disruptive to the local environment than traditional PV panels would be.
The fantastic thing about renewables is how much they lend themselves to a less centralised model. Solar collector? Sure, why not‽ Rooftop solar on people’s houses? You bet! Geothermal? If local conditions are favourable to it, absolutely!
Instead of a small number of massive power plants that only governments or really large corporations can operate individuals can generate the power for themselves, or companies can offset their costs by generating a little power, or cities can operate a smaller plant to power what operations in their city aren’t handled by other means. It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach.
This contrasts with nuclear. SMRs could theoretically do the same thing, but haven’t yet proven viable. And traditional plants just put out way too much power. They’re one-size-fits-all by definition, and only have the ability to operate alongside other modes with the other modes filling in a small amount around the edges.
Pumped hydro? Or one of the many other non battery storage options, or just over production
How viable is pumped hydro? It would be good if feasible, but last I checked, there were not enough places where you can install them.
Pumped hydro requires a specific sort of place and not sure there’s enough of them for most countries to rely on.
Redox flow, sodium ion, iron air, etc.
There are some 600+ current chemical-based battery technologies out there.
Hell for me, once sodium is cracked, that shit is so abundant that production wouldn’t have many bottlenecks to get started.
Will Li-ion battery companies let that happen? They want profit, which means they want to keep the high battery cost.
Fuck I wish the politicians would give this to us straight like that.
Why is Albo’s party spreading memes about three eyed fish instead of saying “yeah Dutton’s nuclear plan is safe, but it maximises fossil fuel use in the short term and we’d prefer to focus on renewables”
Agreed, building a nuclear facility takes a lot of time and costs a lot of money. However… This doesn’t need to be the case at all.
A lot of the costs go into design, planning and legal work. The amount of red tape to build a nuclear plant is huge. Plus all of the parties that fight any plans to build, with a heavy not in my backyard component.
If however a country would be prepared to cut through the red tape and have a standard design developed for say 10 plants at the same time, the price and construction time would be decreased greatly. Back in the day we could build them faster and cheaper. And these days we build far more complex installations quicker and cheaper than nuclear power plants.
The anti-nuclear movement has done so much to hold humanity back on this front. And the weird part is most people do think nuclear fusion plants are a good thing and can solve stuff. But they have almost all of the downsides nuclear fission plants have in terms of red tape, complexity and cost.
You can’t cut the red tape. The red tape is why we’re able to say nuclear is safe.
the weird part is most people do think nuclear fusion plants are a good thing and can solve stuff. But they have almost all of the downsides nuclear fission plants have in terms of red tape, complexity and cost
Huh? Nuclear fusion doesn’t have any downsides or upsides. Because it doesn’t exist. We’ve never been able to generate net power with fusion. (No, not even that story from a couple of years ago, which only counted as ‘input’ a small fraction of the total energy used overall. It was a good development, but just one small step on the long journey to it being practical.)
Being anti-nuclear was a poor stance to have 20, 30 years ago. At that time, renewables weren’t cost effective enough to be a big portion of our energy generation mix, and we should have been building alternatives to fossil fuels since back then if not earlier. But today, all the analysis tells us that renewables are far cheaper and more effective than nuclear. Today, being pro-nuclear is the wrong stance to take. It’s the anti-science stance, which is why it has seen a recent rise among right-wing political parties and media organisations.
I have never heard being pro-nuclear is the anti science stance and it being on the rise among right wing political parties. All the right wing is talking about it more coal and less things to be done about the climate.
The people who I talk to who are pro nuclear seem very well informed and not anti science at all.
I believe nuclear can help us get to the future we want and we should have done it a lot sooner. Nuclear doesn’t mean anti-renewable, both can exist.
If however a country would be prepared to cut through the red tape and have a standard design developed for say 10 plants at the same time, the price and construction time would be decreased greatly.
That’s a pretty big ask for a democratic government where half of the politicians are actively sabotaging climate initiatives…
The only countries where this is really feasible are places where federal powers can supersede the authority of local governments. A nuclear based power grid in America would require a complete reorganization of state and federal authority.
The only way anyone thinks nuclear energy is a viable option in the states is if they completely ignore the political realities of American government.
For example, is it physically possible for us to build a proper deep storage facility for nuclear waste? Yes, of course. Have we attempted to build said deep storage facility? Yes, since 1987. Are we any closer to finishing the site after +30 years…no.
Huh. So those of us that have always advocated for a nuclear baseline with wind/solar topping off until we have adequate storage solutions are climate change deniers? That’s new.
First, no, that’s not what I said. If you’re only going to be arguing in bad faith like that this will be the last time I engage with you.
Second, baseload power is in fact a myth. And it becomes even worse when you consider the fact that nuclear doesn’t scale up and down in response to demand very well. In places with large amounts of rooftop solar and other distributed renewables, nuclear is especially bad, because you can’t just tell everyone who has their own generation to stop doing that, but you also don’t want to be generating more than is used.
Third, even if you did consider it necessary to have baseload “until we have adequate storage”, the extremely long timelines it takes to get from today to using renewables in places that don’t already have it, spending money designing and building nuclear would just delay the building of that storage, and it would still end up coming online too late.
I used to be a fan of nuclear. In 2010 I’d have said yeah, we should do it. But every time I’ve looked into it over the last 10 years especially, I’ve had to reckon with the simple fact that all the data tells us we shouldn’t be building nuclear; it’s just an inferior option to renewables.
Aaaw, someone doesn’t like the tone used? Well that’s unfortunate. How about you start with leaving dem bad faith arguments?
Renewables will not cover your usage. Period. You will need something to cover what renewables won’t be able to deliver. Your options are limited. Nuclear is the only sustainable option for many places. Sure you got hydro (ecological disasters) or geothermal in some places, but most do not have those options.
It’s not an XOR problem.
The irony of Homer Simpson representing safe nuclear energy…
Hi, I work in waste handling, and I would like to tell you about dangerous materials and what we do with them.
There are whole hosts of chemicals that are extremely dangerous, but let’s stick with just cyanide, which comes from coal coking, steel making, gold mining and a dozen chemical synthesis processes.
Just like nuclear waste, there is no solution for this. We can’t make it go away, and unlike nuclear waste, it doesn’t get less dangerous with time. So, why isn’t anyone constantly bringing up cyanide waste when talking about gold or steel or Radiopharmaceuticals? Well, that’s because we already have a solution, just not “forever”.
Cyanide waste, and massive amounts of other hazardous materials, are simply stored in monitored facilities. Imagine a landfill wrapped in plastic and drainage, or a building or cellar with similar measures and someone just watches it. Forever. You can even do stuff like build a golfcourse on it, or malls, or whatever.
There are tens of thousands of these facilities worldwide, and nobody gives a solitary fuck about them. It’s a system that works fine, but the second someone suggests we do the same with nuclear waste, which is actually less dangerous than a great many types of chemical waste, people freak out about it not lasting forever.
As a friend once said “benzene is what anti-nuclear people think nuclear waste is.”
I mean, spent fuel is actually quite lethal when not packaged, but you get something like 300-400MWh out of a kilo of fuel. And that’s significantly more than I’ll use in my lifetime.
I’d gladly keep a kilo of dry-casked spent fuel in my house. It’d make an excellent coffee table or something, if a bit hard to move. I would absolutely not put a lifetime supply of benzene anywhere near my house.
Edit: it would make a shitty coffee table. 1 kilo of uranium oxide is just under 100ml
The density of uranium always fucks with me. How can something that takes up so little volume weigh so much?
https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxguides/toxguide-8.pdf
I didn’t know that before but it appears cyanide does have a half-life that is a fraction of nuclear waste.
That doesn’t make it or the other compounds less dangerous, of course.
That’s uhh, not what that says. One of the two mentions of half life are your body converting cyanide into thiocyanate, which will kill you and depending on your last bowel movement, make your corpse into hazardous waste itself.
The other mention is hydrogen cyanide in air, which is lighter than air and will decompose back into cyanide eventually, scattering it over a large area. Which will technically make it go away from your site, but spreading toxic waste over the countryside is illegal for a reason.
Most cyanide in surface water will form hydrogen cyanide and evaporate.
As long as it has a surface to evaporate, it will degenerate.
Yeah but how is the Kremlin going to control us with their gas & oil if we have nuclear?
Checkmate uh pro democratic people I guess?
Yeah but how is the Kremlin going to control us with their gas & oil if we have nuclear?
France is EU’s first importer of ‘Russian nuclear products’: study – Euractiv
New report shows Russia raking in revenue from state nuclear company | Fox Business
Russia faces threat of sanctions on nuclear power industry as Germany backs uranium ban – POLITICO
Bratislava to reject EU’s latest sanctions package if it includes ban on Russia nuclear fuel
Russia’s Rosatom Helps Putin Skirt Sanctions
Russia’s nuclear project in Hungary: France’s growing role | OSW Centre for Eastern Studies
https://www.greenpeace.de/publikationen/20220517-greenpeace-report-russland-taxonomie.pdf
Cyanide is used extensively in precious metal recycling too. So even reclaiming resources has a harsh chemical cost. Meeting workers from there I was surprised to say the least about how ‘casually’ they work with Cyanide. Clearly they have safty protocall but nothing like what I imagined something like Cyanide would call for.
Curious to hear you say this. I live in NZ and cyanide waste is always raised as an objection to gold mining.
There are downsides to nuclear these days. Incredibly high cost with a massive delay before they’re functioning. Solar + wind + pumped hydro + district heating is where it’s at in 2024.
This.
Also, tie together more countries’ power grids to even out production and demand of renewables, and reduce the need for other backup sources.
For a fraction of the cost of nuclear, increase the storage capacity as well. We’ve had days where the price per MWh was negative in many hours, because of excess production.
The barriers to carbon free energy aren’t technical, they’re purely political.
Yeah, back in 2010 and before nuclear was the way to go but with the incredible advancements in solar and wind it’s no longer the best option.
Still shame on Germany for decommissioning nuclear reactors and deciding to build Nordstream 2 and burn coal as a replacement.
with the incredible advancements in solar and wind it’s no longer the best option.
I haven’t heard of any advancement that makes solar generate energy when the sun doesn’t shine and wind generate energy when the wind isn’t blowing.
You probably also didnt heard about Thorium based molten salt reactors, they are much safer than conventional nuclear, also cheaper, and you can have a 50MW installation in space not much larger than a shipping container. A 50MW solar installation is close to 1km2 and thats without any storage included. It even can be modified to run on spent fuel of conventional nuclear power plants.
Please understand that negative prices are the market for electricity breaking down! That is not a good thing. It should mean that if you have solar panels on your roof you have to pay to participate in the national grid because you are dumping energy into the grid when it can’t use it, but special rules have been made for renewable plants. Literally, imagine a contract-to-supply for wind or solar…
district heating is where it’s at in 2024.
You don’t have those in 2024? Commies built central heating in every city.
Well that’s unfair, all you have to do is take a corkscrew to the floor and stick a pipe in it!
Still not a reason to not build them, the entire point is for nuclear to handle the load when solar/wind can’t provide due to weather. Other renewables will still be producing the bulk of the power we need, but at night nuclear will be handling any demand spikes, each of them would greatly reduce the number of batteries required to satisfy the demand. They can stay until our solar output is so high we can just start electrolyzing water into hydrogen as energy storage.
That’s why they mentioned “pumped hydro”
Though pumped hydro is sometimes opposed by environmental groups because it does absolutely decimate local environments.
I have high hopes for sodium batteries. The ones that have been released on the market are simply perfect (if scaled up) for local grid storage in countries with a lot of space and will hopefully get better energy density in line with Lithium Iron Phosphate with time.
Salt batteries have been the cold fusion of battery tech for like 10 years, but now it is finally coming to fruition. I hope to install a solar installation with salt batteries in 5 years or so, myself.
If you’re suggesting using Nuclear as a peaker plant or to turn it off and on whenever wind/solar is not up for it then I’m sorry to say that it’s not viable. Nuclear generators don’t handle well being turned off and on.
You can make Thorium reactors much smaller and cheaper, basically a 50MW unit is not much larger than a shipping container, while being much more safe than standard nuclear plants. The largest issue is over-regulation of the nuclear power in general.
A 50MW of solar installation is HUGE, and thats 50MW at the sunniest part of the planet: https://newsaf.cgtn.com/news/2019-12-15/Kenya-launches-Chinese-built-50MW-solar-power-plant-MqC575l6Te/index.html, We are basically talking about close to a square kilometer installation…
there is simply no way to call a 50MW solar plant cleaner than nuclear and its probably not even that much cheaper in the end. Compare that to a shipping container sized reactor… Only thing in the way, is the nuclear scare and government regulations.
If you’re interested in energy solutions and haven’t read the RethinkX report on the feasibility of a 100% solar, wind and battery solution, it’s definitely worth taking a look.
Whilst I agree that we need to decarbonise asap with whatever we can, any new nuclear that begins planning today is likely to be a stranded asset by the time it finishes construction. That money could be better spent leaning into a renewable solution in my view.
Exactly this. I am “in favor” of nuclear energy, but only in the sense that I’d like fossil power to be phased out first, then nuclear. Any money that could be spent on new nuclear power plants is better spent on solar and wind.
I’d like Nuclear power not to be thrown out with the bathwater because it is practically essential for space travel/colonization in the long term. Solar panels can only get us so far, and batteries are a stop-gap. We need nuclear power because it is the only energy source that can meet our needs while being small enough to carry with us.
All should praise the magic, hot rocks.
it is practically essential for space travel/colonization in the long term.
Seems like it’s pretty important we not burn through our finite reserves of it if we can help it. I’m not saying we should reach zero nuclear, but I don’t think we should be relying on it too much either.
Does it cover everyone on the planet using the same amount of electricity as a North American? 8 billion people now. And usage is increasing too, gotta power EVs and AI (but not limited to that).
im fine with dropping AI for more humans right now, but apparently that wont generate shareholder value.
