Anti-nuclear people in here arguing about disasters that killed a few k people in 50 years. Also deeply worried about nuclear waste that won’t have an impact on humans for thousands of years, but ignoring climate change is having an impact and might end our way of life as we know it before 2100.
They’re bike-shedding and blocking a major stepping stone to a coal, petrol and gas free future for the sake of idealism.
They’re bike-shedding and blocking a major stepping stone to a coal, petrol and gas free future for the sake of idealism.
I really don’t get this “nuclear as stepping stone” argument. Nuclear power plants take up to ten years to build. Also (at least here in Germany) nuclear power was expensive as hell and was heavily subsidized.
We have technology to replace coal and gas: Wind, solar, geothermal, etc. Why bother with nuclear and the waste we can’t store properly…?
Because none of those (except hydro and geothermal, but those are both extremely location dependent) will deal with the baseload power generation we need. And don’t just say we will make more batteries, lithium is already getting more expensive, and there may be global shortages in the next few years.
Because none of those (except hydro and geothermal, but those are both extremely location dependent) will deal with the baseload power generation we need.
Is this the problem though? I mean: The sun is shining somewhere at all times and the wind is blowing somewhere at all times. Energy is being produced. The problem is either storing it (okay, batteries are expensive, I get it) or better: distributing it.
In Germany we have the problem that we are producing a surplus of wind energy in the north but currently we are not able to distribute the energy into the south of Germany which results in needing gas power plants in the south while at the same time shutting down wind generators in the north. This is obviously bad.
Upgrading our grid would solve this problem and would vastly reduce our need for gas energy. This is costly but is far from impossible.
I swear you lot saw one 15 minute video made by some 17 year old about how nuclear is safe and now you just spout the same 3 or points over and over again without any critical understanding.
I love how this person made a good argument about energy storage and you just responded with speculation and an insult, not actually addressing the point. If it’s the same 3 points, you should be able to perfectly counter their argument without resorting to an ad hominem attack.
Well for one he’s implying chemical batteries are the only way to store energy, which is disingenuous and not a good argument, pumped storage is a proven, relatively cheap and widely known technology. and then the whole “BaSeLoAd” argument which is just literally just a bullshit buzzword the fossil fuel industry uses to try and make renewables seem less reliable.
So please wont you forgive me for not engaging the guy spewing bad faith arguments and ff propaganda.
Why yes lets build 150 fission plants every year for 30 years so we can checks notes generate 1/5 of the current demand. By all means research fussion. But to think that humans are competent enough to manage that many plants at once and to ignore the permanent issue of the waste is crazy to me. In addition nuclear is more carbon intensive than renewables and the more plants you make the quicker you will run out of optimal uranium deposits. “But what about fast breeders?!?!” why yes lets make tons of plutonium and have our plant constantly catch on fire so we can pursue a decades old dead end technology. We could be building massive floating wind farms off coasts around the world but nah lets whine about a pipe dream that nuclear will save the day instead. This activist is misled as many are sadly.
There’s about 100 years of uranium ressource available actually, double the production and you got only 50 years… that’s mainly the problem with nuclear.
Extraction from the ocean is economically not viable.
The biggest enemy of the left is the right, it’s just that everyone on the left can agree that they’re terrible so it doesn’t come up in discourse too much, whereas the people who are on your side but want to do things a different way will take up much more of your attention.
A lot of the anti-nuclear sentiment comes from the 80s when the concerns were a lot more valid (and likely before half the pro-nuclear people in this thread were born).
But blaming people on social media for blocking progress on it is a stretch. They’re multi-billion dollar projects. Have any major governments or businesses actually proposed building more but then buckled to public pressure?
Anyway, I’m glad this conversation has made it to Lemmy because I’ve long suspected the conspicuous popularly and regularity of posts like this on Reddit was the work of a mining lobby that can’t deny climate change anymore, but won’t tolerate profits falling.
How do you plan to reach 80% non-carbon-based energy by 2030? That’s the current stated goal by the Biden Admin, and it’s arguably not aggressive enough. Nuclear plants take a minimum of 5 years to build, but that’s laughably optimistic. It’s more like 10.
SMR development projects, even if they succeed, won’t be reaching mass production before 2030.
The clock has run out; it has nothing to do with waste or disasters. Greenpeace won.
10 years from now, you might be in a situation where the grid is unstable and capacity is insufficient in front of demand. You will also be facing potential renewal of existing solar panels, wind farms, batteries storage, etc.
If you lack capacity, any attempt at industry relocation locally will be a pipe-dream.
And at that time, you’ll say either “it’s too late to rely on nuclear now” or “fortunately we’re about to get these new power plants running”. You’re not building any nuclear power plan for immediate needs, you’re building for the next decades.
Meanwhile, one country will be ready to take on “clean production” and be very attractive to industrial projects because it already planned all of that years ago and companies will be able to claim “green manufacturing”. That country is… China!
I don’t have the sources right now, but nuclear reactor designs exist that output minimal weapons grade materials and some that output none at all. IIRC they are in use already, but I’d have to check what their names are.
There are nuclear plants in operation today that do not use or create any fuel that is capable of being weaponized. In fact, coal plants emit more radiation than a modern nuclear power plant.
None of them is ignoring climate change, Actually you are more than anyone else since you are promoting an energy source that isn’t green.
Many other nuclear accidents happened over the past years but you sound like the kind of person that doesn’t care much about the environment:
I think you’re confusing terminologies here. Nuclear is not renewable since it requires using a finite resource that has to be mined from the earth to create energy, however it is a nearly zero emission form of energy since it’s basically a giant tea kettle who’s steam spins a turbine to generate energy. That steam is just water vapor, the by products and spent fuel rods can be safely stored and processes or reprocessed. Wind, Solar, Geothermal and hydroelectric are renewable since they require no fuel to operate. All of the above could be considered green since they emit zero emissions unlike Coal and Liquid Natural Gas plants
but ignoring climate change is having an impact and might end our way of life as we know it before 2100.
Yes, so we need change FAST. Not in 15 years when the nuclear plant is finally built, not in 20 years when it starts producing commercial power, not in 25 years when it finally offsets the carbon cost of the concrete to build it, not in 30 years when it breaks even on the cost and the company can think about building another, not in 35 years when it offsets the cost in money and carbon to decommission the thing in the future. Now, so we should be building windfarms, that are MASSIVELY cheaper per MW than nuclear and can be built in 6 months and have less of a carbon impact.
Any way you run the numbers, any metric you look at wind beats nuclear.
I used to be very very pro nuclear, then one day I tried to argue against someone and did the calculations myself.
Anti-nuclear people in here arguing about disasters that killed a few k people in 50 years. Also deeply worried about nuclear waste that won’t have an impact on humans for thousands of years, but ignoring climate change is having an impact and might end our way of life as we know it before 2100.
They’re bike-shedding and blocking a major stepping stone to a coal, petrol and gas free future for the sake of idealism.
I really don’t get this “nuclear as stepping stone” argument. Nuclear power plants take up to ten years to build. Also (at least here in Germany) nuclear power was expensive as hell and was heavily subsidized.
We have technology to replace coal and gas: Wind, solar, geothermal, etc. Why bother with nuclear and the waste we can’t store properly…?
Because none of those (except hydro and geothermal, but those are both extremely location dependent) will deal with the baseload power generation we need. And don’t just say we will make more batteries, lithium is already getting more expensive, and there may be global shortages in the next few years.
Is this the problem though? I mean: The sun is shining somewhere at all times and the wind is blowing somewhere at all times. Energy is being produced. The problem is either storing it (okay, batteries are expensive, I get it) or better: distributing it.
In Germany we have the problem that we are producing a surplus of wind energy in the north but currently we are not able to distribute the energy into the south of Germany which results in needing gas power plants in the south while at the same time shutting down wind generators in the north. This is obviously bad.
Upgrading our grid would solve this problem and would vastly reduce our need for gas energy. This is costly but is far from impossible.
I swear you lot saw one 15 minute video made by some 17 year old about how nuclear is safe and now you just spout the same 3 or points over and over again without any critical understanding.
I love how this person made a good argument about energy storage and you just responded with speculation and an insult, not actually addressing the point. If it’s the same 3 points, you should be able to perfectly counter their argument without resorting to an ad hominem attack.
and ive made that response dozens of time before. Hence why im making that comment.
Or you don’t actually have an argument and are posturing.
Well for one he’s implying chemical batteries are the only way to store energy, which is disingenuous and not a good argument, pumped storage is a proven, relatively cheap and widely known technology. and then the whole “BaSeLoAd” argument which is just literally just a bullshit buzzword the fossil fuel industry uses to try and make renewables seem less reliable.
So please wont you forgive me for not engaging the guy spewing bad faith arguments and ff propaganda.
Why yes lets build 150 fission plants every year for 30 years so we can checks notes generate 1/5 of the current demand. By all means research fussion. But to think that humans are competent enough to manage that many plants at once and to ignore the permanent issue of the waste is crazy to me. In addition nuclear is more carbon intensive than renewables and the more plants you make the quicker you will run out of optimal uranium deposits. “But what about fast breeders?!?!” why yes lets make tons of plutonium and have our plant constantly catch on fire so we can pursue a decades old dead end technology. We could be building massive floating wind farms off coasts around the world but nah lets whine about a pipe dream that nuclear will save the day instead. This activist is misled as many are sadly.
There’s about 100 years of uranium ressource available actually, double the production and you got only 50 years… that’s mainly the problem with nuclear. Extraction from the ocean is economically not viable.
The biggest enemy of the left is the right, it’s just that everyone on the left can agree that they’re terrible so it doesn’t come up in discourse too much, whereas the people who are on your side but want to do things a different way will take up much more of your attention.
A lot of the anti-nuclear sentiment comes from the 80s when the concerns were a lot more valid (and likely before half the pro-nuclear people in this thread were born).
But blaming people on social media for blocking progress on it is a stretch. They’re multi-billion dollar projects. Have any major governments or businesses actually proposed building more but then buckled to public pressure?
Anyway, I’m glad this conversation has made it to Lemmy because I’ve long suspected the conspicuous popularly and regularity of posts like this on Reddit was the work of a mining lobby that can’t deny climate change anymore, but won’t tolerate profits falling.
How do you plan to reach 80% non-carbon-based energy by 2030? That’s the current stated goal by the Biden Admin, and it’s arguably not aggressive enough. Nuclear plants take a minimum of 5 years to build, but that’s laughably optimistic. It’s more like 10.
SMR development projects, even if they succeed, won’t be reaching mass production before 2030.
The clock has run out; it has nothing to do with waste or disasters. Greenpeace won.
And in doing so, helped doom us all together with big oil, gas and coal.
10 years from now, you might be in a situation where the grid is unstable and capacity is insufficient in front of demand. You will also be facing potential renewal of existing solar panels, wind farms, batteries storage, etc.
If you lack capacity, any attempt at industry relocation locally will be a pipe-dream.
And at that time, you’ll say either “it’s too late to rely on nuclear now” or “fortunately we’re about to get these new power plants running”. You’re not building any nuclear power plan for immediate needs, you’re building for the next decades.
Meanwhile, one country will be ready to take on “clean production” and be very attractive to industrial projects because it already planned all of that years ago and companies will be able to claim “green manufacturing”. That country is… China!
Isn’t the main worry the “side product” of weapons grade nuclear materials?
I don’t have the sources right now, but nuclear reactor designs exist that output minimal weapons grade materials and some that output none at all. IIRC they are in use already, but I’d have to check what their names are.
Yes. It’s possible, but they are not of interest to nuclear power states.
There are nuclear plants in operation today that do not use or create any fuel that is capable of being weaponized. In fact, coal plants emit more radiation than a modern nuclear power plant.
And they cost too much. Governments only fund weaponizeable fission.
Not in a way that can be concentrated and weaponized.
None of them is ignoring climate change, Actually you are more than anyone else since you are promoting an energy source that isn’t green. Many other nuclear accidents happened over the past years but you sound like the kind of person that doesn’t care much about the environment:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accidents_by_country
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste_dumping_by_'Ndrangheta
“Nuclear energy isn’t green” lol. You sound like an anti-vaxxer.
Nuclear is not green https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_energy
You do realise that the article you just shared lists nuclear energy as sustainable, right?
It doesn’t, learn how to read
LMAO are you daft? Such an obvious troll.
I think you’re confusing terminologies here. Nuclear is not renewable since it requires using a finite resource that has to be mined from the earth to create energy, however it is a nearly zero emission form of energy since it’s basically a giant tea kettle who’s steam spins a turbine to generate energy. That steam is just water vapor, the by products and spent fuel rods can be safely stored and processes or reprocessed. Wind, Solar, Geothermal and hydroelectric are renewable since they require no fuel to operate. All of the above could be considered green since they emit zero emissions unlike Coal and Liquid Natural Gas plants
Yes, so we need change FAST. Not in 15 years when the nuclear plant is finally built, not in 20 years when it starts producing commercial power, not in 25 years when it finally offsets the carbon cost of the concrete to build it, not in 30 years when it breaks even on the cost and the company can think about building another, not in 35 years when it offsets the cost in money and carbon to decommission the thing in the future. Now, so we should be building windfarms, that are MASSIVELY cheaper per MW than nuclear and can be built in 6 months and have less of a carbon impact.
Any way you run the numbers, any metric you look at wind beats nuclear.
I used to be very very pro nuclear, then one day I tried to argue against someone and did the calculations myself.
That’s a little out of nowhere and I don’t get what you’re saying, but I totally agree with the rest