This feels like one of those “heres a speech to make me look like the good guy” when in reality they have some ulterior motive. I am hoping the ulterior motive is that this dudes company has heavily invested in renewables and forcing a transition will help them financially and help the world.
To his point that we need to explore all options, nuclear included, i can not agree more. Nuclear is the safest and cleanest option that can power much more than wind or solar on a site by site basis. It just sucks that the general public has no understanding of nuclear tech and how much better and safer it is than in the past.
Because digging up ore with lower energy density than coal that spreads heavy metals everywhere is totally safe. /s
When oil barons, Putin, far right grifters, and coal barons are all suddenly spouting the same lines about nuclear it’s definitely because they know it’s a good way to get rid of fossil fuels /s
Nuclear isn’t great long term, but of all the options that aren’t great long term, nuclear is the least not great. It can support the backbone of the energy grid for relatively cheap and in much safer conditions than other energy sources, even if we are led to believe otherwise by Chernobyl and Fukushima. Advances in nuclear reactor technologies means nuclear becomes safer and more maintainable over time, and it already has been the safest source of energy for a while. Also, Japan doesn’t shy away from nuclear; they’ve designed systems that heavily recycle nuclear waste to extract as much energy from it as possible, which also has the added effect of reducing the waste’s radioactive life.
It’s simple, really. We rely on it to support us while fusion gets off the ground, and even if it doesn’t get off the ground, we can still rely on fission to support us while we get more and more renewable sources up and running.
If anything it’s the fear of nuclear that’s been keeping us in such bad energy situations. For instance, France, being at the forefront of nuclear energy use, has not worked on new reactors up until recently after decades of underfunding and underdevelopment. Now the lack of maintenance and develoent of new reactors means that old reactors have begun showing signs of significant wear and tear, threatening the entire grid and part of the French economy; they’re energy exporters (green energy, at that), but are years away from having to phase out old reactors and become energy importers. That imported energy is almost guaranteed to be sourced from fossil fuels. If not even these nations are enticed to keep nuclear up and running, how are we ever to leave fossil fuels?
As for your mining comment, we’re going to have this issue even if we were to rely mostly on renewable. Demands for energy storage are only going up, and lithium batteries is where it’s at, currently. We just need to find the paths of least environmental damage, because there won’t be any path that doesn’t harm the environment.
It’s also not great short-term because building reactors (to proper standards, mind you) takes ages. Much longer than expanding renewables.
It’s also not great mid-term because, well, mid-term is too slow to have much of a climate impact, anyway, also, in that kind of time frame we’ll have fusion.
It’s also not great long-term because Uranium deposits are quite limited, especially if everyone were to switch to nuclear.
Then it’s also not great in general because no matter how safe you design the reactor, humans not prone to institutional failure have yet to be invented. Are you sure your country is able to be better at running plants than Japan. About the only country I actually trust with that stuff is Ukraine – because they have Chernobyl to remind them.
Then it’s more expensive than renewables, yes also those fancy new mini reactors, and that’s with the hidden subsidy of not actually having to insure against fall-out. States cover it because if operators had to buy insurance, well, they couldn’t operate because no insurer, or reinsurer, is willing to bankrupt themselves over a single claim.
Demands for energy storage are only going up, and lithium batteries is where it’s at, currently.
Nope. The vast majority of storage necessary for my utility to provide energy is Scandinavian hydro dams, we pump them full of wind energy and then get it back. Not to mention that with proper wide-area transmission networks wind is baseload-capable (you can’t have no wind anywhere, physically impossible) and with proper overcapacity the need for seasonal storage shrinks.
Speaking of seasonal storage: Germany’s gas pipeline network can store three months of total(!) energy usage, and is generally hydrogen-capable – parts of it are currently switched over. Call Siemens they’ll sell you turn-key plants off the shelf.
The reason you see so many lithium installations is because it’s good short-term storage. Noone is going to use them for seasonal storage makes no sense at all they have quite high self-discharge rates.
In theory, nuclear power generation may be safe. In practice it is not. There were two major catastrophes that killed thousands, first in Chernobyl and then in Fukushima. Fukushima wasn’t that long ago either. In practice, one should not underestimate the irrational greed of managers. There are calculations of how much damage insurance for nuclear power plants would cost. Since the risk, which can be calculated from the damage multiplied by the probability of occurrence, is very high because the damage in an accident would be so incredibly great that companies cannot afford it and always taxpayers have to save them, which shows the risk the taxpayers bear with nuclear power plants. Many nuclear power plants are very old and extremely expensive to maintain. So you would have to build new power plants in order to install the latest safety technology. Incidentally, the new security technology does not help against invaders either, as can be seen in the Ukraine. This super great security technology is enormously expensive. Renewable energy sources are simply unbeatably cheap because you get the energy from the earth and the sun as a gift. It is already the case that countries with many renewable energy sources, such as Denmark, are depressing the European energy market with their cheap electricity, and conventional energy sources are not getting prices that low. Then there is the biggest problem, nuclear waste. Uranium 235 and its fission isotopes are harmless after 1 million years. So the nuclear waste has to be guarded for 1 million years. Labor costs are bigger than money in the world exists and most countries don’t have repositories because it’s impossible to find a safe place for the next 1 million years. From the generated energy one also has to subtract the large amount of energy that is consumed firstly by the enrichment of uranium in gigantic centrifuges and secondly by the creation of uranium in mining. Only vehicles with combustion engines are used for this and the mining itself emits a lot of CO2. In addition, the uranium deposits are not that large given our high energy consumption. That is why India is researching thorium reactors, but none of them are productive yet. I think fusion reactors are a much better way to spend research money. Nuclear power plants need a lot of water for cooling. In view of the climate change, there were big problems in France last year to cool the nuclear power plants because the rivers did not deliver enough water due to little rain. As a result, many power plants had to be shut down and electricity had to be imported at great expense. By importing uranium from abroad, one also becomes extremely dependent on other countries and on their uranium prices. As you can see, given the huge advances in renewable energy sources, I think nuclear power plants are very poor options for generating energy.
Your premise is specious
There were two major catastrophes that killed thousands, first in Chernobyl and then in Fukushima.
- Chernobyl was a flawed test which deliberately ignored documented safety protocols on an RBMK-1000 high-power channel-type reactor. There are still 10 chernobyl-style reactors operating across russia, but the test method is the primary cause of that disaster.
- Precisely ONE of those 15,000 people killed in Fukushima and neighboring areas were due to destruction of the reactors at Fukushima. Here’s more information.
Firstly you are just picking up on my first point and secondly no one would have been harmed in either disaster if a wind farm had been set up.
I love you. Reddit has that weird cult of nuclear energy bros and I never once saw someone actually successfully stand up to them. I’m never leaving lemmy. 😭
You cannot run a society solely on renewables. You can run a society with zero emissions.
