this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2023
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U.S. Pledge To Triple Global Nuclear Energy By 2050 (www.huffpost.com)
submitted 11 months ago by lntl@lemmy.ml to c/worldnews@lemmy.ml
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When I first read the titile, I thought that the US is going to have to build A LOT to triple global production. Then it occured to me that the author means the US is pledging to make deals and agreements which enable other countries to build their own. Sometimes I think the US thinks too much of itself and that's also very much part of American branding.

Where are my renewable bros at? Tell me this is bad.

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[–] xerazal@lemmy.zip 0 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Nuclear power isn't bad. I used to be anti-nuclear energy because of the specter of Chernobyl, 3 mile island, and Fukushima. But learning more about it, there haven't been many actual problems with nuclear energy.

Chernobyl happened because of mismanagement and arrogance. 3 mile happened because of a malfunction. Fukushima happened because of mismanagement and failure to keep up safety standards in case of natural events.

These are all things that can be mitigated to one extent or another. it's much cleaner than other forms of energy, outputs way more than solar or wind, and with modern technology can be extremely safe. I think we should be adopting nuclear, at least as a stopgap until renewable tech reaches higher output in efficiency.

Kinda annoyed that these investments are going into foreign countries, when we are one of the major contributors to greenhouse gas. We should be building them here first to mitigate our own ghg contributions, then helping smaller countries build theirs.

I do still have concerns about waste removal and storage tho, but I'm sure we could figure that out if we actually wanted to. But I doubt we do, because "dA cOsTs" or some shit.

[–] DrFuggles@feddit.de 0 points 11 months ago

It's not "da costs", it's actually really, really really expensive to build new nuclear reactors. Most of that comes from increased labor costs, which in turn have ballooned largely due to increased regulation and oversight requirements, which I would argue is not something we should do away with.

I wouldn't necessarily mind having a reactor or two acting as base generators especially during the winter, but

  1. In Germany we've been searching for a secure waste site since the first reactor went online in 1957. If we haven't found it yet, we never will.
  2. There's not really a reason to hope for cost reduction of reactor construction once we do it at scale, because requirements and local acceptance are too heterogeneous to implement any sort of scaling construction. Every jurisdiction will have its own risk assessment and usually the locals are none too happy about a reactor close to them. I just don't see something happening in that regard. Wind turbines and solar panels on the other hand can be churned out in factories at scale, which is why they're so cheap, comparatively.
  3. Therefore, personally I'd rather invest in green H2 as an energy storage solution. We can easily generate an enormous electricity surplus during the summer months, but lack long-term storage of the electricity. So we shut off solar and wind farms when they're over producing. Wouldn't it be neat to instead let them keep generating and use that surplus energy to power power-to-gas plants E. G. with H2? It's an enormously power-hungry process, but if you do it when power is basically free...

Oh wait, we're already doing that and it's already cost-effective. Now, if we were to take that process and build it at scale... for example by not spending 12-20 Bn 💶 to build another Flamanville, Olkiluoto or Hinkley Point C... I think that might actually work.

[–] GiM@feddit.de 0 points 11 months ago

Nuclear is too expensive. It doesn't make sense to build new reactors.

[–] jozza@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I’m a renewable bro. I wanna see as much money pumped into as much infrastructure for renewables as possible. I wanna see solar on every building. I wanna see off-shore wind and tidal energy production. I’m keenly following development of clean, efficient, and cost-effective energy storage technologies, and much is being done in this space to support a future switch to full renewable reliance.

That won’t change the fact that we need on-demand energy now and we need to stop using coal and gas as soon as possible. We currently don’t have energy storage at scale. We will, but we don’t. So in the meantime, nuclear is probably the best option to pursue for use over the next couple of decades while we continue to invest in, and implement, renewables.

[–] Diplomjodler@feddit.de 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

What exactly do you mean by "in the meantime"? What kind of timeline do you envisage for the large scale rollout of nuclear energy? Do you seriously think it'll be possible to roll out nukes faster than building some more storage?

[–] Mannimarco@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The problem is "some more storage" can't be done, the technology doesn't exist

[–] Diplomjodler@feddit.de 0 points 11 months ago

You'll be blown away when you learn about batteries.

[–] polle@feddit.de 0 points 11 months ago

Its wierd to have these two posts next to each other today

https://feddit.de/post/5764680

Pleges for nuclear power if photovoltaic is already cheaper?