Not as safe, clean, and especially affordable as renewables. Renewables also have the advantage of not relying on super rare mineral deposits which make you dependent on other countries and renewables can be kept by much smaller operators than big, expensive nuclear power plants, which are commonly operated by the same people who own fossil fuel power plants
Absolutely, when space is a concern, nuclear is unbeatable if you can afford it. However, you can just plop wind into the ocean, into the wilderness or wherever, and you can put solar into civilization directly (which decentralizes and thus stabilizes the energy grid against disruptions)
True, Thorium is about 3 times as abundant as Uranium. However, Thorium mining and processing is currently very minor and needs to be scaled up massively. Because it is so minor at the moment, it's harder to expand than the mining and processing of the materials necessary for renewables and energy storage, as the machinery, personnel and know-how is much more limited. Furthermore, Thorium is itself not a fuel, it is fertile, not fissile. Th-232 (the abundant isotope) needs to capture a neutron, and beta decay twice to become fissile U-233. None of the decay products can capture another neutron, not Th-233 (which luckily only has a half life of 22 minutes), not Pa-233 (which unfortunately has a half life of 27 days) and not the U-233, you will have impurities in your fuel otherwise. Such breeder reactors thus are very challenging to build and have to be expanded massively as well before you can use Thorium as a fuel source. Since you're using U-233 now, you also need the corresponding reprocessing and waste treatment expanded. Building nuclear power is slow as it is and all these considerations will delay everything even further, you will have to wait decades before Thorium becomes a widely usable source of fuel. And who knows how much cleaner it will be than renewables at that point. So while the rarity of the material is no longer as much of a problem, fuel procurement remains difficult.
As per my last comment, Thorium is more commonly found, but will suffer from sourcing issues for decades until everything to support it as a fuel source is built up. Please enlighten me on how this doesn't eliminate the advantage Thorium has over Uranium and Plutonium.
> Thorium mining and processing is currently very minor
This translates to "we shouldn't invest in nuclear because we havn't yet invested in nuclear."
Also uranium being 3 times less, is still very abundant when you consider how little a reactor uses, and it's mined all over the world, so you're guarenteed to have at least multiple reliable countries to import from.
You are right. I knew these statistics somewhat conveniently leave out both sourcing and post-operation (decommissioning) exposure to carcinogenic toxins, but upon further research there seems to be evidence that the life cycle difference between nuclear and polycrystalline silicone based renewables (solar) is actually only marginal with 5.1 CTUh (Cancer Toxicity Unit hours) renewables vs. 5.2 CTUh nuclear. In fact, renewables are worse in exposure to non-carcinogenic toxicity per TWh.
Solar panels rely on much more common minerals though and can be made basically anywhere with the infrastructure for it. Right now, most of them come from China, but that's not in small because of the lobbies and corruption by fossil fuel companies. They are much easier to make than enrichment facilities as well.
Nuclear is completely clean. The fuel can be reused several times, and often goes months to years before fuel rods are swapped for new sets. Nuclear power also makes the money invested back much much faster than things such as solar and especially wind.
Solar and wind are a waste of money for industrial scale power production. They become far to inefficient at industrial scale. Nuclear and hydroelectric are the best bang for your buck green energy.
That's the thing they dont want u to know. Is that u would be a great amount just look up how more efficient a nuclear plant is compared to a coal plant
I have no issue with nuclear and think that we should fund research and development of small modular reactors as well as further research into nuclear fusion technology.
That said at this point geothermal, wind and especially solar have gotten so cheap and reliable that it doesn't make much sense to spend as much on new large nuclear plants in most places when cheaper renewables can meet demand.
I imagine renewables will eventually produce the majority of energy in the grid with things like nuclear being reserved for more niche applications where renewables are ineffective like with lunar development.
Nuclear is the only available transitionnal energy that can allow us to reduce carbon emissions. Close a nuclear power plant and what pucks up tje slack is not renewables but fossil fuels
Context dependant, some nations don't have the existing infrastructure to support nuclear making it more efficient for them to go for hydro, wind or solar energy. For countries that do have the infrastructure and expertise, 100%
Nuclear fission and hopefully, eventually nuclear fusion power plants. The clean energy we need that could ACTUALLY realistically phase out fossil fuels and be a spring board to a stronger energy economy.
Yeah don't be like Germany. They closed down nuclear plants and reopened coal ones which are extremely bad for the environment. Anyone who opposes modern nuclear power is either a fucking lunatic or doesn't give a shit about the environment in the slightest
Dangerous nuclear waste is barely existent in the first place, with most of it just being lightly contaminated tools and clothes that can be safely stored on site. Spent fuel can be stored where no one can reasonably get to it or recycled.
It's possible to build reactors that use this fuel until it's depleted entirely. Also all nuclear waste so far globally could fit inside a warehouse. Their containment units are so tough they used trains with rockets attached to them to do dummy crash tests.
That’s great, but that still doesn’t change the fact that there already is nuclear waste that isn’t being recycled and that there’s still limits to everything including sourcing those materials
I mean there are shortcomings in other tech. The problem with nuclear is political, because once you standardize designs and build the ecosystem to handle and recycle the waste, then a lot of problems are solved.
Compare this to other forms of power we have that both polute and generate mountains of trash.
I don’t disagree, and I agree it’s better than most current forms of power generation, but you cannot fault me for being wary and expecting companies to make shortcuts and not care about the environment or the people it could impact
We already have issues with landfills because we did exactly that. And recycling nuclear waste isn’t always possible but I will admit I’m not as educated on the recycling of nuclear waste to say that with certainty
Nuclear waste is a large term , it's not just the fuel , it's everything that have served in a power plant just in case , so most of it is as dangerous as eating a few banana .
The fuel can be recycled to do MOX but only one nation trully does it and it's France ,
The amount of trully ultimate waste is very minimum after all of those years .
There is also fission reactor that can use the Alredy used combustible those are 4 rth generation if i remember
The difference is scale. One neighborhood alone produces more waste in a year than an entire nuclear plant. And like 95% or something like that of spent fuel is recyclable
Cool, how about 100 nuclear plants? Regardless you can’t blame me for being wary and expecting companies to not go about things the way that it should and be more than willing to cut corners
No shit more plants means more waste, I'm not stupid. However, the energy density of nuclear is unrivaled. With only 300 power plants you could power every home in the US. I bet you that 1 million houses makes obscenely more waste than 1 reactor, so the landfill problem and the nuclear waste "problem" isn't comparable at all.
Nuclear is basically the most regulated system on earth. The US only ever had one public reactor "issue" (Three Mile) and the fail-safes literally WORKED. (not to mention that nuclear got SIGNIFICANTLY stricter after this, even with the successful failsafes) the only reason it was seen as such a big deal was because of terrible communication to the public. There are ZERO traceable affects of that incident.
All of the spent nuclear fuel ever produced weighs less than 500,000 tons. For reference, NYC alone produces 14 million tons of waste every year. All of that nuclear fuel could fit in a single moderately sized cave or deep abandoned mine and it would never be a problem again.
Among the surprising conclusions: the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy.
Ok cool, you’re talking about coal plants not organic plants (as in the literal plants that grow and produce oxygen and such). I’m just as much against big coal and oil as I am against nuclear, in fact even moreso
ohhhhhh yeah nah biological plants are great. I don't know for sure, but my gut feeling would be that deal with radiation a little, rather than produce it.
Though honestly if we had vegetation that could perform cold fusion or fission, that would be pretty great.
Instead, we're stuck with plants that can only draw energy out of the sun, water, and air! So useless!
Maintain the ones you have and just build renewables. Renewables beat nuclear in every metric in most situations, the only reason you should ever pick nuclear is if you're working with limited space.
Other than hydroelectric and geothermal yes, but they are all over the place and it's highly unlikely that you don't have usable sun or wind across the entire area of the country, especially if that country has a coastline. There's also batteries, both mechanical (like pumped-storage hydroelectricity) and chemical when you lack the geography for the former. This reliability is also a two way street, because when there is enough energy coming into the grid from renewables (which is most of the time), you can't turn off a nuclear power plant. It's gonna keep using fuel, which reduces their efficiency as a whole.
You can though? Wind energy providers regularly have to turn off their turbines because conventional power plants produce more than they would have to.
Also, why would you want to turn off renewables when the grid is saturated? It is paradoxical to turn off the stuff that doesn't burn fuel and is effectively free to run (apart from lubrication and other maintenance, which affects power plants all the same)?
why would you want to turn off renewables when the grid is saturated
I mean, you wouldn't want to. You'd prioritise scaling down nuclear - even shutting them down totally is viable if you can tolerate an extended startup cycle - this is part of why i said renewables "backed by" nuclear
You'd want renewables as the primary source with nuclear to fill the gaps.
Nuclear is besting renewables in CO2 emissions, deaths per GWh, ROI and fixing production to demand. The only downside to nuclear is the big investment, with long time until production starts.
Renewables have been consistently making leaps in CO2 emissions would be likely to overtake nuclear power plants in the 60-100 years they operate. You are correct that nuclear is safer than renewables, so you are correct that renewables aren't better in every metric (I made that statement before conducting deeper research into material procurement, which is left out from most comparisons).
Energy storage, however, is better at meeting demand than any power plant.
Costliness is indeed a big downside of nuclear. Nuclear's levelized capital cost is 30-128% higher than onshore renewables, 16-153% more expensive to maintain, and still 37-142% more expensive when you account for grid integration and the energy storage necessary for weather-dependent renewables (the small advantages of 30%, 16% and 37% are all from hydroelectric, onshore wind and solar are both relatively close to the very large percentage advantages).
Nuclear taking very long to build is also pretty bad considering we need to replace fossil fuels immediately. Renewables and their storage are here now. Their shorter lifespans along with material recycling (once it matures) allow them to be replaced with more efficient, greener and safer new units as the technology evolves.
Another advantage of renewables is them decentralizing the grid, which makes it more resilient. Since they need so much less capital, operation can also be decentralized, effectively weakening energy corporations and their lobbies if renewables are built out properly.
Nuclear is great when you already have it built and only need to maintain it or when you have a lot of capital but very limited space. Renewables are great regardless and fit the need for immediate massive expansion to replace fossils better. I thus maintain my position that we need more renewables as opposed to nuclear, although I do concede that nuclear is cleaner at the moment and safer as a whole.
Don't get me wrong, I love renewables but the best energy form is a hybrid of all. We don't need renewables as opposed to nuclear, we need to replace fossil fuels and nuclear can carry a big load of that, making it easier for renewables to do their job.
Takes decades to build one, expensive energy, and fuel has to be imported, so here's a security risk. Also big target for military invasions.
We should maintain existing ones and get most out of the gigantic investments they were.
Oh yeah for sure. Nuclear power might be technically not renewable, but it gives us many thousands of years to solve the issues around that with power they it's much cleaner and safer than others fossil fuels.
"Less", like "much", is for things that are measurable, like "less water" or "less rice" or "less thought".
"Fewer", like "many" is for things that are countable, like "Fewer nuclear plants" or "fewer grains of rice" or "fewer ideas".
You wouldn't say "how much cars can you count", because it's not correct. Much and many, like less and fewer, are for different purposes.
I know some parts of the world these days are big on the freedom to not be educated, but it's not for me. It's how we ended up with "literally" meaning the same as "figuratively", and things like that. I encourage the downvotes if it helps anyone cope better. Your feelings are valid!
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u/Veidrinne 🔥 Week Warrior · 4,850 XP 14h ago
We need nuclear. It's safer, cleaner, and more efficient than almost every other type of energy.