Three Mile Island was the worst nuclear accident in US history. Was mainly caused by poor design of human feedback systems which caused operational confusion and lead to a catastrophic failure.
Three Mile Island was the worst nuclear accident in US history. Was mainly caused by poor design of human feedback systems which caused operational confusion and lead to a catastrophic failure.
We are installing gobs of distributed, cheap, safe solar and batteries to smooth load and nuclear proponents will still be running around advocating for expensive centralized nuclear reactors that generate either long-lasting radioactive waste or nuclear bombs.
🤷♂️
One kilogram of uranium produces more power than one hectare of solar panels does in two years.
Then there’s the waste product to consider.
No, not from nuclear. That’s an issue to be dealt with certainly, but I’m talking about the waste from the production and disposal of solar panels that is ongoing because they don’t last forever.
Solar panels are mostly aluminum and glass and about 90% recyclable. More importantly, they are inert and not radioactive.
You can’t seriously compare nuclear waste to solar panels.
Maybe they’re 90% recyclable, but 90% of decommissioned solar panels are not recycled and end up in landfills. The silver lining of nuclear waste storage being limited is we recycle the heck out of it. I guess solar does have a better solution already, though.
I’m not comparing them, I’m saying that it’s inaccurate to ignore the effects that solar has.
The chemicals in producing PV panels are toxic. Part of why production got shifted to countries like China is because without regulation on the waste disposal they are so much cheaper to make there. Sucks for the residents, but that’s capitalism.
Energy is used to make PV. True of everything, but when solar is advertised it leans heavy on the free energy that the device generates, not how much it took to make it. But at least that energy can come from solar too…except it comes from fossil fuels.
The heavy metals that make up part of the other 10% are the later waste problem. I don’t know if you can consider those metals inert since they are considered hazardous waste, but they can’t be discounted either. A recycling program to recover everything possible and then controlling the hazardous leftovers would make this less of a point, but we’re not doing that fully yet, so there are things going in the landfills now that could leach into the environment.
All of this can be improved of course. I’m just introducing the fact that solar, like anything we do to keep our society at its level, has drawbacks too.
Nuclear has its problems, as I mentioned. I didn’t pretend that solar is bad and nuclear is all flowers. But the issues it faces are much different and have their own solutions, and nuclear energy density and flexibility is far better than solar ever could be.
I never understand why people pick their sides and then try to make other choices seem like the antithesis to help their cause. Why not find the best solutions for all of the non-fossil fuel sources, and have them all where they make the most sense? Diversity and redundancy is far better than a monopoly won by falsehoods.
The market found the best solution: renewables.
You are the one here arguing we should be doing nuclear. You are the person here with an agenda.
Of course the market selected renewables as the favored child. “Renewable” and “green” are marketing terms, as is “net zero” and “recycling”. I’m not here with any agenda, I just brought up some points about environmental damage that solar can do on both sides of its existence. I guess I ruffled some feathers.
Did you miss my points about having some of both? Or did you just read the first few lines and rage post? I figured this was a forum where we could discuss the pros and cons of all sides, not just hate on anyone with a differing view.
👀
The restrictions on nuclear fuel recycling might be lifted soon, so that argument may very well become moot as well.
Now do the math on the cost of that uranium and the facility you need to turn it into power compared to the cost of the solar.
If you think cost isn’t the primary factor in all energy production … 🤷♂️
Edit: not to mention all the essentially free developed space we already have in spades to deploy solar to: rooftops.
Utility-scale solar comes out to around US$0.06 per kWh (source). Nuclear power comes out to US$0.07 per kWh (source).
Commercial-scale solar costs US$0.11 per kWh. Residential rooftop solar comes out to US$0.16 per kWh.
Edit: This does not take into account the cost of battery capacity or pumped-storage hydroelectric solutions, which are necessary for solar solutions but not nuclear ones. Lithium-ion battery storage costs US$139 per kWh. You’d need at least 500 MWh to accommodation a medium-size city, which would cost US$70 million. If you get 5,000 charge cycles out of the battery, this adds an additional US$0.03 per kWh.
Whoa real information
All of which ignores lots of real world factors that aren’t being included in the costs the commenter outlines.
Again, if nuclear were cheaper, you wouldn’t all be here downvoting my comments, you’d be discussing all the great new nuclear being onlined.
Renewables have won. They’re cheaper and easier to deploy, they’re distributed rather than concentrated, and they have lower impacts on the environment.
FWIW: I thought thorium reactors might have had some legs in the 00s, but it became clear those didn’t make fiscal sense, either.
It does not ignore any information.
The cost per kWh is the totality of all information. It is the end product. That is the total costs of everything divided by the number of kilowatt-hours of electricity produced.
I understand that you’re deeply invested in this argument, but you’ve lost. You’re repeating the same claim over and over, and when proven wrong, you just said “nuh uh” and pretended that nothing I said is true.
Nuclear energy can be cheaper than solar or wind. It is more reliable than solar and wind. It uses less land than solar or wind. All of these are known facts. That’s why actual scientists support expanding nuclear energy 2 to 1.
But people will still dislike it because they’re scared of building the next Three Mile Island or Fukushima. That, as I explained, is the reason why fewer nuclear plants are being built. Because the scientists, the ones who know the most about these, are not in charge. Instead, it’s the people in the last column that are calling the shots. Do not repeat this drivel of “iF nUcLeaR pOweR PlanTs So Good WhY aRen’T tHerE moRe of ThEM??”. I have explained why. It is widely known why. Your refusal to accept reality does not make it less real.
That is the end of the argument. I will not respond to anything else you say, because it is clear to me that no amount of evidence will cause you to change your mind. So go ahead, post your non-chalant reply with laughing emojis and three instances of “lol” or “lmao” and strut over the chessboard like you’ve won.
Because I don’t give a pigeon’s shit what you have to say any more.
Show me the line items for long term handling of the waste, please. I am curious how much they allocated.
Man, we could generate some good wind power with how fast those goalposts are moving!
So many twists and turns here!
Its alright i wasnt going to tell anyone i knew the best energy solution after reading lemmy comments. I haven’t voted at all in this thread.
Nuclear definitely has a ton of commitment. It takes like 60 years to decommission one right?
The Trojan Nuclear Plant near my city was closed in 1992. They started moving stuff away in 2003. The cooling tower was demolished in 2006. The various other buildings were demolished in 2008. All that remains are some security posts and abandoned office buildings and empty tool sheds.
Yeah. Minimum is like 20. Note that stopping it from generating power is quite early in the decommissioning schedule.
A good chunk of the world is still stuck where the options are coal vs nuclear for base load coverage. Of course people are going to push for the safest option for large load needs.
We’re generations away from worldwide energy needs being met entirely by green renewables and battery banks. I’ll never be against expansion of those technologies, but nuclear is an important middle step that is far less dangerous than the most widely used technologies for meeting base load (coal).
Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Why should any underdeveloped nation want to build more expensive nuclear plants that come with tons of issues when they can now install solar, wind and batteries for less?
The value proposition is absent for developing countries. When you have a lot more money, then nuclear starts to become a serious option.
You can build nuclear plants in almost any climate. That is not true for solar and wind. Nuclear plants are also “one and done”. You don’t need accompanying battery infrastructure to accompany them to get reliable output. As long as you have water, uranium rods, and nuclear scientists to run the plant, you will have reliable electricity output.
On top of that, one nuclear plant can produce as much power in two hectares of land as a wind farm could in a hundred hectares.
If any of that were actually true, we wouldn’t be net negative on nuclear reactors onlined over the past couple decades.
Starting to think the nuclear lobby has been pushed by the fossil fuels industry to delay renewables adoption.
No, in fact. The nuclear lobby has been historically raw dogged by the malding fossil fuel and coal plant industries for decades. Up until recently, traditional power lobbies haven’t seen renewables as legitimate competition due to issues of scaling to meet demand, issues of location restricting where they can be built, etc.
We’ve had reactor designs ready to use the spent fuel you’re so damn concerned about for years now. Turns it into even less dangerous more spent fuel as more energy is pulled out of it (if you’ll excuse the incredibly simple summation). Incredibly efficient.
Fully researched. Risks, benefits, construction costs mapped out, maintenance costs mapped out, decomissioning costs mapped out, how long they’d be safe to run mapped out.
Every single time construction of a new plant comes up, there is a massive fucking push from the older “burn dangerous shit to pollute the air and generate power” industry to drum up fear again until the local community "not in my back yard"s hard enough to stop it.
Let me make it as explicit as possible: People like you, freaking out about hypotheticals surrounding nuclear power that they have never taken the time to understamd themselves, are a huge part of the reason why greener energy production is so slow to take off.
If green energy is so ready to take the fuck over and make nuclear obsolete, how in the absolute fuck do you explain what’s going on in Germany right now? Are they just too stupid to do things the right, safe, sustainable way that has no drawbacks at all? Or maybe, just maybe, there are still issues preventing reasonable widespread adoption of renewables, and the smog belchers want us at each other’s throats instead of at theirs?
Fucking hell. Let me know when you start accusing people of being bots or paid shills so I can just fucking block you already.
You seem to think that the politics behind choosing energy sources is based on rational reasoning. It is not. It is fear and emotion that drives the decision to not build nuclear plants. If humans were all rational, there would be more nuclear reactors coming online every year.
But yes, you are correct, the fossil fuel industry has a hand in this… in fear-mongering nuclear power to discourage its adoption, that is. Because when countries take nuclear power offline, they are usually replaced with fossil fuel plants. This has happened all over Germany, who are replacing decommissioned nuclear plants with new coal plants. And it has happened in my city as well. Portland General Electric decommissioned their Trojan Nuclear Plant, which at one point produced an eighth of all the electricity in Oregon, and its capacity has been replaced with mostly natural gas plants.
Quite the opposite, starting in the 1970s. We’d have a lot more nuclear power and less red tape had the petroleum industry and politics not put a scare into the public about the nuclear boogeyman. Your comment above about nuclear bombs is precisely the angle they took, using the tension with Russia as a prop for inaccurate science claims.
Nuclear power plants don’t make nuclear bombs…
Some nuclear reactor designs can be used for breeding plutonium, as well as for producing power. It was a bigger issue in the past, though; nowadays there are plenty of well tested designs that aren’t capable of breeding plutonium
Oh really? Neat
Thorium was being tested for viability alongside uranium, and got scrapped not because it wasn’t a feasible design, but because it couldn’t produce weapon grade material as a byproduct. Some countries are finally exploring thorium again, hopefully with some success.
The actual quantity of radioactive waste generated is tiny, and even combining the storage space for waste products with the footprint of the reactor plant itself, nuclear is by far the most energy-dense and space-efficient form of power generation we have.
How long does that waste need to be safely stored and what are the projected costs there? How do they compare to solar that you can deploy today?
We are not running out of space to put power generation, but we definitely need to worry about costs.
Not entirely sure if this video covers costs but the short answer is that there are ways to safely store nuclear waste that won’t impact the surrounding environment.
https://youtu.be/4aUODXeAM-k
Are you paid to spew bs or is this something you enjoy doing?
Just create cheap RTGs with the radioactive waste. Invent the process and give humanity the best of both worlds. All you have to do is increase the power generation from a few hundred watts up an order of magnitude using garbage instead of actual purpose engineered materials. Simple.
Oh you sweet ignorant child. Industrial scale battery storage to offset solar for continues power during night time hours is horrifically expensive when you’re talking gigawatt grids, to say nothing of the severe safety hazard they are.