Nuclear energy is clean

I do not feel like you are giving me a good faith response, but I am responding in the hope that you are.

> So the argument is: because we haven't managed to actually find a long term storage we can make up numbers about recycling and lifetime of the waste?

No, that is not the argument.

1) Those lifetime numbers aren't made up. I'm not sure why you would claim so. You can easily check these numbers. (This is why I'm concerned about good faith. You are just saying that the article is flat out lying, not hand waving)

2) We don't need repositories. There are other sources, including our own acidburnNSA[0]. Storing things on sight is perfectly fine and we can do so for hundreds of years safely. I think many miss a lot of the purposes of deep geological repositories and the strange constraints they have on them. One such constraint (driven by cold war fear) is that these sites can't accidentally be dug up by future archeologists or aliens thousands of years after we are gone and who may not understand our language. It is a weird constraint because it's assuming we have a nuclear war, wipe everyone out, and forget everything about radiation. This is really unlikely.

> there are massive uncertainties about not just the storage, but also the logistics of the transport, the maintance etc..

Would you care to explain? We've advanced storage techniques in the last 70 years we've been using nuclear. What is the concern with transportation? We've had them fall out of planes (during a period where engines would also fall off planes, but this doesn't happen anymore) and hit by trains all without any problem. It sounds like we have room for mistakes/error. Those examples are success of real world testing.

> Where are the real world examples?

> now opened a long term storage facility is Finland

It feels like you answered your own question. But here's France's storage[1] and Russia's[2]. You should also read [0] because it discusses easier methods.

[0] https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html

[1] https://twitter.com/Orano_usa/status/1182662569619795968

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5uN0bZBOic&t=105s

I’m looking at the list of reactors on Wikipedia and what I’m seeing is pretty much a 8-10 year minimum from construction start to operation start. China is a big exception to this patterns (taking 7-9 years), but China is in a league of its own when it comes to mega-projects. The of the few reactors that did start operation outside of China in the past 20 years there is often some involvement of Chinese construction. (e.g. reactors 2 and 3 in the Karichi nuclear plant). In Europe, Rostov is one of few that seems to have broken the 10 year minimum with their 3rd and 4th reactors (7 and 8 years respectively). But reactors 1 and 2 in the same facility started construction in 1983 but didn’t start operation until 2001 and 2010 respectively.

Scanning the list of new reactors it seems that 8-10 years is a reasonable estimate for reactors in an existing plants, and close to 20 years is a reasonable estimate for reactors in new facilities. This gives 2030 as the earliest reasonable time for a new reactor in an existing plant outside of China that you already have the design for, and 2040 for new facilities if you are starting your planning phase now.

Are you willing to risk that energy storage is still gonna be lacking in 2030-2040? Are you sure carbon capturing of natural gas plants will still be economically unfeasible then?

Honestly though, if we still haven’t sorted out our carbon emission before 2040 I think we have bigger things to worry about then 24 hour access to energy at a low price.

Sure, easy to grant you that Nuclear is not perfect.

But I'm not comparing Nuclear to perfection; I'm comparing it to existing alternatives. Climate change is real, the stakes are high, and nuclear brings a lot to the table.

Nuclear can provide base load energy. To provide base load with renewables requires battery storage that doesn't exist. I'm sure the technology exists but whether because expense or other issues, energy grids around the world don't use grid level storage. And consumers are not interested in trading a little reliability for greener grids; they consistently insist that dirty alternatives close the gap.

And very rough estimate here (it is going to vary considerably based on the solar panels and plant in question, but the principle is unchanged): 1 nuclear plant is roughly 4,000 sq km of solar panels. So like 80 Manhattans ever inch of it a solar panel array. The environmental destruction caused by solar panel array and wind farms is real. The amount of mining required to create the materials needed for 4k solar panels also has a very high environmental cost. Nuclear is compact and requires less materials.

We deal with all kinds of waste that we know would be damaging if it was released in the environment. Radioactivity is dangerous, but I would argue far better understood than many other phenomenon (like micro plastics). It is a challenge, but there is no avoiding challenges. The tradeoffs feel well worth it to me.

I strongly disagree with your point “we can install twice the capacity in MW for solar and still have money left over to put into a smarter grid or storage” because you appear to be making up numbers - what is your reference to sources?

You used MW in that comment - your new comment is not clarifying whether you made a mistake or what your actual point is.

LCOE is an averaged cost/MWh, which is absolutely inappropriate to use when discussing whether nuclear is expensive or not, because LCOE ignores usage patterns (which you obviously know, but are hand-waving away as “money left over”). From your Wikipedia link: “One of the most important potential limitations of LCOE is that it may not control for time effects associated with matching electricity production to demand” and “To ensure enough electricity is always available to meet demand, storage or backup generation may be required, which adds costs that are not included in the LCOE”.

Finally, almost any plot that uses “installed capacity” is deceptive by design: because capacity factors make solar/wind appear 5x better, which is not a trivial difference on a graph. Instantaneous capacity is usually not relevant (except during “peaker” loads).

Dedicated batteries are not cheaper yet, but (a) price is still on a rapid downward trend, (b) repurposing old batteries from electric cars once the batteries are no longer good enough for transport is cheaper, and (c) it isn't the only storage mechanism, for example pumped hydroelectric and hydrogen are both really cheap.

The battery production capacity is currently in a rapid growth phase. I'm not sure what timescales you think are "for some time longer", but I think 10 (optimistic) to 20 years (pessimistic) would be enough to see the global electricity market almost totally (95% or more) transformed to renewables.

While I personally am relaxed about nuclear power if it's done right, the political realities are that it terrifies people and that corners get cut just often enough to make the terror not entirely unjustified, so it's not going to happen on a significant scale unless there's a reason for the government to ignore the will of the people.