Going back to 1965, air pollution from fossil fuels has cost us around 81 million lives. 4,000 people in China die every day due to fossil fuel pollution. 1 in 5 premature deaths can be attributed to fossil fuels.
Radiation in pop culture is portrayed as difficult to contain, but that isn’t the case. We know how to do it well, and we already do it.
Pop culture depictions fail to illustrate the radiation that is released into the air, unable to be properly managed, as a result of fossil fuel production and consumption.
Which if they were practically feasible, still wouldn’t be running for another ten years. Whereas the time and money and resources looking for breakthroughs in that ten years, could easily go to renewables and hey, they don’t need a breakthrough solution for nuclear waste. They already work and already are cheaper. Literally the solution. Right there.
We would have had that solved a long time ago if it weren’t for a few factors.
The first is that a significant amount of radioactive waste is short-term. Like, literally inert after a couple years. The reason for that is because the vast majority of radioactive waste isn’t actually inherently radioactive. Most of it has become radioactive as a result of coming into extended contact with highly radioactive sources. However my understanding is that despite being short-lived, you must dispose of it the same way you’d dispose of nuclear fuel rods. This is an issue that could be resolved by separating the short-lived stuff from the fuel rods and returning the short-lived stuff to a landfill once radioactivity drops to background radiation levels.
Factor 2: paranoia. We had a potential permanent waste site in the middle of nowhere, in an extremely geologically stable area in the US that has virtually no chance of flooding, however people thought that radioactive waste buried beneath a literal mountain would somehow still poison them. So Yucca Mountain was never fully completed. Afaik it’s technically still on the table but it’s been completely defunded thanks to NIMBYs, so instead nuclear waste is being stored across the US at various nuclear plants which are less geologically stable, have a higher chance for flooding, etc. This also hampers state and national efforts to clean up decommissioned plants and nuclear accidents. The waste has to go somewhere; if you have no where to safely store it, you can’t clean it up.
Factor 3: if I understand correctly, we could hypothetically design nuclear plants with reactor chains that produce dead fuel rods (fuel rods that are completely spent). However, a lot of weapons-grade material would be produced during the intermediate stages. For sooome reason everyone freaks out when they hear you’re making weapons-grade radioactive material, even if you promise you’re just using it to generate power. I can’t imagine why /s
The problems with nuclear storage are actually pretty easily solved, it’s just that no one wants to because they’d rather pretend nuclear doesn’t exist to begin with. I swear, we could have a one-time pill that makes you fully immune to every radiation-induced disease and people would still freak out about nuclear. Hell, there was an article I saw a month or two about how a bunch of researches discovered that turning used graphite control rods into diamonds resulted in low-power batteries that could be used for things that require a small amount of power over long durations (like SSDs or RAM). Iirc something about the diamond’s structure meant it contained its own radiation as well, meaning it didn’t need any radiation shielding either despite generating energy via radioactivity.
Factor 1: Not quite accurate. Yes there are categories of waste; the names change depending on the regulator. The lower level wastes are already disposed of in the US (there are already four such facilities). The politically charged problem is always the spent nuclear fuel itself.
Factor 2: Senator Reed (D-NV) was a former Senate majority leader. He extracted the defending of Yucca Mountain from the Obama administration as a concession to pass Obamacare. It’s still technically viable and not disposing of waste costs enormous amounts of money. The federal government is legally obligated to take spent fuel off the hands of operators. Obviously they have not, so the government is sued (and loses). This has cost the government roughly $20b for their inaction see here..
Factor 3: You can recycle spent fuel but there’s no concept as spent fuel with zero radioactivity.
Two largest problems in the US: Inability to manage waste and inability to execute on large scale construction required for nuclear.
On factor 3: I thought that there were cyclic reactor chains, where the fuel produced at the end of the chain could be reused at the start. If followed long enough, wouldn’t that theoretically result in fully spent fuel rods? It might take a long time, but it’s not impossible and in the meantime, they’re still being useful and generating power when they’d normally be discarded.
That’s kinda the problem. Money that should be going to renewables is going to nuclear, which won’t be effective for many years. Renewables don’t have the high cost and requirements and ramp up time nuclear requires.
Nuclear could be extremely effective right now, if only someone put money into it and people stopped jumping at ghosts. We have the technology, it's not like we have another 2 decades of research to make it viable. The general public is just uninformed and when someone says "nuclear" they hear "Chernobyl" and this has caused quite a lot of general mass panic, despite the fact that nuclear is one of the safest and most environmentally friendly power production technologies that exist today.
Chernobyl happened because of a multitude of reasons that just aren’t capable of happening today in the western world. This is just pure fear-mongering, it’s like saying we need to ban planes because of world trade center, or ban all research on narcotic medications because the opiod epidemic.
A wind farm costs in the range of 32 - 62 dollar per megawatts (Judith Gap/Spion Kop wind farms), compared to the 29 dollars per megawatt for nuclear power (average in USA year 2021).
In USA there are 92 reactors totaling 809 terawatt hours. To compensate for that with wind turbines you would require roughly 33.000 wind turbines all running 24/7 at max capacity with no down-time assuming a rated limit of 3 megawatt. Together those wind turbines would collectively take up 260 square kilometers.
Building them would likely be close to impossible as there isnt any infrastructure to make 33.000 in a timely manner. Since 2005 about 3000 has been built per year, assuming current production that would mean 11 years without producing parts for servicing current turbines to simply just replace the nuclear energy.
Lets make it a little more interesting and compare wind turbines to Browns Ferry nuclear plant. It has 3 reactors producing in total 3600 megawatt, to compensate for just that plant alone it would require 1200 turbines. To make it even more interesting, fossile fuel plants produces in total 2554 terawatt hours, and is the worst energy source we have, and would require roughly 104.000 turbines to offset, or 34 years of wind turbine production. That means the old turbines will have to be replaced before theyre all even fully built assuming the 20-30 year life expectancy.
Are you starting to grasp the problems with wind turbines now? To stop the usage of fossile fuel for powerplants you need other complementary systems. We need to get rid of fossile plants -now- and there’s literally no way wind turbines could ever realistically fill that role alone. You’re barking up the wrong tree.
You’re ignoring solar and hydro. No one said everything has to be wind.
Nuclear costs in the US are at that price because the industry is mature and subsidised by the government significantly. As in France, as reactors age, things get a lot costlier. Maintaining the surplus industries for storage, maintenance, supplies and infrastructure for nuclear are only getting more expensive. And you still haven’t solved the waste problem. Renewables have some obstacles, but none that can’t be resolved with money. And the end result is cleaner and cheaper.
You mentioned chernobyl in the very comment I replied to, you being the first person in this entire comment section to do so.
You’re also oversimplifying the problems and arguing in bad faith by simply ignoring the viability and reality. You can’t just throw money at a problem and it’ll magically resolve itself. Instead of arguing against one of our safest energy sources you should turn your eyes towards fossile power plants which is genuinely killing our planet as we speak. To end that madness in any sort of reasonable time frame you need a combination of all options.
I also want to add that the production costs for nuclear power I mentioned above, doesn’t count in subsidizes, it’s based on the actual average costs among these 92 reactors without withdrawing government spendings.
My source is Statista, “the production costs equal the sum of operations and capital costs and fuel costs”.
You still are just spouting fearmongering that’s going to kill our planet before any “worst case scenarios” you can dream up about nuclear power has any chance to.
At this point you’re either trolling or arguing with yourself and for some reason replying to me.
I’m not “fearmongering” when I point out the indisputable fact that renewables don’t produce nuclear waste. You’re also not including the supporting industries that nuclear requires in your costs. And more importantly, you’re only looking at the US. Even then, your figures are arguable.
Wikipedia “In 2019 the US EIA revised the levelized cost of electricity from new advanced nuclear power plants going online in 2023 to be $0.0775/kWh before government subsidies”
Wikipedia “The global weighted average levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) of new onshore wind projects added in 2021 fell by 15%, year‑on‑year, to USD 0.033/kWh, while that of new utility-scale solar PV fell by 13% year-on-year to USD 0.048/kWh and that of offshore wind declined 13% to USD 0.075/kWh.”
Nuclear may make current economic sense when you ignore the storage issues and the cost of new reactors and the unavoidable increase in uranium importation. Long term it doesn’t. Renewables don’t have that issue and are already cheaper.
Again, renewables globally are cheaper and safer. Byeeeeeee
Except that clearly isn’t true, if nuclear was a viable solution then we’d be building power plants but we’re not because they make no sense economically or practically.
Look at all the plants in France losing more money every time they have another problem, shutting down in the summer because the rivers get low… Oh someone said the word terror attack let’s spend a whole boat load of euros on security because they’re such a massive and vulnerable target…
They keep saying the new nuclear will be great and we just need ten more years of oil and gas plus a billion in research and development grants then it’ll do everything they promised a decade ago.
For a lot of people it seems to have turned into a sports team tribalism. They feel like they’re supposed to support nuclear because it’s science which kinda overlooks that PV is far cooler science, we need to look at reality and see we can have renewables now or the hope for a decent micellar ten or twenty years down the line, maybe.
And the non insurable nature of nuclear power besides its distant break even point is the reason only governments have ever build nuclear plants, or had to give huge guarantees. There are financial problems with nuclear, too.
No. It’s kicking the can down the road. And when there is a real, viable, cleaner, cheaper option already up and running, nuclear is simply not the answer.
I’m increasingly of the same opinion, however, I dislike the fact that even talking about nuclear as a potential bridge technology is such a polarizing issue.
I am very far from being an expert on the subject and accordingly don’t have a strong opinion either way as to what role, if any, it can usefully play in transitioning to sustainable energy models.
What I don’t like is the immediate labeling of either side of the issue as somehow automatically being indicative of bad faith or “shilling” on behalf of a larger, nearly conspiratorial interest.
its not that nuclear is bad, but it’s very expensive and takes a long time to commission, where the bridge between now and full scale renewable is on a shorter time frame. if the idea of using nuclear as a transition was made 10-20 years ago, absolutely. now, it’s kinda too late.
so pretty much the most economical solution is to go all in on renewable from now on
Fun fact, all the pro-nuclear bullshit you hear is just regurgitated nuclear lobbying propaganda.
The only reason nuclear has such a following is because people (almost always men) think they think they’re in the know. It’s unironically very typical of how the alt-right pipeline starts. People think they’re being given all this “truth” about nuclear and now they’re knowledgeable about stuff that other people aren’t aware of or that other people are believing the “mainstream” thought about. It also helps that nuclear followers see themselves as edgy. It’s a perfect rabbit hole for these people who are easily influenced to fall down.
it is worth pointing out that the Fukishima plant had it’s seawall bellow regulation height and had it’s meltdown after seawater flooded the backup generator. This was an easily preventable disaster if they had just followed the law about nuclear safety
You ever hear of the bikeshed effect? It’s the idea that if you get a committee of laymen to make a decision on something extremely complex, like a nuclear power plant, they’ll hyperfixate in on the one thing that they think they understand - the bike shed. So instead of oversight and planning of the important bits of the plant like the reactor or the safety system, each decision maker will take their turn altering the color and the dimensions and the positioning of the bike shed.
I’m gonna guess that the wall was their bike shed.
There’s a bit more nuance here. Fron this article, the plan is to treat the water to decontaminate it, then dilute it as much as possible because the treatment cannot remove some isotopes which could cause problems. The 30 year plan is actually a good thing since this would dilute the isotopes further making the risk minimal according to IAEA and the US. There are some independent labs that voice concerns for more data though.
The main issue is that the tanks that are supposed to hold the contaminated cooling seawater are filling up quick, so they need to add some space. Unless there’s a better plan, it’s either that or the tanks overflow.
You can’t undo years of release if theres problems down the line
Current science says that this release is probably fine, but as you said independent labs and neighboring countries have posed objections based on insufficiency of evidence
"Current science" is really key here because it wasn’t so long ago that science was convinced that heroin could be given to babies, smoking was harmless, and leaded gasoline is safe. Our state of the art has a habit of becoming the next generation’s "how could they be so stupid?"
There have been alternative treatment and disposal options proposed and the Japanese government just happened to chose the cheapest one? That doesn’t pass the sniff test.
Even if the release turns out to be completely safe in retrospect, all of the factors above will cause a significant amount of people to turn their opinions against nuclear power because it sets a precedent for perceived reckless handling of nuclear waste.
“Current science” is really key here because it wasn’t so long ago that science was convinced that heroin could be given to babies, smoking was harmless, and leaded gasoline is safe.
Science as a whole never was, there was just a shitton of money going to anybody publishing studies saying so. There’s not a cannon of grant money fired at any scientist who says “radiation is good actually”.
The lead gas thing is as you described but heroin and tobacco especially were in wide use for many years without anyone really knowing the full extent of damage they caused. Sometimes it does actually just take science a while to gather the data and catch up.
These are valid criticisms and they should be addressed. I think the main issue is that this is urgent and we can’t wait to do the amount of surveying or studying enough to guarantee a safe dumping. I’m just assuming here since no one said anything about that. But I think it’s a valid assumption since the disaster is 12 years old. If they are rushing this after let’s say 8 years of studying it, then whatever time they have left to fill up the tanks is probably not gonna be enough.
Every single decision we make is based on “current science” since we didn’t invent a time machine just yet to look at the future. Just because science has messed up in the past, doesn’t mean we should paralyze ourselves now.
What are these alternative treatments that the government rejected? How much more effective are they vs how much more do they cost? If treatment “A” gives us a 5% chance of a better outcome and costs 80% more, then it makes sense. If it was an 80% better outcome for 80% more cost then yeah they did mess up.
I really don’t want to play top trumps over which tragic disaster is worse by measuring bodycounts, as this is all way too grim and I think we can agree that the worst case scenarios for all of these things are awful in their own distinct ways. But that number you put for nuclear is difficult to believe. Where did you find it?
IIRC Chernobyl amounted to about 46 people dead from the disaster itself, (the Fukushima incident did not kill anyone at the time it occurred IIRC, three mile island didn’t kill anyone) and while it did release a lot of radioactive material that did result it more cancers/excess mortality, coal burning releases about ten times more radioactive material than a nuclear reactor (coal has trace amounts of radioactive material in it). So even if we’re just comparing the hazards of radiation nuclear is probably the better/cleaner option if there’s a robust and quick response after incidents.
Yes coal is indeed very bad and needs go away immediately. But I’m not so sure if coal being bad makes radiation cancers from Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island, Sellafield, etc etc etc not worth caring about.
They’re definitely worth caring about (and for) but I’d say it’s really important to put the dangers of nuclear power in the context of what we’re already doing, and it’s magnitudes safer. While I feel like we should be pushing for more renewables regardless, at the same time nuclear’s still really viable because it doesn’t have the availability (renewables are weather dependent) and storage (you can just keep running it on demand) issues.
Some nuclear disasters are a bit overstated honestly. Like Three Mile Island was a tiny amount of radiation. Coal ash releases more radiation regularly. It’s just part of our normal “accepted” energy production and doesn’t get the media focus.
jesus-christ I have no idea if that’s bullshit or not, but this is definitely turning into a tragic bodycount measuring contest. I’m outta here. peppino-run
When it comes to generating electricity, nuclear is hugely more expensive than renewables. Every 1000Wh of nuclear power could be 2000-3000 Wh solar or wind.
If you’ve been told “it’s not possible to have all power from renewable sources”, you have been a victim of disinformation from the fossil fuel industry. The majority of studies show that a global transition to 100% renewable energy across all sectors – power, heat, transport and industry – is feasible and economically viable.
This is all with current, modern day technology, not with some far-off dream or potential future tech such as nuclear fusion, thorium reactors or breeder reactors.
Compared to nuclear, renewables are:
Cheaper
Lower emissions
Faster to provision
Less environmentally damaging
Not reliant on continuous consumption of fuel
Decentralised
Much, much safer
Much easier to maintain
More reliable
Much more capable of being scaled down on demand to meet changes in energy demands
Nuclear power has promise as a future technology. But at present, while I’m all in favour of keeping the ones we have until the end of their useful life, building new nuclear power stations is a massive waste of money, resources, effort and political capital.
Nuclear energy should be funded only to conduct new research into potential future improvements and to construct experimental power stations. Any money that would be spent on building nuclear power plants should be spent on renewables instead.
Frequently asked questions:
But it’s not always sunny or windy, how can we deal with that?
While a given spot in your country is going to have periods where it’s not sunny or rainy, with a mixture of energy distribution (modern interconnectors can transmit 800kV or more over 800km or more with less than 3% loss) non-electrical storage such as pumped storage, and diversified renewable sources, this problem is completely mitigated - we can generate wind, solar or hydro power over 2,000km away from where it is consumed for cheaper than we could generate nuclear electricity 20km away.
Don’t renewables take up too much space?
The United States has enough land paved over for parking spaces to have 8 spaces per car - 5% of the land. If just 10% of that space was used to generate solar electricity - a mere 0.5% - that would generate enough solar power to provide electricity to the entire country. By comparison, around 50% of the land is agricultural. The amount of land used by renewable sources is not a real problem, it’s an argument used by the very wealthy pro-nuclear lobby to justify the huge amounts of funding that they currently receive.
Isn’t Nuclear power cleaner than renewables?
No, it’s dirtier. You can look up total lifetime emissions for nuclear vs. renewables - this is the aggregated and equalised environmental harm caused per kWh for each energy source. It takes into account the energy used to extract raw materials, build the power plant, operate the plant, maintenance, the fuels needed to sustain it, the transport needed to service it, and so on. These numbers always show nuclear as more environmentally harmful than renewables.
We need a baseline load, though, and that can only be nuclear or fossil fuels.
Not according to industry experts - the majority of studies show that a 100% renewable source of energy across all industries for all needs - electricity, heating, transport, and industry - is completely possible with current technology and is economically viable. If you disagree, don’t argue with me, take it up with the IEC. Here’s a Wikipedia article that you can use as a baseline for more information: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy
I am so tired of people who have no idea how good wind and solar are/have gotten smugly declaring that wind and solar will never be good enough to meet energy demands…
Thank you! Please feel free to copy and share. There is so much pro-nuclear rhetoric online, particularly on Reddit, I debate it every time I see it but there’s too much for me to do alone.
In Australia our conservatives run on the promise of nuclear power, but they’ve been in power for 20 of the last 26 years and haven’t ever attempted to implement it, they just use the promise to stymie the development of renewables.
Imo the time to try to use nuclear to suppress oil and gas was 50 years ago.
Nuclear would have really worked though, but green advocates just HAD to ruin it. (I’m talking about majority) Wind and solar will never truly take off or be mainstream because everyone rather do coal and gas, including the governments. Congrats people we’re fucked!
MRI used to be called NMRI, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging, because it uses the reaction of the nuclei of atoms to create images. Unfortunately people are fucking stupid and freaked out when they heard “nuclear” so they had to drop the N.
The only people who really prefer coal and gas over wind and solar are the fossil fuel industry. They want to keep their place on top of the energy market, and attempt to do so with lobbying and propaganda, . Wind in solar are more than powerful enough to provide for all our energy needs, and either we will eventually switch to them or be replaced by the people who were smart enough to switch to wind and solar.
Correct me if I’m wrong but even though Nuclear sounds cool. In the vast majority of places isn’t it less costly, to go with renewables, instead? And for a greater power output? And also renewables can be created in a fraction of the time without any r&d. That’s not even mentioning the potential hazards and waste management issues with nuclear.
I don’t know about initial costs, but the main problem with wind/solar is they cannot be scaled up/down on-demand. The depend on the weather and that does not align with energy demands throught the day.
As long as we cannot store energy at-scale, we will have to rely in another source of energy we can ramp up/down depending of the energy demands (being fossil fuels or, preferibly, nuclear)
That’s a taking point that wasn’t very true in the 70s and certainly isn’t close to true now, there are endless methods of balancing a renewables grid for constant power involving endless options for continuous generation methods (solar thermal especially) or battery storage (chemical, gravity, etc) and load balancing using at-peek tied industry (especially e-fuel manufacture)
There’s also a lot of stuff like tidal generation which is hugely promising and drastically underfunded, certainly compared to nuclear.
All technologies you’ve mentioned are in R&D, not ready to use as you seem to imply. Great investment is still required to implement them at-scale. What I’d agree on is that It’s in our best interest to invest heavily in them, and they are probably underfunded given their importance in the survival of humanity.
The idea that we can transition from fossil fuels to traditional renewables (solar, wind, etc) while refusing to rely on nuclear power seems wishful thinking to me. In the short and mid-term (10-20 years) we only have nuclear as a realistic alternative for clean energy. In this transition, we can develop those promising methods of energy storage and also build the necessary infrastructure they require.
Both Germany and France want to reach zero emissions by 2050.
We know how Germany opted to phase out nuclear power already in the year 2000 and completed its ‘nuclear exit’ in April 2023. Compare that to France that since 1974 has been heavily investing in nuclear power with the goal of producing most of its energy from it (Messmer Plan (Wikipedia)).
The results for me are apparent:
Greenhouse gas emissions 2021 in Germany: 665.88 megatonnes (8.0 tonnes/capita)
Greenhouse gas emissions 2021 in France: 302.33 megatonnes (4.5 tonnes/capita)
I’d take a real reduction in green house emissions any day before the “wish” of reducing them while refusing to make any compromise.
Without being disrespectful, I think it is a big mistake to refuse prioritize nuclear power to replace fossil fuels in the near future if the goal is to reduce greenhouse emissions.
If you only use the faceplate capacity of the facilities and include battery storage for free then yes solar and wind looks pretty good. Once you factor in needing 4-5x the capacity for wind and solar to actually produce power regularly, add cost for non existing storage it gets a lot closer to where the difference isn’t significant.
Wind and solar are (mostly) good from a risk/benefit analysis, and I think further investment in battery tech would make them even better. But the problem with nuclear, other than waste, is the fact that noone has tried building like a bunch of reactors that are basically the same. So the training becomes industrialized, repairs and manufacturing, over time it gets cheaper. In France, correct me if I’m wrong, they did this and it was really successful. In general the main problem with both technologies is lack of public investment, i think due to political consequences from oil companies, general bourgeois resistance to public works and investment, etc.,
That applies to availability of fossil fuels too, though. Everyone acts like it’s never gonna run out, but the number one producer of oil and gas in the world is literally causing thousands of miniature earthquakes and poisoning groundwater in a desperate effort to get to the worst quality fossil fuels.
That’s true about fossil fuels. But it seems you’re interpreting my comment as if I was defending the use of fossil fuels.
What I’m pointing out here is that the fact that hydroelectric energy production (although very clean) is not really an alternative for many countries as a substitute for fossil fuels. It is not a matter or decision lack of attention or investment. Many developed countries actually have most of their potential capacity installed, yet that accounts for very little of their electric demand. Take Germany as an example:
Germany had a hydropower installed capacity in 2016 of 11,258 MW (…). In the same year, the country generated 21.5 TWh from hydroelectric plants, representing about 3% of the country’s total electricity generation.
The hydropower capacity in Germany is considered mature and the potential already almost completely exploited, with limited room for growth. In recent years, growth in capacity has mainly come from repowering of existing plants.
Of course, there’s exceptions (% of total domestic electricity generation): Canada (59.0%), Norway (96%), Paraguay (100%) or Brazil (64.7%).
Actually, from what I can tell, hydro seem to be so convenient (it can be ramped up/down on-demand, used for storage, cheap) that most countries that can afford it tend to maximize their installed capacity to the extend their hydrography allows them to.
@racsol@Viking_Hippie, Eliminating oil is not so simple and must start with stopping manufacturing SUVs and Supercars, eliminating continental flights and changing maritime traffic. That is where it fails, what's more, on top of that the politics and lobbies promote them. They limit themselves to raising the prices of gasoline and diesel, making life impossible for transporters and consumers who see food prices, instead of skyrocketing instead of subsidizing fuel and ecological vehicles.
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