holy shit people stop fucking talking when you dont grasp a concept, nuclear energy is genuinely the most green energy there is by a longshot when all factors are considered.
Good job Georgia! While yes they are not technically renewable i think nuclear power is a much more realistic solution for energy problems as true renewables don’t make nearly enough to power a country and what waste nuclear power does produce is comically little in comparison to the energy it makes. I don’t get why people are so against it.
Renewables aren’t consistent enough alone, so they need a big consistent buddy to help them out. It could be coal or gas, but we’d much rather have nuclear.
Why expensive nuclear reactors instead of cheaper renewables?
Edit: 8 likes, 11 dislikes… This makes me sad, because it’s the same behavior as on Reddit. Different oppinion? Downvote!!! Now I have a “-3” score on this post and could think about deleting it. That’s how we create echo chambers on Lemmy.
It was sold as being modular, with lots of fabrication happening off site. That didn’t come to fruition. It was also not too far removed from nukegate in South Carolina.
@Claidheamh@ndsvw
It depends on the renewables. Wind and photovoltaics have stability issues. Hydro and geothermal are more stable. Nuclear is compact and high power but has huge waste disposal issues.
The waste disposal is a solvable issue, that is still less nefarious than fossil fuel emissions. If you set the goal to replace ALL fossil fuel power generation, then nuclear is a necessary component of a renewable energy based grid. Geothermal and hydro are great and necessary, but can’t provide a reliable base load for the entire grid. Nuclear plants are complemental to renewables, not competition.
What do you prefer? A power plant where all the hazardous material it generates you throw out into the atmosphere, or one where you can capture all of it into a container and prevent it from going out into the environment?
> Renewables plus storage are very well capable of reliable supply.
Don’t get me wrong, they are capable of a much larger percentage of supply than they currently provide, but to handle the predictable periods of peak demand on the grid, it would be incredibly inefficient to rely only on renewables plus storage. It’s not the most environmentally friendly solution for that.
Do you have an english translation for the link in the edit btw?
>an institution as unsuspicious of being “too green” as it gets
Being too green is not the problem. The problem is not being green enough…
What do you mean hasn’t been solved? Nuclear waste is being processed and stored constantly and with high safety. Not to mention reprocessing which could be done if not for being outlawed.
The only permanent storage for high level waste is currently being built in Finland, if I’m not mistaken. Germany thought they had found one, but they have to retrieve all waste because of leaks. Back to square one.
All we have up to now is temporary surface storage.
We forgot about the pyramides (4k years ago) and found some of them recently. There is research about how to warn future humans about the thread what turned out to be very difficult, because in 4k years, there have been multiple languages…
I would not call the status quo a permanent solution. Given the time it takes that stuff to not be dangerous anymore, we have got a temporary solution.
Also we didn’t forget about the pyramids. What does that even mean? People have lived right next to them since they were built.
There are more pyramids than just the 3 of Giza in Egypt… During the last 100 years, multiple pyramids (probably 100s) have been found that were forgotten by humanity. There are discoveries in China, Peru, Egypt, …
The pyramids weren’t buried 1km under the surface
Somehow ironic. Yes, the Tomb of Tutankhamun was not buried 1km under the surface. But it was discovered 3.250 years after it was build in 1922.
Anyway… There is Egyptology, which has the goal to find out what they have done 1000s of years ago, because we did/do not know that. We don’t know who some of the pharaohs are, some pharaohs that are mentioned haven’t even been found. He can read some of the writings, we can’t read all of them. Lots of knowledge was lost, and that’s what you need to realized when you are planning to store stuff for 1000s of years.
Yes there are archaeological sites which have been forgotten and rediscovered.
Nothing you’re saying is a strong argument about self sealing deep storage waste burial sites. I don’t think you realize just how little waste nuclear reactors produce, they’re not pyramids, they’re a few barrels across years.
Germany alone expects it to be 10.500 tons until 2080. And that’s only the “highly radioactive” part. That’s more than a few barrels. And there are more countries on this planet than just the one I’m from…
sorry for the confusion. It’s of course not 11 tons. It’s 11,000 (11k) tons. Germany uses the dot as a “thousands separator”.
Not really relevant to deep salt storage.
Well, I disagree with that. We can simply not imagine what happens in 10k years or how the planet looks in 10k years. And being sure that none of the many “final” storage places will be opened in the future is naive…
BTW, in 10k years, your grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-children will live on this planet.
Ah. Even so, that’s less than the trash output of 1000 citizens. The quantity of waste is not very worrisome to me at all, especially considering all the other possible hazardous wastes from other industrial processes.
Ah. Even so, that’s less than the trash output of 1000 citizens
It’s just one country (BTW: one that spent much money looking for a final storage for decades and has not yet found it).
And to be honest: I’d feel better living in a country without the 11k tons of it and don’t agree with that that’s just nothing.
You say, it’s not much, I say, it’s too much. Yes, you can compare it with 11k tons of trash or 11k tons of poop or salt or feathers to make it look less dangerous, but it’s still 11k tons of highly radioactive waste.
@Claidheamh
Nuclear is also very expensive. Bioenergy is the one I missed. That is far cheaper than nuclear and could be scaled up easily. I'm sure there will be a need for both the existing nuclear and indeed some fossil fuels for a while yet. But I think we should focus on getting our renewable energy resources in place in advance of building any new nuclear plants.
@Claidheamh straw too. Biofuels are in fact carbon neutral. But yes release CO2. Nuclear also produces CO2 mainly due to the mining, processing and transportation of the fuel. But far less than say coal or gas. The reality is that some new reactors are going to be built. But I believe the money would have been better invested in onshore wind.
That’s what their marketing would like you to believe. But they’re only carbon neutral if you take into account the carbon being sequestered by the growth of plants before they’re burned. By that measure they’re just as carbon neutral as coal.
> Nuclear also produces CO2 mainly due to the mining, processing and transportation of the fuel.
That’s not nuclear that produces CO2, that’s mining, processing, and transportation. It’s transversal to anything you build, be it nuclear, bioenergy, wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, anything. In the ideal conditions of your power being entirely carbon-free, then so is all of that.
Point is that’s just as big an “it” as the nuclear costs. Which, in a zero emissions world, is a very small “it”. I’m not arguing against renewables, I’m arguing against fossil fuels. We need to replace all of it ASAP, and realistically nuclear is the easiest, most reliable way to reach that goal. Just compare Germany and France’s emissions per capita, and then the distribution of their power source, and electricity costs.
ASAP? Take a look at planning and construction times of nuclear plants. Like Hinkley Point C in the UK for instance. Announced in 2010, generation now postponed to 2026, years behind schedule and billions over budget. And that’s on an already pre-existing nuclear site.
Cost? Estimated 100 GBP/MWh. The difference to market prices will probably be coughed up by the taxpayer.
Renewables are way faster to install, for a fraction of the cost.
They should have started sooner and with more plants. But it’s still much better for that nuclear plant be complete in 2030, than never. Delays and mismanagement aren’t unique to nuclear, and no excuse to stop from building it.
>Renewables are way faster to install, for a fraction of the cost.
So why are we still using fossil fuels then? The best time to start building alternatives is yesterday. Second best time is now.
By that measure they’re just as carbon neutral as coal.
Well no, because coal is deep deposits of carbon which have essentially left the carbon cycle. By digging it up and burning it we are adding carbon back which otherwise wasn’t already an issue. Biofuels by definition rely on the carbon currently in the carbon cycle so they do not have this issue.
Sure, but the carbon in coal was captured from the atmosphere by plants previously (that’s what I meant by “by that measure”). Let’s just leave the carbon where it is, whether coal or plants, and not burn any more of it back into the atmosphere, please.
I’m saying they are fundamentally different and it is 100% true in theory that biofuel is carbon neutral. The plants scrub co2 from the atmosphere, then release that biomass out. It is physically not capable of releasing more than it scrubs except for conversion of co2 to higher co2 equivalent GHG.
Coal and oil are talking carbon from reserves which are currently not causing GHG effects and moving that carbon out to the atmosphere.
The dead reserves, coal and oil, are NOT currently greenhouse gases (GHG). They have no effect on global warming, they are essentially inert.
Growing and burning living reserves takes currently active GHG, literally they use carbon from the air to grow their biomass (I.e. leaves, stems, everything). That ghg is temporarily stored in the plants, then equally released into the atmosphere from exactly where it came from.
The carbon can’t be created or destroyed in either process from nothing, it’s coming from somewhere. When burning the fuel that carbon is released to the atmosphere in the form of co2 and other products. Fossil fuels, from inert carbon repositories that haven’t been in the atmosphere for many millions, hundreds of millions, of years. For biofuel, it’s carbon that may have been in the atmosphere at most like… A year ago. As soon as yesterday.
Does that help clear things up? I was intentionally repetitive in case one method was more effective than the other.
I know all that, but I don’t think you’re understanding the point I’m making. Grow all those plants, and leave the carbon there. It’s a much better use of our resources than burning it all again straight after. Let them become coal. And then continue not burning it.
You asked what the difference was and claimed that biofuels aren’t carbon neutral and that both are equivalent. I explained why they are carbon neutral in theory and why they are very different from burning fossil fuels.
Carbon capture and biofuels are approaching two extremely different problems. Carbon capture is not mutually exclusive with biofuels, they aren’t even close to alternatives. Framing them as alternatives is ridiculous. Literally different problems, carbon capture doesn’t produce power (the opposite, in fact) and biofuels are extremely inefficient land use for carbon capture, and slow.
That just sounds like absurdly naive or bad faith black and white thinking, honestly. It doesn’t make sense as a claim.
In that case you should be in favor of nuclear, as it’s the only real replacement we have for fossil fuels, no matter what Shell and BP will try to tell us.
There are interesting documentations about this topic. Basically, you need to plan 1000s of years into the future. I’m not sure whether there is even one plan that worked for 1k years… I mean… Hitler tried it… He called it “1000-jähriges Reich”… It lasted a few years. Anyway…
How do you want to warn the humans that live here in 4k years about what is down there? They will speak a totally different language. Do you want to use signs? Where do you put them? You do you make sure, they last 1000s of years? It’s actually not that easy.
In Germany, they tried to find an “Endlager” (a final storage place) for it, but all options have been classified as not good enough at a later point. Additionally, the people here go on the streets when you tell them that you store that stuff in their village or city.
You don’t need to plan “1000’s of years into the future.” Why does Nuclear require a multi-generational plan on a scale that no civilization has ever attained, but burning fossil fuels which will kill most of us within a few generations doesn’t? It’s a distraction, the solution to nuclear waste was solved in the 50’s and the reality is that dangerous nuclear waste is useful and should be recycled, and the low-order nuclear waste isn’t dangerous for anymore then a century at most, and even then it’s only if you consume it.
the solution to nuclear waste was solved in the 50’s and the reality is that dangerous nuclear waste is useful and should be recycled
We in Germany expect to have 10.500 tons of highly radioactive waste until 2080. And you are telling me that there is a solution already? Then why don’t the people with the solution just take the radioactive waste of Germany and recycle it?
Conclusion: There is no “ready-for-production”, permanent solution for this problem yet.
It’s called nuclear reprocessing and it was banned as a compromise between the USSR and the USA because it can also be used to make weapons. The USSR is gone now, and any country that wants to do it is more then welcome to withdraw from the nuclear reprocessing treaty. They can do it unilaterally without any risk at all and that takes care of their existing and future high-order nuclear waste in one fell-swoop.
10.500 tons of highly radioactive waste until 2080
Ok, but in 2022 alone Germany emitted 746 000 000 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere. I’ll take the 10.500 of easily containable waste over 60 years, please. In fact, let’s do 5x that. Or even 10x.
The amount of electricity generated from fossil and conventional energy sources fell by 12.2% in the first half of 2023 compared to the same period of the previous year. The largest decline, at 22%, was measured in power generation from coal. Coal-fired power plants fed in a total of 17.3 billion kWh less than in the previous year. Nuclear power generation has also declined due to the shutdown of the last 3 nuclear power plants. Nuclear power plants still fed 6.7 billion kWh of electricity into the grid in the first half of 2023 and thus contributed 3% to the electricity mix. Electricity generation from natural gas fell by 4.1% compared to the same period last year
No, it really does not. That compares power generation mix, not total capacity, over the same periods of different years, which you can’t interpret in a vacuum. Look at the neighbouring countries’ data so you can normalise the data and analyse it properly. It may very well be that total power generation in the period they’re comparing is down overall due to a warmer winter. So it stands to reason that so would fossil fuels.
If you want to interpret it properly, we can go over it, but it won’t tell you much about what we’re talking about. The matter is that while we’re in a fullblown climate crisis, and what we’re doing is insufficient, they reopened coal plants:
And none of it would be necessary had they not closed their very well performing NPPs.
We need to be doing everything we can to decarbonise, and I honestly don’t understand why we keep having this 60 year old discussion, the same as the previous generations that have led us to this point. It really only serves so that fossil fuel magnates can keep lining their pockets as the world burns. Somehow they’ve convinced people that nuclear is competition for renewables instead of complementary, it’s really incredible to me.
Your first link is almost one year old. They did indeed prepare for a worst case, which didn’t occur after all. Coal and gas consumption (total, not just percentage wise) did not go up, but down instead.
Yes, a mild winter helped. Unfortunately, winters are getting warmer and warmer, and the last one was no exception there.
So why is your country’s emissions per capita more than 50% higher than France’s (from here), despite a much higher renewables percentage in the power mix? Might it have something to do with how much more nuclear they have?
Looking through your post history, we seem to be aligned in advocating for decarbonisation. If you really want to reach zero emissions as soon as possible, don’t you think we should be exploring every carbon free avenue, and shutting down every single fossil fuel power plant?
Don’t fall for your government’s justifications, or fearmongering around nuclear. If we want to decarbonise the grid, we need it to complement renewables and fill the roles that renewables can’t by themselves. The longer we take to realise that, the longer we’ll keep burning greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
don’t you think we should be exploring every carbon free avenue, and shutting down every single fossil fuel power plant?
Sure. But nuclear is probably not the answer: we don’t have those decades left it takes to build hundreds of new plants. Not to mention the astronomical cost. The ship had sailed 30 years ago.
Edit: the last 3 nuclear plants we shut down this year had a combined capacity of around 4 GW. In 2022 we installed over 7 GW of solar and about 2.5 GW of wind capacity (this year it will probably significantly more)
30 years ago it was the same argument. “It takes too long, we needed to have started earlier”. Well, here we are now. Let’s not have kids 30 years from now saying the same thing.
France regularly imports (renewable) electricity from Germany when they have to shut down some of their reactors due to cooling problems in summer. So 50 are not enough. For a smaller economy.
Well, so has France. And at a larger percentage. While emitting disproportionately less carbon, which, again, is the whole point of this conversation. I’d rather not sacrifice climate for the sake of economy. Especially because the economy will suffer a lot more if we don’t get emissions under control.
Because they fill different roles in the power grid? They don’t replace each other. Haven’t you been reading what I’ve been saying all this time or what? Nuclear works WITH renewables. It’s fossil fuels we need to phase out, and nuclear can fill their role when renewables can’t.
In many places, a lot of the time, they can. But not everywhere, all of the time.
The problem is that if even fellow environmentalists like yourself keep thinking of nuclear like a boogeyman, or just not knowing how a power grid works, then we stand no hope of decarbonising power generation. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Annual_world_electricity_net_generation.svg? The way to decrease that that brown area is by increasing all the other colours in similar proportion. There are circumstances where a fully renewable grid is possible, but those conditions aren’t the same everywhere, and those niches will continue to be filled by fossil fuels until we stop being afraid of the much better alternative. The fact is countries with higher percentages of nuclear in their power mix have much lower emissions per GDP per capita than their neighbours. So I may not be able to convince you, but I’m going to keep trying to educate anyway.
Tell me, then, how can you have a stable grid with renewables alone in places where (or when) pumped hydro isn’t feasible or can’t provide enough power by itself? Or in countries prone to lengthy droughts, like my own? I’m not asking this to argue, but because our disagreement may come from a misunderstanding of the base working principles of the power grid.
I’m not paying €79/month to review the whole statistics, but you know perfectly well that France started from a much lower number. They already had nuclear when we started to roll out renewables on a large scale. Are you by any chance familiar with the term “head start”?
But decisions from 40 years ago are irrelevant for decisions today. Spilled milk.
But it does not answer the question. The question would be: Where does the baseline have to be? Yes, they have lots of fossil fuels, but you could still replace that with reneawables as long as you have enough electricity left at night when there is no wind. Additionally, it could matter whether you and your geographical neighbours share a power grid and support each other, etc…
but you could still replace that with reneawables as long as you have enough electricity left at night when there is no wind.
That would require storing all that energy, which isn’t feasible right now and realistically not anytime soon unless we get some kind of battery breakthrough (Still waiting on those solid-state and graphene batteries)
I wonder why we haven’t been looking into mechanical flywheels more ofr the energy storage. They’re far less energy dense sure but their service life blow batteries out of the water long term and when you’re building static grid scale storage space isn’t really a concern.
We have those, that’s pretty much how big energy plants work (Coal, gas and fusion all use that I think), it’s not exactly a flywheel, but a large turbine which can keep spinning for some time. I think a full on flywheel would have to be absolutely massive to produce enough energy to be meaningful, which is probably just not worth it
Renewables should complement nuclear. “And” not “or”
The thing is we’ve gotten so good at burning coal that the base load cannot realistically be carried by renewables and transmitted to where the load is. Nuclear, with it’s challenges, is the only technology that can fill the power vacuum left by base load coal and gas generation stations.
Complaining about down votes is some small dick reddit energy, don’t do that in the future. We are on Lemmy now.
Now to answer your question. “Renewables*” are supplementary. Wind/Solar cannot provide baseline power, and will never be able to provide baseline power for the grid. Any kind of magical energy storage you can come up with that would allow renewables to replace a power plant also requires exotic/expensive tech that would be more expensive then Nuclear power and still doesn’t address baseline power consumption. This kind of question is also used as a distraction by the fossil fuel industry so that you have countries like Germany replacing nuclear power with coal and strip mining.
Why are they building coal in the first place? Because “renewables” do not produce enough base-line power. If Germany could use magically renewable energy to meet all of their energy demands, they would probably do it, but that isn’t the reality. In the future try to avoid framing solar/wind as competitors to nuclear power. Both are needed, and unlike nuclear power which hasn’t been built on any scale since the 70’s, solar/wind are absolutely used everywhere they can be and if they aren’t sufficient in cases like Georgia, Nuclear should 100% be the answer because if it’s not used you will have coal or gas instead. “Just asking questions” like that shows you don’t understand power-generation and you have fallen for the fossil fuel industries propaganda.
Excellent rundown. The baseline power supplier for when there’s no wind or sun can either be natural gas or nuclear, and nuclear produces far less harmful byproducts.
Complaining about down votes is some small dick reddit energy, don’t do that in the future. We are on Lemmy now.
We are on Lemmy now and can decide to do things in a better way and we can question what was done on Reddit and what we can improve. Or yeah… We can also just don’t do it and be toxic…
I does not matter who you are. There will always be a situation when your have the 33% opinion and others have the 66% opinion. And that’s fine. We are individuals. Giving the 1-vs-2 minority a reason to delete their post because of tons of dislikes… That’s small dick energy level 100.
At least, Lemmy shows us that there are X upvotes and Y downvotes. Reddit would just show the “-Z” value.
don’t do that in the future
I think, you don’t understand my edit above: I told you that I don’t plan to do something, just because the 11-vs-8 majority thinks I should do it.
I went even further and asked on “Ask Lemmy” when people do upvote, downvote and when to just not do anything, because it’s actually interesting… Most people stated that they don’t downvote different opinions under that post, but those who do did probably not leave a comment…
PS: Go ahead, give this one downvote, too. That increases your chances to hear only what you want to hear in the future. 🎉
I think it’s more likely that you come of as disingenuous given that you come here to parrot some very well known talking points that are plain fallacies aimed at painting nuclear in a negative way.
Meanwhile, we are getting slow cooked and a lot of people here probably feel the impact of the heat and the urgency of the situation.
Ok, but why not just answering my original comment with “I researched and found out: They build more nuclear, because they stated that they need a baseline X% reliable energy that is always there and so far, they only have Y% nuclear. Oh, and they have also increased solar at lot recently.” instead of disliking the hell out of it?
It would be benefitial for everyone and I’d give it an instant upvote.
It’s a fact that nuclear power is more expensive than solar and wind. Especially when we talk about insurance of catastrophes. So I think, my question is not that crazy and should be allowed.
BTW: I did not dislike your comment.
PS: Sometimes, I ask myself the question “What, if everyone would do XYZ?”… What, if everyone would dislike every other opinion? Be honest: This platform would be toxic AF. I gave probably 1k likes and under 10 dislikes on lemmy so far and I keep going the way of positivity, because I think, in the end, it’s better for Lemmy.
It’s much more reliable and consistent at generating power. It’s not dependent on the sun shining or wind blowing, so you can get the full capacity of generation at all times, making it a better investment for a government trying to support large populations. It also takes up way less land to set up and run.
Though of course, it doesn’t have to be one or the other. Solar and wind can supplement nuclear really well.
I thought about it when typing it, but I carried the habit from reddit over to lemmy to consider someone beginning a chain of comments as OP.
It’s definitely not the original meaning, but I saw it fairly common to use OP to refer to the author of an initial comment when responding to one of its child comment.
I wonder how many emissions could we have avoided if that money was spent on renewables + batteries while we were waiting for this powerplant to come online
Nuclear power plants typically retire after 40 years. I wouldn’t be surprised if replacing all the renewables and batteries after 20 or 30 years would still be cheaper than this nuclear plant
Renewables and batteries are great tools, we need to be building these out. Nuclear can best complement renewables with a stable, emission free, base load capacity. Nuclear has its own challenges, but renewables can not replace enormous load that’s currently carried by coal and gas in the near or extended term.
Not great but uranium can be mined in first world nations unlike cobalt which is mined by slaves in the congo. Nuclear is long term better for the environment than cobalt mining for batteries.
Renewables + batteries? You wouldn’t have saved any emissions. Construction of a nuclear plant doesn’t require as much carbon emissions as you think. And regardless, nuclear isn’t competing with renewables, anyway, it’s for replacing carbon-emitting power plants. Nuclear and renewables need to work hand-in-hand if we want to actually reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions.
Sure, but we don’t talk about solar vs wind power, do we? They all have their place. It’s the same thing here. Renewables and nuclear each have a place in a zero carbon grid.
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