10 points

Slow, expensive, riddeled with corruption, long ago surpassed by renewables. Why should we use it?

permalink
report
reply
19 points

Sometimes the sun doesn’t shine, sometimes the wind doesn’t blow. Renewables are great and cheap, but they aren’t a complete solution without grid level storage that doesn’t really exist yet.

permalink
report
parent
reply
22 points

Solar with Battery grid storage is now cheaper than nuclear.

permalink
report
parent
reply
11 points

If the demand goes up I have some doubt, also, mining for Lithium is far from being clean, and then batteries are becoming wastes, so I doubt you would replace nuclear power with this solution

I guess in some regions it could work, but you’re still depending on the weather

permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points
*

Would love to see a source for that claim. How many 9’s uptime do they target? 90%, 99%

permalink
report
parent
reply
16 points
*

Thats a chicken/egg peoblem. If enough renewables are build the storage follows. In a perfect world goverments would incentivice storage but in an imperfect one problems have to occure before somebody does something to solve them. Anyway, according to lazard renewables + storage are still cheaper than NPPs.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Imagine this (not so) hypothetical scenario:

Yellowstone or another supervolcano erupts and leads to a few years of volcanic winter, where there is much less sunshine. This has historical precedent, it has happened before, and while in and of itself it will impact a lot of people regardless of anything else, wouldn’t you agree it would be better to have at least some nuclear power capacity instead of relying solely on renewables?

Sure, such a scenario is not probable, but it pays to stay safe in the case of one such event. I would say having most of our power from renewables would be best, having it supported by 10-20% or so nuclear with the possibility of increase in times of need would make our electric grids super resilient to stuff

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

Let’s be clear, the only reason grid-level storage for renewables “doesn’t exist” is because of a lack of education about (and especially commitment to) simple, reliable, non-battery energy storage such as gravitational potential, like the ARES project. We’ve been using gravitational potential storage to power our mechanisms since Huygens invented the freaking pendulum clock. There is simply no excuse other than corruption for the fact that we don’t just run a couple trains up a hill when we need to store massive amounts of solar energy.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points
*

There is simply no excuse other than corruption for the fact that we don’t just run a couple trains up a hill when we need to store massive amounts of solar energy.

How about basic maths? I

Scale is a huge fucking issue. The little country of the Netherlands, where I happen to live, uses 2600 petajoule per day. So let’s store 1 day of power, at 100% efficiency, using the tallest Alp (the Mont Blanc).

Let’s round up to 5000 meters of elevation. We need to store 2.6e18 joules, and 1 joule is 100 grams going up 1 meter. So to power a tiny little country, we need to lift roughly 5e13 kilos up the Mont Blanc. To visualize, that’s 1.7 billion 40ft shipping containers, or roughly 100 per inhabitant.

Using 555m blocks of granite, you’d need 166 million of them (9 for every person in the country). Assuming a 2% slope, you’d need to build a 250.000m long railway line. And if you lined all those blocks up, with no space in between, you’d need 3328 of those lines (which then couldn’t move, because they fill the entire space between the summit and sea level).

And that’s just 1 small country.

permalink
report
parent
reply
13 points

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/24/power-grid-battery-capacity-growth

US power grid added battery equivalent of 20 nuclear reactors in past four years

permalink
report
parent
reply
48 points

only antimatter could provide more energy density, it’s insanely powerful.

produces amounts of waste orders of magnitude lower than any other means of energy production

reliable when done well

it shouldn’t be replaced with renewables, but work with them

permalink
report
parent
reply
11 points

Yes, but energy density doesn’t matter for most applications and the waste it produces is highly problematic.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

the waste it produces is highly problematic.

It’s a solved problem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aUODXeAM-k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhHHbgIy9jU

permalink
report
parent
reply
18 points
Deleted by creator
permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

If something is Nuclear enough it can generate heat, its just the reactors make use of an actual reaction that nuclear waste can’t do anymore. Yever watch the Martian, he has a generator that’s fuel is lead covered beads of radioactive material, it doesn’t generate as much as reactors but it’s still a usable amount.

permalink
report
parent
reply
-2 points

Energy density is a useless bullshit metric for stationary power.

Produces more waste than almost all of the renewables.

Reliable compared to… … … ok, I’m out of ideas, they need shutdowns all the time. Seems to me it’s less reliable than anything that isn’t considered “experimental”.

And it can’t work with renewables unless you add lots and lots of batteries. Any amount of renewables you build just makes nuclear more expensive.

They are an interesting technology, and I’m sure they have more uses than making nuclear weapons. It’s just that everybody focus on that one use, and whatever other uses they have, mainstream grid-electricity generation is not it.

permalink
report
parent
reply
-1 points

Who gives a fuck about energy density beyond some physics nerds? Unless you’re planning on building a flying nuclear-powered airplane, energy density is irrelevant. This is why solar is eating fission’s lunch.

permalink
report
parent
reply
15 points

only antimatter could provide more energy density, it’s insanely powerful.

Nuclear energy indeed has very high energy per mass of fuel. But so what? Solar and wind power doesn’t even use fuel. So the energy density thing is a bit of a distraction.

permalink
report
parent
reply
-2 points

just compare 1 ton of fissile fuel and 1 ton of Silicon or steel. how much power do you get out of it ?

permalink
report
parent
reply
18 points

But it’s not done well. Just look at the new built plants, which are way over budget and take way longer to build then expected. Like the two units in Georgia that went from estimated 14bn to finally 34bn $. In France who are really experienced with nuclear, they began building their latest plant in 2007 and it’s still not operational, also it went from 3.3bn to 13.2bn €. Or look at the way Hinkley Point C in the UK is getting developed. What a shit show: from estimated 18bn£ to now 47bn£ and a day where it starts producing energy not in sight.

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

Do you know WHY they went over budget?

permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points
*

The same problems faced the oil industry too, with their drilling rigs & refineries (over budget and over schedule, with gov money grants and subsidies), it’s just less in the media & more spread out (more projects).

Also 10s of billions is still insignificant for any power, transport, or healthcare infrastructure in the scheme of things - we have the money, we just don’t tax profit enough. And we don’t talk about how the whole budget gets spent (private or public), where all the money actually goes, instead we get the highlighted cases everyone talks about. But not about the shielded industries when they fuck up.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

it shouldn’t be replaced with renewables, but work with them

Nuclear energy as a bridge technology is incompatible with renewables.

permalink
report
parent
reply
7 points

Right now we probably use more energy to produce antimatter than getting it back

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

certainly

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

This argument again?

permalink
report
parent
reply
-3 points

Yes, it’s called reality. I know it’s an ugly thing that just doesn’t go away no matter how hard you want it to.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Dude, thorium reactors will be ready any day now, along with mini reactors! Everything will be super cheap and all the waste will be reused and we won’t be dependent on any fuel sources from Russia and all our problems will be gone!

/s, in case it’s not obvious

permalink
report
parent
reply
0 points
*

Reality can be anything anyone says, you just gotta believe it really hard?

And then repeat the lie reality in service to the ones than benefit from it. Gooboi.

permalink
report
parent
reply
0 points

You go on thinking renewables are ever going to replace fossil fuel while we charge full tilt to our doom

permalink
report
parent
reply
0 points

Hey now, someone who knows almost nothing is just asking questions here.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points
*

You are saying we should be kinder to the less fortunate & uneducated?

That’s a nice thought.

permalink
report
parent
reply
7 points

Not sure I get what you mean by “slow”.

And it’s not entirely shocking that we have more of the power source we’ve been building and less of the one we stopped building.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points
*

Renewables once surpassed fossil fuels, until some brave knight killed all the windmills.

permalink
report
parent
reply
46 points

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.

permalink
report
reply
8 points
*

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.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

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.

Actually yes.

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 […].

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

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?

permalink
report
parent
reply
13 points

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.

permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points

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.

permalink
report
parent
reply
-3 points

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.

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

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.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

Because superconductors are even more expensive than breeder reactors.

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

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.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

The costs used for wind/solar energy never included the cost of the required buffer storage, and even the rare few people who include that never factor in frequency stability which to this day is maintained by the giant steam turbines everyone wants to get rid of. It will not be trivial to solve the frequency stability problem; it will likely require massive investment in pumped water storage, flywheel storage, or nuclear energy, and these costs once finally included in the real cost of wind/solar will hurt its value prospect considerably.

As for nuclear waste: the overwhelming majority of nuclear waste generated over the lifetime of a reactor is stored onsite. Only the smallest amount of material is what will actually remain dangerous for a long time, and many countries have already solved this problem. It’s a seriously overstated problem repeated by renewable-purists who usually haven’t even considered how much frequency stability and grid-level storage have and will add to the cost of renewables, meaning they have not given a full accounting of the situation.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

The costs used for wind/solar energy never included the cost of the required buffer storage

https://www.csiro.au/en/research/technology-space/energy/GenCost

permalink
report
parent
reply
-2 points

And even if we just buried all of it, all nuclear waste ever produced could easily be buried in one square mile.

permalink
report
parent
reply
0 points

We need a fitting location to safely bury it in. Otherwise it can pollute the ground and water. In Germany for example we dont have such a location. That and the issue of cost, no one wanting to build it, no one wanting to insure it, no state wanting to offer the space and no energy company wanting this energy led to us making the correct decision in moving away from it

permalink
report
parent
reply
0 points

We don’t add that level of scrutiny to coal ash which there is much more of and equally dangerous forever. Nuclear is the the only power source expected to address 100% of problems at any point in the future before it can even start construction.

permalink
report
parent
reply
23 points

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.

permalink
report
reply
60 points

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

permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points

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.

permalink
report
parent
reply
10 points

Exactly, bad PR.

Waste isn’t actually much of a problem - it’s just been portrayed as one.

permalink
report
parent
reply
-4 points
*

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?

permalink
report
parent
reply
-2 points

Renewable are so cheap, especially when we don’t need as much energy! Fortunately we won’t need as much energy in winter now. :-)

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

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

permalink
report
parent
reply
10 points

Fire’s waste is just all particulates in the air which we all share.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

Yeah but we got lungs to filter that all out … or smth idk how this works

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

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.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

There is a huge lobby of pro-nuclear think tanks who try to astroturf pro-nuclear shit onto social media. We, scientifically literate, rational people, need to counteract these harmful narratives with some facts.

FACT: Renewable sources of energy are as cheap or cheaper per kwh than nuclear.

FACT: Renewables are faster to provision than nuclear.

FACT: Renewables are as clean, or cleaner, than nuclear.

FACT: Renewables are much more flexible and responsive to energy fluctuations than nuclear.

FACT: Renewables will only get cheaper. Nuclear will only get more expensive, because uranium mining will get harder and harder as we deplete easily accessible sources.

permalink
report
reply
12 points

Fact: renewables take more land, that could be used for other purposes.

Fact: renewables by themselves cannot, and I mean CANNOT, be used alone. Unless you are willing to have a ridiculous over-provision. They depend on weather and have massive seasonal divergences. You need a base line power production to have a rational generation scheme.

Fact: nuclear have a higher cap for total production than renewables. As humanity needs more and more and more energy renewables (even destroying all our usable land) won’t be enough.

Fact: no everyone that doesn’t share your opinion is an “astrosuftist lobby” some of us can also think by ourselves. And some of us can ever think above the dogma of our political school of choice.

permalink
report
parent
reply
-6 points

if 15% of the land used for parking spaces in the USA was instead used for renewables, that would generate enough electricity to power the whole country.

a report from the IEA showed that renewables CAN, and I mean CAN fully power the entire world. So take that one up with the experts. thanks!

nice brainwashing though!

permalink
report
parent
reply
8 points
*

Do you have the calculations for thar 15%? I’d love to fact check it.

Quick search didn’t found me that report from the iae. You should probably pass me a link so I can fact check it too.

My country is not the USA, we do not have those ridiculous parking places that you guys have. Still renewables takes a ridiculous amount of space. I shall now as the land where I grew up is totally changed due wind power installations. And we are at 50% renewable generation. I fear to think what would become of this land if it was a 100% (that would probably need to be not double the land but 3-4 or more times the land if we want to cover energy usage during not windy months)

I really think that the sweet spot would be about 30-40 nuclear and 70-60 renewables.

You really need to stop following political dogmas, and start thinking.

permalink
report
parent
reply
7 points

Can you reply to the other points too? Also, could you link that source, it’s very intriguing

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

As humanity needs more and more and more energy renewables (even destroying all our usable land) won’t be enough.

I’m pretty sure the ICCC disagrees with that

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

You don’t actually need to mine more uranium though. You can run certain nuclear designs on Thorium, Plutonium from weapon stocks, or even waste from other reactors. Current generation nuclear designs are laughably inefficient at using the nuclear fuels we have available, and I fully understand why people don’t support them.

Realistically though I don’t ever expect nuclear fission to be as cheap as renewables in most areas. In some places nuclear or another power source is always going to be needed though just because renewables are not practical in certain conditions.

In the long term the answer is almost certainly going to be nuclear fusion or another future power source like neutrino voltaic. Solar and wind power are ultimately just offshoots of fusion, and so is fission if you think about where uranium, thorium and so on come from. In fact all power we know of seems to come from either gravity or some kind of nuclear reaction (inc. geothermal and fossil fuels).

permalink
report
parent
reply
-11 points

Notice how pro-nuclear people always point towards a bunch of fictional technology as the solution? Oh, we just need fusion, or breeder reactors, or a bunch of other shit that doesn’t exist. No, bro, we just need to build renewables and proper energy grids. It’s really not that complicated. If it’s not sunny where you live, then you just get electricity from where it is sunny. It’s really really simple

Nuclear energy is a solution looking for a problem. Total tech bro bullshit. Like crypto.

permalink
report
parent
reply
0 points

If it’s not sunny where you live, then you just get electricity from where it is sunny. It’s really really simple

Yeah, really, really simple. Wait, what are transmission losses?

permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points

Breeder reactors already exist??? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Notable_reactors

Moving electricity around is a hard problem. Even just moving energy from one end of Britain to the other looses us 10 or 20%, and we are a small nation. If you need to start moving energy in from somewhere actually sunny like Spain you are going to have a big problem.

Crypto isn’t looking for a problem, fiat has plenty of problems, it’s just not an optimal solution. Probably the real answer is not using money at all.

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

Renewables folks are also always looking for things that don’t exist. Like magical energy storage and transmission solutions that don’t cost the earth or have huge losses. Or wave power which still hasn’t materialized after decades of research.

permalink
report
parent
reply
143 points

Well, you see, the “Anti Magic Rock” Lobby has immense amount of power because of the money of the still lucrative “burning stuff and pollute everything” business.

permalink
report
reply
-5 points

That, and the green parties (at least in EU).

permalink
report
parent
reply
13 points

The “green” parties 💵💵

permalink
report
parent
reply
8 points
*

Yeah, oil oiled the “green” anti-nuclear protests.

You can tell that’s how it was because the cops didn’t beat them as much (or in some big cases at all) as they do even the most insignificant anti-oil protesters.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point
*

I feel like people are interpreting your comment with an American context. As a fellow European I agree, NGOs like Greenpeace are also to blame, and I don’t think those are financed by fossil fuel lobbies.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

I hadn’t made that connection. Thank you

permalink
report
parent
reply
-7 points

Nuclear isn’t in competition with fossil fuels, it’s in competition with renewables. Renewables are better than nuclear by pretty much every conceivable metric. So fuck nuclear power, it’s a waste of money and time.

permalink
report
parent
reply
16 points

Fact: that is a fake statement.

Nuclear is not renewables competition.

Nuclear provides a base line energy production.

Both renewables and fossils produce a variable production line.

So within a rational production scheme the choice is nuclear+renewables or fossils+renewables. As renewables by themselves cannot work. Because there is months over the year when it’s not sunny, not rainy and not windy enough, what do we do for those months? We close humanity during those months because some political dogma says so?

permalink
report
parent
reply
0 points
*

Since we are talking hypotheticals, an ideal scenario would be a nearly completely renewables approach where each household is its own self contained energy production center equippef with solar arrays, wind turbines, thermoelectric generators. Various means of production. And have either propane or diesel generator as a backup. You know your average overall watt-hour usage for the household and try to have enough battery capacity to satisfy it for a week or two of bad weather.

Most household electrical wiring is redone for DC transmission and all consumer appliances possible are run straight on DC for optimal efficency. Energy efficent heat pumps for cooling and heating. energy efficent cooking appliances like induction heaters. Electric cars that act as backup battery banks would be awesome.

Industrial zones would be much harder as you need huge solar panel or wind turbine arrays to get the megawatt and gigawatts needed to run a factory. Most factories are decades old running on the most energy ineffient assembly lines you can think of. A energy mandate that calculated and taxed total energy efficency compared to national average for factory size and the would be a start.

Humanity simply does not “stop” because we go through an energy crisis. We did fine enough before the industrial revoltion and renewables + energy efficent consumer devices have improved a bunch. The economy would tank and what renewable energy made would be a premium commodity and the system would adapt to use it best as possible. But things would go on.

permalink
report
parent
reply
7 points

Are you sure renewables don’t require more extracted resources and more land usage per quantity of energy produced?

permalink
report
parent
reply
30 points

It’s the “Burning other magic rocks” party.

permalink
report
parent
reply

Science Memes

!science_memes@mander.xyz

Create post

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don’t throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

Community stats

  • 8.8K

    Monthly active users

  • 3.2K

    Posts

  • 51K

    Comments