Because it a a white elephant that allows governments to take longer to pivot to renewables allowing fossil fuel to continue for much longer than needed. It's playing out in Australia. Australia is never going nuclear. But it allows governments to waste time debating and considering. Even when every forecasting body that isn't tied to the nuclear lobby laughs them out of the room.
this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2024
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I don’t get it. Current nuclear power solutions take longer to set up, have an effectively permanently harmful byproduct, have the (relatively small) potential to catastrophically fail, almost always depend on an abundant supply of fresh water, and are really expensive to build, maintain and decommission.
If someone ever comes up with a functional fusion reactor, I could see the allure; in all other cases, a mix of wind, wave, geothermal, hydro and solar, alongside energy storage solutions, will continually outperform fission.
I suspect that the reason some countries like nuclear energy is that it also puts them in a position of nuclear power on the political stage.
That is the point. 30 years ago going nuclear was extremely viable. Now it is a distraction.
Nuclear takes 10 years to build. Renewables are extremely cheap and work directly.
By pretending to advocate for nuclear energy the fossil fuel industry can keep selling their trash for another 10 years. When the plants are almost done they will start fearmongering against nuclear to cancel the plants.
In what universe do those other power generation methods even come close to nuclear power?
And the fissile material can be reprocessed after it’s been spent. Like 90% of the spent fuel can be reprocessed and reused, but the Carter administration banned nuclear waste recycling in the US for fears it would hasten nuclear proliferation.
Wind, hydro, solar, and geothermal are all great. Anything is better than coal or gas power generation. But to say these green power generation methods come close to nuclear… not a chance.
Those 800 wind turbines can be built in a month. Building a nuclear plant takes decades. And nuclear fuel reprocessing had never been economical by a long shot. Your pipe dreams will always regain just that and that's before we even start talking about proliferation and nuclear waste.
Building a nuclear plant takes decades.
In China they do it in 6 years...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/712841/median-construction-time-for-reactors-since-1981/
I'm very glad I don't live anywhere near one of those.
And why is that?
The Chinese are really famous for their safety culture, right?
The performance of nuclear power must be calculated in relation to its cost and risk. And here renewable energy is more than competitive.
I can set up 20 GW of solar panels to match the capacity of a 4 GW nuclear power plant. And I can set up 20 GW of PV in a year. China installs about 30 GW of solar capacity in a quarter.
It takes about 8-10 years to build a nuclear power plant. In 8 years, I could have installed the equivalent of 8 nuclear power plants using Solar PV that it would take me to build one nuclear power plant.
You can theoretically. Unfortunately, you are not considering the land difference.
More to the point, the absolute political nightmare of buying and getting permission to use so much land.
It is a nightmare for both. But rare to see the amount of land needed for the power station, have to argue about arable use. Whereas, it's pretty hard in the UK to locate the solar without others claiming land is lost. Farm land mainly as that is the cheap build option. (pricy land, lower labour).
But even brownfield land. Once you have the area to host something like this. You are usually talking about close to populated areas. And just about every NIMBY crap excuse is thrown up about history or other potential use. Meaning, at best you end up with some huge project that takes decades. With a vague plan to add solar generation to the roof.
Honestly I agree. It should be fucking easy to build these plants. Farming should be updating. And honestly can benefit from well-designed solar if both parties are willing to invest and research.
But we have been seeing these arguments for the last 20 years. And people are arseholes, mostly.
And this is all before you consider the need for storage. Again solvable with hydro etc. Theoretically easy. But more land and way way more politics and time. If hydro the cost goes insane. And the type of land become more politically complex. If battery, you instantly get the comparison of mining and transport costs. So again more insane politics.
But then you don't have power at night. Cost comparisons of renewables vs nuclear very often neglect storage. It is not a trivial cost. Nuclear doesn't perfectly match demand either, but it can provide a baseload.
It's not renewables or nuclear, it's renewables and nuclear.
Then get to work.
That's right.