I think it’s a trust issue. If you see regulations and laws fall in real time, due to deregulating governments, destroying years of work with one strike … you don’t want these people to have supervision over nuclear plants or the waste disposal. Remember the train derailment? Yeah,… that but worse, because they tried to save money.
I just don’t see why so many people are dead set on only solar/wind/hydro as “green” and nuclear and other more exotic power generation methods that don’t emit greenhouse gases are somehow unacceptable.
Isn’t the goal net zero? Why are we quibbling about how we achieve that?
Can’t we just do whatever we must to get there and move on with our existence?
Mostly because nuclear is incredibly expensive and takes too long to build. If we want to achieve net zero anytime soon, going all-in on renewables is currently the most economically viable option.
Yeah, the best time to start building nuclear plants was 20+ years ago. Unlike most things, the second-best time is not now, however - we’re at a point where the massive expenditure for nuclear power generation is just a big question mark as to whether it’ll be cost-effective by the time it’s finished. There just haven’t been enough breakthroughs in the past few decades to improve the cost-effectiveness of nuclear power substantially, while renewables are faster to install, cheaper to replace, and advancing at a rapid clip.
Definitely should still keep any nuclear plants we still have running, though. My home state of Maryland generates over 1/3 of its power through a nuclear plant. Would be 2/3s if the Obama administration didn’t screw us over ‘foreign’ (EU) suppliers being a ‘security risk’ back in 2010 or so, ffs.
No advancements?
Is SMR a joke to everyone?
Look, I’m not saying nuclear is the only path forward, far from it. I don’t think any path is the only path forward. I believe that we’ll need a compilation of various generation methods to meet the demands of tomorrow.
The only thing I want to see in that future is no coal, nor fuel plants. Those two are the most common types of greenhouse gas-producing plants in use. The objective, in my mind, is to entirely phase them out. Whatever gets us there, is good with me. If that turns out not to be nuclear, that’s fine too. If SMR or any other kind of nuclear is required to make that a reality, that’s also fine.
I. Don’t. Care.
Left: Regular green energy.
Right: Glowing green energy.
Exactly 😂😂
Do we have a solution for nuclear waste yet?
We put it back in the ground where we found it in the first place.
I don’t see how people are A-OK with uranium and other naturally occurring nuclear isotopes beneath their feet, but used fuel rods from a nuclear power plant? No fucking way!
Your house is full of radon Joe, the nuclear waste in a sealed casket, buried in the side of a mountain nowhere near you isn’t what is going to give you cancer.
The picture shows cooling towers (which could be anything) and a Tokamak reactor. Fusion doesn’t produce any nuclear waste. Doesn’t work either though, unfortunately. Any time now…
Is nuclear waste more radioactive than the uranium we started with?
We have many. Most aren’t in effect yet though, but it also isn’t a serious issue. They’re stored safely in cement caskets, with molten glass and stuff to keep it together and safe, with effectively zero chance to cause an issue. There are permanent ways to store it safely, but we haven’t invested in them yet for many reason. Mostly, dirty energy companies pushing the anti-nuclear message have purposefully hamstrung nuclear from becoming a great solution, and people who think they’re being smart believe them.
That and they have ways to reuse “spent” nuclear fuel in newer reactors that can use fuel that older reactors have finished using.
Reprocess it, salvage useful isotopes for known uses, keep a few others for research purposes, don’t put it too far away because most of it could be useful in the future.
Afaik that is not an economically viable option.
France literally does that. They reprocess 96% all of their used fuel back into usable fuel and useful materials.
The number is false. You make a confusion between what could be recycled and what is actually recycled. And MOX is not a good option (expensive, 1 cycle, toxicity).
clutches pearls won’t someone think of the stock market?
Which part? France is basically doing this already.
- Economically it’s not interesting
- It’s one cycle only
- Waste in output is even worst and more toxic
Ah yes, economically viable like destroying the planet.
If destroying the planet weren’t economically viable, no one would do it.
This has been your daily depressing fact.
Permanent underground storage where it will naturally decay. Are a couple of different methods available from what I understand. And the amount of material that actually needs to be stored is a fraction of what is instead released into the air, water & soil from fossil based fuel. Not to mention toxins like mercury etc.
Eat it! So many calories. You will never have to eat again.
You could feed every single person on earth for life and solve hunger
Do we have a solution for atmospheric CO2 release yet?
Do we have a problem with nuclear waste yet?
Yes
Define problem, because it’s less waste than old solar panels per megawatt. Both of which we just throw away in special places designed specifically for that waste.
In EU you recycling is included in the price. It is mandatory and must be done in EU.
Define “less”. By volume? Mass? Ecological impact? If you want to say “per megawatt” then you obviously have numbers, let’s see them.
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Uh, that wasn’t me, please pay attention. Either way, you made a claim - a quantitative claim no less - it’s on you to back it up. Don’t pretend that someone else’s behaviour excuses yours.
Nuclear waste is uncontroversially a serious problem. If you want to convince anybody of anything else you need to be willing to communicate, and this isn’t it.
I don’t give a shit at this point. Just stop with the fossil fuels. Whatever it takes. If employing a team of white working class farmer astronauts to run in a hamster wheel is more politically palatable then let’s fucking do it.
It feels like we are either approaching, or have reached, a point where going zero carbon and straight up dumping unprotected nuclear waste in a population center would lead to less suffering and misery than our current trajectory. Obviously that’s not necessary or even possible, but that the situation we are in is extremely bleak and fixing it at this point probably requires a level of ice cold motherfuckerness we’ve never reckoned with.
employing a team of white working class farmer astronauts to run in a hamster wheel
They’re engineers and technicians, but I see you’re already familiar with the Canadian nuclear power industry. “Hide and seek for a grand a week, or stand in plain view for two”
Nowv kiss🥰🥰. More seriously I don’t understand this nonsense of make fighting two great solution that help to stop the use of fossil fuel industry. Plus they are complementary since we can’t store great amount of energy and solar and turbine are intermittent energies
They’re not as complementary as you might think. Because solar and wind fluctuate during the day, any additional power source also needs to be able to spin up or down quickly. And nuclear doesn’t do that, it takes time to do so. Worse, because nuclear is so expensive the only way it gets even remotely close to becoming economically viable is if it’s running all the time. And that’s precisely what it won’t be able to do, because solar and wind are simply cheaper; nuclear will be pushed off the market.
Energy storage is genuinely a cheaper and more viable option these days. I think I saw someone calculate recently that producing the equivalent amount of energy in solar/wind/storage as a nuclear plant would cost less than half the amount of money to build, and even less time than that.
I think nuclear is cool and fusion is probably the future, but for now I don’t see it making any kind of financial sense.
Sadly, it’s just not. Looking at just the price to generate is just too one sided. Renewables need a lot of expensive infrastructure due to being decentralized, land which you might not have, and experts that are already in huge shortage. Energy storage especially is hard and expensive with current technology due the massive amount of rare earth metals you need for it, and even the current largest storage facility can’t even provide enough energy for 2 million people let alone 8 billion of them.
I calculate it and explain it in even more depth here: https://lemmy.world/comment/13508867
TL:DR; currently, renewables + nuclear + storage is the closest we can get to carbon neutral. With just renewables and storage you don’t get anywhere close and are still forced to fall back on either fossil, hydro, or nuclear. Of which the only really green option is nuclear. When the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing, when the alternative is either massive pollution, that should be more important than paying a few cents more per kWh. In that moment the cost for renewables might as well be infinite if they’re not producing anything and we don’t have enough batteries to store it.
If nuclear helps us phase out fossil fuels quicker than I fully support it.
Renewables are the main actor for the phase out. Nuclear contribution (less than 8% of the electricity) is ridiculous.
At least where I live that’s a big if. Nuclear in Australia is most often used by fossil fuel interests as a stalling tactic because of how long it would take to get up and running and how expensive it would be, compared to renewables.
Yet if they just did it, we’d have it by now. Any talking point is stalling at this stage.
It won’t, but it’ll help the longterm. We can tackle both longterm and short term goals at once.
What we absolutely shouldn’t be doing is engaging in protectionism, and banning imports of cheap solar panels. We don’t have time for that shit.
The discussion should just be about either solar/wind/hydro or solar/wind/hydro/nuclear. Let’s start with the low hanging fruit and then keep discussing nuclear.
¿Por que no los dos?
Exactamente, no entiendo por qué es una discusión.
Wait are we supposed to agree with the guy on the left? Cos the last iteration of this meme I saw, the woman on the right (Summer?) was by far the more open-minded one. I just don’t know this meme well enough.
It’s two people having similar thoughts, don’t read into it so much haha
Need CO2 line go down.
