The head of the Australian energy market operator AEMO, Daniel Westerman, has rejected nuclear power as a way to replace Australia’s ageing coal-fired power stations, arguing that it is too slow and too expensive. In addition, baseload power sources are not competitive in a grid dominated by wind and solar energy anyway.
Even if we started to build nuclear plants like crazy right now, it would be decades for them to make a real impact. Building a single nuclear plant is very expensive and time consuming. Building up the necessary supply chain to build a lot of them would take much longer. In the meantime, you can build huge amounts of renewables in just a few years for a fraction of the cost, even if you factor in storage.
Exactly. Sure, shutting down existing plants is dumb af (looking at you, Germany). But building new plants now with the aim of having an impact on climate change just isn’t the most effective decision.
Not only that but the cost of renewables and storage is still coming down rapidly. You’d better hope that you’re not priced out of the energy market before your construction time plus payback period is up if you start building nuclear.
Lemmy most of the time: Makes fun of people always bringin up “the economy” as if that’s what’s really important
Also Lemmy when it comes to nuclear: “But the economy!”
What happens in case of a sudden abnormal weather event that blocks out most of the sunlight? Picture a super volcano eruption covering the sky in ashes for thousands of miles. Or think back to the extinction of dinosaurs, where after a meteorite crashed into earth the sun was blocked by dust for several years. Or just think about northern European countries that barely get any light in winter; Portugal is a very sunny country, we have invested a lot into solar, and sometimes we still get energy from Spain (who use nuclear btw).
Also, I’ve been hearing this whole “it takes too long to build nuclear plants” since at least early 2010s; imagine where we’d be if we’d just started building plants then. I can picture the same thing being said in 2035-2040, while fossil fuels still have not been completely dropped.
I’m not sure what kind of sudden weather event covers all the sun for Australia. Seems a little farcical
I don’t think anyone mentioned the economy here in this thread, so I’m not sure what the relevance of that is unless I’m misunderstanding your criticism there.
For my comment specifically I’m not worried about the economy, but the unit cost of energy. Simply put if nuclear has a higher unit cost that means we can’t replace as much fossil fuel generation vs other lower unit cost sources of energy for the same price.
I agree with your criticism of folks complaining about the build time, back in 2010 it was probably worth building nuclear. That’s no longer the case and the fact that people (imo incorrectly) used this criticism in 2010 doesn’t mean that it’s invalid now in the mid 2020s.
Disasters is an interesting perspective to take and to be honest I haven’t really thought much about it before. You have, however, picked a very specific and unlikely event here and I’m wondering why you went with that. There are a great many potential disasters that can impact a power grid from earthquakes, extreme weather and even deliberate attacks or acts of sabotage. I think for most of these, having a more distributed grid is likely more resilient and these are much more realistic scenarios than a civilization ending level event like you described.
At the end of the day, we need to decarbonise immediately using the whatever technology is at hand. My criticism of nuclear is that it’s no longer the cheapest or fastest way to achieve that, but I’m open to being wrong. Your disaster scenario wasn’t particularly convincing though at least for me.
What happens in case of a sudden abnormal weather event that blocks out most of the sunlight
The neighbor has sun then. Buy it there. Or store the power.
Always the same old platitudes.
Or think back to the extinction of dinosaurs, where after a meteorite crashed into earth
We now have the technology to alter the trajectories of asteroids (tested on the DART mission), and have a fairly comprehensive catalogue of the big ones. I don’t expect this to be an issue.
That’s not precise. A nuclear plant can be built in like 5 years. And the supply chain is not the issue when you have lots of orders. But there are not many. It’s also not precise to say you can build huge amounts of renewables instead. Probably Spain doesn’t need nuclear, since it’s got plenty of sun. On the other hand many countries don’t have areas that have enough sun and consistent wind.
Id also say that the part you said that cost of renewables combined with storage would be a fraction of the cost, that is completely false.
A nuclear plant can be built in like 5 years.
Can you point to any nuclear plant in a Western country that was built in five years in the past thirty years or so?
And the supply chain is not the issue when you have lots of orders.
Seriously? Building reactor vessels is a very specialized task that only few suppliers are even capable of. Add to that uranium mining, fuel rod production, fuel logistics and a host of other components - and all that will just fall from the sky once enough orders are signed?
On the other hand many countries don’t have areas that have enough sun and consistent wind.
Germany is already at over 50%, many other countries are far ahead of that. Your point has no factual basis.
Id also say that the part you said that cost of renewables combined with storage would be a fraction of the cost, that is completely false.
Here’s a source
Can you point to any nuclear plant in a Western country that was built in five years in the past thirty years or so?
what about the rogue boyscout one
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why did you specify in the west :)? You know why you did that, because nuclear plants do get built in 5 years elsewhere.
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emm, yes very much so. Like you said, they’re are even a few suppliers who can do that. They just need enough orders for it to make sense.
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you should check that data again. Renewables are great, but some countries have better access than others. Right now Germany is building gas plants and burning coal and there is no end in sight for that.
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I might check that file later thanks, but what I’m taking about is just plain physics. You can not store enough energy today to make a big difference at any cost. And the cost is really high and can not be close to what a power plant can generate on the fly. It’s just can’t. Especially if you are taking lithium batteries.
yup, and no waste issues that have to be held on site in cooling pools for decades (assuming a final storage point is ever resolved in your country).
we already know that we must improve transmission infrastructure across the board, if we’re going to have to do that either way, might as well embrace grid storage and go with as much renewable generation. AU, your Great Australian desert could power most of the southern pacific if you want to get wild :D
Exactly. Building nuclear power plants in the 80s should’ve been the way humanity went. Now, advancements in batteries (Sodium ion for example) and established supply chains means that solar/wind + batteries is the way to go.
I don’t agree with ur safety take on nuclear energy though. All nuclear energy accidents were the result of shitty operational management who were warned waaaay before. It’s like airlines in the 60s, where safety standards were hilariously bad. Now, with extremely stringent regulations, we can solve the safety issues.
Shitty operational management is systemic in organisations that operate huge centralized systems though. see: normal accidents accidents
I would disagree. Take a look at airplanes for instance. Good safety policy measures and enforcement can make seemingly high risk operations incredibly safe. Take a look at French nuclear reactors for example. Good nuclear safety policies, hence no accidents.
Nobody died at Fukushima and it was an outdated designed reactor that needed to be retrofitted.
Just wanna add that storing energy can also be done in other forms than electricity. For example, pump water up a hill with solar energy during daytime, and use turbines and gravity during the night
Nuclear waste is incredibly safe and disasters simply don’t happen anymore because of how strict safety protocols are
This getting heavily downvoted with no replies shows just how much of anti-nuclear is simply based on propaganda and fearmongering, not science. Nuclear is the second safest energy source in the world, nearly tied with solar for first, and actually was the first until not too long ago. And that is despite the heavy investment into renewables and disinvestment into nuclear. If anyone is that worried about the dangers of nuclear to people and the environment, they should turn their attention to hydro-energy (not to speak of fossil fuels, obviously).
What are even the major disasters regarding nuclear? One, Chernobyl, was in the USSR in the 80s; does anyone remember what phones looked like in the 80s? The other was in Fukushima, which is located in a country known for earthquakes and tsunamis, and it was not build to handle such events; and it still was nowhere near as bad as Chernobyl. I think I’ve also heard about one in the UK, but that was in the fucking 50s, and even smaller than Fukushima.
It’s all very well claiming that nuclear waste storage is safe but you can’t guarantee anything can be kept safe for 10000 years. Humans haven’t managed that for anything, ever.
You can’t really guarantee anything. What we do is play the odds. And the odds are pretty good.
I certainly agree that we’ve gotten much better at safely producing and storing. However, with climate change worsening, we continue to have unprecedented natural disasters in unexpected areas which concerns me the most.
harness it,
Getting more efficient and cost effective at a rapid pace. Still some environmental concerns over manufacturing, raw materials acquisition, and disposal of old equipment.
store it,
Getting more efficient and cost effective at a less rapid pace. Still significant environmental concerns over manufacturing, raw materials acquisition, and disposal of old equipment.
then distribute it.
Lots of effort and resources needed for this part. Need to subsidize consumer appliance conversion better.
Some countries have sun, some don’t. They might need nuclear. That is the reality.
Which countries? The UK is famous for its cloudy weather, yet solar is feasible there. Finland and Sweden are building more and more solar. Not sure where you’re talking about.
Until a weather event blocks out most of the sunlight. An extreme scenario would be what happened to the dinosaurs, however smaller scale versions or that, such as large volcano eruptions, seem entirely possible and could heavily restrict the amount of sunlight you have access to for long periods of time.
Portugal lies in Southern Europe, we get plenty of sun, and we make heavy use of solar, but that still isn’t enough sometimes, and I’m pretty sure we sometimes get our energy from Spain, who themselves use nuclear.
Can Nuclear plant electricity production be run in a decentralised way? No?! Not yet!?
Do we have alternatives to nuclear? Yes!?
We should avoid nuclear then.
Also, let’s not forget Uranium has a finite supply. A few years ago the IAEA estimated that at high usage scenarios (which might actually be happening now), by 2040 28% of remaining supplies would be used. Depending on different factors, that could either accelerate and run out not too long after, which is even for us a pretty short time. Other estimates were thinking up to about 200 years left, at current rates, 10 years ago so indeed not taking AI etc into account.
In the nineties they said there is only 30 years worth of oil at that times consumption.
If the need arises, we will find the uranium.
Source? I was a kid in the seventies and the OPEC shit show brought a lot of fresh of discussion and investigation into peak oil, and that was expected to be around now , but nobody I heard from said it would run out. Have some wikipedia with that: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil
May I quote that the predictions were decent, however “It has been recognized that conventional oil production has peaked around 2005–2006. What has prevented peak oil from then on is US tight oil which rapidly increased since the Global Financial Crisis in 2008. Additionally, but to a lesser extent, Canadian oil-sands production has helped increase oil supply since 2008.”
So yes, more sources were found, however they were mostly obtainable by tight oil, AKA fracking, and as we all know, fracking is economically viable only when all environmental and other damage is externalised.
Lol. Relax. Seriously, take a few deep breaths and maybe turn off your device for an hour.
Nobody cares about what you wrote. It’s not even the topic of conversation.
There’s also a fuckton of gold in the ocean, just waiting for someone to figure out how to filter the entire ocean and pull out the individual atoms. All at a profitable price point.
Same with uranium. Which means it’ll never happen.
We will have cracked fusion, mined the far side of the moon for helium3 and brought it back to terra before we crack that nut
For context; we’ve only mined ~200k tonnes of gold historically with an estimate ~50k tonnes left. The ocean holds 20milion tonnes, worth over $770Trillion and it’s not cost effective to get it out.
The environmental damage you will cause by digging shit up from the oceans, if that’s even possible, will be insane. Absolutely insane, completely bonkers, but it does prove once again that nuclear fanbois don’t give a rat’s arse about the environment.
You don’t have to dig anything, it’s literally in the water, you could filter it out. In theory.
The alternative for base load is batteries, not wind and solar renewables, since they are intermittent. We don’t have a good idea yet of just how expensive massive grid storage is yet, but the lead time would definitely be shorter.
The alternative to base load is load shifting, just move most loads to when enough power is available. Or in other words, base load is a thing because big power plants like nuclear and coal are slow and someone’s gotta use that power at all times.
Load shifting is the destruction of economic value, because it means people are making choices that aren’t optimal for their own lives.
Time is often written off in economic considerations, but that’s unwise because time is the most limited resource people have.
That’s really really expensive unless you already have natural upper and lower reservoirs.
