this post was submitted on 04 May 2024
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I love nuclear but this new battery tech has me super excited
It increases the viability of renewable energy sources (especially solar) which makes me hella happy
I'm not trying to be a dick but could you explain why?
Not who you asked but look at France's energy mix compared to the US.
Imagine where the US could be today regarding emissions if we had kept up with nuclear this whole time.
I totally get that but that ship has sailed with renewables being way cheaper now.
Perhaps a bad example because most people undermine them, but China has still decided to move forward with 4 different nuclear facilities this year despite having an ABUNDANCE of solar manufacturing. If they found that decision worthwhile I would think the opposite, assuming most of the reasoning is current battery tech can't sustain dark periods at a massive scale, but I'm not an expert.
Also just saw you mentioned nuclear costs in another comment, I suggest you look at South Korea and China's cost per facility compared to the US, they're able to build and maintain facilities at about half the US does.
Literally every source I've come across has nuclear being massively more expensive than renewables + storage, at least in the West.
The market decides what to invest in in a capitalist economy and they will tend to go for the thing that makes them the most money in the shortest time possible and that's why new nuclear isn't happening much.
If you're advocating for public ownership of utilities so there's central planning and long term thinking instead of profit chasing, that's an interesting debate to have.
@IchNichtenLichten
Not OP, but why not love it? It's one of the cleanest, greenest, safest, and efficient power sources we have.
@Gormadt
This is exactly why I love nuclear
And who can forget the classic, "Where is the waste from fossil fuels? Take a deep breath, it's in your lungs. Where is the waste from nuclear power? Where we store it."
Yes there have been disasters but the waste from those are tracked, in a specific location, and can be cleaned up. The default state of fossil fuels hits every living breathing thing on Earth.
And even factoring in the impact from disasters nuclear is still the safest. And we have even safer designs for reactors nowadays then the reactors that had those disasters.
Nuclear suffers from the airplane fallacy where when something goes wrong it tends to go really wrong and a lot of people die at once and it makes the news. But fact is, many orders of magnitude more people have died from fossil fuel plants, mining, byproducts, and combustion. They just die slower, in smaller groups, so it doesn't get reported on as easily.
Isn't it even safer than wind energy ?
And now we're in an age of nuclear fusion. My kid or grandkids may live in a world powered by even cleaner reactors. Which is great because they will probably have to live entirely indoors.
Eh, I feel like we've been in an age of nuclear fusion for decades, it's always just around the corner...
But maybe this latest set of breakthroughs will be it. I'll believe it when I see a production scale plant.
It has value in terms of research but I’ve seen no evidence that we’re even remotely close to hooking a fusion reactor up to a grid.
Sure, I get that. My priorities are clean energy that is as cheap as possible and nuclear just can’t compete on cost.
@IchNichtenLichten
It might have a higher initial upfront cost, but the return on investment over a plant's whole lifetime makes it one of the cheapest. And even then, they don't take long to break even.
This isn’t true but I’m happy to be proved wrong.
@IchNichtenLichten
I've found this reference that seems good:
https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and-the-environment/energy-return-on-investment
https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/economics-of-nuclear-power
There's certainly more, but I'm not nuclear powered and don't have the mental energy for online debate 😁
You're linking to a pro-nuclear trade group.
Capital costs:
Nuclear: $6,695–7,547
Wind power: $1,718
Solar PV with storage: $1,748
Global levelized cost of generation (US$ per MWh):
Nuclear: 140–221
Wind: 24–75
PV: 24–96
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#
It looked suspiciously biased. I'm going to research more.
How about we regulate all the other power sources as heavily as we regulate nuclear?
This is an extremely unfair comparison, because nuclear has to do things (Even leaving aside the Nuclear part of it) that no other energy source does.
You know any coal supply chains that have to track each atom that they ever dig up?
And even leaving aside cost, what about other benefits?
I can't believe I even have to mention this but you realize that nuclear power has safety issues that wind and solar do not? Hence the regulation.
Such as?