alt Hacker NewsBelieving we're in a climate crisis and also being anti-nuclear are mutually exclusive positions in my mind, and opposition to nuclear from environmentalist orgs should be viewed as a massive historical mistake as it set us back decades in moving the needle on carbon emissions.
The engineering side of running reactors safely is a solved problem, the US navy has > 7500 reactor-years with a perfect safety record.
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The engineering side might be a theoretically solved problem, anybody looking at belgium's crumbling nuclear powerplants can help but feeling slightly nervous!
I agree we probably need nuclear to bridge the gap until solar or wind can take over fully, but there are a lot of problems with nuclear and the most pressing ones are connected to the unwillingness of people to spend money before a disaster happens.
On top of that, uranium is a limited resource, it's extraction is (energetically) expensive and dirty and the storage of the nuclear waste is very far from a solved engineering problem. Storing safely stuff for thousands of years is just not a realistic scenario whatsoever.
All this is not to say we should just skip on nuclear power altogether, we can't afford that I think and burning all the fossil fuels will probably have more disastrous consequences. But we shouldn't close out eyes to the problems either.
The engineering side of running reactors safely is a solved problem, the US navy has > 7500 reactor-years with a perfect safety record.
It’s also worth noting that the US Navy is the only organization with a perfect nuclear safety record.
My point being: by god, let the Navy nukes train everyone else!
Powerprice in Germany today minus 500€/MWh. Nuclear power is economic madness in an environment where we see negative electricity prices practically every day.
Fun fact, "friends of the earth" was originally funded by Robert Anderson, CEO of Atlantic Richfield oil, to oppose nuclear.
What about the opposition from the not exactly environmentalist orgs?
> "The failure of the U.S. nuclear power program ranks as the largest managerial disaster in business history, a disaster on a monumental scale ... only the blind, or the biased, can now think that the money has been well spent. It is a defeat for the U.S. consumer and for the competitiveness of U.S. industry, for the utilities that undertook the program and for the private enterprise system that made it possible." — "Nuclear Follies". Forbes Magazine. 1985.
> Believing we're in a climate crisis and also being anti-nuclear are mutually exclusive positions
I also used to believe that but now I'm not so sure. Nuclear carries massive and unpredictable risks on failure. We can fairly well predict what will happen on catastrophic wind turbine failure, but with nuclear it is much more difficult. And what is arguably worse is that nuclear catastrophic failures are very infrequent and so we have very hard time estimating and thinking about probabilities of them happening.
Personally I think that keeping existing reactors running is better than the alternatives, but I'm not so sure about building up new reactors compared to building more predictable green energy sources.
"carbon emissions" LOL. Just lookup what's happening In Tuapse, and in other war zones. And we are penalising some poor bugger burning wood to warm his house at winter ...
Funnily (or tragically?) enough, lots of environmentalists here in Italy are opposing solar and wind projects too. I find that crazy.
Nonsense, the reluctance of governments to reduce carbon emissions has been driven by the reluctance for entrenched industries to give up their gravy train. There are many ways for power to be produced with lower carbon emissions, it's absolutely not a binary situation at all.
What nuclear is is a wedge issue that can successfully split the opposition to the fossil fuel industry. People should be incredibly wary of the argument being forced into these positions, its artificial and contrary to the desires of people who want action on climate change who support nuclear and don't.
It follows Europe's energy policies (declaring nuclear climate-friendly). France is ahead of the US when it comes to civil nuclear plants strategy.
Yep, I have been saying for decades that I agree on almost everything wirh the local Green Party, _except_ the anti-nuclear stuff. Very emotional, very relatable but very dumb.
I live close to the Belgian border. Some time ago there was concern about Belgian reactors (they are old and their concrete was fracturing) and they were distributing iodine pills. Keeping them open even longer just sounds peak Belgium.
Here we go again ...
Did those plants suddenly became manageable? No.
Did those plants suddenly became cheap? No.
Do we suddenly have a solution for the waste? No.
Have new uranium deposits suddenly been discovered? No.
> Believing we're in a climate crisis and also being anti-nuclear are mutually exclusive positions in my mind
Not at all. Some people are depopulationists.
well, regardless of what you think, they are not
Believing we're in a climate crisis and also being anti-nuclear is like being a firefighter and opposing the use of water to extinguish fires.
> Believing we're in a climate crisis and also being anti-nuclear are mutually exclusive positions in my mind,
I wonder how many people actually believe that we are in good shape so mankind should have no development whatsoever. Just stay as is or even go back decades just to preserve the environment. The first world need more energy because we're greedy and etc.
>Believing we're in a climate crisis and also being anti-nuclear are mutually exclusive positions in my mind
Yes hello, these are both my opinions, do I exist for you or not ;)? You can say that we are in a climate crisis AND be anti-nuclear.
Why do so many nuclear fans try to suggest climate change only exists if you like nuclear? It's very odd.
Compare:
If you believe COVID exists you need to use hydroxychloroquine.
It makes you sound like you don't even believe in the problem you are proposing an (unpopular with experts) solution for.
There's two very different types of reactors: the already-paid-for long-run reactor that's still going, and then on-paper-not-yet-constructed reactor in a high cost of living nation.
Building lots of new nuclear instead of doing the cheaper option of tons of batteries and renewables, only makes sense in a few geographic locations. Not all, or even most!
Even keeping old reactors running gets super expensive as they get past their designed lifetimes, and very often doesn't make sense.
The engineering is indeed already done for electricity, and storage and renewables are cheap and getting cheaper. Nuclear is at best staying the same high cost, and getting more expensive is these large construction projects rise due to Baumol's cost disease.
Opposing more nuclear in the US in the 1980s wasn't fully irrational, the US managerial class have way overbuilt nuclear and we didn't need all the electricity. Then we didn't have much growth in
The far bigger fight for climate these days isn't electricity: it's car-centric living, it's the anti-EV and anti-battery advocates, and to some degree it's retrofitting the wide variety of highly-cost-sensitive industries, such as steel or fertilizer or concrete, to use carbon neutral methods. Or maybe sustainable aviation fuel.
Nuclear had it's chance to be a big contributor to climate action back in the mid 2000s and 2010s, it failed that challenge in Georgia at Vogtle, in South Carolnia at Summer, in the UK at Hinkley Point C, in France in Flamanville, and in Finland an Olkiluoto. Every one of those failures is a very good reason for a climate activist to oppose nuclear.
If you believe in a climate crisis and are serious about it you probably want to run the numbers on different options and policies to see what works rather than saying yay this boo that. Running numbers on producing energy in say 15 years time which is roughly how long it takes to approve and build nuclear, and comparing it with projected solar+wind+battery costs for 15 years hence you tend to come with much better figures for the non nuclear. (see graph here with the trend https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/nuclear-vs-solar?hide_intro_po...)
China which is fairly sensible on this stuff and which plans to be world's largest nuclear producer by 2035 actually added 1GW of nuclear and ~300GW of solar last year because it's cheaper.
I'll give you maintaining existing nuclear makes sense. But as a British tax payer the cost of our upcoming Hinkley C is eye watering (£48bn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_...)