Mycle Schneider isn’t a trustworthy source. He’s an anti-nuclear activist with a clear agenda and a history of misrepresenting or obfuscating facts about the industry and its inherent danger.
An argument that nuclear power makes the climate crisis worse
161–170 of 247 posts
Re: An argument that nuclear power makes the climate crisis worse
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
>If a truck full of solar panels crashes on the highway, that highway doesn’t become a superfund site. It doesn’t cost hundreds of millions to clean up, the local community doesn’t see a massive spike in cancer. >You cannot say the same about nuclear waste. Sure you can. Look-up transport casks.
An account of the 1984 test: https://www.railmagazine.com/trains/heritage/it-s-a-lovely-d... And the BBC Six O'clock News report: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo22l4wJdx8
TLDR: That test showed no leaks after hitting the flask with a train at 100mph.
Re: An argument that nuclear power makes the climate crisis worse
#163Re: An argument that nuclear power makes the climate crisis worse
#164https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/02/05...
I think real world examples are always good. Germany went all solar, France all nuclear. Seems like France is winning (cheap clean energy).
Re: An argument that nuclear power makes the climate crisis worse
#165https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/02/05...
I think real world examples are always good. Germany went all solar, France all nuclear. Seems like France is winning (cheap clean energy).
Germany didn't go "all solar", they went "all coal and methane".
https://grist.org/energy/the-cost-of-germany-going-off-nucle...
Re: An argument that nuclear power makes the climate crisis worse
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the short term nuclear is undoubtedly expensive, but when the debt from construction is payed off, it becomes an incredibly cheap and reliable source of energy. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cbeJIwF1pVY
As far as I'm aware, dealing with the waste has cost taxpayers in Germany quite a lot over the last couple of decades, and all of the really hot stuff is sitting in glorified warehouses with no end in sight. I have a feeling this may still become a very significant part of the overall costs. Has any other country actually solved that problem?
These glorified warehouses are cheap. Also cheap are former mines where 50 year old spent fuel can be placed with risks below that of chemical plants.
Re: An argument that nuclear power makes the climate crisis worse
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
That depends on how you measure land use; are you counting the amount of space that becomes otherwise unusable, i.e. the relatively small area occupied by the towers, or the entire area of the fields in which the wind turbines are placed? (which can still be used for other things like agriculture). Personally I think wind turbines look quite majestic, and I like to see them when I go for a drive in the countryside. T…
What are you talking about? Wind turbines use substantial sums of copper and that requires mining on a scale much larger than uranium mining.[1] [1]: https://copperalliance.org.uk/knowledge-base/education/educa...
That link doesn't mention anything about the amount of land required to mine the copper needed for wind turbines.
It must be far less than is needed for mining the uranium needed to generate the same power. Think about it; the copper required for the wind turbines is a fixed one-off cost that lasts the lifetime of the turbine, and can be recycled. Nuclear reactors need a continual supply of uranium (about 27 tonnes per year for a 1GWe reactor: http://bit.ly/3voR0II).
Furthermore copper concentrations are typically around 100 times higher than uranium concentrations, which means you need far more uranium ore than copper ore to produce the same weight of metal. Copper has been extracted with relative ease for thousands of years.
And then of course, there's all the metals and concrete that are needed to build the nuclear power station.
Re: An argument that nuclear power makes the climate crisis worse
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, as it establishes the potential bias of the article author. If this article was written by typically a pro-nuclear author it would be much more noteworthy.
It is possible to be both biased and correct. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Appeal_to_bias
Noting an author's biases/motives, like agarttha did, is useful. It's not the same as asserting that a conclusion is logically false because of the biases of the person who argued it.
Re: An argument that nuclear power makes the climate crisis worse
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nuclear friendly countries are struggling with the costs. Multiple examples of problems were given for France, yet the French government likes nuclear power.
Electricity in France is so cheap that EDF has had to raise domestic electricity prices in order to make it possible for other providers to compete
Are the prices subsidized? Are they actually that cheap or are you just paying the rest on your tax bill?
Re: An argument that nuclear power makes the climate crisis worse
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're good until 2030 and then they're all going to start aging out at more or less the same time. Nuclear power is extraordinarily capital intensive but fairly reasonably priced to run once it's built. This also creates a strong incentive to run plants beyond their operating lifetime, which France may do. That takes us into exciting new territory safety-wise.
And then it becomes comes time to dismantle them, and they turn capital intensive again.
This tail end expense is maybe the largest problem with nuclear power. Economic systems and corporate structures are not set up for this. The whole economy is used to things costing nothing at the end of their life, or nearly so.
Done with a car? Scrap it, strip it, recycle the recyclables, and toss the rest. Done with a building? Implode it and cart it away. Same goes for almost all other pieces of machinery and capital.
Done with a nuke? Now you have another cost almost as high as building it to begin with! It's like having to buy your car and then spend almost the same amount to un-buy it at the end of its life span.
Yes such things can be priced in, but it requires a tremendous amount of foresight and discipline. There is a constant temptation to cut corners on any cost that won't be incurred for a long time, especially if that time is beyond the term of a politician or the career of a corporate bureaucrat.
Done with a solar panel? Send it to a bulk electronics recycler. Done with a wind turbine? Scrap it like any other piece of heavy machinery.
There are other industries with non-trivial decommissioning costs, like chemicals, oil and gas, etc., but at least the time frame is reasonably short. Nuclear decommissioning costs drag on and on, theoretically many times longer than the plant's useful life span.