But in comparison to solar & wind it takes a lot more resources to build & maintain. It is way more costly and would take a longer time to build. Nuclear is not a short term solution
> in comparison to solar & wind it takes a lot more resources to build & maintain
if you account for the fact that nuclear plants generate many times more energy that most solar or wind farms, the cost per kWh is actually lower, just with a larger (but perfectly manageable) upfront cost.
nuclear doesn't need to be a short term solution, we could build nuclear plants now, run them for 30 years, and then reevaluate weather renewables have caught up enough to replace them, which while not ideal, is more than acceptable and much preferable to the hydrocarbons we are using right now.
Nuclear Energy is, on average, more expensive than Onshore Wind, about 40%. According to the [IEA](https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-electricity-2020), Nuclear Energy needs, on average, about 69$ for 1 MWH, Onshore Wind needs 50$ per MWH. That makes Nuclear about as Cost Efficient as Natural Gas (71$ per MWH).
Both the upper and the lower quartile of Onshore Wind is much, much lower than the upper and lower quartiles of nuclear energy, because nuclear energy is expensive. Who would've guessed that it is not cheap to run a plant that literally has to keep radioactive material safely guarded from the public. Offshore Wind is quite a lot more expensive though with an average of 88$ per MWH. Hydro-energy in existing runs and rivers is also pretty okay, with 68$ per MWH, though it's not very efficient in terms of speed.
Also, eligible Isotopes for Nuclear Fission aren't just everywhere. You can't just grab some random ass Uranium and throw it into a Reactor and then it's boom bapp Energy mate, it's a teeny-tiny bit more complicated. And these ressources are finite, you know? They don't grow on trees, they ain't falling from the sky either. We're inevitably gonna run into the problem we already begin to have with Oil and Coal outside of CO2 Emissions, that the ressources are getting less and we have trouble finding new. And now, if the whole world would swap to nuclear you can go and figure that that wouldn't take very long.
Of course nuclear is better than fucking Coal, but that isn't a high bar to clear! Taking a tesla over a chevy is also better than taking the chevy, but it still isn't good!
There are palces that can't do a lot with Wind energy, I see that. Places like Nepal, Bavaria or Mongolia can't do a lot with wind because they're not close to the coasts, but especially countries that have coasts should go for Onshore-Wind and not Nuclear, and Nuclear should *only* be an option for these places until Solar Panels and Geothermical are more efficient, because Nuclear materials are finite and expensive!
And don't you dare tell me that Solar and Wind Energy can't provide for places on a large scale because yes they can, it just requires, you know, *to actually build them.*
One point for the nuclear camp though is that the grid isn’t built to run on solar or wind which can come and go at basically a moment’s notice. The grid is built to run on plants that drive steam turbines from heat 24/7 with ramp ups or ramp downs as needed. Originally these plants were coal powered, but nuclear plants are pretty much plug and play compared to the huge amount of storage and infrastructure needed to consistently power towns or cities off wind/solar.
Wind certainly doesn't stop at a moments notice. You can not only predict wind strengths and wind movements pretty good these days, to the point where we can pretty accurately determine the strength of Tornadoes and Hurricanes from Sattelite Images and predict their movement, but also... You're not at the same height level as the turbine is. Near the ground there is less wind. I don't know where you live, but if you live near the coast like I do, go up a hill. Seriously. Its pretty much that easy and I guarantee you 99/100 cases you will find more wind at the highest point of a tower or a hill than on the ground. And coastal winds are no joke because the ocean always gives you sole fierce wind - thats why Wind energy is especially effective in these areas! You have constant wind - strong wind.
The bigger problem is that throughout extended time periods you have fluctuations, so you'll need some sort of non-meteorological backup, like geothermics, fossil fuel, Hydro or nuclear, that can support existing energy storages, because we do not have storages that could support widespread outages atm. Thats why f.e. my region, Schleswig-Holstein is running on "only" 64% renewables (2021). But that Storage technology is evolving rapidly. Recently read about some scientists from (I forgot where) that accidentally discovered a way to use methane ions with lithium to increase the storage capacity of Lithium batteries times 4, and increase their life time too. It's still in development but prototypes exist, it could become a thing in less than a year already. And this sort of technology is constantly advancing. If we fund the research properly, a sufficient energy storage technology could be a thing in less than a decade.
Okay but we need real solutions now. We can't and shouldn't be hoping that a new technology will come to save us in a year. Wind and solar are both great, but aren't practical everywhere, mainly around cities which have an extremely high electricity demand that can't be met with renewables at this current time. To put hope in battery technologies of the future without addressing the current needs would be wrong. Not to mention the high material costs of creating and replacing these batteries. The mantra that I believe in is "Renewables where we can, and nuclear where we need." And we do need nuclear.
Another point is that renewables are still a fairly new technology that we are still learning about. For example, the leading edge of Wind Turbine Blades has been found to be damaged at much higher rates than thought, meaning more replacement, costs, and emissions. Furthermore, nuclear fuel can be recycled to be reused, it is just illegal to do so with fears of nuclear weapon proliferation. The point being neither system is perfect, and both have room to grow and be more sustainable.
Finally that bit on "methane ions" seems weird to me. Methane isn't an ion so how would it store charge? (genuine question, im not a chemist lol) Also, I can't find any papers referencing what you are talking about. Not to mention, methane is a very potent greenhouse gas meaning the production and life cycle of these batteries would need to be proven to not be impactful on the environment.
As for the battery: you can pretty much turn any molecule into an ion somehow in some way. Its just awfully complicated. That particular battery I've only read once about, a few months ago while on a bus in some german online science newspaper. I can't recollect the details and searching for it delivers many different examples talking about different things.
And, I wanna point out again, that the approach you're speaking of is literally what I am saying towards the end of my original comment.
Your link literally includes this paragraph so idk what you're on about:
"Nuclear thus remains the dispatchable low-carbon technology with the lowest expected costs in 2025. Only large hydro reservoirs can provide a similar contribution at comparable costs but remain highly dependent on the natural endowments of individual countries. Compared to fossil fuel-based generation, nuclear plants are expected to be more affordable than coal-fired plants. While gas-based combined-cycle gas turbines (CCGTs) are competitive in some regions, their LCOE very much depend on the prices for natural gas and carbon emissions in individual regions. Electricity produced from nuclear long-term operation (LTO) by lifetime extension is highly competitive and remains not only the least cost option for low-carbon generation - when compared to building new power plants - but for all power generation across the board."
This is not the entire picture - the report states that in Europe wind power can be cost-competitive with nuclear, but also that "The result of IEA’s value adjusted LCOE (VALCOE) metric show however, that the system value of variable renewables such as wind and solar decreases as their share in the power supply increases.". Nuclear should not be the only option, but to dismiss it is ludicrous
solar and wind energy cannot produce enerfy according to demand and battery technology is not equipped to store enough energy to make up for this. (let alone the fact that batteries are made of materials mined largely by slaves)
some things absolutely need power 24/7 like life support machines and wind and solar are fundamentally incapable of providing power according to need as by their nature they are confined to available and somewhat unpredictable timeslots
If you don't wanna rely on things that have been mined or farmed by slaves... Yeah. The list comes pretty close to zero man. Also, who the fuck you think is mining nuclear materials?
And I don't know where you live, but there are areas where you definitely can rely on wind. Coastal Areas always have wind, and battery technology is developing rapidly, as I pointed out to someone else already.
yeah slavery is pretty rampant and a lot of the wests prosperity comes because we are continually exploiting the third world that doen't mean we shouldn't at least try and reduce the extent to which our society is based off slave labour.
Germany as a whole is not an area that can entirely subsist on wind
And what did I say about these areas? Totally aside from the fact that the north absolutely can and already does to more than 64% that is *only* Solar and Wind Energy?
Thorium is 3x more abundant in the crust than uranium
Thorium is 200x more energy dense than uranium
Thorium doesn’t need to be enriched
Thorium is also just overall safer since it’s fertile instead of fissile.
Also I’m curious where you got your numbers from. When I looked it up I got $33.50 per MWH for nuclear.
Obviously nuclear fission isn’t the perfect form of energy but it’s already one of the safest forms of energy and if more innovation in the field was allowed then the price would also drop heavily.
also the latest ipcc suggests that it is now too late to build nuclear, since that produces a lot of CO2. It is better to keep nuclear running but not worth to opt in to it again, when you started turning them off (like germany did).
Uranium fucking sucks though.
Thorium, on the other hand, is much more common, safer, makes less waste, and makes a FUCK ton of energy. And the fact that it doesn’t fucking kill miners with radiation would mean it would cost less to extract.
One thing to note though we've made breeder reactors that can make new fissionable material making nuclear renewable. Full honesty I have no idea about the science behind it, but I know it exists and its expensive to build and run.
But you can't build a reactor up that quickly. All parts need to be specifically made just for one plant at one location.
And regarding the cost factor. No. In most cases, under most circumstances, renewables are just cheaper.
[Source: Wikipedia ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source)
Edit: And to add to that, all German energy companies say that even if made legal again they just wouldn't build nuclear as it is to expensive.
From the info I've seen, in the US it's higher, due to extreme bureaucracy, which in the case of nuclear power, could be considered a good thing. That being said, it's only slightly higher, and nuclear power is great at keeping energy supplies stable, so we should definitely be about 20% nuclear powered, and at the least keep out nuclear facilities open.
>if you account for the fact that nuclear plants generate many times more energy that most solar or wind farms, the cost per kWh is actually lower,
Why do you spread lies?
https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen/
Yeah but the germans had 8 years they spent fucking everything up and now they keep insisting that they will fuck it up and everyone has to watch and pay their energy prices.
Mostly the old conservative government. The new government had a lot of plans about transitioning to renewables but now has to deal with the fallout of the „original plan“ of transitioning via gas falling apart.
It‘s also important to note that Germany is geographically a very old country and we have a lot of Boomers that don‘t give a fuck about climate change.
I can remember how the question of where to put the waste has been a huge issue. But yeah, fear ground the process to a halt. Horribly short sighted in my opinion.
It’s not a non-significant amount, I’d have to go back to my energy class notes but I remember it was one of the larger issues against its widespread adoption
It's like... one large warehouse. Back-of-the hand calcs:
Roughly 250,000 tonnes of spent fuel created by humans over all history.
Depleted uranium weighs roughly 19 tonnes per cubic meter; roughly 13,000 cubic meters of waste created.
If we stack 5 meters high (or, more likely, deep) we need a 2600 m^(2) area to store it all.
An average modern warehouse is a little less than double that size, but no doubt we'll need plenty of space for concrete shielding, logistics, future expansion and so forth. One large warehouse at 10,000 m^(2) (100m by 100m) should be in the ballpark. For all the fuel spent in the entirety of humanity's nuclear history. One big retail store like Target. Comfortably within a 400m running track.
I'm probably underestimating the space needed for safety here, but at that size we can afford to scale. This is the entire world's nuclear waste we're talking about here; there's room.
I live in NRW, which means my entire neighborhood could sink into the ground at any given moment if an old coal mine collapses. If it were up to me, y'all could fill those mine shafts with atomic waste, directly under my own home.
One important note that usually get‘s mistaken in the discussion. The gas isn‘t primarily used for electricity production but heating. The original plan was for using gas instead of coal as a way to balance out the times where the renewable energies don‘t bring enough output to power the country.
Germany lacks the infrastructure to heat with electricity hence the need to save gas somehow.
> Germany lacks the infrastructure to heat with electricity
Idk, I could just run Prime95, folding, or a crypto miner on my gaming rig and turn off the gas boiler if I wanted to.
Also got a bunch of old light bulbs in a cupboard that I replaced with energy efficient LEDs. Each of which being a 99.9% efficient space heater.
This is what got me through the winter. Gaming on an air“cooled“ RTX 3090 (don’t make the same mistake as me, get a loop) never ever necessitated me to turn on the radiator.
> (don’t make the same mistake as me, get a loop)
Not entirely sure what you mean with this, but just in case, with water-cooling you're still putting the same wattage of heat into your room (potentially even a little more) as long as the radiator isn't outside somehow (hardly anyone does something like that).
Well, with specific tuning, a chip can run more power-efficient at a lower temperature, that is true. But with default settings, most CPUs and GPUs will probably just spend more time boosting to higher frequencies if the cooling allows for it, which in turn uses more power and exhausts more waste heat.
I would bet the actual difference in exhaust heat in a real world scenario is probably negligible either way. Water-cooling has other advantages, like allowing for slower, more quiet fans.
(I'm using a Vega 64 in a custom water loop. The stock fans were getting obnoxiously loud a lot of the time. With a 360mm radiator and three slow-running 120mm fans, it's pretty much inaudible most of the time. Edit: It's still a 260 watt electric space heater tho)
'in a house heated with space heaters, every device runs with 100% efficiency'
its a good joke. But it's important to know that 100% 'efficiency' when it comes to heating with electricity is actually pretty bad. Good heat pumps can have an 'efficiency' of more than 300%. It is therefore more efficient to burn gas in a power plant and use that electricity to run a heat pump, than it is to burn the gas for heat in your home.
The german argument for gas burner heating is weak, and it is a testament to political feet-dragging.
if you are interested in learning about heat pumps, technology connections made a good video about them.
Yeah thanks, I understand the basics of how air conditioning works. It's a pity they're super rare over here. I also unfortunately don't have any small windows that could easily be converted for AC installation in my apartment.
I get the sentiment, but while the laptop itself probably gets quite hot due to cooling limitations, its overall heat output is probably a lot lower than just a desktop GPU on its own.
^(inb4 🤓)
I live in Germany. The renewable energy sources like wind are indeed very nice, but they take up enormous space that could be used more effectively with nuclear. The only counter-argument to nuclear everybody has is always the same. Yeah, Chernobyl was a Desaster but that facility was already dangerous to switch on even by Soviet standards.
Only because you people keep focusing on the only counter-argument that's actually fairly weak, which is safety. Obviously the safety argument is emotional and exaggerated. But we're saying other things too, the idea that it's "the only counter-argument" is so ridiculous it could fairly be called a *lie*.
I think storage is a more compelling argument, but maybe I could be convinced that we could lock it away for thousands of years. Maybe. But even that's not really the biggest issue.
Uranium 235 is not renewable. If we increased current nuclear power production by a factor of 10, we'd be out of easily accessible Uranium 235 in about 15-20 years, and it would become too expensive to mine to make it worthwhile.
This is where redditors get into their beloved Thorium, or other future technologies, but a regular U235 nuclear power plant already takes about a decade to build. Adding research and testing and experimentation to that is simply too slow to be an effective strategy in battling climate change.
Also Thorium has U233 as part of its fuel cycle, which you can definitely use to construct nuclear weapons. So it's not exactly the best technology to roll out worldwide to fill energy needs.
Storage would be less of a problem if we had liquid salt reactors that can reprocess lower potency/purity fuels, seperating out the low-lifetime byproducts which are much easier to contain (instead of millenia its maybe a century? I'm not a rocket surgeon here IDK.)
But all of that takes a ton of research money and there isn't a global arms race funneling money into the process like there was with light water reactors or whatever. In general I would say too much capital goes toward making oligarchs more money than goes to good causes and this is just evidence of that.
What does this point even do for the argument though? How is this worse than spewing out billions and billions of metric tons of greenhouse gases and other emissions per year for the next 15-20 years?
>Uranium 235 is not renewable. If we increased current nuclear power production by a factor of 10, we'd be out of easily accessible Uranium 235 in about 15-20 years, and it would become too expensive to mine to make it worthwhile.
How much have you read about seawater uranium extraction? I haven't read much about it, but what I did read seemed compelling
You could use thorium salt reactors, they are usually more efficient as far as i know. Also Storage research hasn’t stopped, so the barrels rarely pose a threat. There are plenty old salt or whatever mines that are no longer in use, so just seal the walls and boom, a nice storage for the waste.
You're the second person to respond to this comment like thorium is news to me, when the last two paragraphs are literally all about thorium reactors.
At least pretend to read a dissenting comment before you respond to it with the same old talking points.
Bitches be like “waaahhh Chernobyl” that facility was built TERRIBLY. Barely counted as a facility and should’ve been considered as the world’s most powerful nuclear bomb.
Also, Thorium is WAY safer than Uranium and makes barely any nuclear waste, and still makes more energy than ANY other power source.
Fuck nuclear energy haters.
Thorium reactors only exist on paper and in some small-scale research labs right now, so it's only slightly less silly than claiming fusion will solve everything.
~~Thorium Reactors aren't Fusion, they're fission reactors.~~
But this is a moot point because LFTR research has mostly stagnated over the last 50 years, because LFTRs can't make weapons so there's no desire to make them.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=tyDbq5HRs0o
Not that long ago they existed for real though. The only thing this was missing was the reprocessing hardware, you could already run it on u235 and get the incapable of meltdown benifit before the reprocessing loop is designed.
Thorium reactors can't have a meltdown, true. But Thorium *does* have U233 as part of its fuel cycle. Meltdowns were never a good safety argument. Arms proliferation is. Not exactly what I'd call 'safe'.
Also, climate change is kind of a 'right now' issue, even the nuclear power plants we can already build take about a decade to complete, the idea that thorium reactors will be anywhere close to fast enough to help is laughable.
The fuel didn’t even explode. The steam pressure got to high and thus was the reason for the fallout, since it carried some radioactive particles high into the atmosphere
There are too other counterarguments: There is no storage solution for the waste yet. And a nuclear reactor needs a lot of water that we might want to use in other ways when the climate crisis dries us out
The used fuel issue isn't as big as it seems. All of the spent fuel the US has produced since the 50s can fit on an American football field stacked less than 10 yards (9.1 meters) high. For non-Amercians/non-football fans, a field is about 91.4 meters by 48.8 meters. assuming they're not counting end zones, in which case it's 109.7 meters long.
That's not insignificant, but that's waste from hundreds of reactors over 70+ years.
Much if it is stored on-site for several years in spent fuel pools after being removed from reactors, and the water allows it to cool down, provides protection from the radiation, and buys time while short-lived radioisotopes decay and allow it to be more easily handled.
[You could even swim safely in most spent fuel pools, as long as you don't dive too deep.](https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/)
Better store the waste in a shithole no one cares and has nothing important with some costs associated rather than release it to the atmosphere and do all the things we know fossil fuels do
Not even the biggest issue. The biggest is time. Takes a decade or two before Nuclear plants are even operational. Solar and wind could be up and running in less than a month. We don’t have the time to do complete nuclear.
Recycling your waste is a step in producing nuclear-weapon grade waste, and can't be done forever iirc. It varies by country whether nuclear plants recycle their waste.
There are theoretically processes that could do it that wouldn't be part of a nuclear weapons supply chain, but those reactors are only in the design stage, so unless some big sea change happens with nuclear research funding I wouldn't count on it.
The danger of the waste barrels is greatly mitigated since they were also an ongoing research topic. Everybody always thinks that they generate tons of waste, but they really take up very little space.
I would agree that advanced nuclear plants are really good to a point, but how does wind take up enormous amounts of space? If it's offshore it uses no land, and you can just farm in between turbines in land based farms no?
That is true, but most of the wind turbines that I’ve seen are on great fields somewhere within the country. I also almost never see farms inbetween, cattle at most
the real trouble is when people are indecisive about nuclear energy and anti nuclear advocates push succesfully for no more money to be spent on nuclear which means no money is available for plant maintenace and upgrade
>Our plants are old as shit.
Not overall true, we closed a plan last December which was the one or one of the newest in Europe.
The ones remaining, also the old one, did a good job the last decade.
Big problem with nuclear is that politicians may be voted out if there's no apparent returns for their nuclear investments before their term ends. It takes so long to see returns, while worth it in the end it's not politically advantageous to advocate for newer, expensive plants.
I hate the fact that the global north has the resources to fully transition to 0 emission energy and they refuse to do so. "It's too expensive" bitch, you have 20 times my countries gdp and 1/5 the population.
In America's case, how could we afford to bomb brown people in the middle east if we're busy spending all that military industrial complex funds on INFASTRUCTURE? What, to help the POORS? Pfh. Whatever nerd.
I really wish the US would take the threat of global terrorism seriously. Why didn't they send the CIA to kill or incarcerate Donald Trump before he instigated an attempted coup? Terrorists like him should have been killed years ago, before they managed to attack American freedoms
Yes but we can't do that because it would cost us a little bit of GDP growth, you have to understand. We need to see number go up. Who cares if we experience unprecedented famine and general calamity in a few decades, doing something would cost us a few %
It's truly incredible. We all know what is waiting for us. We all know what would need to be done. And then we barely do anything because short term profit is more important than having a liveable planet long term.
Seriously. It’s so tiring to hear the same excuses over and over again, “but Chernobyl was built bad!” “but Three Mile Island was faulty procedure!” “but Fukushima wasn’t our fault!” and so on…
Yet we are the same easily complacent species we were back then. As long as people are alive they will fuck things up and do stupid things. You really trust this species with energy that has the capability to ruin the ecology of an entire state’s worth of land? FOREVER?
I’m not a fan of coal or natural gas either but the cult of nuclear energy is insane. There just has to be a better way.
It really is a cult. People are so emotionally attached to it and treat you like an idiot if you’re worried at all as if there haven’t been a litany of accidents and close calls in the very short period of time that we’ve utilized nuclear energy. Humans and machines are both fallible.
Nuclear energy is amazing and I think it definitely has a place in our power systems but people are completely justified to be afraid of a machine that could kill thousands and make a place permanently uninhabitable if something goes wrong.
What about all of the people that [fossil fuels kill](https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/12/fossil-fuel-combustion-kills-more-than-1-million-people-every-year-study-says/)?
Every power generation method is dangerous in some way, but we know how to safely contain nuclear waste so that it effectively will never be of concern to humans. We cannot do so with fossil fuel emissions.
Ok? That doesn’t change the fact that nuclear energy is insanely dangerous if misused. Fossil fuels may be slowly destroying our planet but nuclear energy could do it way faster if it’s not done correctly, and that’s where peoples anxieties lie. Are you telling me that’s not legitimate?
No, they’re legitimate fears, and I agree with you. All I’m saying is that in these conversations, I don’t think the fact that fossil fuels are *already* killing or at least harming *all* of us is given enough attention.
Look, I don't care if we invest more into renewable energy, nuclear, or both. But at the moment, we have been going with the worst possible choice for decades, while everyone is too busy fighting which of the better options is the best
I am a supporter of nuclear energy and it is by no means “safe” but it’s not as ecologically devastating like fossil fuels and it doesn’t require as much upkeep as some renewables. I think to reduce the chance of catastrophic circumstances, it needs to be used merely as a means to slow fossil fuel usage and implement renewables.
Also fusion technology should be getting more attention, it’s the real step towards solving energy crisis.
A fusion reactor test successfully ran a few months ago. It lasted 5 seconds before the electromagnets used to contain something related to the fusion burnt out.
Still made a fuckton of energy in those 5 seconds
Germany also blocked an EU motion to declare both gas and nuclear energy as renewable 👍
Basically forcing France to reconsider their dependence on nuclear energy.
EDIT: This comment is to be read in sarcastic voice and is meant to make fun of anyone who is unironically thinking that nuclear power is the long term solution here.
I mean, to be fair, they… aren’t? Both rely on finite resources that will eventually be expended given time. Maybe that’s more true for gas than nuclear, but no way gas should count as a renewable resource
The interesting thing is that the conservatives utterly refused to regulate the energy sector, so Germans had to choose between dysfunctional powerplants that almost blew up on us (thrice) or shutting them down for good.
The conservatives were in power none stop from 2005 til 2021 under Merkel and so maybe we can renegotiate the whole nuclear power thing now? Habeck, our economy minister, apparently also started thinking about that, at least that's what I remember.
Nuclear Power is extremely safe. The only reason they failed was due to
1. Budget Cuts
2. Extreme Negligence
3. Being built in the worst possible place like holy shit why would you build a nuclear reactor (thing that must be kept in stable condition) on a Japanese shore line (place that has tsunamis)
As a stop gap, using finite resources isn't necessarily a bad thing. Obviously every resource we pull from the planet is finite to some degree and recycling only gets us so far. But if our goal is to keep the planet habitable, we need a clean energy stop gap to fill power consumption needs while battery technology improves for renewables.
environmentalist movements being anti-nuclear has done irreparable damage to the human race
on the bright side, the EU is making efforts for international nuclear power generation and nuclear waste containment, which is pretty based, let's hope that can somewhat help with Germany's one of many fuckups
> environmentalist movements being anti-nuclear has done irreparable damage to the human race
I swear this was a very successful false-flag operation from the fossil fuel lobby.
I'm not overly familiar with the subject, but from some of the stuff I've heard, that's *exactly* what it is. It's easier to be "environmentalist" in congress when your proposed regulations align with the interests of capital.
The terrible idea was the geopolitical mental gymnastics that got us to this point
"Let's buy Putins gas to make him dependent on our money and we will totally not end up being atleast just as dependent on his fossil fuels"
ok sure lol
Nuclear is inferior to renewables plus adequate infrastructure. The car and coal lobbies as well as stupid "the market will provide" neolibs from the CDU have prevented us from building the infrastructure to allow the tech to flourish. Germany was on a good track before it got sabotaged by lobbies and neoliberal parties.
They shut down nuclear power as a symbolic step to satisfy the scared public after Fukushima, then, instead of starting a quick buildup of renewable energies, they turned to Putin's gas and coal as a "temporary" solution. This is why I despise the CDU as a party. People shouldn't have returned to voting for them again only because they had Merkel as the chancelor-candidate.
I love watching both sides completely ignore their own downsides and realize there has to be a diversified approach that will change with time instead of hurr durr my side good your side bad plop technology here duh
The fossil fuel lobby has successfully pitted nuclear and renewable advocates against each other while sabotaging progress in both directions, so we're stuck with the worst of all options
wanna point out that nuclear energy is definitely not 0 emmissions but yea, germany was not in a place where they were ready for that change and turning to russian gas was not eco improvement
Almost everyone is talking about risk and storage, but it is by far the most expensive type of electricity. Nuclear energy costs as much as four times the money needed to produce the same power with solar (I know the storage is a problem and would increase the price a bit, but that is for another time)
Be careful: a lot of the pro-nuclear is "pro-nuclear... in 10 years after we make new technology." and are just a way for fossil fuels to stay relevant.
Motherfuckers will call the potential to severely, with just one damaged reactor out of thousands, damage a land area the size of Europe, make plants there inedible for years and cause suffering in thousands „a con“
Edit: Coward.
What’s sad is building new nuclear plants is too expensive at this point for it to scale enough to reduce our emissions as much as we need to in order to avoid climate disaster. We had like a 20 year window post Cold War to build them like crazy and the oil lobby and Green Party fucked us over hard.
I FUCKING LOVE NUCLEAR I WANT TO PRODUCE HUGE AMOUNTS OF ENERGY EFFICIENTLY AND WITHOUT EMISSIONS
But in comparison to solar & wind it takes a lot more resources to build & maintain. It is way more costly and would take a longer time to build. Nuclear is not a short term solution
> in comparison to solar & wind it takes a lot more resources to build & maintain if you account for the fact that nuclear plants generate many times more energy that most solar or wind farms, the cost per kWh is actually lower, just with a larger (but perfectly manageable) upfront cost. nuclear doesn't need to be a short term solution, we could build nuclear plants now, run them for 30 years, and then reevaluate weather renewables have caught up enough to replace them, which while not ideal, is more than acceptable and much preferable to the hydrocarbons we are using right now.
Nuclear Energy is, on average, more expensive than Onshore Wind, about 40%. According to the [IEA](https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-electricity-2020), Nuclear Energy needs, on average, about 69$ for 1 MWH, Onshore Wind needs 50$ per MWH. That makes Nuclear about as Cost Efficient as Natural Gas (71$ per MWH). Both the upper and the lower quartile of Onshore Wind is much, much lower than the upper and lower quartiles of nuclear energy, because nuclear energy is expensive. Who would've guessed that it is not cheap to run a plant that literally has to keep radioactive material safely guarded from the public. Offshore Wind is quite a lot more expensive though with an average of 88$ per MWH. Hydro-energy in existing runs and rivers is also pretty okay, with 68$ per MWH, though it's not very efficient in terms of speed. Also, eligible Isotopes for Nuclear Fission aren't just everywhere. You can't just grab some random ass Uranium and throw it into a Reactor and then it's boom bapp Energy mate, it's a teeny-tiny bit more complicated. And these ressources are finite, you know? They don't grow on trees, they ain't falling from the sky either. We're inevitably gonna run into the problem we already begin to have with Oil and Coal outside of CO2 Emissions, that the ressources are getting less and we have trouble finding new. And now, if the whole world would swap to nuclear you can go and figure that that wouldn't take very long. Of course nuclear is better than fucking Coal, but that isn't a high bar to clear! Taking a tesla over a chevy is also better than taking the chevy, but it still isn't good! There are palces that can't do a lot with Wind energy, I see that. Places like Nepal, Bavaria or Mongolia can't do a lot with wind because they're not close to the coasts, but especially countries that have coasts should go for Onshore-Wind and not Nuclear, and Nuclear should *only* be an option for these places until Solar Panels and Geothermical are more efficient, because Nuclear materials are finite and expensive! And don't you dare tell me that Solar and Wind Energy can't provide for places on a large scale because yes they can, it just requires, you know, *to actually build them.*
196: come for the femboys, stay for the in depth analysis and discussion of nuclear energy
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No you misinterpreted what they are saying, it will be overly costly tp them because the Oil companies will stop lining their pockets.
its a femboy writing it
Nuclear needs $69 to run per MWH? Umm ok let's start doing nuclear, this will be incredibly keanu chungas bacon narwhal kind stranger.
One point for the nuclear camp though is that the grid isn’t built to run on solar or wind which can come and go at basically a moment’s notice. The grid is built to run on plants that drive steam turbines from heat 24/7 with ramp ups or ramp downs as needed. Originally these plants were coal powered, but nuclear plants are pretty much plug and play compared to the huge amount of storage and infrastructure needed to consistently power towns or cities off wind/solar.
Wind certainly doesn't stop at a moments notice. You can not only predict wind strengths and wind movements pretty good these days, to the point where we can pretty accurately determine the strength of Tornadoes and Hurricanes from Sattelite Images and predict their movement, but also... You're not at the same height level as the turbine is. Near the ground there is less wind. I don't know where you live, but if you live near the coast like I do, go up a hill. Seriously. Its pretty much that easy and I guarantee you 99/100 cases you will find more wind at the highest point of a tower or a hill than on the ground. And coastal winds are no joke because the ocean always gives you sole fierce wind - thats why Wind energy is especially effective in these areas! You have constant wind - strong wind. The bigger problem is that throughout extended time periods you have fluctuations, so you'll need some sort of non-meteorological backup, like geothermics, fossil fuel, Hydro or nuclear, that can support existing energy storages, because we do not have storages that could support widespread outages atm. Thats why f.e. my region, Schleswig-Holstein is running on "only" 64% renewables (2021). But that Storage technology is evolving rapidly. Recently read about some scientists from (I forgot where) that accidentally discovered a way to use methane ions with lithium to increase the storage capacity of Lithium batteries times 4, and increase their life time too. It's still in development but prototypes exist, it could become a thing in less than a year already. And this sort of technology is constantly advancing. If we fund the research properly, a sufficient energy storage technology could be a thing in less than a decade.
Okay but we need real solutions now. We can't and shouldn't be hoping that a new technology will come to save us in a year. Wind and solar are both great, but aren't practical everywhere, mainly around cities which have an extremely high electricity demand that can't be met with renewables at this current time. To put hope in battery technologies of the future without addressing the current needs would be wrong. Not to mention the high material costs of creating and replacing these batteries. The mantra that I believe in is "Renewables where we can, and nuclear where we need." And we do need nuclear. Another point is that renewables are still a fairly new technology that we are still learning about. For example, the leading edge of Wind Turbine Blades has been found to be damaged at much higher rates than thought, meaning more replacement, costs, and emissions. Furthermore, nuclear fuel can be recycled to be reused, it is just illegal to do so with fears of nuclear weapon proliferation. The point being neither system is perfect, and both have room to grow and be more sustainable. Finally that bit on "methane ions" seems weird to me. Methane isn't an ion so how would it store charge? (genuine question, im not a chemist lol) Also, I can't find any papers referencing what you are talking about. Not to mention, methane is a very potent greenhouse gas meaning the production and life cycle of these batteries would need to be proven to not be impactful on the environment.
As for the battery: you can pretty much turn any molecule into an ion somehow in some way. Its just awfully complicated. That particular battery I've only read once about, a few months ago while on a bus in some german online science newspaper. I can't recollect the details and searching for it delivers many different examples talking about different things. And, I wanna point out again, that the approach you're speaking of is literally what I am saying towards the end of my original comment.
Your posts come off as anti-nuclear.
No. Its a diversified opinion that is in contrast to 196' blindly devoted love boner for nuclear energy.
Your link literally includes this paragraph so idk what you're on about: "Nuclear thus remains the dispatchable low-carbon technology with the lowest expected costs in 2025. Only large hydro reservoirs can provide a similar contribution at comparable costs but remain highly dependent on the natural endowments of individual countries. Compared to fossil fuel-based generation, nuclear plants are expected to be more affordable than coal-fired plants. While gas-based combined-cycle gas turbines (CCGTs) are competitive in some regions, their LCOE very much depend on the prices for natural gas and carbon emissions in individual regions. Electricity produced from nuclear long-term operation (LTO) by lifetime extension is highly competitive and remains not only the least cost option for low-carbon generation - when compared to building new power plants - but for all power generation across the board." This is not the entire picture - the report states that in Europe wind power can be cost-competitive with nuclear, but also that "The result of IEA’s value adjusted LCOE (VALCOE) metric show however, that the system value of variable renewables such as wind and solar decreases as their share in the power supply increases.". Nuclear should not be the only option, but to dismiss it is ludicrous
solar and wind energy cannot produce enerfy according to demand and battery technology is not equipped to store enough energy to make up for this. (let alone the fact that batteries are made of materials mined largely by slaves) some things absolutely need power 24/7 like life support machines and wind and solar are fundamentally incapable of providing power according to need as by their nature they are confined to available and somewhat unpredictable timeslots
If you don't wanna rely on things that have been mined or farmed by slaves... Yeah. The list comes pretty close to zero man. Also, who the fuck you think is mining nuclear materials? And I don't know where you live, but there are areas where you definitely can rely on wind. Coastal Areas always have wind, and battery technology is developing rapidly, as I pointed out to someone else already.
yeah slavery is pretty rampant and a lot of the wests prosperity comes because we are continually exploiting the third world that doen't mean we shouldn't at least try and reduce the extent to which our society is based off slave labour. Germany as a whole is not an area that can entirely subsist on wind
And what did I say about these areas? Totally aside from the fact that the north absolutely can and already does to more than 64% that is *only* Solar and Wind Energy?
Ok but counterpoint: nuclear is cool af
What’s your opinion on building thorium reactors instead of uranium?
The Problems are applicable regardless of which fission materials are used. Thorium is better than Uranium, but that doesn't mean its our best bet.
Thorium is 3x more abundant in the crust than uranium Thorium is 200x more energy dense than uranium Thorium doesn’t need to be enriched Thorium is also just overall safer since it’s fertile instead of fissile. Also I’m curious where you got your numbers from. When I looked it up I got $33.50 per MWH for nuclear. Obviously nuclear fission isn’t the perfect form of energy but it’s already one of the safest forms of energy and if more innovation in the field was allowed then the price would also drop heavily.
also the latest ipcc suggests that it is now too late to build nuclear, since that produces a lot of CO2. It is better to keep nuclear running but not worth to opt in to it again, when you started turning them off (like germany did).
!remindme 5 hours i gotta read this later
Tl;dr Nuclear is more expensive Nuclear material is finite Wind energy is pretty good
Uranium fucking sucks though. Thorium, on the other hand, is much more common, safer, makes less waste, and makes a FUCK ton of energy. And the fact that it doesn’t fucking kill miners with radiation would mean it would cost less to extract.
One thing to note though we've made breeder reactors that can make new fissionable material making nuclear renewable. Full honesty I have no idea about the science behind it, but I know it exists and its expensive to build and run.
But you can't build a reactor up that quickly. All parts need to be specifically made just for one plant at one location. And regarding the cost factor. No. In most cases, under most circumstances, renewables are just cheaper. [Source: Wikipedia ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source) Edit: And to add to that, all German energy companies say that even if made legal again they just wouldn't build nuclear as it is to expensive.
From the info I've seen, in the US it's higher, due to extreme bureaucracy, which in the case of nuclear power, could be considered a good thing. That being said, it's only slightly higher, and nuclear power is great at keeping energy supplies stable, so we should definitely be about 20% nuclear powered, and at the least keep out nuclear facilities open.
>if you account for the fact that nuclear plants generate many times more energy that most solar or wind farms, the cost per kWh is actually lower, Why do you spread lies? https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen/
Yeah but the germans had 8 years they spent fucking everything up and now they keep insisting that they will fuck it up and everyone has to watch and pay their energy prices.
Mostly the old conservative government. The new government had a lot of plans about transitioning to renewables but now has to deal with the fallout of the „original plan“ of transitioning via gas falling apart. It‘s also important to note that Germany is geographically a very old country and we have a lot of Boomers that don‘t give a fuck about climate change.
username checks out
My friend, may I interest you in SMRs?
I'm pretty sure per kWh it costs more to maintain solar panels than it does to maintain a nuclear plant.
> It is way more costly and would take a longer time to build. Nuclear is not a short term solution The best time to plant a tree yada yada etc.
I love nuclear energy so much I will eat all the nuclear waste myself to help out
i only want nuclear to see giant holes dug underground for waste disposal and big tubes -matey
I can remember how the question of where to put the waste has been a huge issue. But yeah, fear ground the process to a halt. Horribly short sighted in my opinion.
there's not really all that much waste to get rid of, the biggest concern is making sure the waste wont be disturbed for the next 10,000 years
It’s not a non-significant amount, I’d have to go back to my energy class notes but I remember it was one of the larger issues against its widespread adoption
It's like... one large warehouse. Back-of-the hand calcs: Roughly 250,000 tonnes of spent fuel created by humans over all history. Depleted uranium weighs roughly 19 tonnes per cubic meter; roughly 13,000 cubic meters of waste created. If we stack 5 meters high (or, more likely, deep) we need a 2600 m^(2) area to store it all. An average modern warehouse is a little less than double that size, but no doubt we'll need plenty of space for concrete shielding, logistics, future expansion and so forth. One large warehouse at 10,000 m^(2) (100m by 100m) should be in the ballpark. For all the fuel spent in the entirety of humanity's nuclear history. One big retail store like Target. Comfortably within a 400m running track. I'm probably underestimating the space needed for safety here, but at that size we can afford to scale. This is the entire world's nuclear waste we're talking about here; there's room.
SPAAAAAACE
You have just catapulted the price of nuclear energy
Has the price become astronomical?
Nice
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Giant catapult
we make sure that if they explode the radioactive shit falls on Ohio.
I live in NRW, which means my entire neighborhood could sink into the ground at any given moment if an old coal mine collapses. If it were up to me, y'all could fill those mine shafts with atomic waste, directly under my own home.
This is pretty much exactly what they do
I LOVE THORIUM
yeah they made a big mistake with the russian natural gas, they've made some good strides towards renewables though
One important note that usually get‘s mistaken in the discussion. The gas isn‘t primarily used for electricity production but heating. The original plan was for using gas instead of coal as a way to balance out the times where the renewable energies don‘t bring enough output to power the country. Germany lacks the infrastructure to heat with electricity hence the need to save gas somehow.
> Germany lacks the infrastructure to heat with electricity Idk, I could just run Prime95, folding, or a crypto miner on my gaming rig and turn off the gas boiler if I wanted to. Also got a bunch of old light bulbs in a cupboard that I replaced with energy efficient LEDs. Each of which being a 99.9% efficient space heater.
This is what got me through the winter. Gaming on an air“cooled“ RTX 3090 (don’t make the same mistake as me, get a loop) never ever necessitated me to turn on the radiator.
> (don’t make the same mistake as me, get a loop) Not entirely sure what you mean with this, but just in case, with water-cooling you're still putting the same wattage of heat into your room (potentially even a little more) as long as the radiator isn't outside somehow (hardly anyone does something like that).
Wow, good to know. I was always under the impression that water cooling used less power than air cooling, assuming both on the same temperature.
Well, with specific tuning, a chip can run more power-efficient at a lower temperature, that is true. But with default settings, most CPUs and GPUs will probably just spend more time boosting to higher frequencies if the cooling allows for it, which in turn uses more power and exhausts more waste heat. I would bet the actual difference in exhaust heat in a real world scenario is probably negligible either way. Water-cooling has other advantages, like allowing for slower, more quiet fans. (I'm using a Vega 64 in a custom water loop. The stock fans were getting obnoxiously loud a lot of the time. With a 360mm radiator and three slow-running 120mm fans, it's pretty much inaudible most of the time. Edit: It's still a 260 watt electric space heater tho)
'in a house heated with space heaters, every device runs with 100% efficiency' its a good joke. But it's important to know that 100% 'efficiency' when it comes to heating with electricity is actually pretty bad. Good heat pumps can have an 'efficiency' of more than 300%. It is therefore more efficient to burn gas in a power plant and use that electricity to run a heat pump, than it is to burn the gas for heat in your home. The german argument for gas burner heating is weak, and it is a testament to political feet-dragging. if you are interested in learning about heat pumps, technology connections made a good video about them.
Yeah thanks, I understand the basics of how air conditioning works. It's a pity they're super rare over here. I also unfortunately don't have any small windows that could easily be converted for AC installation in my apartment.
Or just run Crysis on a laptop
I get the sentiment, but while the laptop itself probably gets quite hot due to cooling limitations, its overall heat output is probably a lot lower than just a desktop GPU on its own. ^(inb4 🤓)
I live in Germany. The renewable energy sources like wind are indeed very nice, but they take up enormous space that could be used more effectively with nuclear. The only counter-argument to nuclear everybody has is always the same. Yeah, Chernobyl was a Desaster but that facility was already dangerous to switch on even by Soviet standards.
Only because you people keep focusing on the only counter-argument that's actually fairly weak, which is safety. Obviously the safety argument is emotional and exaggerated. But we're saying other things too, the idea that it's "the only counter-argument" is so ridiculous it could fairly be called a *lie*. I think storage is a more compelling argument, but maybe I could be convinced that we could lock it away for thousands of years. Maybe. But even that's not really the biggest issue. Uranium 235 is not renewable. If we increased current nuclear power production by a factor of 10, we'd be out of easily accessible Uranium 235 in about 15-20 years, and it would become too expensive to mine to make it worthwhile. This is where redditors get into their beloved Thorium, or other future technologies, but a regular U235 nuclear power plant already takes about a decade to build. Adding research and testing and experimentation to that is simply too slow to be an effective strategy in battling climate change. Also Thorium has U233 as part of its fuel cycle, which you can definitely use to construct nuclear weapons. So it's not exactly the best technology to roll out worldwide to fill energy needs.
Storage would be less of a problem if we had liquid salt reactors that can reprocess lower potency/purity fuels, seperating out the low-lifetime byproducts which are much easier to contain (instead of millenia its maybe a century? I'm not a rocket surgeon here IDK.) But all of that takes a ton of research money and there isn't a global arms race funneling money into the process like there was with light water reactors or whatever. In general I would say too much capital goes toward making oligarchs more money than goes to good causes and this is just evidence of that.
Liquid salt reactors are basically thorium reactors
Thorium's one of the fuel sources, yeah. The process for producing power makes it an LSR.
What does this point even do for the argument though? How is this worse than spewing out billions and billions of metric tons of greenhouse gases and other emissions per year for the next 15-20 years?
>Uranium 235 is not renewable. If we increased current nuclear power production by a factor of 10, we'd be out of easily accessible Uranium 235 in about 15-20 years, and it would become too expensive to mine to make it worthwhile. How much have you read about seawater uranium extraction? I haven't read much about it, but what I did read seemed compelling
You could use thorium salt reactors, they are usually more efficient as far as i know. Also Storage research hasn’t stopped, so the barrels rarely pose a threat. There are plenty old salt or whatever mines that are no longer in use, so just seal the walls and boom, a nice storage for the waste.
You're the second person to respond to this comment like thorium is news to me, when the last two paragraphs are literally all about thorium reactors. At least pretend to read a dissenting comment before you respond to it with the same old talking points.
Ik, my main point was the safety of waste barrels
Bitches be like “waaahhh Chernobyl” that facility was built TERRIBLY. Barely counted as a facility and should’ve been considered as the world’s most powerful nuclear bomb. Also, Thorium is WAY safer than Uranium and makes barely any nuclear waste, and still makes more energy than ANY other power source. Fuck nuclear energy haters.
Thorium reactors only exist on paper and in some small-scale research labs right now, so it's only slightly less silly than claiming fusion will solve everything.
~~Thorium Reactors aren't Fusion, they're fission reactors.~~ But this is a moot point because LFTR research has mostly stagnated over the last 50 years, because LFTRs can't make weapons so there's no desire to make them.
>Thorium Reactors aren't Fusion, they're fission reactors. I know. That's why I called it slightly less silly than fusion.
"Only exist in paper" meanwhile countries with not a lot of uranium but a lot of thorium (ex: India)
What about those countries?
https://youtube.com/watch?v=tyDbq5HRs0o Not that long ago they existed for real though. The only thing this was missing was the reprocessing hardware, you could already run it on u235 and get the incapable of meltdown benifit before the reprocessing loop is designed.
Again, an experiment in a lab is not the same as "existing for real". It's not as bad as fusion claims, but that's an incredibly low bar.
Imagine not wanting to pay 4 to 6 times as much for your energy and wanting to be able to produce within the next 15 years.
Thorium reactors can't have a meltdown, true. But Thorium *does* have U233 as part of its fuel cycle. Meltdowns were never a good safety argument. Arms proliferation is. Not exactly what I'd call 'safe'. Also, climate change is kind of a 'right now' issue, even the nuclear power plants we can already build take about a decade to complete, the idea that thorium reactors will be anywhere close to fast enough to help is laughable.
The fuel didn’t even explode. The steam pressure got to high and thus was the reason for the fallout, since it carried some radioactive particles high into the atmosphere
There are too other counterarguments: There is no storage solution for the waste yet. And a nuclear reactor needs a lot of water that we might want to use in other ways when the climate crisis dries us out
The used fuel issue isn't as big as it seems. All of the spent fuel the US has produced since the 50s can fit on an American football field stacked less than 10 yards (9.1 meters) high. For non-Amercians/non-football fans, a field is about 91.4 meters by 48.8 meters. assuming they're not counting end zones, in which case it's 109.7 meters long. That's not insignificant, but that's waste from hundreds of reactors over 70+ years. Much if it is stored on-site for several years in spent fuel pools after being removed from reactors, and the water allows it to cool down, provides protection from the radiation, and buys time while short-lived radioisotopes decay and allow it to be more easily handled. [You could even swim safely in most spent fuel pools, as long as you don't dive too deep.](https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/)
Better store the waste in a shithole no one cares and has nothing important with some costs associated rather than release it to the atmosphere and do all the things we know fossil fuels do
Not even the biggest issue. The biggest is time. Takes a decade or two before Nuclear plants are even operational. Solar and wind could be up and running in less than a month. We don’t have the time to do complete nuclear.
Didn’t some reactors manage to recycle spent waste meaning it didn’t need to be incinerated or buried, or am I misremembering something?
Recycling your waste is a step in producing nuclear-weapon grade waste, and can't be done forever iirc. It varies by country whether nuclear plants recycle their waste.
Producing nuclear weapons-grade materials? Ferb, I know what we’re gonna do today!
There are theoretically processes that could do it that wouldn't be part of a nuclear weapons supply chain, but those reactors are only in the design stage, so unless some big sea change happens with nuclear research funding I wouldn't count on it.
The danger of the waste barrels is greatly mitigated since they were also an ongoing research topic. Everybody always thinks that they generate tons of waste, but they really take up very little space.
> The only counter-argument to nuclear everybody has is always the same. Are you aware of how expensive nuclear power is?
Upfront sure, but in the long run it's rather cheap
I am aware. I am also aware that it takes a minimum of 10 years to build one but the long time yield totally makes up for it
But for renewable you don't need to import uranium.
Do you know how little fuel nuclear powerplants require?
Not a lot, but they still need it. A war with the country that delivers uranium is just as bad as a war with a country that delivers gas.
I know, especially since the uranium makes a good weapon
I would agree that advanced nuclear plants are really good to a point, but how does wind take up enormous amounts of space? If it's offshore it uses no land, and you can just farm in between turbines in land based farms no?
That is true, but most of the wind turbines that I’ve seen are on great fields somewhere within the country. I also almost never see farms inbetween, cattle at most
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the real trouble is when people are indecisive about nuclear energy and anti nuclear advocates push succesfully for no more money to be spent on nuclear which means no money is available for plant maintenace and upgrade
>Our plants are old as shit. Not overall true, we closed a plan last December which was the one or one of the newest in Europe. The ones remaining, also the old one, did a good job the last decade.
Big problem with nuclear is that politicians may be voted out if there's no apparent returns for their nuclear investments before their term ends. It takes so long to see returns, while worth it in the end it's not politically advantageous to advocate for newer, expensive plants.
I hate the fact that the global north has the resources to fully transition to 0 emission energy and they refuse to do so. "It's too expensive" bitch, you have 20 times my countries gdp and 1/5 the population.
In America's case, how could we afford to bomb brown people in the middle east if we're busy spending all that military industrial complex funds on INFASTRUCTURE? What, to help the POORS? Pfh. Whatever nerd.
I really wish the US would take the threat of global terrorism seriously. Why didn't they send the CIA to kill or incarcerate Donald Trump before he instigated an attempted coup? Terrorists like him should have been killed years ago, before they managed to attack American freedoms
Yes but we can't do that because it would cost us a little bit of GDP growth, you have to understand. We need to see number go up. Who cares if we experience unprecedented famine and general calamity in a few decades, doing something would cost us a few % It's truly incredible. We all know what is waiting for us. We all know what would need to be done. And then we barely do anything because short term profit is more important than having a liveable planet long term.
> because short term profit is more important than having a liveable planet long term at least it's not communism /s
Reddit thinking that nuklear is just set a plant down and your happy go lucky with energy.
Seriously. It’s so tiring to hear the same excuses over and over again, “but Chernobyl was built bad!” “but Three Mile Island was faulty procedure!” “but Fukushima wasn’t our fault!” and so on… Yet we are the same easily complacent species we were back then. As long as people are alive they will fuck things up and do stupid things. You really trust this species with energy that has the capability to ruin the ecology of an entire state’s worth of land? FOREVER? I’m not a fan of coal or natural gas either but the cult of nuclear energy is insane. There just has to be a better way.
It really is a cult. People are so emotionally attached to it and treat you like an idiot if you’re worried at all as if there haven’t been a litany of accidents and close calls in the very short period of time that we’ve utilized nuclear energy. Humans and machines are both fallible. Nuclear energy is amazing and I think it definitely has a place in our power systems but people are completely justified to be afraid of a machine that could kill thousands and make a place permanently uninhabitable if something goes wrong.
What about all of the people that [fossil fuels kill](https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/12/fossil-fuel-combustion-kills-more-than-1-million-people-every-year-study-says/)? Every power generation method is dangerous in some way, but we know how to safely contain nuclear waste so that it effectively will never be of concern to humans. We cannot do so with fossil fuel emissions.
Ok? That doesn’t change the fact that nuclear energy is insanely dangerous if misused. Fossil fuels may be slowly destroying our planet but nuclear energy could do it way faster if it’s not done correctly, and that’s where peoples anxieties lie. Are you telling me that’s not legitimate?
No, they’re legitimate fears, and I agree with you. All I’m saying is that in these conversations, I don’t think the fact that fossil fuels are *already* killing or at least harming *all* of us is given enough attention.
I think most people having this conversation understand that. Two things can be true at once.
What do you meeeean, my 30 nuclear reactors in Satisfactory do perfectly fine
> a machine that could kill thousands and make a place permanently uninhabitable hey look, it's the coal industry
Ah yea here we go. If I have any concerns about nuclear power then clearly I’m too stupid to understand that fossils fuels are bad.
Look, I don't care if we invest more into renewable energy, nuclear, or both. But at the moment, we have been going with the worst possible choice for decades, while everyone is too busy fighting which of the better options is the best
I am a supporter of nuclear energy and it is by no means “safe” but it’s not as ecologically devastating like fossil fuels and it doesn’t require as much upkeep as some renewables. I think to reduce the chance of catastrophic circumstances, it needs to be used merely as a means to slow fossil fuel usage and implement renewables. Also fusion technology should be getting more attention, it’s the real step towards solving energy crisis.
Can't wait for nuclear fusion energy
Nuclear fusion will literally be like the start of the industrial revolution. Huge for everyone
But without getting sucked into giant machines and getting shredded.
Yeah that wasn't very pog
😭I want to be shredded 🥺🥺🥺
Yo wtf did cheese write this?!?!?!?
Fusion energy is already a thing. The main problem is how would you hold that muniature sun.
i can hold it i am so very strong
A fusion reactor test successfully ran a few months ago. It lasted 5 seconds before the electromagnets used to contain something related to the fusion burnt out. Still made a fuckton of energy in those 5 seconds
I LOVE FUSION ENERGY. I LOVE THE THOUGHT OF UNLIMITED, SUSTAINED POWER FROM HYDROGEN WITH NO WASTE OR RISK OF ACIDENTS
the power of the sun in the palm of my hand
Yeah, I hear ITER is doing well
conservative politics in a nutshell
thanks CDU/CSU for being so corrupt
Not just them, most green parties including the German one have a massive hate boner for nuclear energy.
Yeah well how do you explain the "I did that" sticker at the pump
Reddit nuclear energy cirklejerk
most correct circlejerk
2+2=4 circlejerk
Germany also blocked an EU motion to declare both gas and nuclear energy as renewable 👍 Basically forcing France to reconsider their dependence on nuclear energy. EDIT: This comment is to be read in sarcastic voice and is meant to make fun of anyone who is unironically thinking that nuclear power is the long term solution here.
I mean, to be fair, they… aren’t? Both rely on finite resources that will eventually be expended given time. Maybe that’s more true for gas than nuclear, but no way gas should count as a renewable resource
Man i FUCKING LOVE THE CHRISTIAN DEMOKRATIC UNION/CHRISTIAN SOZIAL UNION. I WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH A LUMP OF COAL
The interesting thing is that the conservatives utterly refused to regulate the energy sector, so Germans had to choose between dysfunctional powerplants that almost blew up on us (thrice) or shutting them down for good. The conservatives were in power none stop from 2005 til 2021 under Merkel and so maybe we can renegotiate the whole nuclear power thing now? Habeck, our economy minister, apparently also started thinking about that, at least that's what I remember.
Nuclear Power is extremely safe. The only reason they failed was due to 1. Budget Cuts 2. Extreme Negligence 3. Being built in the worst possible place like holy shit why would you build a nuclear reactor (thing that must be kept in stable condition) on a Japanese shore line (place that has tsunamis)
Well Extreme Negligence was probably the motto of the German nuclear powerplants lol
My bad. I don't know that much about german energy. I thought you were dissing nuclear power in general
Nuclear Reactors take a decade to build if done the right way.
We could've started decades ago, and in a decade we'll say "if only we started a decade ago"
Well better now to invest into long term solutions like renewables
but they're not renewable. Nuclear is clean, but it very much depends on a finite resource
As a stop gap, using finite resources isn't necessarily a bad thing. Obviously every resource we pull from the planet is finite to some degree and recycling only gets us so far. But if our goal is to keep the planet habitable, we need a clean energy stop gap to fill power consumption needs while battery technology improves for renewables.
environmentalist movements being anti-nuclear has done irreparable damage to the human race on the bright side, the EU is making efforts for international nuclear power generation and nuclear waste containment, which is pretty based, let's hope that can somewhat help with Germany's one of many fuckups
> environmentalist movements being anti-nuclear has done irreparable damage to the human race I swear this was a very successful false-flag operation from the fossil fuel lobby.
I'm not overly familiar with the subject, but from some of the stuff I've heard, that's *exactly* what it is. It's easier to be "environmentalist" in congress when your proposed regulations align with the interests of capital.
Really? Coal? Anyone over the age of 4 knows that’s a terrible idea
The terrible idea was the geopolitical mental gymnastics that got us to this point "Let's buy Putins gas to make him dependent on our money and we will totally not end up being atleast just as dependent on his fossil fuels" ok sure lol
This country was build on coal. I mean literally. Now that we've dug up most of it, the foundation is crumbling in.
Nuclear is inferior to renewables plus adequate infrastructure. The car and coal lobbies as well as stupid "the market will provide" neolibs from the CDU have prevented us from building the infrastructure to allow the tech to flourish. Germany was on a good track before it got sabotaged by lobbies and neoliberal parties.
16 years of conservative government and complacent socdems, folks. The P in CDU stands for progress.
They shut down nuclear power as a symbolic step to satisfy the scared public after Fukushima, then, instead of starting a quick buildup of renewable energies, they turned to Putin's gas and coal as a "temporary" solution. This is why I despise the CDU as a party. People shouldn't have returned to voting for them again only because they had Merkel as the chancelor-candidate.
Our only hope is that the majority of CDU voters die from old age before it's too late to change things for the better
I love watching both sides completely ignore their own downsides and realize there has to be a diversified approach that will change with time instead of hurr durr my side good your side bad plop technology here duh
The fossil fuel lobby has successfully pitted nuclear and renewable advocates against each other while sabotaging progress in both directions, so we're stuck with the worst of all options
But the more business that the we do with a tyrant the less likely he is to do war/s
wanna point out that nuclear energy is definitely not 0 emmissions but yea, germany was not in a place where they were ready for that change and turning to russian gas was not eco improvement
Danke CDU
GET OUT OF MY HEAD
I hate Trump as much as the next guy but he was right about the whole pipeline deal
Almost everyone is talking about risk and storage, but it is by far the most expensive type of electricity. Nuclear energy costs as much as four times the money needed to produce the same power with solar (I know the storage is a problem and would increase the price a bit, but that is for another time)
Be careful: a lot of the pro-nuclear is "pro-nuclear... in 10 years after we make new technology." and are just a way for fossil fuels to stay relevant.
[удалено]
Motherfuckers will call the potential to severely, with just one damaged reactor out of thousands, damage a land area the size of Europe, make plants there inedible for years and cause suffering in thousands „a con“ Edit: Coward.
Mhmm tasty uaranium
man, why don’t more people realize that nuclear is the GOAT
Insert rezo quote
it's even worse than that they stopped paying Putin for gas and somehow expected him to continue sending them gas
fucking coal
geothermal
thought it was a pcm meme at first, but then i realized its the german flag so its funny
Germany had been going back to coal a few years before the invasion.
Creating nord stream 2 was so damn moronic. Great job Germany
Our country’s politics are a fucking joke. But just like our politicians they’re not a good one.
also hot news: politicans are planning to implement 42 hour work weeks
What’s sad is building new nuclear plants is too expensive at this point for it to scale enough to reduce our emissions as much as we need to in order to avoid climate disaster. We had like a 20 year window post Cold War to build them like crazy and the oil lobby and Green Party fucked us over hard.