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But if the magic rocks (facility) cost more than creating energy from the water the magic rocks need for cooling…
Do both then
What if fire burned down everything in a 10 km radius when there’s not enough water around the specific area the fire was ignited at?
Funny how nuclear power plants are taboo, but building thousands of nuclear warheads all over the globe is no issue.
It’s because there’s no opposing corporate interest to building nuclear weapons. The way the world works is: profitable shit happens, no matter what the hippies think about it. See: every other environmental issue.
I’m in Missouri so apparently I’m surrounded by silos
How many fingers do you have?
Funny how building nuclear power plants that can only (if you have dipshits running them) kill a nearby city is taboo, but climate change that will kill everyone is acceptable to the moralists.
Funny how whataboutism makes your audience defensive.
Funny how being polite didn’t convince you so now you’re trying to sell that being mean is going to stop you. You were always useless.
Hey, I hear you, life is stressful and there’s a lot going on. It’s okay to be upset, I hope whatever you’re going through gets easier.
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Is there a particular reason you think everyone, here specifically, believes those things?
Edit: I absolutely share your passion about climate change, as a preface. Calling someone, who agrees with you or not, “useless” makes them dismiss your opinion. It just means we can’t engage in any meaningful discussion and others are less likely to take action.
Funny how solar, wind, and batteries are way cheaper and faster to build yet people are still talking about nuclear.
If only people weren’t fearmongering about nuclear 50 years ago we’d have clean energy today.
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, second best is now”
That saying works for trees. We didn’t make trees obsolete with better technology.
Reliable clean energy isn’t a solved issue today either. Until we have grid-level storage we need something that can provide a reliable base and had enough mass/momentum to handle grid fluctuations.
Stopping nuclear from being built is the problem.
We would have had a lot more clean energy than we do by now if we let the nuclear power plants that “would take too long to build!” be built back then, because they’d be up and running by now.
More letting perfect be the enemy of good.
Nuclear may have been good 10 years ago, but it isn’t really good anymore. This is like saying “if I had bought a PS2 in 2002 then I would have had fun playing Final Fantasy XI Online. Therefore, I should buy a PS2 and FFXI Online so I can have fun in 2024”. That ship has sailed
You can still play FFXI in 2024 officially on PC. Just don’t need the PS2.
and we can have 100% clean, renewable energy in 2024, we just don’t need the nuclear reactor
Solar and wind are cheaper yes. Batteries, no. If batteries were that cheap and easy to place we’d have solved energy a long time ago. Currently batteries don’t hold a candle to live production, the closest you can get is hydro storage, which not everyone has, and can’t realistically be built everywhere.
Look at the stats. The second largest battery storage in the US (and the world) is located near the Moss Landing Power Plant. It provides a capacity of 3000 MWh with 6000 MWh planned (Which would make it the largest). That sounds like a lot, but it’s located next to San Jose and San Fransisco, so lets pick just one of those counties to compare. The average energy usage in the county of San Clara, which contains San Jose (You might need to VPN from the US to see the source) is 17101 GWh per year, which is about 46.8 GWh per day, or 46800 MWh. So you’d need 8 more of those at 6000 MWh to even be able to store a day’s worth of electricity from that county alone, which has a population of about 2 million people. And that’s not even talking about all the realities that come with electricity like peak loads.
For reference, the largest hydro plant has a storage capacity of 40 GWh, 6.6x more (at 6000 MWh above).
Relative to how much space wind and solar use, nuclear is the clear winner. If a country doesn’t have massive amounts of empty area nuclear is unmissable. People also really hate seeing solar and wind farm. That’s not something I personally mind too much, but even in the best of countries people oppose renewables simply because it ruins their surroundings to them. Creating the infrastructure for such distributed energy networks to sustain large solar and wind farms is also quite hard and requires personnel that the entire world has shortages of, while a nuclear reactor is centralized and much easier to set up since it’s similar to current power plants. But a company that can build a nuclear plant isn’t going to be able to build a solar farm, or a wind farm, and in a similar way if every company that can make solar farms or wind farms is busy, their price will go up too. By balancing the load between nuclear, solar, and wind, we ensure the transition can happen as fast and affordable as possible.
There’s also the fact that it always works and can be scaled up or down on demand, and as such is the least polluting source (on the same level as renewables) that can reliably replace coal, natural gas, biomass, and any other always available source. You don’t want to fall back on those when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow. If batteries were available to store that energy it’d be a different story. But unless you have large natural batteries like hydro plants with storage basins that you can pump water up to with excess electricity, it’s not sustainable. I’d wish it was, but it’s not. As it stands now, the world needs both renewables and nuclear to go fully neutral. Until something even better like nuclear fission becomes viable.
Ok let’s compare real data then. Vogtle 3&4 are the latest nuclear plants to be completed in the US. They cost over 30 billion dollars for a capacity of 2.106GW. That’s >14.2 dollars/watt. Let’s be generous and assume nuclear has a 100% capacity factor (it doesn’t).
I can’t find real numbers for Moss Landing specifically, but NREL has data on BESS costs up to 10 hr storage at $4.2/watt. Let’s ignore that no grid in the country actually needs 10hr storage yet.
Utility scale solar has well known costs of ~1 dollar/watt. Let’s assume a capacity factor of 25%, so for equivalent total energy generation we are looking at $4.
$4 for solar, $4.2 for BESS, and since you’ll complain about not having 24hr baseline let’s add another equivalent 10hr storage system at $4.2. that’s a total of $12.4, compared to Vogtle’s $14.2.
Add in that the solar plus BESS would be built in 1-2 years, while Vogtle took well over a decade.
Also consider that BESS systems have additional value in providing peaking ability and frequency regulation, among other benefits.
Also consider that PV and batteries have always gotten cheaper over time, while nuclear has always gotten more expensive.
2.160 GW is it’s rated capacity. I’m not sure how you got from there to 14.2 dollars per watt, but it completely ignores the lifetime of the power plant.
Vogtle 3&4 are really a bad example because unit 4 only entered commercial activity this year. But fine, we can look at what it produces just recently.. About 3335000 MWh per month, or about 107 GWh per day. We can then subtract the baseline from Reactor 1 & 2 from before Reactor 3 was opened, removing about 1700000 MWh per month. Which gives us about 53 GWh per day. The lifetime of them is expected to be around 60 to 80 year, but lets take 60. That’s about 1177200 GWh over it’s lifetime, divided by the 36 billion that it cost to built… Gives you about 0.03 dollars per kWh. Which is pretty much as good as renewables get as well. But of course, this ignores maintenance, but that’s hard to calculate for solar panels as well. As such it will be somewhat larger than 0.03, I will admit.
Solar panels on the other hand, often have a lifetime of 30 years, so even though it costs less per watt, MW, or GW, it also produces less over time. For solar, and wind, that’s about the same.. So this doesn’t really say much.
But that wasn’t even the point of my message. As I said, I agree that Nuclear is slightly more expensive than renewables. But there are other costs associated with renewables that aren’t expressed well in monetary value for their units alone. Infrastructure, space, approval, experts to maintain it.
Let’s ignore that no grid in the country actually needs 10hr storage yet.
Because they cannot. They can’t do it because there’s not enough capacity. If the sun is cloudy for a day, and the wind doesn’t run. Who’s going to power the grid for a day? That’s right. Mostly coal and gas. That’s the point. Nuclear is there to ensure we don’t go back to fossils when we want to be carbon neutral, which means no output. If you are carbon neutral only when the weather is perfect for renewables, then you’re not really carbon neutral and still would have to produce a ton of pollution at times.
I’m glad batteries and all are getting cheaper. They are definitely needed, also for nuclear. But you must also be aware of just how damn dirty they are to produce. The minerals required produce them are rare, and expensive. Wind power also kills people that need to maintain it. Things aren’t so black and white.
Also consider that PV and batteries have always gotten cheaper over time, while nuclear has always gotten more expensive.
This is not true, and it should be obvious when you think about it. Since this data fluctuates all the time. Nuclear has been more expensive in the past, before getting cheaper, and now getting more expensive again. Solar and wind have had peaks of being far more expensive than before. These numbers are just a representation of aggregate data, and they often leave out nuance like renewables being favored by regulations and subsidies. They are in part a manifestation of the resistance to nuclear. Unlike renewables, there are many more steps to be made for efficiency in nuclear. Most development has (justifiably) been focused on safety so far, as with solar and wind and batteries we can look away from the slave labor on the other side of the world to produce the rare earth metals needed for it. There is no free lunch in this world.
For what it’s purpose should be, which is to provide a baseline production of electricity when renewables are not as effective. A higher price can be justified. It’s not meant to replace renewables altogether. Because if renewables can’t produce clean energy, their price might as well be infinitely high in that moment, which leaves our only options to be fossil fuels, hydro, batteries, or nuclear. Fossil fuels should be obvious, not everyone has hydro (let alone enough), batteries don’t have the capacity or numbers at the scale required (for the foreseeable future), and nuclear is here right now.
Would battery companies allow the price to go down? They are quite greedy as well.
There is competition in battery production. Pretty much all of society would be better off with better batteries, so price gauging in an industry like that is quite hard. And if it was, it would not go unnoticed.
The problem is simply the technology. There’s advancements like molten salt batteries, but it’s practically in it’s infancy. The moment a technology like that would become a big improvement over the norm, it would pretty much immediately cause a paradigm shift in energy production and every company would want a piece of the pie. So you’ll know it when you see it. But it might also just start off very underwhelmingly like nuclear fission and very gradually improve with the hope it can scale beyond the current best technologies for batteries.
All we can do is wait and hope for breakthrough, I guess. Because cheap and abundant batteries could really help massively with reducing our carbon output.
A nuclear power plant cannot destroy a city.
I guess destroy != Make unlivable
And that cannot happen. It’s a fear people have because they equate a nuclear power plant with a nuclear bomb. That is as wrong as considering the earth flat.
Chernobyl
But that was a really old tech, the plants built after 1990s shouldn’t allow this scale of pollution even if all the stops are pulled and everything breaks in the worst way possible
Chernobyl yes, let’s talk about it : after the catastrophy, 2 reactors were used until very recently (like until 10 or 20 years ago).
After the catastrophy, Chernobyl was made into an exclusion zone where people wouldn’t be allowed to live. But people came back 10 years after and it’s a small village now.
BTW even Hiroshima and Nagazaki that were annihilated with atomic bombs, that is weapons meant to destroy whole cities, were quickly inhabited again.
So much for the permanent destruction and millions of years of contamination. CO2 is a far more deadly compound for mankind than any radioactive material. Anti-nuke militants are merely ignorant fanatics.
Fukushima?
Fukushima, in 2024,is a city of 272569 inhabitants. If that’s unlivable, I’m fine with it. Hiroshima, Nagazaki and Chernobyl are all inhabited too.
Saying that nuclear stuff makes places unlivable is plain wrong, it’s anti-science. It’s comics level of bullshit science. Travel in time is a more serious theory than nuclear stuff destroying the planet.
People don’t put reactors next to cities for a reason. Meaning this scenario wouldn’t happen. Nuclear is also one of the safest energy sources overall in terms of deaths caused. It’s safer than some renewables even, and that’s not factoring in advances in the technology that have happened over the decades making it safer. This kind of misinformation is dangerous. It’s also not a good reason not to do nuclear. The reason why renewables are used more (and probably have a somewhat larger role to play in general) is because they a cheaper and quicker to manufacture. Nuclear energy’s primary problem isn’t safety but rather cost. It’s biggest strength is reliability and availability. You can build a nuclear plant basically anywhere where there is water.
I know nuclear is super safe but we have actual examples of accidents happening and making cities unlivable, you can’t deny that.
Which cities? I haven’t heard of any cities being made unlivable, only towns and villages.
🙄 I’m sorry, I was unaware of the population requirement
Depends on where you live, Germany that gets the beating for phasing out nuclear, is so densely populated that these remote areas hardly exist!
That’s actually an interesting point. Maybe we shouldn’t put nuclear reactors in Germany.
Burning down your house doesn’t poison people thousands of years later, so it’s not a perfect analogy.
Plus we have magic mirrors and magic fans that do the same thing as the magic rocks just way cheaper.
We’ve upgraded from burning our houses down to burning our atmosphere down which will absolutely poison humans for centuries to come. And since we now burn larger fires with black rocks, those release far more magic rock dust that poisons people than the magic rock water heaters do. Not to mention that fire has both killed more of us cave dwellers than magic rocks ever have (including the flying weaponry runes made from them) and have caused more ecological disasters, so fire is much worse.
Then we talk magic mirrors, they have evil rocks in them that get in our rivers and we don’t contain well. That aside, we show tradition to our ancestors by making much of them with slavery.
And the magic fans? The design is very human. They’d be a gift from the gods if only the spirit of the wind were always with us.
Summary: Magic rock still good, black rocks and black water make bad fire and hairless monkey make sick more.
Then we talk magic mirrors, they have evil rocks in them that get in our rivers and we don’t contain well. That aside, we show tradition to our ancestors by making much of them with slavery.
Sure, because mining uranium is total helaty and no problem at all.
https://genesenvironment.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s41021-015-0019-3
One must be very careful when digging for magic hot rocks or else you expose the evil spirit vapors. Our ancestors knew that where there is magic, some evil lurks. As they did then, we do now when we accept a better evil in return for the magic we believe may do more good than before.
I love the wording in here
Awesomeness Matey… A great paraphrasing correcto.
This is exactly, factually right, and eloquently put using the same meme terminology people here understand.
You say thousands of years, but it hasn’t been even 70 years since Chernobyl and the surrounding area is a thriving forest with tons of animals, unbothered by humans.
We had magic mirrors and magic fans for centuries tho.
Yet we decided to release way more poison and even way more radiation by mining and burning fossil fuels. We just poison larger areas than any nuclear disasters. And with fossil fuels people actually get cancer, and with toxic byproducts, mutations and birth defects.
People in polluted areas die sooner. Except around nuclear disasters sights - the air gets cleaner once all the people are thrown out.
We had magic mirrors and magic fans for centuries tho.
We’ve had solar and wind electricity generation for centuries?
Biomass and windmills perhaps
Eccentricity generators were invented before mass oil or coal use (1830s by Faraday).
We’ve had windmills, hydro, and even animal/human powered devices that could result in turning cranks for the generator to produce electricity - all for centuries at even that point. I would have to look up about when we first used solar to boil water, but I’m guessing there about.
Step 1: Get magic rocks.
Step 2: Now design the rest of the nuclear reactor.
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Profit.
yes
Step 5: Bury cursed stuff somewhere and forget about it.
The problem isn’t that they exploded one time. The problem is that that one explosion is still happening and likely will be for quite a while.
On the other hand, modern rock exploding plant designs are so much better that it’s very unlikely to repeat itself, so there’s that.
I’m sure the other rock/liquid/gas burning plants have had no issues along their lifetime and had no hand in demonizing the “new” slowly exploding rock technology after extreme negligence let the one big one happen. /s
I’d take the band aid of nuclear in my backyard vs what we rely on now after learning all of the insider knowledge of someone who personally worked in energy generation that did all of this plus renewables almost their entire professional life.
A hydro damn breaking has killed more people than Chernobyl before, and probably will again. Renewables are not perfect either unfortunately. Though some are slightly safer than nuclear.
Most are safer than nuclear, but until the environmental cost of manufacturing them is outweighed by the benefit of their use then nuclear is the least intolerable stopgap.
Wait are you saying that renewables have too much environmental cost to make?
Nobody wants dams. It’s not just dangerous, It’s also ecocide.
Since when? There are dams all over the place.
He should, reason they ditched them for coal and gas was because big daddy Exxon and BP are pushing for it so they don’t go out of bussiness. FUCK BP AND EXXON!
No it’s about nuclear waste and where to store it, it’s about how expensive it is to build a nuclear power plant (bc of regulations so they don’t goo boom) and it’s about how much you have to subsidize it to make the electricity it produces affordable at all. Economically it’s just not worth it. Renewables are just WAY cheaper.
Fire’s waste is just all particulates in the air which we all share.
Yeah but we got lungs to filter that all out … or smth idk how this works
I am Jack’s Lungs. I breath in soot and particles and eventually they cause cancer and I kill Jack.
That’s how that shit works, homes. Not a thing to “idk whatev” about.
Renewable are so cheap, especially when we don’t need as much energy! Fortunately we won’t need as much energy in winter now. :-)
Funny how people think waste is why we don’t use nuclear power.
You noticed how we’re all fine breathing in poison and carcinogens? Still haven’t banned burning fossil fuels.
It’s a money problem and a PR problem
And much of the PR problem is related to waste. The main push towards alternative energy sources comes from people worried about the long term consequences of burning fossil fuels. These same people worry about the long term consequences of nuclear waste production, so nuclear sabotages itself on this front.
Exactly, bad PR.
Waste isn’t actually much of a problem - it’s just been portrayed as one.
You noticed how we’re all fine breathing in poison and carcinogens? Still haven’t banned burning fossil fuels.
Who is “we”? How “fine” are you with breathing poison and carcinogens?
No it’s about nuclear waste and where to store it,
Is this video inaccurate? This isn’t meant as a gotcha comment. https://youtu.be/4aUODXeAM-k
Okay but why use a slur to make a point
You’re right to reject the logic behind that because it’s nonsense. Its not making sense to them because they still presume some kind of good faith when it come to these sorts of things.
The reason we haven’t built more nuclear power stations is because oil, gas and coal companies will make less money, if we build more nuclear power stations.
They have the means, the motive and they have a well recorded history of being that cartoonishly villainous. Nothing else makes sense.
Three Mile Island and Chernobyl really did change things. Prior to those incidents there were plans to build over 50 more nuclear plants in place which got canceled as a result. Currently oil and gas industries will do all they can to keep nuclear from making a come back, but for a long time they didn’t have to do shit thanks to those catastrophes.
Don’t forget Fukushima bring an excellent reminder
They didn’t have to but they did anyway.
It’s crazy that Mr. Burns from the Simpsons was in nuclear and not coal or oil. Probably a product of the propaganda at the time.
“Right in the heart of it is an itty bitty windmill and that just don’t sit right with me” - That one cousin at Thanksgiving
There is a huge lobby of pro-nuclear think tanks who try to astroturf pro-nuclear shit onto social media. We, scientifically literate, rational people, need to counteract these harmful narratives with some facts.
FACT: Renewable sources of energy are as cheap or cheaper per kwh than nuclear.
FACT: Renewables are faster to provision than nuclear.
FACT: Renewables are as clean, or cleaner, than nuclear.
FACT: Renewables are much more flexible and responsive to energy fluctuations than nuclear.
FACT: Renewables will only get cheaper. Nuclear will only get more expensive, because uranium mining will get harder and harder as we deplete easily accessible sources.
Fact: renewables take more land, that could be used for other purposes.
Fact: renewables by themselves cannot, and I mean CANNOT, be used alone. Unless you are willing to have a ridiculous over-provision. They depend on weather and have massive seasonal divergences. You need a base line power production to have a rational generation scheme.
Fact: nuclear have a higher cap for total production than renewables. As humanity needs more and more and more energy renewables (even destroying all our usable land) won’t be enough.
Fact: no everyone that doesn’t share your opinion is an “astrosuftist lobby” some of us can also think by ourselves. And some of us can ever think above the dogma of our political school of choice.
OUR Energy Sector…?
there are millions being poured into propaganda against using anything but fossil fuels, much of it stems from there. But i wonder if its better this way or the alternative way where we would use more nuclear energy but since there would be so much money to be made, the rich would use their money to make all safety regulations null. I wish we could just get rid of the source problem.
