Nuclear power is still the most expensive way to produce electricity by a large margin.
Sure, we could save ourselves from extinction, but what about shareholder value?
It is not.
And there is no large margin.
Referencing several sources that consider a vast array of power generation technologies, from offshore wind to biomass, terrestrial wind, solar, gas, coal and nuclear, and nuclear energy has high start up costs and it’s also not the cheapest per megawatt of power. It’s basically middle of the road on most of the stats I’ve seen.
Solar, by comparison, has had a much higher LCOE as recently as 5-10 years ago. Most power construction projects take longer than that to plan and build, then operate for decades. Until the last few years, solar hasn’t even be a competitor compared to other options.
Beyond direct cost nuclear has been one of very few green energy sources, the nuclear materials are contained and safely disposed of. Unless there’s a serious disaster, it’s one of the most ecologically friendly forms of energy. The only sources better are hydroelectric, and geothermal. The only “waste” from nuclear is literal steam, and some limited nuclear waste product. A miniscule amount compared to the energy produced.
Last time I checked, all of the nuclear waste that’s ever been produced can fit in an area the size of a football field, with room to spare. For all the energy produced, it’s very small.
Yet, because of stuff like Chernobyl and Fukushima, everyone seems to hate it.
I live in Ontario, Canada, our entire power infrastructure is hydroelectric and nuclear. I’m proud of that.
Nuclear isn’t the demon that people believe it is.
Yet, because of stuff like Chernobyl and Fukushima, everyone seems to hate it.
Is that a bad reason really? When nuclear goes bad it goes really bad and it can go bad due to human error which is something that will always be present. When a solar panel catastrophically fails it doesn’t render the surrounding environment uninhabitable for decades.
The thing is, nuclear problems are big and scary events, but they’re rare.
Think like plane crash vs other transportation accidents: they make bigger news, but they’re actually safer than most other solutions.
Here’s the data: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh
It does seem that your solar example is the one thing that’s safer than nuclear sccording to this chart though, so maybe you knew!
No. And pretending it is longer for solar is false too. https://www.lazard.com/media/2ozoovyg/lazards-lcoeplus-april-2023.pdf
Thanks, that LCOE reference shows that nuclear is on par with several other technologies.
It thoroughly disproves the point that it is more expensive “by a large margin”. At most it’s a bit more costly than some things, but it’s also not far off from some other options, so it’s definitely not expensive… At least not by a large margin.
LCOE of solar is lower than nuclear for eleven years now. Wind has had lower LCOE than nuclear for 14 years now. See figure 52.
Building a new nuclear power plant takes 9-12 years on average. Hinkley Point C in southeast England was announced in 2008 (16 years ago) and is projected to be finished in 2028, with costs now being estimated around $40 billion. These long realisation times are not a european issue alone, as Korea’s Shin-Hanul-1-2 faces similar problems.
Safely storing nuclear waste is expensive, too.
Maybe I shouldn’t step in this but here it goes. My personal opinion is that nuclear isn’t good or bad, it’s an option that’s available. I have never heard a nuclear activist say that nuclear energy is superior to renewables. It’s not black and white, it’s all a complex mix of demands and limitations that dictate if renewables are better for an area or nuclear. It’s a whole lot of gray, but nuclear energy isn’t as dangerous as some make it out to be.
This meme is nonsense. Fast reactors do not alleviate the problem; if that were the case, waste would not accumulate around the world, to the point that no one knows what to do with it. There are no geologically safe storages for millennia.
A nuclear power plant has a useful life of about 40, at most 50 years, after which there remains a ruin that must be eliminated, a deconstruction that can last decades to eliminate thousands of tons of debris with medium and high radioactivity. This, adding to the storage problems, is a tremendously expensive process that is also carried out with public money, not by the owner company. In the event of an accident, see Harrisbourg, Chernobyl, Fukushima and some more, large areas of the country remain contaminated for many years.
The statement spread by nuclear companies that nuclear power plants do not pollute during their operation is a lie. They produce almost as much CO2 as carbon plants, since they require transportation from third countries, if they do not have a Uranium mine nearby, apart from the energy requirements in the enrichment processes in centrifuge plants. The warming of surrounding aquifers due to cooling, with important impacts on local fauna due to the proliferation of algae and lack of oxygen in them. Not to mention the risk of a meltdown due to lack of refrigeration, when the aquifer disappears due to a drought, which precisely now with global warming is a real risk.
The promotion of nuclear power plants has pure economic reasons for certain companies and in some cases weapons reasons to justify the production of the necessary Uranium and Plutonium.
Nuclear energy is only acceptable in medical applications with short half-life isotopes and in space probes. A nuclear alternative will only exist with fusion plants, the current fission plants are not an option.
The reason for rejection is not hate, but rather knowledge of the cause and consequences.
Your numbers are way off. A nuclear power plant generates about a tenth of the emissions of a coal power plant over its full lifecycle. This includes things like:
- Plant construction
- Plant decommissioning
- Uranium mining
- Uranium transportation
- Uranium enrichment
- Fuel reprocessing
- Uranium mine reclamation
But none of this really matters in comparing the two. Coal power plants also need to be constructed, and have fuel transported to them! They don’t just sprout out of the earth like manna from God!
Is it better than solar, wind, or hydro? No. Those generate about 5 to 20% of the emissions as a nuclear power plant (depending on which you’re talking about) when you include manufacturing and construction. Fortunately, functional governments (read: not the West) are capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time! They’re doing both! Which is smart—I’d rather have a nuclear fuel storage problem in 100 years than a “whoops, humanity went extinct!” problem. We don’t have a lot of time here.
Well, coal plants also need to be constructed and deconstructed in its finl life, but its much easier to do without problems, apart the fuel transport is also less problematic, most countries have own coal mines nearby, no need of importing it with dependency of third countries, which never is a good idea with changing world politics (see dependency of Russian gas in Europe). But yes, Nuclear Power isn’t an option, at least not the fusion power, and fission power maybe in 10-20 years, except in poor countries anyway.
You might need to back up some of your statements with a source there. Lots of words, none of which make sense.
Pretty much everything OP said is backed up by mountains of evidence, especially in the case of France. Looking it up is trivial. Without proving anything to the contrary, your own comment is lazy and useless to this conversation.
And yet, here you are, being precisely what you accuse me of being. Lazy and useless.
“Pretty much”, “Mountains of evidence”, yet none presented by them or you.
Also
Nuclear power is a MUST if we want to advance as a race in a “short” period of time. We need alot of energy to be able to have what we all want. Warmth, food, a life… hell even the internet. As long as people take it seriously, nuclear power is very very safe, and efficient.It doesn’t mean it is the only form of energy we need to adopt. But we do need it. Unless you think coal, oil or gas is the way to go… And no. Solar and wind won’t cut it all-round.
That is an opinion, mostly my own. It is based on many hours of reading articles and watching videos. I didnt study formally for anything to back up that opinion. However maybe read something like this to help you understand some stuff.
Good luck, and be better please.
Do they actually produce as much CO2 as carbon plants? Do you have a source for that claim?
In terms of nuclear waste storage, the IAEA claims 390,000 tonnes were generated between 1954 and 2016, and a third has been recycled.
The US EPA claims the US generated 6,340 million metric tons of CO2, and 25% were for the electric power economic sector.
The nuclear waste is stored on site, but I imagine carbon waste is stored mostly in our atmosphere…
The narrative I have heard is that nuclear energy waste is much more manageable than fossil fuel waste, but if nuclear energy has emissions or scaling problems I’m not aware of, I’d be happy to revise my preconceptions about it.
Here’s some reading material: https://www.bmk.gv.at/en/topics/climate-environment/nuclear-coordination/fairy-tales.html
here’s some more reading material from a country that actually knows what it’s talking about https://www.caea.gov.cn/english/n6759365/n6759369/c6792804/content.html
This comic is pretty bad. It oversimplifies both positions to the point of complete triviality, then uses it to mock a group of people. The comic is not insightful, or funny, or representative or any real people in any sense. It’s basically just a jab at some people that the author doesn’t like.
It’s so annoying that being irrationality afraid of nuclear power is simply assumed to be a leftist position where I live, by leftists and non-leftists alike. No thought goes into it, nuclear power is scary because of nuclear bombs and Chernobyl and that’s it.
