What's wrong with nuclear energy?

[alexw]

I think the US is too big and too distributed for nuclear to ever had a real chance to be be the dominant power generating technology. Nuclear makes a lot of sense in a place like North East. But a place like California, it is probably better to go Solar.

Of course, for the exact same reasons it's impossible to lay new rail lines for AmTrack up here, it is unlikely we'll be in the business of building new Nuclear Power plants where we need them most.

Maybe offshore nuclear energy on re-purposed oil rigs or barges is a solution. Russia had some plans for such designs.

Solar and wind are the perfect way to go. Its almost as if the US climate were tailored for them. Lots of high solar incidence states, and lots of flat land that winds can roll across picking up lots of speed. Just need to solve the storage problem and we are good to go.

[chazus]

Antimatter reactors will be used to generate energy during the next century. It will be the cleanest form of energy, but if something goes wrong with it, the size of the crater will be massive.

Um. What? That's honestly all I can say.

[Shakadam]

Because when something goes wrong it usually goes really wrong.

Fusion is fine, current fission reactions? Not so much.

And yet nuclear energy is the safest form of energy of them all, counting deaths per kiloWatt-hour. Yes there's even fewer deaths than wind power has.
More people have died from radioactive exposure to coal than to nuclear energy (because yes coal is slightly radioactive).


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamescon.../#361f21c0479f

[Deleted]

you can't build anything with an "act of god" in mind.

You can't, not even if you're the most pious. Sometimes god just wants you to eat a dick, look at the spanish armada.

Also; fukushima was top tier engineering "Let's put the piece that we use as security measure when we get a tsunami or quake underground!"

[BannedForViews]

Nuclear power is dirty, dangerous, expensive and obsolete. First of all, it is toxic from the beginning of the production chain to the very end. Uranium mining has sickened countless numbers of people, many of them Native Americans whose land is still contaminated with abandoned mines. No one has solved the problem of how to safely store nuclear waste, which remains deadly to all forms of life for much longer than all of recorded history. And the depleted uranium ammunition used by our military is now sickening people in the Middle East.

Nuclear power is dangerous. Accidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima create contaminated zones unfit for human settlement. They said Chernobyl was a fluke, until Fukushima happened just 5 years ago. What’s next - the aging Indian Point reactor 25 miles from New York City? After the terrorist attack in Brussels, we learned that terrorists had considered infiltrating Belgian nuclear plants for a future attack. And as sea levels rise, we could see more Fukushima-type situations with coastal nuke plants.

Finally, nuclear power is obsolete. It’s already more expensive per unit of energy than renewable technology, which is improving all the time. The only reason why the nuclear industry still exists is because the government subsidizes it with loan guarantees that the industry cannot survive without. Instead we need to invest in scaling up clean renewable energy as quickly as possible.

I laughed so hard at this. Especially this last bolded part. Renewable being cheap? Get your head out of the clouds.

[Deleted]

What's wrong with nuclear energy? What's wrong with the Sun? That's nuclear energy. There's nothing wrong with nuclear energy. There may be something wrong in how you try to harness it.

[Garnier Fructis]

I laughed so hard at this. Especially this last bolded part. Renewable being cheap? Get your head out of the clouds.

He copied a post by Jill Stein.

That's why it's so outrageously stupid.

[Osmeric]

The problem with nuclear is not that it's dangerous, or dirty, or that it produces long lived waste.

The problem is that it's too expensive, and has not been getting cheaper.

Renewables ARE getting cheaper. It's too late for nuclear to compete, and it will become increasingly uncompetitive in the coming years. Some reactors in the US are shutting down because they can't even compete on just operating cost.

- - - Updated - - -

I laughed so hard at this. Especially this last bolded part. Renewable being cheap? Get your head out of the clouds.

You don't understand the current state of affairs. A utility-scale PV facility was recently bid in Abu Dabhi at $.0242/kWh. Nuclear cannot hope to compete with something like that.

[Cæli]

It is wrong because it's not clean (waste is not clean sorry) and non renewable. In other words it's an old technology, symbol of failing to advance in technology when used.

[Mormolyce]

You can't scale a solution with so much inherent risk. You might say that modern reactors are very unlikely to meltdown, but once they become ubiquitous, different story. Especially when rolled out to less scrupulous parts of the world.

And besides, the fuel is still not renewable and the waste products have half lives in the thousands or millions of years. Our only solution is to bury them in deep holes.

[Deleted]

Some people say Nuclear Power is clean, but what of the radioactive rubbish it leaves behind? It's just that no one figured out how to get rid of it, so at the moment this stuff will be around millions of years. It's expensive to find storage for it and no one wants it stored near them.

Obviously Coal etc energy isn't clean either, but that doesn't exactly make nuclear better.

The future should be renewables and hopefully Fusion. Unfortunately Renewables still have to be improved quite a bit, but the longer we take the easy way and rely on Nuclear no one will give any fucks to invent better tech. It's just like in WoW, if the fire doesn't tick for enough damage, then why move out?

Edit:
For reference:
- in Germany a nuclear waste storage place must guarantee safety (ie nuclear shit not spreading via water or so) for 1 million years.
- To cover costs german Energy companies saved ~32.5billion Euro. Costs are expected to rise however, to roughly double (50-60billion).
- 4 years of running a Nuclear Power Plant = ~1000kg Plutonium waste (amongst others). 241100 years later there is still 1kg of the 1000 left and has to be stored safely.
- some nuclear waste stays longer. 0.7% of nuclear waste is 129I with Halflife 15.7 million years. So if in 4 years we have 1000kg Plutonium waste which "only" takes 240k years to almost go away, then these 7kg of 129i shit stay for-fucking-ever

[Deleted]

A utility-scale PV facility was recently bid in Abu Dabhi at $.0242/kWh. Nuclear cannot hope to compete with something like that.

So how do those solar power plants work in countries that do actually have cloud cover? What about winters and heavy snowfall?

[Mormolyce]

And yet nuclear energy is the safest form of energy of them all, counting deaths per kiloWatt-hour. Yes there's even fewer deaths than wind power has.
More people have died from radioactive exposure to coal than to nuclear energy (because yes coal is slightly radioactive).


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamescon.../#361f21c0479f

China SLIGHTLY distorts those death ratios lol.

I suspect the deaths due to fossil fuels are more due to the scale of the industries.

[Cæli]

Some people say Nuclear Power is clean, but what of the radioactive rubbish it leaves behind? It's just that no one figured out how to get rid of it, so at the moment this stuff will be around millions of years. It's expensive to find storage for it and no one wants it stored near them.

Obviously Coal etc energy isn't clean either, but that doesn't exactly make nuclear better.

The future should be renewables and hopefully Fusion. Unfortunately Renewables still have to be improved quite a bit, but the longer we take the easy way and rely on Nuclear no one will give any fucks to invent better tech. It's just like in WoW, if the fire doesn't tick for enough damage, then why move out?

Force greedy selfish rich people to send it into the sun

[Deleted]

Storing spent nuclear rods isn't an issue, and never will be.

Force greedy selfish rich people to send it into the sun

Well, if we're going for a harebrained scheme, why not just dump the spent rods in a fault, and let them sink into Earth's core as one of the plates continues to dive underground.

[alexw]

And yet nuclear energy is the safest form of energy of them all, counting deaths per kiloWatt-hour. Yes there's even fewer deaths than wind power has.
More people have died from radioactive exposure to coal than to nuclear energy (because yes coal is slightly radioactive).


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamescon.../#361f21c0479f

Isn't finland building the most expensive nuclear power plant in the world currently? You know, the one that's massively over-budget, and everyone is fighting over with respect to blame?

[Deleted]

Isn't finland building the most expensive nuclear power plant in the world currently?

If you're talking about Hanhikivi 1, then feel free to provide some sources as to why it would be "the most expensive nuclear power plant in the world."

Without sources the answer would be no.

[chazus]

Some people say Nuclear Power is clean, but what of the radioactive rubbish it leaves behind? It's just that no one figured out how to get rid of it, so at the moment this stuff will be around millions of years. It's expensive to find storage for it and no one wants it stored near them.

As a wise Dwight Schrute once said (actually many times).

"False."

It doesn't 'leave behind' anything. It's not like a car that spews out stuff we can't do anything about. It's a product, that is contained and stored safely. And we know exactly what to do with it, that's safe. Storage is not that expensive (relatively speaking).

And while technically this is just nitpicking, the rods remain active for about ten thousand years, not 'millions'. Literally less than 1% of the time stated.

[Cæli]

Storing spent nuclear rods isn't an issue, and never will be.


Well, if we're going for a harebrained scheme, why not just dump the spent rods in a fault, and let them sink into Earth's core as one of the plates continues to dive underground.

How long would it take and how to know for sure it'll go into the earth core, and will it be safe for the planet after thousands of years?

[chazus]

Isn't finland building the most expensive nuclear power plant in the world currently? You know, the one that's massively over-budget, and everyone is fighting over with respect to blame?

If you're talking about Hanhikivi 1, then feel free to provide some sources as to why it would be "the most expensive nuclear power plant in the world."

I imagine he's talking about Olkiluoto 3, which was over budget, but still only in the 4-6bn range. Hanhikivi 1 will probably hit around the 8bn mark once it's actually done.

Though, neither of those come close to prospective plant in Britain, around the 30bn mark when its done.

How long would it take and how to know for sure it'll go into the earth core, and will it be safe for the planet after thousands of years?

You realize it was a joke, right?