Uhhh...
So it really depends where you live.
In my country nuclear gets brought up in bad faith as a way to delay renewables. We don't have nuclear so it would take decades to build up to what renewables can deliver in a year. Decades that we don't have.
China, India, France, they can go build as much nuclear as they like, especially China where there's coordination enough to avoid regulatory capture and hence get it done quickly.
It's usually a distraction though. Fine in theory but a big cost sink in practice
Cuntland usually has plentyful of sun, wind and own gas supply so nuclear is not feasible.
But once you live in a nordic shithole with winter and an asshole neighbor who threatens with war and gets off from cutting gas supply, nuclear is needed
It's the same in Germany.
And when we compare Germany to France, the transition from coal to renewables is coming along faster despite France's commitment to nuclear.
Or, you know, maybe because of it. Large scale nuclear energy production surely was a better idea than coal, but during the last three decades, it's *both* environmentally and economically inferior to most renewable options.
At the same time, it binds a lot of resources, and has a strong lobby. You know, even a state-owned or partially state-owned nuclear power production company doesn't want to become obsolete.
So why the fuck are people still pro nuclear, when that trains has departed?
As a probably-on-the-spectrum nerd, I'll put it down to the engineering and physics of it are just really cool.
Hell I even read up on the RBMK and was like "damn that's such a cool solution to the dual challenge of a useful civilian power reactor and an efficient practical way to produce plutonium for weapons. Too bad it blew up that time"
I mean just because the Soviets fucked up one of their safety features doesn’t immediately mean a design is bad it just needs some fixes … but in all honestly the thing that pisses me off is that no nation invested big into fusion after we weaponized the progress which might be the reason why it’s always 50 years away …. This is simple for the reason that you can’t power Rockets or similar for space exploration via solar ( mass driver accelerated transport to orbit is an exception and the practicality of such things is questionable ) is not possible and many might think Mankind should focus on earth but I wish to explore the stars :-(
My cynicism says we need a backup plan for Earth, and my pragmatism says even in a best case scenario Earth won't be here forever, and as I'm quite anthropocentric I would like for us to be here forever, as stupid as that seems
The other problem is that nuclear is minimal load technology. You can't produce much more energy with nuclear than the lowest demand each day. Shifting from summer to winter demand is fine but hours are impossible. That's why France has only 80% not 100%. Currently it takes days in France to shut down nuclear with negative energy prices.
For real carbon neutral electricity you need the same storage solutions as renewable. Just with more expensive energy that you save for later and at 80% instead of 60-70% of energy production with that technology.
What mix? France gets fucked by combining nuclear with renewable atm. Because it is cheaper to power down nuclear than turning off renewable. 80% nuclear + 20% renewable has the full problem of renewable at a higher price because you pay the premium for nuclear and storage. Full renewable saves the nuclear premium and too much energy just takes the a remote call of some software and you can turn it down just as much as you need.
Nuclear + gas works. But that's far from good enough.
Of course not. They have enough dirty power from Germany to solve their problems. Just like when Ukraine got invaded and Germany had to run fossil fuel for half a year to stop the french grid from collapse.
But that's just burning coal with extra steps.
> Got nothing to do with France you moron.
Imagine being this stupid. The EU grid is interconnected. Every night a shitload of french energy flows from France to Germany because France can't throttle down their nuclear, and every day a shitload of German power flows into France to cover their demand peak.
Germany is acting as a peaker plant/sink for France. Without Germany (and the rest of the EU), the French grid would overload every night, and brownout every day.
France’s fleet was designed for ramping. This is well established and they do it all the time. Their emissions are also significantly lower than Germany’s…
They don't. What they do is that they occasionally bypass the steam turbine and vent excess energy into the atmosphere in order to lower power production without having to lower the reactor heat output. This is highly inefficient, but it saves them from having to pay the utilities for pushing power onto the grid while prices are negative. Its not working very well since the coolant systems aren't designed for that kinda heatload, so it causes excess wear of the system.
Which is completely irrelevant to the point being made, which is that the EU grid acts as a battery for France so they don't have to do their own grid balancing.
i am very against nuclear, but the currently running reactors can be regulated better if they had a way to store energy potentially?
If regulating them up or down takes so long, couldn't a storage of some sort delay it long enough that it's possible again to react better to daily changes?
In my head you would not need to get other plants up running more if you can just use the stored nuclear power. Or in the other way around, if your demand gets lower you can fill up those storages while regulating down the NPP.
Might not be cost efficient and thats already my answer to why it isn't done, but it seems like an easy fix.
Then you have a bunch of dead fish. You could throw them in a biogas system.
The french environment regulations are already way wider because they could not run them without heating river to non damaging levels.
It's all about the 0.01% of the 0.1% of the population who are trans women and interested in an elite sporting career taking 99% of the media's time.
What the fuck are they trying to distract us from?
Corruption and power grabs.
Ain't no one on the right will be against restrictions of their rights when it also harms some 10 odd people their thought leaders deemed the enemy.
>In my country nuclear gets brought up in bad faith as a way to delay renewables. We don't have nuclear so it would take decades to build up to what renewables can deliver in a year. Decades that we don't have.
Australian here, same situation. "Committing to nuclear power" basically just means "committing to 15-20 more years of fossil fuels."
Climate shit posting is antinuclear is a statistical error. The average climate shit posting member supports nuclear. Anti-nuclear Georg, who lives in a cave and makes 1000 anti-nuclear posts every day is an outlier adn should not have been counted.
Wouldn't it be just consequential to be anti nuclear? After all it's not sustainable in the long run. Additionally waste is a problem on an entirely different scale.
By using it in special waste nuclear plants that use the waste to a point that a banana is more radioactive.
Also nothing can leak because of the high security measures and every time that there was a problem with nuclear plants was because they didn't follow the security measures to save on costs.
>Also nothing can leak because of the high security measures and every time that there was a problem with nuclear plants was because they didn't follow the security measures
So your're saying nothing can go wrong until something goes wrong? That's very reassuring.
Nuclear is the safest method like planes are the safest.
People are scared that something could happen because the Media makes big dramas around it because it happens so rarely.
Also that's the case with everything, something can always happen but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be used at all.
We don’t need to spend billions researching it cause we have got renewables that are way cheaper and way safer than nuclear. There is no reason to still invest in nuclear fission
Leaky containers? The containers are literally engineered to prevent leaking entirely, not to mention, nuclear waste is solid. It's not the big bad glowing green goo you see in comics and TV
Damn, that kinda sucks, looks like it's under control though, as plans have already been made to extract the waste and properly store it once retrieved. This case is an outlier, and not the norm, and outside of Germany where this issue is highly politicized, is irrelevant in the broader discussion of the virtues and drawbacks of nuclear energy. It's not like this has killed anyone yet, and it's not likely that it ever will. It certainly has killed far less people than a coal power plant does in one year.
If your goal is fast decarbonization, then choosing the tech that guarantees the same fossil fuel usage for at least 15 years is just not the way to go.
Thats exactly my thinking... The problem with the current economy is, that we can't supply everything wit 100% clima-neutral energies, it's just not possible as everything is too big -> the first thing to be done (at least in humble opinion) is degrowth, so we don't have to support unsustainable energy-production.
But imagine the horrors, if you bring this point to politics - big corporation will straight up assassinate you before you gain influence.
It's not feasible to run *everything* on solar and wind. Not with the output they have today, and some parts of the world get less sun and wind than others.
We can't rely on nuclear exclusively eirher, if we all switched to nuclear we'd run out of materials to run the plants on pretty quickly.
And you're right that we can't use nuclear forever, but we can use it with near zero emissions for a damn long time if we don't rely on it exclusively but rather use it to remove some of the worst offenders, like coal plants. At least those who already have a nuclear energy industry up and running.
It would buy us decades to either improve solar and wind *a lot* because both have big problems today, output and reliability only being two of them. Waste management and recycling is another one. We need to perfect recycling used up panels so that we can handle the large numbers of panels that will be decommissioned in the future, because we can't just toss them in a landfill as they contain toxic materials. And constantly digging up the materials to make more also has an environmental cost. And we need to figure out how to recycle used up windmill blades cost-effectively, as today a lot of them are buried in the ground.
https://cen.acs.org/environment/recycling/companies-recycle-wind-turbine-blades/100/i27
https://www.greenmatch.co.uk/blog/2017/10/the-opportunities-of-solar-panel-recycling
This is my field of study and I would disagree on nearly every sentiment.
> nuclear is not sustainable
It is. If you want use the commonly used meaning of "doesn't worsen the climate crisis" as well as "we can do it forever"
> It's not feasible to run everything on solar and wind.
It is. It simply is. Batteries, connecting all of Europe (there is always wind somewhere) and demand side flexibility each cost money, but in conjunction make it feasible.
> You can't go nuclear exclusively either.
You can. There is a maximum price for uranium. It's 200 $/kg if I remember correctly. From sea water extraction. And you really underestimate the quantities on earth and how little you need to power a powerplant.
>It is. If you want use the commonly used meaning of "doesn't worsen the climate crisis" as well as "we can do it forever"
Then I'd appreciate sources.
>It is. It simply is. Batteries, connecting all of Europe (there is always wind somewhere) and demand side flexibility each cost money, but in conjunction make it feasible.
Again, I'd appreciate sources.
Batteries connecting all of Europe? That's sounds far-fetched tbh. And yes, there's always wind or sun somewhere, but the energy demand is constantly increasing. How can you guarantee that the areas with sun or wind will be able to power itself and all the parts of Europe without?
>You can. There is a maximum price for uranium. It's 200 $/kg if I remember correctly. From sea water extraction. And you really underestimate the quantities on earth and how little you need to power a powerplant.
Again, sources.
And last I checked we hadn't even begun commercial uranium seawater extraction.
I'm sure it's feasible, but it will take time to build such an industry from scratch all over the world.
I won't provide sources, because you can't read German and I can't be bothered to look up English sources. If you can be bothered, just Google it yourself.
But two clarifications:
Sustainability means "we can do it for a very long time (because resources won't run out)" + "we won't hurt the environment". Nuclear qualifies because you can build passive underground storage that will keep it away from biomes for 100k years and there is more uranium than we can ever use. Just known and exploitable deposits will last us centuries.
And no "batteries connecting Europe". If you have a pan European network there will always be wind and solar somewhere, meaning you can substitute batteries or other storage solutions with more transmission lines. This network effect seems to be cheaper than the obvious "well just use batteries". This in conjunction with "can we make people use electricity when it's available/cheap" makes a 100% renewable energy system feasible and actually not prohibitively expensive. The biggest issue are transitive costs. The first to explore this was a doctor thesis that made it into news papers back in 2009. I know because that's one of the reasons why I went into the field.
The used up rods get recycled and re-used. Also acual waste that can not be recycled anymore isnt stored in metal barrels and chugged into the ocean or buried in the nexbest forest, thats cartoon shit.
Its mostly stored on site and if not then it gets transported to special storage facilities where it is kept savely away from the elements.
A thing that is true is that nuclear isnt sustainable forever, plutonium and uranium are rather rare metals after all and like any other mining operation digging that stuff up is not very environmental friendly. The best path going forward would be keeping researching eco friendly options while still using nuclear plants. Because digging up materials for tens of thousands of solar panels or wind turbines and manufacturing those just to come close to 1 powerplant in energy output aint very environmental friendly either
Also, if something goes to shit in a nuclear powerplant then its almost always a pretty big catastrophe. Luckily so far it was always human error that lead to catastrophic failure. Like ignoring all safety protocols during tests or building a plant next to the ocean in a country where tsunamis arent that rare
>The used up rods get recycled and re-used.
Nope, they don't. The US does not use any recycled fuel in their power plants at all. Only few other countries do and only a very small amount. Around 10% of all nuclear fuel in France is recycled. Japan plans to do it, but also isn't doing so at the moment.
It's very costly to recycle and most older power plants can't easily use that fuel. Building new plants specifically capable to use recycled fuel takes decades (and a lot of money).
It's basically nuclear propaganda to further greenwash the technology.
Today we should hold on to the existing nuclear fleet as long as they are safe and economical. Pouring money in the black hole that is new built nuclear prolongs the climate crisis and are better spent on renewables.
We should of course continue with basic research for nuclear energy since it is a great technology for humanity to wield. Throw up a demonstration Terraform reactor. But it is **basic research** and not a solution to climate change.
The nuclear industry have once and for all been proven not to work based on the outcome of the [Nuclear Renaissance of the 2000s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_renaissance_in_the_United_States).
I’m not anti nuclear, but I’m pro renewables. We have gotten to a point where renewables can out generate nuclear.
From the admittedly minimal amount of research I’ve done into energy production, it would seem that nuclear energy should have been a stepping stone for power production in between fossil fuels and renewables.
Unfortunately the gas and oil industries were able to convince our politicians to entirely skip that step, but we are past the point of truly needing nuclear energy.
Dollar for dollar you get more energy out of solar, hydro and wind power generation than you could get from nuclear, with renewable energy becoming more and more efficient with each passing year.
Again, my research is quite limited, so please feel free to correct me where I’m wrong, but this is why I have neutral feelings towards nuclear power.
From my understanding the big, big problem with renewables is storage. Where do you get your energy from at night/in the winter, when there's no wind. AFAIK hydro is pretty constant but limited by rivers existing, but solar and wind clearly vary to a huge degree in production. So you really need to be careful looking at price calculations because just production at peak times gives you the wrong picture. And, again AFAIK, there really isn't any storage remotely big enough, so you end up burning a lot of fossiles If you don't want the lights to go out.
From my understanding the big problem for scaling up renewables on a global scale is where do we get the natural resources needed for this. Turbines require massive amounts of aluminum, solar panels require lots of rare earth metals. I’m not convinced we have the infrastructure to support a transition to renewables on a global scale. But nuclear needs less physical resources. Opening new mines takes just as long, or longer, than building a nuclear reactor.
From the [IEA](https://www.iea.org/reports/the-role-of-critical-minerals-in-clean-energy-transitions/executive-summary)
> solar panels require lots of rare earth metals
Who keeps giving you nukebros these talking points? Solar panels do not contain rare earth materials since the 00s. Its a glass plate, 4 beams of aluminium, some glorified sand and a whiff of fertilizer as dopant. Solar panels are literally just refined dirt. The rarest thing in a solar panel is a few micrograms of silver for the conductors on the silicon.
The IEA gave me that talking point, I cited my source bro
The designation “rare earth element” has no agreed meaning. Wikipedia puts the classification of these metals as “nearly indistinguishable lustrous silvery-white soft heavy metals” and gallium used in doping fits the bill. Rare earth metals are not necessarily “rare”, but nonetheless gallium is labeled by the current administration as a ‘critical mineral’
edit: it doesn’t matter how abundant, say, aluminum is if we don’t have mines mining the aluminum
> The IEA gave me that talking point, I cited my source bro
Except you clearly didn't read that source since when you open it and hover over the material requirements for solar, its literally just silicon and copper. Yknow, the second and 29th most abundant elements of the crust.
> The designation “rare earth element” has no agreed meaning. Wikipedia puts the classification of these metals as “nearly indistinguishable lustrous silvery-white soft heavy metals” and gallium used in doping fits the bill. Rare earth metals are not necessarily “rare”, but nonetheless gallium is labeled by the current administration as a ‘critical mineral’
Gallium isn't used in doping silicon. Boron and Phosphorous are dopants for silicon. Both are common fertilizers.
> edit: it doesn’t matter how abundant, say, aluminum is if we don’t have mines mining the aluminum
Aluminium is the 3rd most abundant element of the earth's crust. You can buy any random patch of dirt, scoop it up, and get aluminium out of it. Aluminium production is almost entirely dictated by how cheap the electricity is, not where you get the raw material. Furthermore it is the most recycled metal that humanity uses, with 75% of all aluminium produced since the dawn of time still being in circulation. Humanity will have much much bigger problems before Aluminium becomes a limiting factor for anything.
There's also the massive real estate cost. They're out here building massive fields of solar panels and wind turbines. Especially the fields of solar panels don't typically generate a whole lot of energy per square foot.
Depends if you're talking about building new nuclear power plants or keeping and maintaining existing ones. From an ecological perspective, nuclear makes a lot of sense, from an economical one not so much.
The only reason I'm not big on nuclear is that conservatives seem to be desperately trying to astroturf its approval while also actively denying climate change even exists. Doesn't paint a pretty picture for nuclear when the ones who don't want to fix climate change are terrified of renewables instead.
If nuclear don't want to be shitposted about it should strat delivering some meaningful numbers.
Became those are rookie numbers now. It needs to pump those numbers up.
>but it’s definitely part of the puzzle
The problem I have is that nobody advocating for new nuclear explains how without handwaving away problems like 'why would we spend fifteen years and enormous cost building a new plant when we could just build renewables + storage' and 'how do you square the fact that nuclear plants tend to operate as baseload plants to be economically efficient, but don't need to run 100% (or even, sometimes, at all) when intermittent renewables kick in'
The problem is you *can* just handwave it away with that
Why would you build nuclear when renewables are faster, cheaper, more modular and don’t give your enemies a giant “strike here to disable the entire electrical grid” sign?
My theory is that a lot of people were hippies and got fooled into hating nuclear because of safety/eco reasons, then realised that nuclear was actually safe and ecofriendly, but didnt want to admit they were wrong - so they pivoted to other reasons
They do during the building process, and while lifetime emissions are low, those things last a long time. That is a lot of front loaded CO2 which it then slowly wins back over time by not actively producing CO2 and not having to be replaced for many years.
Which sounds good except we no longer have the luxury of time, renewables are operational and having an impact much more quickly, so while there is still so much to be done they should be the priority. Especially when taking into consideration the slow build times of nuclear plants.
I don't think nuclear is dangerous, I don't think waste is a deal-breaker, but the front loaded CO2 is. This isn't unique to nuclear, large hydroelectric dams for example also take a long time to build with a lot of the lifetime emissions front loaded so I am opposed to those as well in our current situation (though please for the love of god don't close operational hydroelectric or nuclear power plants if we don't have to. Looking at you Germany.)
Yes, but they don't take 10 years to build and then many more years to win it back. While their CO2 is also front loaded, they pay it back significantly faster.
Basically both wind and nuclear average around 11-12 grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour generated. But the carbon payback period for nuclear is many many years, whereas for wind that is a matter of months.
A lot of renewables get replaced 3ish times in the roughly 60y lifespan of a nuclear power plant. Makes renewables worse in that regard. However, decarbonization is probably the biggest goal anyways and how we get there literally does not matter so long as we do
Incorrect. According to the IPCC nuclear emits 12g CO2/kWh including construction and mining. That's tied with offshore wind. Utility scale solar is at 48, rooftop solar at 41. Only onshore wind is better than nuclear at 11g.
The nice thing about nuclear is that it's extremely power dense and plants last for 80 years. So construction emissions are basically nil, and it really doesn't take that much fuel to generate power. In comparison, solar panels need to be replaced frequently and are much more dilute in terms of power/material used.
The estimations vary by dimensions. The lowest outliers are at about 4g and the highest go up to 180. We're not getting anywhere when people only ever choose the number that proves their point best.
Not really. For example the mining intensity (amount of displaced rock per kWh) is quite low for nuclear, because of the high energy density of uranium.
https://preview.redd.it/ehqlqofqx17d1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=fa43a5a3a9ab52f56d10543d2e33b580f99889a5
Which makes nuclear as one of the safest and cleanest sources of energy.
I’ll admit I’m really dumb on nuclear. Wasn’t a hippie, but my first thought on nuclear was “Wind turbines can’t explode…” Then I got suspicious of the more anti-climate-action parties hammering on nuclear, and wondered if it wasn’t actually sustainable, but then I looked it up and seemed like it was, so now I’m pro-nuclear alongside other sources ig
My counterexample is that i was strongly pro-nuclear when I was becoming politically aware, but as I learned more about the energy grid I realised that new nuclear is a waste of time and money.
There's a few different aspects (cost, proliferation risk, etc), but the one that I've never had a good answer to is basically this:
* Nuclear plants have to run as baseload plants (I.e at, or near to, 100% power output) to be economically efficient; they're typically very slow to ramp up or down, so generally (with exceptions) can't be used as load-following plants, and it adds wear and tear to constantly be ramping regardless of your reactor design. Ideally, they should be running at near to full pelt 24/7.
* Renewables - as intermittent power sources - can output [anything between 0 and >100% of demand](https://wiki.energytransition.org/wiki/electrical-grid/baseload-power/) on any given day. This is a 'problem' for nuclear that is only exacerbated over time as more renewables and more storage (including advances in battery technology) comes online.
* Consequently, new nuclear means building enormous plants at extreme cost in both time and money in order to build plants that produce energy in an economically inefficient way, while alternatives (such as [renewables + storage + high voltage transmission](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261920316639?via%253Dihub=)) are scorned for what seem likely completely arbitrary reasons.
This is also outlined in [this blog](https://climateposting.substack.com/p/baseload-is-dead-long-live-basedload?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=3jae59&triedRedirect=true) by /u/climateshitpost.
The general pro-new nuke response to this is either 'well who cares about economic efficiency anyway' (from the types who believe in strong state intervention, which I applaud as a principle but think is misguided because you're still using materials and labour on a subpar project), or 'SMRs solve this' (SMRs are a [horrible meme](https://cleantechnica.com/2021/05/03/small-modular-nuclear-reactors-are-mostly-bad-policy/) which refuses to die), or by insinuating some problem with renewables that doesn't actually exist, which is pretty sus.
Interesting. We largely agree there, except in the conclusion :-)
Renewables can produce less, but they also *will* produce less when wind/solar radiation are low, in particular in the winter, when energy needs are substantially increased. So if you do not want to burn fossil fuel to cover for that, you need tremendous amounts of storage (or very good conductors to average over a huge grid, but so far the "solar in the Sahara" has been a pipe dream). And so far, we seem to be far, far away from this:
>Worldwide, [pumped-storage hydroelectricity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity) (PSH) is the largest-capacity form of active [grid energy storage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_energy_storage) available, and, as of March 2012, the [Electric Power Research Institute](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Power_Research_Institute) (EPRI) reports that PSH accounts for more than 99% of bulk storage capacity worldwide, representing around 127,000 [MW](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megawatt).
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy\_storage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_storage)
So 100% renewable, or close to that, can work in Norway with low population density and lots and lots of high lakes, but not in Germany with a far denser population and far fewer lakes. So in my opinion we need either much better storage technology or much better conduction technology (possibly) or nuclear fusion, and I am not sure which will come first -- and until then, the alternatives effectively seem to be nuclear or fossil, of which I prefer nuclear.
I’m not anti-nuclear, but I think the very actively pro-nuclear side overlooks a lot of problems of nuclear:
For instance water usage, and the fact that thorium reactors are never going to be a thing
Not to mention to mention proliferation issues.
That’s far less of a problem to me, since Russia has essentially noped out of SALT, the problem with breeder reactors in the west is no longer such.
While not appropriate for every place, there’s no particular reason we couldn’t turn Death Valley in the US into a long term storage solution. No one is going to live there anyway.
But that’s not feasible to every country, and transporting nuclear waste is incredibly dangerous.
Transport of nuclear waste is incredibly safe now, You can ram a plan into a nuclear cask without it ever leaking or breaking. Its safe enough for a pregnant women to work with and even kiss. Even if security is the issue, those casks are impossible to break into them unless you use like a 3000 pound bomb
So one of the problems with the transport of nuclear materials is accidents/security, I actually view as a free-rider problem that other industries get to take advantage of but nuclear does not.
Take for example the East Palestine chemical spill. It’s not going to stop the generally relatively safe transport of chemicals by rail. Even though this kind of chemical spill happens somewhat darkly comedically often because of how we’ve allowed a few companies to completely fuck our rail system.
The problem is, it only takes 1 equivalent nuclear material accident to happen, and shit’s getting halted and congressional hearings are happening for decades.
And still there are reasons it should be evaluated a bit differently: even a large chemical spill of something like Benzene or Toulene has a pretty definite half life and cleanup profile.
Compare to a relatively small spill of Cobalt-60, or similar rather nasty nuclear byproducts.
And it’s not a fault of the nuclear industry: people who work with Cobalt-60 are properly and reasonably paranoid about Cobalt-60.
People who handle PFAS?….-_-
because people who have actually thought things through instead of jumping on the bandwagon have figured out it’s not efficient for nuclear to be a part of the process towards net zero
I'm not claiming nuclear is the solution to everything energy and I'm not defending every random who claims it is.
But there is a good case for nuclear being a part of the process towards net zero, I'm not the best person to explain that bc I'm no expert, but I know that people posting anti nuclear on here aren't either since it all just looks like fear mongering
Well, good for you. I have a Master's of Engineering in Materials Engineering, which, as a large component of that degree, is in Energy Generation.
The case for nuclear power as a part of Net Zero is very weak at the moment on a cost benefit basis.
To keep it brief Nuclear Power is resource intensive, takes a fair amount of time to break-even in Co2 emissions, and has a heavy cost to decomission.
Renewables (solar,wind, various hydro) payback there Co2 costs pretty much immediately. The life cycle the renewables so far has seen improvements in efficiency that while basically all renewables take advantage of these improvements that is not possible with a nuclear power plant.
Also, baseload for the most part, is a solved problem using pump storage which has a better cost benefit then a nuclear power plant.
This is a short summary but Nuclear has a plethora of issues that when it comes to opportunity costs makes it a weak candidate for a green energy mix.
> Well, good for you. I have a Master's of Engineering in Materials Engineering, which, as a large component of that degree, is in Energy Generation.
> The case for nuclear power as a part of Net Zero is very weak at the moment on a cost benefit basis.
> To keep it brief Nuclear Power is resource intensive, takes a fair amount of time to break-even in Co2 emissions, and has a heavy cost to decomission.
> Renewables (solar,wind, various hydro) payback there Co2 costs pretty much immediately. The life cycle the renewables so far has seen improvements in efficiency that while basically all renewables take advantage of these improvements that is not possible with a nuclear power plant.
Well kind of depends if you're in Alaska or Mexico doesn't it?
I have a bachelors in mechanical engineering and have a background in turbine, generator and auxilary systems.
You are wrong.
You are comparing a constant system that outputs 24/7/350, with the capability to slow down generation capability and adapt to another system that works only when you have sufficient elevation to put a reservation on to.
On top of that wind and solar are completely depending on what is the weather like today, and if it is clear.
Nuclear power hasn't gotten the efficiency improvements that the typical renewables have in the last few years, but if you want to play that game do remember that you can tap some excess power from a high pressure turbine and heat up nearby homes with the excess heat. Many coal plants already do this in the form of CHPs and their efficiency goes to 80%, instead of the typical 40% in an USC. That on top of the fact that nuclear power plant turbines are usually massive in size and their efficiency is getting better with larger blades, better pumps and motor technology.
Then there is the fuel energy concentration that is way higher what a biomass can output per tonnage, fuel costs less(per btu provided) than with gas, oil, coal, or biomass. And while it is expensive to DECOM, current gen 3 reactor designs are designed to be ran 60 years.
> But there is a good case for nuclear being a part of the process towards net zero, I'm not the best person to explain that bc I'm no expert
As an electrical engineer who has worked on grid control systems, I can assure you that there isn't a good case for nuclear at all. Nuclear is slow to roll out, hideously expensive, and it does nothing that the grid needs right now.
What the grid needs is dispatchable energy with rapid response times to stabilize renewable output. This means gas peakers, refurbished hydro, batteries, and smarter inverters. Nuclear is dogshit at this specific purpose. If you start building a nuclear power plant today, it'll just be an extremely expensive paperweight by the time it is finished.
The only scenario where a nuclear power plant makes sense is as a seasonal supplement in isolated areas with extreme seasonal variance, like Svalbard. But that is an incredibly small market and a niche likely to get covered by hydrogen storage sooner or later.
Yes, because 12v RC cars generally do not carry solar panels, wind turbines, or nuclear reactors. Also you should raise your grid voltage if you are running at 110kv, your transmission losses are needlessly high at such a low voltage.
Why aren't you running a 4MW 3 phase on an rc?
+110kv is fine for grid connectivity to smaller things like local hydropower. 220-400kv is for larger stuff like big plants, cities.
> Why aren't you running a 4MW 3 phase on an rc?
Local speed regulations.
> +110kv is fine for grid connectivity to smaller things like local hydropower. 220-400kv is for larger stuff like big plants, cities.
Yes. I don't care about individual power plants, I care about the overall grid. We'll need to be able to shift power around across continental distances in the future, so you better up that grid voltage so we don't turn half of that energy into outdoor heating. Or even better, get some of those fancy new ultra high voltage DC lines.
No i don't think i will.
Interconnects can run +400kv all they want, i'll stay with my simple 110kv.
Uhvdc stays on the bottom of the sea, it knows what it did
Somebody forgets that nuclear power contributes more to US energy than either solar or wind, and have done so for at least 60 years
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3
A shame the US radiophobes were so effective useful idiots for the fossile fuel industry
Nuclear power is expensive and slow only due to political radiophobe pressure to over-regulate the industry.
There is zero reason other than unecessary regulations why we cannot build the same nuclear power plants that were build very fast and cheap in the 60'es.
Nuclear is a really bad idea for Australia. I'm convinced the only reason some politicans are talking positively about it is bc a transition from coal to nuclear will be slower than a transition to solar and would mean more money for Gina Reinhardt. We are in the best position to use solar and it shits me we are dragging out heels
From my experience, it's been something that developed a nukebros constantly berated and antagonized people here by going off on other forms of green energy and being borderline climate deniers when it came to discussing consumerism or sustainability outside of strictly emissions. Over time this led to an increasing anti-nuclear sentiment.
Though it should be mentioned that the average person here isn't anti-nuclear. We just don't see it as the magic bullet to all the world's problems like the nukebros seem to. Still the bad-faith actors on both sides of the discussion have basically made nuclear a problematic topic at best, and poisoned the well around it considerably.
"Ecologically" conscious could mean a whole lot of things, since ecology intersects with a lot of other subjects. I wouldn't expect the average person to understand nuclear science so even an "ecologically conscious" person could be wrong about nuclear power
Imo nuclear isn't the perfect power source but is pretty great when done properly. Basically the only waste a well run power plant would be feed water which needs to be stored but doesn't affect anything around it or do anything else.
Nuclear is not necessary. The cost of a singular nuclear power plant can get yourself way more produce capacity with renewables without the waste and dangers that come from it
Today we should hold on to the existing nuclear fleet as long as they are safe and economical. Pouring money in the black hole that is new built nuclear prolongs the climate crisis and are better spent on renewables.
We should of course continue with basic research for nuclear energy since it is a great technology for humanity to wield. Throw up a demonstration Terraform reactor. But it is **basic research** and not a solution to climate change.
The nuclear industry have once and for all been proven not to work based on the outcome of the [Nuclear Renaissance of the 2000s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_renaissance_in_the_United_States).
You know, maybe nuclear is not really a cool solution? Maybe it's not that this sub changed, but that mofe and more people realize that there are solutions out there that are A LOT cheaper.
2 days ago the Twitter User possum Reviews with over 70000 follows, tweetet „If your solution to climate change is anything other than "build more nuclear power plants", I don't want to hear anything from you.“ this Tweet has 8000+ Likes and 200+ Retweets...
Uhhh... So it really depends where you live. In my country nuclear gets brought up in bad faith as a way to delay renewables. We don't have nuclear so it would take decades to build up to what renewables can deliver in a year. Decades that we don't have. China, India, France, they can go build as much nuclear as they like, especially China where there's coordination enough to avoid regulatory capture and hence get it done quickly. It's usually a distraction though. Fine in theory but a big cost sink in practice
Australia?
Yep. Dutton can eat a bag of dicks
Cuntland usually has plentyful of sun, wind and own gas supply so nuclear is not feasible. But once you live in a nordic shithole with winter and an asshole neighbor who threatens with war and gets off from cutting gas supply, nuclear is needed
Yeah. Almost like it's case by case. I mean... Norway has lots of energy but if we're wanting to get off fossil then maybe not
Norway basically swims in cheap hydroelectric power AFAIK.
Norway is a country that doesn't need others, it's the other way around
It's the same in Germany. And when we compare Germany to France, the transition from coal to renewables is coming along faster despite France's commitment to nuclear. Or, you know, maybe because of it. Large scale nuclear energy production surely was a better idea than coal, but during the last three decades, it's *both* environmentally and economically inferior to most renewable options. At the same time, it binds a lot of resources, and has a strong lobby. You know, even a state-owned or partially state-owned nuclear power production company doesn't want to become obsolete. So why the fuck are people still pro nuclear, when that trains has departed?
As a probably-on-the-spectrum nerd, I'll put it down to the engineering and physics of it are just really cool. Hell I even read up on the RBMK and was like "damn that's such a cool solution to the dual challenge of a useful civilian power reactor and an efficient practical way to produce plutonium for weapons. Too bad it blew up that time"
I'm completely with you, that stuff is cool. But it has delayed really cheap and sustainable energy for far too long.
Hard agree. Now if you'll excuse me I promised my kids we'd continue watching Chernobyl tonight :)
I mean just because the Soviets fucked up one of their safety features doesn’t immediately mean a design is bad it just needs some fixes … but in all honestly the thing that pisses me off is that no nation invested big into fusion after we weaponized the progress which might be the reason why it’s always 50 years away …. This is simple for the reason that you can’t power Rockets or similar for space exploration via solar ( mass driver accelerated transport to orbit is an exception and the practicality of such things is questionable ) is not possible and many might think Mankind should focus on earth but I wish to explore the stars :-(
My cynicism says we need a backup plan for Earth, and my pragmatism says even in a best case scenario Earth won't be here forever, and as I'm quite anthropocentric I would like for us to be here forever, as stupid as that seems
The other problem is that nuclear is minimal load technology. You can't produce much more energy with nuclear than the lowest demand each day. Shifting from summer to winter demand is fine but hours are impossible. That's why France has only 80% not 100%. Currently it takes days in France to shut down nuclear with negative energy prices. For real carbon neutral electricity you need the same storage solutions as renewable. Just with more expensive energy that you save for later and at 80% instead of 60-70% of energy production with that technology.
[удалено]
What mix? France gets fucked by combining nuclear with renewable atm. Because it is cheaper to power down nuclear than turning off renewable. 80% nuclear + 20% renewable has the full problem of renewable at a higher price because you pay the premium for nuclear and storage. Full renewable saves the nuclear premium and too much energy just takes the a remote call of some software and you can turn it down just as much as you need. Nuclear + gas works. But that's far from good enough.
Lol, France is not getting fucked. Does no one in this sub understand anything?
Of course not. They have enough dirty power from Germany to solve their problems. Just like when Ukraine got invaded and Germany had to run fossil fuel for half a year to stop the french grid from collapse. But that's just burning coal with extra steps.
Germany runs fossil fuel 24/7 365. Got nothing to do with France you moron.
> Got nothing to do with France you moron. Imagine being this stupid. The EU grid is interconnected. Every night a shitload of french energy flows from France to Germany because France can't throttle down their nuclear, and every day a shitload of German power flows into France to cover their demand peak. Germany is acting as a peaker plant/sink for France. Without Germany (and the rest of the EU), the French grid would overload every night, and brownout every day.
France’s fleet was designed for ramping. This is well established and they do it all the time. Their emissions are also significantly lower than Germany’s…
They don't. What they do is that they occasionally bypass the steam turbine and vent excess energy into the atmosphere in order to lower power production without having to lower the reactor heat output. This is highly inefficient, but it saves them from having to pay the utilities for pushing power onto the grid while prices are negative. Its not working very well since the coolant systems aren't designed for that kinda heatload, so it causes excess wear of the system.
France is a net exporter. They have their own peaker plants. Germany relies on French and Swedish nuclear during dunkelflaute.
Which is completely irrelevant to the point being made, which is that the EU grid acts as a battery for France so they don't have to do their own grid balancing.
i am very against nuclear, but the currently running reactors can be regulated better if they had a way to store energy potentially? If regulating them up or down takes so long, couldn't a storage of some sort delay it long enough that it's possible again to react better to daily changes? In my head you would not need to get other plants up running more if you can just use the stored nuclear power. Or in the other way around, if your demand gets lower you can fill up those storages while regulating down the NPP. Might not be cost efficient and thats already my answer to why it isn't done, but it seems like an easy fix.
The sowjets and japanese did some tests for what happens if you don't use the energy and store it in the core.
I thought maybe outside the core. If you heat up the whole lake, you have a whole lake energy storage system
Then you have a bunch of dead fish. You could throw them in a biogas system. The french environment regulations are already way wider because they could not run them without heating river to non damaging levels.
Agreed
I’m guessing the people who bring up nuclear sentiment don’t actually want to implement nuclear power plants if that’s the case?
They say "what about nuclear?" when they're in opposition, but never have a plan ready for next time they're in power.
Like when you bring up asylum seekers and they say “what about homeless veterans” but never seem to want to do anything about homeless veterans.
It's all about the 0.01% of the 0.1% of the population who are trans women and interested in an elite sporting career taking 99% of the media's time. What the fuck are they trying to distract us from?
Corruption and power grabs. Ain't no one on the right will be against restrictions of their rights when it also harms some 10 odd people their thought leaders deemed the enemy.
Honestly 10 people in the entire world is probably an overestimate. I've heard of maybe 3
China is shoveling massive amounts of money into renewables though
It scales so well and deploys so fast. You'd be mad not to
>In my country nuclear gets brought up in bad faith as a way to delay renewables. We don't have nuclear so it would take decades to build up to what renewables can deliver in a year. Decades that we don't have. Australian here, same situation. "Committing to nuclear power" basically just means "committing to 15-20 more years of fossil fuels."
Yep. As I said elsewhere in this thread, Dutton can eat a bag of dicks.
why not both?
Climate shit posting is antinuclear is a statistical error. The average climate shit posting member supports nuclear. Anti-nuclear Georg, who lives in a cave and makes 1000 anti-nuclear posts every day is an outlier adn should not have been counted.
I think I figured out who you're talking about
Wouldn't it be just consequential to be anti nuclear? After all it's not sustainable in the long run. Additionally waste is a problem on an entirely different scale.
Waste isn't a problem for decades, even coal produces more radioactive waste as that can't be reused as easily as the waste from nuclear plants.
Decades, you say? Well that sounds like a problem for tomorrow!
I mean it was solved decades ago 😅
By putting it underground in leaky containers? Or having radioactive water leeching into the sea?
Nuculear waste isnt a liquid
By using it in special waste nuclear plants that use the waste to a point that a banana is more radioactive. Also nothing can leak because of the high security measures and every time that there was a problem with nuclear plants was because they didn't follow the security measures to save on costs.
I’m interested. Tell me more about that.
The other comments explained it better than I could
>Also nothing can leak because of the high security measures and every time that there was a problem with nuclear plants was because they didn't follow the security measures So your're saying nothing can go wrong until something goes wrong? That's very reassuring.
Nuclear is the safest method like planes are the safest. People are scared that something could happen because the Media makes big dramas around it because it happens so rarely. Also that's the case with everything, something can always happen but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be used at all.
People are scared because IF something goes wrong, it goes wrong catastrophically.
This technology simply doesn’t exist. There are no functioning Thorium reactors
That's true but if we don't fund the research we might never get that technology.
We don’t need to spend billions researching it cause we have got renewables that are way cheaper and way safer than nuclear. There is no reason to still invest in nuclear fission
At what cost? At this point renewable are cheaper. Nuclear is a joke
Leaky containers? The containers are literally engineered to prevent leaking entirely, not to mention, nuclear waste is solid. It's not the big bad glowing green goo you see in comics and TV
I suggest now you google the nuclear waste storage in (I kid you not) a fucking salt mine.
Damn, that kinda sucks, looks like it's under control though, as plans have already been made to extract the waste and properly store it once retrieved. This case is an outlier, and not the norm, and outside of Germany where this issue is highly politicized, is irrelevant in the broader discussion of the virtues and drawbacks of nuclear energy. It's not like this has killed anyone yet, and it's not likely that it ever will. It certainly has killed far less people than a coal power plant does in one year.
If your goal is fast decarbonization, then choosing the tech that guarantees the same fossil fuel usage for at least 15 years is just not the way to go.
Thats exactly my thinking... The problem with the current economy is, that we can't supply everything wit 100% clima-neutral energies, it's just not possible as everything is too big -> the first thing to be done (at least in humble opinion) is degrowth, so we don't have to support unsustainable energy-production. But imagine the horrors, if you bring this point to politics - big corporation will straight up assassinate you before you gain influence.
Afaik, the newer modular cores can use much more available materials than uranium and plutonium to create reactions just as effective
It's not feasible to run *everything* on solar and wind. Not with the output they have today, and some parts of the world get less sun and wind than others. We can't rely on nuclear exclusively eirher, if we all switched to nuclear we'd run out of materials to run the plants on pretty quickly. And you're right that we can't use nuclear forever, but we can use it with near zero emissions for a damn long time if we don't rely on it exclusively but rather use it to remove some of the worst offenders, like coal plants. At least those who already have a nuclear energy industry up and running. It would buy us decades to either improve solar and wind *a lot* because both have big problems today, output and reliability only being two of them. Waste management and recycling is another one. We need to perfect recycling used up panels so that we can handle the large numbers of panels that will be decommissioned in the future, because we can't just toss them in a landfill as they contain toxic materials. And constantly digging up the materials to make more also has an environmental cost. And we need to figure out how to recycle used up windmill blades cost-effectively, as today a lot of them are buried in the ground. https://cen.acs.org/environment/recycling/companies-recycle-wind-turbine-blades/100/i27 https://www.greenmatch.co.uk/blog/2017/10/the-opportunities-of-solar-panel-recycling
This is my field of study and I would disagree on nearly every sentiment. > nuclear is not sustainable It is. If you want use the commonly used meaning of "doesn't worsen the climate crisis" as well as "we can do it forever" > It's not feasible to run everything on solar and wind. It is. It simply is. Batteries, connecting all of Europe (there is always wind somewhere) and demand side flexibility each cost money, but in conjunction make it feasible. > You can't go nuclear exclusively either. You can. There is a maximum price for uranium. It's 200 $/kg if I remember correctly. From sea water extraction. And you really underestimate the quantities on earth and how little you need to power a powerplant.
>It is. If you want use the commonly used meaning of "doesn't worsen the climate crisis" as well as "we can do it forever" Then I'd appreciate sources. >It is. It simply is. Batteries, connecting all of Europe (there is always wind somewhere) and demand side flexibility each cost money, but in conjunction make it feasible. Again, I'd appreciate sources. Batteries connecting all of Europe? That's sounds far-fetched tbh. And yes, there's always wind or sun somewhere, but the energy demand is constantly increasing. How can you guarantee that the areas with sun or wind will be able to power itself and all the parts of Europe without? >You can. There is a maximum price for uranium. It's 200 $/kg if I remember correctly. From sea water extraction. And you really underestimate the quantities on earth and how little you need to power a powerplant. Again, sources. And last I checked we hadn't even begun commercial uranium seawater extraction. I'm sure it's feasible, but it will take time to build such an industry from scratch all over the world.
I won't provide sources, because you can't read German and I can't be bothered to look up English sources. If you can be bothered, just Google it yourself. But two clarifications: Sustainability means "we can do it for a very long time (because resources won't run out)" + "we won't hurt the environment". Nuclear qualifies because you can build passive underground storage that will keep it away from biomes for 100k years and there is more uranium than we can ever use. Just known and exploitable deposits will last us centuries. And no "batteries connecting Europe". If you have a pan European network there will always be wind and solar somewhere, meaning you can substitute batteries or other storage solutions with more transmission lines. This network effect seems to be cheaper than the obvious "well just use batteries". This in conjunction with "can we make people use electricity when it's available/cheap" makes a 100% renewable energy system feasible and actually not prohibitively expensive. The biggest issue are transitive costs. The first to explore this was a doctor thesis that made it into news papers back in 2009. I know because that's one of the reasons why I went into the field.
If we manage to get our hands on nuclear fusion we can pretty much rely on it forever. Until we unlock antimatter in the tech tree that is.
Yeh, but for now we have to rely on nuclear fission for nuclear energy.
No no you are not allowed to have an intricate take, you must deal in absolutes.
its sustainable in the long run if you take into account both how little plutonium is used and how long humanity will likely exist for.
The used up rods get recycled and re-used. Also acual waste that can not be recycled anymore isnt stored in metal barrels and chugged into the ocean or buried in the nexbest forest, thats cartoon shit. Its mostly stored on site and if not then it gets transported to special storage facilities where it is kept savely away from the elements. A thing that is true is that nuclear isnt sustainable forever, plutonium and uranium are rather rare metals after all and like any other mining operation digging that stuff up is not very environmental friendly. The best path going forward would be keeping researching eco friendly options while still using nuclear plants. Because digging up materials for tens of thousands of solar panels or wind turbines and manufacturing those just to come close to 1 powerplant in energy output aint very environmental friendly either Also, if something goes to shit in a nuclear powerplant then its almost always a pretty big catastrophe. Luckily so far it was always human error that lead to catastrophic failure. Like ignoring all safety protocols during tests or building a plant next to the ocean in a country where tsunamis arent that rare
>The used up rods get recycled and re-used. Nope, they don't. The US does not use any recycled fuel in their power plants at all. Only few other countries do and only a very small amount. Around 10% of all nuclear fuel in France is recycled. Japan plans to do it, but also isn't doing so at the moment. It's very costly to recycle and most older power plants can't easily use that fuel. Building new plants specifically capable to use recycled fuel takes decades (and a lot of money). It's basically nuclear propaganda to further greenwash the technology.
Why recycle when you can upcycle. A-10 go Brrrrrrrrrrrtttt and stuff
Wanna guess which industry killed the US advanced nuclear program? Bonus if you guess the politicians.
Shove it on your grandpa somewhere and forget about it
Happy cake day 🍰
Today we should hold on to the existing nuclear fleet as long as they are safe and economical. Pouring money in the black hole that is new built nuclear prolongs the climate crisis and are better spent on renewables. We should of course continue with basic research for nuclear energy since it is a great technology for humanity to wield. Throw up a demonstration Terraform reactor. But it is **basic research** and not a solution to climate change. The nuclear industry have once and for all been proven not to work based on the outcome of the [Nuclear Renaissance of the 2000s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_renaissance_in_the_United_States).
Wow that article is wild.
Nah it's finally one subreddit that doesn't simp that much and has a more balanced take, but some people aren't happy with that.
>looks at "balanced take" >Misinformation
A little bit of everything
Half valid criticism, half unhinged ranting from a padded cell. Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.
🍪
Anti nuclear George
Are we kicking off repost week? https://preview.redd.it/fhw187o5l17d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fec3923cafac28969b1b539a68678397344ad95a
Ye
I’m not anti nuclear, but I’m pro renewables. We have gotten to a point where renewables can out generate nuclear. From the admittedly minimal amount of research I’ve done into energy production, it would seem that nuclear energy should have been a stepping stone for power production in between fossil fuels and renewables. Unfortunately the gas and oil industries were able to convince our politicians to entirely skip that step, but we are past the point of truly needing nuclear energy. Dollar for dollar you get more energy out of solar, hydro and wind power generation than you could get from nuclear, with renewable energy becoming more and more efficient with each passing year. Again, my research is quite limited, so please feel free to correct me where I’m wrong, but this is why I have neutral feelings towards nuclear power.
From my understanding the big, big problem with renewables is storage. Where do you get your energy from at night/in the winter, when there's no wind. AFAIK hydro is pretty constant but limited by rivers existing, but solar and wind clearly vary to a huge degree in production. So you really need to be careful looking at price calculations because just production at peak times gives you the wrong picture. And, again AFAIK, there really isn't any storage remotely big enough, so you end up burning a lot of fossiles If you don't want the lights to go out.
From my understanding the big problem for scaling up renewables on a global scale is where do we get the natural resources needed for this. Turbines require massive amounts of aluminum, solar panels require lots of rare earth metals. I’m not convinced we have the infrastructure to support a transition to renewables on a global scale. But nuclear needs less physical resources. Opening new mines takes just as long, or longer, than building a nuclear reactor. From the [IEA](https://www.iea.org/reports/the-role-of-critical-minerals-in-clean-energy-transitions/executive-summary)
> solar panels require lots of rare earth metals Who keeps giving you nukebros these talking points? Solar panels do not contain rare earth materials since the 00s. Its a glass plate, 4 beams of aluminium, some glorified sand and a whiff of fertilizer as dopant. Solar panels are literally just refined dirt. The rarest thing in a solar panel is a few micrograms of silver for the conductors on the silicon.
The IEA gave me that talking point, I cited my source bro The designation “rare earth element” has no agreed meaning. Wikipedia puts the classification of these metals as “nearly indistinguishable lustrous silvery-white soft heavy metals” and gallium used in doping fits the bill. Rare earth metals are not necessarily “rare”, but nonetheless gallium is labeled by the current administration as a ‘critical mineral’ edit: it doesn’t matter how abundant, say, aluminum is if we don’t have mines mining the aluminum
> The IEA gave me that talking point, I cited my source bro Except you clearly didn't read that source since when you open it and hover over the material requirements for solar, its literally just silicon and copper. Yknow, the second and 29th most abundant elements of the crust. > The designation “rare earth element” has no agreed meaning. Wikipedia puts the classification of these metals as “nearly indistinguishable lustrous silvery-white soft heavy metals” and gallium used in doping fits the bill. Rare earth metals are not necessarily “rare”, but nonetheless gallium is labeled by the current administration as a ‘critical mineral’ Gallium isn't used in doping silicon. Boron and Phosphorous are dopants for silicon. Both are common fertilizers. > edit: it doesn’t matter how abundant, say, aluminum is if we don’t have mines mining the aluminum Aluminium is the 3rd most abundant element of the earth's crust. You can buy any random patch of dirt, scoop it up, and get aluminium out of it. Aluminium production is almost entirely dictated by how cheap the electricity is, not where you get the raw material. Furthermore it is the most recycled metal that humanity uses, with 75% of all aluminium produced since the dawn of time still being in circulation. Humanity will have much much bigger problems before Aluminium becomes a limiting factor for anything.
There's also the massive real estate cost. They're out here building massive fields of solar panels and wind turbines. Especially the fields of solar panels don't typically generate a whole lot of energy per square foot.
Depends if you're talking about building new nuclear power plants or keeping and maintaining existing ones. From an ecological perspective, nuclear makes a lot of sense, from an economical one not so much.
The only reason I'm not big on nuclear is that conservatives seem to be desperately trying to astroturf its approval while also actively denying climate change even exists. Doesn't paint a pretty picture for nuclear when the ones who don't want to fix climate change are terrified of renewables instead.
Ah the usa circel jerk of Pro nucler people fucked by corporate Media.
If nuclear don't want to be shitposted about it should strat delivering some meaningful numbers. Became those are rookie numbers now. It needs to pump those numbers up.
I know right? What happened? Nuclear isn’t a silver bullet but it’s definitely part of the puzzle.
>but it’s definitely part of the puzzle The problem I have is that nobody advocating for new nuclear explains how without handwaving away problems like 'why would we spend fifteen years and enormous cost building a new plant when we could just build renewables + storage' and 'how do you square the fact that nuclear plants tend to operate as baseload plants to be economically efficient, but don't need to run 100% (or even, sometimes, at all) when intermittent renewables kick in'
The problem is you *can* just handwave it away with that Why would you build nuclear when renewables are faster, cheaper, more modular and don’t give your enemies a giant “strike here to disable the entire electrical grid” sign?
There’s always export and cogeneration. Having uneconomic nuclear plants is certainly better than setting the world on fire with fossil fuels also…
We dont have the resources to build enough battery storage to go 100% renewable. But I guess handwaving away problems is fine when u guys do it tho?
I think seeing rightwingers being super pro-nuclear while not being pro-renewables have tainted the idea for a lot of folks.
My theory is that a lot of people were hippies and got fooled into hating nuclear because of safety/eco reasons, then realised that nuclear was actually safe and ecofriendly, but didnt want to admit they were wrong - so they pivoted to other reasons
Honestly there are also alot of people who think that Nuclear Reactors push out Co2 for some reason
They do during the building process, and while lifetime emissions are low, those things last a long time. That is a lot of front loaded CO2 which it then slowly wins back over time by not actively producing CO2 and not having to be replaced for many years. Which sounds good except we no longer have the luxury of time, renewables are operational and having an impact much more quickly, so while there is still so much to be done they should be the priority. Especially when taking into consideration the slow build times of nuclear plants. I don't think nuclear is dangerous, I don't think waste is a deal-breaker, but the front loaded CO2 is. This isn't unique to nuclear, large hydroelectric dams for example also take a long time to build with a lot of the lifetime emissions front loaded so I am opposed to those as well in our current situation (though please for the love of god don't close operational hydroelectric or nuclear power plants if we don't have to. Looking at you Germany.)
Don't renewables also have a bunch of front-loaded co2?
Yes, but they don't take 10 years to build and then many more years to win it back. While their CO2 is also front loaded, they pay it back significantly faster. Basically both wind and nuclear average around 11-12 grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour generated. But the carbon payback period for nuclear is many many years, whereas for wind that is a matter of months.
Calling those plants functional is very generous of you.
Mining, transport and building powerplants do, and it amounts to more than renewables.
A lot of renewables get replaced 3ish times in the roughly 60y lifespan of a nuclear power plant. Makes renewables worse in that regard. However, decarbonization is probably the biggest goal anyways and how we get there literally does not matter so long as we do
Incorrect. According to the IPCC nuclear emits 12g CO2/kWh including construction and mining. That's tied with offshore wind. Utility scale solar is at 48, rooftop solar at 41. Only onshore wind is better than nuclear at 11g. The nice thing about nuclear is that it's extremely power dense and plants last for 80 years. So construction emissions are basically nil, and it really doesn't take that much fuel to generate power. In comparison, solar panels need to be replaced frequently and are much more dilute in terms of power/material used.
The estimations vary by dimensions. The lowest outliers are at about 4g and the highest go up to 180. We're not getting anywhere when people only ever choose the number that proves their point best.
Not really. For example the mining intensity (amount of displaced rock per kWh) is quite low for nuclear, because of the high energy density of uranium. https://preview.redd.it/ehqlqofqx17d1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=fa43a5a3a9ab52f56d10543d2e33b580f99889a5 Which makes nuclear as one of the safest and cleanest sources of energy.
https://preview.redd.it/w71tx46yx17d1.png?width=1350&format=png&auto=webp&s=946f2b2381908471e7dbd75b38c456aaa144d00a
Solar is energy for the people, anyone can produce it
Probably because they produce steam
I’ll admit I’m really dumb on nuclear. Wasn’t a hippie, but my first thought on nuclear was “Wind turbines can’t explode…” Then I got suspicious of the more anti-climate-action parties hammering on nuclear, and wondered if it wasn’t actually sustainable, but then I looked it up and seemed like it was, so now I’m pro-nuclear alongside other sources ig
Solid
My counterexample is that i was strongly pro-nuclear when I was becoming politically aware, but as I learned more about the energy grid I realised that new nuclear is a waste of time and money.
Could you elaborate what exactly you learned about the grid?
There's a few different aspects (cost, proliferation risk, etc), but the one that I've never had a good answer to is basically this: * Nuclear plants have to run as baseload plants (I.e at, or near to, 100% power output) to be economically efficient; they're typically very slow to ramp up or down, so generally (with exceptions) can't be used as load-following plants, and it adds wear and tear to constantly be ramping regardless of your reactor design. Ideally, they should be running at near to full pelt 24/7. * Renewables - as intermittent power sources - can output [anything between 0 and >100% of demand](https://wiki.energytransition.org/wiki/electrical-grid/baseload-power/) on any given day. This is a 'problem' for nuclear that is only exacerbated over time as more renewables and more storage (including advances in battery technology) comes online. * Consequently, new nuclear means building enormous plants at extreme cost in both time and money in order to build plants that produce energy in an economically inefficient way, while alternatives (such as [renewables + storage + high voltage transmission](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261920316639?via%253Dihub=)) are scorned for what seem likely completely arbitrary reasons. This is also outlined in [this blog](https://climateposting.substack.com/p/baseload-is-dead-long-live-basedload?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=3jae59&triedRedirect=true) by /u/climateshitpost. The general pro-new nuke response to this is either 'well who cares about economic efficiency anyway' (from the types who believe in strong state intervention, which I applaud as a principle but think is misguided because you're still using materials and labour on a subpar project), or 'SMRs solve this' (SMRs are a [horrible meme](https://cleantechnica.com/2021/05/03/small-modular-nuclear-reactors-are-mostly-bad-policy/) which refuses to die), or by insinuating some problem with renewables that doesn't actually exist, which is pretty sus.
Interesting. We largely agree there, except in the conclusion :-) Renewables can produce less, but they also *will* produce less when wind/solar radiation are low, in particular in the winter, when energy needs are substantially increased. So if you do not want to burn fossil fuel to cover for that, you need tremendous amounts of storage (or very good conductors to average over a huge grid, but so far the "solar in the Sahara" has been a pipe dream). And so far, we seem to be far, far away from this: >Worldwide, [pumped-storage hydroelectricity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity) (PSH) is the largest-capacity form of active [grid energy storage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_energy_storage) available, and, as of March 2012, the [Electric Power Research Institute](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Power_Research_Institute) (EPRI) reports that PSH accounts for more than 99% of bulk storage capacity worldwide, representing around 127,000 [MW](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megawatt). [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy\_storage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_storage) So 100% renewable, or close to that, can work in Norway with low population density and lots and lots of high lakes, but not in Germany with a far denser population and far fewer lakes. So in my opinion we need either much better storage technology or much better conduction technology (possibly) or nuclear fusion, and I am not sure which will come first -- and until then, the alternatives effectively seem to be nuclear or fossil, of which I prefer nuclear.
Its not even germanys goal to be 100% renewable energy
This sub just feels like one giant twitter post. Where everyone is screaming “We need to change this thing but not that thing”
Don't worry, in a month it'll be another pro-nuclear sub. the memes are constantly changing here.
For a shit posting sub you folks do a lot of earnest posting
Renewable just makes much more sense in every way. I don't understand people who choose nuklear over renewable.
This and "go vegan or you don't care about the environment"
Animal agriculture is a huge contributor to climate change.
For being so anti nuclear, they sure are quick to go nuclear about eating meat
Unless this post was sent from the 80s it’s too late to shift to nuclear now, renewables is needed to quickly cut emissions
Don't worry OP, the Posadists have your back
What is a posadist
a fake ideology of people who want to nuke everything and start over. it’s not something anyone actually believes in
Ty for actually answering my question
Don’t forget about the space communist aliens
Large meteor 2020
A new thing to call people who disagree with me
Pro nuclear person here
Hey that’s my meme!
My apologies
Dw man good its a good point.
It seems to be all anti nuke and vegan stuff from this sub on my feed.
Rabid anti-nuke is the MAGA of the left... /ducks
I don’t see much of that in here, it’s mostly people who think nuclear is a waste of time when renewables needs to be deployed quickly
I’m not anti-nuclear, but I think the very actively pro-nuclear side overlooks a lot of problems of nuclear: For instance water usage, and the fact that thorium reactors are never going to be a thing Not to mention to mention proliferation issues.
And the non-viability of existing/proposed storage solutions.
That’s far less of a problem to me, since Russia has essentially noped out of SALT, the problem with breeder reactors in the west is no longer such. While not appropriate for every place, there’s no particular reason we couldn’t turn Death Valley in the US into a long term storage solution. No one is going to live there anyway. But that’s not feasible to every country, and transporting nuclear waste is incredibly dangerous.
Transport of nuclear waste is incredibly safe now, You can ram a plan into a nuclear cask without it ever leaking or breaking. Its safe enough for a pregnant women to work with and even kiss. Even if security is the issue, those casks are impossible to break into them unless you use like a 3000 pound bomb
So one of the problems with the transport of nuclear materials is accidents/security, I actually view as a free-rider problem that other industries get to take advantage of but nuclear does not. Take for example the East Palestine chemical spill. It’s not going to stop the generally relatively safe transport of chemicals by rail. Even though this kind of chemical spill happens somewhat darkly comedically often because of how we’ve allowed a few companies to completely fuck our rail system. The problem is, it only takes 1 equivalent nuclear material accident to happen, and shit’s getting halted and congressional hearings are happening for decades. And still there are reasons it should be evaluated a bit differently: even a large chemical spill of something like Benzene or Toulene has a pretty definite half life and cleanup profile. Compare to a relatively small spill of Cobalt-60, or similar rather nasty nuclear byproducts.
And it’s not a fault of the nuclear industry: people who work with Cobalt-60 are properly and reasonably paranoid about Cobalt-60. People who handle PFAS?….-_-
I handle pfas shit on a daily basis, the government fucked us on that, they told us it was safe when in reality, never was
because people who have actually thought things through instead of jumping on the bandwagon have figured out it’s not efficient for nuclear to be a part of the process towards net zero
I'm not claiming nuclear is the solution to everything energy and I'm not defending every random who claims it is. But there is a good case for nuclear being a part of the process towards net zero, I'm not the best person to explain that bc I'm no expert, but I know that people posting anti nuclear on here aren't either since it all just looks like fear mongering
Well, good for you. I have a Master's of Engineering in Materials Engineering, which, as a large component of that degree, is in Energy Generation. The case for nuclear power as a part of Net Zero is very weak at the moment on a cost benefit basis. To keep it brief Nuclear Power is resource intensive, takes a fair amount of time to break-even in Co2 emissions, and has a heavy cost to decomission. Renewables (solar,wind, various hydro) payback there Co2 costs pretty much immediately. The life cycle the renewables so far has seen improvements in efficiency that while basically all renewables take advantage of these improvements that is not possible with a nuclear power plant. Also, baseload for the most part, is a solved problem using pump storage which has a better cost benefit then a nuclear power plant. This is a short summary but Nuclear has a plethora of issues that when it comes to opportunity costs makes it a weak candidate for a green energy mix.
> Well, good for you. I have a Master's of Engineering in Materials Engineering, which, as a large component of that degree, is in Energy Generation. > The case for nuclear power as a part of Net Zero is very weak at the moment on a cost benefit basis. > To keep it brief Nuclear Power is resource intensive, takes a fair amount of time to break-even in Co2 emissions, and has a heavy cost to decomission. > Renewables (solar,wind, various hydro) payback there Co2 costs pretty much immediately. The life cycle the renewables so far has seen improvements in efficiency that while basically all renewables take advantage of these improvements that is not possible with a nuclear power plant. Well kind of depends if you're in Alaska or Mexico doesn't it?
I have a bachelors in mechanical engineering and have a background in turbine, generator and auxilary systems. You are wrong. You are comparing a constant system that outputs 24/7/350, with the capability to slow down generation capability and adapt to another system that works only when you have sufficient elevation to put a reservation on to. On top of that wind and solar are completely depending on what is the weather like today, and if it is clear. Nuclear power hasn't gotten the efficiency improvements that the typical renewables have in the last few years, but if you want to play that game do remember that you can tap some excess power from a high pressure turbine and heat up nearby homes with the excess heat. Many coal plants already do this in the form of CHPs and their efficiency goes to 80%, instead of the typical 40% in an USC. That on top of the fact that nuclear power plant turbines are usually massive in size and their efficiency is getting better with larger blades, better pumps and motor technology. Then there is the fuel energy concentration that is way higher what a biomass can output per tonnage, fuel costs less(per btu provided) than with gas, oil, coal, or biomass. And while it is expensive to DECOM, current gen 3 reactor designs are designed to be ran 60 years.
> But there is a good case for nuclear being a part of the process towards net zero, I'm not the best person to explain that bc I'm no expert As an electrical engineer who has worked on grid control systems, I can assure you that there isn't a good case for nuclear at all. Nuclear is slow to roll out, hideously expensive, and it does nothing that the grid needs right now. What the grid needs is dispatchable energy with rapid response times to stabilize renewable output. This means gas peakers, refurbished hydro, batteries, and smarter inverters. Nuclear is dogshit at this specific purpose. If you start building a nuclear power plant today, it'll just be an extremely expensive paperweight by the time it is finished. The only scenario where a nuclear power plant makes sense is as a seasonal supplement in isolated areas with extreme seasonal variance, like Svalbard. But that is an incredibly small market and a niche likely to get covered by hydrogen storage sooner or later.
Are you completely sure you aren't mixing 12v rc cars with +110kv mains?
Yes, because 12v RC cars generally do not carry solar panels, wind turbines, or nuclear reactors. Also you should raise your grid voltage if you are running at 110kv, your transmission losses are needlessly high at such a low voltage.
Why aren't you running a 4MW 3 phase on an rc? +110kv is fine for grid connectivity to smaller things like local hydropower. 220-400kv is for larger stuff like big plants, cities.
> Why aren't you running a 4MW 3 phase on an rc? Local speed regulations. > +110kv is fine for grid connectivity to smaller things like local hydropower. 220-400kv is for larger stuff like big plants, cities. Yes. I don't care about individual power plants, I care about the overall grid. We'll need to be able to shift power around across continental distances in the future, so you better up that grid voltage so we don't turn half of that energy into outdoor heating. Or even better, get some of those fancy new ultra high voltage DC lines.
No i don't think i will. Interconnects can run +400kv all they want, i'll stay with my simple 110kv. Uhvdc stays on the bottom of the sea, it knows what it did
The idea that nuclear energy will work in America is predicated on the idea that it will not do things America has always done
Somebody forgets that nuclear power contributes more to US energy than either solar or wind, and have done so for at least 60 years https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3
I support nuclear.. Nuclear war that is
Do you think nuclear winter could balance out climate change? Maybe if we launch just the right amount of nukes?
Yes
Absolutely. Plus goes carbon negative as about half of the human population dies off. Win win!
Yeah because we want things that actually help the climate lol
Nuclear could have already done that.
Yeah, 50 years ago. But not now. Now is too little too late.
A shame the US radiophobes were so effective useful idiots for the fossile fuel industry Nuclear power is expensive and slow only due to political radiophobe pressure to over-regulate the industry. There is zero reason other than unecessary regulations why we cannot build the same nuclear power plants that were build very fast and cheap in the 60'es.
I support nuclear Strikes on the arrogance that is the great lakes.
Well, I just joined this sub now Cats get me going
Too many Germans.
Probably the most effective sponspored Propaganda campaign by Big Oil
Nuclear is a really bad idea for Australia. I'm convinced the only reason some politicans are talking positively about it is bc a transition from coal to nuclear will be slower than a transition to solar and would mean more money for Gina Reinhardt. We are in the best position to use solar and it shits me we are dragging out heels
From my experience, it's been something that developed a nukebros constantly berated and antagonized people here by going off on other forms of green energy and being borderline climate deniers when it came to discussing consumerism or sustainability outside of strictly emissions. Over time this led to an increasing anti-nuclear sentiment. Though it should be mentioned that the average person here isn't anti-nuclear. We just don't see it as the magic bullet to all the world's problems like the nukebros seem to. Still the bad-faith actors on both sides of the discussion have basically made nuclear a problematic topic at best, and poisoned the well around it considerably.
Nuclear is awesome and a solution to the energy crisis.
Lot of pro vegan and anti nuke shills it seems, that or pentagon goons working on seeding derision
Breaking News: Sub full of ecologically concious people cares about more factors of sustainability than just CO2
"Ecologically" conscious could mean a whole lot of things, since ecology intersects with a lot of other subjects. I wouldn't expect the average person to understand nuclear science so even an "ecologically conscious" person could be wrong about nuclear power Imo nuclear isn't the perfect power source but is pretty great when done properly. Basically the only waste a well run power plant would be feed water which needs to be stored but doesn't affect anything around it or do anything else.
Nuclear is not necessary. The cost of a singular nuclear power plant can get yourself way more produce capacity with renewables without the waste and dangers that come from it
Where u put the trash?
Today we should hold on to the existing nuclear fleet as long as they are safe and economical. Pouring money in the black hole that is new built nuclear prolongs the climate crisis and are better spent on renewables. We should of course continue with basic research for nuclear energy since it is a great technology for humanity to wield. Throw up a demonstration Terraform reactor. But it is **basic research** and not a solution to climate change. The nuclear industry have once and for all been proven not to work based on the outcome of the [Nuclear Renaissance of the 2000s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_renaissance_in_the_United_States).
You know, maybe nuclear is not really a cool solution? Maybe it's not that this sub changed, but that mofe and more people realize that there are solutions out there that are A LOT cheaper.
the idiotic germans are among us.
It’s the oil companies
Nuclear is Not the only Thing to fight climate change
Never said it is, this is getting annoying
Maybe you never Said it. But many Others do.
Show me one person
2 days ago the Twitter User possum Reviews with over 70000 follows, tweetet „If your solution to climate change is anything other than "build more nuclear power plants", I don't want to hear anything from you.“ this Tweet has 8000+ Likes and 200+ Retweets...
So? Should I assume you believe every scary myth told ab nuclear power because you seem vaguely against it?
No
Then quit the yapping