81–90 of 309 posts
> However, 58% thought that nuclear power caused climate change while only 46% thought that coal burning did so This raises some interesting thoughts about the nature and importance of democracy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of the things you've listed, I think the costs are really the only argument against nuclear. The inherit risks are supremely low and the catastrophic failure mode for nuclear plants isn't a nuclear winter, in the absolutely worst case it's a contamination of the area where the plant was built (Modern nukes are all about containing failures. So even while they've optimized for not failing, they've also optimized for w…
Even crazier - attacking the power lines doesn’t even require bolt cutters. A ballon or toy drone and some aluminized string or thin wire is more than enough to have it blow itself up.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Nuclear power has inherit risks that are not present in other forms of modern energy generation. The risk is mostly that there's a large, high-profile accident every 20 years. Coal power has probably killed more regular people (not miners) than nuclear due to its emissions, but it's metered out slowly, so it's less scary. People are more afraid of flying than driving for the same reason.
I do not consider coal to be a modern source of fuel, it’s clearly a legacy source that we need to be rid of.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nuclear is always touted as such a good idea on this site, but I want to take the opposite stance. - Nuclear power has inherit risks that are not present in other forms of modern energy generation. You can claim that todays designs are 99.9999999% safe, but there is no such thing as 100%. If humans build it, it will fail, and a single catastrophic nuclear plant failure isn’t acceptable. - Nuclear waste is difficult t…
> If humans build it, it will fail, and a single catastrophic nuclear plant failure isn’t acceptable. We do people focus so much on the danger aspect of nuclear energy only? Why not the thousands of people who died of dam break, the millions who die of lung failure due to exposure to polluants, or, the elephant in the room, the dozens of millions whoe die and will die of climate change? Sure, it's very sad that a han…
When those dumps leak into your groundwater it does indeed ruin your day.
"Government policy is to reduce this to 50% by 2035." I'm no expert on Nuclear power but it seems to me were going in the wrong direction. At a time when we're investing so much money in other fuels, we could be investing that in better nuclear power, like Small Modular Reactors [1], Sodium Cooled Fission, Small Pellet reactors, etc. [2] [1] https://www.energy.gov/ne/advanced-small-modular-reactors-sm... [2] https://…
The government policy for a reduction to 50% is not based on issues with nuclear power itself. As far as I have seen, there are mainly 2 reasons mentioned in the public debate: i) a concern about the disposal of nuclear wastes and the long-term cost of their storage, and ii) the desire to follow other countries' policies, with a focus on wind, water and sunlight, rather than leading the way with the cheapest and most…
The cost of waste storage is tiny.
By far the best would to join with Canada on next generation nuclear.
"Government policy is to reduce this to 50% by 2035." I'm no expert on Nuclear power but it seems to me were going in the wrong direction. At a time when we're investing so much money in other fuels, we could be investing that in better nuclear power, like Small Modular Reactors [1], Sodium Cooled Fission, Small Pellet reactors, etc. [2] [1] https://www.energy.gov/ne/advanced-small-modular-reactors-sm... [2] https://…
Nuclear is always touted as such a good idea on this site, but I want to take the opposite stance. - Nuclear power has inherit risks that are not present in other forms of modern energy generation. You can claim that todays designs are 99.9999999% safe, but there is no such thing as 100%. If humans build it, it will fail, and a single catastrophic nuclear plant failure isn’t acceptable. - Nuclear waste is difficult t…
Are we ignoring the hundred thousand people dying per year because of coal exhaust? Because it sure seems like that's what you're doing. 13,000 people die premature deaths per year because of coal power in the United States, more in countries with more coal and less stringent emissions controls. If we're evaluating "inherent risks", you really should include that in your calculus.
Natural gas power production probably kills ~4,000 people per year, by the by.
> Nuclear waste is difficult to deal with. Our current strategies include finding a secret underground cave, and hoping no one accidentally stumbles onto it. Not to mention we have no plan for dealing with widespread use of nuclear power and the waste that would produce.
So is fly ash. Hell, so is CO2.
> Nuclear plants take ages to build, and are insanely expensive. These costs make it impractical for a city to invest in. They also require massive amounts of concrete (bad for the environment, locally and globally) and absurd amounts of space.
Never see these arguments raised against coal or natural gas plants and production infrastructure.
Also, it's not like governments don't waste crap tons of money all the time on dumb things. The F-35 is up to what, half a trillion dollars now? The Zumwalt class destroyer cost $7.5 billion each and we don't even have ammunition for its main gun. There is plenty of money around to make nuclear happen, we just decide to pour that money into useless shit rather than power.
> Nuclear is centralized, and vulnerable to attack. In a national defense situation, nuclear power plants are large, easily identifiable, delicate targets that can take an entire area’s grid offline with a single hit to a cooling tower. The damage doesn’t even need to be severe, just enough to warrant a shutdown and inspection.
I was unaware that natural gas power plants can move. Oh wait.
The power grid itself is a huge, vulnerable thing. The actual target for enemy actors isn't the power plant itself, which is usually hardened, but rather transformer stations that are usually soft targets. Hell, one got knocked out in CA recently by an unknown actor with a single rifle, no fancy nation state equipment needed.
> Compared to other readily available green power sources, I cannot fathom why nuclear is preferred to a safe, distributed, clean grid of solar panels.
The rub is that it is currently impossible to run our power grid on renewables. Night time is a thing, as are still days when the wind does not blow. Maybe in a few decades we'll have sufficient grid level storage in order to make this a moot discussion, but we're not there yet. Right now any grid running a significant portion of renewables still requires "peaker" plants to provide base level load when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing.
And I say that someone with rooftop solar. It's great, but I can't run my house on it at night.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do not consider coal to be a modern source of fuel, it’s clearly a legacy source that we need to be rid of.
Well too bad because closing nuclear reactors right now means reopening coal plants, as we've recently seen in Germany and France. We don't really have the luxury of having time when it comes to energy/electricity and nuclear objectively is the best stopgap measure until (if) we manage to master intermittent energy sources.
I recommend you try and understand the position somebody’s trying to take before you argue against them, lest you end up embarrassing yourself arguing the wrong points, like you are now.
I added some clarity to my point above.
What the site does not seem to talk about is that an internal commission in 2011 found[1] that the real cost per kWh is around 50-56c. Nuclear power in France is heavily subsidized, directly and indirectly. [1] https://bit.ly/3DAGW2s
Earlier quoted context omitted.
are you certain this remains true on a grid dominated by wind and solar? it is true at the moment because the grid just deals with the vagaries of these sources and other generators (and consumers) bear the cost. Will this continue to be the case?
Renewables have zero marginal cost to generate. When the spot price goes negative, they can simply stop exporting. Other generators are paying others to take power and for the fuel they're using to generate. As renewables penetration increases, it only puts more pain on legacy generators and increases the arb opportunity for storage (which can charge when power is cheap, and discharge when demand is high). This is th…
You mention zero energy prices but fail to address the major problem - reliability. The power is always on and losing power is catastrophic.
The solution to the current problem is more transmission capacity. Not batteries.
Wind and solar can help but they are not the solution unto themselves.
Oh and the cost of wind and solar are not only in fuel. There's lots of costs to O&M and grid balancing, both of which are not included in their energy cost.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nuclear is always touted as such a good idea on this site, but I want to take the opposite stance. - Nuclear power has inherit risks that are not present in other forms of modern energy generation. You can claim that todays designs are 99.9999999% safe, but there is no such thing as 100%. If humans build it, it will fail, and a single catastrophic nuclear plant failure isn’t acceptable. - Nuclear waste is difficult t…
Of the things you've listed, I think the costs are really the only argument against nuclear. The inherit risks are supremely low and the catastrophic failure mode for nuclear plants isn't a nuclear winter, in the absolutely worst case it's a contamination of the area where the plant was built (Modern nukes are all about containing failures. So even while they've optimized for not failing, they've also optimized for w…
Well, not really. While the probability of an accident is indeed low (but not super low by any means, as near misses are often not publicised), the damage/cost of an accident follows a heavy-tailed distribution. As a result the average cost is extremely high.
So high in fact, that there is no market price for it. As a result no nuclear power plant worldwide is insured - the risk is directly born by the society. If we re-distribute the risk to the private sector there would simply be no nuclear power plants.
Regardless if you are pro/contra nuclear - this 'market view' is strong indication that the risk can't be easily dismissed.
Of independent interest: Some studies even conclude that this is one of the rare cases where we observe a distribution without a first moment in real life.