this post was submitted on 01 May 2024
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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
Thank you for providing a bigger picture
Re: Remaining fuel.
If we built breeder reactors we could use the spent waste fuel to power the entire US for 1000 years. That runs into plutonium existence problems, but it's a political problem, not a resource problem.
However, I still agree with what you've said. We should limit our nuclear footprint to key isotope production, but we really shouldn't be doing that until we've gone full carbon neutral.
Edit: In case you can't see the reply to this comment, my conversation partner has given me more information I didn't have before. Breeder reactors are neat, but they have more issues than I originally knew. (Still a badass concept though :P) https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.2968/066003007
While those are all fair points, it’s also important to note that Gen IV reactor technology has projected generation efficiencies of very roughly 100-300x the energy yield from an identical mass of fissile material when compared to Gen II and Gen III reactors. I dare say that would change the efficiency equation rather significantly if those numbers pan out in the implementation stage.
The number of people who still think nuclear power is a manageable risk in any capacity is really depressing. We still have no idea what to do with all the nuclear waste we're creating even now. And that's not even considering the impact of having a nuclear plant when you're in a war.
Ukraine seems to be fine, beyond Russians digging up their own fuck up dirt from the past to dig trenches
"Ukraine seems to be fine" is an odd thing to say considering what is going on there in general, but to your point, we can be glad that the fighting around Chernobyl did not do more damage. There's also a difference in strategy when a country attacks their neighbour to annex their land. If they instead want to mess with a country further away, they can just drop some bombs on their nuclear plants and see what happens.
The vast majority of "nuclear waste" is just common items that have come into contact with radiation. The really radioactive portions can be, and are safely stored within the facilities themselves.
Sure, the barely radioactive waste components do need to be buried (or it seems like that's the current trend), but they pose no risk to anyone as long as they're not digging them up.
And for how long to they have to be "safely stored"? For how long do they have to be buried without anyone digging them up? And where are we burying anyway where there is no risk of anyone digging them up intentionally or accidentally, no risk of natural phenomena interfering, no risk of the barrels breaking and nuclear waste seeping into our water? There is a reason why countries have been struggling to find these safe storage spaces for decades. I'd argue that is because there aren't any.
Just because you NIMBYs are not smart enough to figure out a solution does not mean its impossible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_drillhole_disposal
Reaching for an unproven concept of "drilling really deep holes" that's barely a few years old to convince people there is no problem with long-term storage of dangerous waste we've been accumulating for decades, but sure, I'm just a NIMBY.
Drilling deep holes is a great concept for geothermal energy. One might even forego the nuclear reactor part then and just do geothermal.
The entire French nation begs to differ. Look at that map! Power generation alllll over the country, not tucked in an unpopulated area or clustered in one spot ‘just in case’.
Then look across the border at Germany. The CND and Greens did a number on then generations ago, and Russia has kept up the fear over nuclear so they were able to keep Germany dependent on Gazprom. Until Ukraine.
The article says nothing about waste.
Russia is the biggest exporter of Uranium.
I have no idea what the CND in Germany is supposed to be and neither has Google.
France had to repeatedly power down nuclear plants and buy electricity from neighbours because they couldn't cool their plants. Because there was so much drought in Europe there wasn't enough water. A phenomenon that will surely never happen again in Western Europe in the next couple of decades.
France has not been at war since they started building nuclear plants and has no solid plan for dealing with nuclear waste either from what I can tell.
France comes begging across the border for coal and gas electricity in hot summers when their reactors have to lower output because river water for cooling is too hot. Then they pat themselves on the back because the CO2 is not generated within their borders.
Why aren't Hiroshima, Nagasaki or Chernobyl nuclear wastelands?
I don't think nuclear power was killed by NIMBYs, at least not entirely. In the 1970s and 80s the financial world started taking a much more short-term view. Nuclear power plants have such a huge up-front cost that you aren't going to see returns for decades. When the market wants numbers to go up every quarter they're not going to finance something that won't make a profit for 20 years.
That's why we have governments though, for the long time low return infrastructure, like power grids.
Somehow we are willing to spend billions yearly on new roads but can't be assed to build a new nuke plant once a decade to grow power production.
If only it were as exciting as the shitty startups that sell for millions a few years after being founded despite never making any profit...
The problem with nuclear is it gives fossil fuel giants a free pass to try speedrun killing the planet before it even arrives.
If we plan for nuclear, we plan to do nothing for 50 years.
I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about. Nuclear displaces fossil fuels at a better rate than renewables and is just as low carbon impact as them. We could replace the entire fossil grid with nuclear in 10 years if there was public support and demand for it, but fossil giants have been parroting the same antinuclear myths and fears dor the last 70 years and its so widely spread even pro renewable people have been deluded into thinking nuclear is bad for the planet when it might very well be our last best hope of fixing greenhouse emissions without the entire world reverting to pre industrial lifestyles.
I wish i could send you a beer
I think nuclear and fossil fuel people all the same people. Its all energy investors. Nuclear would come with a lifetime storage contract with the ability to continually jack up the public cost indefinitely as the requirements change. Seems like an industry that would appeal to the fossils fuel types.
Nope, we will be burning the fossil fuels the whole time the nuclear plant is being built.
That's why fossil fuel giants and right wingers are banking on nuclear, because it'll be a free pass to burn burn burn.
Nuclear plants wouldn't take so long to build if people stopped trying to sue and protest their construction and sabotage it with all the red tape. If permits were approved and certified tomorrow a new plant could be operational in 10 years. 5 if it was actually funded and supported. Building the plant is easy, its cuttinf through the red tape encouraged by the oil lobby that is takes decades
Hey, those are the safety standards!
But what if one of those stray radio nucleides corrupts my potential grand grand grand grand children 500 years down the line? What say you of your safety margins then?. (Dies of coughing due to coal Ash)
Please provide valid sources to back up your comment. Thanks.
I'll be a source. I worked at Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant in MD for over 10 years. Because of the trend of shutting down nuclear, I shifted over to operating a combined cycle power plant. Calvert with 2 units did about 1800MW combined, base loaded 24/7 except for outages, and those were staggered so that when one went down for maintenance and refueling, the other unit was still throwing 900MW to the grid. My current plant has 2 gas engine turbines and 1 STG, and on a good day when we're fully up 2x1 with ducts in, we can hit about 800MW when it's called for. Balls to the wall in perfect conditions on a plant that's not even ten years old, we can't do half of what Calvert was doing and they've been operating since the 70s.
Imagine what modern nuclear tech could do. We should've been a step ahead of everybody with this.
Do you have any opinions on light water SMR designs? Do you think the idea to mass produce them and distribute these smaller reactors on a local basis is feasible, or do you think if they are mass produced we would be more likely to see them clustered in series in more modern plants?
Idk much about that in particular but I can speculate based on what I know about the power industry and business in general. I think larger modular clusters (10-30) would be more common just because of the infrastructure needed. Sure, we might see instances of 1-3 units here and there, but I imagine that if a company is already going to the trouble of buying a plot of land and building a switchyard, getting water access and RO-EDI tech for it, cooling water of whatever type, n+1 redundancy on all equipment, radioactive waste management including on-site storage of spent fuel, etc while also welcoming the NRC and FERC and whoever else to scrutinize, it makes the most sense to have several units making ~~money~~ power. Like anything else, upping the scale makes the cost per instance go down. Nuclear in the US has a fuckload of red tape and permitting and oversight that cost a lot of money to stay on top of. There could be good applications for small clusters like closer to urban, more densely populated areas where land is expensive and the power needs are the immediate vicinity. Or in developing areas that don't have much power demand, at least not yet. There's no good reason why a small cluster couldn't replace the remaining coal plants. It's also completely feasible to throw some up at military bases or large university campuses for training and their own power needs. Big power will want to squeeze as many into as small of a space with as little maintenance requirement as they can get away with because everything they do is in the name of maximizing profits for shareholders. But for nationalized power like in France, it kinda doesn't make sense to build anything else right now.
Maybe the best part of SMR tech as I understand it is that somebody could get the land and permits and infrastructure set up for the end goal but just build a small percentage of the reactors at first, and then scale up later. This is cheaper to start, faster to build, and is a perfect proof of concept strategy to get investors excited at funding the bulk of the project.
Thanks for this. I did ask OP for sources, in other words links to verifiable data to back up the assertion that:
"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 data is widely available and easy to find.
It's the difference between spending 0 seconds looking it up and wanting "a source", versus actually looking it up and not finding anything, then asking where the info comes from.
Asking for a source just to ask for a source is called sealioning.
Good grief, no.
I read so much absolute bullshit around nuclear and renewables where people just write out their feelings on the subject. Asking for sources to back up their claims isn't sealioning, it's a polite way of asking someone to try and back up their claims with facts.
In this instance, OP said, "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"
I want to know what they're talking about. If they're saying 1 solar panel or wind turbine has a smaller output than a nuclear plant then ... well yeah, that's obvious. If they're saying renewables won't work without nuclear then that's a straight up lie and I'd like them to post sources to back up that assertion.
Here are the claims he made:
So which part do you know to be false, that you couldn't easily look up and had to ask him where he got this obscure info? Which part do you want him to source? All of it? Even the part where we are running in circles fixing climate change? Or is it the part where current plants are being showered in money to make up for extended lifetimes?
Right, you were just sealioning.
Re-read what I wrote, I was quite clear although I edited my post a minute after submitting so maybe you missed it.
You can claim I'm sealioning all you want, anyone with a functioning brain can see I'm not.
I don't need to reread what you wrote, im not the one making the claims!
What you actually said to buddy was:
That message is the one you might want to edit instead of arguing with me it's not sealioning.
Cool. We're done here.
Please provide valid sources to back up your comment. Thanks.
na
So not only no sources but you are in fact not "done here"?
https://www.opg.com/power-generation/our-power/
Fuck you
OPG manages power production for all of Ontario, with 2 nuke plants putting out over 3 GW each, for a total of ~6.5GW, OPG generates about 18-19GW so 30% is covered by two plants
The majority of the remainder is hydro across 66 fucking plants. And nothing else comes even close in output
And these are CANDU reactors, they don't require refined uranium, and don't contribute to proliferation like other plants, they also don't meltdown explosively since boiling the coolant reduces the nuclear reaction rate.
I just don't get why they can close down nuclear power plants while still keeping coal power plants open. Coal is so much worse.