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A nuclear plant’s closure was hailed as a green win. Then emissions went up
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
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I've always been pro nuclear. But what I've come to understand is that nuclear accidents are traumatizing. Anybody alive in Europe at the time was psychologically damaged by Chernobyl. Don't forget also that the elder Xers and older worldwide lived under the specter of nuclear annihilation.
So you've got rational arguments vs. visceral fear. Rationality isn't up to it. At the end of the day, the pronuclear side is arguing to trust the authorities. Being skeptical of that is the most rational thing in the world. IDK how to fix this, I'm just trying to describe the challenge pronuclear is up against.
I'm pro nuclear based on the science, but I'm anti nuclear based on humanity. Nuclear absolutely can be run safely, but as soon as there's a for profit motive, corporations will try to maximize profits by cutting corners. As long as there's that conflict I don't blame people for being afraid.
This comes off as you're anti nuclear but you know you can't say that, so you do the trick where you say you're pro butttt.
"Afraid" after seeing unfettered capitalism cut corners in every way it can, with zero regard for human life.
I am not sure it's fear so much as it is a logical response to the current situation to not want more nuclear in this context when renewables are so much cheaper.
I am not "afraid" of nuclear power, I just think it's a really bad option right now and that its risks, like all other forms of power generation, need to be considered carefully, not dismissed out of hand.
Being afraid of what can go wrong is still being afraid. It's not an insult.
Being afraid does not mean it's irrational or unjustified.
Except that modern nuclear technologies like LFTR are objectively way safer, and even with 60s technology and unsafe operation, nuclear has fewer deaths per MWh than just about every other form of energy generation. It's just that nuclear's failures are more concentrated and visible.
And let's not forget that every reactor type was "very safe" at the time. It's true, every power plant can have problems and fail, but if a nuclear one does, consequences could be WAY worse.
First off, RBMK (Chernobyl) wasn't safe as designed. In the US, the style of reactor wouldn't have made it through the required licensing.
Second of all, the consequences being way worse is an exaggeration. If a nuclear power plant has a small release, the (real, scientific) impact would be minimal. If it has a large release then something else happened and the reactor containment was destroyed and whatever massive natural disaster did that is causing waaaaayy more problems. We're probably all dead anyway.
People are afraid of radiation because you can't see or smell or hear it. Which is probably a good thing considering you are surrounded by it all the time.
Someone recently said to me that if people had been introduced to electricity by watching someone die in an electric chair, they'd refuse to have power in their homes. People were introduced to radiation by an atomic bomb.
You got it. I've had this discussion and the anti nuclear boils down to "somewhat, somehow, something, someone, maybe, possibly, perhaps may go wrong. Anything built by man could fail". There's no logic, just fear.
At this point, you can be economically anti-nuclear. The plants take decades to build with a power cost well above wind/solar. You can build solar/wind in high availability areas and connect them to the grid across the states with high power transmission lines, leading to less time that renewables aren't providing a base line load. One such line is going in right now from the high winds great plains to Illinois, which will connect it to the eastern coastal grid illinois is part of.
We also have a hilarious amountof tech coming online for power storage, from the expected lithium to nasa inspire gas battery designs, to stranger tech like making and reducing rust on iron.
There is also innovation in "geothermal anywhere" technology that uses oil and gas precision drilling to dig deep into the earth anywhere to tap geothermal as a base load. Roof wind for industrial parks is also gaining steam, as new designs using the wind funneling current shape of the buildings are being piloted, rivaling local solar with a simplier implementation.
While speculative, many of these techs are online and working at a small scale. At least some of them will pay off much faster, much cheaper and much more consistently before any new nuclear plants can be opened.
Nuclear's time was 50 years ago. Now? It's a waste to do without a viable small scale design. Those have yet to happen, mainly facing setbacks, but i'm rooting for them.
there is one cool thing about nuclear though, if you know what you're doing they're ripe for government subsidy investment. One and done, they'll run for like 30-50 years. No questions asked. It's really just the upfront build cost that's the problem.
The georgia plant just opened 7 years late and 17 billion over cost. It is already running residents $4+/month in fees, with up to $13+/month being discussed, and that outside of the cost of electricity. It far, far over ran even huge government subsidies, with the feds putting up 12 billion.
There are much better places to put those billions now than in incredibly late and overly expensive "modern" nuclear.
To be completely fair to them, a ton of the delay was over lawsuits. I mean, you'd definitely end up dealing with those regardless of where you put upa NPP, but just giving them that small benefit f doubt there.
I'm a customer of theirs, paying the stupid fee. They got all celebratory about getting to the end and now the bill has to be paid and oh look, it's the customers paying. Joy.
I work nuclear industry adjacent, so I guess it's job security. And with that disclaimer I'll add this:
Building new plants is definitely going to take too long. If we get small modular reactors that will help. Same way if we get better batteries for solar and wind storage or new tech in geothermal. The simple point is that we are 50+ years behind. We gotta try anything and everything. It's our only hope at this point. And no matter what, it's going to cost. Money, land, your view from your backyard. People aren't willing to sacrifice anything to get it done, and that's how it's going to end for us if we don't change. And that's true for literally every problem we have. Nimby-ism will be the death of us.
While renewables get build without subsidies, because they pay off anyway.
FWIW, I'm an Xer against nuclear power, but not for the reason you outlined: it's because it's an overall bad approach to energy generation.
It produces extremely long-lasting waste, on timescales humans are not equipped to deal with. It has a potential byproduct of enabling more nuclear weapons. The risks associated with disaster are orders of magnitude greater than any other power generation system we use, perhaps other than dams. It requires seriously damaging mining efforts to obtain the necessary fuel. It is more expensive.
We have the tech to do everything with renewables and storage now.
It's not my trauma, it's my logic that leads me to be generally against nuclear. (Don't have to be very against it, no one wants to build these now anyway.)
Very little waste compared to burning coal or oil which also produces waste we aren't equipped to deal with. See oh idk global warming.
Also, dont coal plant spew out loads of radiation?
Not loads per say, but the workers are exposed to more radiation than a nuclear reactor operator would be.
and the public, birds, animals, wildlife, anything outside potentially. (realistically most of it should be scrubbed but uh..)
A lot compared to renewables. Did you read what he said? "We have the tech to do everything with renewables and storage now."
Nuclear is unexpectedly safer and less polluting than renewables. That's including stuff like Chernobyl. Also less expensive overall. The plant itself is expensive yes but for the energy output/cost per watt it's by far cheaper last I checked.
This is not true and you are spreading misinformation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accidents_by_country
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_waste_dumping_by_the_%27Ndrangheta
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilaria_Alpi
https://feddit.de/comment/8462209
I never argued for coal power. I don't know if you're an oil/gas lobby shill or what, but I said absolutely nothing about coal, oil, or gas, none of which are good options vs. renewables.
Huh? Bro what. What kinda oil shill would be promoting fuckn nuclear
Nuclear is incredibly expensive, uneconomic and for all countries starting only now would delay phasing out fossil fuels by decades of planning and construction. When they could start reducing fossil fuels and emmissions right now by building renewables and adding storage successively over years.
So the actual answer is: all of them. They know fossil fuels don't have a future, so they have long changed to delay tactics.
Nuclear is very expensive to build it's the cheapest to maintain. Even accounting for horrible disasters like Chernobyl it's safer and less polluting. But yes, renewables are great! Most of our power where I live is from a dam. My grandpa had his house heated primarily via solar energy. They generated enough power through solar that they were able to sell it off to the energy dudes. When solar was bad they'd get power from the nearby wind turbines or the dam. All this stuff is great, it's way better than coal but a single nuclear plant would out perform all of that energy generation and ultimately, cost less.
only if you dont count cost of salaries. Nuclear takes a lot of highly skilled people to run/maintain.
There have been more deaths and major environmental disasters with fossil fuels than with all nuclear accidents combined (including the less reported ones that happened in the 50s and 60s). Nuclear plants are generally safe and reliable. They do not produce excessive waste like wind (used turbine blades) and solar (toxic waste from old panels that cannot be economically recycled).
Nuclear is the superior non-carbon energy source right now. Climate change is an emergency, so we shouldn't be waiting on other technologies to mature before we start phasing out emitting power plants in favor of emission-free nuclear plants.
If I were advocating for more use of non-renewables, your comment would make sense in this context.
I am arguing against non-renewables getting more funding.
But really my arguments don't matter, the market has decided and I feel like these nuclear posts are becoming mostly sour grapes and not any kind of legitimate discussion about what things nuclear would need to do to be price competitive.
Probably should be mentioned too that there’s the very clever idea of simply repurposing existing coal power plants to run nuclear fuel. The main ‘expense’ of nuclear power plants, as I understand, is the general equipment itself, not the nuclear core. Those can be built much quicker than building an entire plant from scratch.
the market sucks at doing anything other than profits for an increasingly small populace
thermal reactor skill issue, just use a fast reactor design.
Btw the mining is vastly less significant to something like coal, oil, and probably even natural gas production. It's just a fraction of the volume being mined, to produce the same amount of energy.
You make a really good point with the comparison to dams. It's not that it's not a great way to generate power, but it is a fact that the worst case scenarios for failure are really really bad. It's perfectly rational to worry about that. Consider, for example, how both dams and nuclear plants have been targeted by Russia in Ukraine. No one is worried if they smash a few solar panels
the solution is never build an RBMK plant ever again. And invest in gen IV designs, which are inherently safe, and have basically no active safety features, because they dont need them.
That specter's back though.
Not quite the same level as the cold war, but yeah, it's back baby
That's putting it mildly. Most people alive at the time were as certain as they could be that a nuclear apocalypse was right around the corner. Kids were told as much in school. Right now it's floated as a possibility, but most people don't take it seriously or aren't aware of it much at all.
I use to be very pro nuclear. I'd write letters to papers and such explaining how the waste, which is the main concern most people have, is not as big of a problem as people think - and that certain manufacturing processes produce other waste products that are very bad and people just don't think about those...
Anyway, I changed my mind some time back. There are three main things that have turned me against nuclear.
So yeah, I'm not so into nuclear now. It's not a bad technology, but the idea of it is a bit radioactive, just like the waste product.
There is a simple answer that nobody will implement. Thorium reactors, very veyy low chances of meltdowns
But the governments won't do it because you can't convert thorium to bombs
Disagree, sorry.
Thorium is unproven in a commercial setting, molten salt reactors in general are plagued with technological difficulties for long term operations and are limited currently to just a few research reactors dotted about the globe.
There's no denying that originally a lot of the early nuclear reactors chose uranium because of its ability to breed plutonium for nuclear weapons proliferation but nowadays that's not a factor in selection. What is a factor is proven, long-lasting designs that will reliably produce power without complex construction and expensive maintenance.
that's true, but so is everything that hasnt been built since the decline of nuclear power. Frankly i don't think it really matters anymore. We struggle to build existing gen 2 and 3 plants now, we don't have gen 4 plants off the ground yet, and thorium is in that camp.
Being skeptical of trusting "authorities" is only rational if you're still living with boomer information. There are plenty of designs now that would have made Fukushima a non-issue. Until fusion comes along, nuclear is easily our best option alongside renewables.
Well there are plenty of rational arguments against nuclear. Its very expensive and time consuming to build, so its better to build renewables that can start generating power in a couple of months vs at least a decade for nuclear.
Then they are actually pretty significantly more polluting than renewables due to the amount of concrete they use. And decommissioning them is a costly and expensive process that also releases a lot of carbon. And theres only one permanent storage facility in the world for nuclear waste. And theres the fact that due to needing a constant and highly skilled workforce, they need to be near population centres but far enough away that people feel safe, which makes it hard to plan.
And also specifically for the reactors mentioned in the article, they were built in the 60s, they are not nearly as safe as modern reactors.
This movie didn't help.
(Good movie by the way; Jack Lemmon's "I can feel it" line at the end of the movie really scares the crap out of you.)