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I’ve got solar panels on my roof, and being Dutch windmills are in my blood. But I’m also not blind to the reality that both wind and solar will only get you so far. And there’s already a lot of opposition to wind farms - they ruin the view, endanger birds and there’s health concerns due to noise and shadow projection.
If we just build even one nuclear powerplant, we could basically just… not do wind. And we’d have pleeeenty of power for the coming energy transition, change to electric vehicles, etc.
But noooo… nuclear is scary. Especially to the people who only cite Fukushima and Chernobyl in regards to safety. That’s the same as banning air travel because of 9/11 and the Tenerife disaster. Nuclear power is safe, cheap and we owe it to the planet to use it wisely instead of more polluting alternatives.
The number of people who still think nuclear is bad and solar / wind will make up for it is really depressing. We could have had an unrivaled nuclear power infrastructure but those NIMBY assholes stopped it 50 years ago and now we rely on extending existing plants past their lifetimes while running in fucking circles about how to save the planet. Has anyone who wants to “go green” without nuclear ever looked at the power output of these things?? It’s not even the same league! AaagggghHhHhhhhhhhh
The problems with nuclear power aren’t meltdowns, but the facts that it often takes decades just to construct a new plant, it creates an enormous carbon footprint before you get it running, it has an enormously resource-intensive fuel production process, it contributes to nuclear proliferation, it creates indefinitely harmful waste, and even if we get past all of that and do expand it, that’s just going to deplete remaining fuel sources faster, of which we only have so many decades left.
It’s not a good long term solution. I agree we should keep working plants running, but we can’t do that forever, and we still need renewable alternatives - wind, hydro and solar.
And it wasn’t some nebulous group of NIMBYs that worked against nuclear power, it was the fossil fuel lobby. I don’t know why people keep jumping to cultural explanations for what is clearly a structural issue. The problem isn’t some public perception issue, but political will, and that tends to be bought by the fossil fuel lobby.
Also there is good science on why we actually can switch to entirely renewables: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/23/no-miracles-needed-prof-mark-jacobson-on-how-wind-sun-and-water-can-power-the-world
It’s just not going to happen, it’s way too slow to become profitable. There are plenty of nuclear power plants in production that have been in production for 40 years that still aren’t profitable.
Storage is going to have to be the thing that makes up for the instability of solar and wind, whether it be in the form of heat storage, hydrogen production, fly wheels, or some breakthrough in Battery Tech.
Energy shouldn’t be a business, it’s a necessity at this point.
It shouldn’t be, but I don’t live in Fairy Tail land, I live in the real world. And as sad as it is the fact of the matter is if it’s not profitable it’s not happening. At least not in the US, so unless the population finally chooses the band together tear down the current structure and basically change overnight I have to ask for realistic possible solutions
And? I don’t live in the USA and neither does most of the world. They aren’t the biggest nation even.
The US is the worst offending nation but many others will fail for the same reason. Was just heading off the “but this one small place with specific economics did it” comments
China are building, designing, and testing more nuclear and new nuclear technologies. I hardly think that’s a small nation. My own country is building new nuclear plants too. Planning to open 2026. Another 8 are being considered right now to be built on existing sites (presumably to replace older ones). France have massive nuclear investment and are the ones supplying our new reactors if memory serves.
Enter the IAEA web page, there you will find that not even IAEA rhinks of nuclear energy as a replacement. Thats because uranium reserves arent infinite. Once conventional uranium mines run out of uranium, we will have to go for the non conventional ones and prices will go up the paradigm IAEA professes is nuclear is excellent as a transition techonology (they also include natural gas as a transition techonology) to a fully renewable energy market.
Also, its generally not advisable to have more than a 10% of nuclear energy.
We have to cut the demand.
https://www.iaea.org/publications/15558/nuclear-energy-in-mitigation-pathways-to-net-zero
We will never run out of fuel for the next few 10 thousand years. And by that time we’ll probably have functional Dyson spheres.
People who want nuclear plants should also vote for having a nuclear waste storage in your area if that is possible. In germany we still dont have a solution for the waste we already have and the states who want Nuclear Plants are already said no to havin a storage in their state. You cant make this shit up
Weird how y’all haven’t figured it out yet considering Finland has and Germany has had nuclear power plants for longer.
But I suspect it’s more of a lack of wanting to do what’s needed for storage because ‘politics’ and boomers than it is because it’s not possible.
Could be that Finland is a big country with only 5,5 million people living there compared to 83million in germany. Easier to find a place.
Yeah, and like most of Europe, that German population lives in cities, not random forests and mountains in the middle of nowhere where you could also do underground storage like Finland has done.
Not to mention Germany has more land.
Don’t you think it sounds crazy to build a underground storage just to have it closed for a million years. I just can’t understand why anybody would want that.
FFS do some research, you dig a big hold drill sideways for a bit and back fill it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_drillhole_disposal
But why would you do that if you can just without.
Well you see we kinda are failing at the whole mitigating climate change issue and we and we only have so many rare earth minerals to exploit for large scale battery storage banks. And every year we are burning more Fossil Fuels and shutting down more reactors and building no new modern designs and giving nuclear none of the funding the fossil fuel industry receives or the renewables industry receives.
The waste doesn’t pose any danger as long as it’s stored securely and doesn’t cost that much space. The only downside of the waste is that it needs to be stored forever, but that’s a very, very, small price to pay for not destroying the planet…
But its also possible without nuclear waste. You are just pushing the problems with the waste to the future generations.
There needs to be a future generation to push it onto first…
Agreed, the future generations already have enough problems. Thats why we should invest into stuff that brings solutions and does not create problems.
You and your fearmongering is the problem
No, money is the problem. If nuclear wasnt that expensive then sure, go for it.
Money a problem? We have individuals with more money than entire cities and companies with more money than entire nations. Money is not the problem.
Every dollar / euro / whatever invested in nuclear power should have been invested in real renewable energy for a bigger impact and a better sustainable transition to green energy.
It gets especially funny when you can’t use the powerplants in the summer anymore because it gets too hot for the cooling water like it has been in France.
You dolt there was never a problem with cooling the plants. The issue was that there is red tape that limits how much water the plant can discharge into the Rhine. That could have easily been addressed if the plants were just allowed to cycle more water. The higher the flow rate the colder the water will come out the other end . The water is put through a heat exchanger and then cycled back to the river. If more water can be piped through then the reactor can maintain lower temperatures.
Every time I’m in a thread about nuclear power it’s the same shit.
Y’all really have no fuckin clue how much safer it is than fossil fuels. But go ahead and keep letting the oil industry convince you otherwise.
I think you replied to the wrong person.
The greens are principle over matter.
Yeah, principles.
The principles that it won’t be profitable for 50+ years if at all.
And it will mean we are stuck with fossil fuels for just as long.
So I’m all for doing anything to survive, preferably sometime in the last 50 years.
The principles that it won’t be profitable for 50+ years if at all.
Sure, and your source for that is a green politician or an anti-nuclear thinktank?
So I’m all for doing anything to survive, preferably sometime in the last 50 years.
“Anything” for greens somehow doesn’t include nuclear for greens 🤷♂
Because the money is better spent elsewhere.
Yet if we plan for nuclear it’ll be like “oh no, we’ve had project delays and cost blowouts” like they do every time and we will just burn fossil fuels the whole time and die anyway.
Also the anti nuclear green think tanks are called educated people. And all you’d need to do is look at the European failures and shut downs to know the costs don’t add up.
Also the anti nuclear green think tanks are called educated people.
LMAO. Your brain must be so much bigger than that of physicists who are proponents of nuclear energy. Mr “disagreement with my opinion means you’re wrong”.
Very convincing argumentation
