- cross-posted to:
- nuclear_power
- cross-posted to:
- nuclear_power
I found this surprising. Even considering the costs of construction and decommissioning, nuclear does not compare too badly to renewables.
This doesn’t seem to be just made up. It cites this which cites this, which cites this. And as far as i’m willing to dig, there’s nothing bogus about it.
I have a few comments though:
- in the Warner article, do the costs represent proper decommissioning, like making it as safe as a decommissioned solar farm would be? It’s not clear.
- The OWID article doesn’t distinguish between different types of wind/solar, which the source material does! So maybe that’s how they are fudging the data? Somebody needs to take some time and improve the OWID dataset.
- It’s really pathetic if renewables still aren’t safer and cheaper than nuclear. Nuclear is so wasteful. If we need a decade or two of research before we can ditch nuclear, then let’s do it.
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Yeah, unfortunately it is terribly expensive and takes extremely long to build. New innovations like smaller reactors just bring new problems. Like you’d need more of them, no insurance would allow them etc.
I added the sources. They assume 9 years construction.
I think the safest and cleanest sources of energy are largely geographically dependent. Wind, solar, hydroelectric dams, etc. are all location dependent.
Rapid climate change is such a big problem that any energy besides biofuel/coal/oil/natural gas is better than what we have now. Yes, there are problems with all energy sources. That’s how reality works.
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Nothing against OP and his submission but this is what I think about the material.
Nuclear energy and clean, they are dreaming. Toxic waste that lasts for millions of years is not clean. Storing the waste under our kids feet and pretend it is secure and clean is ridiculous.
They also do not put the entire thing into objective, solar panels for example is listed as clean but you need to put lots of energy into the creation and then you end up with recycling issues after 15-20 years after they are finished + they lose efficiency over time + on a bigger scale there are storing issues too, what to do with the energy, you also need to create some sort of big battery centers.
I call this report nonsense because it does not put every variable into consideration, it only cherry picks some elements out of it and try to sell you the thing as truth. In reality there are always lots of variables to consider and the whole carbon footprint discussion is complex as hell.
I think people should just stop to compare things, what we need are individual solutions depending on the individual needs and the individual environment. Makes no sense to use solar on the south pole, so you need to put the environmental factor into consideration too. We need multiple solutions combined with multiple technologies and not just … oh just use solar and that is it discussion.
Here is the discussion that made me make this post. You’ll find more detail there.
it only cherry picks some elements
What impresses me about this report is that it does have citations, and you can look at the research. Follow the links. I couldn’t find any flaws. That’s what’s so surprising about it.
What specifically is cherry picked or misrepresented?
If there are no mistakes in the research and the conclusions are valid, we should start taking nuclear seriously from now on.
Nuclear energy and clean, they are dreaming. Toxic waste that lasts for millions of years is not clean. Storing the waste under our kids feet and pretend it is secure and clean is ridiculous.
The rest of your points are fine but here we gotta come full stop. Nuclear power plants don’t create radioactive waste, they transform already radioactive Uranium into a different compound which they go store somewhere else (possibly an even safer place).
Are there accidents with this? Sure, but to draw an analogy - “We should stay on Windows (coal) for privacy (energy) because Ubuntu (nuclear) has data collection (waste) too!”
The other options aren’t feasible. My roof growing up was covered in solar panels. The junk was worthless, and who knows what happened to it after we replaced the panels. We need feasible solutions today. Even if Nuclear is 5x worse than I’m selling it (it’s not), it’s still miles ahead of the competition
They create radiactive uranium, and transform it into nuclear waste. Radioactive enriched uranium is a man-made substance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enriched_uranium
You still need to enrich it, so yes it is man made in order to use it.
It’s worse than that. He says “Toxic waste that lasts for millions of years”… but any radioactive waste with such a long half-life is actually only mildly radioactive. The scary stuff, the stuff you don’t want to be within 100 miles of, that stuff burns quickly. Half-lifes measured in hours or even minutes. These two properties are always inversely related. It shows some sort of profound misunderstanding that masquerades as a serious insight and legitimate concern.
The only true criticism of nuclear at this point is that it takes 40 years to spin one up… you can’t even fabricate the damned pressure vessels but at one or two places in the world. Pretty sure they’re all booked up for the next decade.
Nuclear’s opponents stalled things long enough that you can’t possibly hope to scale it up to where it could matter on any timescale that your grandchildren might care about. It’s over.
- You need to enrich the uranium in the first place, you need machines and know-how so there is no full stop. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apODDbgFFPI
- There was leakages across the globe, some example. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hanford-nuclear-site-leaking-radioactive-chemical-waste/
- We have options like water for example. Wind, solar. Combining them is a beginning.
What specifically is cherry picked or misrepresented?
- You need to put into consideration that creating solar panels also creates a carbon footpint as well as recycling it. It is not about mistakes, it is about the scope, research material often put the scope on other variables. If we swipe under the carpet that solar has flaws, or forget the nuclear waste, well sure than those solutions look - clean. But they are not.
