Shuttering of New York facility raises awkward climate crisis questions as gas – not renewables – fills gap in power generation
When New York’s deteriorating and unloved Indian Point nuclear plant finally shuttered in 2021, its demise was met with delight from environmentalists who had long demanded it be scrapped.
But there has been a sting in the tail – since the closure, New York’s greenhouse gas emissions have gone up.
Castigated for its impact upon the surrounding environment and feared for its potential to unleash disaster close to the heart of New York City, Indian Point nevertheless supplied a large chunk of the state’s carbon-free electricity.
Since the plant’s closure, it has been gas, rather then clean energy such as solar and wind, that has filled the void, leaving New York City in the embarrassing situation of seeing its planet-heating emissions jump in recent years to the point its power grid is now dirtier than Texas’s, as well as the US average.
Here is a copypasta from another user:
*When it comes to generating electricity, nuclear is hugely more expensive than renewables. Every 1000Wh of nuclear power could be 2000-3000 Wh solar or wind.
If you’ve been told “it’s not possible to have all power from renewable sources”, you have been a victim of disinformation from the fossil fuel industry. The majority of studies show that a global transition to 100% renewable energy across all sectors – power, heat, transport and industry – is feasible and economically viable.
This is all with current, modern day technology, not with some far-off dream or potential future tech such as nuclear fusion, thorium reactors or breeder reactors.
Compared to nuclear, renewables are:
- Cheaper
- Lower emissions
- Faster to provision
- Less environmentally damaging
- Not reliant on continuous consumption of fuel
- Decentralised
- Much, much safer
- Much easier to maintain
- More reliable
- Much more capable of being scaled down on demand to meet changes in energy demands
Nuclear power has promise as a future technology. But at present, while I’m all in favour of keeping the ones we have until the end of their useful life, building new nuclear power stations is a massive waste of money, resources, effort and political capital.
Nuclear energy should be funded only to conduct new research into potential future improvements and to construct experimental power stations. Any money that would be spent on building nuclear power plants should be spent on renewables instead.
Frequently asked questions:
- But it’s not always sunny or windy, how can we deal with that?
While a given spot in your country is going to have periods where it’s not sunny or rainy, with a mixture of energy distribution (modern interconnectors can transmit 800kV or more over 800km or more with less than 3% loss) non-electrical storage such as pumped storage, and diversified renewable sources, this problem is completely mitigated - we can generate wind, solar or hydro power over 2,000km away from where it is consumed for cheaper than we could generate nuclear electricity 20km away.
- Don’t renewables take up too much space?
The United States has enough land paved over for parking spaces to have 8 spaces per car - 5% of the land. If just 10% of that space was used to generate solar electricity - a mere 0.5% - that would generate enough solar power to provide electricity to the entire country. By comparison, around 50% of the land is agricultural. The amount of land used by renewable sources is not a real problem, it’s an argument used by the very wealthy pro-nuclear lobby to justify the huge amounts of funding that they currently receive.
- Isn’t Nuclear power cleaner than renewables?
No, it’s dirtier. You can look up total lifetime emissions for nuclear vs. renewables - this is the aggregated and equalised environmental harm caused per kWh for each energy source. It takes into account the energy used to extract raw materials, build the power plant, operate the plant, maintenance, the fuels needed to sustain it, the transport needed to service it, and so on. These numbers always show nuclear as more environmentally harmful than renewables.
- We need a baseline load, though, and that can only be nuclear or fossil fuels.
Not according to industry experts - the majority of studies show that a 100% renewable source of energy across all industries for all needs - electricity, heating, transport, and industry - is completely possible with current technology and is economically viable. If you disagree, don’t argue with me, take it up with the IEC. Here’s a Wikipedia article that you can use as a baseline for more information: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy *
Here is some info about the only construction projects in the US from the last 25 years:
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The V.C. Summer project in South Carolina (two AP1000 reactors) was abandoned after the expenditure of at least A$12.5 billion leading Westinghouse to file for bankruptcy in 2017.
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Vogtle project in Georgia (two AP1000 reactors). The current cost estimate of A$37.6-41.8 billion is twice the estimate when construction began. Costs continue to increase and the project only survives because of multi-billion-dollar taxpayer bailouts. The project is six years behind schedule.
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The Watts Bar 2 reactor in Tennessee began operation in 2016, 43 years after construction began. That is the only power reactor start-up in the US over the past quarter-century. The previous start-up was Watts Bar 1, completed in 1996 after a 23-year construction period.
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In 2021, TVA abandoned the unfinished Bellefonte nuclear plant in Alabama, 47 years after construction began and following the expenditure of an estimated A$8.1 billion.
I’d really rather put all that money and effort into developing fusion power plants. In 20 or 30 years, we should actually be building commercial ones. And the promise of that is far beyond anything nuclear plants could ever deliver.
I can see, maybe, building a few more nuclear plants to cover the gap, but a widespread effort to build many more new ones? The resources for that really up to go elsewhere.
But, with regards to the Indian point power plant, the plant was shut down because it was old and damaged and leaking into the local environment. That particular plant very much needed to be shut down, not because it was a nuclear power plant, just because that particular plant was too old and broken to continue safe operation.
We don’t have 20-30 years to wait for a “maybe”.
We need to drastically reduce emissions yesterday. The way to do that is water, wind, solar.
That’s why we’re investing in renewable green energy in the meantime. Any new nuclear power plant would take a decade to build at least. They don’t just pop up overnight.
who the fuck is downvoting this?
Well, no. It’s not feasible because of lack of energy storage. There is no way you would power from renewables through winter with current technology. Period. Ask Germans, one of the most renewable countries in Europe and one of the biggest pollutors at same time.
If we invent energy storage for such large scale then it’s just a matter of building plenty of sources.Germany right now has about 60-70% renewable electricity in the summer and about 50% renewable in winter. 100% is absolutely achievable. You need to install more capacity than you need of course and there will be times where you generate much more power than you need. That is not a problem because a) renewables are cheap to install and b) you can use that excess power to charge batteries or synthesize hydrogen.
Those in turn can be used for times where power production might now be enough otherwise. We have the technology, we are deploying it right now and by the time the last coal plants are shut down, it will work.If we start building nuclear power today, we get less capacity slower for a higher price.
So, why don’t they have storage then, if it is easy? I also doubt 50% during winter when clouds and short days. Summer is not a problem, winter is when everybody is consuming a lot of energy for heating.
There is not a lot of storage yet because the goal is only to be climate neutral by 2045 and right now, more power generation has the priority. There are limited funds.
I never said it was easy. I said it was more economically viable than constructing dozens of nuclear reactors.
On the contrary, it’s one of the biggest economic transitions ever.Wind turbines make up the biggest share of regenerative capacity in the German power grid and there tends to be more wind in winter:
Sorry it’s not the best diagram and it’s in German.
The numbers appear to be TWh of power (that’s why it doesn’t add up to 100). The percentage above each month is the percentage of regenerative sources. 2023 it never dropped beneath 50% except 47 in February.
How much of those costs are due to obstructionism by anti-nuclear folks like yourself?
Also, breeder reactors are not “potential future tech”. There are numerous contemporary breeder reactors designs, and the very first nuclear reactor to generate grid power in the United States was a breeder reactor.
If you have any data at all that shows that the price is a function of regulation, I would encourage you to share it.
Nuclear costs orders of magnitude more than renewables. You need to offer strong evidence to account for that difference being due to regulation.
I never said the cost of nuclear was a function of regulation. I do believe that NIMBYism has a lot to do with it.
The thesis of your remarks seems to indicate that you think that nuclear power generation is inherently more expensive, and I’d be interested in hearing your non-circular reasoning for that implicit assertion. So far, all I’ve heard is “Nuclear is more expensive because it is.”
A study by MIT in 2020 found that most of the excessive costs related to building nuclear plants are due to lack of decent standardization. Part of the problem is that because of emotional opposition to nuclear, the industry has had little opportunity to actually deploy any of the modular reactor innovations that have been developed in the last 50 years.
Here’s a link to the MIT article: https://news.mit.edu/2020/reasons-nuclear-overruns-1118
Again, I’m interested in hearing your reasoning for why nuclear is more expensive, other than “it just is” and “renewables are better”.
My reasoning is based on the about 80 years of history we have building these.
They did sort of standardize around some reactor designs, and nothing is or was stopping companies from forming consortiums to reducing R&D and manufacturing costs.
They have had 80 years to do it and they have not. Nuclear is very, very challenging power generation that has an easy side of runaway reaction, not a low cost mix of things.
Nuclear has had plenty of time to prove itself and to lower its costs. It has failed to do so and renewables and storage are now so cheap that nuclear no longer makes any real sense.
But yeah, I doubt we are changing each other’s minds.
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This isn’t an issue about closing down a nuclear plant because of misinformation about nuclear power plants. This plant was old and leaky and was harming local wildlife. It needed to be shut down.
Out Greens had the same idea. They wanted to close almost 6 gigawatt of nuclear and replace it all with gas plants. People thought they lost it. Then the invasion in Ukraine happened and gas prices went crazy. Nobody took them seriously after that and they are losing voters fast.
The ecological cost of a nuclear plant is mostly front-loaded; over that, it uses a few truckloads of fuel a year and produces an equivalent amount of waste (which can be reprocessed or stored). So if you already have nuclear plants which are in good order, you want to sweat them. Whether it makes sense to build new nuclear infrastructure in an age of cheap renewables and improving energy storage, however, is a different question.
So unexpected !
surprised pikachu
I see this as a failure to build renewables. Wind and solar and batteries are and were able to solve this, but changing infrastructure costs time, money and skill. The closing of the NPP was foreseeable, so is the climate change.
New York just completed the building of a 130MW wind farm off the coast of Long Island. The largest one in the country.
That doesn’t replace the 2 GW (peak) Indian point reactor, but it’s a step in the right direction.
Who would think that’s a green victory?
Because it was leaking radioactive matter into the river upstream of one of the most densely populated areas in this hemisphere…
Considering all releases to the environment from the plant, including the Hudson River, for 2010 Entergy calculated an annual dose of about 0.2 millirem whole body and 0.7 millirem to the critical organ. This compares to a normal average yearly dose per person of 620 millirem from background radiation and other sources such as medical tests.
As far as I can see that’s not a big deal. Just sounds scary right?
It assumes a normal distribution spread out over an equal area. Which isn’t really something we should be assuming.
But yeah. 0.7 millirem is the equivalent of eating 70 bananas.
So if that was the most anyone got, it’s not a big deal.
But we shouldn’t be assuming that.
It was under federal regulations, but this is American industry we’re talking about. “Within regulations” doesn’t always mean “safe”.
There are no drinking water sources that are affected, so the dose to the public would be from eating fish and shellfish from the Hudson River.
So it’s also only if you eat sea food from there.
It does sound like a lot of fuss over nothing tbh.
Mate, why keep asking questions?
If you want to learn more, try reading something more than a single article.
Like, nuclear engineering school sucked a lot, and was a while ago for me. You’re wanting to ask a teeny tiny question, wait for me to respond, re-read the same article, then ask a follow up.
This is the absolute least efficient way for you to learn things. Especially nuclear exposure and all the ramifications.
Like, it would be different if you had a simple question or two that you asked in one comment for someone to help you understand.
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This article mentions the leak, but not amounts.
To get you a source I’d just be googling it and grabbing the first thing I saw.
I did have the wiki open already
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Point_Energy_Center#Safety
It gives more details and the sources it links to likely gives amounts for each incident.
To clarify a little, the part where primary got to generators would have also discharged to the river. But there was also other major shit going wrong apparently over the years
Environmentalists wanted it gone because it was old, ill maintained, harmed wildlife by raising river temperature, and had leaks…
It faced a constant barrage of criticism over safety concerns, however, particularly around the leaking of radioactive material into groundwater and for harm caused to fish when the river’s water was used for cooling. Pressure from Andrew Cuomo, New York’s then governor, and Bernie Sanders – the senator called Indian Point a “catastrophe waiting to happen” – led to a phased closure announced in 2017, with the two remaining reactors shutting in 2020 and 2021.
A leaky nuclear reactor upstream from a major metro area isn’t a good thing…
The reason it was closed wasn’t carbon emissions, that would be ridiculous.
It was closed because it was unsafe
While it was a net benefit to close this specific plant, fossil fuel power plants pump radioactive particles into the environment along with other pollutants.
Sounds less like it needed to be closed than that it needed to be repaired. It wasn’t a problem because it was a nuclear plant, that was actually good and we need more nuclear plants. It was a problem because it was poorly maintained.
It was also a problem because it was a nearly 70 year old power plant design that would likely cost less to replace with a modern design from scratch than to try and repair the existing facility.
But anti-nuclear sentiment is strong enough that people don’t understand how much they have improved since the 1950s so they assume a new plant will be as bad for the environment as this one.
Or maybe it’s because nuclear power is ridiculously expensive and new designs are still a black hole in the budget. Wind and solar exist, right now, and are also carbon free, while being cheaper and not leaving the next 100 generations with radioactive waste. For which, by the way, we have but one final storage solution. Or is the facility in Finnland even up and running yet?
But you have to compare its safety with what will replace it. Gas is known to produce fumes that poison the air we breathe and warm the climate. This will lead to people dying.
So which is worse? I suspect the answer is gas because we consistently underestimate the danger from fossil fuels and overestimate the danger from nuclear. But you’d have to do some kind of risk assessment to be certain.
But you have to compare its safety with what will replace it.
Specifically this plant?
I’m hoping by “gas” you mean natural gas and not gasoline, but yeah, natural gas is better than an untrustworthy reactor because of the risk involved. Not forever, but right now it’s better than if we kept running a plant that will eventually have catastrophic failure.
Once turbines are spun up, it all pretty much runs itself. If you automated the oil purifiers it could conceivably run for years even decades on its on it’s own and not have any issues.
But we don’t take that chance, because something might go wrong.
The quality of this plant was shit, so the potential risk outweighed the known benefits and it needed shut down.
That doesn’t mean nuclear power is bad.
It means this one specific plant is bad after 60 years of operation and being one of the first plants constructed. It doesn’t mean we can’t build a modern plant that’s built to last and maintain it.
Shutting it down even if that means a temp return to fossil fuels for this one relatively tiny area for a few years is worth avoiding a nuclear meltdown a couple miles upstream of NYC…
It’s basic risk assessment
According to you. I believe the opposite.
We need to measure the actual dangers (in terms of lives lost, illnesses, etc.) and risks (in terms of probability of various outcomes) involved in order to arrive at an informed conclusion regarding this issue.
Natural gas kills people every day. This plant might, hypothetically, kill people in the future. Barring strong evidence that the second outcome is dramatically larger or more likely, the default should be to avoid killing people now.
According to you. I believe the opposite.
Welp…
The US government spent well over six figures teaching me nuclear engineering…
Seriously, it’s fucking expensive.
So if you think this comes down to a matter of opinion. That’s fine.
Feel free to keep thinking you’re the expert. It legitimately doesn’t matter in the slightest, I was just trying to help you understand.
It does matter, unqualified opinions holding equal weight with expert opinions/analysis is a serious issue in society.
First we have no way of confirming that this person is really an expert and considering they have shown no real advanced knowledge of the topic, count me skeptical.
Second, this completely misunderstands the nature of science and expertise. Science works because it is a process that uses documentation of evidence to arrive at logical and probabilistic conclusions. Experts are not magical unicorns that spray forth truth. They are experts because they have a deep familiarity with the research in their field. Their roles is to share this research, not boldly state opinions and then fall back on their authority when challenged. That is the rhetoric of demagogues.
In fact, I think it is precisely this misunderstanding about the nature of expertise that has led to the problem you’ve described but misunderstood.
He absolutely isn’t an expert. He may very well have done what he claims, but if so the military training he received simply teaches him to diligently read from a book and follow the steps listed there. He’s no more an expert based on this training than someone is an artisan baker for following the recipe on the back of a box or Betty Crocker.
On a large scale, sure.
But I’m only going to sink so much time into explaining stuff for one person.
On Reddit it was different because 10s even 100s of thousands of people might read a chain of comments.
Smaller communities tho, if someone doesn’t get, whatever.
Well I’m afraid you’re doing a very poor job of it. If you are truly an expert on this topic it should be easy for you to provide some research that supports your position here. If there is any. Or you can just assert you’re a brilliant expert who should be unquestioningly believed on the basis of a comment on Lemmy. We’ll have to see which is the more effective educational technique.
I trust nuclear can be built safely, problem is I don’t trust the humans building, maintaining, and running it to not cut corners. I flat out didn’t trust nuclear that’s run for profit as shareholders will demand cost cutting to maximize profits, and I didn’t know if I’d trust publication funded nuclear to stay properly funded.
It doesn’t have to be capitalistic.
Having our energy grid be for profit is a ridiculous idea anyways.
And the Navy has been training nuclear engineers for decades, without any major accidents despite almost all of their reactors being shoved into ships and submarines and training takes 18-24 months and being offered to kids literally right out of highschool.
Nationalize the energy grid and require government certification/contracts fornuclear plant operators.
Hell, most Navy nuclear engineers would literally jump ship to that just to be off a ship. But loads more would sign if the pay/bonuses was in anyway comparable to what Navy gets.
Just because capitalism makes something impossible doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Just that it’s incompatible with capitalism.
I’m aware, but, if we push for nuclear in the US right now, it will be for profit, and that’s why I’m apprehensive. If we can keep it public and ensure proper funding, then I’m for it.
Oh good info. I am Pro Nuclear and Pro renewable. I think modern reactors have a real place in our future grid, but yeah old leaky reactors we should get rid of.
how was it leaking radioactive material into the water? It’s a PWR plant, that’s not coming from the reactor itself.
Oh, seems like the spent fuel pool was leaking. Cool, not even the plant itself, literally just the waste storage. Fascinating.
With that logic they should be ripping out every hydroelectric dam as well.
If ones cracked and keeps springing leaks, yeah, that shit needs fixed.
But you don’t exactly “rip out” a dam…
I think you’re just one of many people who think one bad nuke pant makes them all bad.
One flawed anything doesn’t make all of anything bad, especially when the bad one is one of the first made in the world and there have been ridiculous amounts of advancement in the field.
Hell, it was 20 years after we really figured out nuclear physics when this was built, and 3x that long till it was decommissioned. It just wasn’t good anymore.
You all treat energy policy like it was highschool sports rivals.
The environmental advocacy groups are their own enemy.
Are there any plans to modernize the plant? It will probably take billions to meet modern standards, but I’d imagine that it would be cheaper than building a new plant
For now, the state seems more interested in building out other green renewables like wind and solar. I haven’t seen any plans to refurbish or replace Indian Point.
New York State did just launch a new solar wind farm that will produce 130 MW of power. It’s the biggest one in the country.
, rather then
Hmm. I don’t need to read the article, then.
They went up because they turned on other non green energy instead. The ones who made this decision are the same who you are supposed to trust for nuclear energy.
Nuclear and renewables are for different purposes and are complementary. Taking an all-or-nothing approach to energy will drastically delay net-zero generation.
oh, the old “base load” lie? the one that exists because large power companies want to keep milking their massive investment power plants to generate more ROI.
think about it, it stipulates that a “base load” power plant should be running all the time to cover the load on the grid, but what would be the point of renewables then? you’re not going to magically consume more power just because wind/solar are producing more.
no, if you actually want renewables used, you need secondary power generation that can be ramped up or down in minutes not weeks that can be adjusted based on grid load and renewable production, but that would mean less uptime for the lucrative big power plants.
I beg you Lemmy, dont be like a redditor that just reads the purposefully inflammatory headlines and gets mad over it. Always assume a headline is supposed to get a specific emotional response from you and read the article.
For this one the environmental concerns people had were not about carbon emissions, they were about groundwater contamination
It faced a constant barrage of criticism over safety concerns, however, particularly around the leaking of radioactive material into groundwater and for harm caused to fish when the river’s water was used for cooling.
The plant as well as NYs other plants that face a lot of criticism were built in the 60s long before much of the modern saftey measures and building techniques that make Modern reactors so safe. And thats why they were decommissioned, they were almost 60 years old and way past their initial life span. Not because of “Dumb environmental activists think taking nuclear power offline will decrease carbon emissions” like whoever wrote this headline is trying to get you to assume.
You are not immune to propaganda.
Besides the text of the article, there is the issue that environmentalist fear-mongering about nuclear energy caused extreme hesitance to build a new plant and that has lead directly to greenhouse gas emissions increases.
Indeed, we are not immune to propaganda.
Environmentalists can’t stop oil and gas companies from drilling and fracking and spilling and polluting. If nuclear was profitable environmentalists wouldn’t be able to stop it either.
The only reason we have so many nuclear plants is because the government subsidized them because they produce material that can be used in weapons. Just the reactor on its own isn’t profitable for decades, which is too long for a company to wait for a return even in the good old days before profits needed to grow every quarter.
Well, nuclear can be profitable. It’s just that fossil fuels are more profitable.
But this is also where the government needs to step in. There should be a carbon tax to account for the climate change externality. Also, clean sources of power including nuclear should be subsidized.
Keep in mind that while environmentalists maybe can’t stop it, some of them happily join a coalition with NIMBYs and indeed, fossil fuel companies to stop nuclear.
Even if the government did start heavily subsidizing nuclear, it will take a decade for new plants to come online. In the meantime, hundreds of gigawatts of renewables will come online, and storage and efficiency technologies will improve immensely. Like I said in another comment, if renewable power lowers the price of electricity, the nuclear plant will take even longer to be profitable.
We can keep the existing plants we have going. And even in the future, I believe there is space for nuclear. It is still far more consistent at generating power.
And I doubt renewables will make power cheaper.
Listen, the companies building gas turbine generators are not stupid. They know they will run for decades. Renewable energy, while good, just cannot meet increasing demands for power on its own.
And I doubt renewables will make power cheaper.
Except it already has. It’s cheaper (hence a lower electricity price) to build new wind or solar than it is to continue operating a coal power plant. And because they’re renewable the only real costs are the initial construction and some fairly easy maintenance. Without the fuel costs the real price of electricity will go down over time. A rooftop solar system will pay for itself after 7-10 years and from then on the electricity is essentially free.
Meanwhile, when Vogtle 3 came online last year electricity prices in Georgia went up 3% because they passed along the cost of construction to customers.
Plus, building a nuclear power plant takes decades. Vogtle 3 started planning in 2006, and took a decade to build and didn’t come online until last year. In the meantime the price of solar dropped by 75%, and we’ve added 38 GW of solar capacity. Wind went down in price about 25% and added 130 GW of capacity.
So I’d rather wait a decade to tear down the gas turbine generators - or power them with biofuel somehow - than wait for a nuclear plant to come online.
I’ve checked and rechecked my power bill. Definitely not cheaper.
I live in the Great Lakes, where essentially it is cloudy 90% of the time from October-April. My home has a relative roof that faces east and west, not south. Rooftop solar does not pay for itself here so easily. And that is besides the regulations the power companies have placed on it, essentially eliminating even net metering and only giving you pennies for excess power production.
The planet can’t wait a decade while we build out renewables. We have to keep what nuclear we have going at least.
Well when you consider that reactors at the time werent as safe as they are now, and that we had several high profile nuclear reactor failures at around the same time, that were all pretty narrowly stopped from becoming even worse disasters and all those reactors were “Perfectly safe” until they werent and also just how deeply awful the effects of radiation is. Do you think its actually “fear mongering” or reasonable concern? I suppose the difference depends mostly on which side of the argument you are on.
THANK YOU ffs
The plant should have been closed for updating and modernization, not just closed permanently.
Nuclear is the only way we will get to carbon neutral emissions anytime soon.
You cant really just keep “modernising” ancient reactor designs forever. Eventually you’ll need to close them down and build something else.
And realistically it makes way way more sense to build Wind power than nuclear to get us to carbon neutral. We can build a 50mw wind farm in 6 months.
For comparison Hinkley Point C in the UK was announces in 2010 and is currently expected to be commissioned by 2029.
That means if we built wind instead we would have built 1900MW of capacity in the time it would have taken to build the NPP and by the time the reactors would generate power for the first time the wind farms would already have generated 17 GW/years of power. If we stopped building more wind farms when the NPP completed it would take the reactor 14 more years just to catch up to the wind farms. And if we continue to build wind farms nuclear literally never catches up as total wind capacity would overtake the capacity of the NPP by year 13.
Yes you can make arguments about the uptime of wind, but I think ive made my point. And thats not even factoring in the cost/MW of capacity.
This is a great point about renewables: A partially finished solar or wind power installation can produce some power and start recouping costs. A nuclear plant doesn’t start bringing in income until it’s completely finished, so all those billions tied up in design and construction are a liability for a lot longer.
You didn’t factor in that nuclear only takes forever because we haven’t done it in a long time and have lost all of the knowledge and skilled builders that know how to do it. If we properly pursued new nuclear plants in the US on a federal and state level it would absolutely be the best option.
I know you touched on it but the battery storage needed to make wind reliable would be enormous.
I’m a firm believer nuclear and renewables are what we need to be spending our time and money, not one or the other but both.
You didn’t factor in that nuclear only takes forever because we haven’t done it in a long time and have lost all of the knowledge and skilled builders that know how to do it.
I didn’t, because its not true.
France has been building new reactors consistently since they started in the 50s and yet their latest reactor Flamamville 3 has been under construction since 2007.
The only people that can do Nuclear quickly are China through a combination of lesser safety standards, their totalitarian government, and the massive scale at which they are building them.
know you touched on it but the battery storage needed to make wind reliable would be enormous.
You don’t need batteries to make windows viable, there are lots of solutions, the most obvious being to just overbuild it.
I’m a firm believer nuclear and renewables are what we need to be spending our time and money, not one or the other but both
I’m not, nuclear just doesn’t make sense to build right now, nuclesr is a medium tern solution to a long term problem that needs immediate solutions.
You get way way more MWs per $ with wind. Wind farms can be built in 6 months and start generating power immediately. Even the fastest NPPs can’t compete. Wind farms can be built anywhere because they take no workers to operate and requite much less lightly skilled workers to maintain and no water to oeprate (so arent affected by droughts). They are less hindered by planning regulations, nimbys and protest groups, can be built onshore or offshore and also don’t have the chance to make an area uninhabitable for generations.
The only advantages nuclear has is a smaller footprint which is mitigated by wind being dispersed and stable output. Which is something that can be compensated for in wind.
Modern is a misnomer. Most of our plants are 30+ years old. After 3 Mile Island, nuclear development ground to a halt in the US. No new nuclear power began development after 1979 except 2 new reactors at the existing Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Georgia that were approved in 2009.
And only one reactor at Indian Point came online in the 60s. Units 2 and 3 came online 12 and 14 years after unit one. And unit 1 was decommissioned in 1974 as it is, shortly after unit 2 came online.
In any case, why not fix the issue rather than just shutting the plant?
And that does not make the headline “inflammatory.” It is accurate. People just assume that nuclear will be magically replaced by renewables. But you can’t just do that. You can draw a direct line from the closure of Indian Point to the construction of 3 natural gas turbine plants.
Three natural gas-fired power plants have been introduced over the past three years to help support the electric supply needed by New York City that Indian Point had been providing: Bayonne Energy Center II (120 MW), CPV Valley Energy Center (678 MW), and Cricket Valley Energy Center (1,020 MW).
In any case, why not fix the issue rather than just shutting the plant?
Because just patching up an old faulty nuclear power plant thats past its expected service life is a recipe for disaster. Hence why we have service lifetimes for these things in the first place?
And that does not make the headline “inflammatory.” It is accurate
It absolutely is inflammatory. Its specifically trying to conflate environmental concerns of polluted groundwater with carbon emissions, to make it seem like the people who voiced those concerns are idiots.
thats past its expected service life
Citation needed. It received a 40-year permit to start because that was the max permit issued.
Lots of things last well past their “expected service life.” That is why there is the word EXPECTED. The problem was in the spent fuel pools. They could build brand new ones.
Tell me, what was the expected service life of the Brooklyn Bridge? Should people avoid it because continuing to use it is “a recipe for disaster?”
The fact is, intensive inspections would have been required for another permit to continue operating.
Listen, if you think we should build newer and better nuclear power plants, I am right with you. But until that happens, we cannot just flush what we have down the toilet.
Should we build wind and solar? Absolutely. But we also need green power that works when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing, and that is what Indian Point gave the state of NY for decades.
It absolutely is inflammatory. Its specifically trying to conflate environmental concerns of polluted groundwater with carbon emissions, to make it seem like the people who voiced those concerns are idiots.
It cites a “green win.” The groundwater issue is absolutely a green issue.
But even then, those pushing to close it down claimed it would be replaced by green energy. The National Resourced Defence Council claimed that “Indian Point Is Closing, but Clean Energy Is Here to Stay.” The claimed that “because of New York’s landmark 2019 climate legislation and years of clean energy planning and investments by the state, New York is better positioned today than ever to achieve its ambitious climate and clean energy goals without this risky plant.”
So, yes, it was absolutely advertised as a climate win that the NY would easily replace it with renewable energy, even when those 3 gas turbine plants were being bought online.
In any case, why not fix the issue rather than just shutting the plant?
Because the bean counters counted the beans and found that it wouldn’t be profitable.
Canada’s CANDU reactors were built in the 60’s and are providing Ontario 60-80% of its power.
Shitty design and build are the main problem. Not the age
I don’t know if heavy water plants leaking tritium in their wastewater should be used as a good standard for the longevity of old reactor designs.
You’re worried about a bit of tritium being pumped into Lake Ontario?
The actual leak never got out, the only time there was a leak was some dumbass filled the wrong silo and had to dump it.
I’ve always been pro nuclear. But what I’ve come to understand is that nuclear accidents are traumatizing. Anybody alive in Europe at the time was psychologically damaged by Chernobyl. Don’t forget also that the elder Xers and older worldwide lived under the specter of nuclear annihilation.
So you’ve got rational arguments vs. visceral fear. Rationality isn’t up to it. At the end of the day, the pronuclear side is arguing to trust the authorities. Being skeptical of that is the most rational thing in the world. IDK how to fix this, I’m just trying to describe the challenge pronuclear is up against.
Well there are plenty of rational arguments against nuclear. Its very expensive and time consuming to build, so its better to build renewables that can start generating power in a couple of months vs at least a decade for nuclear.
Then they are actually pretty significantly more polluting than renewables due to the amount of concrete they use. And decommissioning them is a costly and expensive process that also releases a lot of carbon. And theres only one permanent storage facility in the world for nuclear waste. And theres the fact that due to needing a constant and highly skilled workforce, they need to be near population centres but far enough away that people feel safe, which makes it hard to plan.
And also specifically for the reactors mentioned in the article, they were built in the 60s, they are not nearly as safe as modern reactors.
Being skeptical of trusting “authorities” is only rational if you’re still living with boomer information. There are plenty of designs now that would have made Fukushima a non-issue. Until fusion comes along, nuclear is easily our best option alongside renewables.
FWIW, I’m an Xer against nuclear power, but not for the reason you outlined: it’s because it’s an overall bad approach to energy generation.
It produces extremely long-lasting waste, on timescales humans are not equipped to deal with. It has a potential byproduct of enabling more nuclear weapons. The risks associated with disaster are orders of magnitude greater than any other power generation system we use, perhaps other than dams. It requires seriously damaging mining efforts to obtain the necessary fuel. It is more expensive.
We have the tech to do everything with renewables and storage now.
It’s not my trauma, it’s my logic that leads me to be generally against nuclear. (Don’t have to be very against it, no one wants to build these now anyway.)
You make a really good point with the comparison to dams. It’s not that it’s not a great way to generate power, but it is a fact that the worst case scenarios for failure are really really bad. It’s perfectly rational to worry about that. Consider, for example, how both dams and nuclear plants have been targeted by Russia in Ukraine. No one is worried if they smash a few solar panels
Thank you for considering what I am saying. I really appreciate at least one person being open to thinking about their position.
The problem IMO is that there are a lot of entrenched beliefs here, but none of this is black and white
The only reason I put myself through these discussions is I used to be pro-nuclear. (And am not nearly as anti-nuclear as pro-nuclear people think me to be.) 😂
It produces extremely long-lasting waste, on timescales humans are not equipped to deal with.
Very little waste compared to burning coal or oil which also produces waste we aren’t equipped to deal with. See oh idk global warming.
Also, dont coal plant spew out loads of radiation?
Not loads per say, but the workers are exposed to more radiation than a nuclear reactor operator would be.
and the public, birds, animals, wildlife, anything outside potentially. (realistically most of it should be scrubbed but uh…)
I never argued for coal power. I don’t know if you’re an oil/gas lobby shill or what, but I said absolutely nothing about coal, oil, or gas, none of which are good options vs. renewables.
Huh? Bro what. What kinda oil shill would be promoting fuckn nuclear
You tell me why people advocate for a more dangerous, more expensive option.
I figure it’s in the best interests of non-renewables to slow adoption of renewables any way they can - advocating for big expensive projects that typically go way over budget as the answer to the fossil fuels issue feels like a way for them to push back their reckoning.
A decade ago I thought nuclear was a good option, I’ve seen the data in the intervening time and renewables have scaled too quickly for nuclear to have any chance of keeping up. (At least, not without more research, as I think another commenter suggested should be our primary focus of any dollars allocated to nuclear.)
But I’m getting all the down votes, not counter arguments, so you tell me what’s going on.
I won’t aim to change your mind but I’ll add that one of the reasons they’re so expensive is, at least in the US, there is simply a struggle to build mega engineering projects. From project management to the blue collar skills required (nuclear isn’t the only large scale engineering project with cost overruns). Things were more favorable in the 80s when plants were built somewhat regularly and the country had collective experience completing these projects.
Renewables are similar too on both the installation and design side. More experience in manufacturing, developing, and installing helps to lower costs.
Yes, then deregulation really began, gutting our unions and thereby our trades. It robbed us of valuable experience for the benefit of a handful of wealthy people. It wasn’t a fair trade and we need to reverse it asap if we want to have a.futire as a society.
Well I’m not calling anyone an oil shill so I’m sure you’ll feel very persecuted no matter what’s said to you
Fair criticism. I’ll think on this.
What kinda oil shill would be promoting fuckn nuclear
Nuclear is incredibly expensive, uneconomic and for all countries starting only now would delay phasing out fossil fuels by decades of planning and construction. When they could start reducing fossil fuels and emmissions right now by building renewables and adding storage successively over years.
So the actual answer is: all of them. They know fossil fuels don’t have a future, so they have long changed to delay tactics.
Nuclear is very expensive to build it’s the cheapest to maintain. Even accounting for horrible disasters like Chernobyl it’s safer and less polluting. But yes, renewables are great! Most of our power where I live is from a dam. My grandpa had his house heated primarily via solar energy. They generated enough power through solar that they were able to sell it off to the energy dudes. When solar was bad they’d get power from the nearby wind turbines or the dam. All this stuff is great, it’s way better than coal but a single nuclear plant would out perform all of that energy generation and ultimately, cost less.
it’s the cheapest to maintain.
only if you dont count cost of salaries. Nuclear takes a lot of highly skilled people to run/maintain.
A lot compared to renewables. Did you read what he said? “We have the tech to do everything with renewables and storage now.”
Nuclear is unexpectedly safer and less polluting than renewables. That’s including stuff like Chernobyl. Also less expensive overall. The plant itself is expensive yes but for the energy output/cost per watt it’s by far cheaper last I checked.
Worth mentioning it’s actually quite small by mass (only 1% or so of what goes in), but only a few places actually separate out those isotopes.
Yeah nuclear waste is super overblown we can very easily store it away which isn’t exactly great but we fuckn bury our garbage so I’m cool with putting nuclear waste in some sort of vault
You volunteering to have it stored where you live?
Yup right in my room preferably, keeps the heating bill down
Oh a serious note sure, most nuclear waste is actually PPE which is only mildly radioactive. Uranium glass will give you more radiation exposure than a bin of that stuff
thermal reactor skill issue, just use a fast reactor design.
Btw the mining is vastly less significant to something like coal, oil, and probably even natural gas production. It’s just a fraction of the volume being mined, to produce the same amount of energy.
I did not compare it to oil., coil or natural gas. I am not sure why you are using those as some kind of comparison or justification.
because you literally talked about mining. You mentioned the environmental impact of mining, which is still significantly less, than any other form of extraction. Except for maybe natural gas. Though im not familiar with how that works.
It requires seriously damaging mining efforts to obtain the necessary fuel.
Maybe you weren’t referring to nuclear, but judging by the fact that the literal entire rest of the post refers to nuclear, and you are yelling at me about how you didn’t mention it, im going to assume, for lack of any better context, that you meant mining in regards to nuclear.
I don’t think I understand what you’re trying to say. I’m saying nuclear power requires mining to get the fuel. It’s just one negative point about the power source. I didn’t compare it to any other form of power generation in that regard.
Edit: I should have said “non-renewable form” - I’m listing it as a negative around nuclear because it’s not a (direct) negative in renewables.
i mean even solar panels require mining material. Rare earth materials at that. Wind? Same deal there, hydro? Same deal there. Literally every form of energy production requires extraction processing and refining. Nuclear is arguably one of the least significant contributors, most of it’s primary extraction and processing is very similar to how large buildings and structures are built. The secondary extraction is very minimal. Compared to something like solar where you need continual extraction, processing, and refining, of rare earth materials in order to turn funny photon energy into electrical energy so we can bitch and yell at each other for no reason.
Wind is arguably better than solar, but it has the cool side effect of using fiberglass, particularly in the blades, which is basically landfill from the factory, due to how they wear, and how you can’t really dispose of them.
Of course mining material is a negative, but we can literally leech uranium out of the ground using zero human involvement, while it’s probably not great for the environment itself. That might even be a marked improvement over something like solar, nuclear probably has one of if not the lowest recurring cost of extraction for producing energy.
I’m not sure what the point of mentioning that is unless you legitimately believe that free energy exists. It’s entirely redundant otherwise.
There have been more deaths and major environmental disasters with fossil fuels than with all nuclear accidents combined (including the less reported ones that happened in the 50s and 60s). Nuclear plants are generally safe and reliable. They do not produce excessive waste like wind (used turbine blades) and solar (toxic waste from old panels that cannot be economically recycled).
Nuclear is the superior non-carbon energy source right now. Climate change is an emergency, so we shouldn’t be waiting on other technologies to mature before we start phasing out emitting power plants in favor of emission-free nuclear plants.
If I were advocating for more use of non-renewables, your comment would make sense in this context.
I am arguing against non-renewables getting more funding.
But really my arguments don’t matter, the market has decided and I feel like these nuclear posts are becoming mostly sour grapes and not any kind of legitimate discussion about what things nuclear would need to do to be price competitive.
Probably should be mentioned too that there’s the very clever idea of simply repurposing existing coal power plants to run nuclear fuel. The main ‘expense’ of nuclear power plants, as I understand, is the general equipment itself, not the nuclear core. Those can be built much quicker than building an entire plant from scratch.
the problem with this concept, is that nuclear plants are built ground up to be a containment vessel. If you can build a core that produces heat, very effectively, and very safely, this is definitely an option. But even the external building of a nuclear reactor is going to be a containment vessel of some kind.
the market sucks at doing anything other than profits for an increasingly small populace
Shut up Xer they said it’s a security problem don’t use your logic
the solution is never build an RBMK plant ever again. And invest in gen IV designs, which are inherently safe, and have basically no active safety features, because they dont need them.
lived under the specter of nuclear annihilation.
That specter’s back though.
Not quite the same level as the cold war, but yeah, it’s back baby
That’s putting it mildly. Most people alive at the time were as certain as they could be that a nuclear apocalypse was right around the corner. Kids were told as much in school. Right now it’s floated as a possibility, but most people don’t take it seriously or aren’t aware of it much at all.
Nor will they. Nuclear bombs have been coopted by the ever churning content machine that is western media into “this is an explosion, but it’s really fucking big”.
Shit, look at what’s happened to Godzilla. We have Godzilla Minus One vs Monsterverse Godzilla. I don’t think I need to break down how trivial Monsterverse Godzilla is by comparison. “Very big, very cool, big explodey lizard wow” is about all Godzilla amounts to in the West, and it is a walking metaphor for a nuclear bomb.
Why would anyone be afraid of something so trivialized? We’ve been fucking powerscaled into not caring about nuclear bombs.
i’m sorry, we power scaled a 3kilometer wide sun on earth?
As far as something to be afraid of on a day to day basis, yes. This is speaking of both the real world and fiction. Fiction is obvious as to why, Goku can fucking blow up galaxies or some shit. Superman becomes God at some point or whatever.
In the real world, when is the threat of a singular nuke ever the case? Seriously, when? It’s always total thermonuclear annihilation. You never hear about a singular nuke. Most people fear being shot or stabbed more than total nuclear annihilation. The idea is too abstract.
Nuclear weapons weren’t “coopted.” It’s extremely unlikely because any country that uses would similarly be glassed. Sure, it’s not zero, but probably not too far off.
I clearly meant nuclear bombs as a concept.
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I am sympathetic to the don’t trust the powers that be viewpoint. For example I just assume everything an economist says is the exact opposite of what we should do.
What I look for is multiple independent groups able to present the same data showing the same results. For example I trusted the first Covid vaccine because Universities and multiple government agencies of different countries agreed. If it was just the Orange White House administration lawyers claiming this shit is the bomb yeah I am not getting it.
Guess we need to basically just keep saying “look you don’t trust the government, and that’s fine. Here is the science for all these other places”
Don’t forget also that the elder Xers and older worldwide lived under the specter of nuclear annihilation.
This movie didn’t help.
(Good movie by the way; Jack Lemmon’s “I can feel it” line at the end of the movie really scares the crap out of you.)
You got it. I’ve had this discussion and the anti nuclear boils down to “somewhat, somehow, something, someone, maybe, possibly, perhaps may go wrong. Anything built by man could fail”. There’s no logic, just fear.
At this point, you can be economically anti-nuclear. The plants take decades to build with a power cost well above wind/solar. You can build solar/wind in high availability areas and connect them to the grid across the states with high power transmission lines, leading to less time that renewables aren’t providing a base line load. One such line is going in right now from the high winds great plains to Illinois, which will connect it to the eastern coastal grid illinois is part of.
We also have a hilarious amountof tech coming online for power storage, from the expected lithium to nasa inspire gas battery designs, to stranger tech like making and reducing rust on iron.
There is also innovation in “geothermal anywhere” technology that uses oil and gas precision drilling to dig deep into the earth anywhere to tap geothermal as a base load. Roof wind for industrial parks is also gaining steam, as new designs using the wind funneling current shape of the buildings are being piloted, rivaling local solar with a simplier implementation.
While speculative, many of these techs are online and working at a small scale. At least some of them will pay off much faster, much cheaper and much more consistently before any new nuclear plants can be opened.
Nuclear’s time was 50 years ago. Now? It’s a waste to do without a viable small scale design. Those have yet to happen, mainly facing setbacks, but i’m rooting for them.
there is one cool thing about nuclear though, if you know what you’re doing they’re ripe for government subsidy investment. One and done, they’ll run for like 30-50 years. No questions asked. It’s really just the upfront build cost that’s the problem.
While renewables get build without subsidies, because they pay off anyway.
there are a lot of subsidies for renewables right now. They both have use cases, and different advantages. Nuclear is just particularly apt for the exact situation we’re in right now.
As economists say, diversify investments.
You mean being in need of green energy as soon as possible? I don’t see nuclear helping short term.
not immediately, but a very low carbon energy source that lasts for upwards of half a century? That’s incredibly invaluable.
Especially if something were to plateau in solar or wind power for example.
The georgia plant just opened 7 years late and 17 billion over cost. It is already running residents $4+/month in fees, with up to $13+/month being discussed, and that outside of the cost of electricity. It far, far over ran even huge government subsidies, with the feds putting up 12 billion.
There are much better places to put those billions now than in incredibly late and overly expensive “modern” nuclear.
To be completely fair to them, a ton of the delay was over lawsuits. I mean, you’d definitely end up dealing with those regardless of where you put upa NPP, but just giving them that small benefit f doubt there.
I’m a customer of theirs, paying the stupid fee. They got all celebratory about getting to the end and now the bill has to be paid and oh look, it’s the customers paying. Joy.
I work nuclear industry adjacent, so I guess it’s job security. And with that disclaimer I’ll add this:
Building new plants is definitely going to take too long. If we get small modular reactors that will help. Same way if we get better batteries for solar and wind storage or new tech in geothermal. The simple point is that we are 50+ years behind. We gotta try anything and everything. It’s our only hope at this point. And no matter what, it’s going to cost. Money, land, your view from your backyard. People aren’t willing to sacrifice anything to get it done, and that’s how it’s going to end for us if we don’t change. And that’s true for literally every problem we have. Nimby-ism will be the death of us.
Nimby-ism
this
most of that is going to be skill issues. “modern nuclear reactors” are multiple factors simpler than existing gen 2 and 3 plants. The problem is that they don’t exist, and nobody wants to fund them right now.
If none of them have been built, then they aren’t “modern” reactors. They are “theoretical” or “promising designs,” with any improvements being just as “potential” as other unproven techs.
they are modern reactor designs, forgive me for not speaking like an autistic nerd who has a hyper fixation on weird shit for 12 fucking seconds.
They are modern reactors. Just like the RBMK is an old and antiquated reactor, even though they aren’t being built anywhere. Same thing for BWR reactors, which aren’t nearly as common as PWR even though they may be built every so often.
As someone who works nuclear field adjacent (and has pretty frequent convos with people working for Plant Vogtle, the plant that’s nearly done adding 2 units in Ga) I completely agree about the expense. You can’t do full scale nuclear quickly or cheaply enough for it to realistically compete over the short term. Honestly, somewhat rightfully so. I wish every industry had the regulatory hurtles to cross before they got to impact the environment. And they have to pay for their regulators.
As for SMRs, I’m also hopeful there. Mostly because of you could get a small enough one you could literally take it anywhere in the world and power a small town with ease.
I use to be very pro nuclear. I’d write letters to papers and such explaining how the waste, which is the main concern most people have, is not as big of a problem as people think - and that certain manufacturing processes produce other waste products that are very bad and people just don’t think about those…
Anyway, I changed my mind some time back. There are three main things that have turned me against nuclear.
- The first thing was that I read a detailed analysis of the ‘payback time’ of different forms of energy generation. i.e. the amount of time it takes for the machine to produce more energy (in dollar terms) than it cost to build and run it. Nuclear fairs very poorly. It takes a long time to pay itself back; but wind was outstandingly fast; and solar was surprisingly competitive too (this was back when solar technology wasn’t so advanced. That’s why it was surprising). So then, I got thinking that although nuclear’s main advantage over coal is its cleanliness, wind is even cleaner, and easier to build, and safer, and pays itself off much much faster. And Australia has a lot of space suitable for wind power… so I became less excited by nuclear energy.
- The second thing is that as I grew older, I saw more and more examples of the corrupting influence of money. Safely running a nuclear power-plant and managing waste is not so hard that it cannot be done, but is a long-term commitment… and there are a lot of opportunities for unwise cost-cutting. My trust in government is not as high as it use to be; and so I no longer have complete faith that the government would stay committed to the technical requirements of long-term safe waste management. And a bad change of government could turn a good nuclear power project into a disaster. It’s a risk that is far higher with nuclear than with any other kind of power.
- The third and most recent thing is that mining companies have started turning up the rhetoric in support of nuclear power. They were not in favour of it in the past, but they smell the winds of change, and they trying to manipulate the narrative and muddy the waters by putting nuclear into the mix. They say nuclear is a requirement for a clean future, and stuff like that. But that’s not true. It’s an option, but not a requirement. By framing it as a requirement, they trigger a fight between people for and against nuclear, and it’s just a massive distraction form what we are actually trying to achieve. If the fight just stalls, the mining companies win with the status-quo. And if nuclear gets up, they win again with a new thing to mine… It’s not nice
So yeah, I’m not so into nuclear now. It’s not a bad technology, but the idea of it is a bit radioactive, just like the waste product.
I’m pro nuclear based on the science, but I’m anti nuclear based on humanity. Nuclear absolutely can be run safely, but as soon as there’s a for profit motive, corporations will try to maximize profits by cutting corners. As long as there’s that conflict I don’t blame people for being afraid.
This comes off as you’re anti nuclear but you know you can’t say that, so you do the trick where you say you’re pro butttt.
Oh absolutely the corporations are going to want to maximize profit. There are just a lot of things they can’t get out of, especially when it comes to safety.
The nuclear industry (in the US) since TMI has had a heavy amount of oversight from its regulatory body. That the plants pay for, too, which is good.
“Afraid” after seeing unfettered capitalism cut corners in every way it can, with zero regard for human life.
I am not sure it’s fear so much as it is a logical response to the current situation to not want more nuclear in this context when renewables are so much cheaper.
I am not “afraid” of nuclear power, I just think it’s a really bad option right now and that its risks, like all other forms of power generation, need to be considered carefully, not dismissed out of hand.
Being afraid of what can go wrong is still being afraid. It’s not an insult.
It’s risks are pretty minimal, in the grand scheme. I won’t say non-existent of course. The possibility of a release is always there, but the impact is going to be measured in negative public perception, not deaths. One of the reasons the plants cost so much to build is because they have to stick a real big concrete dome over the dangerous bit.
Being afraid does not mean it’s irrational or unjustified.
Except that modern nuclear technologies like LFTR are objectively way safer, and even with 60s technology and unsafe operation, nuclear has fewer deaths per MWh than just about every other form of energy generation. It’s just that nuclear’s failures are more concentrated and visible.
And let’s not forget that every reactor type was “very safe” at the time. It’s true, every power plant can have problems and fail, but if a nuclear one does, consequences could be WAY worse.
First off, RBMK (Chernobyl) wasn’t safe as designed. In the US, the style of reactor wouldn’t have made it through the required licensing.
Second of all, the consequences being way worse is an exaggeration. If a nuclear power plant has a small release, the (real, scientific) impact would be minimal. If it has a large release then something else happened and the reactor containment was destroyed and whatever massive natural disaster did that is causing waaaaayy more problems. We’re probably all dead anyway.
People are afraid of radiation because you can’t see or smell or hear it. Which is probably a good thing considering you are surrounded by it all the time.
Someone recently said to me that if people had been introduced to electricity by watching someone die in an electric chair, they’d refuse to have power in their homes. People were introduced to radiation by an atomic bomb.
People are afraid of radiation because you can’t see or smell or hear it. Which is probably a good thing considering you are surrounded by it all the time.
People: “I’m going to enjoy this sunny day with my shirt off and no sunscreen”
Same people: “I don’t want a nuclear plant anywhere in my country.”
Also fun are the 5G haters who don’t realize that 5G is being delivered over 3.4 ghz to 4.2 ghz but they’re ok with the wireless home phones doing 2.4ghz. Also fun fact for those who don’t know but you can actually destroy cellular tissue with ultrasound if the amplitude is high enough. Of course the range for this is very short and ultrasonic imagers don’t have the power to do this but ultimately this can be summarized as “everything is dangerous if you use enough of it” which just seems obvious and shouldn’t need to be mentioned.
There is a simple answer that nobody will implement. Thorium reactors, very veyy low chances of meltdowns
But the governments won’t do it because you can’t convert thorium to bombs
Disagree, sorry.
Thorium is unproven in a commercial setting, molten salt reactors in general are plagued with technological difficulties for long term operations and are limited currently to just a few research reactors dotted about the globe.
There’s no denying that originally a lot of the early nuclear reactors chose uranium because of its ability to breed plutonium for nuclear weapons proliferation but nowadays that’s not a factor in selection. What is a factor is proven, long-lasting designs that will reliably produce power without complex construction and expensive maintenance.
that’s true, but so is everything that hasnt been built since the decline of nuclear power. Frankly i don’t think it really matters anymore. We struggle to build existing gen 2 and 3 plants now, we don’t have gen 4 plants off the ground yet, and thorium is in that camp.
Well i didn’t know this. I will read up more on this. Thank you.
Also the nuclear waste is a big problem, it will be around for thousands of years. We have a nuclear plant near us and none of the waste has ever left the site, it just keeps getting added to big casks on a concrete slab outdoors and is a big potential vulnerability.
Coal waste is a bigger problem
Most radioactive waste is just mildly contaminated and has a relatively short danger period in the realm of a century or less. The truly dangerous stuff represents the smallest amount of waste and that’s the crap people have been trying to put very deep underground for decades. For whatever reason the political will just hasn’t been there. For now it rests on-site in casks designed to keep it safely stored for a very long time, but it will eventually need a permanent home.
If you ever see someone shilling solar over nuclear, it’s because they are useful idiots succumbing to propaganda.
You can sell solar to any moron, which is why there are so many dipshits on these forums shilling it without understanding it.
