I’m pro nuclear-power technology, but anti nuclear power as a capitalist or state-owned tool. And unfortunately, it’s only ever going to be the tool of states in the current world, so functionally I’m against it.
But if small groups could be setting up SMRs for their communities, that would be awesome.
I’ll take renewables over nuclear, but I’ll take nuclear over fossil fuels.
Context: I’m currently doing a PhD in nuclear engineering
Hard-line advocates of nuclear power usually point to its role as a ‘baseload’ generation, but this term is often misused. A lot of people use it as if it means “reliable power on demand” as opposed to wind and solar which is not (without batteries). But baseload generation generally refers to plants with unvarying output that provide the minimum energy consumption of the grid, so that other (varying output) energy sources can be turned up or down to make up the deficit.
The “unvarying” part is very important for nuclear power. Conventional nuclear plants (PWRs/LWRs) really hate when you vary their power output. This is because varying heat and radiation flux through the fuel rod cladding causes a “racheting” effect which accelerates the swelling of fuel pellets against them leading to formation of cracks in the surface oxide, which can propagate into the bulk metal if power goes up and down too often, leading to rupture of the fuel rod cladding (which is bad). Anything below 85% power output for longer than 2 weeks is classed as extended reduced power operation (ERPO) and should be minimised - typically it is done for maintenance purposes.
This is important because it influences how much of your energy production can actually come from nuclear. France for example generates something like 75% of its electrical power from nuclear, but this is only possible because they are surrounded by countries which import a lot of energy (i.e. Germany and the UK), so they can offload excess power there and avoid putting their plants into ERPO. If Germany and the UK had similarly high amounts of nuclear, the system would not work and a lot of plants would experience reliability issues.
All this is to say, nuclear is an excellent energy source for making up a large, unvarying chunk of energy production (say, ~30%) but anything much more than that can cause more problems than it solves. One power source which can provide reliable on-demand time-varying energy is… batteries! Which is one of the reasons that recent advances in battery + solar are so exciting to me. A power grid made up of solely nuclear and renewables working together to meet time-varying demand is now completely plausible. So we dont have to choose between nuclear or renewables per se, we just have to deploy each in a way that suits its own merits.
Might I just add that nuclear isn’t exactly dealing with climate change and water shortages that well.
It’s something I never really thought about, but plenty of nuclear plants have faced climate related issues in recent years, and been forced to shutdown or reduce output.
Also, in an age of drone warfare, decentralised power production is potentially also a huge plus.
This is true. We hear about it happening a lot in mainland europe because there are a lot of inland reactors relying on rivers/reservoirs, however coastal reactors aren’t vulnerable in the same way. Climate change certainly isn’t making nuclear obsolete, but it definitely changes the way we need to think about cooling systems
Of course, coastal reactors are vulnerable in other ways. Climate change can exacerbate extreme weather events. It’s the annoying thing about lots of stuff, you only really find out what goes wrong, when it goes wrong.
Unknown unknowns, as some arsehole once put it.
Also, coal contains small amounts of uranium and thorium which gets concentrated in the fly ash. Fly ash which then gets spread across the area surrounding the power plants. So I’m certainly not saying nuclear is obsolete or particularly dangerous compared to alternatives like coal.
What about nuclear + storage (pumped hydro, batteries) then? That should let you up the baseload a bit right.
Absolutely! Though in practice battery storage tends to be more economical with renewables as the excess is higher (so electricity is cheaper) and storage time is shorter (as upping nuclear baseload would require you to account for differing long-term demand between seasons)
Aside from it being simply outdated and uneconomical, and given the community you are asking this in: there is an well studied argument that nuclear power is inherently authoritarian because of the necessary security requirements (and to a lesser extend centralisation of power production).
On the uneconomical aspect, this isn’t really true. Yes, it’s uneconomical to build an old reactor in the modern world. However, that’s by design, not necessity. It isn’t inherent to nuclear reactors that they are expensive.
They’re expensive because of a bunch of hurdles we make them jump through that other sources of power get to skip. This is on purpose, to ensure they can’t out-compete the existing energy companies that have all the money and power. As an example, no other power source has to account for all of its waste. Even renewables create waste they get to just ignore and let third-world countries deal with. The level of safety is also ridiculous, which raises costs. It’s potentially safer than even many/most(/maybe all, if scaled properly) renewables.
As for outdated, I have no idea what this could even mean. Care to explain? There are new reactor designs. If you mean old designs are old then sure. If you mean the source of power itself does not function anymore, then that’s absolutely insane.
Authoritarian? Sure, I guess. Our whole grid is the. As an Anarchist, sure, I’d prefer people to generate the power themselves. However, efficiencies of scale mean this isn’t the best option short-term. We need to get off of dirty energy ASAP. Even solar benefits from scale. Kwh/$ is better on solar farms than an individual house. But also, micro-reactors are becoming a thing. They generate too much power for an individual house, but they do allow for localized power generation with nuclear.
I wish nuclear power operators had to accout for all their waste, but that isn’t true at all. And the rest of you comment is equal levels of ignoring reality.
We need to get off of dirty energy ASAP.
Exactly, and nuclear energy is the opposite of that. It takes decades to build and those non-existing micro-reactors are the latest investor scam that make evel less economic and technical sense than regular sized reactors.
I wish nuclear power operators had to accout for all their waste, but that isn’t true at all. And the rest of you comment is equal levels of ignoring reality.
What do you mean? What waste isn’t accounted for? Do you mean water vapor? That’s the only thing you could mean. The vast majority of the “nuclear waste” volume is stuff like protective gear, because even that is thrown away after using it once, because there’s that much aversion to risk. They have to account for damn near every atom.
If you’d like to make an actual rebuttal, you’re going to have to try harder. You aren’t even making any specific claim, but just saying I’m incorrect broadly with no detail. You look silly.
Exactly, and nuclear energy is the opposite of that. It takes decades to build and those non-existing micro-reactors are the latest investor scam that make evel less economic and technical sense than regular sized reactors.
It does not take decades to build a nuclear reactor. It takes decades to deal with the bureaucratic red tape that is designed to keep us using fossil fuels. Reactors used to be built in less than 4 years. Most are built in 6-8 years, and very few take more than a single decade, let alone multiple. This is a silly myth spread by energy companies to prevent nuclear support, because it’d kill their business.
Now, tell me how this is wrong. I’ve given you the data. If you want to rebut, please give details so it can be discussed, otherwise you prove you don’t have an argument.
If you base your argument on fan-fiction then there is little point in discussing this further 🤷
The safty regulations were put into place because they proved to be necessary due to serious (and costly to repair) construction defects found in all of those reactors that were put up in such a short time. And not a single operator of a nuclear power plant will ever pay for the storage costs of the nuclear waste, because as with fossile fuels that is almost entirely externalized to the society at large and future generations.
“Fan fiction.” I’m the only one who provided sources. Fucking idiot…
They are literally paying for their waste. Look at the satellite view of a reactor. You can see the casks usually. No, there are not negative externalities involved. There’s no radiation leakage and there’s no danger posed. Almost no one has been harmed by a nuclear reactor, and even the disasters there was more damage done by evacuation than the actual radiation.
You’re the one living in a make-believe world here. You’ve made zero verifiable claims so far. Presumably why is because, as soon as you do, you’ll be fact checked and proven wrong. You’re making yourself look silly while insulting me. Please, make a claim that can be checked or fuck off. You’re making everyone dumber.
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… while creating new problems…
They’re overstated problems, especially considering other forms of energy production.
Pro, but as a temporary measure to eliminate fossil fuel usage, and it should be replaced with renewable energy later. But I doubt anything like that will ever happen.
Indeed, it would be a good temporary solution if we had started 30-40 years ago… I’m afraid that where we’ll past the point of a well thought of transition to renewable energy sources.
Also its a pretty outdated technical principle of boiling water with heat. Sun, wind and hydro has become way more efficient since then.
Against. 20 years ago I would have been for.
Highly centralized systems have always gone against my basically anarchist, emergent, bottom up approach I try to take to all things. At the same time, by the numbers, nuclear just makes more sense for the climate.
Solar or wind or hydro with battery, especially with the more modern batteries, fits both my general philosophy and the overall approach for the climate far better. It requires less technical skill (anyone here could install basic solar plus battery), its more modular, it allows for emergent systems; everything about it makes more sense.
If you believe we should make decisions collectively at the scale of a society, we shouldnt spend any money building nuclear at this point. And if you don’t believe we should make decisions collectively at the scale of a society, you probably already didn’t agree with the philosophy required to support nuclear.
The next generation of nuclear is supposed to be small, movable shipping container sized plants, could be great for small independent communities. Though they’re yet to be commercially demonstrated.
I shared an office building with nuScale. I"m not interested.
We have solar and wind. We have batteries, they are getting better every year, and now with sodium replacing lithium, storage and the associated risks are effectively solved. Don’t waste resources, our time, the environment, or peoples mental bandwidth on this.
We can and should transition towards fully decentralized non-centrally owned or managed systems.
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Cool! Still a demonstrator plant, it looks like, but good to see it’s in commercial operation.
Pro. One of the cleanest energy sources you can get. Highly reliable. Fear about waste is vastly overblown which becomes apparent when you spend even a second researching it.
It is one of the only viable energy sources for space travel, which means it’s not something we should phase out or stop researching. The only real alternative at this time is hydrogen fuel cells, which are explosive, and a lot more complicated. Solar is only viable at a certain distance to the sun. Nuclear energy is the clear winner by almost every metric.
Think about how basic of a concept nuclear is. You have a spicy rock heat up fluid. The rock stays spicy for a long time and you rarely need to change it. That’s it. You’re not burning anything. You aren’t using overly complicated electrical equipment and membranes. You don’t need specific weather conditions or specific geological features like rivers or geothermal vents. It’s a rock that gets hot and can stay hot.
Boiling water to spin turbines is so last century. We can generate electricity directly through the wind blowing and the sun shining now and it’s way less expensive.
To be fair, wind turbines are also just spinning turbines.
True but you get to skip the heating up some water bit.
Wind turbines don’t work in space.
Do you live in space? I don’t.
All of their pro points were about space travel explicitly
Cool story but that doesn’t mean shit to me living on earth.
BUT RADIATION BAD
It is one of the only viable energy sources for space travel, which means it’s not something we should phase out or stop researching.
Who gives a shit? People have actual real problems on Earth. These kind of wasteful distractions are fundamental reason why.
I don’t know? Maybe because that is a brain-dead fucking take on the importance of space travel and completely ignores how nearly every advancement in the space industry leads to massive improvements for people and society?
I don’t have the time or patience to deal with people who are too fucking stupid to be able to comprehend why. Whitey on the moon… Are you fucking serious?
I am pro nuclear energy. It’s the most efficient way to generate sustainable electricity in abundance in the smallest amount of space.
We’re not running out of space. That’s a strange thing to use as a decider.
Same opinion here. It’s basically a gas well boiler plant without the CO2. The reason we don’t have more of it is due to politics surrounding transporting nuclear waste.
yes. its stable and powerful, you cant rely entitely on renewable energy because sun does not always shine, wind does not always blow and hydro-electric outputs too little power compared to the damage caused. you also cant rely on coal because youre going to fucking die
Anti, but only because it’s far too late. Nuclear energy should have been the transitional technology that helped us move off fossil fuels and into renewables.
But due to a massive smear campaign in the 60’s and 70’s, and some unfortunate material circumstances, everybody began equating nuclear power with nuclear weapons.
Renewables are totally viable now, as China has most prominently shown in recent years. The damage that fossil fuels have done to our climate and environment are so extreme, and the political and economic entrenchment has grown so deep, that spending money and resources trying to get nuclear energy popular again is a waste.
Nuclear energy is still popular. China is building many reactors and many countries are ordering SMRs.
Within the current capitalist system, it no longer makes sense to build them. They are too slow to come online, and they’re more expensive than renewables. It would have been an ideal solution had the rich and powerful cared for even their own children. With that said, it still makes sense to maintain them, as they’re actively keeping fossil fuels at bay to some degree.
If the world suddenly and magically became an anarchist utopia, I’d say it makes sense to build them going forward. We need to transition as much as possible as quickly as possible, and that means doing parallel efforts where the resources needed are different, which is to a degree the case with nuclear vs renewables. We are in a crisis and should act like it.
In a magical, pretend, ideal future where climate change is no longer an issue, I don’t think it would make sense to have them. They require a lot of centralization, and renewables don’t. We should opt for less centralization.
It’s less efficient compared to more decentralized renewable energy; it’s ok to keep the working central but I’m against new ones.
This is the key point. One supports or supposed policies. But “nuclear” is not one; it’s a power source, not a policy. So then the serious discussions are what new power plants to build, and when to retire current nuclear plants… And those are both worthwhile topics with totally different considerations and answers.
It also depends where you live, because the alternatives are geographically dependent. Are you in South Dakota? Might wanna do solar or wind.
It also depends what scale you mean. A slightly wealthy homeowner in the US can afford their rooftop solar, but many people can’t afford it or can’t install it. And this matters, right? If the power companies are fucking us over, using less of their juice is a good idea, but only of we can… And this all ties into the relative benefits of nuclear.
I am against the idea “factorio” type people seem to see in nuclear in that it could solve our problems with endless energy, no politics needed.
It is an ideology that is dangerous if nuclear power can’t fulfill that promise and its even more dangerous if it can.
I am not entirely against the technology itself however.
People who think nuclear can solve all our problems with endless energy clearly never actually played Factorio.
I dunno the whole narrative framing of the game seems to be thematically lost on people obsessed with the game in my experience but a huge number play it so I know I have only experienced a small slice.
I mean, even ignoring narrative framing, nuclear power generation is kind of pain in the ass to manage in Factorio. Of course, it’s also a massive step up compared to fossil fuels, so maybe some players just ignore the obvious downsides.
Pro. The waste storage required per kilowatt is tiny compared to the waste storage of coal. The all-told, long-term investment to power ratio is far better than fossil fuels in general. The death-print is safer than even solar.
Caveats
- Strong and competent regulation is required. No plants should be built under Trumpism.
- Our primary focus should be renewable sources of power and improved batteries to make them more reliable.
PRO: For use on Pioneer 10 and 11; Voyager 1 and 2; Galileo; Ulysses; Cassini; New Horizons; as RTG power sources.
ANTI: Terrestrial use that needs 10,000 years of safe storage considerations for spent fuel and waste.
Whitey on the Moon… Now thanks to nuclear energy! \s
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