The article does not explain why nuclear must be part of the energy solution. In fact, the argument seem to be that nuclear has been the target of fear mongering from environmentalists and therefore nuclear must be a part of the energy solution which is a fallacy.<p>Germany has decommissioned numerous nuclear plants (Energiewende) and yet its GDP is up and its coal consumption down. <a href="https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts" rel="nofollow">https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...</a> Critics said it couldn't be done, except it was done. Critics claim that Energiewende isn't popular, except surveys show that it is supported by a super majority of Germans.<p>The main issue nuclear power's supporters ignore is that nuclear is much more expensive than renewables. According to LAZARD 14.0, the cost for wind is $26 to $54 per MWh and $129 to $198 for nuclear. <a href="https://www.lazard.com/media/451419/lazards-levelized-cost-of-energy-version-140.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.lazard.com/media/451419/lazards-levelized-cost-o...</a> Furthermore a nuclear plant costs billions to construct and is an investment that takes decades before reaching its break-even point. That's not something the market is interested in, despite record-low capital costs around the world. Should the tax-payer subsidize an energy source that is already at least four times as expensive as wind which may, in a decade or two, be ten times as expensive?
I think nuclear definitely has a role to play, at least in the short term. I'm not sure about expanding its usage, but definitely maintain what we have until it can be replaced with renewables, and definitely replace nuclear only after coal/gas/other fossil fuels are no longer being used anywhere.<p>Don't be fooled by disastrous events, nuclear is statistically the safest energy source we have[1], so don't fear it senselessly. This is a whole topic on it's own and I won't delve deeper into it here.<p>[1]<a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/" rel="nofollow">https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...</a>
> Whether or not nuclear power costs too much will ultimately be a matter for markets to decide<p>It’s not a market decision, but a government decision, as nuclear power has always been built with state guarantees and/or subsidies.<p>This article also again equates safety with lack of deaths. That’s like saying a neighborhood is safe, because in the robberies there only a few people die. Chernobyl and Fukushima had dramatic effects on millions of people. Contamination from Chernobyl to this day is a problem in Germany for instance.
Nuclear energy, for generations now, always has a stronger theoretical case than a practical one.<p>Going on first principles, nuclear is amazing. Abundant. Clean. Cheap. Constant. When we build cities along the kuiper belt, they're obviously going to be nuclear powered.<p>Practically... Nuclear energy has been around for 60+ years. There have been massive investments. Many plants in many countries trying different things. It's rarely been a notable success. It rarely been especially cheap. Not that nuclear energy projects always fail, but...<p>To riff on the author's own analogy: nuclear never had a coal_vs_wood moment. It didn't ultimately matter that the clergy hated coal. Coal was better than wood by a big enough margin that it would win regardless. Nuclear was never practically superior enough to replace coal, and many countries that invested in nuclear divested later.<p>Renewables OTOH, despite their first principles problems are on an economic trajectory that nuclear never had in practice.<p>Long term, nuclear is a good bet. Practically, it's that bet rarely never paid off to date... and many bets have been made.
"a Pulitzer Prize-winning author argues that nuclear is safer than most energy sources"<p>Since when are Pulitzer prize winners experts on nuclear energy?<p>A sentence like this is shows he has absolutely no clue what he is talking about:<p>"Nuclear waste disposal, although a continuing political problem in the U.S., is not any longer a technological problem."<p>see <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwY2E0hjGuU" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwY2E0hjGuU</a><p>"A final complaint against nuclear power is that it costs too much. Whether or not nuclear power costs too much will ultimately be a matter for markets to decide, but there is no question that a full accounting of the external costs of different energy systems would find nuclear cheaper than coal or natural gas. "<p>Ok, see here <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/wind-and-solar-are-30-50-cheaper-than-thought-admits-uk-government" rel="nofollow">https://www.carbonbrief.org/wind-and-solar-are-30-50-cheaper...</a>
Nuclear is already the most expensive solution to produce electricity.<p>Also we don't need artificial nuclear energy here on Earth. There is plenty of nuclear energy available for free from the sun.
My main issue with Nuclear power is my lack of trust in regulators over time.<p>Nuclear done well is safe, clean and has an extremely low carbon footprint.<p>But, where profit incentives exist, lobby groups exist. And the US government has shown itself incredibly pliable with enough donations and time given.<p>So for me, give it 10-15 years, or less, and the safety margins will erode over time as people get too comfy with the new normal, and like always happens, be it Boeing, Texas power systems or the like, I have a nasty suspicion bad events will start happening at a scale previously unseen, with companies not doing their due diligence and lobbying for concessions and bending regulation around expensive but necessary precautions.
> Elizabethan preachers railed against a fuel they believed to be, literally, the Devil’s excrement.<p>1. So it seems, 500 years later, as we struggling with all the issues this resource has caused and still causing they were not wrong...<p>> For too many environmentalists concerned with global warming, nuclear energy is today’s Devil’s excrement<p>Read (1)<p>---
It is only a question who will suffer along the lines, after we are long gone from the existence.
When you consider any public infrastructure - roads, telecommunications, electricity grids - the bottleneck is always how much can be supplied during peak periods.<p>When we add capacity, its always to address the peak demand.<p>The solution is to get smarter about shifting demand, particularly as we build out a massive fleet of EVs.<p>Here's an example of hourly electricity use in Florida: <a href="https://energymag.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/daily-demand-florida-public-utility-commission.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://energymag.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/daily-demand-f...</a><p>We need appliances that can take into account grid pricing, and any local power supply that the owner has (solar, EV battery), and adjust accordingly. eg. heating or cooling a house an hour earlier than when the owner would typically manually request it.<p>Secondly for EVs that can charge offpeak at night (eg. at 9pm, not simply when the owner gets home at 6pm and plugs it in - contributing to peak demand) and then upload some power back into the grid in the morning, and then during the day again if necessary.<p>Its going to be hard to integrate this into appliances, but power upload and smart charging/discharging should be mandated for new EVs.<p>While we're at it we should also begin charging for time of use for roads - to reduce congestion, and replace the revenue from gas taxes. This UI and charging mechanism could be built into the infotainment system.
The article discusses only nuclear <i>fission</i> power if that helps to decide whether you actually want read it. The arguments presented are pretty much the same as always.
There are many videos of Jean-Marc Jancovici on this subject. Some of them are in English. It gives documented pragmatic analysis. One conclusion is clear:
Current nuclear plants shall be preserved to smooth the energetic transition (fossil free). What has been done in Germany was not wise.<p>It is less obvious whether we shall build new nuclear plants or focus on new energy sources. In France, we struggle to recover our aptitude to build new plants.
Perhaps <i>some form</i> of nuclear power can be part of a sustainable energy solution, but that doesn't mean expanding nuclear power is a good idea right now. Building, running, and maintaining a nuclear power plant is a formidable engineering challenge. So is dealing with its waste. The biggest fallacy is that just because we've been able to get by with temporary waste storage and haven't had a disaster so far we'd be able to deal with much more over much longer periods of time. Nobody who's serious about this or any other topic just <i>assumes</i> infinite scalability. Show proof or GTFO.<p>With newer plant designs and better waste handling we can come back to considering expansion of nuclear. AFAIK there are just too many problems still unsolved, so that would be premature. <i>In the here and now</i> solar and wind seem vastly preferable. Also, the remaining problems with wave/tidal power, while far from trivial, seem likely to be solved before the remaining problems with nuclear. If that happens, there's no reason to take <i>any</i> risk with nuclear.
I am in no way or shape <i>against</i> nuclear power per se. I know its technology, I have studied the engineering behind it etc. Still, any argument against nuclear is immediately categorized as "fearmongering" no matter how much it isn't based on the technology itself. Facts and an interest in truly bringing your country forward don't matter. Money and lobbyism is what rules the discussions.<p>No matter how many subversive nuclear shills keep posting on reddit and other forums. Reddit drowns in fake marketing/PR accounts, you can buy them by the thousands. In the past, I have seen templates for responses written in the weekly pro-nuclear threads. But whatever - just one simple statement that remains true in 2021 is this:<p>Nuclear fission power is entirely uneconomical and already replaced by safer, better alternatives.<p>And on top of the insane cost - plants will never be profitable without lifelong government subsidies - the insane length of construction and planning to build new modern generation plants is completely out of what's reasonable because we have to tackle climate change NOW. You're looking at $20bn and 10-15 years of construction <i>at least</i>.<p>Finland is currently struggling to finish their new reactor and it costs them dearly. Just invest in renewables and be done with it far sooner at much lower cost and factor 1000 less problems (aside from lobbyism and shilling). Just look at this mess of cost and lost time: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Finland#New_construction" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Finland#New_c...</a> All that jazz for a measly 1600 MW.<p>Less than 1500 off-shore wind power turbines deliver a whooping 7.5 Gigawatt for Germany [1]. If you can build 300 wind turbines in 20 years at a fraction of the cost of a single nuclear plant you will have the same output and no possible nuclear incidents or nuclear waste to take care of. Mix it with other renewables and you get the power consistency you need. Nuclear in 2021 is so incredibly unreasonable it bothers me to no end.<p>In Germany, we <i>still</i> have no reasonable way to dispose of 1900 CASTOR containers containing dangerous plutonium with a half-life of 24,000 fucking years. The containers are rated for 40 year protection btw.<p>We have a super majority that rejects nuclear power. Do we struggle sometimes to make the shift away from fossil fuels AND nuclear at the same time? Yes. Do we have to buy power from France or other neighbors in times of high demand? Has happened before. But we are making progress and are able to sustain a large portion of our economy on renewables TODAY.<p>If we had this discussion in 1990, my opinion would have been different. But it's too late and too expensive now to shift back into nuclear. By 2042, when a plant planned TODAY would go online, our renewable infrastructure will far outdo what any nuclear plant is capable of in terms of risk-reward.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/german-offshore-wind-power-output-business-and-perspectives" rel="nofollow">https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/german-offshore-w...</a>
I saw this recently: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbrT3m89Y3M" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbrT3m89Y3M</a><p>I hope they get adopted and maybe even replace the old ones plus coal/gas powered ones.
I can't recommend you spend your time reading this nebulous essay, which doesn't in any way address the time and cost blowouts for the latest generation of reactors, instead choosing to blame woke liberals. Tiresome.
No other fuel has the energy density of nuclear, no other source has the capability to run 24/7/365.<p>Renewables are based on the hope that one day we will either had transcontinental grids, which no one has managed to build, or get batteries with energy storage seen only in Star Trek.<p>Nuclear on the other hand has been here for 50 years and could have already solved our CO2 problems. But because it's unfashinable to be pro-science in liberal cities no one has the guts to stand up and say "You're not only wrong but delusional" to the hippies who have as much understanding of energy as flat earthers do of geography.<p>It's ridiculous that the people who say they want to save the earth are the reason why we've locked in a 6th mass extinction already.
What do you do in 30 years when another incident like the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster happens?<p>Batteries will be the long term solution to energy baseload needs, not nuclear.
We aren't even responsible enough with the nuclear assets and waste we already have, and we're going to have to <i>actively</i> look after that lot for <i>millennia</i> to come. You can't just walk away from a spent fuel waste facility - you have to <i>run</i> it, or it will eventually leak radioactive isotopes into the environment. We aren't even doing <i>that</i> right now, so how do we expect our decendents to have the will and knowledge to do that in 2200? If we're still around at all.
The best argument: more people died in Bhopal. As if going nuclear will make that stop. Please, the only argument to make to such a question is "because we can't reduce CO2 emissions without, and that's because ...".<p>But what do you expect from an article that tries to tarnish opponents of nuclear energy by comparing them to "Elizabethan preachers [who] railed against [coal], a fuel they believed to be, literally, the Devil’s excrement."
I feel like this is a prime example of someone failing to update their beliefs with new information.<p>For decades it would have been a reasonable position that governments should override political objections, embark upon mass nuclear power programs, and try to drive costs down through economies of scale and process improvements over time.<p>20 years ago it was arguably a correct and very strong position to take?<p>10 years ago, still a reasonable-seeming one?<p>By 5 years ago, nuclear had probably missed its chance. Most of us had probably not quite grasped that yet.<p>Today, anyone arguing this just needs to redo their sums with up-to-date numbers and they'll see the impossiblity of their argument. Nuclear is done. Baseload business models are done. The market has chosen a winner, which is mass deployment of wind and solar.