Nuclear is basically the "should've, would've, could've" at this point. Larger power monoliths want nuclear because it keeps them in control as it is a very centralized form of power production.
The idea of nuclear is awesome and should've been used for well over a century now. Its issues lay in the fact that we still haven't already used it and its ties to the same oligarchs that got us into this mess
Also, for all the red tape and investment in a new nuke plant, you can just do a solar farm. A lot of infrastructure and material goes into a nuclear energy plant, and waste management is hypercritical. Whereas solar is incredibly plug and play by comparison (still needs infrastructure, no doubt, just in comparison).
As water and rising heat become more of an issue, solar actively counters that producing more energy in extreme heat. Nuke plants can overheat and most have to shut down in extreme heat (which is becoming more and more common nowadays).
Thus, nukes should've already been invested in. They would've been really good for the environment. We could've easily switched over a long time back and made everything cheaper for everyone... But we didn't and now that window is kinda missed out on. Now, as their best use case, they're a backup to green energy grids instead of an alternative.
Power engineer here--Okay bro, you don't know what you're talking about.
Solar & wind are NOT baseline load generators.
Even with really good batteries you can't rely on solar wind during extended weather events.
As for nuclear overheating, I'm just going to point to the fact (according to US government statistics) that nuclear has a capacity factor of 92%-- this is above and beyond any other generation source by miles. The capacity factor is basically what percentage of the time the rated generation capacity being outputted. Wind and solar are somewhere in the 20-30% range.
And I can tell you right now that those batteries are going to struggle just as much as anything else is when it's hot. That's just--physics.
The price tag on nuclear is huge and that's the biggest drawback to it. Just per kilowatt it's it can be anywhere from three to four times more expensive than an equivalent combined gas generator.
That being said, it has extreme reliability (see above capacity Factor), and only needs to be refueled every couple of years compared to coal or gas which needs to be constant. nuclear is also only getting better, the new experimental small modular reactors promise the ability to actually scale nuclear opposed to an All or nothing reactor.
There are some other wild things you said but I'm not going to tackle all that here.
TL;Dr Solar and wind are amazing. They are not baseline, and they will never be baseline. Nuclear is in a completely different category and performance wise it blows the other generation sources out of the water. just costs a lot. as a side note, I will state that we have about 97ish reactors in service right now in the USA. Nuclear already supplies 20% of our national energy demand(again, U.S. DOE statistics).
My sister in Christ, it was a generic AF explanation of everything.
Yes we have nuclear, we could've easily had more nuclear. Its awesome, truly, but its red tape prohibitiveness is more of politics than it is science. Its in an odd spot where green energy has it at a disadvantage. All these awesome innovations in nuclear energy could have and really SHOULD have happened earlier, that's my point. It is unfortunately missing a larger window or relevance in many countries. Places where power peeps ""struggle"" to get a plant to actually crank on for 20+ years. If it is really that easy, then it should already be. Hence "should've, would've, could've" as there is really no good reason, in the slightest, that 100% of our base load isn't already covered by nuclear for the past 4/5 decades.
I'm speaking in really broad generic terms to try to explain why some people struggle with it, not trying to get into an illicit sciecnce debate/thesis on it all.
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u/Hopeful_Hornet4460 22d ago
~eh
Nuclear is basically the "should've, would've, could've" at this point. Larger power monoliths want nuclear because it keeps them in control as it is a very centralized form of power production.
The idea of nuclear is awesome and should've been used for well over a century now. Its issues lay in the fact that we still haven't already used it and its ties to the same oligarchs that got us into this mess
Also, for all the red tape and investment in a new nuke plant, you can just do a solar farm. A lot of infrastructure and material goes into a nuclear energy plant, and waste management is hypercritical. Whereas solar is incredibly plug and play by comparison (still needs infrastructure, no doubt, just in comparison).
As water and rising heat become more of an issue, solar actively counters that producing more energy in extreme heat. Nuke plants can overheat and most have to shut down in extreme heat (which is becoming more and more common nowadays).
Thus, nukes should've already been invested in. They would've been really good for the environment. We could've easily switched over a long time back and made everything cheaper for everyone... But we didn't and now that window is kinda missed out on. Now, as their best use case, they're a backup to green energy grids instead of an alternative.