Well yeah, it's a service. Expecting profit from necessary services is stupid and counter-productive but it makes a few people rich so of course it happens then you get memes like this.
Efficient use of resources still matters in a service-driven model.
The service in this case is to provide electricity - if other alternatives can provide the same system of electricity while using less resources in the process, then it is clearly preferable.
Externalized costs are a thing though. For instance, a coal plant spewing smoke (and radiation) costs everyone else money. A nuclear plant OTOH is usually responsible for dealing with all of its own shit. So it's not always an apples to apples comparison to consider just the profitability of a project.
Well you could just like, put all that tax money into decentralized renewable energy sources...that would also be profitable.
While not causing waste that cant be touched for the next million years.
While also lessening your dependence on nuclear fuel imports from political less than optimal nations or sources where the mining of it causes radio active dust to contaminate the population (Russia/USA and Australia).
Million year really , so you talk about the EXTREMELY small portion of nuclear waste ? Also why not both , why not nuclear AND solar / wind / hydro electricity? Because all those renewable energy sources are either limited (hydro electricity) or intermittent (solar / wind) And I know you dont care but Yes we can bury nuclear waste if we do it properly, there already were natural nuclear reactor on earth way before humanity and it didnt kill everything where they were.
If you ever need firefighters make sure you ONLY go to a profitable firehouse, or you'll be a huge hypocrite. Either that or stupid.
Also make sure you ONLY drive on profitable roads, and ONLY use private delivery services. And ONLY during the day because of streetlights.
A public service should be a public service, not profitable from the basic level.
A public service should be a net profit in standards of living of the people who make up the public. And i proclaim that nuclear power plants dont do that in the long term. They drain the public out of resources that could have been invested in better solutions that dont come with the downsides of radio active waste products.
I'll admit I don't know much about the polluting effects of nuclear, but wouldn't it be considered a net benefit in regards to the devastatingly expensive damage of climate change compared to burning coal and gas?
why is there such a negative sentiment towards nuclear power? was it all oil and gas propaganda? or is there some truth
the man who decided to end german nuclear power production getting a seat in gazprom doesn't inspire confidence in reality-based discussion of this subject
It was decided after Fukushima under Merkel.
Chernobyl, Fukushima, 3 Mile Island. Plus uranium is another non-renewable resource.
I'm still pro nuke as getting off fossil fuels is of the utmost urgency, but we will have to learn to live off wind and solar.
So what has released more uncontrolled waste into the world, all the nukes including those, or the equivalent mega-wattage of all other human power generation? Our entire global community is FUCKED to the tune of hundreds of trillions of dollars from consequences of petro, while meanwhile very few of us are suffering from the effects of nuclear power generation. Nukes don't replace solar and wind, they complement them.
Ideally we figure out some sweet Nuclear Fusion.
Ah yes, the Fusion Reactors that are coming soon (TM) (promised decades ago).
We need energy now, not at some unknown point in the future. Of course, resaeching this technology may make sense. But it does not help today and also not the next 20 years.
Yeah, putting your hopes / goals on a fusion powered future is foolish at this point.
But I def support (lots of) research into it.
Because it only makes sense if you also need to run nuclear Submarines with ICBMs on them.
Basically Nuclear power has always been a military project thats just "Dual use" to offset the cost by having tax payers foot the bill for civilians plants.
Doing that makes the whole supply chain cheaper for the Military usage....cuz mining it only for military usage only would be hella expensive and harder to justify towards the population.
This is only for uranium and plutonium based nuclear power. There are others that don't produce weapons grade byproducts. Helium 3 for instance and other versions of uranium. Also cobalt is an option.
As long as we want to pay for power, it can be profitable, in the sense that we pay what we need and people who work there are paid fairly as well.
You’re in the comments trying to act like you’re more noble, but if your very first angle and the one you built your post on is about profitability then you’ve already lost. You made a strawman and are just mad that it was called out.
Yea, renewables would be better, for sure. Talk about that, then, if that’s what you really care about.
You have to get the people in somehow. And i was sick of ppl calling nuclear cheap solution to climate change when it clearly isnt, thence i choose the word profitable.
There has never been a reactor that produced more energy than it took to construct? You sure about that?
Otherwise this is a capitalism meme, not a science meme.
Economics is science too.
Economics is a human made concept, not a universal fact.
You would have been better off arguing it's important because it's math.
Sun isn't profitable. We should just extinguish it.
Even if this were true, would that be important nowadays? If it can push out climate change and make it into a problem to solve later (in case of fission). Fusion would be great though
It can't. It takes WAY too long to build, and for what it is the whole work isn't worth it.
The volume of renewables and batteries (Incl. Sodium-Ion, great tech for the grid) we can produce outpaces nuclear by a long shot, is safer, cleaner, available quicker, easier to install, easier to regulate (once the batteries are up, it's a combo deal) and especially more "for the people" (you can carry and install smaller units of solar and wind anywhere).
I also thought nuclear (fission) made somewhat sense a few years ago, but it really doesn't in any way shape or form. Countries who're dead-set on nuclear such as France are already running into SO mamy problems. They're building a huge financial pile of shit for the current and next generation to be fucked over by.
Why not do all of these things. Build nuclear power plants, do battery storage, do renewables, carbon capture, plant trees etc, etc, etc. if the goal is reverse, stabilize or slow climate change. There isn't 1 silver bullet, we need to do all the things.
This view on it is the exact reason why i made this meme, this shit has to stop its a tale propagated by the fissile fuel industry.
First of all. I'm against nuclear power plants.
But. This right here, is a weird argument against it. I would even say, its no argument against it at all. We should not produce anything with the focus to make a profit. We should produce to meet needs. I would say that for the entire industry.
And even if you're not for a democratic industry that is owned by the people, you should at least see that there are some services where it just makes even less sense to look for profit. For example energy production, healthcare, public transport or the food industry. These are all fundamental services that just need to work. They should never have to focus on generating a profit. Even many liberals have realised this.
From Wikipedia
In 2019, the US EIA revised the levelized cost of electricity from new advanced nuclear power plants going online in 2023 to be $0.0775/kWh before government subsidies, using a regulated industry 4.3% cost of capital (WACC - pre-tax 6.6%) over a 30-year cost recovery period.[63] Financial firm Lazard also updated its levelized cost of electricity report costing new nuclear at between $0.118/kWh and $0.192/kWh using a commercial 7.7% cost of capital (WACC - pre-tax 12% cost for the higher-risk 40% equity finance and 8% cost for the 60% loan finance) over a 40-year lifetime.[64]
The article discusses why that number is probably flawed and relies on cherry picked data, but it seems somewhat close to profitability. Assuming theyre above with a cost of electricity of ~$0.20/kWh (already cheaper than some of US) should be viable, yeah?
40-year lifetime
That dosent include the cost of maintaining the radioactive trash for the next few million years.
Neither are most roads, sewers or hospitals, we are talking basic infrastructure here, whether it is profitable seems to me to be completely irrelevant.
And again, not a huge fan of nuclear power plants, but this argument is not one I hold against them.
Fossil fuels are only 'profitable' if you ignore the long-term environmental costs.
Nobody is defending Fossil fuels here.
you're the one who made the focus on profits, thus comparing profitability of fossil fuels is completely reasonable.
Chernobyl. It's so profitable, it keeps on giving even half a century later.
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