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The year is 2289.
We know how Dyson spheres work
That star is just literally free energy
But we blew up a solar system and wiped out a developing race one time and we stopped using it.
Imagine if hunters had stopped using fire?!?
Fukushima showed us the truth, Nuclear Safety is incompatible with capitalism. I don’t care to find out what other time bombs we build into future plants.
Just because burning fossil fuels is bad doesn’t magically make nuclear good, or somehow no big deal. The chance for a catastrophic accident mentioned in the meme is only one drawback (which is bad enough–get real, denial is not a strategy here). Just a few other issues:
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the problem of what to do with the waste: no permanent solutions have yet been implemented and we’ve been using costly-to-maintain “temporary” methods for decades. Not to mention the thermal water pollution to aquatic ecosystems
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the enormously out of proportion up front costs to construct the plants, and higher ongoing operation and maintenance costs due to safety risks in proportion to amount of power generated
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the fact that uranium is also a limited resource that has to be mined like other ores, with all the environmental negatives of that, which then has to go through a lot of processing involving various mechanics and chemicals just to make it usable as fuel.
Anyway I’m not going to try and go into more detail on a forum post, but all this advocacy for a very problematic method of producing power as if it’s a simple solution to our problems is kind of irritating. At least I hope the above shows we should stop pretending it’s “clean energy”. We should be focusing on developing renewable and sustainable energy systems.
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Okay but why use a slur to make a point
TBF a nuclear incident is not like burning just one house down. It’s burning down the whole city and making it unusable for a decade or ten.
OUR Energy Sector…?
That is an extreme over simplification of a very complicated subject, it’s never that simple.
Having said that: yeah. It was stupid to stop using nuclear energy
Do I sit out on the nuclear ralley, hmmm
He should, reason they ditched them for coal and gas was because big daddy Exxon and BP are pushing for it so they don’t go out of bussiness. FUCK BP AND EXXON!
It’s sad that the coal lobby has convinced so many people that the most reliable clean energy source we’ve ever discovered is somehow bad.
I hate this thread.
It has some interesting discussion, although it also shows how US-centric Lemmy is. Much of the EU has understood why nuclear energy is inherently incompatible with renewable energy and has therefore rightfullly dismissed it.
“Most of the EU”
actually talking about Germans, as everybody else disagrees
In Soviet Lemmy this thread hates you
I bet you’re working for BP and Exxon, shill.
Lol yeah I get paid $30 an hour by Exxon to comments on Lemmy
there are millions being poured into propaganda against using anything but fossil fuels, much of it stems from there. But i wonder if its better this way or the alternative way where we would use more nuclear energy but since there would be so much money to be made, the rich would use their money to make all safety regulations null. I wish we could just get rid of the source problem.
Anon is dumb. Anon forgets the nuclear waste. Anon also forgets that the plants for the magical rocks are extremely expensive. So much that energy won by these rocks is more expensive than wind energy and any other renewable.
Anon forgets the nuclear waste.
Nuclear waste is pretty tame. Compare gloves that were used once to turn valve on pipe in reactor room to shit from coal in your lungs. Even most active kind of waste everyone thinks of - spent fuel - consists from about 90% of useful material.
EDIT: 95-98% of useful material.
Anon also forgets that the plants for the magical rocks are extremely expensive.
Actually not. Especially cost of energy compared to one of coal.
What nonsense is this?
Compare gloves that were used once to turn valve on pipe in reactor room to shit from coal in your lungs.
No shit, Sherlock… The reactor room is shielded by the water. Something you had in there once shouldn’t be overly radioactive and the fact that it isn’t doesn’t say anything about the dangers of radioactive waste.
Even most active kind of waste everyone thinks of - spent fuel - consists from about 90% of useful material.
What does that even mean? How is that saying anything about the dangers of radioactive waste?
Actually not.
new nuclear power costs about 5 times more than onshore wind power per kWh […]. Nuclear takes 5 to 17 years longer between planning and operation and produces on average 23 times the emissions per unit electricity generated […].
Something you had in there once shouldn’t be overly radioactive
It still counts as radioactive waste. It was example of something regular people don’t associate radioactive waste with, but still counts as one.
Something you had in there once shouldn’t be overly radioactive and the fact that it isn’t doesn’t say anything about the dangers of radioactive waste.
“This waste shouldn’t be overly dangerous and the fact that it isn’t doesn’t say how dangerous it is”. Wow. How did you do this?
What does that even mean? How is that saying anything about the dangers of radioactive waste?
Did you read what I write?
I will rephrase you:
What does that even mean? How is that saying anything about the amount of radioactive waste?
“This waste shouldn’t be overly dangerous and the fact that it isn’t doesn’t say how dangerous it is”. Wow. How did you do this?
Here I thought you’re just slow and didn’t read what I wrote so I was already preparing to just explain what I said.
What does that even mean? How is that saying anything about the dangers of radioactive waste?
Did you read what I write?
I will rephrase you:
What does that even mean? How is that saying anything about the amount of radioactive waste?
This is where I realised you’re just trolling.
The costs used for wind/solar energy never included the cost of the required buffer storage, and even the rare few people who include that never factor in frequency stability which to this day is maintained by the giant steam turbines everyone wants to get rid of. It will not be trivial to solve the frequency stability problem; it will likely require massive investment in pumped water storage, flywheel storage, or nuclear energy, and these costs once finally included in the real cost of wind/solar will hurt its value prospect considerably.
As for nuclear waste: the overwhelming majority of nuclear waste generated over the lifetime of a reactor is stored onsite. Only the smallest amount of material is what will actually remain dangerous for a long time, and many countries have already solved this problem. It’s a seriously overstated problem repeated by renewable-purists who usually haven’t even considered how much frequency stability and grid-level storage have and will add to the cost of renewables, meaning they have not given a full accounting of the situation.
The costs used for wind/solar energy never included the cost of the required buffer storage
https://www.csiro.au/en/research/technology-space/energy/GenCost
Anon isn’t dumb, just simple. Nuclear energy can be the best solution for certain situations. While renewables are the better choice in every way, they’re effectiveness isn’t equally distributed. There are places where there just isn’t enough available renewable energy sources year round to supply the people living there. When energy storage and transmission methods are also not up to the task, nuclear becomes the best answer. It shouldn’t be the first answer people look to but it is an answer. An expensive answer but sometimes the best one.
Also nuclear waste doesn’t have to be a problem. If anyone was willing to cover the cost of burning it in a breeder reactor for power or burry it forever. It just is because it’s expensive.
Also nuclear waste doesn’t have to be a problem. If anyone was willing to cover the cost of burning it in a breeder reactor for power or burry it forever. It just is because it’s expensive.
But it is a problem. Finding a place that can contain radioactive waste for millions of years is incredible difficult. If you read up on it, you get disillusioned pretty fast.
When energy storage and transmission methods are also not up to the task, nuclear becomes the best answer.
Obviously, the best answer is to improve energy storage and transmission infrastructure. Why would we waste hundreds of millions on a stupid toy power plant when we could spend 10% of that money on just running decent underground cables.
You do realize that all that is also expensive, and limited? We haven’t invented room temperature superconductors yet, and battery technology is far from perfect. There is only so much lithium and cobalt in the entire world. Yes we can now use things like sodium, but that’s a technology that’s still young and needs more research before it’s full potential is realized. There is also a reason we have overground cables and not underground. Digging up all that earth is hella expensive.
You really don’t understand how expensive underground cables are. You know those big, huge steel transmission towers that you see lined up, hundreds in a row?
Those towers costs hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars each. And the reason they’re used is because that’s way cheaper than underground.
Shit - just the cable is a couple million per mile per cable.
Are you fucking serious? Nuclear power plants cost way fucking more than some cables. You people are fundamentally so unserious. Pull your head out of a reactor for ten seconds and take reality as it exists
Yes. They cost more than some cables. But we aren’t talking about wiring a stereo.
A new nuclear unit (4 billion-ish) costs about as much as 2,000 miles of transmission-grade cable (about 2 million per mile). Considering that there’s about 30 cables on a tower run, you’re looking at around 65 miles’ worth of cable for the cost of a nuclear unit.
And that’s just the cost of the wire. No towers, no conduit, no substations, no land acquisition (aerial easement and underground are very different things), no labor.
A new nuclear unit (4 billion-ish)
In the USA the most recent two reactors (2 added to a plant that already had 2 existing) cost $34 billion just for the two new ones. source
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I think you need to touch grass. You sound very angry about some cables.
Maybe take a break from the doomscolling/doomposting and try to relax.
Because superconductors are even more expensive than breeder reactors.
and breeder reactors are more expensive than faerie magic, I prefer to use technologies that are actually real rather than things I wish were real
I prefer to use technologies that are actually real rather than things I wish were real
Wake up, 80-ies were 40 years ago!
USSR figured it out long time ago: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-600_reactor
And even if we just buried all of it, all nuclear waste ever produced could easily be buried in one square mile.
We need a fitting location to safely bury it in. Otherwise it can pollute the ground and water. In Germany for example we dont have such a location. That and the issue of cost, no one wanting to build it, no one wanting to insure it, no state wanting to offer the space and no energy company wanting this energy led to us making the correct decision in moving away from it
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Don’t feed the troll 💩As long as you don’t care when the electricity is produced
Don’t feed the troll! We’re making progress fast. ☀️
Storage is a solvable problem. Whereas we don’t have the resources to power the world with nuclear plants.
The second half if most important. It doesn’t produce enough electricity. Renewables are getting cheaper and cheaper and are taking up the mantle to take over majority of power production in some nations. But it is harder to monetize and can be democratized and made pretty easily. It’s like weed. It can be taken away from bigger producers and therefore there is significant push back/lobbying against it.
Storage is a solvable problem
I’m not convinced it is. Storage technologies exist for sure, but the general public seems to grossly underestimate the scale of storage required to match grid demand and renewables only production.
Again: This is just the beginning! We’re like five years into an energy revolution and you are drumming against it because you’re “not convinced”, rooting for stuff we already discarded because it’s uncontrollable and will poison our planet for centuries. Get out of the way, boomer!
Germany has over 400 MW of solar-plus-storage projects under development, with notable installations like a 100 MW/200 MWh battery system in Bavaria. This is way more than even the green minister of economic affairs set as a goal for 2045. California leads globally with 6,600 MW of battery storage already operational and an additional 1,900 MW expected by year-end, totaling 8,500 MW. By 2045, California aims to expand its capacity to 52,000 MW. Australia is also scaling rapidly, with around 9 GW of utility-scale battery projects underway or completed. Soon EV batteries get to feed energy back into the grid, we’re becoming one huge decentralized batterie mosaic. It’s gonna be beautiful!
We’re like five years into an energy revolution
Exactly, after working on it for over 30.
It seems like theyre not even planning on going fossil free.
That quote, again, not mentioning stored energy. How do they not understand that storage needs to be specified in both power and energy?
I think you underestimate how much storage power is currently being build and how many different technologies are available. In Germany alone there currently are 61 projects planed and in the approval phase boasting a combined 180 Gigawatts of potential power until 2030. Those of them that are meant to be build at old nuclear power plants (the grid connection is already available there) are expected to deliver 25% of the necessary storage capacity. In addition all electric vehicles that are assumed to be on the road until 2030 add another potential 100GW of power.
Of course these numbers are theoretical as not every EV will be connected to a bidirectional charger and surely some projects will fail or delay, however given the massive development in this sector and new, innovative tech (not just batteries but f.e. a concrete ball placed 800m below sea level, expected to store energy extremely well at 5.8ct / kilowatt) there’s very much reason for optimism here.
It’s also a funny sidenote that France, a country with a strong nuclear strategy, frequently buys power from Germany because it’s so much cheaper.
Another important note about France: They are the second country alongside Germany heavily pushing for an upscaled green hydrogen market in the EU. Because -just like renewables- nuclear production doesn’t match the demand pattern at all. Thus it’s completely uneconomical without long-term storage.
The fact that we seem to constantly discuss nuclear vs. renewables is proof that it’s mostly lobbying bullshit. Because in reality they don’t compete. It’s either renewables+short-term storage+long-term-term storage or renewables+nuclear+long-term storage. Those are the only two viable models.
upscaled green hydrogen market
That’s been the talk in town for 40 years now. Green hydrogen has never gotten beyond proof-of-concept.
The fact that we seem to constantly discuss nuclear vs. renewables is proof that it’s mostly lobbying bullshit.
Sadly, it’s because the political green parties available to me are anti-nuclear.
It’s either renewables+short-term storage+long-term-term storage or renewables+nuclear+long-term storage.
Why is nuclear+short term storage not an option, according to you?
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Why is nuclear+short term storage not an option
Because cold winter days exist. Yes you can only build nuclear capacities for the average day and then short-term storage to match the demand pattern. But you would need to do so for the day(s) of the year with the highest energy demand, some cold winter work day. What do you do with those capacities the remaining year as throttling nuclear down is not really saving much costs (most lie in construction and deconstruction)?
Due to the recent nuclear hype uranium price will rise and keep in mind that the resource will not exceed a century.
It’s not just power that’s needed (MW), also stored energy (MWh).
Germany consumes on average 1.4TWh of electricity a day (1). Imagine bridging even a short dunkelflaute of 2 days.
Worldwide lithium ion battery production is 4TWh a year (2).
It’s also a funny sidenote that France, a country with a strong nuclear strategy, frequently buys power from Germany because it’s so much cheaper.
Isn’t that normal? The problems with renewables isn’t that they generate cheap power, when they are generating. Today windmills even need to be equipped with remote shutdown, to prevent overproduction.
The problems arise when they aren’t generating.
Your estimation goes way off because you still believe lithium ion to be the only viable solution. By now Sodium-Ion batteries are already installed even in EVs and can be produced without any critical resource like lithium.
And then of course there are all the other storage solution. Like I said, there even are storage solutions like concrete balls. Successfully tested in 2016, here an article from 2013.
By now it wouldn’t be wise to stifle this enormous emerging market of various technologies by using expensive, problematic technology (not just because the biggest producer of fuel rods is Russia).
I don’t think lithium ion is the only storage technology. I was using it for scale.
The most cost effective storage is pumped storage. But even that wouldn’t reach the scale necessary.
6 MWh pumped storage proof-of-concept won’t l, either.
The watthours is what gas is for. Germany’s pipeline network alone, that’s not including actual gas storage sites, can store three months of total energy usage.
…or at least that’s the original plan, devised some 20 years ago, Fraunhofer worked it all out back then. It might be the case that banks of sodium batteries or whatnot are cheaper, but yeah lithium is probably not going to be it. Lithium’s strength is energy density, both per volume and by weight, and neither is of concern for grid storage.
Imagine bridging even a short dunkelflaute of 2 days.
That’s physically impossible for a place the size of Germany, much less Europe.
is what gas is for
Wouldn’t it be better to go fossil free. Given, you know, climate change. And the fact that the gas needs to be shipped all the way from the US.
That’s physically impossible for a place the size of Germany, much less Europe.
Unless we use a different technology, that is not renewables + storage?
Another problem arises when you’re generation 63.688 after today and still have to keep maintaining deadly waste from nations that don’t exist anymore, because they produced “cheap” and “clean” energy for a couple of decades.
Come on, Jesus died like 2000 years ago, this stuff will haunt us for centuries. Arguing in favor of something this unpredictable is just selfish, stupid and shortsighted.
Ok but maybe a counterpoint is we are overestimating the ability of the atmosphere and ocean to absorb CO2 and maintain a habitable planet. I’d rather store isotopes in the earth (where they came from anyway) than carbon in the air.
Storage is a solvable problem.
Not in this economy. We need change in consumption too. Make loads opportunistic. Have extra energy - heat more water. Or heat homes. There was video on Technology Connected about it.
Nuclear: As long as you don’t care about the magic rocks once the magic has decayed to a level where they’re not boiling water anymore
90% of magic rocks that no longer boil wsater is magic rocks that can boil water.
If you’re talking breeder reactors, do we have any in the US?
If you’re talking breeder reactors
I was talking about reusing uranium from “spent” fuel, not about using plutonium. Found source that says “spent” fuel is 95-98% mix of uranium isotopes that were there. Sadly, source doesn’t say how much of each isotope, I expect very low amount of U-235. Yes, you can also use plutonium in MOX fuel, but only Russia~~, France~~ and China do that, as far as I know.
do we have any in the US?
Dunno. Do you? If you don’t, you can buy them from mentioned above countries.
EDIT: France no longer has working breeder reactor? How did it happen?
I feel this is all moot. When we run out of fossil fuels and go off the energy cliff, the nuclear facilities will basically build themselves, assuming there will be anyone around that will even know how to build a nuclear reactor
