105
A fair dialectical starting point for a four-year-old.
Actual policy experts will tell you that the reason nuclear energy died off in the US in particular and in the world at large is not because of anti-nuclear environmentalist lobbies.
It's a financial question. What environmentalist opposition exists is neither sufficient nor necessary to explain the lack of nuclear development.
These projects get killed because they are almost hilariously expensive by any standard, including the cost per joule produced. They show NO signs of learning curves. Thorium is vaporware. SMRs have proven to be neither small nor modular. These projects get shitcanned not because oh no newcleer so skaweee. They get shitcanned because no one wants to pay for them when you can just do cheap natural gas and wind or even cheaper solar.
The hunt the nuclear fanboys go on to attack environmentalists is invented. It's basically false consciousness. The fossil fuel industry benefits from this strife.
For what a nuclear facility costs to build, buying equivalent solar would probably get you an order of magnitude more energy production, even factoring the additional transmission capacity you'd need to buy alongside it. You could almost certainly get at least the same value out of a combination of wind, solar, transmission, and medium-term energy storage. And end up with a far more resilient grid in the process. And also not be blighting a couple square miles of riverside real estate.
Just so we’re clear, it is cheap fossil fuels that made nuclear uneconomical. Solar and wind provide a very different type of power in comparison, and do not really compete against each other. There’s a reason why countries that abandoned nuclear are suddenly thinking about restarting nuclear again (see Germany). Meanwhile, countries that fully adopted nuclear (see France) are seeing no pressure to abandon it.
It's cheap fossil fuels that first pushed nuclear uneconomical, particularly natural gas.
But today, solar is already making those same fossil fuels increasingly uneconomical. If we transferred the >$20bil/yr that current gets sent to the already-massively-profitably fossil fuel companies instead to grid upgrades, storage, and renewable investment, that'd be pretty fucking neat. We're already seeing rapid changes to the energy economy because of the reality of these costs. The trillion+ dollars being almost entirely directed to grid enhancements, under-served communities, and renewable energy that is the IRA is causing massive, sweeping changes to the world of energy too. Even if people on forums like these have decided they want to throw out that bill's swimming pool of babies just because one West Virginian took a dry dump in the corner in exchange for getting it passed.
The whole "very different type of power" thing I don't really buy. It is not a profound, cutting observation that the sun isn't always shining. The duck curve barely even exists when you have a good mix of wind and solar for most of the world since these sources are basically fully-complementary, and we already have lots of short and medium-term energy storage technologies that can be run for profit because of how cheap solar is. The market is already creating these incentives and businesses are moving in to fill the need; the technology exists or else isn't that hard to figure out. Overbuilding solar to the point of negative energy prices at peak production (& thus curtailment) will create huge incentives for storage. We're already seeing this; a handful of very serious industrial heat battery firms, for example, are offering products that take advantage of these energy price fluctuations that can be build and run profitably both for them and the firms that buy them. Markets are not a solution for all problems, but they are super goddamn good at wiping out arbitrage.
I've seen no evidence of Germany seriously considering spinning back up their reactors. If you have a source from within the last few months implying different, I'd love to read it, but as of last fall their energy ministry was completely dismissing these ideas as baseless rumors. I'd personally prefer it if they did, though; with the things already built, a lot of the cost is already sunk, and beyond that it seems worthwhile to get coal decommissioned.
France is a more complicated story, but it's impossible to deny they have a lot of successful nuclear capacity. But guess what they're pursing as their key generation platform for the future? It's solar. Because it's way fucking cheaper. Easier for them than most thanks to their massive nuclear base, no doubt.
A lot of this dives deep into wishful thinking territory. We will need to spend trillions of dollars to make a pure renewable energy solution viable. People will find out that nuclear is not magically guaranteed to be more expensive. If it wasn't the case, why are new nuclear reactors still being built and more are being planned?
Germany is definitely rethinking it's anti-nuclear position. Ignore the viewpoints of the current political group in charge. They are deeply unpopular. Politicians outside of that group are advocating for a return to nuclear.
France is keeping and building more reactors. This is not a "more complicated story." It is simple proof that nuclear is viable.
Why is my view of the state of industry with concrete, affordable renewable energy technologies that are already available for purchase and rapidly scaling up just by market forces wishful? Why isn't your belief that nuclear will suddenly buck it's 50+ year trend of always being extremely expensive at least as wishful?
Not all production needs to be economic, mind you. It's fine for the state to pursue an expensive technology because it has some other benefit, and there are concrete benefits of nuclear -- specifically how firm it is, to the point where it's basically irresponsible to ever curtail it or adjust production based on grid demand. But capital isn't infinite and these tradeoffs need to be considered very seriously. On the flip side, spend five minutes searching for what the Georgia PSC has to say about the two new AP1000s at Vogtle. They are not happy at all about the cost overruns and failures. Would the next reactor cost less? Probably... so long as it starts construction soon before those couple thousand of newly-trained workers all find new jobs and progress is lost, as usually happens. But it won't, because no one wants to feel like the next sucker.
I'm totally pragmatic about this. It nuclear stops being ludicrously expensive, we definitely ought to pursue it. And if a new technology shows actual evidence and promise of making it more affordable, it's worth the R&D. But at least so far, it shows no signs of doing so. It's definitely not going to keep following the nearly Moore's Law-like learning curve solar has been on. The french are uniquely good at building reactors because of their long history and even still they are clearly signaling in e.g., their NECP plan that renewables are the primary technology of their future. They're pretty much the best in the world at it and they're still plainly chasing solar because of its affordability.
load more comments
(1 replies)
tl;dr - If nuclear was actually profitable environmentalists wouldn't be able to stop it, just like they can't stop fossil fuels.
If you care about not having the environment be poisoned by nuclear waste for tens of thousands of years, then you kinda have to.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Of course you can. Because nuclear energy is NOT a solution. Especially not in the long run.
load more comments
(13 replies)
Here, let the german Deputy of the Federal Chancellor and Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection shut you up. Starts at 24:56.
load more comments
(7 replies)
Well, I'd say that this argument is just as simplistic and binary. I'm in no way an expert, but from what I've gathered, nuclear power is nowhere near the clean power with long term storage as the only issue that many people seem to think. Mining is extremely dirty and nobody wants an uranium mine in their backyard. Yeah, next gen nuclear reactors that run on depleted uranium sound great in theory. Too bad they are just one corner closer from cold fusion. I am too for nuclear power because of pragmatic reasons so we can shelve fossil fuels until we have better, but pretending it is unproblematic is ridiculous and plain stupid.
Edit: It seems I have the unpopular opinion around here for saying that nuclear power is not entirely unproblematic. Gasp, my pearls!
It seems I have the unpopular opinion around here for saying that nuclear power is not entirely unproblematic.
There are a lot of people who, for reasons I can't fathom, have convinced themselves without evidence that nuclear is the future.
load more comments
(1 replies)
I didn’t realize nuclear waste was so great for the environment! I’ll be sure to tell that to the fish in Fukushima.
load more comments
(1 replies)
this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2024
105 points (71.6% liked)
Unpopular Opinion
6216 readers
1 users here now
Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!
How voting works:
Vote the opposite of the norm.
If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.
Guidelines:
Tag your post, if possible (not required)
- If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
- If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].
Rules:
1. NO POLITICS
Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.
2. Be civil.
Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Please also refrain from gatekeeping others' opinions.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...
Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.
5. No trolling.
This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.
Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS