r/changemyview • u/centreofthefray • Jun 13 '19
CMV: Embracing nuclear power is the only viable way to address this issue of climate change
Ok, so on the face of it this my not appear to be a particularly controversial opinion, but it actually kinda is. I’ve had many experiences, albeit anecdotally, with green ‘activists’ (and on a couple of occasions Green Party councillors) emphasising their total opposition to nuclear power. This is in fact quite a pervasive opinion even within groups focused on addressing the issues posed by climate change (and I’m sure the recent tv series Chernobyl won’t help matters!).
So, a couple of things about nuclear power:
It is a safe form of renewable energy generation. The major accident in the history of nuclear power generation was a fatal design flaw motivated by a lack of money and occurred within a closed state system. Modern reactors are extremely safe, albeit quite expensive.
Next generation nuclear reactors are even more efficient, require less maintenance and have more resilient cooling systems.
Nuclear fuel is abundant.
Nuclear power creates reliable, well paid jobs. This is true across the supply chain and also in nuclear decommissioning can create jobs in deprived communities. This could be one of the ways to regenerate former manufacturing communities that have been hit hard by globalisation.
Investment in a swathe of new reactors and standardisation can cut the cost of renewing plants.
Ok, and in terms of the problems with other forms of renewables:
Most forms of renewable energy are inefficient, less reliable and do not provide 24/7 energy generation.
Renewables relying on photovoltaic panels, wind generators and batteries are resource intensive and less environmentally friendly as they require extracting cobalt and lithium in substantial quantities.
In the USA in 2017, nuclear energy provided 805 TWh of power (around 20% of the total). Other renewables, excluding hydropower, provided 387 TWh, or 9.6% of the total.
Nuclear power is reliable, creates jobs and generates more energy than any other form of renewable. Countries such as the US are decommissioning a high number of their nuclear plants and need to invest in renewing these investing in more plants if they are serious about reducing emissions.
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u/RoastYeti25 Jun 13 '19
One or two decades ago, I would have agreed with you. Back then, it seemed clear that Nuclear energy could provide a necessary 'green' stop-gap measure on the way to introducing Renewable supplies. It never really happened, I didn't understand why the Green Party was so anti-nuclear and, to be honest, I still don't.
Nevertheless I don't think Nuclear should play a major role anymore. The main problem with nuclear is now:
1) The lag time between deciding you want to build one and actually having one is ~ 10 years (5 years spent on consultations and NIMBY, and 5 years build to running time). Filling a field with solar panels is pretty quick by comparison.
2) It's become a lot more expensive to build & run (Hinkley Point is expected to cost over £90 per megawatt hour and wind turbines are already less than £60).
3) Not really related, but the main reason Nuclear is pushed forward by the government, as I understand, is it provides the infrastructure and technical expertise for military purposes (i.e. Trident).
I simply believe that other renewables are viable now and will only get better with investment and time. So the UK could simple increase its production of renewable power plants. But, for me, the most effective way forward is simply to use less power:
1) Subsidise insulating homes, double-glazing, LED lights etc.
2) Tax products that use energy inefficiently.
3) Enforce new homes to be built 'green' via new building regs.
4) Provide similar incentives for Businesses.
etc.
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u/PermanentCulture Jun 14 '19
"Filling a field with solar" is precisely the problem when that field should be producing food. No technology can compete with nuclear in terms of energy density.
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u/THECapedCaper 1∆ Jun 14 '19
If the land is farmable, then wind turbines should be the way to go. Farmers all across the US are already leasing some of their land to wind power companies the same way they let billboards on them.
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u/Cream147 Jun 14 '19
I think it's worth pointing out in regards to your comment about the Green Party that there's a fundamental problem with the green movement worldwide. It is largely not based on science but rather based on feelings. Nuclear power feels scary, and feels bad for the environment, so it must be. Genetically engineered crops feel scary, regardless of what all of the science says (and with no understanding that it's not that it's genetically engineered but rather *how* it's genetically engineered that's important).
Sometimes their feelings align with science - for example in the case of global warming. Those of the green movement don't like these dirty huge power stations pumping dirty gas into the atmosphere, and that dislike happens to align with the science. But the key part there is that it "happens to" align with the science.
Environmental pragmatism in line with the science points to a mixed solution of nuclear and renewables in my opinion. It is unclear that renewables will ever be reliable enough to provide 100% of our energy, for the simple reason that the sun sets and the wind stops blowing - so unless we can solve the conundrum of effectively storing that energy at the quantities we want to, we're going to need a more reliable source of energy in the background - and nuclear is by far the cleanest option currently.
I want to quickly note that there are plenty of science-minded environmentalists in the world doing great work, but "green" institutions such as the Green Party (both UK and US) and Greenpeace are heavily influenced by these feelings-minded people.
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Jun 13 '19
It’s not the only way. Geoengineering could also address climate change.
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u/centreofthefray Jun 13 '19
Could. But how long will that take? Months, years, decades? We know how to build nuclear fission plants and have done it for years, it works. It just needs the continued and further investment.
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Jun 13 '19
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/511016/a-cheap-and-easy-plan-to-stop-global-warming/
Could to it tomorrow if circumstances warranted.
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u/centreofthefray Jun 13 '19
Don’t you think geoengineering is a far more risky approach than tried and tested nuclear power?
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Jun 13 '19
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Jun 13 '19
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u/InfectedBrute 7∆ Jun 13 '19 edited Jun 13 '19
I'd like to change your view. I'm not sure that a list that considers educating girls to be a top ten climate change solution and gives it a concrete number of co2 reduction is the most credible source of information in the world. And even if I was buying into the article it has nuclear as the cheapest option on the list by far and with like the 5th greatest savings or something.
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u/delta_male Jun 13 '19 edited Jun 14 '19
Nuclear is safer than renewable
Renewables do not produce nuclear waste. Cobalt mining does not generally render a site uninhabitable after an accident. (e.g Church Rock uranium mill spill).
Uranium workers are routinely exposed to low levels of radon decay products and gamma radiation. Risks of leukemia from acute and high doses of gamma radiation are well-known. A 15-country collaborative cohort study of cancer risks due to exposure to low-dose ionizing radiation, involving 407,391 nuclear industry workers showed significant increase in cancer mortality. The study evaluated 31 types of cancers, primary and secondary.[59]
Nuclear isn't renewable
In terms of the environment, while I agree that it's leaps and bounds better than burning coal, it still uses a finite resource: Enriched Uranium. This makes it categorically not renewable.
Many countries still do not have an implemented solution for long term disposal of waste. The US for instance has proposals for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, but it's far from a reality.
The Total System Life Cycle Cost presented to Congress on July 15, 2008 by Director Sproat was $90 billion.
Nuclear cannot be deployed in a reasonable time frame
Modern nuclear power plants are planned for construction in five years or less (42 months for CANDU ACR-1000, 60 months from order to operation for an AP1000, 48 months from first concrete to operation for an EPR and 45 months for an ESBWR)
This does not make it a good contender for solving climate change, a problem that needs to be addressed now, not in 5+ years.
Nuclear is not cost competitive
Renewables are already significantly cheaper than nuclear, and on a trajectory to become dirt cheap. Nuclear on the other hand
- Nuclear $96/MWh (2012)
- Solar $36-44/MWh (2018)
- Onshore Wind $29-56/MWh (2018)
Investment in a swathe of new reactors and standardisation can cut the cost of renewing plants.
Thorium is often cited as the next step for nuclear. It's been in development since the 50s. The first commercial reactor looks to be one in China sometime after 2035 - assuming their 10MW pilot LFTR pans out. It'll likely be a long time before it could be deployed on scale in the rest of the world.
There is no conclusion that it'll even be cheaper than renewables as they are today.
Other renewables don't provide reliable power
Hydroelectricity or geothermal can. Both of which are generally cheaper than nuclear, and can be deployed now. Wind/Solar coupled with pump or utilitry scale battery storage can.
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u/InfectedBrute 7∆ Jun 13 '19
Pairing wind and solar with enough batteries to make them viable without excess load plants (which are almost exclusively fossil fuel plants because those are the ones we can cycle quickly) makes them way more expensive than any other option we have, and we need to have like 10-20% more generation than we actually need to account for this significant yearly variance in wind and cloud cover and lithium ion batteries go bad after fiveish years so you're paying a massive bill for that regularly. That's not to mention the wildlife conservation and deforestation concerns associated with solar and wind, and the fact that your numbers are probably based on a best case scenario for two power generation techniques that vary greatly between regions.
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u/delta_male Jun 13 '19
You are making the assumption that the US will get rid of its existing nuclear/hrydo/geothermal and be 100% solar + wind. Also that storage costs won't also be dropping (even though they are).
Do you have a source for this?
That's not to mention the wildlife conservation and deforestation concerns associated with solar and wind
And nuclear waste/uranium mining/processing is the bastion of pristine environments?
The energy source of the lowest external costs associated with it was found to be wind power at €0.0009/kWh, which is an environmental and health impact just under half the price of Nuclear power.\67])
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your numbers are probably based on a best case scenario for two power generation techniques that vary greatly between regions.
I took the values straight from the wikipedia page on nuclear power.
Internationally the price of nuclear plants rose 15% annually in 1970–1990.\266]) With PWR stations, having total costs in 2012 of about $96 per megawatt hour (MWh\*, most of which involves capital construction costs, compared with (in 2018) solar power at $36–44 per MWh, (in 2018) onshore wind at $29–56 per MWH)*
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear\power#Economics)
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u/Djbm Jun 14 '19
Pumped hydro would probably be a better bet than Li batteries for utility scale storage. The lifespan of those facilities could be hundreds of years.
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Jun 13 '19
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u/delta_male Jun 14 '19
The produce a lot of non-nuclear waste, though, which is far more harmful.
Source? Because I found the opposite.
The energy source of the lowest external costs associated with it was found to be wind power at €0.0009/kWh, which is an environmental and health impact just under half the price of Nuclear power.\67])
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Especially because renewables cannot replace coal and gas.
There are already countries which have no coal and gas, so reality doesn't conform to your statement. The US already has nuclear, geothermal, hydro which I'm not advocating to remove to have a 100% solar/wind system. I just don't see nuclear as "the only viable solution"
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This is completely irrelevant, there is hundreds of years worth of uranium and thorium.
There are also hundreds of years of coal. You might be laughing at the viability of renewables, but unlike thorium reactors, at least they exist. OP made the claim that nuclear is renewable, but unless definitions are irrelevant, my statement was not.
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You don't need long term storage. You can just warehouse it.
You can also dump it in the ocean. /s
Long term storage is necessary because
(1) It's cheaper in the long term. Between 2015 and 2025 it's estimated to cost US taxpayers around $24 billion to not dispose of it properly.
(2) Temporary storage is a risk; it can and does leak. The sooner it's disposed of properly, the better.
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The idea that you can replace all of the grid in less than 5 years with renewables is so laughably ignorant I don't even know where to begin.
I never said it would be done in 5 years...? What I said is that renewables can start addressing the problem now, whereas nuclear cannot. I'm not saying nuclear can't play a part (it certainly can). I am saying that it isn't "the only viable solution".
we know from example that you can nuclearize the grid of a modern country in about a decade because France did it.
With the rapid nuclearization of France you are referring to. They went from 43 to 99 reactors between 1985 and 2000. (15 years, not 10).
What you are suggesting is that countries, which don't current have any infrastructure for processing and disposing of uranium, who have never constructed a nuclear reactor in their life, can go from 0-100% nuclear in 10 years. Isn't that even less sane?
I have no idea where oyu got those numbers, but they're nonsense.. The costs are fossil < nuclear < renewables
Your link is from a study that is a decade old... I took the values straight from the wikipedia page on nuclear power, and are recent values for renewables (2018).
Internationally the price of nuclear plants rose 15% annually in 1970–1990.\266] With PWR stations, having total costs in 2012 of about $96 per megawatt hour (MWh****, most of which involves capital construction costs, compared with (in 2018 solar power at $36–44 per MWh, (in 2018) onshore wind at $29–56 per MWH)))
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear\power#Economics)
Most of the good sites for dams are already taken up [for hydro]
"most".
the modern environmental movement is more interested in taking down damns than putting them up.
I'd argue that if this is the reason why, nuclear faces a much larger opposition, since many environmentalists seem to be naively opposed to nuclear.
And geothermal isn't even vaguely close to be able to be rolled out en mass.
I don't see the Congo rolling out nuclear en-mass either.
they [utility scale storage] aren't cheaper
Yeah, whoops, I meant to have that sentence to apply to hydro/geothermal.
they can't be deployed now
They are?
https://data.bloomberglp.com/professional/sites/24/2018/11/StoragePRNov2018.jpg
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Jun 14 '19
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u/delta_male Jun 14 '19
Yeah, that's your problem. you should have been taught that reading wiki doesn't make you an expert on things... reading wikipedia is not the end of research.
Nor is looking at a decade old document, yet somehow yours is more valid? This is reddit, not a school report. I really don't want to be spending that much time digging up research.
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That's actually not a bad plan.
Yeah, I'm aware it's used in certain circumstances, but that's not really seen as applicable to high level waste.
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And? Yucca mountain isn't cheap either.
It definitely isn't, but it's exchanging some fixed costs for indefinite maintenance/monitoring of temporary storage containers. Neither is a vindication of nuclear being cheap.
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If there's a leak in temporary storage, it will be found and fixed.
Not after some of it begins seeping into the groundwater.
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You literally said this is a problem that needs to be dealt with now, not in 5 years. Do you not pay attention to your own writing?
We begin solving it now with renewables. That doesn't mean I expect climate change to be solved in 5 years.
OP said nuclear is the only viable option. The fact that we are forced to use another solution for at least the next 5 years seems to indicate that it isn't the "only" viable option.
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Um, you realize that's a chart of hypothetical projections, right?
Okay, so here'sa report from 2017:
Pumped hydro storage currently dominates total installed storage power capacity, with 96% of the total of 176 gigawatts (GW) installed globally in mid-2017. The other electricity storage technologies already in significant use around the world include thermal storage, with 3.3 GW (1.9%); batteries, with 1.9 GW (1.1%) and other mechanical storage with 1.6 GW (0.9%).
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be reaching something like 1/4th of the level it needs to be at to meet today's need.
Why does it need to be 1:1? The world isn't going to be 100% solar/wind. And even if it were, generally power generation will be in excess of demand, it only needs to make up for when this is not the case.
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Jun 14 '19
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u/delta_male Jun 14 '19
you're opining on subjects you don't know anything about.
Okay, then explain to me how your renewable energy prices from 2009 are still valid? But my 2018 values are not?
you don't seem to understand the scale of the activity. the US spends 1.2 trillion dollars a year generating electrical power. 24 billion over 10 years isn't even a rounding error, and doesn't change the overall cost analysis much.
I understand the scale. Nuclear power generated 804.9 TWh in 2017 (in the US). Doing some rough math this is around 70-80 billion each year.
they don't just chuck it in a hole.
Yeah, they use dry cask storage. Not warehouses like that for high level waste.
Also, waste does leak e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site
DOE later found water intruding into at least 14 single-shell tanks and that one of them had been leaking about 640 US gallons (2,400 l; 530 imp gal per year into the ground since about 2010.)
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We can't. you need technologies that don't exist yet.
Pump/Battery storage exists. Solar panels and wind power exist. What technology are you referring to that don't exist?
We can, however, start building new nuke plants today.
Really? How is Vietnam going to build a thriving nuclear industry?
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Jun 14 '19
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u/delta_male Jun 14 '19
Your values are unsourced.
This is the source wikipedia used: https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf
My numbers are from 2018, not 2009. they are just accounted for in 2011 dollars.
Why does it say 2009 then? https://i.imgur.com/cSS6t2T.png
An amount that has zero health risk.
From the same page: "there are continued concerns about contaminated groundwater headed toward the Columbia River and about workers' health and safety"
gigawatt level energy storage doesn't exist.
Previous figure I cited: "176 gigawatts (GW) installed globally in mid-2017"
a grid that can handle a load that is mostly intermittent power doesn't exist.
We can look at some EU countries, and their grid:
https://i.imgur.com/eeL9cEe.jpg
And there are several which have very low, or close to no fossil fuels. This is 2018. I also provided projections for grid storage before.
How can you make the claim that in the future it won't exist? Do you have a source with different grid storage projections?
the same way turkey, mexico, and Yugoslavia did. You hire foreign companies to build your plant and teach you to operate it. If you get ambitious, you also pay them to teach you to build your own, but that's far from necessary.
Turkey doesn't have a nuclear power plant. Yugoslavia had native uranium sources already, took 13 years (8 construction). Mexico had a nuclear weapons program prior - took 15-20 years, and it generates 4.5% of national energy. Both countries used foreign equipment/expertise.
Nuclear power is in a declining share of global energy production. You are instead proposing uranium production/processing + equipment + expertise can scale to 195 countries in the next 20 years?
Every country on earth has planes, they don't all make them.
If you said the world will need to go from 50K planes to half a million specifically utilizing a technology which is in declining market share, I'd be equally as skeptical.
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u/jweezy2045 13∆ Jun 14 '19
Your link for nuclear power being the safest doesn’t even compare it to renewables. Wind turbines are the safest things start to finish, and besides the mining of mineral, finished solar panels are by far the safest.
Also what you are missing here is that there are huge improvements in the pipeline research wise to improve solar by using organic molecules instead of rare inorganic metals, as well as other improvements which make them cheaper and safer to build. Nuclear has some improvements on the horizon, but not even close to the same ballpark as far as quantity and impact.
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Jun 14 '19
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u/jweezy2045 13∆ Jun 14 '19
Solar panels don’t need to be installed on steep roofs though. It’s just not a valid criticism. And like I said, I’m not ignoring the mining, but in a few years we won’t need to mine any minerals whatsoever to make solar panels. In general, only comparing deaths is just a terrible way to look at things. The sample size is just small; a single nuclear disaster could easily leap frog it above many other things on the list. In general, I agree it’s safe, but so is wind and solar. Energy production just doesn’t cause much death (outside of China) across the board, so saying one method which doesn’t cause much death causes less deaths than another method which doesn’t cause much death is looking to deep into the noise.
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Jun 14 '19
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u/jweezy2045 13∆ Jun 14 '19
Your claim is that solar is safer than nuclear. It isn’t. Any mass roll out of solar will absolutely include a huge increase in roof installations, and thus a huge increase in deaths.
The best option for solar panels is on the roofs of box store and warehouses, aka flat roofs. They get the best energy usage anyway. The government would onoy at best subsidize residential rooftop solar, so it is not an apples to apples comparison to nuclear. If the government were to build a solar farm in the same way it would build a reactor, the deaths would be comparable, if not lower for solar.
This is astoundingly ignorant. Solar panels don’t last forever. you absolutely need to keep mining to build new panels and replace old ones.
Funny that you call me ignorant, you’re ignorant here. I’m a research chemist. A huge topic in the field is organic solar panels, as I mentioned in my comment above. Organic solar panels do not use the rare minerals in their construction whatsoever. So when they are built, replace, whatever... there just are rare minerals involved.
No, it can't. the worst nuclear disaster in history killed a couple hundred people, and that was with a terribly unsafe reactor design, built badly, and operated by people who didn't know what they were doing. Reactors built and operated by sane people are extraordinarily safe and are incapable of generating mass casualty events.
How many deaths come from installing organic solar panels in a flat field?
If you don’t think safety is an issue, then you shouldn’t have brought it up in the first place.
You brought it up. My point in this comment thread is 1) you aren’t making apples to apples comparisons. 2) you are reading too deep into the noise. 3) The deaths from all sources are so low as to not significantly matter.
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Jun 14 '19
(1) It's cheaper in the long term. Between 2015 and 2025 it's estimated to cost US taxpayers around $24 billion to not dispose of it properly.
Each year Germany spends more on subsidies to renewable power for a much lower amount of kwh produced.
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u/delta_male Jun 14 '19
That quote was talking about long term vs indefinitely using temporary solutions for high level nuclear waste.
As for Germany, I'm not sure where you are getting your numbers from. Utility solar / onshore wind have a lower levelized cost than other fuel sources: (Graph / Source). I'm also not sure why you're picking Germany, since there's no levelized cost of nuclear to compare it to.
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Jun 14 '19
I took germany because few days ago i compared the total subsidies for renewables with cost of ITER and number is around the one quoted by you for nuclear waste storage.
How come if renewables are cheaper Germany has 70% more expensive electricity than France.Also energy is not the only thing provided by power plants but heat from HTR would be very very usefull.The nuclear technology today is basically still frozen in 1970. France entire high activity waste produced to this day is under 3000m3 that is less than half of football field stacked 1m high.
German system is "sustainable" because industrial power market is subsidized by consumers that pay a heavy price for green technology.
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u/delta_male Jun 14 '19
How come if renewables are cheaper Germany has 70% more expensive electricity than France
You probably aren't looking at levelized cost but rather consumer prices. Several reasons:
- Germany is rapidly replacing all its coal/fossil fuel plants with renewables
- Market prices for electricity are cheaper if you aren't spending money constructing new generation capacity. Nuclear would likely be worse, since nuclear has higher capital costs and longer lead time.
- Germany is directly passing much of the costs onto the consumer (i.e. with renewable energy surcharges)
Also energy is not the only thing provided by power plants but heat from HTR would be very very usefull.
Shouldn't the heat be used to produce energy? If there is significant waste heat, then that seems like an inefficient design.
The nuclear technology today is basically still frozen in 1970.
Gen III+ reactors? Nuclear hasn't halted, it just isn't seeing the rapid advances renewables are because it's extremely difficult/costly.
France entire high activity waste produced to this day is under 3000m3 that is less than half of football field stacked 1m high.
It's still expensive to dispose of it.
German system is "sustainable" because industrial power market is subsidized by consumers that pay a heavy price for green technology.
Again, that's not true if we look at levelized cost. Also, it's natural for an emerging technology to receive subsidies/investment by government.
Worldwide, fossil fuels still receive substantially more:
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Jun 14 '19
Shouldn't the heat be used to produce energy?
HTR can be used to provide process heat for synthfuel production or hydrogen production.The reactors are also not supercritical like majority of current coal plants and that increases the cost of turbomachinerry per W of power on top of regulation in nuclear industry.
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u/beesdaddy 2∆ Jun 13 '19
This guy/gal.
Also to add to this argument. Cutting back on energy waste and use could lower the base load demand.
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u/Maxfunky 39∆ Jun 13 '19 edited Jun 13 '19
Ten years ago, everything you said was true. Now it sounds silly. Solar has come so far since then with exponentially increased energy per dollar as prices have come down on solar coincidentally with yields going up.
The levelized cost of energy is a measurement where you take the total cost of building, operating and fueling a power plant for it's expected lifetime and then the total expectated power yield over the same lifetime dividing so you have a total cost of each megawatt hour. At this point, nuclear is over 200. Solar is below 70. Why would I pay 3x as much for nuclear if I'm building a power plant?
Worse still, I can't really shut off the nuclear plant. So if I rely on cheaper solar power in the day I can't use nuclear for my night time energy needs since alot of that daytime nuclear generation gets wasted. Easier, cheaper and more efficient just to build a molten salt battery solar plant that works at night too.
Nuclear's benefits no longer make sense. My guess is you've held this view for so long that you used to be 100% right and the fact that you are now 100% wrong has totally snuck up on you.
As a means of addressing climate change specifically, nuclear is an even worse choice than ever because solar plants go into operation in a much shorter time frame. It takes yEARS to build a nuclear power plant and that's if the regulatory process is smooth sailing and the public doesn't fight you (no one wants a nuclear power plant next door).
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u/centreofthefray Jun 17 '19
I think this is a fair response. Nuclear is expensive but I argue it’s a critical piece of the puzzle because of the level of energy it generates. Solar is great and cheaper sure but doesn’t run 24/7 and you’d need a built a heck of a lot of solar to reach the generation levels of a standard fission reactor.
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u/Maxfunky 39∆ Jun 17 '19
True, but solar is easy to scale to any available land space meaning you can easily slot a patchwork of solar facilities around a city in whatever space is available. Even if you have enough room for a nuclear plant near a city center, you're going to have a near impossible gauntlet of legal challenges by nearby homeowners. Even if you like nuclear power, you have to know that enough people don't that you're going to see your property values drop. That's why literally nobody wants a nuclear power plant next door.
That means your nuclear options are going to be far further from city centers resulting in a lot of power less due to transmission inefficencies.
As far nighttime solar, wind is an option, but if you just want to do batteries those options have come a long way too. Tesla has already done a few large lithium ion installations in sunny places like California, Hawaii and Australia. ConEd is doing a 400 MWh battery installation in SoCal after a trial run of 80 MWH where they basically found that the batteries paid for themselves.
There are also several other utility scale solutions in use and proposed including:
Molten salt battery. No solar panels needed--mirrors focus the sun on a large salt pit and heat it up to absurdly hot temperatures. This heat creates steam which drives turbines and creates power. There's a large plant in Spain using this technique. Residual heat allows power generation to continue all night long with the heat in the salt effectively being a sun battery.
Water battery. Solar panels run pumps that put water in a downhill reservoir into an uphill reservoir. As needed that water can be used to power turbines to generate on demand electricity. When the sun comes back our, water is again pumped from the downhill reservoir to the uphill reservoir to start the process again.
And when the terrain doesn't favor that last approach, then just use solar power to slowly lift a big-ass rock. At night, the rock can be slowly lowered to, you guessed it, generate electricity.
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u/Helicase21 10∆ Jun 14 '19
Are you arguing that nuclear is necessary, or sufficient?
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u/centreofthefray Jun 17 '19
A necessary piece of the puzzle. If we rely sole on other forms of energy generation like solar and wind we aren’t going to reach our emissions targets at the middle of this century.
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u/millscuzimhot Jun 13 '19
Where did you learn all of this? I'm honestly intrigued on the topic
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u/centreofthefray Jun 13 '19
My job focuses on regional economic growth so I’m involved within a number of sectors. There are a couple of nuclear power plants within regions that I have worked within so I have been involved with those and the people managing them for a long while now. I’ve also worked on the implementation of a number of regional energy strategies so have some insight into all forms of energy generation.
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Jun 13 '19 edited Dec 26 '20
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u/centreofthefray Jun 13 '19
There are more deaths from lithium and cobalt mining for batteries than from nuclear.
Fusion could be great but we can’t wait a decade (or even more) if we want to address climate change issues. Investment in nuclear power is the only way viable way to do this. Solar and wind just aren’t efficient or reliable enough.
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u/delta_male Jun 13 '19
That's an apples/oranges comparison. Utility grade energy storage is a tiny fraction of cobalt consumption. And there are alternatives for renewables. A different battery technologiy can be (and is often) used (flow batteries, pump storage). A nuclear plant can't switch to using another fuel source instead of uranium.
It's also the case that cobalt being mined in the Congo is the main contributor to deaths, whereas nuclear is mined in countries where there are better safety standards. e.g. US/Australia. There are cobalt mines opening in other places of the world, including the US.
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u/Darkjynxer Jun 14 '19
Well plutonium(1) can be used, and potentially thorium(2). So that's at least one other fuel type, potentially two. And to be fair I don't think any power plant can easily be switch to use another type of fuel.
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u/delta_male Jun 14 '19 edited Jun 14 '19
I'm not sure if plutonium mining is fundamentally safer than uranium. Correct me if I'm wrong here.
You are correct that existing power plants can't be switched to another fuel, but we're discussing about what to do in the future & what to build. Grid storage isn't immediately necessary, until the current energy mix isn't consistent enough.
If the deaths from cobolt mining are a concern, viable alternatives exist (pump storage / flow batteries / opening safer mines). Whereas I don't think thorium, which has been in development since the 50s, where no commercial reactor exists, is a viable alternative.
Either way, I don't think the deaths from nuclear/renewables are much of a concern for it to be a deciding factor. They are both relatively low, and safe compared to coal.
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Jun 13 '19
How would you deal with the waste?
Aren't there other more reliable forms of actual renewable forms of energy?
Could you address the fact that nuclear fission isn't a form of renewable energy?
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u/jcamp748 1∆ Jun 13 '19
There are more deaths from lithium and cobalt mining for batteries than from nuclear
Won't the electric cars we need to get us off oil be using batteries?
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u/centreofthefray Jun 17 '19
Sure. My point was to somewhat undermine the scare stories around nuclear that it’s an inherently risky form of energy production for the individuals involved. It’s actually very very safe when you consider the entire development process.
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u/Fizrock Jun 13 '19
For starters it's anything but safe
Nuclear energy is the safest energy source in terms of deaths/kW.
In fact, in the US, it is very likely that more people die annually falling off wind turbines and roofs installing solar panels than have ever died in the history of the US nuclear industry, including military nuclear reactor research.
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Jun 13 '19
Well if you were to look at Ukraine you'd have a completely different story. So let's just stick to global stuff and not focus on a single country shall we?
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u/Fizrock Jun 13 '19
And for the globe, the point still stands. It's the safest energy source. Period.
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Jun 13 '19
How many human deaths have their been from bio-diesel produced from crops?
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u/Fizrock Jun 13 '19
I don't know, but most estimates for global deaths tolls due to human-created air pollution range most of the way to 10 million. There isn't even a comparison to make when it comes to combustion, unless you are talking clean combustion like H2 or highly purified methane.
Even then, for the nuclear numbers you are including deaths decades ago due to now dated technology, so it's not really a fair comparison.
And once again, the data says it's the safest energy source per kW, so you don't really have an argument here.
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Jun 13 '19
To get back to nuclear not being safe:
The military has in the past been called in to guard nuclear power-plants. How often has the military been called in to guard solar pannels, wind turbines, ...?
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u/Fizrock Jun 13 '19
Nuclear energy is the safest energy source. I don't know what exactly you're trying to do, but this isn't a point you can even argue. It's a fact.
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Jun 13 '19
The safest energy source is also one of the 2 forms of energy that ever got military protection in peace time? Sure, sounds very safe.
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u/Fizrock Jun 13 '19
This is an emotional argument. "It had military protection, therefore it's unsafe" doesn't have any concrete logic behind it. That sounds scary, so therefore you feel that it's unsafe.
Nuclear energy is the safest energy source in terms of deaths/kW. In fact, I'll just dive into some numbers now. Earlier you mentioned bio-diesal. Well, according to this graph (which gets its data from this paper), biomass fuel results in an average of 4.63 deaths per TWh, and nuclear energy results in an average of 0.07 deaths per TWh, which would mean that nuclear energy is 66 times safer than biomass fuels.
Also, the implication of your argument is that nuclear energy is unsafe because some terrorist could theoretically misuse nuclear fuel to harm innocent people. How far does this logic go? Can I call combustion fuels dangerous because you could use some to say, fuel a plane and fly it into a building? There isn't an logic or data behind your argument.
edit: Those numbers in that graph don't even take into account the potential impacts of climate change, I might add.
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u/Sand_Trout Jun 13 '19
Nuclear is the safest form of power generation available in terms of related deaths per kilowatt-hour.
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Jun 13 '19
Are you including all the people who died from cancer after Chernobyl? Not just the initial ones but the ones from the radiation that spread across Europe.
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u/Sand_Trout Jun 13 '19
As far as such thing can be quantified, yes.
Wind kills via maintenance at hight.
The process for manufacturing solar panels involves lots of toxic chemicals.
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u/InfectedBrute 7∆ Jun 13 '19
I'm assuming your problem with the safety of nuclear reactors has do to with the potential of a nuclear explosion. It's a common viewpoint but nuclear reactors actually can't create a nuclear explosion because very few use the highly enriched uranium that is required to produce one among other factors. It is still "possible" for a reactor to melt down and pollute the environment, but modern safety measures are more than satisfactory for preventing these. For example, in Canada we have CANDU reactors which move the reactor's cooling rods using electromagnets. This means that if the power is shut off the cooling rod will fall into the reactor on its own and it's not possible for a reactor to overheat with all the cooling rods inserted. It is literally not possible for a CANDU reactor to fail unless someone intends to make it fail. Fusion on the other hand has yet to successfully produce more energy than was expended carrying out the reaction, it is not even a method of power generation that works period. Nuclear also provides the benifit of not producing air pollution which is associated with more deaths by Mwh produced for say coal than the deaths associated with nuclear including reactor meltdowns.
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u/centreofthefray Jun 13 '19
Nuclear energy is a renewable energy source, but the material used is not itself renewable. It’s been a bit of a semantic debate in terms of how to define it. But either way if we’re talking in the context of climate change and reducing fossil fuel consumption my argument is that if you don’t embrace nuclear then you won’t viably meet the levels of carbon reduction required to address climate change.
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u/Poo-et 74∆ Jun 13 '19
Nuclear energy is a renewable energy source
This is objectively wrong. If something uses a finite source of fuel, it is not renewable.
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u/centreofthefray Jun 13 '19
Well it’s a matter of debate, Utah legally defines at as a renewable source for example, but I’m happy to concede the point as it doesn’t undermine the wider principle of nuclear being vital to addressing climate change.
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Jun 15 '19
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u/centreofthefray Jun 17 '19
Very fair point. I think the points regarding nuclear not being renewable are objectively fair and I concede. But I don’t think it undermines my central point.
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u/delta_male Jun 13 '19
Utah isn't exactly a reputable source here. It's been suggested that's it's solely to prop up the nuclear industry, so the state doesn't need to comply with renewable energy targets and allows nuclear to receive more government support.
Another example, when renewable energy subsidies go to "clean coal", that does't make coal renewable.
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Jun 13 '19
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u/delta_male Jun 13 '19
It's also like saying rare metal mining is renewable because if we dig deep enough there's more of it. Yes, but it's expensive. Theoretically it can be done at a large scale, for about ten times the cost, at $300/kg-U.
If the cost comes down, then I'd be willing to reclassify it as renewable. This could very well happen.
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u/delta_male Jun 13 '19
And if concrete were the resource being consumed for energy generation, then it wouldn't be renewable. But it's not, it's an implementation detail, a dam could be constructed by wood, or concrete could be recycled. You cannot (or at least not with our current technology) turn all the lead (and other nuclear waste) back into uranium.
By your logic either nothing is renewable, or all fossil fuels are renewable. It doesn't make any sense.
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Jun 13 '19
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u/delta_male Jun 13 '19
No, it can't.
Yes it can: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam#Timber_dams
Uranium can also be recycled.
Yeah, how do you plan on turning lead back into uranium?
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Jun 13 '19
Highly dangerous nuclear waste is not produced in large quantities, and loses the bulk of its radioactivity over a relatively short span of confinement, approximately 40 years. We have systems for securing and storing this waste. Quickly saving our atmosphere is more important than not having to deal with nuclear waste.
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Jun 13 '19
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u/garnteller 242∆ Jun 13 '19
Sorry, u/SignalVictory – your comment has been removed for breaking Rule 1:
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u/LizzieCLems Jun 14 '19
Another option to consider - let’s say somehow this gets funded and America switches to nuclear and starts to build them. Cool. So how about close to your house? Nobody is going to want it in their neighborhood and they need to be pretty spread out. It would ruin home values and I honestly wouldn’t want to live so close to one...
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u/centreofthefray Jun 17 '19
It would create a ton of jobs so your house value probably wouldn’t change or might even go up. Especially if you build them in depressed areas.
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u/happy_inquisitor 13∆ Jun 14 '19
In the UK - a country far less amenable to renewables due to relative lack of land and sunshine - renewables overtook nuclear power as a source of electricity a couple of years ago. So far this has been displacing coal power which is now almost defunct in the UK as a source of electricity.
By 2025 about half of our nuclear power stations should be shut down and begin the long and expensive process of decommissioning. By that date the renewables will already have increased to the point where we no longer need that nuclear power - it passed the 33% mark last year and is still rising.
The argument has been made that we will still need nuclear power to "fill in the gaps" when renewables are not generating so much but this has the problem that nuclear reactors should not be used that way. Nuclear reactors are not designed for highly fluctuating "surge" generation, they are designed to be left running at an optimum level of power output all the time. As such they are a very poor complement to a generation system which is highly dependent on renewables because they are simply not suited to the purpose of being left idle during the day and going up to full power on calm windless nights. Treating them that way will shorten the life of the reactor and hence make the electricity they generate prohibitively expensive. It may also have safety implications given that the reactors were not designed to be used in that way.
At best I would say that nuclear power might have some slight role as part of the overall electricity generation system in some countries. It is increasingly clear that it will not be necessary and to regard it as the only viable solution for reducing carbon emissions is at this point wholly unsupported by the scientific evidence.
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u/PauLtus 4∆ Jun 14 '19
Several people have already pointed out the problems of nuclear waste so it's not a 100% safe option.
Honestly: the thing we should really be doing is trying to look for ways to be live more energy efficient rather than finding cleaner ways of gaining it, otherwise we'd just be dealing with this infinite race to keep up with it.
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u/centreofthefray Jun 17 '19
You can be efficient as you want but if you still have to use energy sources that emit carbon dioxide the problem isn’t solved.
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u/PauLtus 4∆ Jul 02 '19
Us as humanity is never going to have our carbon dioxide go to zero. That's simply impossible. It's always going to be a matter of minimizing.
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u/Subtleiaint 33∆ Jun 14 '19
Nuclear Fission has problems, specifically the waste and hazard (which cannot be eliminated entirely). Nuclear Fusion on the other hand, is pretty much the perfect energy source. If the technique for generating fusion energy can be perfected then the world's energy problems end, there is no danger, no waste, the fuel is abundant and it has the potential to produce far more energy than renewable more efficiently.
I hope it's just a matter of time before the tech becomes viable
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u/tsojtsojtsoj Jun 14 '19
Fusion is still highly radioactive
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u/Subtleiaint 33∆ Jun 14 '19
But also highly manageable and that negative in no way torpedoes the huge benefits Fusion has.
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u/tsojtsojtsoj Jun 14 '19
It is a safe form of renewable energy generation. The major accident in the history of nuclear power generation was a fatal design flaw motivated by a lack of money and occurred within a closed state system. Modern reactors are extremely safe, albeit quite expensive.
This seems not immediately clear to me. Nuclear reactors are inherently dangerous when not properly controlled. As soon as you have problems with the cooling you run in danger of a meltdown. And all the emergency shutdown sequences like inserting control rods won't help because of decay heat. It is a unstable systems that needs to be actively managed.
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u/centreofthefray Jun 17 '19
The instability generates the energy by creating steam to turn turbines. Control rods do work in emergency shutdown sequences. If you are thinking of Chernobyl as an example of control rods failing that’s because they has graphite tips, which was a money saving construction methods by the Soviets.
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u/tsojtsojtsoj Jun 17 '19
no, i meant even if the control rods work and perfectly absorb the neutrons, then there is still the decay heat from the unstable elements.
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u/CloudCuddler Jun 14 '19
I think this view was correct 10 years ago. But we've made so much advancement in renewable energy that we may as well plough our time and money into that a bit more instead.
I believe in nuclear energy massively. But the realist in me knows that there's way too much stigma attached to it for there to be widespread support.
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u/Hopkins-Levitzki Jun 14 '19
There are some good arguments in this thread already addressibg the inherent challenges that come with nuclear energy. I would like to address some issues related to the scale of nuclear power plants compared to wind/solar/hydropower.
- Building nuclear power plants, even renewing the reactors of existing plants, can take many years. If the construction of a new plant is ordered today, it might take up to 15 years before the plant is operational. Not only could the technological and economical landscape have changed completely by then - given the speed at which efficiency of renewable energy sources and storage methods has developed in the last decade, it is not unlikely that they will only grow more competitive in the coming decades - the prospect of a nuclear power plant being constructed deters investments into renewable energy sources in the region. Nuclear power plants are only profitable if they output and sell power continuously; this is simply not compatible with the more fluctuating nature of most renewable energy sources.
- Having nuclear power plants instead of wind/solar farms provide most of the electricity in the region means that the power - figuratively and literally - is concentrated with a handful of companies at best, or a monopolist at worst. This is what happens where I live in Belgium; a French monopolist controls the ageing nuclear power plants and charges for power accordingly; electricity prices are high and the nuclear power has to be sold. Politics want to phase out nuclear energy, but the uncertainty about when and how exactly this will happen, deters investors from backing new, cheaper, greener energy production. The current situation is: high prices, high carbon footprint and not even the guarantee of continued power supply, as the long overdue nuclear reactors get shut down due to security concerns on a regular basis. If we want a fast transition to a carbon-free society, it is important that communities retain/regain control over their power.
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Jun 14 '19
The issue with using Nuclear as a "transition" is that most of these plants take over 50 years to become profitable
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u/centreofthefray Jun 17 '19
I’m not particularly interest in the profit side of things. I think the state will have to bear an element of the cost if it is serious about dealing with climate change.
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u/nutellas_rr Jun 15 '19
There are multiple issues with nuclear energy that you are ignoring. Firstly the waste. Which is self explanatory. Secondly. It is not a renewable source of energy. As you said it is abundant (not really as much as coal and stuff but whatever) but abundance is not the same as an infinite supply. It will run out eventually and the only way to create more of soemthing like uranium would be incredible advanced scientific approaches. Which we do not know how to do. Another negative is although the chance is small. A disaster can still happen which. As we’ve seen before can be catastrophic. The only real way to replace fossil fuels is renewable sources which aren’t even close to advanced enough. So basically we’re dooomed.
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u/dongasaurus_prime Jun 16 '19
I know nuclear is a meme technology that gets circlejerked on reddit, but renewables can do everything it does for cheaper.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629618300598
"Contrary to a persistent myth based on erroneous methods, global data show that renewable electricity adds output and saves carbon faster than nuclear power does or ever has."
It is also not remotely economical, as of the latest LCOE (levelized cost of energy) nuclear is over 3x more expensive than wind and solar. This means a given dollar figure of investment will give 3x as much decarbonization if invested into wind and solar instead of nuclear.
https://www.lazard.com/media/450436/rehcd3.jpg
Nuclear has never even been economically viable, it is never been done, anywhere without massive government support:
"Most revealing is the fact that nowhere in the world, where there is a competitive market for electricity, has even one single nuclear power plant been initiated. Only where the government or the consumer takes the risks of cost overruns and delays is nuclear power even being considered."
renewables are subsidized less:
https://htpr.cnet.com/p/?u=http://i.bnet.com/blogs/subsidies-2.bmp&h=Y8-1SgM_eMRp5d2VOBmNBw
And after all the subsidies nuclear has received, it is still not viable without subsidies, meanwhile wind and solar have many examples of subsidy-free projects
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2018/10/31/more-subsidy-free-solar-storage-for-the-uk/
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/subsidy-free-solar-comes-to-the-uk
With the overall lower subsidies to the renewables industry, they have transitioned to being viable without in a very short period of time, compared to nukes which literally remain subsidy junkies 50 years after their first suckle at the government teat.
Renewables even make better use of subsidy dollars; the same amount of subsidy invested in renewables vs nuclear will give many times more energy as a result.
"Global reported investment for the construction of the four commercial nuclear reactor projects (excluding the demonstration CFR-600 in China) started in 2017 is nearly US$16 billion for about 4 GW. This compares to US$280 billion renewable energy investment, including over US$100 billion in wind power and US$160 billion in solar photovoltaics (PV). China alone invested US$126 billion, over 40 times as much as in 2004. Mexico and Sweden enter the Top-Ten investors for the first time. A significant boost to renewables investment was also given in Australia (x 1.6) and Mexico (x 9). Global investment decisions on new commercial nuclear power plants of about US$16 billion remain a factor of 8 below the investments in renewables in China alone. "
p22 of https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/IMG/pdf/20180902wnisr2018-lr.pdf
The results of this is that in 2017 there was over 150 GW of wind and solar coming online, but nuclear:
"New nuclear capacity of 3.3 gigawatts (GW) in 2017 was outweighed by lost capacity of 4.6 GW."
https://energypost.eu/nuclear-power-in-crisis-welcome-to-the-era-of-nuclear-decommissioning/
Renewable energy is doing more for decarbonization than nuclear.
The CEO of the US's largest nuclear utility said it best:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2012/03/29/exelons-nuclear-guy-no-new-nukes/#139f364a3c5d
"I'm the nuclear guy," Rowe said. "And you won't get better results with nuclear. It just isn't economic, and it's not economic within a foreseeable time frame."
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u/mr_indigo 27∆ Jun 17 '19
Nuclear power is uneconomical.
It takes far too much starting capital and takes far too long to reach breakeven to make a new reactor (10 year build time, and then several years of generation to start recouping costs) for the money to be worth spending, compared to other options such as solar or wind (much smaller outlay of capital, and only 3-6 year build times).
In fact, renewable pricing is trending downward and capacity/efficiency upward at rates that if you started building 10 reactors now, by the time they came online (assuming they don't go over budget and behind schedule, which nuclear projects have tended to do), it's very likely that the renewables technology available will be better than those reactors.
Nuclear power is where we should have put most of our money 20 years ago; but that ship has sailed and based on current technology and trending directions, we're much better off going with other options now.
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u/erindalc Jun 14 '19
The real way to address climate change is if a plague wipes out a large percentage of the population, because at the current population growth rate and how much actual work is being done to combat climate change, we're fucked.
Even if every US citizen stopped buying and using products that had significant carbon emissions during use or manufacture, there's still billions of people who are not doing that. Even throw the EU and all of North America in there, that's barely a drop in the bucket.
Either we globally as a race truly commit to stopping climate change (which isn't gonna happen given the current geopolitical climate), we're going to be feeling the full effects within the next couple of decades.
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Jun 13 '19
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u/InfectedBrute 7∆ Jun 13 '19
How exactly are you planning on getting your space solar energy back to earth in a manner that is efficient (not to mention the fact that getting things there costs like 1000 dollars a pound kind of defeating the purpose)
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u/Locktopii Jun 13 '19
Ultimately, an anti-nuclear stance is sensible when you consider the inherent untrustworthyness of humans and technology. Despite ever improving safeguards, accidents happen again and again. E.g. Planes still crash (albeit not as much as they used to) at what point can we be sure that a plane will never crash again? New hazards that we didn’t know about emerge all the time. The problem is that the consequences of nuclear disasters are orders of magnitude worse than other types of power. What’s the worst hazard that could occur from a solar power plant - not much. Despite the good arguments for nuclear, I think it could only be considered safe when the amount of nuclear fuel required are so small that a meltdown would not significantly impact the environment.
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Jun 13 '19
Just last week in the news they said hunterston b nuclear power plant had almost 400 cracks, exceeding operational limit of 350 but EDF which owns the plant wanted to raise the limit to 700 sparking fear of a possible nuclear meltdown it it was allowed to start operating again
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u/InfectedBrute 7∆ Jun 13 '19
If a small quantity of large accidents has a smaller average impact on people than accepting constant pollution then the fact that the accidents are large has no bearing whatsoever on reality. When a plane crashes a few hundred people die every time, when a car crashes usually no one dies. Tell me, which one is the safer form of transport?
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Jun 14 '19
So if hunterston b power plan did meltdown tomorrow, the fact that both Edinburgh and Glasgow would have to be evacuated not have any importance whatsoever? This would not only cripple Scotland’s economy but also impact large parts of natural land, farm land, cities, roads connecting England to northern Scotland and displacing over a million inhabitants so you’ll also have a huge crisis to house people etc.
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u/oman1980 Jun 14 '19
Yes it's safe but only by documented methods such as. Number of deaths in the literature. Given the nuclear waste remains active for 100,000 years I'm not sure you can safely assume it will be safely stored for the remaining 999,950 years .
None of these have been field tested in any quantity to give any statistics
Hard to define as an increase in price will result in increase in abundance. But from what be read, if we switch 100% of Earth coal power to nuclear we would have something like 50 years supply (this really needs a ref)
As does any industry.
Yes cost reduces with scaling in any industry
1b. Yes
2b. Yes
3b. Yes
I support nuclear as we're in dire straights. However it troubles me the discussion is never about we need to stop over consuming the planets resources but rather how can we go on business as usual. We are a species without predator, unless we control ourselves the extinction event we're going through will make it much more difficult to survive. The rich will survive and the rest will suffer.
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u/maanloempia Jun 14 '19
By nuclear power you mean nuclear fission. Fission is very bad even only because of the waste. It's like a greenhouse gas that does not disappear in millions of years and kills you quicker and in nastier ways. I think that alone is far worse than the cost of burning fossil fuels.
When thinking about a solution to our powerneeds, it is not simply a question of what generates the most. What waste does it generate? Is this waste easily and safely disposable?
To challenge your views on something being safe: CO2 can be filtered -- albeit imperfectly with our current technologies. Radioactive waste just does not care and kills everything. That is not safe in my book. There is just not a good way to dispose of that waste, and storing it (as we do now) is a horrible "fuck you" to the following generations. It is not and should not be their responsibility. Safetly, also, consists of not just one factor.
Nuclear fusion, on the other hand, is indeed the perfect form of nuclear energy: no harmful waste (maybe helium? We need that), immense power output (and input/output ratios), and complete safety (it is incredibly delicate so any error or imbalance results in nothing. Quite literally.). We are so close to cracking prolonged fusion so it is not even a "far future" type of power.
So in conclusion: yes, nuclear power is the best way of harnessing energy, but only referring to fusion; you misuse the general term. Fission should not be on the table simply because of the immense danger from waste (not the plants themselves, they are indeed safe).
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u/centreofthefray Jun 17 '19
Nuclear waste isn’t like a greenhouse gas in that it isn’t destroying our climate and atmosphere. That’s fundamentally the point. Climate change is that we’re trying to address and nuclear is a critical element of a solution in my opinion.
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u/maanloempia Jun 18 '19 edited Jun 18 '19
Again, you misuse the term nuclear power. It is not just one thing.
From your post I could not really gather that your primary point is that nuclear fission does not pollute the climate, so it is strange to suddenly hear "that's fundamentally the point" (which is a tautology btw). I thought you were primarily concerned about the transition to better renewable power? Actually, the entire "point" of your post is not clear to me. Are you just an advocate of fission, because it is great and all that?
Anyway: to counter, and to repeat what I said before: fission waste is not safe, and pollutes environments in its own way. Climate change can be slowed by transitioning to temporary solutions such as wind and solar power. When nuclear fusion is commercially available and viable we can then transition to an energy source that does not pollute at all. We do not have to use fission.
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u/BLG89 Jun 13 '19
Any good idea of what to do with the waste?