Namely, do you think it has a future in the wave of next gen clean energy sources? If you support it, do you think it will always be viable or that it should only be a temporary measure to get us off fossil fuels while our renewable infrastructure grows?
I spent a lot of time discussing with French people in YouTube comments. And I need to say that a lot of beliefs of nuclear energy are wrong.
- France got a very good re-processing of nuclear wastes
- Nuclear energy is the energy with the smallest mortality rate compared to any other energy. The worst being coal with 2 deaths per removedt
- Nuclear energy is still pretty clean on a pollution side.
I don’t like this energy but trying to throw it away, without reducing the demand, sounds impossible to me.
Something I really regret about nuclear energy though is the fact that you are completely dependent on other countries and industries.
So another belief (on the side of pro-nuclear this time) is the fact that it makes you independent of your own electricity. Except that all your uranium is coming from another countries, this is not what I call “independent”.
TL;DR: I don’t like centralization of the electricity production. But with the current demand, it’s the only viable choice.
Could you alborate on your first claim ?
France got a very good re-processing of nuclear wastes
They seem very advanced in the control of nuclear waste and know how to reprocess a good part of them. Everything is contained securely and they don’t seem to have any space problem with it. It’s the “ANDRA” (National Agency for the Management of Radioactive Waste) who do all of that.
I don’t know where you saw that the ANDRA was dealing with all this in good manner. If you can translate, you should look at theses website :
I mean, ANDRA seems a bit more neutral. They are not there to promote nuclear energy. They are there to deal with the wastes. Not only from power plants, but also from the military, labs and medical (X-rays and stuff). In deed I don’t have any “proof” they do their work correctly, but they seems pretty transparent about it and publish everything on their website.
I’m not saying they are not doing their jobs, or that they do it badly, I’m saying that the jobs requires them to destroy forests, contaminate areas of land for centuries, and sometimes take decisions that are contrary to good practice, for example the choice of the site at Bure.
Yeah, that’s why I think calculations based on the surface took by such centrals is completely biased (it only counts the power plant, not the storage).
The reason why I cite ANDRA is because they have the decency to be transparent about what they’re doing. Which was not the case in France in the past.
I’m still on the fence about nuclear, and centralized vs decentralized energy production (bc decentralized relies on batteries where the materials are mined under terrible conditions, not to mention the batteries themselves are terrible for the environment) . I wonder if anyone’s done a comparison of nuclear vs solar, in terms of waste byproducts and mining ethics, bc I bet its probably closer or even possibly more in favor of nuclear than many think.
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Yes there are people who made that comparison. Solar is much worse than nuclear energy.
could you link the research pls?
This is the french video summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEy-DqEaJJU This is the sources of the video : https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YO_dE0y22B2UaYV1U1Ir2Uv-e0v_ETtHfxzXTKv_dvU/edit
Until we figure out the storage problem in order to get solar working, nuclear is the only realistic way of replacing coal which has much more negative consequences. I don’t like it, but as it stands it is the lesser of two evils.
please take into consideration that solar panel are not a viable solution in all countries…
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I think that nuclear energy is actually a decent temporary solution for countries until they can transition to other energy sources of energy that are much safer and with fewer negative consequences. However, there needs to be regulation and control throughout the whole process, private companies of course shouldn’t be allowed to run them, governments should buy the absolute best available equipment possibly at a monetary loss to themselves. Plus investing into figuring out a nuclear waste disposal solution.
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I do not live within a culture / community / political entity capable of handling it responsibly. I am therefore not familiar with the much reduced but still existent risks of nuclear handled responsibly, or at least, not familiar enough to have strong feelings on the topic.
Fallout! Err I mean, yeah this right here.
Its not gonna be much use once Uranium runs out, and that might be rather soon.
Good article about it (in Spanish, but with graphics in English)
Good point. Hadn’t thought of that, I always assumed that there’d be plenty of Uranium in the Earth.
What about Thorium reactors.
“After 50 years of exploitation we still haven’t arrived at the level to create a reactor that’s comercially viable.”
And it links to this blog post which explains that in a lot of detail it seems: http://theoildrum.com/node/5929
The logic of the article doesn’t really follow? It implies there’s no uranium just because there’s no profitable way to extract it in France and the US at the current dirt cheap prices. It even acknowledges there’s plenty of Uranium ore in Kazakhstan, but provides no data about it.
You could multiply the price of uranium in the graphs by 100 and it would barely impact the cost of electricity: nuclear power is extremely fuel efficient, even a price of 10000 $/kg of natural uranium implies less than 0.1 $/kWh of electricity in fuel costs.
Capitalist mining companies will never survey more uranium mines when uranium demand has been dwindling for the last 2 decades due to the anti-nuclear media campaign and the inherent low rate of profit of such a capital-intensive industry.
I think we have to use all available options at this point. We have around a decade left to avert the most horrific effects of global warming, and nuclear power is a proven technology that’s available to us today. I see fission being phased out eventually in favor of renewables and fusion.
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Nuclear waste is contained in one place and it doesn’t contribute to global warming which is the most urgent problem we have right now. The waste is a potential problem, however it can be recycled going forward. Thorium is also very promising and as I recalled it’s created from processed uranium.
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The key point here is that we’re well past the point where we can be picky about the solutions. The worst case scenario we’re looking at is mass extinction of complex life on this planet, and even barring the worst case outcomes we’re looking at billions of people dying as parts of the globe become uninhabitable. As you note, we need levels of international cooperation that don’t currently exist, so things are looking very grim already. Hence why I think we must encourage the use of all the tools available to us.
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Here’s what’s currently happening:
- defaunation
- humans just 0.01% of all life but have destroyed 83% of wild mammals
- humanity has wiped out 60% of animal populations since 1970, report finds
We’re currently seeing a global ecosystem collapse:
- study finds ocean ecosystems likely to collapse in 2020s and land species in 2040s unless global warming stemmed
- studies show drought and heat waves will cause massive die-offs, killing most trees alive today.
- multiple overlapping crises could trigger ‘Global Systemic Collapse’
- 246 academics call on government to act now to avoid global collapse
- Planet’s largest ecosystems collapse faster than previously forecast
World’s oceans are also acidifying to a similar rate as the Permian extinction (but again in 100 years instead of 20k-60k), with an anoxic event locked in after 1,000ppm or 360 gigatons, which we will reach by 2100 at the latest. So that’s whatever’s left wiped out.
And here’s what’s currently happening with food production. Two different groups of 200+ scientists and academics, separately from each other, each warned of near-term global collapse:
- https://www.sciencealert.com/hundreds-of-top-scientists-warn-combined-environmental-crises-will-cause-global-collapse
- https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/02/04/opinion/246-academics-call-government-act-now-avoid-global-collapse
Examples of record-breaking crop failures currently happening:
- https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/06/midwest-rain-climate-change-wrecking-corn-soy-crops/
- https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/19/extreme-heat-wave-hits-us-farmers-already-suffering-from-flooding.html
- https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/may/15/australia-to-import-wheat-for-first-time-in-12-years-as-drought-eats-into-grain-production
- https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/20/crop-failure-and-bankruptcy-threaten-farmers-as-drought-grips-europe
- https://www.zerohedge.com/health/historic-midwest-blizzard-has-farmers-seeing-massive-crop-lossesas-devastating-weve-ever
- https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-02/low-rice-crop-leads-to-sunrice-job-losses/11566748?pfmredir=sm
- https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/climate-and-people/climate-change-could-cut-fruit-production-almost-third-study/
- https://phys.org/news/2019-12-climate-whammy-corn-belt.html
- https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/11/12/britain-facing-potato-shortage-failure-dredge-rivers-led-flooding/
- https://weather.com/science/environment/news/2019-08-01-drought-dam-drive-mekong-river-to-lowest-level-in-100-years
- https://phys.org/news/2020-01-atlantic-circulation-collapse-british-crop.html
- https://phys.org/news/2019-12-climate-threat-global-breadbaskets.html
- https://phys.org/news/2019-12-large-atmospheric-jet-stream-global.html
Scientific studies projecting future crop failures:
- Schlenker and Roberts, 2009. Nonlinear temperature effects indicate severe damages to US crop yields under climate change. PNAS, 106(37), pp.15594-15598
- Mora et al, 2015. Suitable days for plant growth disappear under projected climate change: Potential human and biotic vulnerability. PLoS bio, 13(6), p.e1002167
- Schauberger et al, 2017. Consistent negative response of US crops to high temperatures in observations and crop models. Nature Comms, 8, p.13931.
- Sakschewski et al, 2014. Feeding 10 billion people under climate change: How large is the production gap of current agricultural systems?. Ecological modelling, 288, pp.103-111
- Liang et al, 2017. Determining climate effects on US total agricultural productivity. PNAS, 114(12), pp.E2285-E2292
News articles about projected crop failures:
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We have a very short timeline to do anything meaningful to reduce the impacts of the impeding climate disaster. If we want to stop burning fossil fuels in 30 years, we have to be pragmatic. I assume the question is only about nuclear fission energy production, given that fusion research is nowhere near providing anything for at least 5-6 decades, which will be too late to solve our little issue.
Without efficient storage, solar & wind are out of the question given our modern society energy needs. When you add the storage component, both technologies see their greenhouse gases emissions multiplied by a factor of 2 to 10 depending on the storage solution used.
My view is that nuclear power is the rescue parachute for the global climate crisis. It can generate a vast quantity of power for a relatively low price (the upfront cost is high, but running costs are quite low) without GHS emissions (almost all emissions are done during the building phase).
The main drawbacks are the pollution risk and the nuclear waste storage:
- Nuclear waste is a non-issue: just bury it somewhere geologically stable and forget about it for the time being.
- The pollution risk is real: we have to ensure that strict safety standards are met with oversight of national/woldwide agencies. The next generation of reactors could also be safer with no possibility of a meltdown.
I love nuclear energy. It is will be viable far longer than oil or other non-renewables.
I would recommend anyone who hasn’t seen it to watch Pandora’s Promise!
viable longer than oil or other non-renewables.
Nuclear energy is not renewable actually. It’s still extracted from the ground.
I would rather link PhD student on physics for this topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k13jZ9qHJ5U
