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TURKEY POWER
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this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2024
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I really don't get this ackshually business about nuclear power, we're absolute idiots to not employ it more. Everywhere there's been a focus on nuclear power generation we're seeing reliable results over a long long timespan
The problem with nuclear is: business wise, it is a TOUGH sell to the public, even without the anti-nuclear lobby groups fighting with safety propaganda.
It takes a much higher capital spend to start up nuclear than any other type of plant, so you won't "break even" for 30 plus years, if ever.
It doesn't help when there are high profile sites that are being refurbished, whose costs are already phenomenaly high, and then the managing firm fucks it up (I'm looking at you Crystal River).
It makes it high risk, financially. And it's the public that ultimately ends up paying.
My hope is that SMR's become viable. They introduce a new factor though. If you get small, "cheaper" nuclear plants, then you will get more operators and you will get some that may run fast and loose. One fuck up can ruin it for everyone.
I can accept the argument that it's safe and effective but the public irrationally won't accept it. Seems to have been a pretty good sell on the other side of the curtain though
SMRs also produce significantly more waste for the amount of power generated.
It's sort of too late for nuclear though. They take years to build and cost a fortune. The time to invest in nuclear power on a large scale was probably 10 years ago (although, was it as safe then? I don't know)... Right now we need answers that get us away from fossil fuels much, much quicker. Nuclear may still be a part of the picture, but renewables are more pressing.
Think beyond your own lifetime
The energy problem we have isn't beyond my lifetime, it's now. There is a finite amount of investment available for new energy projects, and if we pour it into nuclear that means 10+ years of continuing with present usage of fossil fuels. Obviously I know noone is suggesting we do only nuclear, but the point remains that renewables projects can be completed sooner and cheaper. Even if we continue to use nuclear to support the base load and decide to develop some level of capability beyond what exists today, the majority of investment should go to renewables.
We have there options:
Continue fossils and make earth uninhabitable for a medium (on the scale of humanity) duration of time.
Switch to renevables, even if it means changing our way of living, maybe overproducing less, having less ultra riches etc.
Switch to nuclear, which isn't fast enough to stop the fossil problem but also contaminates earth for a ultra long amount of time and also is way harder to get rid of (we have at least in theory options to get co2 out of the atmosphere even if its not at all practical/usable e ough to help us with our current situation, for nuclear waste there is literally nothing you can to except wait.)
No sane person I met ever argued for 1, but since some time Americans seem to start arguing for 3 instead of 2 with literally no good arguments.
Thing is this has been said for longer than I've been alive, and will probably still be said after I'm dead, in the intervening 70-80 years we could have and could be actually building the damn things.
I'm not making this argument in the past, I'm making it now.
Well, they are being built? It's not like the world has abandoned nuclear power. We need the base load, there's certainly an argument to use some nuclear, but the safety and waste issues mean it shouldn't really ever be our only way to generate power, at least until some of those problems are solved. Modern reactors are much safer than they once were, but as I said before - the fossil fuel situation is immediate and pressing. I'm not sure I disagree with anyone who made this argument in the past - renewables are a faster way to convert away from fossil fuels. It's more pressing now than ever, but it isn't a new problem and it's been urgent for a long time. Just because we failed to solve it before doesn't mean we should throw the baby out with the bathwater. What's your reasoning to focus on nuclear rather than renewables today?
My reasoning is we should do both, nuclear and renewables both have useful properties in the short and long term and the idea we can't afford both seems ridiculous when we can apparently spend huge amounts of money on things like space tourism and giving amazon more money back in rebates than they paid in taxes to begin with.
Well I agree there. I think we should be focusing on renewables, but like I said I think we also need nuclear unless we can solve the energy storage problem.
Lemmy keeps telling me nuclear power is stupid. I've been screaming for more going on 30-years now. 🤷
Maybe because we still don't have a solution for the waste which kills people generations after your death?
We've had multiple solutions for a long time. Name me some people who have been killed by nuclear waste. Other than Chernobyl I bet you can't. How does it feel repeating decades old fossil fuel propaganda?
Hahah
First: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_by_death_toll
Second: Tell me one spot on earth where we can put this stuff safely.
All the ones named "safe" in the past weren't so safe actually weren't they?
Also detecting radiation poisoning as cause of death is super hard, if you die from cancer, it could very well be radiation, but it will not get counted as such, except it is very well documented you got exposed (which it isn't if its in the Drinkwater supplies as we fear it will happen in a few years here in Germany with the "Endlager asse" because the tons containing the waste are rusting.
There is still no solution for waste which is litteratly a unseeable, unsmellable, untasteble killer, radiating for longer then fucking civilization exists. We CANT possibly plan good enough to manage those kinds of timescales, and we don't have a plan by now AT ALL
Everyone who thinks this is all taken care of by the responsible company's selling nuclear has learned nothing from the fossil fuel desaster. You are falling for propaganda again
He said nuclear waste. Most of those are accidents involving radiation exposure (Are you lobbying we stop radiation therapy too?), Russian subs, and Soviet era handling of nuclear sources.
The rare incident of death cause by nuclear waste was an explosion at a testing facility in Japan that was apparently trying to research a new way to deal with nuclear waste.
One death attributed to Fukushima is amazing to me. That was a catastrophic event. (The tsunami that caused the incident may have killed some that would have otherwise died from exposure, but without the tsunami, there wouldn't have been an incident, so I don't know how to argue that one.)
A better argument is cost. It is EXPENSIVE to store nuclear waste. We are not allowed to just bury it and we can't just shoot it into the sun... yet.
I've seen all kinds of novel ideas for modern ways of dealing with nuclear waste but the current rules are tied up in so much bureaucracy, it would practically take an act of God for approval of any change. People fighting nuclear cause more problems than they help.
Take the San Onofre plant in California. They replaced a system that was aging, then some time later, they shut down for routine maintenance and discovered that the replacement system was wearing out much faster than it should. So the plant said they would stay off until they found the problem and fixed it. At no time was the public in danger. But the anti nuclear whackos took their opportunity to pounce, took advantage of that famous California NIMBYism, and got the plant shut down permanently. Now electricity is provided by natural gas.
That was a waste of fucking money. Plant was already producing electricity, and now there is more CO2 getting pumped into the air.
I don't trust the anti-nuclear power crowd anymore than I trust the oil industry. They both lie their asses off and don't care about facts. One just has a lot more money than the other.
When you hear people hating on bureocracy is mostly rich people hating on rules which stop them from fucking the public over for profit.
The truth is: we can't possibly plan a safe storage for that kind of timespan, there are way better alternatives like renewables, everyone arguing for nuclear is replacing the propaganda from the fossil lobby with propaganda from the nuclear lobby.
My theory on why Americans recently started to believe in a miricale storage which in the future sure will be found? Because if they wouldn't they would need to realise that they need to change their economy and their way of living
I'm not rich or have money invested.
Sorry to disappoint.
Bureaucracy does have a purpose but it can also become a problem. Sometimes technology can advance much quicker than the paperwork can process. It's not a miracle or propaganda.
But spouting the same anti- nuclear shit that has been spouted for the last 50 years IS propaganda.
Can I get some references that compare nuclear waste vs coal, gas, solar, wind waste and emissions?
All the ones you mentioned except nuclear don't create radiation waste at all.....
Coal waste (fly ash) releases 100 times more radiation than shielded nuclear waste
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/
I doubt solar wind and hydro create any radioactive waste though. Again though would like to see a comparison of their waste vs the shielded casks
The source you give is comparing the direct surrounding of opperating power plants, it is not talking about the nuclear waste. no on argues living near an (safely) operating power plant is too dangerous, its that you get nuclear waste which is the problem. Sure you can wheel it of to somewhere else, but then its a problem there.
I just want to see a comparison between the waste, that's all. If it really is worse I'll accept it as worse
I can imagine It's easier to manage nuclear waste than fly ash
Uranium is present in coal in high enough quantities that a coal plant releases more uranium to the environment then an equivalent nuke plant burns in its reactor, and mining for materials for solar panels creates literal mountains of thorium salts and other thorium contaminated debris.
Nuclear plants have the unfortunate position that they actually have to manage their nuclear waste due to its concentration. It's not actually hard to store the waste permanently from a technical perspective, it's just difficult to have the political will to actually do it.
In germany we have, after 20 years of search, not one safe place. The one we have for temporal storage is expected to start leaking soon..