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I just don't see why so many people are dead set on only solar/wind/hydro as "green" and nuclear and other more exotic power generation methods that don't emit greenhouse gases are somehow unacceptable.
Isn't the goal net zero? Why are we quibbling about how we achieve that?
Can't we just do whatever we must to get there and move on with our existence?
There's a great distinction that Norwegian philosopher and deep ecologist Anre Naess makes between long-range and short-range movements which I think helps explain the disagreement a little.
In the short term, we need to reduce CO2 for our own survival. Nuclear helps this, so from this angle it seems counterproductive for anyone who claims concern over the environment to object to its development.
In the long term, humans need to transition away from a society based on resource extraction, and long term damage. It's a lot harder to see how nuclear helps with this- mining and enriching uranium are destructive processes, and nuclear waste needs containment for thousands of years.
Our current situation is pretty critical, so I think it's pretty legitimate to think that we might need to make some compromises between the long and short term. But I think the distinction makes it a lot clearer about why people seem to be shouting passed each other sometimes.
The electrical grid, from production, distribution, and delivery, to the outlets in your home/business, is a very complex and distinctly unique system filled with challenges at all points.
I know just enough about all of it to get myself into trouble, or, more frequently, keep myself out of trouble. IMO, nuclear, whether in the form of SMR or something else, should be built to handle the base loads, aka, the power that is always needed, and not necessarily any more than that.
The volatile loads that fluctuate throughout the day, that's what I'm not sure the best method to address. Is it wind/hydro, which are fairly consistent (the latter more than the former, in terms of consistency), or solar + energy storage, which may be batteries, or some other method of storing the power?
I dunno, I'm no expert. But given the reliability of nuclear, building more or less static systems with it that will supply base loads, seems like a no brainer. We will always need at least that much power, let's get it from somewhere that can push it out 24/7/365 for years with little to no maintenance. Obviously, all nuclear production needs to be monitored, regardless of the reactor type.... For safety. But if the system is basically always doing the same thing, with the same output, constantly, it shouldn't require a lot of variance.
I think those are pros of nuclear. The alternative to a static system like that would be a very diverse flexible one with lots of different energy types and markets to encourage users to flex usage up or down.
I'm not trying to make a case either way though, just explaining what perspectives might lead people to be concerned about climate change and still anti-nuclear.
I appreciate that. It didn't come across as anything other than informative, and fostering discussion.
I'm personally a fan of nuclear. I know the long lead times of creating the facilities, largely because of the safety and protection systems that need to be built, tested and validated before the plant can export a single watt of power. All of which I understand.
My background is in IT, and the most stable systems, which are almost always preferred over alternatives, are distributed. What I want to see is that the majority of generation is done by homes in the neighborhood they serve. So the power needed, is the power inside that area; this wouldn't eliminate the need for a larger grid to interconnect all of those cells of production together, which would allow any single production location to go down and the power would still be delivered to the people in that area, borrowing excess from neighboring areas.
This would, however, make the grid power a lot more communal of a resource. I'm sure that works inspire a lot of "communist" type arguments...
However, the benefits of such a system would be clear and fairly robust compared to the more centralized systems we're using now.
I don't know if that's really viable, either with SMR (or other nuclear), or using solar/wind/whatever.
Mostly because nuclear is incredibly expensive and takes too long to build. If we want to achieve net zero anytime soon, going all-in on renewables is currently the most economically viable option.
Nuclear is there as a back up for when the sun doesn't shine, the wind doesn't blow, you don't have enough space for renewables, or you've reached the capacity for building and repairing renewables (Either logistically, in lack of expertise, or lack of public support). If you can't find a solution for that the result you end up with is just going back to fossil fuels when the times are tough. That's not carbon neutrality.
Battery storage is also still a breakthrough away from being viable enough to store all the electricity renewables could potentially generate to be able to sustain a 100% load when they are less effective, not to mention the amount of infrastructure required for them to be able to do so. You need some kind of baseline to supplement it that works when nothing else does.
We need both renewables and nuclear, and nuclear should never be a reason not to invest in renewables. But the same goes the other way around. We're in a crisis, we can't be pedantic about this stuff when the world waited out the clock to the very end like a teenager the day before his exam. We can pick the perfect options when it is no longer the enemy of good options. Until then every option should be explored.
Nuclear is there as a back up for when the sun doesn't shine, the wind doesn't blow, you don't have enough space for renewables, or you've reached the capacity for building and repairing renewables (Either logistically, in lack of expertise, or lack of public support).
Nuclear is a terrible backup. It's far too expensive, requires a ton of highly educated personnel we don't have and is not flexible enough to act as a quick backup if renewables fluctuate too much. On top of that there are very few moments where there is almost no wind or sunshine over a very large area all at once, making it economically unviable to an enormous degree.
Obviously the best backup is battery storage, which is ramping up in production capacity quite quickly. And it allows far more decentralisation: a lot of homes can be fitted with a small battery pack, which combined with some solar allows them to be basically off the grid. Combined with more research showing PV cells are still up to 80% the efficiency they were designed for after 30 years (suggesting they last far longer than estimated), it seems solar is becoming an ever stronger long-term solution. It's also becoming cheaper each year beyond even the most optimistic scenarios.
But even something like gas is a more preferable alternative to nuclear. It's very cheap and still viable when needing to spin up or down quickly. It also requires less educated personnel than nuclear and most countries have at least a few built already. Sure there's more emissions, but for those 30 days of the year you really need them that's still well over 95-98% of emissions cut when compared to the current fossil fuel mix.
nuclear should never be a reason not to invest in renewables
Unfortunately it is, because money is finite. And investers choose whatever is most viable, which increasingly is not nuclear.
I'm hopeful for fusion, but as always that's at least a decade away from commercial viability.
The same people that build nuclear don't build solar or wind. And yes, there is a huge shortage for these people with renewables, which is where the black and white flat cost of energy sources breaks down. Renewables are slightly less expensive than nuclear, but infinitely more expensive when their natural source is unavailable and battery / hydro storage is depleted. "far too expensive" is highly over exaggerated when nuclear costs about 1-3x as much as renewables, with newer reactors being on the low end of that scale.
On top of that there are very few moments where there is almost no wind or sunshine over a very large area all at once, making it economically unviable to an enormous degree.
To make this happen you need a massive amount of overcompensation for the times that the sun does shine and the wind does blow. The kind that isn't economically viable. You're building decentralized infrastructure that needs to be maintained while being essentially useless a lot of the time. You also can't exactly build a new wind/solar park in response to short term fluctuating demand, while you can scale up reactor utility.
Obviously the best backup is battery storage, ... And it allows far more decentralisation: small battery pack, which combined with some solar allows them to be basically off the grid.
The biggest users of electricity are not homes. You're right, this is a fine setup for houses. But you're not going to solve the biggest energy users this way. Not to mention, even for people at home, the amount of rare earth metals required with current technology is an ecological disaster in it's own right. We need batteries, but lets not pretend they are currently a final solution. Decentralization is not a magic cure all, decentralization also causes places with outdated energy infrastructure requiring new investments to completely revamp the system. This is not economically viable.
But even something like gas is a more preferable alternative to nuclear. It’s very cheap and still viable when needing to spin up or down quickly.
This is not carbon neutral, which is what our goal is. So you're essentially conceding the point here. You also highly overestimate how many days a year you would need them, considering the sun doesn't shine for at least HALF the day on average.
Unfortunately it is, because money is finite. And investers choose whatever is most viable, which increasingly is not nuclear.
Which is why nuclear is necessary. As the engineers that can build and maintain renewables are busy, and the grid is oversaturated with renewables when the sun is shining and the wind blowing (causing their efficiency / utilization to fall if you build any more) they will eventually break the equation in favor of nuclear. And there are still nuclear reactors being built in places where public opinion isn't irrationally afraid of nuclear.
The sad thing is we could have been building them 20 years ago, and have had massive steps ahead in being green now. Instead we are here hoping for some kind of miracle technology like cheap batteries, nuclear fusion, carbon capture, all which isn't a certainty to become fruitful, yet nuclear is here right now.
Yeah, the best time to start building nuclear plants was 20+ years ago. Unlike most things, the second-best time is not now, however - we're at a point where the massive expenditure for nuclear power generation is just a big question mark as to whether it'll be cost-effective by the time it's finished. There just haven't been enough breakthroughs in the past few decades to improve the cost-effectiveness of nuclear power substantially, while renewables are faster to install, cheaper to replace, and advancing at a rapid clip.
Definitely should still keep any nuclear plants we still have running, though. My home state of Maryland generates over 1/3 of its power through a nuclear plant. Would be 2/3s if the Obama administration didn't screw us over 'foreign' (EU) suppliers being a 'security risk' back in 2010 or so, ffs.
No advancements?
Is SMR a joke to everyone?
Look, I'm not saying nuclear is the only path forward, far from it. I don't think any path is the only path forward. I believe that we'll need a compilation of various generation methods to meet the demands of tomorrow.
The only thing I want to see in that future is no coal, nor fuel plants. Those two are the most common types of greenhouse gas-producing plants in use. The objective, in my mind, is to entirely phase them out. Whatever gets us there, is good with me. If that turns out not to be nuclear, that's fine too. If SMR or any other kind of nuclear is required to make that a reality, that's also fine.
I. Don't. Care.
Is SMR a joke to everyone?
Yes, because it hasn't really been demonstrated to be particularly viable. You don't need tons of small reactors, that's way too much logistical and regulatory overhead for little capacity. And you need way more auxiliary infrastructure and personnel that way, driving up costs that exceed what you save by modularizing them.
In October 2023, an academic paper published in Energy collated the basic economic data of 19 more developed SMR designs, and modeled their costs in a consistent manner. A Monte Carlo simulation showed that none were profitable or economically competitive.
In 2024, Australian scientific research body CSIRO estimated that electricity produced in Australia by a SMR constructed from 2023 would cost roughly 2.5 times that produced by a traditional large nuclear plant, falling to about 1.6 times by 2030.
I love the idea and the potential of SMRs, but the comment you’re replying to said there weren’t sufficient advances to make it economically competitive. That’s true.
Any time I see a new graph of the cost per kwh for the several largest power generation types, the SMR range makes me sad. I’m sure a bunch of the smarter timelines are getting 80% of their power from cheap, mass produced, passively safe, self-contained SMRs installed individually in remote areas or in large banks near population centers. But for our dumb asses it seems so far off economically. (Granted that’s because fossil fuel power plants don’t cover the costs of their externalities, but that’s also how our stupid world works)
I think it's a trust issue. If you see regulations and laws fall in real time, due to deregulating governments, destroying years of work with one strike .... you don't want these people to have supervision over nuclear plants or the waste disposal. Remember the train derailment? Yeah,... that but worse, because they tried to save money.
I don’t give a shit at this point. Just stop with the fossil fuels. Whatever it takes. If employing a team of white working class farmer astronauts to run in a hamster wheel is more politically palatable then let’s fucking do it.
It feels like we are either approaching, or have reached, a point where going zero carbon and straight up dumping unprotected nuclear waste in a population center would lead to less suffering and misery than our current trajectory. Obviously that's not necessary or even possible, but that the situation we are in is extremely bleak and fixing it at this point probably requires a level of ice cold motherfuckerness we've never reckoned with.
If nuclear helps us phase out fossil fuels quicker than I fully support it.
Renewables are the main actor for the phase out. Nuclear contribution (less than 8% of the electricity) is ridiculous.
At least where I live that's a big if. Nuclear in Australia is most often used by fossil fuel interests as a stalling tactic because of how long it would take to get up and running and how expensive it would be, compared to renewables.
Yet if they just did it, we'd have it by now. Any talking point is stalling at this stage.
Nowv kiss🥰🥰. More seriously I don't understand this nonsense of make fighting two great solution that help to stop the use of fossil fuel industry. Plus they are complementary since we can't store great amount of energy and solar and turbine are intermittent energies
They're not as complementary as you might think. Because solar and wind fluctuate during the day, any additional power source also needs to be able to spin up or down quickly. And nuclear doesn't do that, it takes time to do so. Worse, because nuclear is so expensive the only way it gets even remotely close to becoming economically viable is if it's running all the time. And that's precisely what it won't be able to do, because solar and wind are simply cheaper; nuclear will be pushed off the market.
Energy storage is genuinely a cheaper and more viable option these days. I think I saw someone calculate recently that producing the equivalent amount of energy in solar/wind/storage as a nuclear plant would cost less than half the amount of money to build, and even less time than that.
I think nuclear is cool and fusion is probably the future, but for now I don't see it making any kind of financial sense.
Sadly, it's just not. Looking at just the price to generate is just too one sided. Renewables need a lot of expensive infrastructure due to being decentralized, land which you might not have, and experts that are already in huge shortage. Energy storage especially is hard and expensive with current technology due the massive amount of rare earth metals you need for it, and even the current largest storage facility can't even provide enough energy for 2 million people let alone 8 billion of them.
I calculate it and explain it in even more depth here: https://lemmy.world/comment/13508867
TL:DR; currently, renewables + nuclear + storage is the closest we can get to carbon neutral. With just renewables and storage you don't get anywhere close and are still forced to fall back on either fossil, (stored) hydro, or nuclear. Of which the only really viable green option for most places is nuclear. When the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing, when the alternative is the exact pollution we are trying to nullify, that should be more important than paying a few cents more per kWh. In that moment the cost for renewables might as well be infinite if they're not producing anything and we don't have enough batteries to store it.
Do we have a solution for nuclear waste yet?
We put it back in the ground where we found it in the first place.
I don't see how people are A-OK with uranium and other naturally occurring nuclear isotopes beneath their feet, but used fuel rods from a nuclear power plant? No fucking way!
Your house is full of radon Joe, the nuclear waste in a sealed casket, buried in the side of a mountain nowhere near you isn't what is going to give you cancer.
I was gonna make a joke about using it for plutonium production, but I'm pretty sure that still requires neutrons from fresh U235 to hit U238 to make U239 which decays into Pu239
Reprocess it, salvage useful isotopes for known uses, keep a few others for research purposes, don't put it too far away because most of it could be useful in the future.
Permanent underground storage where it will naturally decay. Are a couple of different methods available from what I understand. And the amount of material that actually needs to be stored is a fraction of what is instead released into the air, water & soil from fossil based fuel. Not to mention toxins like mercury etc.
Just put it back in the ground where it came from. Why is this a concern? It was radioactive rocks when we took it out, and it's radioactive rocks when we put it back in.
We have many. Most aren't in effect yet though, but it also isn't a serious issue. They're stored safely in cement caskets, with molten glass and stuff to keep it together and safe, with effectively zero chance to cause an issue. There are permanent ways to store it safely, but we haven't invested in them yet for many reason. Mostly, dirty energy companies pushing the anti-nuclear message have purposefully hamstrung nuclear from becoming a great solution, and people who think they're being smart believe them.
That and they have ways to reuse “spent” nuclear fuel in newer reactors that can use fuel that older reactors have finished using.
Is nuclear waste more radioactive than the uranium we started with?
¿Por que no los dos?
Exactamente, no entiendo por qué es una discusión.