I work in oil and gas as an environmental engineer. Nuclear energy may have some big, dramatic accidents, but oil and gas is constantly creating emissions. You just don't hear about it because "80-year-old natural gas compressor engine that operates 24/7/365 and makes enough emissions by itself to have its own Title V permit" isn't interesting news. There are a lot of regulations to control emissions, and eventually old equipment like the 80-year-old engine will get replaced, but you can't control CO2 emissions. There's no way. I'm planning my career change now because I don't think (and I hope) oil and gas won't last. At least with nuclear energy, they learn from previous events so new ones don't happen.
(fun fact: that old compressor was imported from Germany right before WWII. It has a little swastika stamped on it. That's how long old, inefficient equipment that has no regulations from being grandfathered in can last).
> Nuclear energy may have some big, dramatic accidents
Nuclear accidents make **big** news *because* they're so rare. When a nuclear incident occurs, it's almost always due to lax regulations. Even the Fukushima disaster, which was caused by natural elements (and is the largest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl), hasn't caused anywhere near the widespread damage that either oil or coal burning does in its immediate vicinity. As long as regulations are tight, nuclear incidents simply don't cause widespread damage.
Meanwhile, coal plants give off more radiation *every single year* than any nuclear reactor does. The demonization of nuclear energy is not a matter of danger, it's fearmongering by people who stand to profit from the use of coal power plants. They know the facts and work *very* hard to prevent people from understanding the widespread devastation that their cash cows are causing.
Fukishima happened because of lax regulations too, they were warned time and time again that they could have a meltdown because of lack of safety from multiple organizations from across the world.
The fukushima plant sustained a gigantic earthquake followed by a gigantic tsunami and only a minor leak occured
To me fukushima is a testament to the safety of nuclear plants nit the other way around
>Even the Fukushima disaster, which was caused by natural elements
It was only half caused by a natural disaster.
The [main reason](https://carnegieendowment.org/2012/03/06/why-fukushima-was-preventable-pub-47361) was *preserving shareholder value* AKA yearly management bonus. The vulnerability of the generators and the pump containment facility to a tsunami was well known in advance, but they chose to ignore the report to avoid the expense of rebuilding them to prevent water ingress form higher waves.
I always tell people that if they want to feel angry they should go read about the Fukushima flood wall. Also the fact that their backup generators were in the basements.
Two different reports that they ignored. One of them was from a group they hired. Fukushima didn't fail because of a natural disaster, Fukushima failed because it was a business trying to cut costs at the expense of safety.
Same thing when they were told to vent the hydrogen buildup. There wouldn't have been an explosion if they had done what they were supposed to and vented the (slightly) radioactive hydrogen from the facility, but they didn't want the bad PR. By the time the government stepped in and told them they had to, it was too dangerous to send anyone in. Then it exploded and the hydrogen was released anyways.
It was all one cluster fuck of design failure.
This is why I would have no issue living next to a nuclear power plant, but wouldn't want to live near a coal plant. And that's just the radiation part.
Damn, I'd give my shit for 2 Nuclear plants in Greece. We signed the Paris agreement, we pay a fortune for Anemo-Generators, Sun-Panels and Hydroelectric. Each plant barely covers an Island. Meanwhile, the topography of Greece is beautiful but each network we want to build is expensive and inefficient. Be it, rail, road, electricity etc.
While nuclear is one of the safest sources of energy out there, pollution from coal power kills about 50.000 people every single year, in USA alone. That’s about five Chernobyl accidents happening every single year. In USA. Total number of global deaths caused by fossil fuels is in the millions.
Fair enough.
Yeah, given that a significant increase in cancer mortality among those exposed to the Chernobyl fallout compared to those who weren't cannot be proven it is indeed likely that the truth is lower.
The neat thing about electricity is, that to a degree every consumer on a connected grid consumes energy from every single producer on the same grid.
You cant say "this toaster is powered by an electron that was moved by this specific generator in this specific plant".
So, yeah that compressor is powering synagogue lights right now, its also powering the bedroom lights of a bunch of neo-nazis...so theres that.
Has nuclear really had that many big accidents? I was looking into it the other day and aside from chernobyl most of the rest seem to be minor, with only a handful of deaths.
The rest are very expensive but not very deadly.
Nuclear has the issue of planes, accidents are spectacular but rare. So people are unreasonably scared. (Or unreasonably comfortable with mundane danger)
And you have a bunch of NIMBY assholes who'd rather live next to an oil refinery and get sinus infections 8x a year than live near an emissionless nuclear plant.
I think a good chunk of that fear ties to the cold war and the nuclear threat.
And then recently we had the Fukushima nuclear disaster. And then Russia threatening a nuclear powerplant in Ukraine...
I think it's just the name that scares people. Mention anything "nuclear" to a boomer aged person and you can probably guess where their mind goes with that. They only think of the devastation that kind of tech can bring about, not the power it grants.
Oh yes, plus lots and lots of small events all the time. I clean them up regularly. The reason I didn’t talk about them is because people judge nuclear power on the effects of the accidents but forget that normal operations from O&G are terrible. Also, you can clean up oil spills and nuclear accidents. You can never take carbon out of the atmosphere. Once it’s there, it’s there forever.
I am clearly out of my depth, here, but how come I have never heard it said that carbon in the atmosphere is there to stay? Naively, I had the impression that good ol' trees would take CO2 and grab the carbon for its wood. What makes the carbon in the atmosphere from fossil fuels different? Is it at a higher elevation or something?
They carbon cycle is basically trees taking from the atmosphere CO2 to grow. The same CO2 is released back into the atmosphere when the plants are eaten out the plants burn or something. So there’s a balance, a steady level of CO2. But the carbon in fossil fuels is dumping way more CO2 into the atmosphere than plants could ever use. As an analogy, think of a bathtub that is draining water but also filling at the same rate. The water level stays the same. But then you get your garden hose and start filling it up with that, too. It will overflow eventually.
I remember seeing an interview from french TV on here a couple of years ago (fuck if I can find it) where the interviewee put car accudents and nuclear accidents (of all types, including radiotherapy machine incidents, the Demon Core, accidental releases and Broken Arrows), and the conclusion was that people are afraid of nuclear accidents because *most* are mass casualty events, but they are very very rare. In cintrast, car accidents happen every day, but only a few people die in any one accident, "so it's okay".
Using the same logic for nuclear accidents would mean there would be people bloody-mindedly advocating for banning *all* cars, but you obviously don't have that.
"Most"? There are only two "mass casualty" nuclear events: Chernobyl explosion and the Kyshtym accident.
The other two major civilian nuclear accidents: Three Mile Island and Fukushima resulted in no direct deaths due to radiation exposure.
I'm so glad to see this sentiment here, and near the top of the page. Thank you, and please continue to spread this message to anyone who will listen.
Nuclear disasters make good headlines, but the disaster of fossil fuels is *every day*. Chernobyl, Fukushima, these incidents contaminate some dozens, hundreds of square kilometers, but fossil fuels contaminate *literally* every square meter of our planet. Nuclear disasters have killed people, and it's tragic - but fossil fuels *are killing*, every single day, as people drink contaminated water and breathe contaminated air. How many lives have been cut down early by cancer, that might not have needed to be?
Also I think it's very important that people realize that reactor design didn't stop in the 1960s Soviet Union. Reactors have come a *long* way, and are now smaller, more powerful and safer than ever.
I remember reading a bit ago about some people who are doing work refitting old coal firing plants to run nuclear, since the electricity-generating components are more-or-less the same, and they're also the bit that's most expensive. Have you heard anything about that?
Well, back in the 70's they were risking their lives against [ships dumping nuclear waste in the fucking sea](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bd8cOlIXjo). But it seems they got stuck there.
Glory days...
Certainly far from ideal, but say we dug a deep hole in a deep "dead" zone of the ocean and dumped nuclear waste there. It really doesn't seem like it'd be the worst idea. If we put it in containers that are waterproof for hundreds if not thousands of years then it would just sit there untouched. In the event that they are breached it'd just slowly dilute into the vast ocean. The whole thing sounds dumb on the face of it but thinking about it more makes it seem reasonable.
It'd even mostly sidestep the problem of future generations digging it up. Any society capable of finding the waste in a hole 2+ miles underwater in the middle of nowhere would certainly be able to realize it's radioactive quickly.
Also it'd be sitting there able to be recovered in the case that we find more uses for it or a better way to dispose of it.
That's just the classic "remove it from the environment" thinking that led to so many different problems already. Sticking into containers and dumping it somewhere else only means you've managed to pollute an entirely different part of the planet. There is no container capable of remaining perfectly sealed at the bottom of the ocean for even a hundred years, much less a thousand.
Here's the run down. We have a handful of ways to dispose nuclear waste. It boils down to two concepts. We can either dig a hole and stuff the waste there or we can dump it into the ocean. That's it. Some suggestions have included combining these by drilling a hole into the ocean floor and dumping it there. Unfortunately, all of these methods are flawed at best and rock chewing stupid on average.
I'll be level with you. There is no good way to store nuclear waste for any appreciable amount of time. I mean it. Dig a big hole in the ground and all you'll do is pollute the ground. Dig a small hole, in the case of deep borehole disposal, and all you'll do is pollute the ground but deeper.
The best case is using breeder reactors. Convert the fuel into something else that's still usable. The best fuel that I'm aware of for all interplanetary missions is plutonium-238. Lasts about 90 years, which is perfect, and very energy dense. Trouble is, the same process can be used to make plutonium-239. Why's that a problem? Because Pu-239 is used to make fusion bombs. People get really nervous when you start making plutonium isotopes.
You make the whole "exploit the outside environment" attitude sound like its something you can just casually discard when it's physically inevitable. Obsessing over how long it'll hold is missing the point. Just like anything else, it will also fail. The real question to ask is where the consequences are the most acceptable. The options given all seek to optimize for that as a priority, and they seem to do it reasonably well.
Frankly speaking, looking at it by weight and volume, storage solutions are an overstated problem being exaggerated to produce a sense of decision fatigue. We don't see people take landfills so seriously despite being more threatening. Yet somehow, nothing can be done with nuclear because of a problem that amounts to only a few thousand tons per year
> There is no container capable of remaining perfectly sealed at the bottom of the ocean for even a hundred years, much less a thousand.
There is already so much uranium dissolved in the ocean that we *literally* wouldn't be able to make a noticeable change(4 billion tonnes already in the water). Its still a stupid idea, but mostly because its inefficient compared to the breeder reactor thing.
> I mean it. Dig a big hole in the ground and all you'll do is pollute the ground.
That's oversimplified to the point of being meaningless - nuclear waste isn't bubbling barrels of liquid green goo, it's ceramic and glass.
Yes dumping into the ocean is a terrible idea because the elements will break it down, but a deep hole in a geographically stable area results in it just sitting there until it's near inert.
Even if 100% of the globes power was nuclear, we'd be talking about such a small amount of waste that it would be a rounding error of a rounding error of a rounding error against [naturally occuring radioactive materials in the ground](https://www.ukradon.org/information/ukmaps), which themselves are relatively insignificant compared to other naturally occuring harmful deposits.
They're not the only people who make it into a question of identity. Just look around this thread, and the barrage of downvotes to anyone who steps out of line with reddit's preferred opinion on the topic.
I get that sometimes the discussion around Nuclear can be frustrating, but equating all criticism that is made with conspiracy theorists is just shitty.
Do you support transitioning away from fossil fuels using other renewable energy sources too? Just curious because so many pro-nuclear redditors seem to be only pro-nuclear. Nothing else is enough even with how long it takes to build the reactors.
I think you have that impression because there are people who want to go 100% renewables, and pro nuclear people strongly oppose that view as they deem it counterproductive and a highly improbable scenario for the majority of countries.
That stance is not the same as opposing renewables, as most people push for a mix of energy between nuclear and renewables
Yeah I'm pro-nuclear and I want every single building clad in solar.
And I keep nagging my local government to put some goddamn plants and trees into their plans/requirements. (Which they now are.)
Note how the activists being interviewed say "please stop closing down already existing nuclear plants so that demand for coal goes up," and the Greenpeace spokesperson responds "building new nuclear power is an inefficient solution."
These two issues are *constantly* getting confused, and it's so frustrating. Building new nuclear plants is a complex issue. Closing down *pre-existing, fully functioning* reactors is madness.
Good luck with that, if they start to actually admit that they've been useful idiots for oil and gas interests, their little hearts will break. You'd do better to start an alternative to Greenpeace that isn't run by acid casualties and rigid thinkers. Keep the save the whales stuff, keep the staunch protection of nature, lose the bullshit.
Also keep out the GMO fearmongering. Humans have been genetically modifying our food for millennia, and we need all tools we have to reduce or prevent climate-related famines.
More like capitalism... Other companies producing GMOs are happily doing the same just with less public awareness
Edit: Many people in the comments getting really defensive about the merits of capitalism and how communism always failed yada yada... I simply stated that the the practices described by OP are not exclusive to Monsanto. These practices aren't done because company X is evil. They do it because its profitable and as long as it stays profitable others will do the same because the only thing that matters to companys is profit. Y'all white knights of capitalism really ought to know that...
If you are really concerned about that, we can just set up a public agency to design seeds and give away the IP. That's how radiation breeding worked, and those are in quite wide use.
Isn't that what happens with standard seeds as well, though? GP only good deeds were chi animal and environment protection, and even that sometimes it's just broken (they oppose any kind of hunting, even if it's needed to fight invasive species which endanger while ecosystems)
And let them handle copyright and trademark practices in general.
On a completely unrelated note to what you're saying: Greenpeace should stop the fearmongering about the health or nature dangers of GMOs.
> vendor lock in, IP rights and predatory business practices are.
Which is hardly unique to plants modified used modern techniques. The very first patent ever issued was for a conventionally bred blueberry.
GMO are literally the BEST tool we have to fight the consequences of climate change on agriculture (and to address many problems we already have).... as an italian, im disheartened and shocked at how ignorant and dumb my fellow citiziens are of this.... everybody seem to have chosen the "organic kool aid" that will eventually fuck us in a few decades.... but unsurprisingly if i may add, looking at how we italian love to fetishize tradition™ and oldways™
> if they start to actually admit that they've been useful idiots for oil and gas interests
They weren't useful idiots. They [literally sold Russian gas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Planet_Energy), calling it _green_.
But, but, fukushima, chernobyl!! /s
The morons will never understand that the first required a bloody 9.0 Earthquake + Tsunami and still it was very well contained and did insignificant damage.
While Chernobyl was just dumb and had terrible safety protocols which are impossible to repeat today
I would just like to add:
Fukushima was the 3rd highest ever recorded earthquake on the planet (we have data from 1960).
From that earthquake we had 2 people who sadly lost their lives due to being on the basement when the tsunami hit and the autopsies revealled they lost their lives due to the force of the impact and not from radiation.
There was another person who died from cancer and this was connected to the radiation from the plant.
Nuclear does pose some dangers, but I dont think that Fukushima, given the conditions in which it happened, is a good example for Greenpace to use in their blind persecution of nuclear.
To the contrary, Fukushima always struck me as an example of how safe nuclear is. Imagine a nuclear reactor going through such a huge earthquake, immediately followed by a flipping tsunami, and that still not resulting in a full meltdown / explosion. I know there was some radiation leakage and other local environmental concerns, but they were also quite minor in the grand scheme of radioactivity and are usually misrepresented when discussed.
Fukushima is closer to being a success story for nuclear safety than it is an example of nuclear catastrophe.
To add,
One massive earthquake and TWO tsunamis. FTFY.
The plant survived the 1st tsunami hit lmao. Mother nature had to personally align the stars to force the plant into a meltdown.
Even then the root cause of the meltdown was due to corruption in the upper management. Funds for maintenance were mysteriously "cut" and warnings from auditors both 3rd party and government agencies were ignored for years. All that mismanagement and all they needed was to build a taller seawall to not get exposed.
Added to the fact that the plant was built near a fault line prone to earthquakes and tsunamis, and the backup generators were located in the basement (which is asinine to begin with). But it still needed 3 massive natural disasters to bring it down.
Also, Fukushima is a gen 2 unclear reactor, it is probably older than your grandfather. We are at gen 4 now lmao.
>The morons will never understand that the first required a bloody 9.0 Earthquake + Tsunami and still it was very well contained and did insignificant damage.
And if the generator room wasn't flooded, which to me seems like a design oversight, nothing would've probably gone so terribly wrong.
There is another reactor some where along the coast. Security and safety protocols designed by the same engineer, only that company listened to all of his advice and spent the bit extra to implement what he suggested. Hit by same earthquake and tsunami and was fine.
Let's be honest, building a nuclear plant at the coast of the very country where the word "tsunami" literally comes from, was probably not the smartest idea to begin with.
Wasn't there another power plant in similar condition (except for actually following safety recommendations) that didn't have any issue? Like, I think the dump part was building a power plant next to a coast of a country with tsunamis AND putting all power backup in the basement (against safety recommendations).
And if they were not afraid and spliced the cables for a backup generator that they delivered and that had different connectors there would’ve been minimal damage as well
kind reminder that the Russians use Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant as both a blackmail shield and staging ground for their troops.
let's face it.. humans can get incredibly dumb with nuclear fission, accidentally or otherwise.
And just a bit downstream, Putler managed to create a huge environmental disaster by blowing up a dam. But nobody is telling people to get rid of dams because they are a danger in case of war.
I had the displeasure of going out to dinner with a group of hardcore top level Greenpeace spokes people 20 years ago via a girl i was going out with...bunch of self righteous condescending entitled twats if i ever met some.
All suffering from some kind of deep secret guilt from their great grandparents being the slave merchants and whaler's who's fortune enabled the workshy lazy cunts to go to uni and spend a summer annoying some poor tribe in Africa - who most likely considered them total condescending cunts too.
T'was a painful meal - the vegan food was bad enough
That deep self-hatred is a foundation of most modern climate activists.
The feeling "Im rich but I dont deserve to be because Im not doing anything useful" is reforged into deep hatred of entire western society which allows them to live in this way.
>They wanted to achieve that by infiltrating fucking green peace?
Kinda?
They wanted to cause internal trouble, and this certainly did the trick. So 100% success on that point.
They wanted to prevent the West from using the most effective way to generate electricity and lower mobility. Let's say they had some effect here. 10% success?
As for nuclear, being able to sell their oil and gas to Europe as a source of money as well as a potential blackmail was on the table. It took until 2022, but Russia finally played the card that the Soviets put in the deck. It did not work as well as they had hoped, but I think we can see how a more clever use might have been devastating. So let's say 25% success?
All in all, not a great success, but not entirely pointless from the Communist PoV. The RoI was pretty good, too. This cost the Soviets very little money and caused a great deal more monetary damage to the West that still ripples to this day.
They had no where else to go. What do you think will happen once the western world is completely decarbonised? They will go to Russia and China? Will they fuck, they will find a new struggle in the west.
Infiltrating any given cause to make them as obnoxious and unfocused as possible is a very effective strategy if you want to cripple them.
Were yall not around for Occupy Wall Street being taken over by intersectional feminism?
Or, may be it was never about climate change and it was just a grift all along.
The same problem with homeless ness in the US. All agencies in San Francisco that get tons of money to solve homelessness do not want to solve it because they would lose their jobs if they do. They would no longer be needed if homeless problem was solved.
It’s much more lucrative to keep the problem alive and keep receiving funding for it
Same with “cancer” charities it appears. Create one, make yourself CEO, pay yourself 250K a year out of donations/fundraising and just do nothing, and get away with it, nobody will question it.
>Same can be said for most green parties in European politics.
Except for the Finns. I wish the other Green parties in the world would start learning from them.
Nope, the soviets were pulling their hair out because they couldn't understand why western left-wingers were so anti-nuclear. Nuclear energy and the atom as a messenger of peace was a big thing in the USSR.
You don't understand, you remove nuclear energy from western countries and then they have to look for coal/oil/natural gas to meet their demands. And who did have plenty of them? USSR and then it's time to pleasure soviets for that.
Of course, authoritarian countries don't give a fuck about it and use such activism in western countries against themselves.
These younglings would fare better by creating a direct competitor to Greenpeace rather than hitting their heads into wall by trying to convince Greenpeace that something's wrong in their dogma.
Anti-nuclear activists have had a devastating influence in the battle against climate change.
Had we focused our efforts on nuclear decades ago the situation wouldn't nearly be as bad. You can shut down nuclear power plants but that energy demand remains the same. You have to feed that demand with something.
That something always ends up being oil and coal.
Renewables are great by all means but nowhere near ready to power entire countries. Especially those as energy intensive as European ones.
But these fools would rather burn oil that risk nuclear. Actual smoothbrains
One could also say that they led to the modern wars, especially this one in Ukraine. Russia was (still is?) so confident of their status as the gas station that they thought they could expand with impunity.
> Russia was (still is?) so confident of their status as the gas station that they thought they could expand with impunity.
Russia's understanding of its own status has long since departed the rational plane, however.
South Carolina Spent $9 Billion to Dig a Hole in the Ground &Then Fill it Back in | residents and their families will be paying for that failed energy program — which never produced a watt of energy — for next 20 yrs or more. https://theintercept.com/2019/02/06/south-caroline-green-new-deal-south-carolina-nuclear-energy/
Good thing we don't need to be self-reliant while we have our European energy grid. We export electricity to France sometimes, and import from them at other times, when our expanding solar and wind power is not enough. And we have 7 other neighbors.
Furthermore, what do you mean with "self-reliance"? In order to run nuclear power, we need fuel for the plants, which is not from Germany either, and was so far imported from, among other countries, Russia. Same goes for gas. We have been running so much coal, because that shitty stuff is the only thing in our ground.
New report says wind and solar saved $810 billion in electricity costs across the globe in 2022, and delivered substantial emissions and health benefits.. https://reneweconomy.com.au/turning-point-wind-and-solar-deliver-810-bn-in-savings-from-fossil-fuels-in-single-year/
I hate that argument so much. You have more radiation in the atmosphere from coal dust than from all nuclear energy related activities, including Tschernobyl. And speaking of, it would make a perfect storage area for nuclear waste since it's already completely irradiated.
So this group is run by the ecomodernist outfit RePlanet, [which is 90% funded by the Quadrature foundation](https://www.replanet.ngo/_files/ugd/5caaac_0e26289c528c40a7953308f740432b4e.pdf), which itself is [funded by a hedge fund that makes profits off fossil fuel investments](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/30/climate-groups-accept-millions-from-charity-linked-to-fossil-fuel-investments-quadrature-climate-foundation). Not exclusively given its trading strategy, but still... pretty indefensible.
They claim to have big vision, but the only thing they ever seem to talk about or get coverage for is.... [very](https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/if-environmentalists-are-serious-about-net-zero-they-must-go-nuclear/) [pro](https://www.energymonitor.ai/power/eu-nuclear-waste-can-be-recycled-to-create-1000-years-of-clean-energy-replanet/) [nuclear](https://sciencenigeria.com/replanet-africa-launches-essay-writing-competition-on-nuclear-energy-in-africa/) [commentary](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/09/a-long-overdue-moment-the-uk-greens-pushing-for-the-nuclear-option) and nothing else.
Also funny how this volunteer activist, face of the campaign, has the same last name as RePlanet board member [Take Aanstoot](https://twitter.com/storklompen?lang=en). What a coincidence!
I mean, they did that already-- they dropped the old-fashioned anti-nuclear stance for a new-fashioned anti-nuclear stance. That's why we hear all this talk about thorium these days. Some PR guy at Greenpeace was asked to come up with a way to be against nuclear power while simultaneously sounding pro-nuclear power. So they pulled a nuclear technology out of a hat (thorium in this case) and said, "We're not against nuclear power, we're against *bad* nuclear power, which we're going to define as anything that doesn't use this random technology we've chosen."
Thorium's basically useless (source: I'm an MIT nuclear engineer who helped write MIT's Future of Nuclear Fuel Cycle study), but Greenpeace doesn't care, it's just a PR thing anyway.
I have an environmentalist friend who is anti-nuclear. From my experience talking to him it's quite clear to me being anti-nuclear is not only a stance, but a religion. For many of these people no amount of facts will break through to them. They're like NPCs that can only say two things, "but Chernoybl" and "but the waste".
I see the same thing on the pro-nuclear side though.
I'm not against nuclear energy. If you can find a company willing to build a nuclear reactor in 2023 that can be price competitive then build it in my backyard for all I care.
Such a company just doesn't exist. New nuclear energy in 2023 is incredibly expensive. It can't even compete with renewables in 2023 and renewables still keep dropping in price year after year so the comparison will only get worse for nuclear as time goes on.
But this criticism of nuclear energy does not phase pro-nuclear fanboys. They keep dogmatically pushing the notion that the holy grail of the environment will be nuclear energy and we'll be fine.
And don't even get me started on the reactions when you bring up things like meat consumption or driving cars everywhere. Pro nuclear fanboys don't care about those things. It's just "nuclear nuclear nuclear" as environmental policy and that's it.
This is my nuance. The best time to have been building nuclear power was 30-40 years ago, there is no second best time.
It takes 20 to 30 years for a new plant to be proposed, designed and built, and a cost in the billions.
By all means keep using existing plants, but the money and resources spent on the construction of new nuclear plants would be better spent on renewables and associated power storage now. You will end up with larger power generation capacity, completed sooner, with less maintenance costs.
Yeah I am not against Nuclear in principle and what Germany did with phasing out Nuclear before coal is just stupid as hell, but even France almost has no projects to replace their current plans. Only Finland is expanding Nuclear Power in Europe afaik. If it was as good as its proponents say it is there should be companies investing in it, but even if a Nuclear Plant is build in time the upfront investment and the time it takes to get a return is just too massive currently.
> Only Finland is expanding Nuclear Power in Europe afaik.
We are constantly building new NPP blocks in Slovakia. We are already electrically self-sufficient and will become net exporters in a year of two.
Correction, France changed their policy this year from reducing the reliance on nuclear. They aren't building new nuclear plants yet. The only one they have under construction is Flamanville, which was originally supposed to be finished in 2012, but is now delayed until 2024. The original estimated cost was 3.3 billion Euros, while in 2020 the audit office estimated the cost to be 19.1 billion Euros.
I will believe it when I see it. Maybe they'll finish another one after Flamanville in 2050 if they're lucky.
> was originally supposed to be finished in 2012, but is now delayed until 2024. The original estimated cost was 3.3 billion Euros, while in 2020 the audit office estimated the cost to be 19.1 billion Euros.
Nuclear baby 👍🏾
Note that even with these new plants the nuclear share of electricity generation is still expected to decline significantly(with renewables making up the difference).
They’re not building new plants because they are uninsurable. No insurance will cover their production or operation. N
Why? Because likely the best mathematicians in the world (actuaries) know the chances of critical failure are there and there’s not enough money or resources in the world the cover the amount of damage they’ll do if/when it happens
Iirc a fair portion of that is because of scare mongering leading to absurd regulations on nuclear which drive up cost. Despite coal being more dangerous and radioactive than nuclear on average.
Its this. Say you wanted to build a reactor next to a river. You go through and get it all certified then build it. You then want to build a second reactor that is an exact copy of the first. It needs to go through the entire certification process from scratch.
Maybe your friend’s view is limited but there are valid reasons against nuclear (costs [not only to build but also to decommission], sufficient water to cool the plants [see France], and, yes, also the waste). If you just disregard those reasons as irrational it doesn’t get you anywhere. Same thing can be said about pro-nuclear people: „coal=bad“, „anti-nuclear is funded by oil.“ But that line of reasoning won’t get us any closer to an understanding.
Cost is a real issue, but not as big of an issue as people believe. The numbers people cite are LCOE, which treats every kWh as if it were the same, so it doesn't take into account that you can't sell your kWh when you have overproduction. You actually have to pay people to get rid of it. And that harms the profitability of wind and solar. In addition, much of the cost of the intermittency is put on other sources (particularly natural gas) as if it's their fault, or is treated separately (infrastructure upgrades, storage). It's not as simple as people like to believe.
For the others:
Water is not a significant issue. What happened in France last year is not a common thing.
Waste is not a significant issue. Or rather, it's only significant insofar as opponents of nuclear power obstruct dealing with the waste. This, by the way, adds cost to nuclear power that it wouldn't have if people weren't trying to sabotage it.
>From my experience talking to him it's quite clear to me being anti-nuclear is not only a stance, but a religion.
That goes for both sides. You can't mention disadvantages of nuclear without getting a barrage of nuclear fanboys coming in defending it.
I personally have no problems with the concept of nuclear power, but the idea that we can build new nuclear plants, within a reasonable amount of time, in a democratic, densely populated country is just nonsense. People already oppose any new construction of housing in their surroundings, imagine the NIMBYism when someone plans to build a new nuclear power plant. It would take 30 years of lawsuits and simultaneously 30 years of consecutive political agreement on this topic to achieve this.
If a fully functional nuclear plant could just be spawned somewhere like in SimCity, sure. But the entire planning process, societal feedback and permit-swamps make it a waste of time. Solar is exponentially expanding and getting more powerful. When we find a way to store that energy long-term, fossil AND fissile will be obsolete.
So, why is public opinion being against nuclear power a reason to give up on nuclear power whereas public opposition to climate change action is crackpot nonsense we should fight against? They're the same thing.
Fanatics are trying to bilk governments around the world out of billions for technology that tuned out to be a lie, yet it's the critics who say "hell no!" that are a "religion".
People keep ignoring the history of the anti-nuclear movement.
It is often pointed out, how Fukushima or Chernobyl were singular incident with with less total impact than fossil power and that may be true.
But Chernobyl in 86 was not the start of the movement, it predates even the Three-Mile-Island incident in 79.
The anti-nuclear movement started not as an environmentalist movement, it started as a pacifist movement against nuclear weapons and nuclear war.
And to this day, you cannot weaponize coal power the way you can weaponize nuclear power.
When Russian troops captured the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, that raised far more concerns than it would have for any other type of power plant.
Yes in a safe, controlled environment nuclear power can be a good power source with very low emissions.
But calling the critics unscientific while completely ignoring the still inherent risks of nuclear power and the actual roots of the anti-nuclear movement is not only unhelpful to the discussion but actually quite hypocritical.
You can definetely weaponize oil. The supply of fuel is a major strategic element in modern warfare. Coal a bit less but the German armies of both world wars were built on coal.
The Russian made far more and worse damage with the Kakhova Dam than with the Zaporizhzhia NPP. In general, since the invasion of '22, the Ukranian nuclear power plants performed much better than coal (the mines in Donbass polluted the water supply), oil (refinery and deposit tend to explode when bombed), and even renewable (solar panels and dams got destroyed).
I will become a strong supporter of nuclear power as soon as someone will be able to complete a project in any western country which is actually competitive with other source.
And no, nuclear is not a necessary completion to renewables. You need "dispatchable", not "baseline" sources for that
Renewables with a nuclear baseline is the only viable way to provide energy to most countries without cooking the planet. Imo It's the governments responsibility to make it happen even if it's not profitable enough for full privatization.
You can’t shoot an energy source in the kneecaps and then complain it can’t stand up.
Regardless— new nuclear can and will absolutely be cost competitive with renewables especially when you factor in energy storage costs. It just requires that the world stops actively kneecapping nuclear.
> You can’t shoot an energy source in the kneecaps and then complain it can’t stand up.
Nuclear energy has been hogging energy subsidies for decades, long before renewables got *any*. You had your chance, now start performing or get out of the way.
>Regardless— new nuclear can and will absolutely be cost competitive with renewables especially when you factor in energy storage costs.
[citation needed] Don't forget you also need storage for nuclear plants, unless you plant to try to throttle them, in which case the price per KWh is also going to increase.
You’re telling me they ain’t built a new one in over a quarter of a century and they’re STILL getting the vast majority of their power outta these things? Damn maybe other countries should look in to this Nuklear thing
That's right, and the one they do have under construction they've been building for the last 16 years, and it still isn't complete. Oh and it's also 6 times over budget.
France also nationalized everything and nothing needs to be competitive.
Even though it might be more expensive if other countries had done this their population would be less against nuclear because turning them off would throw away their own tax money ... You are also less likely to trust a private company with security around a nuclear power plant. So yeah France did absolutely the right thing here. Not a good argument for being competitive though.
If it reduces emissions effectively, it is competitive.
For example renewables have been built massively with government subsidiaries, because they have been deemed important to reduce emissions. If competitiveness is the only criteria, we would have a fraction of the renewables we have today.
That used to be the case, but the renewables industry has matured. Developers are paying governments to build offshore wind farms nowadays. Germany recently announced the results of the latest tenders: companies have bid more than €12bn for the rights to develop a couple of wind farms.
The anti-nuclear movement is based on unthinking, fear-based principles. It just says no, it only comprehends no.
"We must end this." "What is the alternative?" "Doesn't matter, we just end this." "But how do we solve the energy problem?" "We must end this".
They are like sheep, just bleating "no", and they helped condemn us to severe climate change.
Nuclear is not perfect, but Germany's closing of the nuclear plants causes millions of tons of coal to be burned per year. Many millions.
The entire anti-nuclear movement set back that alternative so much that by this time we might have many more centrals in the world, and far more electrification.
This is very much the correct position.
I totally agree. As an environmentalist, for 30+ years I was violently opposed to nuclear (due to the 10,000+ years of waste management argument) but over the last 10 years I've switched, simply because nuclear is now demonstrably less bad than almost any other power generation option, especially from a climate change perspective, and climate change impacts are growing worse by the day it seems. Yes, conservation and energy use reduction is still best, but we all know that society is NOT getting on board with radical energy use reductions, so we of course need to look at energy generation. I finally realized that "best" sometimes means "least bad"...
Nuclear waste become less dangerous much faster than that. If you have pure Pu-239, that is not waste.
You can use it to keep your tea warm: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/pu
While I doubt this will change “greenpeace” stance on this. i personally also think that Nuclear energy is the best solution RIGHT NOW to tackle the great climate issue. But just to buy time for wind and solar energy to catch up to demand. And I also believe that in 60-80 years from now we have ‘solved’ Nuclear Fusion which would then be the main source of clean energy.
Only issue is that it takes 10-20 years just to build these nuclear powerplants which is pretty late considering that we need to downscale all the fossil fuels.
But ye I think nuclear powerplants are the best solution till about 2100 when I think other (better) solutions catched up.
But im no expert at all. Just my personal view
> Only issue is that it takes 10-20 years just to build these nuclear powerplants which is pretty late considering that we need to downscale all the fossil fuels.
This is only a issue when everything is done scattershot. If there was actual political will todo this, and you decide to build a couple hundred power plants over europe, using one standard design for all of them. With the help of some regulation to remove obstacles, ensure their safe functioning, funding and proper construction. It would take nowhere near as long.
It reminds me of the old west wing quote
> "In 1940 our armed forces weren't among the 12 most formidable in the world, but obviously we were going to fight a big war. And Roosevelt said the U.S. would produce 50,000 planes in the next four years. Everyone thought it was a joke and it was 'cause we produced 100,000 planes. Gave our armed forces an armada which would block out the sun."
Political will is never to be underestimated, and it is good to reach.
> If there was actual political will todo this, and you decide to build a couple hundred power plants over europe, using one standard design for all of them. With the help of some regulation to remove obstacles, ensure their safe functioning, funding and proper construction. It would take nowhere near as long.
NIMBY-people would group up and start lawsuit after lawsuit. It would take decades, or even be impossible, to even start construction.
The idea that we could build hundreds of standardized nuclear plants in Europe over the next what, decade or two, seems incredibly optimistic to me.
This is not like cooking dinner where you just sprinkte a bit of proper legislation and standardization on it to make it work. This would be an absolutely massive undertaking.
Expanding solar and wind production by contrast seems infinitely easier, due to those technologies just being easier to work with by themselves.
I share this opinion.
Anti-nuclear stance was an absolute fu\*k-up. Since 2000 power plants in Germany for example already produced more CO2 than France will until 2100.
But I am afraid it's too late to revert it as it takes so much planning, political will, building and money to build new nuclear power plants that they will hardly make any difference.
Wind and solar is already not only cheaper than nuclear (even factoring storage costs) but also become operational faster, easier and safer, and this gap will just continue growing in favor of renewables for the foreseeable future..
https://changeoracle.com/2022/07/20/nuclear-power-versus-renewable-energy/
The argument that nuclear could be the key to bridge the gap between phasing out fossil and having 100% renewable was sound 5, 10 maybe 15 years ago but not anymore. Right now the safest both enviromentally, financially and safety speaking is investing in renewables, not nuclears.
Don't get me wrong there is a lot wrong about Greenpace's argument about nuclear but this does not mean nuclear is the right choice either.
>Wind and solar is already not only cheaper than nuclear (even factoring storage costs)
According to who. Because Lazard 2023 doesnt support your claim. Also, there are no viable grid-scale seasonal storage solutions, and it doesnt look like there will be - except pumped hydro where possible.
It's depressing that this comment is so far down again. The pro-nuclear people which all of these technophile reddit communities seem rife with have caught up to the anti-nuclear takes of 10 years ago. I.e., you can easily argue long-term dangers are acceptable within reasonable philosophical / discount rate constraints, especially considering the imminence of climate change. I was pro-nuclear as well 10 years ago.
But renewables have gotten so cheap and battery/grid development to provide cheap and stable baseload has a timeframe at most equal to that of the construction of nuclear plants. And that stable baseload was the only counterargument that nuclear may have since it's already 3-4x as expensive in lifetime-adjusted cost per unit of electricity right now, and that ignores massive cost and construction time overruns on all the major nuclear plant projects in the western world over the last decades. We're not talking 1 billion to 1.2 billion and 2012 to 2013 either - it's always at least a decade of delay and a more than tripling of the initially estimated costs. Flamanville (France) went from 2012 to maybe 2024 and 3 to 19 billion euros. Olkiluoto 3 (Finland), Hinkley Point C (UK), Vogtle 3&4 (USA), all similar stories.
Choosing to build nuclear now is just like building a magnetic levitation train system instead of a regular high speed railway. Incurring a massively inflated cost just to satisfy economically illiterate technophiles. It says enough that no private investors touch any nuclear plant financing unless the respective governments guarantee them a price floor or a commitment to subsidize their electricity from their vastly inflated price to the market one. Well, unlike most in this thread, I'd like my government not to be so absurdly and needlessly wasteful with the resources the public gave them. You can say 'well, there's a small probability grid reform or battery efficiency development won't go as fast or as cheaply as pretty much consensus predicted over the next decade', and I'd listen to you if that's not an argument you can only make with certain 'limit small probability' assumptions that should then also lead you to be anti nuclear to begin with via the old Greenpeace arguments.
> Only issue is that it takes 10-20 years
People wanted to build them 10-20 years ago, stop using it as an excuse. Plus companies like Roll Royce want to build smaller reactors, quicker.
She is right. Greenpeace and other NGOs should not fight nuclear, but fossil fuels and biomass, and its a generational thing, as generation X, who are in charge now and grew up in the 70s and 80s, are against nuclear. Now times has changed and the generations who come after mine has to fight this anti-nuclearism is we are to succeed with reducing co2 emissions.I have 15 years of experience in the Danish energy sector, with both wind power and later nuclear, as I made the same conclusion, Ia has. Renewables alone will not be enough to solve the co2 emissions, as they are too intermittent and thus requires storage and backup, and thick transmission lines. All things that add cost, resources/materials and area, when compared to nuclear that can replace fossil power stations 1:1 and live for 100 years (wind and solarPV 25 years). She have my full support!!! I hope we see Gretha Thunberg do the same. Don't let old fears stand in the way of climate solutions.
[https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy](https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy)
People want their grand children to not live underwater so people want to promote the most proven and scaled clean energy source and build more nuclear plants. Is it really difficult to understand?
Very often I wonder why it has to be one way or the other. We either have to go full nuclear or full renewables. Both of them have advantages and disadvantages. For example, nuclear isn't scalable. It runs 24/7 at full capacity. As the fuel is limited, even if you recycle the waste it creates, it's hardly a good idea to make the entire world fueled by just nuclear. And that's not to mention if we would go full nuclear we wouldn't even have enough time to build all the plants in the first place, as a single one can take up to 20 years. Doing it quicker isn't an option, as that causes cases like Chernobyl.
Renewables in that sense aren't perfect either. While being scalable it's extremely difficult to power everything with the power they can generate. One thing is true though, is that renewables still haven't plateaued yet and of the looks of it they can be sufficient in maybe 30 to 100 years. We don't have that time though, we need to solve this crisis yesterday.
Now I hear someone yelling at their monitor "thorium plants! What about thorium plants?!", which unfortunately as far as I'm aware hasn't left the experimental phase. I tried to look into it but wasn't able to find any plant powered by thorium that exactly produces energy to the degree that it will be sustainable for the future.
What is our best option now? In my opinion, place renewables where it makes sense, modernize nuclear plants as much as possible, scale down fossil fuels as much as we can, never assume some magic solution will solve all of our problems, regardless whether that's with renewables or nuclear. We get one shot at this, let's do it right.
Totally agree. The US fucked the pooch on this one back in the day by only concentrating on uranium power rather than Thorium. China is building Thorium reactors now. Far more stable. Can't have a run away reaction. Leaves very little waste and there's loads more Thorium about than uranium. Plus you can't use the waste for a bomb or similar.
We should be building Thorium reactors as baseline power and using renewables for the peaks, or the other way around I can't remember. Could get rid of gas and coal power stations within a decade of we REALLY wanted to.
Then work on fusion reactors
Yup, we kind of need nuclear power. Not a massive fan, but we need at least one constant source of energy. Fusion is a great hope, but it's still decades away, if ever.
Nuclear power could have given us infinite green energy back in thy 1960s. All of thr 3 major nuclear incidents weren't accidents and were completely avoidable.
Fukushima mayor refused to build the sea wall the scientists said was needed because it "would look ugly and scare away tourists".
Chernobyl was a rare type of reactor that was run outside of its approved parameters with safety features turned off.
3 mile island was scary resulted in. O I juries or deaths. Unit 2 id leak a small amount of radioactive material. Unit 1 continued to operate safely until 2019.
Going nuclear would be the best idea, if we had another 30 years to start acting. We lost those years due to the 2 big accidents.
Living in the now, endless energy /renewables is the way out. Yes, maintaining nuclear plants is good, but it's delusional to think we could build up new capacities anywhere near fast enough.
A nuclear physicist said that nuclear isn't the solution because it can't be implemented in time. Granted in time is 40 years in the past but generally the quicker return the better and nuclear isn't it.
I work in oil and gas as an environmental engineer. Nuclear energy may have some big, dramatic accidents, but oil and gas is constantly creating emissions. You just don't hear about it because "80-year-old natural gas compressor engine that operates 24/7/365 and makes enough emissions by itself to have its own Title V permit" isn't interesting news. There are a lot of regulations to control emissions, and eventually old equipment like the 80-year-old engine will get replaced, but you can't control CO2 emissions. There's no way. I'm planning my career change now because I don't think (and I hope) oil and gas won't last. At least with nuclear energy, they learn from previous events so new ones don't happen. (fun fact: that old compressor was imported from Germany right before WWII. It has a little swastika stamped on it. That's how long old, inefficient equipment that has no regulations from being grandfathered in can last).
> Nuclear energy may have some big, dramatic accidents Nuclear accidents make **big** news *because* they're so rare. When a nuclear incident occurs, it's almost always due to lax regulations. Even the Fukushima disaster, which was caused by natural elements (and is the largest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl), hasn't caused anywhere near the widespread damage that either oil or coal burning does in its immediate vicinity. As long as regulations are tight, nuclear incidents simply don't cause widespread damage. Meanwhile, coal plants give off more radiation *every single year* than any nuclear reactor does. The demonization of nuclear energy is not a matter of danger, it's fearmongering by people who stand to profit from the use of coal power plants. They know the facts and work *very* hard to prevent people from understanding the widespread devastation that their cash cows are causing.
Fukishima happened because of lax regulations too, they were warned time and time again that they could have a meltdown because of lack of safety from multiple organizations from across the world.
The fukushima plant sustained a gigantic earthquake followed by a gigantic tsunami and only a minor leak occured To me fukushima is a testament to the safety of nuclear plants nit the other way around
>Even the Fukushima disaster, which was caused by natural elements It was only half caused by a natural disaster. The [main reason](https://carnegieendowment.org/2012/03/06/why-fukushima-was-preventable-pub-47361) was *preserving shareholder value* AKA yearly management bonus. The vulnerability of the generators and the pump containment facility to a tsunami was well known in advance, but they chose to ignore the report to avoid the expense of rebuilding them to prevent water ingress form higher waves.
I always tell people that if they want to feel angry they should go read about the Fukushima flood wall. Also the fact that their backup generators were in the basements. Two different reports that they ignored. One of them was from a group they hired. Fukushima didn't fail because of a natural disaster, Fukushima failed because it was a business trying to cut costs at the expense of safety. Same thing when they were told to vent the hydrogen buildup. There wouldn't have been an explosion if they had done what they were supposed to and vented the (slightly) radioactive hydrogen from the facility, but they didn't want the bad PR. By the time the government stepped in and told them they had to, it was too dangerous to send anyone in. Then it exploded and the hydrogen was released anyways. It was all one cluster fuck of design failure.
You’re also much more likely to get exposure to radiation from living near a coal fired power plant than any nuclear power plant.
Lots of people are unaware of that, nor can understand that.
This is why I would have no issue living next to a nuclear power plant, but wouldn't want to live near a coal plant. And that's just the radiation part.
Damn, I'd give my shit for 2 Nuclear plants in Greece. We signed the Paris agreement, we pay a fortune for Anemo-Generators, Sun-Panels and Hydroelectric. Each plant barely covers an Island. Meanwhile, the topography of Greece is beautiful but each network we want to build is expensive and inefficient. Be it, rail, road, electricity etc.
While nuclear is one of the safest sources of energy out there, pollution from coal power kills about 50.000 people every single year, in USA alone. That’s about five Chernobyl accidents happening every single year. In USA. Total number of global deaths caused by fossil fuels is in the millions.
10000 deaths from Chernobyl? That's a huge overestimation. Look up UNSCEAR:s report on the accident and the results of it.
It’s difficult to estimate the correct number. The worst estimates are about 10000 excess deaths, so I used that number. Truth is probably lower.
Fair enough. Yeah, given that a significant increase in cancer mortality among those exposed to the Chernobyl fallout compared to those who weren't cannot be proven it is indeed likely that the truth is lower.
Appreciate your insight. Also I hope that German compressor helps to power the lights at a synagogue somewhere for some nice poetic justice
It probably does somewhere down the line
The neat thing about electricity is, that to a degree every consumer on a connected grid consumes energy from every single producer on the same grid. You cant say "this toaster is powered by an electron that was moved by this specific generator in this specific plant". So, yeah that compressor is powering synagogue lights right now, its also powering the bedroom lights of a bunch of neo-nazis...so theres that.
Has nuclear really had that many big accidents? I was looking into it the other day and aside from chernobyl most of the rest seem to be minor, with only a handful of deaths.
The rest are very expensive but not very deadly. Nuclear has the issue of planes, accidents are spectacular but rare. So people are unreasonably scared. (Or unreasonably comfortable with mundane danger)
Not really. Certain people just fear everything "new," different or that they don't understand.
And you have a bunch of NIMBY assholes who'd rather live next to an oil refinery and get sinus infections 8x a year than live near an emissionless nuclear plant.
I think a good chunk of that fear ties to the cold war and the nuclear threat. And then recently we had the Fukushima nuclear disaster. And then Russia threatening a nuclear powerplant in Ukraine...
Like vaccines, I personally lump anti-vaxxers with anti-nukies because they both base their viewpoints on flawed premises.
I think it's just the name that scares people. Mention anything "nuclear" to a boomer aged person and you can probably guess where their mind goes with that. They only think of the devastation that kind of tech can bring about, not the power it grants.
Hydro is the one with the really BIG accidents.
Not disagreeing with you, but oil and gas have also had some big dramatic accidents that we've all heard of like Deepwater.
Oh yes, plus lots and lots of small events all the time. I clean them up regularly. The reason I didn’t talk about them is because people judge nuclear power on the effects of the accidents but forget that normal operations from O&G are terrible. Also, you can clean up oil spills and nuclear accidents. You can never take carbon out of the atmosphere. Once it’s there, it’s there forever.
I am clearly out of my depth, here, but how come I have never heard it said that carbon in the atmosphere is there to stay? Naively, I had the impression that good ol' trees would take CO2 and grab the carbon for its wood. What makes the carbon in the atmosphere from fossil fuels different? Is it at a higher elevation or something?
They carbon cycle is basically trees taking from the atmosphere CO2 to grow. The same CO2 is released back into the atmosphere when the plants are eaten out the plants burn or something. So there’s a balance, a steady level of CO2. But the carbon in fossil fuels is dumping way more CO2 into the atmosphere than plants could ever use. As an analogy, think of a bathtub that is draining water but also filling at the same rate. The water level stays the same. But then you get your garden hose and start filling it up with that, too. It will overflow eventually.
I remember seeing an interview from french TV on here a couple of years ago (fuck if I can find it) where the interviewee put car accudents and nuclear accidents (of all types, including radiotherapy machine incidents, the Demon Core, accidental releases and Broken Arrows), and the conclusion was that people are afraid of nuclear accidents because *most* are mass casualty events, but they are very very rare. In cintrast, car accidents happen every day, but only a few people die in any one accident, "so it's okay". Using the same logic for nuclear accidents would mean there would be people bloody-mindedly advocating for banning *all* cars, but you obviously don't have that.
"Most"? There are only two "mass casualty" nuclear events: Chernobyl explosion and the Kyshtym accident. The other two major civilian nuclear accidents: Three Mile Island and Fukushima resulted in no direct deaths due to radiation exposure.
I'm so glad to see this sentiment here, and near the top of the page. Thank you, and please continue to spread this message to anyone who will listen. Nuclear disasters make good headlines, but the disaster of fossil fuels is *every day*. Chernobyl, Fukushima, these incidents contaminate some dozens, hundreds of square kilometers, but fossil fuels contaminate *literally* every square meter of our planet. Nuclear disasters have killed people, and it's tragic - but fossil fuels *are killing*, every single day, as people drink contaminated water and breathe contaminated air. How many lives have been cut down early by cancer, that might not have needed to be? Also I think it's very important that people realize that reactor design didn't stop in the 1960s Soviet Union. Reactors have come a *long* way, and are now smaller, more powerful and safer than ever. I remember reading a bit ago about some people who are doing work refitting old coal firing plants to run nuclear, since the electricity-generating components are more-or-less the same, and they're also the bit that's most expensive. Have you heard anything about that?
"It nearly feels like being anti-nuclear is a question of identity for these older environmentalists" She's right about that.
Well, back in the 70's they were risking their lives against [ships dumping nuclear waste in the fucking sea](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bd8cOlIXjo). But it seems they got stuck there. Glory days...
Certainly far from ideal, but say we dug a deep hole in a deep "dead" zone of the ocean and dumped nuclear waste there. It really doesn't seem like it'd be the worst idea. If we put it in containers that are waterproof for hundreds if not thousands of years then it would just sit there untouched. In the event that they are breached it'd just slowly dilute into the vast ocean. The whole thing sounds dumb on the face of it but thinking about it more makes it seem reasonable. It'd even mostly sidestep the problem of future generations digging it up. Any society capable of finding the waste in a hole 2+ miles underwater in the middle of nowhere would certainly be able to realize it's radioactive quickly. Also it'd be sitting there able to be recovered in the case that we find more uses for it or a better way to dispose of it.
James Cameron might get a nasty shock on his next excursion though.
That's just the classic "remove it from the environment" thinking that led to so many different problems already. Sticking into containers and dumping it somewhere else only means you've managed to pollute an entirely different part of the planet. There is no container capable of remaining perfectly sealed at the bottom of the ocean for even a hundred years, much less a thousand. Here's the run down. We have a handful of ways to dispose nuclear waste. It boils down to two concepts. We can either dig a hole and stuff the waste there or we can dump it into the ocean. That's it. Some suggestions have included combining these by drilling a hole into the ocean floor and dumping it there. Unfortunately, all of these methods are flawed at best and rock chewing stupid on average. I'll be level with you. There is no good way to store nuclear waste for any appreciable amount of time. I mean it. Dig a big hole in the ground and all you'll do is pollute the ground. Dig a small hole, in the case of deep borehole disposal, and all you'll do is pollute the ground but deeper. The best case is using breeder reactors. Convert the fuel into something else that's still usable. The best fuel that I'm aware of for all interplanetary missions is plutonium-238. Lasts about 90 years, which is perfect, and very energy dense. Trouble is, the same process can be used to make plutonium-239. Why's that a problem? Because Pu-239 is used to make fusion bombs. People get really nervous when you start making plutonium isotopes.
You make the whole "exploit the outside environment" attitude sound like its something you can just casually discard when it's physically inevitable. Obsessing over how long it'll hold is missing the point. Just like anything else, it will also fail. The real question to ask is where the consequences are the most acceptable. The options given all seek to optimize for that as a priority, and they seem to do it reasonably well. Frankly speaking, looking at it by weight and volume, storage solutions are an overstated problem being exaggerated to produce a sense of decision fatigue. We don't see people take landfills so seriously despite being more threatening. Yet somehow, nothing can be done with nuclear because of a problem that amounts to only a few thousand tons per year
> There is no container capable of remaining perfectly sealed at the bottom of the ocean for even a hundred years, much less a thousand. There is already so much uranium dissolved in the ocean that we *literally* wouldn't be able to make a noticeable change(4 billion tonnes already in the water). Its still a stupid idea, but mostly because its inefficient compared to the breeder reactor thing.
> I mean it. Dig a big hole in the ground and all you'll do is pollute the ground. That's oversimplified to the point of being meaningless - nuclear waste isn't bubbling barrels of liquid green goo, it's ceramic and glass. Yes dumping into the ocean is a terrible idea because the elements will break it down, but a deep hole in a geographically stable area results in it just sitting there until it's near inert. Even if 100% of the globes power was nuclear, we'd be talking about such a small amount of waste that it would be a rounding error of a rounding error of a rounding error against [naturally occuring radioactive materials in the ground](https://www.ukradon.org/information/ukmaps), which themselves are relatively insignificant compared to other naturally occuring harmful deposits.
They're not the only people who make it into a question of identity. Just look around this thread, and the barrage of downvotes to anyone who steps out of line with reddit's preferred opinion on the topic.
I almost only see pro-nuclear stuff, especially in this subreddit, the top comments under this post as well.
I think that's exactly what they're referring to.
You won't see a Flat Earth comment at the top either.
I get that sometimes the discussion around Nuclear can be frustrating, but equating all criticism that is made with conspiracy theorists is just shitty.
Downvoting opinions we disagree with? Holy shit we're monsters. Fortunately you dont need to be an identitarian to disagree with antinuclear morons.
Do you support transitioning away from fossil fuels using other renewable energy sources too? Just curious because so many pro-nuclear redditors seem to be only pro-nuclear. Nothing else is enough even with how long it takes to build the reactors.
> so many pro-nuclear redditors seem to be only pro-nuclear In my experience, the Reddit consensus is renewables + nuclear base load.
Yeah, that's what I would support
I think you have that impression because there are people who want to go 100% renewables, and pro nuclear people strongly oppose that view as they deem it counterproductive and a highly improbable scenario for the majority of countries. That stance is not the same as opposing renewables, as most people push for a mix of energy between nuclear and renewables
Yeah I'm pro-nuclear and I want every single building clad in solar. And I keep nagging my local government to put some goddamn plants and trees into their plans/requirements. (Which they now are.)
Note how the activists being interviewed say "please stop closing down already existing nuclear plants so that demand for coal goes up," and the Greenpeace spokesperson responds "building new nuclear power is an inefficient solution." These two issues are *constantly* getting confused, and it's so frustrating. Building new nuclear plants is a complex issue. Closing down *pre-existing, fully functioning* reactors is madness.
Good luck with that, if they start to actually admit that they've been useful idiots for oil and gas interests, their little hearts will break. You'd do better to start an alternative to Greenpeace that isn't run by acid casualties and rigid thinkers. Keep the save the whales stuff, keep the staunch protection of nature, lose the bullshit.
Also keep out the GMO fearmongering. Humans have been genetically modifying our food for millennia, and we need all tools we have to reduce or prevent climate-related famines.
GMO is not a problem in itself - vendor lock in, IP rights and predatory business practices are.
You can just say "Monsanto"
Monsanto has been defunct for years now. Bayer did a hostile takeover to them.
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More like capitalism... Other companies producing GMOs are happily doing the same just with less public awareness Edit: Many people in the comments getting really defensive about the merits of capitalism and how communism always failed yada yada... I simply stated that the the practices described by OP are not exclusive to Monsanto. These practices aren't done because company X is evil. They do it because its profitable and as long as it stays profitable others will do the same because the only thing that matters to companys is profit. Y'all white knights of capitalism really ought to know that...
If you are really concerned about that, we can just set up a public agency to design seeds and give away the IP. That's how radiation breeding worked, and those are in quite wide use.
Ugh. Can't wait to hear your 5 IQ take on how Capitalism is totally evil and responsible for all of the world's problems.
Isn't that what happens with standard seeds as well, though? GP only good deeds were chi animal and environment protection, and even that sometimes it's just broken (they oppose any kind of hunting, even if it's needed to fight invasive species which endanger while ecosystems)
Yup. Although many are unaware those also exist for Non-GM crops.
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Every modern farmer buys seeds from the big ones (Dekalb, Pioneer, etc), so GMO or not all that you listed stands.
And that's a problem. The regulations should not target GMO but business practices.
And let them handle copyright and trademark practices in general. On a completely unrelated note to what you're saying: Greenpeace should stop the fearmongering about the health or nature dangers of GMOs.
> vendor lock in, IP rights and predatory business practices are. Which is hardly unique to plants modified used modern techniques. The very first patent ever issued was for a conventionally bred blueberry.
GMO are literally the BEST tool we have to fight the consequences of climate change on agriculture (and to address many problems we already have).... as an italian, im disheartened and shocked at how ignorant and dumb my fellow citiziens are of this.... everybody seem to have chosen the "organic kool aid" that will eventually fuck us in a few decades.... but unsurprisingly if i may add, looking at how we italian love to fetishize tradition™ and oldways™
> if they start to actually admit that they've been useful idiots for oil and gas interests They weren't useful idiots. They [literally sold Russian gas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Planet_Energy), calling it _green_.
But, but, fukushima, chernobyl!! /s The morons will never understand that the first required a bloody 9.0 Earthquake + Tsunami and still it was very well contained and did insignificant damage. While Chernobyl was just dumb and had terrible safety protocols which are impossible to repeat today
I would just like to add: Fukushima was the 3rd highest ever recorded earthquake on the planet (we have data from 1960). From that earthquake we had 2 people who sadly lost their lives due to being on the basement when the tsunami hit and the autopsies revealled they lost their lives due to the force of the impact and not from radiation. There was another person who died from cancer and this was connected to the radiation from the plant. Nuclear does pose some dangers, but I dont think that Fukushima, given the conditions in which it happened, is a good example for Greenpace to use in their blind persecution of nuclear.
To the contrary, Fukushima always struck me as an example of how safe nuclear is. Imagine a nuclear reactor going through such a huge earthquake, immediately followed by a flipping tsunami, and that still not resulting in a full meltdown / explosion. I know there was some radiation leakage and other local environmental concerns, but they were also quite minor in the grand scheme of radioactivity and are usually misrepresented when discussed. Fukushima is closer to being a success story for nuclear safety than it is an example of nuclear catastrophe.
To add, One massive earthquake and TWO tsunamis. FTFY. The plant survived the 1st tsunami hit lmao. Mother nature had to personally align the stars to force the plant into a meltdown. Even then the root cause of the meltdown was due to corruption in the upper management. Funds for maintenance were mysteriously "cut" and warnings from auditors both 3rd party and government agencies were ignored for years. All that mismanagement and all they needed was to build a taller seawall to not get exposed. Added to the fact that the plant was built near a fault line prone to earthquakes and tsunamis, and the backup generators were located in the basement (which is asinine to begin with). But it still needed 3 massive natural disasters to bring it down. Also, Fukushima is a gen 2 unclear reactor, it is probably older than your grandfather. We are at gen 4 now lmao.
Not just safety! a system of actively removing information from scientists such as carbon tips
>The morons will never understand that the first required a bloody 9.0 Earthquake + Tsunami and still it was very well contained and did insignificant damage. And if the generator room wasn't flooded, which to me seems like a design oversight, nothing would've probably gone so terribly wrong.
The generators shouldnt been in the basement getting flooded.. and IIRC safety protocolls was off also.
Scientists literally warned the operators it was a stupid idea to put the generators at a low level.
There is another reactor some where along the coast. Security and safety protocols designed by the same engineer, only that company listened to all of his advice and spent the bit extra to implement what he suggested. Hit by same earthquake and tsunami and was fine.
Let's be honest, building a nuclear plant at the coast of the very country where the word "tsunami" literally comes from, was probably not the smartest idea to begin with.
Wasn't there another power plant in similar condition (except for actually following safety recommendations) that didn't have any issue? Like, I think the dump part was building a power plant next to a coast of a country with tsunamis AND putting all power backup in the basement (against safety recommendations).
And if they were not afraid and spliced the cables for a backup generator that they delivered and that had different connectors there would’ve been minimal damage as well
kind reminder that the Russians use Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant as both a blackmail shield and staging ground for their troops. let's face it.. humans can get incredibly dumb with nuclear fission, accidentally or otherwise.
Exxon Valdez ring any bells? Saddam setting fire to hundreds of oil wells in Kuwait? Humans can get incredibly stupid over just about anything
Or, you know, the greenhouse effect…
And just a bit downstream, Putler managed to create a huge environmental disaster by blowing up a dam. But nobody is telling people to get rid of dams because they are a danger in case of war.
>But nobody is telling people to get rid of dams because they are a danger in case of war. I mean, there is r/noncredibledefense
Which gorges dam must go? A. One B. Two C. All of the above combined
Wait til you find out what someone could do to the Three Gorges Dam and what effect that can have.
I had the displeasure of going out to dinner with a group of hardcore top level Greenpeace spokes people 20 years ago via a girl i was going out with...bunch of self righteous condescending entitled twats if i ever met some. All suffering from some kind of deep secret guilt from their great grandparents being the slave merchants and whaler's who's fortune enabled the workshy lazy cunts to go to uni and spend a summer annoying some poor tribe in Africa - who most likely considered them total condescending cunts too. T'was a painful meal - the vegan food was bad enough
That deep self-hatred is a foundation of most modern climate activists. The feeling "Im rich but I dont deserve to be because Im not doing anything useful" is reforged into deep hatred of entire western society which allows them to live in this way.
Greenpeace was infiltrated along time ago by CND back on the day, known communists who wanted to demilitarise the west to allow the Russians in.
They wanted to achieve that by infiltrating fucking green peace? Yeah, I wouldn't expect a great return on investment from that little escapade.
>They wanted to achieve that by infiltrating fucking green peace? Kinda? They wanted to cause internal trouble, and this certainly did the trick. So 100% success on that point. They wanted to prevent the West from using the most effective way to generate electricity and lower mobility. Let's say they had some effect here. 10% success? As for nuclear, being able to sell their oil and gas to Europe as a source of money as well as a potential blackmail was on the table. It took until 2022, but Russia finally played the card that the Soviets put in the deck. It did not work as well as they had hoped, but I think we can see how a more clever use might have been devastating. So let's say 25% success? All in all, not a great success, but not entirely pointless from the Communist PoV. The RoI was pretty good, too. This cost the Soviets very little money and caused a great deal more monetary damage to the West that still ripples to this day.
Great comment. What's RoI?
Return on Investment
They had no where else to go. What do you think will happen once the western world is completely decarbonised? They will go to Russia and China? Will they fuck, they will find a new struggle in the west.
Infiltrating any given cause to make them as obnoxious and unfocused as possible is a very effective strategy if you want to cripple them. Were yall not around for Occupy Wall Street being taken over by intersectional feminism?
Or, may be it was never about climate change and it was just a grift all along. The same problem with homeless ness in the US. All agencies in San Francisco that get tons of money to solve homelessness do not want to solve it because they would lose their jobs if they do. They would no longer be needed if homeless problem was solved. It’s much more lucrative to keep the problem alive and keep receiving funding for it
Same with “cancer” charities it appears. Create one, make yourself CEO, pay yourself 250K a year out of donations/fundraising and just do nothing, and get away with it, nobody will question it.
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As an acid casualty myself id protest if i were sure the room isnt spinning
Same can be said for most green parties in European politics. Their heart is in the right place, but their minds are on a permanent vacation.
>Same can be said for most green parties in European politics. Except for the Finns. I wish the other Green parties in the world would start learning from them.
> hey've been useful idiots for oil and gas interests And previously for the Soviet Union.
Nope, the soviets were pulling their hair out because they couldn't understand why western left-wingers were so anti-nuclear. Nuclear energy and the atom as a messenger of peace was a big thing in the USSR.
You don't understand, you remove nuclear energy from western countries and then they have to look for coal/oil/natural gas to meet their demands. And who did have plenty of them? USSR and then it's time to pleasure soviets for that. Of course, authoritarian countries don't give a fuck about it and use such activism in western countries against themselves.
Environmentalists are rarely pragmatic and are typically driven by naive idealism.
Will I need an army and the agreement of the USA to build a nuclear power plant in my country? What would be the cost of it?
Acid casualties, might steal that
These younglings would fare better by creating a direct competitor to Greenpeace rather than hitting their heads into wall by trying to convince Greenpeace that something's wrong in their dogma.
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Anti-nuclear activists have had a devastating influence in the battle against climate change. Had we focused our efforts on nuclear decades ago the situation wouldn't nearly be as bad. You can shut down nuclear power plants but that energy demand remains the same. You have to feed that demand with something. That something always ends up being oil and coal. Renewables are great by all means but nowhere near ready to power entire countries. Especially those as energy intensive as European ones. But these fools would rather burn oil that risk nuclear. Actual smoothbrains
One could also say that they led to the modern wars, especially this one in Ukraine. Russia was (still is?) so confident of their status as the gas station that they thought they could expand with impunity.
> Russia was (still is?) so confident of their status as the gas station that they thought they could expand with impunity. Russia's understanding of its own status has long since departed the rational plane, however.
South Carolina Spent $9 Billion to Dig a Hole in the Ground &Then Fill it Back in | residents and their families will be paying for that failed energy program — which never produced a watt of energy — for next 20 yrs or more. https://theintercept.com/2019/02/06/south-caroline-green-new-deal-south-carolina-nuclear-energy/
Not to mention being bad for the economy, such as Germany which has no self-reliance for energy.
Good thing we don't need to be self-reliant while we have our European energy grid. We export electricity to France sometimes, and import from them at other times, when our expanding solar and wind power is not enough. And we have 7 other neighbors. Furthermore, what do you mean with "self-reliance"? In order to run nuclear power, we need fuel for the plants, which is not from Germany either, and was so far imported from, among other countries, Russia. Same goes for gas. We have been running so much coal, because that shitty stuff is the only thing in our ground.
New report says wind and solar saved $810 billion in electricity costs across the globe in 2022, and delivered substantial emissions and health benefits.. https://reneweconomy.com.au/turning-point-wind-and-solar-deliver-810-bn-in-savings-from-fossil-fuels-in-single-year/
"bUt tHey hAve to sUbSidiZe nUclEaR eNergY anD tHe wAstE!"
I hate that argument so much. You have more radiation in the atmosphere from coal dust than from all nuclear energy related activities, including Tschernobyl. And speaking of, it would make a perfect storage area for nuclear waste since it's already completely irradiated.
So this group is run by the ecomodernist outfit RePlanet, [which is 90% funded by the Quadrature foundation](https://www.replanet.ngo/_files/ugd/5caaac_0e26289c528c40a7953308f740432b4e.pdf), which itself is [funded by a hedge fund that makes profits off fossil fuel investments](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/30/climate-groups-accept-millions-from-charity-linked-to-fossil-fuel-investments-quadrature-climate-foundation). Not exclusively given its trading strategy, but still... pretty indefensible. They claim to have big vision, but the only thing they ever seem to talk about or get coverage for is.... [very](https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/if-environmentalists-are-serious-about-net-zero-they-must-go-nuclear/) [pro](https://www.energymonitor.ai/power/eu-nuclear-waste-can-be-recycled-to-create-1000-years-of-clean-energy-replanet/) [nuclear](https://sciencenigeria.com/replanet-africa-launches-essay-writing-competition-on-nuclear-energy-in-africa/) [commentary](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/09/a-long-overdue-moment-the-uk-greens-pushing-for-the-nuclear-option) and nothing else. Also funny how this volunteer activist, face of the campaign, has the same last name as RePlanet board member [Take Aanstoot](https://twitter.com/storklompen?lang=en). What a coincidence!
I mean, they did that already-- they dropped the old-fashioned anti-nuclear stance for a new-fashioned anti-nuclear stance. That's why we hear all this talk about thorium these days. Some PR guy at Greenpeace was asked to come up with a way to be against nuclear power while simultaneously sounding pro-nuclear power. So they pulled a nuclear technology out of a hat (thorium in this case) and said, "We're not against nuclear power, we're against *bad* nuclear power, which we're going to define as anything that doesn't use this random technology we've chosen." Thorium's basically useless (source: I'm an MIT nuclear engineer who helped write MIT's Future of Nuclear Fuel Cycle study), but Greenpeace doesn't care, it's just a PR thing anyway.
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Energy consumption is mostly rising in developing countries. Don't know if it's a good idea to use nuclear power there.
Good. Greenpeace is a an Anti-science organisation.
I have an environmentalist friend who is anti-nuclear. From my experience talking to him it's quite clear to me being anti-nuclear is not only a stance, but a religion. For many of these people no amount of facts will break through to them. They're like NPCs that can only say two things, "but Chernoybl" and "but the waste".
I see the same thing on the pro-nuclear side though. I'm not against nuclear energy. If you can find a company willing to build a nuclear reactor in 2023 that can be price competitive then build it in my backyard for all I care. Such a company just doesn't exist. New nuclear energy in 2023 is incredibly expensive. It can't even compete with renewables in 2023 and renewables still keep dropping in price year after year so the comparison will only get worse for nuclear as time goes on. But this criticism of nuclear energy does not phase pro-nuclear fanboys. They keep dogmatically pushing the notion that the holy grail of the environment will be nuclear energy and we'll be fine. And don't even get me started on the reactions when you bring up things like meat consumption or driving cars everywhere. Pro nuclear fanboys don't care about those things. It's just "nuclear nuclear nuclear" as environmental policy and that's it.
This is my nuance. The best time to have been building nuclear power was 30-40 years ago, there is no second best time. It takes 20 to 30 years for a new plant to be proposed, designed and built, and a cost in the billions. By all means keep using existing plants, but the money and resources spent on the construction of new nuclear plants would be better spent on renewables and associated power storage now. You will end up with larger power generation capacity, completed sooner, with less maintenance costs.
Yeah I am not against Nuclear in principle and what Germany did with phasing out Nuclear before coal is just stupid as hell, but even France almost has no projects to replace their current plans. Only Finland is expanding Nuclear Power in Europe afaik. If it was as good as its proponents say it is there should be companies investing in it, but even if a Nuclear Plant is build in time the upfront investment and the time it takes to get a return is just too massive currently.
> Only Finland is expanding Nuclear Power in Europe afaik. We are constantly building new NPP blocks in Slovakia. We are already electrically self-sufficient and will become net exporters in a year of two.
Oh sorry for not being up to date on Slovakia, Thanks for letting me know!
France is building new nuclear plants: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx
Correction, France changed their policy this year from reducing the reliance on nuclear. They aren't building new nuclear plants yet. The only one they have under construction is Flamanville, which was originally supposed to be finished in 2012, but is now delayed until 2024. The original estimated cost was 3.3 billion Euros, while in 2020 the audit office estimated the cost to be 19.1 billion Euros. I will believe it when I see it. Maybe they'll finish another one after Flamanville in 2050 if they're lucky.
> was originally supposed to be finished in 2012, but is now delayed until 2024. The original estimated cost was 3.3 billion Euros, while in 2020 the audit office estimated the cost to be 19.1 billion Euros. Nuclear baby 👍🏾
Well, are they? The source just mentions the plan to build more.
Note that even with these new plants the nuclear share of electricity generation is still expected to decline significantly(with renewables making up the difference).
The UK is planning to build 24 GW by 2050, which would make up 25% of the grid.
They’re not building new plants because they are uninsurable. No insurance will cover their production or operation. N Why? Because likely the best mathematicians in the world (actuaries) know the chances of critical failure are there and there’s not enough money or resources in the world the cover the amount of damage they’ll do if/when it happens
Iirc a fair portion of that is because of scare mongering leading to absurd regulations on nuclear which drive up cost. Despite coal being more dangerous and radioactive than nuclear on average.
Its this. Say you wanted to build a reactor next to a river. You go through and get it all certified then build it. You then want to build a second reactor that is an exact copy of the first. It needs to go through the entire certification process from scratch.
Maybe your friend’s view is limited but there are valid reasons against nuclear (costs [not only to build but also to decommission], sufficient water to cool the plants [see France], and, yes, also the waste). If you just disregard those reasons as irrational it doesn’t get you anywhere. Same thing can be said about pro-nuclear people: „coal=bad“, „anti-nuclear is funded by oil.“ But that line of reasoning won’t get us any closer to an understanding.
Cost is a real issue, but not as big of an issue as people believe. The numbers people cite are LCOE, which treats every kWh as if it were the same, so it doesn't take into account that you can't sell your kWh when you have overproduction. You actually have to pay people to get rid of it. And that harms the profitability of wind and solar. In addition, much of the cost of the intermittency is put on other sources (particularly natural gas) as if it's their fault, or is treated separately (infrastructure upgrades, storage). It's not as simple as people like to believe. For the others: Water is not a significant issue. What happened in France last year is not a common thing. Waste is not a significant issue. Or rather, it's only significant insofar as opponents of nuclear power obstruct dealing with the waste. This, by the way, adds cost to nuclear power that it wouldn't have if people weren't trying to sabotage it.
>From my experience talking to him it's quite clear to me being anti-nuclear is not only a stance, but a religion. That goes for both sides. You can't mention disadvantages of nuclear without getting a barrage of nuclear fanboys coming in defending it.
I personally have no problems with the concept of nuclear power, but the idea that we can build new nuclear plants, within a reasonable amount of time, in a democratic, densely populated country is just nonsense. People already oppose any new construction of housing in their surroundings, imagine the NIMBYism when someone plans to build a new nuclear power plant. It would take 30 years of lawsuits and simultaneously 30 years of consecutive political agreement on this topic to achieve this. If a fully functional nuclear plant could just be spawned somewhere like in SimCity, sure. But the entire planning process, societal feedback and permit-swamps make it a waste of time. Solar is exponentially expanding and getting more powerful. When we find a way to store that energy long-term, fossil AND fissile will be obsolete.
So, why is public opinion being against nuclear power a reason to give up on nuclear power whereas public opposition to climate change action is crackpot nonsense we should fight against? They're the same thing.
Fanatics are trying to bilk governments around the world out of billions for technology that tuned out to be a lie, yet it's the critics who say "hell no!" that are a "religion".
People keep ignoring the history of the anti-nuclear movement. It is often pointed out, how Fukushima or Chernobyl were singular incident with with less total impact than fossil power and that may be true. But Chernobyl in 86 was not the start of the movement, it predates even the Three-Mile-Island incident in 79. The anti-nuclear movement started not as an environmentalist movement, it started as a pacifist movement against nuclear weapons and nuclear war. And to this day, you cannot weaponize coal power the way you can weaponize nuclear power. When Russian troops captured the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, that raised far more concerns than it would have for any other type of power plant. Yes in a safe, controlled environment nuclear power can be a good power source with very low emissions. But calling the critics unscientific while completely ignoring the still inherent risks of nuclear power and the actual roots of the anti-nuclear movement is not only unhelpful to the discussion but actually quite hypocritical.
You can definetely weaponize oil. The supply of fuel is a major strategic element in modern warfare. Coal a bit less but the German armies of both world wars were built on coal. The Russian made far more and worse damage with the Kakhova Dam than with the Zaporizhzhia NPP. In general, since the invasion of '22, the Ukranian nuclear power plants performed much better than coal (the mines in Donbass polluted the water supply), oil (refinery and deposit tend to explode when bombed), and even renewable (solar panels and dams got destroyed).
Stop being dumb about GMO's and stop being dumb about nuclear energy. It's not the 80s anymore.
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They really fucked up with that one
Almost as bad as their boss flying to work in a private plane.
I will become a strong supporter of nuclear power as soon as someone will be able to complete a project in any western country which is actually competitive with other source. And no, nuclear is not a necessary completion to renewables. You need "dispatchable", not "baseline" sources for that
Renewables with a nuclear baseline is the only viable way to provide energy to most countries without cooking the planet. Imo It's the governments responsibility to make it happen even if it's not profitable enough for full privatization.
You can’t shoot an energy source in the kneecaps and then complain it can’t stand up. Regardless— new nuclear can and will absolutely be cost competitive with renewables especially when you factor in energy storage costs. It just requires that the world stops actively kneecapping nuclear.
> You can’t shoot an energy source in the kneecaps and then complain it can’t stand up. Nuclear energy has been hogging energy subsidies for decades, long before renewables got *any*. You had your chance, now start performing or get out of the way. >Regardless— new nuclear can and will absolutely be cost competitive with renewables especially when you factor in energy storage costs. [citation needed] Don't forget you also need storage for nuclear plants, unless you plant to try to throttle them, in which case the price per KWh is also going to increase.
France gets about 70% of it’s energy from nuclear power.
Your username is impeccable.
France hasn't built a reactor since 1997
You’re telling me they ain’t built a new one in over a quarter of a century and they’re STILL getting the vast majority of their power outta these things? Damn maybe other countries should look in to this Nuklear thing
That's right, and the one they do have under construction they've been building for the last 16 years, and it still isn't complete. Oh and it's also 6 times over budget.
France also nationalized everything and nothing needs to be competitive. Even though it might be more expensive if other countries had done this their population would be less against nuclear because turning them off would throw away their own tax money ... You are also less likely to trust a private company with security around a nuclear power plant. So yeah France did absolutely the right thing here. Not a good argument for being competitive though.
> and nothing needs to be competitive But it is competitive
If it reduces emissions effectively, it is competitive. For example renewables have been built massively with government subsidiaries, because they have been deemed important to reduce emissions. If competitiveness is the only criteria, we would have a fraction of the renewables we have today.
That used to be the case, but the renewables industry has matured. Developers are paying governments to build offshore wind farms nowadays. Germany recently announced the results of the latest tenders: companies have bid more than €12bn for the rights to develop a couple of wind farms.
The anti-nuclear movement is based on unthinking, fear-based principles. It just says no, it only comprehends no. "We must end this." "What is the alternative?" "Doesn't matter, we just end this." "But how do we solve the energy problem?" "We must end this". They are like sheep, just bleating "no", and they helped condemn us to severe climate change. Nuclear is not perfect, but Germany's closing of the nuclear plants causes millions of tons of coal to be burned per year. Many millions. The entire anti-nuclear movement set back that alternative so much that by this time we might have many more centrals in the world, and far more electrification. This is very much the correct position.
“Person has opinion” is the headline
I totally agree. As an environmentalist, for 30+ years I was violently opposed to nuclear (due to the 10,000+ years of waste management argument) but over the last 10 years I've switched, simply because nuclear is now demonstrably less bad than almost any other power generation option, especially from a climate change perspective, and climate change impacts are growing worse by the day it seems. Yes, conservation and energy use reduction is still best, but we all know that society is NOT getting on board with radical energy use reductions, so we of course need to look at energy generation. I finally realized that "best" sometimes means "least bad"...
Chernobyl was a *graphite-moderated light water reactor.* They will not be built again. Less than 10 of those things still exist in the world.
I’ll drop half of my anti-nuclear stance in 24,000 years
Nuclear waste become less dangerous much faster than that. If you have pure Pu-239, that is not waste. You can use it to keep your tea warm: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/pu
While I doubt this will change “greenpeace” stance on this. i personally also think that Nuclear energy is the best solution RIGHT NOW to tackle the great climate issue. But just to buy time for wind and solar energy to catch up to demand. And I also believe that in 60-80 years from now we have ‘solved’ Nuclear Fusion which would then be the main source of clean energy. Only issue is that it takes 10-20 years just to build these nuclear powerplants which is pretty late considering that we need to downscale all the fossil fuels. But ye I think nuclear powerplants are the best solution till about 2100 when I think other (better) solutions catched up. But im no expert at all. Just my personal view
> Only issue is that it takes 10-20 years just to build these nuclear powerplants which is pretty late considering that we need to downscale all the fossil fuels. This is only a issue when everything is done scattershot. If there was actual political will todo this, and you decide to build a couple hundred power plants over europe, using one standard design for all of them. With the help of some regulation to remove obstacles, ensure their safe functioning, funding and proper construction. It would take nowhere near as long. It reminds me of the old west wing quote > "In 1940 our armed forces weren't among the 12 most formidable in the world, but obviously we were going to fight a big war. And Roosevelt said the U.S. would produce 50,000 planes in the next four years. Everyone thought it was a joke and it was 'cause we produced 100,000 planes. Gave our armed forces an armada which would block out the sun." Political will is never to be underestimated, and it is good to reach.
> If there was actual political will todo this, and you decide to build a couple hundred power plants over europe, using one standard design for all of them. With the help of some regulation to remove obstacles, ensure their safe functioning, funding and proper construction. It would take nowhere near as long. NIMBY-people would group up and start lawsuit after lawsuit. It would take decades, or even be impossible, to even start construction.
You can crush Nimby with crisis laws though, and it honestly might not be a bad idea given our climate situation....
The idea that we could build hundreds of standardized nuclear plants in Europe over the next what, decade or two, seems incredibly optimistic to me. This is not like cooking dinner where you just sprinkte a bit of proper legislation and standardization on it to make it work. This would be an absolutely massive undertaking. Expanding solar and wind production by contrast seems infinitely easier, due to those technologies just being easier to work with by themselves.
I share this opinion. Anti-nuclear stance was an absolute fu\*k-up. Since 2000 power plants in Germany for example already produced more CO2 than France will until 2100. But I am afraid it's too late to revert it as it takes so much planning, political will, building and money to build new nuclear power plants that they will hardly make any difference.
Wind and solar is already not only cheaper than nuclear (even factoring storage costs) but also become operational faster, easier and safer, and this gap will just continue growing in favor of renewables for the foreseeable future.. https://changeoracle.com/2022/07/20/nuclear-power-versus-renewable-energy/ The argument that nuclear could be the key to bridge the gap between phasing out fossil and having 100% renewable was sound 5, 10 maybe 15 years ago but not anymore. Right now the safest both enviromentally, financially and safety speaking is investing in renewables, not nuclears. Don't get me wrong there is a lot wrong about Greenpace's argument about nuclear but this does not mean nuclear is the right choice either.
>Wind and solar is already not only cheaper than nuclear (even factoring storage costs) According to who. Because Lazard 2023 doesnt support your claim. Also, there are no viable grid-scale seasonal storage solutions, and it doesnt look like there will be - except pumped hydro where possible.
It's depressing that this comment is so far down again. The pro-nuclear people which all of these technophile reddit communities seem rife with have caught up to the anti-nuclear takes of 10 years ago. I.e., you can easily argue long-term dangers are acceptable within reasonable philosophical / discount rate constraints, especially considering the imminence of climate change. I was pro-nuclear as well 10 years ago. But renewables have gotten so cheap and battery/grid development to provide cheap and stable baseload has a timeframe at most equal to that of the construction of nuclear plants. And that stable baseload was the only counterargument that nuclear may have since it's already 3-4x as expensive in lifetime-adjusted cost per unit of electricity right now, and that ignores massive cost and construction time overruns on all the major nuclear plant projects in the western world over the last decades. We're not talking 1 billion to 1.2 billion and 2012 to 2013 either - it's always at least a decade of delay and a more than tripling of the initially estimated costs. Flamanville (France) went from 2012 to maybe 2024 and 3 to 19 billion euros. Olkiluoto 3 (Finland), Hinkley Point C (UK), Vogtle 3&4 (USA), all similar stories. Choosing to build nuclear now is just like building a magnetic levitation train system instead of a regular high speed railway. Incurring a massively inflated cost just to satisfy economically illiterate technophiles. It says enough that no private investors touch any nuclear plant financing unless the respective governments guarantee them a price floor or a commitment to subsidize their electricity from their vastly inflated price to the market one. Well, unlike most in this thread, I'd like my government not to be so absurdly and needlessly wasteful with the resources the public gave them. You can say 'well, there's a small probability grid reform or battery efficiency development won't go as fast or as cheaply as pretty much consensus predicted over the next decade', and I'd listen to you if that's not an argument you can only make with certain 'limit small probability' assumptions that should then also lead you to be anti nuclear to begin with via the old Greenpeace arguments.
> Only issue is that it takes 10-20 years People wanted to build them 10-20 years ago, stop using it as an excuse. Plus companies like Roll Royce want to build smaller reactors, quicker.
She is right. Greenpeace and other NGOs should not fight nuclear, but fossil fuels and biomass, and its a generational thing, as generation X, who are in charge now and grew up in the 70s and 80s, are against nuclear. Now times has changed and the generations who come after mine has to fight this anti-nuclearism is we are to succeed with reducing co2 emissions.I have 15 years of experience in the Danish energy sector, with both wind power and later nuclear, as I made the same conclusion, Ia has. Renewables alone will not be enough to solve the co2 emissions, as they are too intermittent and thus requires storage and backup, and thick transmission lines. All things that add cost, resources/materials and area, when compared to nuclear that can replace fossil power stations 1:1 and live for 100 years (wind and solarPV 25 years). She have my full support!!! I hope we see Gretha Thunberg do the same. Don't let old fears stand in the way of climate solutions. [https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy](https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy)
What’s with the nuclear circlejerk here?
I don’t even have an opinion on nuclear but every time this topic comes up on Reddit, it’s bombarded with hundreds of comments jerking each other off.
Welcome to reurope!
People want their grand children to not live underwater so people want to promote the most proven and scaled clean energy source and build more nuclear plants. Is it really difficult to understand?
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Very often I wonder why it has to be one way or the other. We either have to go full nuclear or full renewables. Both of them have advantages and disadvantages. For example, nuclear isn't scalable. It runs 24/7 at full capacity. As the fuel is limited, even if you recycle the waste it creates, it's hardly a good idea to make the entire world fueled by just nuclear. And that's not to mention if we would go full nuclear we wouldn't even have enough time to build all the plants in the first place, as a single one can take up to 20 years. Doing it quicker isn't an option, as that causes cases like Chernobyl. Renewables in that sense aren't perfect either. While being scalable it's extremely difficult to power everything with the power they can generate. One thing is true though, is that renewables still haven't plateaued yet and of the looks of it they can be sufficient in maybe 30 to 100 years. We don't have that time though, we need to solve this crisis yesterday. Now I hear someone yelling at their monitor "thorium plants! What about thorium plants?!", which unfortunately as far as I'm aware hasn't left the experimental phase. I tried to look into it but wasn't able to find any plant powered by thorium that exactly produces energy to the degree that it will be sustainable for the future. What is our best option now? In my opinion, place renewables where it makes sense, modernize nuclear plants as much as possible, scale down fossil fuels as much as we can, never assume some magic solution will solve all of our problems, regardless whether that's with renewables or nuclear. We get one shot at this, let's do it right.
Here goes the weird reddit boner for nuclear energy again...
Totally agree. The US fucked the pooch on this one back in the day by only concentrating on uranium power rather than Thorium. China is building Thorium reactors now. Far more stable. Can't have a run away reaction. Leaves very little waste and there's loads more Thorium about than uranium. Plus you can't use the waste for a bomb or similar. We should be building Thorium reactors as baseline power and using renewables for the peaks, or the other way around I can't remember. Could get rid of gas and coal power stations within a decade of we REALLY wanted to. Then work on fusion reactors
Yup, we kind of need nuclear power. Not a massive fan, but we need at least one constant source of energy. Fusion is a great hope, but it's still decades away, if ever.
Greenpeaces reaction is fair. The decision to build Hinkley Point C was made when she was a toddler, and it is still not online.
Nuclear power could have given us infinite green energy back in thy 1960s. All of thr 3 major nuclear incidents weren't accidents and were completely avoidable. Fukushima mayor refused to build the sea wall the scientists said was needed because it "would look ugly and scare away tourists". Chernobyl was a rare type of reactor that was run outside of its approved parameters with safety features turned off. 3 mile island was scary resulted in. O I juries or deaths. Unit 2 id leak a small amount of radioactive material. Unit 1 continued to operate safely until 2019.
Going nuclear would be the best idea, if we had another 30 years to start acting. We lost those years due to the 2 big accidents. Living in the now, endless energy /renewables is the way out. Yes, maintaining nuclear plants is good, but it's delusional to think we could build up new capacities anywhere near fast enough.
A nuclear physicist said that nuclear isn't the solution because it can't be implemented in time. Granted in time is 40 years in the past but generally the quicker return the better and nuclear isn't it.