this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2024
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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.
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.
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.
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and-the-environment/nuclear-energy-and-sustainable-development.aspx
Good luck, and be better please.
I was merely pointing out the fact that your no-effort comment above contributed absolutely nothing to the conversation.
That said, I'm not against nuclear power per se. However, given the fact that we need to cut down on CO2 asap, while at the same time there is a clear lack of available resources to build/research/develop every possible tech at the same time, I find it quite delusional to still push for nuclear when we can use those resources to expand on wind/solar even more aggressively.
In the case of France, the corporation running nuclear power is almost 70 BILLION Euros in debt, while expecting costs upward of additional 50 BILLION Euros for 6 more reactors...numbers that you know will skyrocket once construction begins. That nuclear plant that will be finished next year will produce the most expensive kwh in Frances history. Great outlook! Much convince.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64674131
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:
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.