Safe, sure. Efficient? Not even close.
It’s far, far more expensive than renewable energy. It also takes far, far longer to build a plant. Too long to meet 2030 targets even if you started building today. And in most western democracies you wouldn’t even be able to get anything done by 2040 if you also add in political processes, consultation, and design of the plant.
There’s a reason the current biggest proponents of nuclear energy are people and parties who previously were open climate change deniers. Deciding to go to nuclear will give fossil fuel companies maximum time to keep doing their thing. Companies which made their existence on the back of fossil fuels, like mining companies and plant operators also love it, because it doesn’t require much of a change from their current business model.
Australian politicians have been arguing about nuclear energy for decades, and with whats going on now, petty distracting squabbling while state governments are gutting public infrastructure
The most frustrating thing is the antinuclear party is obviously fine with nuclear power, and nuclear armaments, just look at the aukus submarines
labors cries about the dangers to our communities and the environment are obviously disingenuous, or they wouldnt be setting a green light for the billionaire robber barons to continue tearing oil and minerals out of the ground (they promise to restore the land for real-sies this time)
Anyway, a nuclear power plant runs a steam turbine and will never be more than what, 30% efficient?
Photovoltaic cells are even less efficient, I think they’re somewhere between 10-20% efficient. I think the way to go would be a solar collector, like the Archimedes death ray, but much much bigger.
There are designs for a giant glass cone put in the middle of the desert. Air under the cone gets warmed and it rises up through a couple turbines on its way out of the device.
That is already a thing and it’s called concentrated solar power. Basically aim a shit load of mirrors at a target to heat it, run some working fluid through the target and use that to make steam to turn a turbine. There are a few power plants that use it but in general it has been more finicky and disruptive to the local environment than traditional PV panels would be.
Huh. So those of us that have always advocated for a nuclear baseline with wind/solar topping off until we have adequate storage solutions are climate change deniers? That’s new.
But how do we produce enough batteries for renewable energy?
Pumped hydro? Or one of the many other non battery storage options, or just over production
How viable is pumped hydro? It would be good if feasible, but last I checked, there were not enough places where you can install them.
No, you’re right. It’s not an option for everyone. Which is why I mentioned that there are many other solutions which are similar and over production which is simpler and cheaper
Which options, can you specify?
What? You don’t have Google? Options I know of (other than batteries and pumped hydro) : Compressed Air Energy Storage, Thermal Energy Storage, Fly wheels, Hydrogen, Supercapacitors, Gravitational Storage
The fact that you descend into complete science fiction should give you pause for thought. I doubt it will, but please think about how fantastical your proposed solutions are - “a massive lake of molten salt under every city” (I actually like that one!)…
- It’s not easy to go over all options.
- Many of these are largely theoretical, or for temporary storage. For instance, I don’t think fluwheels can store energy for months.
Redox flow, sodium ion, iron air, etc.
There are some 600+ current chemical-based battery technologies out there.
Hell for me, once sodium is cracked, that shit is so abundant that production wouldn’t have many bottlenecks to get started.
Agreed, building a nuclear facility takes a lot of time and costs a lot of money. However… This doesn’t need to be the case at all.
A lot of the costs go into design, planning and legal work. The amount of red tape to build a nuclear plant is huge. Plus all of the parties that fight any plans to build, with a heavy not in my backyard component.
If however a country would be prepared to cut through the red tape and have a standard design developed for say 10 plants at the same time, the price and construction time would be decreased greatly. Back in the day we could build them faster and cheaper. And these days we build far more complex installations quicker and cheaper than nuclear power plants.
The anti-nuclear movement has done so much to hold humanity back on this front. And the weird part is most people do think nuclear fusion plants are a good thing and can solve stuff. But they have almost all of the downsides nuclear fission plants have in terms of red tape, complexity and cost.
You can’t cut the red tape. The red tape is why we’re able to say nuclear is safe.
the weird part is most people do think nuclear fusion plants are a good thing and can solve stuff. But they have almost all of the downsides nuclear fission plants have in terms of red tape, complexity and cost
Huh? Nuclear fusion doesn’t have any downsides or upsides. Because it doesn’t exist. We’ve never been able to generate net power with fusion. (No, not even that story from a couple of years ago, which only counted as ‘input’ a small fraction of the total energy used overall. It was a good development, but just one small step on the long journey to it being practical.)
Being anti-nuclear was a poor stance to have 20, 30 years ago. At that time, renewables weren’t cost effective enough to be a big portion of our energy generation mix, and we should have been building alternatives to fossil fuels since back then if not earlier. But today, all the analysis tells us that renewables are far cheaper and more effective than nuclear. Today, being pro-nuclear is the wrong stance to take. It’s the anti-science stance, which is why it has seen a recent rise among right-wing political parties and media organisations.
The irony of Homer Simpson representing safe nuclear energy…
Hi, I work in waste handling, and I would like to tell you about dangerous materials and what we do with them.
There are whole hosts of chemicals that are extremely dangerous, but let’s stick with just cyanide, which comes from coal coking, steel making, gold mining and a dozen chemical synthesis processes.
Just like nuclear waste, there is no solution for this. We can’t make it go away, and unlike nuclear waste, it doesn’t get less dangerous with time. So, why isn’t anyone constantly bringing up cyanide waste when talking about gold or steel or Radiopharmaceuticals? Well, that’s because we already have a solution, just not “forever”.
Cyanide waste, and massive amounts of other hazardous materials, are simply stored in monitored facilities. Imagine a landfill wrapped in plastic and drainage, or a building or cellar with similar measures and someone just watches it. Forever. You can even do stuff like build a golfcourse on it, or malls, or whatever.
There are tens of thousands of these facilities worldwide, and nobody gives a solitary fuck about them. It’s a system that works fine, but the second someone suggests we do the same with nuclear waste, which is actually less dangerous than a great many types of chemical waste, people freak out about it not lasting forever.
As a friend once said “benzene is what anti-nuclear people think nuclear waste is.”
I mean, spent fuel is actually quite lethal when not packaged, but you get something like 300-400MWh out of a kilo of fuel. And that’s significantly more than I’ll use in my lifetime.
I’d gladly keep a kilo of dry-casked spent fuel in my house. It’d make an excellent coffee table or something, if a bit hard to move. I would absolutely not put a lifetime supply of benzene anywhere near my house.
Edit: it would make a shitty coffee table. 1 kilo of uranium oxide is just under 100ml
The density of uranium always fucks with me. How can something that takes up so little volume weigh so much?
It’s thicc.
phat nucleasss
ITT: ignorant people with 20+ years old knowledge.
Nuclear energy has been safe for a long time. Radioactive waste disposal is better than ever now.
Also you can separate fuel waste from useful part. So even less waste.
Radioactive waste disposal is better than ever now.
But is it good enough?
Breeder reactors reuse the waste as fuel until there’s a significantly smaller amount of actual waste.
I imagine if we actually committed to funding nuclear tech, we’d get even better at disposing of it.
Shit, why not send it into space with Elon’s rockets? Only half joking.
Because we can dump the waste down deeper mine shafts, making it easier for us to pretend it doesn’t exist?
Thats not even funny. It’s not even a meme. It’s just straight outright corporate propaganda. F off with that, Pinkerton!
The Simpsons shows it’s safe and efficient 😅
It’s unsafe, not renewable, not independent from natural resources (which might not be present in your country, so you need to buy from dictators) and last but not least crazy expensive.
Need to buy from dictators?
I didn’t realize Australia and Canada who has highest uranium reserves are dictators. Canada also used to be highest uranium producer until relatively recently.
There is no need. Though Kazakhstan and Russia may be cheapest if you’re near there.
No, it’s not the best we have. Solar and wind are way safer, cost less and don’t produce waste.
Sure, nuclear power is safe until it isn’t. Fukushima and Chernobyl are examples of that. Nuclear plants in Ukraine were at risk during Russian attacks. Even if you have a modern plant, you don’t really think that under capitalism there is an incentive to care properly for them in the long run. Corners will be cut.
Besides that they produce so much waste that has to be: a) being transported b) stored somewhere
Looking at the US railroad system and how it is pushed beyond it’s capacity right now and seeing how nuclear waste sites are literally rotting and contaminating everything around them I’d say it’s one of the least safe energies. Especially if you have clean alternatives that don’t produce waste.
You cannot make a solar panel without waste. Is it better, remains to be seen… But saying solar and wind is zero waste is not the view to have.
They can also be made in ways that cut cost and harm the environment.
Wait, I’m seeing a lot of people being very against nuclear. From what I’ve gathered, I see no downsides compared to fossil fuels
