Ask Lemmy

It was worth it 30-50 years ago. But we wasted too much time fucking around.

At this point any money spent is better spent on wind and solar.

I would gladly live next door to a nuclear plant

Nuclear energy is expensive to generate compared to its green competitors. Therefore, it's a waste of time and money to focus on it at a time when renewable energy is currently cheaper to produce, knowing that the gap between nuclear and energy is projected to widen even more.

My only complaint to add to the debate is that too much of the waste discussion assumed it's burnt fuel and not just irradiated junk shoved in barrels. At least that is what a former nuclear engineer complained to me about.

The second I guess in the US is the weird public private deals that permiate the industry. Like who's the inspector? Oh that's a private company? Whos responsible for the waste? The government? Where is it stored? Oh your not sure? It was SUPPOSED to here but some of its there and some of it supposed to recycled but some supposedly can't be. Who funded this? Who's profiting?

I got some very confusing answers asking people in the industry about it, and they seemed to agree it was confusing.

It would have been a good transition source of power away from fossil fuels 15 years ago with further development while we build out a renewable infrastructure. Now, best I can see it as backup for some areas of the country.

I am extremely pro. Hear me out. For instance in Scandinavia, we have some of the largest uranium deposits in the world. Yet we import most of our fissile material from Australia. By boat.

The Scandes (mountain range) happens to be one of the best places to store spent fissile material on the planet.

We also have a highly educated workforce, and some of the best universities and colleges in the world.

We also have regional depopulation in the areas where this would be relevant, and suffer from brain drain, because there is more money to be made abroad for the whole range of academic disciplines, so the smartest people, and a fair chunk of the lesser smart people, move abroad. Because lack of opportunities and money.

Furthermore we are addicted to not only fossil fuels like carbon and gas, we (Europe) import most of our energy from Russia (famously). And we are making a lot of geopolitical concessions for the privilege (Nordstream springs to mind).

My proposition is that we expand nuclear power in the nordics, massively. We mine our own uranium deposits, store the spent fuel in our own mountains (think Moria, Nords would make for great LOTR dwarves), create a massive surplus of energy, then sell it off to the rest of Europe, creating basically an energy export hegemony. The energy basket of Europe.

We'd be fucking kings.

Then we'd create a Nordic Union, and get nukes, but that's a different story.

(Just as a fun fact, Sweden had one of the worlds most advanced nuke programs after WW2. They got talked out of it bc USA)

I’d rather solar at this point.

It's good and has few downsides, but I feel like we kind of missed the boat and solar is the move now.

I live in Taiwan and we are actively shutting down our nuclear facilities. Now the majority of our electricity is from fossil fuels.

I much rather work towards clean energy but at the same time only use nuclear power.

They aren't nearly as unsafe as people think they are and I think they are completely fine.

BUT it still doesn't make sense to build them, because renewables (especially solar) is so much cheaper, so we should focus all our energy on expanding that instead of nuclear.

I like the idea of nuclear power, but I think the cost is not justified as it is currently implemented.

Now, the cost for nuclear power can come down. The Trump admin already reduced the cost for setting up nuclear power plants in the US, but that cost reduction comes with increased risk. The reason why I would be fine living near a nuclear power plant, is because the whole thing is designed and run with safety as the first priority. If you haven't yet, check out the Smarter Everyday video Destin filmed inside a nuclear power plant. You can tell from watching the video that safety at that plant is a constantly improving process, and it comes at a cost. Extra concrete to protect the building, extra environmental studies to look for contamination, round the clock armed security... All these things make nuclear power safer, and they are all things that every investor and board member would love to cut to make some extra margin on their billion dollar power project. TBF, I don't think the profit/rent seeking line-go-up management and political culture in the US today is condusive to running safe and reliable nuclear power, and I would much rather see our power come from lower-consequence renewables.

Powerful, but also nonsensical in a world where nuclear reactors have to be stopped because the water used to cool them isn't cold enough. Several reactors in France are powered down or nerfed during heatwaves, for instance. Also, when nuclear goes wrong, it goes catastrophically wrong, with consequences for generations. It doesn't sound reasonable.

I personally feel safer with wind, solar, water, etc, but pragmatism will probably ask of us to use a mix of both renewable and nuclear, especially if AI data-centers hog enough power for us all to live in the tech-surveillance world desired by our genocidal, children-r*ping Epstein classes.

Hm. I guess some technazis ought to get luigied. For ecological reasons, of course, nothing personal. We could also upcycle them to compost.

I used to think it was the way to go for base load generation, but now I'm more excited about sodium batteries because they seem safer and cheaper.

I think we are making big mistakes ditching it.

Renewables have two problems that need to be complemented by other type of energy source.

1.- they take a lot of land. As energy demand increases the amount of land taken is going to reach a limit. Then what?

2.- Most renewables have low momentum. Mostly only hydro have great momentum. This is critical for net safety. My country recently falled into a total blackout among other things because our energy composition (high on renewables) had low momentum and couldn't handle some inestabilities.

For a complementary energy source we have 2 options, burning coal/gas or nuclear. Out of two options I prefer nuclear Sadly every country that ditched nuclear because "renewables are the future" ended upping up their gas/coal consumption for energy production. Most famous example being Germany.

I do think a mix of renewables and nuclear is the future we need to achieve.

Sadly most western societies only look on the short term. And a good national nuclear plant is a long term investment, most governments won't look so far after the next election, so here we are.

I'm nuclear industry adjacent, and I work in public safety. My thoughts, which are only my own:

1. Renewables are the future. Nuclear power is expensive and takes a long time to build, mostly because people don't like the idea of a reactor near them. While that's also true of things like wind farms, the lawsuits on those don't take as long, I guess.
2. Small modular reactors may have a place in our future energy landscape, but the specifics remain to be seen. SMRs are (obviously) smaller, so they have less fuel in them, generate less waste, and would be easier to build (like modular homes, they'd be all made basically the same in a factory and shipped to their site). They are in a race against good enough battery technology to carry the base load. Who will win? Well, nuclear is getting a lot of extra support currently, but still, who knows?
3. Nuclear power is so much safer than people assume. Nuclear reactors have reactor buildings which are big thick concrete monstrosities (part of the reason they're so dang expensive to build). It's quite hard for them to leak, so releases will end up being little amounts out of limited area. Yes, even Fukushima, which while very bad and very expensive to clean up, wasn't the thing killing people. One person officially died, years later from lung cancer. Cancer he might have gotten anyway; we can't know. In the US at least, a lot of money goes into emergency preparation at nuclear power plants, trying to mitigate the impacts of any kind of event, but the concern is cancer, not radiation poisoning. 3.5 interestingly, SMRs will probably not get big thick concrete structures around them, or at least not as big or as thick. It's because the risk is lower in those designs but also because there's just not as much material that could be flung around. This may have changed though (this is not my specific area, just something I hear a lot about). Maybe it will be more akin to naval reactors or something. Those are very small, and very very safe.
4. Nuclear waste storage is a political problem. The nuclear industry has been paying for a long-term storage solution for decades and recently sued the US government over it. We absolutely built a house without a toilet, but we could change that with enough political will. Until then, the waste sits at the plant under guard. It's not great but none of the plants are going to run out of room or anything.
5. The US government is going away from certain standards that are generally recognized as being the safest approach to radiological exposure. This, quite frankly, may be disastrous, but likely not immediately. Eventually I could see it leading to eroded safety culture and that could be a problem long term. But I'm a notorious pessimist, so...
6. Renewables are the future. Anyone telling you anything different is selling something. Probably stock in an SMR company.

pros:

• High ouput

cons:

• overall extremely expensive (you'll pay the govt. subsidies too, also the cleaning up after 50+ years)
• strategic target
• risk for population with "oversights" (big-money attracts corruption) *
• "fuel":
  • geopolitical dependencies (mainly russia)
  • even getting it is a ecological disaster (and its fans then call it "clean energy")
  • radioactive + toxic waste problem still not solved

All in all, it is a great excuse to have the expensive infrastructure for nukes and submarines (see France).

* the stories i know only from the rather thorough & proper countries Switzerland, Germany, France... it's crazy.

It's great and we should have more of it.

Unjustified fears of it blowing up and destroying the world are ridiculous and overblown, especially given modern advances in reactor design and safety. Nuclear waste isn't really an issue, so much as it is an issue of bad policy based on fear mongering about waste being stolen and turned into nuclear weapons/dirty bombs. Which has never happened... it's utterly stupid that due to these stupid fears we don't re-process fuel, which would reduce it's volume by 80%.

There are 431 reactors, and 360 of them are based on 1960s technology, designed and built mostly in the 1970s. They are 50+ years old. Thanks to Chernobyl, reactors are basically stuck in time. Esp when you realize that non-nuclear plants only last about 30 years before they are replaced

There are only 4 Gen 3 reactors in service, and 2 gen 4. Why we don't have 200+ gen 3/4 reactors is... insane. We just keep re-fueling the less safe Gen 2 reactors.

But this is generally just a problem with all our infrastructure in the developed world in general... we don't renew or upgrade it... we just keep patching it and then we wonder why everything is so shitty and inefficient... because we refuse to actually upgrade things in a real way

I'm a mechanical engineer working on the operations side of a large power plant. I've worked in a few different types of plants but ultimately landed in a big Co-Generation plant. Knowing what I do, the actual arguments against nuclear are pretty flimsy. It's just better in almost every way especially compared to solid fuel. I strongly believe that there is a place for every method of generating we currently use (excluding coal for the most part). Main generating electricity can and should come from nuclear on the most wide scale with hydro, solar and wind being a large chunk where geographically most viable. While nat gas and liquid fuel should mostly be used in peaker plants and large scale essential buildings like hospitals. I hope to work in a nuclear plant eventually and have positioned myself to be qualified to do so.

The nuclear everyone is afraid of was from an era where priorities 1-9 were making plutonium for nukes or justifying massive uranium centrifuge farms for making weapons grade material.

Priority #10 was making safe electricity. It honestly was more of a waste product from making nukes instead of the point of the plant... It's not a coincidence that nuclear build out matches the cold war era perfectly. Once the cold war ended the US and allies didn't need more nukes to make weapons with... The priority became stabilizing the Petro dollar, which nuclear helps undermine by decoupling nations from being dependant on USD and US treasuries.

Fast reactors and LFTRs are god awful for nuclear weapons (why they weren't made beyond pilot plants or a few examples that exist purely to complicate my point) but are some of the safest designs for new gen IV reactors.

Fast reactors literally burn nuclear waste from Gen 2 plants...

Liquid core reactors can be built in two halves—the heat retaining high reactivity core, and the heat dissipating passively safe container you drain into in an emergency through a freeze plug. That plug works as long as gravity doesn't go away.

Fast reactor waste is safe in 300-500 years, and they can actually be designed to run on existing nuclear waste as fuel. Even the stuff we can't burn currently that has half lives in the hundreds of thousands of millions of years.

Thorium breeder reactors are the future for long term base load stability I think. Its not the only solution to our energy needs though but it's a very attractive option.

I think wind/solar first priority. Nuclear wherever it makes sense. I may trust Canadians to run them properly and in places not prone to natural disasters like Earthquakes and Tsunamis, but we live on a planet full of assholes. Downside is potential invaders bombing nuclear power plants in the future.

Don't want it, don't need it. The nuclear furnace in space provides free fuel. What we need is massive storage. That's the next real battle.

People will argue that we don't have the tech yet. Well, we never have the tech until someone develops it. Do you suppose a chicken laid a nuclear plant? No, it was developed over time. So will energy storage.

Safety issues aside, I don’t like the power grid topology they create—where power is distributed radially from a single centralized source. Systems like that are fragile and inflexible, with a single point of failure; and they promote similar institutions to control them.

Networks are more robust when they’re distributed and redundant, with lots of interconnected local sources. Solar and wind are a lot more amenable to that kind of structure.

Where nuclear plants have been built to a safe standard, sweat them for their useful life. The costs are paid down, and the energy is cheap to produce, creating only a truckload or so of waste (which can be reprocessed into fuel) for a year’s power.

Where there aren’t usable nuclear plants, you’re probably better off building renewables and/or energy storage. The upfront costs of nuclear are steep. (Also, some nuclear plants built when the climate was cooler are having to shut down on hot days due to the temperature of water used to cool them being too high.)

In either case, I’d rather have modern nuclear power than coal.

nuclear power is fine but extremely dangerous in the hands of the wrong person, not because nuclear power plants itself are dangerous but because we're 1 step away from someone making 1 bad joke about how we should use it in "other ways" and that would escalate international conflicts rapidly. and i do not trust the government to be stable enough to not eventually fall into the wrong hands. therefore, no. at least not in the foreseeable future.

Most countries would rely on other countries for the fuel, like european plants rely on russia. Being sovereign for your power generation is very important in my opinion.