Shuttering of New York facility raises awkward climate crisis questions as gas – not renewables – fills gap in power generation
When New York’s deteriorating and unloved Indian Point nuclear plant finally shuttered in 2021, its demise was met with delight from environmentalists who had long demanded it be scrapped.
But there has been a sting in the tail – since the closure, New York’s greenhouse gas emissions have gone up.
Castigated for its impact upon the surrounding environment and feared for its potential to unleash disaster close to the heart of New York City, Indian Point nevertheless supplied a large chunk of the state’s carbon-free electricity.
Since the plant’s closure, it has been gas, rather then clean energy such as solar and wind, that has filled the void, leaving New York City in the embarrassing situation of seeing its planet-heating emissions jump in recent years to the point its power grid is now dirtier than Texas’s, as well as the US average.
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.
“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.
It’s risks are pretty minimal, in the grand scheme. I won’t say non-existent of course. The possibility of a release is always there, but the impact is going to be measured in negative public perception, not deaths. One of the reasons the plants cost so much to build is because they have to stick a real big concrete dome over the dangerous bit.
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.
Oh absolutely the corporations are going to want to maximize profit. There are just a lot of things they can’t get out of, especially when it comes to safety.
The nuclear industry (in the US) since TMI has had a heavy amount of oversight from its regulatory body. That the plants pay for, too, which is good.
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.
As someone who works nuclear field adjacent (and has pretty frequent convos with people working for Plant Vogtle, the plant that’s nearly done adding 2 units in Ga) I completely agree about the expense. You can’t do full scale nuclear quickly or cheaply enough for it to realistically compete over the short term. Honestly, somewhat rightfully so. I wish every industry had the regulatory hurtles to cross before they got to impact the environment. And they have to pay for their regulators.
As for SMRs, I’m also hopeful there. Mostly because of you could get a small enough one you could literally take it anywhere in the world and power a small town with ease.
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.
lived under the specter of nuclear annihilation.
That specter’s back though.
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.
- The first thing was that I read a detailed analysis of the ‘payback time’ of different forms of energy generation. i.e. the amount of time it takes for the machine to produce more energy (in dollar terms) than it cost to build and run it. Nuclear fairs very poorly. It takes a long time to pay itself back; but wind was outstandingly fast; and solar was surprisingly competitive too (this was back when solar technology wasn’t so advanced. That’s why it was surprising). So then, I got thinking that although nuclear’s main advantage over coal is its cleanliness, wind is even cleaner, and easier to build, and safer, and pays itself off much much faster. And Australia has a lot of space suitable for wind power… so I became less excited by nuclear energy.
- The second thing is that as I grew older, I saw more and more examples of the corrupting influence of money. Safely running a nuclear power-plant and managing waste is not so hard that it cannot be done, but is a long-term commitment… and there are a lot of opportunities for unwise cost-cutting. My trust in government is not as high as it use to be; and so I no longer have complete faith that the government would stay committed to the technical requirements of long-term safe waste management. And a bad change of government could turn a good nuclear power project into a disaster. It’s a risk that is far higher with nuclear than with any other kind of power.
- The third and most recent thing is that mining companies have started turning up the rhetoric in support of nuclear power. They were not in favour of it in the past, but they smell the winds of change, and they trying to manipulate the narrative and muddy the waters by putting nuclear into the mix. They say nuclear is a requirement for a clean future, and stuff like that. But that’s not true. It’s an option, but not a requirement. By framing it as a requirement, they trigger a fight between people for and against nuclear, and it’s just a massive distraction form what we are actually trying to achieve. If the fight just stalls, the mining companies win with the status-quo. And if nuclear gets up, they win again with a new thing to mine… It’s not nice
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.
Don’t forget also that the elder Xers and older worldwide lived under the specter of nuclear annihilation.
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.)
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.
I am sympathetic to the don’t trust the powers that be viewpoint. For example I just assume everything an economist says is the exact opposite of what we should do.
What I look for is multiple independent groups able to present the same data showing the same results. For example I trusted the first Covid vaccine because Universities and multiple government agencies of different countries agreed. If it was just the Orange White House administration lawyers claiming this shit is the bomb yeah I am not getting it.
Guess we need to basically just keep saying “look you don’t trust the government, and that’s fine. Here is the science for all these other places”
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.
Also the nuclear waste is a big problem, it will be around for thousands of years. We have a nuclear plant near us and none of the waste has ever left the site, it just keeps getting added to big casks on a concrete slab outdoors and is a big potential vulnerability.
Most radioactive waste is just mildly contaminated and has a relatively short danger period in the realm of a century or less. The truly dangerous stuff represents the smallest amount of waste and that’s the crap people have been trying to put very deep underground for decades. For whatever reason the political will just hasn’t been there. For now it rests on-site in casks designed to keep it safely stored for a very long time, but it will eventually need a permanent home.
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.)
It produces extremely long-lasting waste, on timescales humans are not equipped to deal with.
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.
A lot compared to renewables. Did you read what he said? “We have the tech to do everything with renewables and storage now.”
Worth mentioning it’s actually quite small by mass (only 1% or so of what goes in), but only a few places actually separate out those isotopes.
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.
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.
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.
I did not compare it to oil., coil or natural gas. I am not sure why you are using those as some kind of comparison or justification.
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
Thank you for considering what I am saying. I really appreciate at least one person being open to thinking about their position.
