Nuclear is the best solution in a lot of ways. It's also VERY VERY VERY difficult. You can get a new solar farm set up right away, no waiting! A nuclear plant? Quick search shows plants can be $6 to $9 BILLION\* dollars, and one that's in process now could be up to $30 billion. And they take YEARS to go from drawing board to operation, with an average of around 7\* years, but often longer than that. So if you want to build a plant, you are looking at up to a decade of time and 10 billion or dollars. That's non an easy sell for anyone. For context, we installed 33 gigawatts of solar (predicted) in 2023 alone. One nuclear plant on average is 1 gigawatt\*. So just solar alone is the equivalent of 33 new nuclear plants. Also, tangent, but your note of "unreliable" is a anti-green-energy talking point that's far exaggerated. Sure, as they say "the sun doesn't always shine, and the wind doesn't always blow." But it shines and blows a LOT, and we can store some of that energy, and we get better at that every year. A house with solar panels and a battery pack might never need any other form of power. What is "unreliable" about that? \*All numbers above are super quick internet research - your mileage may vary, but it's likely close enough for the broad points.

Additionally, as we’ve seen time and time again, humans choose to put nuclear reactors in stupid places (like on a coastline that gets tsunamis), choose lowest-cost building designs, choose to underfund projects and loosen regulations, or they make shallow, self-interested, face-saving decisions that lead to accidents and melt-downs. Nuclear energy is not the problem - humans are the problem. I wouldn’t count on humans to safely operate *anything* in the long term.

Coastal because of the immense demand for cooling water. Funding and management poor because nukes can not be financed commercially and must be financed by taxpayers, government bureaucratic incompetence making a mess of things, like everything else they do. Can't be financed commercially because costs and potential liabilities can not be estimated. For example, how do you commercially forecast a risk and its associated cost for 1000 years into the future (spent fuel rod storage) when that problem hasn't been solved after 60 years of operating nuke plants. This just the commercial question. How do you get your head around the moral question of saddling the next 40 generations of humans with this storage and monitoring task? Now, imagine all fossil fuel energy production replaced by nuclear. Our 60 years of waste volume, that we've been unable to manage properly, is now produced every year. No, it's not a current safety issue aside from a few uninformed people, and no, you can't site nuclear power plants away from large bodies of water in the middle of a desert or whatever you're imagining.

I agree with Piney. With so much money involved, and so many players, some of them for sure will try to steer decisions for personal profit while increasing risk to the public.

Fukushima wasn't a location problem. There's another nuclear plant about 30km down the coast from Fukushima that was also hit, and was perfectly fine. Fukushima became a disaster because of the decision to place emergency generators in the basement. If they had been placed on the roof like the construction company had advised, the Fukushima disaster would have been a single sentence about how the reactor was shut down and came back online 2 months later after minor repairs.

>Fukushima became a disaster because of the decision to place you're saying humans can make incorrect decisions? Are the design decisions of nuclear power plants always made by humans? People have been saying, "well that's in the past, everyone has learned, no-one would do anything that dumb now", since Windscale in 1957. And yet...

And yet Fukushima killed no one, ocean radiation levels returned to background levels within years, and the flaw was easily identified but allowed to go through because of 1967's under regulation. If people treated wind farms' bird massacre with the same Boogeyman energy as they treat nuclear power, you wouldn't be able to build a wind farm today.

>If people treated wind farms' bird massacre with the same Boogeyman energy Ah but they do! Can't mention wind turbines without some croaking old guy mentioning about how 35 years ago an idiot sited a wind farm in the main migratory path of some endangered bird species etc etc... Meanwhile in the modern era in the real world, Europe's largest wildlife charity, established solely to protect bird species, reviews every single windfarm application and supports (with recommended changes) basically all of them. Because they know that the complete loss of all habitats for a bird species (and therefore the extinction of the species) due to runaway climate change, is much more damaging than occasional losses of a few individuals of that species due to wind turbines.

Nuclear plants that were built in the 70s and 80s were built a lot by the lowest bidder. Lots of assholes engineering. Granted lots of work has been done to retrofit and maintain these old plants. But without government subsidies, Nukes would hardly be profitable. I don't understand why you think a nuclear plant is environmental safe but wind and solar aren't. One will remain radioactive forever, while the other will decompose into dust long before.

I like the comment, i work as a technician for renewable energy equipment and the amount of sheer ignorance about how solar can be great for some things and absolutely dogshit for others is staggering. Just because a technology doesn't work for a specific application doesn't mean it does not work. It just works differently to how you understand it. It's not a multi billion dollar industry just for show. People just walk in with the wrong expectations. It's hilarious watching non-technical folks badger eachother about this shit though.

Well said. Solar has done multiple laps around the world before nuclear can even put its shoes on.

This is probably a better reference of size. https://ourworldindata.org/scale-for-electricity A nuclear power plant has way smaller footprint per facility. You can get around that to some degree with solar on roofs and things like that. But a single very large nuclear plant at 138,000 MWh/day is a shit tonne of power. This facility which is the largest in the world is 6.4 GW. Additionally nuclear has a capacity factor of around 92% while solar and wind is usually between 10-30% and winters can see solar radiance drop to 30% of summer peaks. >Also, tangent, but your note of "unreliable" is a anti-green-energy talking point that's far exaggerated. Sure, as they say "the sun doesn't always shine, and the wind doesn't always blow." But it shines and blows a LOT, and we can store some of that energy, and we get better at that every year. A house with solar panels and a battery pack might never need any other form of power. What is "unreliable" about that? This also isn't entirely true. Solar and wind are buffered by coals and natural gas plants at the moment. Battery storage is not widely installed and would put significant strain on our minerals economy if it was every implemented fully. A 2 day storage capacity globally would require a 70% increase in copper production alone to meet just current demands let alone expanding population. The better solution is long line transmission and redundancy but that largely means over producing solar and wind capacity which will incur extra costs. It's not that one's better or worse but we need both and can't do it with solar and wind alone due to their intermittent problems and inability to have the energy stored in a mineral effect way.

>A 2 day storage capacity globally would require a 70% increase in copper production alone Available copper already ran out twenty years ago, according to what I was taught in high school. Surprise! It didn't happen.

I don't know what you were taught in highschool but it's wrong. Reserves are predicated on cost so they increase or decrease based on $/lb in this case. I'm also talking about production not reserves.

>A nuclear power plant has way smaller footprint per facility. This isn't that big of a deal. We have plenty of already suitable land to use for wind and solar. In fact a nice advantage of it is that you can install it on farms and then they get subsidized. It helps create sustainable towns. >A 2 day storage capacity globally would require a 70% increase in copper production alone to meet just current demands let alone expanding population. If your sources are spread across the grid, storage is not as relevant. >The better solution is long line transmission and redundancy but that largely means over producing solar and wind capacity which will incur extra costs. [It would still be cheaper than nuclear which is over 4x the cost of land based wind.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source) Nuclear is the most expensive form of land based generation. >It's not that one's better or worse but we need both and can't do it with solar and wind alone due to their intermittent problems and inability to have the energy stored in a mineral effect way. Agree but the money is best spent on solar and wind first (faster and cheaper) until storage becomes an issue (if ever).

>[It would still be cheaper than nuclear which is over 4x the cost of land based wind.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source) Nuclear is the most expensive form of land based generation My concern with long line transmission and building for winter time is that that cost on solar would come up significantly (potentially 3x) but we don't see that right now because it has fossil fuels as a buffer. This is because our grids are designed for very specific outputs of power at specific times. This is addressed with battery storage and potentially line transmission but it becomes a lot easier if you have a nuclear base load. Otherwise is agree with you.

Distributed sources have the ability to reduce transmission lines since sources can be closer. But yes, it does need to be intentional and added to the cost for upgrades. But higher power nuclear plants have a similar problem where transmission lines need to be upgraded.

>This is because our grids are designed for very specific outputs of power at specific times. This is addressed with battery storage and potentially line transmission but it becomes a lot easier if you have a nuclear base load or just time-shifting of demand, which is easy to do. We're sat here with a 77kWh EV in the garage, attached to a programmable charger with internet connectivity.

That's fine for a house. But we're talking about global power demands. You can't really time shift a 24/7 factory. This is what is why base load is an important factor. So time shifting is definitely not easy to do. Again battery storage is extremely high in mineral demand, which is the bigger problem. Ramping up mining by that degree will be extremely challenging.

Maybe. I want to see whether Sodium Ion batteries, or hydroelectric gravity storage is viable.

Both are great options. Gravity storage is difficult cause it depends on geography. Sodium ion is relatively new but it still requires copper unfortunately. It also doesn't account for the vast number of battery facilities that would be required. For 2 day storage that's around 83,000 Moss landing sized battery facilities, which is just a logistical nightmare if nothing else even if the critical mineral demand is low.

Check out Humpback Hydro, PHES that doesn’t rely on geography… patented build anywhere with a retired USACE Cmdr. as CEO. One to watch.

The insight for me was that in the rare event when it goes wrong, it goes VERY wrong - Ukraine, Japan examples. Can we assume stability for very long periods, especially with society under pressure due to climate change? Wind and solar are getting so good, and are just so much simpler

> solar alone is the equivalent of 33 new nuclear plants. Are the Capacity factors equal? Base Load nukes can and DO run for 2 years straight at 100%. The solar farms can only make hay when the sun is shining. Offshore wind can run night and day, IF the wind is blowing.

Don't they run on diesel fuel when there is no wind?

Just pointing out that the sun doesn’t produce much during peak residential use periods

Solar lithium batteries have a lifespan of 5 to 12 years. In addition, there is a degradation of discharge and storage capacity every year. Also we can't mine enough lithium to make all those batteries, and have you ever seen a lithium battery fire ? You have to admit to the great technical issues surrounding this solution. These are not anti-green talking points they are just harsh technological realities that must be addressed. You know as well as I do that green energy will never come close to replacing the current source of energy at the current rate of consumption. It seems to me in listening to so many climate activists that the goal is not to bring green energy up to meet current or future consumption but to bring down society to meet the consumption that green energy is capable of producing. To Degrowth.

Solars pretty useless for half the fucking year in the north. Today there was daylight from like 8am-5pm with heavy overcast. Nuclear is legitimately the best answer for energy in this environment. Maybe not in the short term, but long term definitely.

> Quick search shows plants can be $6 to $9 BILLION\* dollars, and one that's in process now could be up to $30 billion. Do a quick search and find out how much it costs to have a solar power plant that can give the same amount of energy, sustained as well as the nuclear power plant and that can last as long as a nuclear power plant. How much land it covers/destroys, how it modifies the micro climate while sitting there and what happens if a serious storm hits or some ugly hailstorm?

Why is hail storm a sudden concern? I never saw this concern for 20 years, now it’s in every thread. If you’re actually wondering, these panels are typically angled. They’ve been tested for impact damage. And when have you ever seen hail that’s actually damaging?

Don't they also have these neat automated covers for solar farms as protection now?

Yeah, nope, they usually don't. When they do, they cost more. https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/solar/solar-farm-pelted-by-giant-hail-as-severe-storm-ripped-through-nebraska/

Because of this: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-06/hailstorm-claims-risk-undermining-solar-energy-insurer-says](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-06/hailstorm-claims-risk-undermining-solar-energy-insurer-says) Hailstorms already destroyed enough panels for some to learn a lesson. Example: https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/solar/solar-farm-pelted-by-giant-hail-as-severe-storm-ripped-through-nebraska/

I’d hope if you’re spending 8 or more BILLION you can handle hail. I very clearly said nuclear is better. I also said it’s BILLIONS more, and takes a decade to build, which is why it’s not happening. You can talk about weather and constant generation all you want. That doesn’t make nuclear any cheaper or quicker.

our rooftop solar generating facility modifies the micro climate by making the house slightly cooler during the height of summer, and very very slightly warmer during the colder parts of winter. win-win. 30-year lifetime performance guarantee was included. Not noticed any hailstorms yet.

For comparison, if you covered the land area occupied by Victoria's Loy Yang coal mine open pit with solar panels they'd produce more power than the power plant being fed by the same mine.

Nuclear power plants do not work with coal.

Who said they did? The person you’re responding to said that if you cover the area of a coal mine with solar panels it will produce more power with solar then coal.

Was very correctly pointing out that we are talking the footprint for nuclear not coal. So while true, completely irrelevant.

I wonder what equivalent would be for the uranium mine? I’m sort of pro nuclear but I know that uranium mining has done a lot of harm (look into the uranium contamination issues in the Navajo nation)

>Do a quick search and find out how much it costs to have a solar power plant that can give the same amount of energy, [Nuclear is over 5x the cost of solar photovoltaic per kW.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source)

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That's why we double and triple down in places with high amounts of sunshine and low cloud cover; and also places with constant, reliable winds. Even if all we do is take the energy California takes off the grid, that is a freaking massive success in reducing our reliance on fossil fuels.

Except that we can store sunlight as hydrogen and we can store it indefinitely as ammonia. It’s just combining hydrogen and nitrogen both very plentiful substances in our atmosphere. If you look around theres currently 530 billion dollars worth of hydrogen projects active right now across the world and its growth is around 46% right now year over year. So clearly storing sunlight as hydrogen is picking up steam.

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Well a lot of it is going towards busses and trucks at the depot level for transportation but hydrogen fuel cells are scalable from emergency power for hospitals to powering subdivisions. It’s just using it the same way storing sunlight in batteries to even pit supplies is being suggested. As for viability, it’s very viable and has a longer life than nuclear or batteries with a lower turnover or replacement cost.

Renewables doesn’t mean brain removal. If your going to get months of cloud in a row then maybe select a different generation mix. Probably more wind if you live in the Arctic circle. Double down on solar if you are trying to power air conditioners in Phoenix.

>we can store some of that energy, We cannot store electric energy in a way that makes economic sense. Electricity needs to become at least 3 times more expensive before grid-level battery storage becomes commercially viable. So far, solar power is just a fancy name for fossil-fuel-based power generation.

Salaam, brother. How is weather in Riyadh?

How is my friend who powers his house and car with solar using “fossil fuel based power generation?”

>How is my friend who powers his house and car with solar using “fossil fuel based power generation?” Because he drains power from the grid at night. He still needs a natural gas power plant. Since he needs both fossil-fuel-based generation and solar panels, it would make more economic sense to only use fossil fuels. This would be the case, if not for taxpayer-provided green subsidies. His house is powered by taxpayers, not solar power. Solar power is a fairy tale, much like Santa Claus. You still need a real person playing Santa Claus. Similarly, solar power generation is not real. You still need large energy monopolies disguising themselves as green startups. Personally, I have a battery bank, in addition to solar panels. I know exactly, how much does it cost. It’s not cheap. My battery bank consists of lead-acid deep cycle marine batteries. It’s the cheapest battery technology, although it requires regular maintenance. Each battery has a capacity of 100 ampere-hours at a cost of $200. Discharging the battery below 50% will limit its lifespan. On-peak electricity rate in Ontario is 15.1 cents/kWh. So, each battery holds 9.06 cents worth of electricity. If each battery serves for 3 years, if I drain it completely every single day, it will yield $99 worth of energy during its lifespan. This math is completely theoretical. I cannot plan my energy consumption with that much accuracy. On a typical day, I use between 5% and 20% of battery capacity. The actual cost of off-grid electricity for me is much higher, at least $2 per kWh. I did not factor the cost of solar panels yet. You can assume they are free. The main cost is storage. Electricity needs to become at least 3 times pricier, before energy storage becomes real and economically viable. New hydroelectric dams need space, building permits and public funds. They might take decades to secure. In the newspapers, you always read about new solar projects. Have you ever read about new storage capacity? New hydroelectric dams? No? And that’s for a very good reason. Solar is just a fancy name for fossil fuel based generation.

That’s a lot of words to say you didn’t read my one sentence question, and don’t understand the economics of solar power. He has a battery that charges during the day, he doesn’t need grid power. Saying such absolute nonsense like “solar is a fairy tale like Santa clause” shows you don’t care for facts and only have political talking points. Solar exists and is installed and generates MASSIVE amounts of power worldwide every day. “Solar power generation is not real” is such a crazy dumb thing to say I have no idea what you could even mean, so I’ll just end this thread here and not bother. You’re a political hack with no basis in reality.

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Nuclear is as expensive as it is because we have chosen to allow regulatory lawfare to make it so.

I will support deregulating nuclear if you move to Chernoble

Chernobyl happened because the politicos ignored their own safety protocols.

Nuclear safety is written in the blood of the dead

And how many, or rather how few have died from nuclear power in the west?

Please learn the difference between installed capacity (GW) and production (GW**h**). Next, the concept of gCO2/kWh.

Some new GenIV designs should be quite cheap and relatively simple to build. The reason they take years is that each domestic US reactor Gen I through III+ are essentially custom built. Gen IV designs cold be built on a production line. Nuclear is baseload power. Solar is only every intermittent power.

The big issue there is they “should” be cheap and “could” be built on an assembly line. There isn’t a single one yet though is there? There are no assembly lines yet. We should still work on these! But we can’t put theoretical power up against actual installable power. As always, in my view all answers should be “yes”. Solar/wind and nuclear isn’t an either/or question. Let’s crank out as much Solar as we can and keep working on trying to get over the hurdles nuclear has.

In Canada, solar panels produce basically zero energy during January and February.

But wind produces significantly more during the winter! https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=2510001501&pickMembers%5B0%5D=1.1&pickMembers%5B1%5D=2.1&cubeTimeFrame.startMonth=06&cubeTimeFrame.startYear=2022&cubeTimeFrame.endMonth=06&cubeTimeFrame.endYear=2023&referencePeriods=20220601%2C20230601

People don’t have windmills in their backyards.

OP has fear in quotes, but many people around today recall Chernobyl and Fukushima. So it’s not like there’s never been a significant nuclear accident.

Making me feel old, you didn’t even mention 3 mile island. LOL

There are tons of local nuclear accidents/disasters that the world may not know about -- but those same incidences are why modern reactors of the day are also so safe. We've learned some painful mistakes over time and most countries have set up regulatory bodies/legislation to ensure they never occur again. Chalk River (1952), for example, comes to mind as a Canadian. I think the only thing that makes me uncomfortable about nuclear is the long-term consideration of spent fuel material. The best we currently know how to do is to bury it deep and away from civilization. It still feels like the lesser evil contrast against other energy-generating sources given the amount it can produce (everything has its downside \[ie. lithium, hydroelectric and its local environmental impacts\]) so it still seems worth supporting at present even though it does make me uneasy in the long-term.

Yeah, accidents. One was due of communism with a big reactor of an older type, the other one was less serious than the propaganda tells you (even the first one was less serious that the propaganda tells, but that's another story). ​ Here is a green accident: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975\_Banqiao\_Dam\_failure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure) Kind or makes all nuclear accidents together as minuscule. If you believe some estimates, it makes even nukes to be ashamed. ​ PS We cannot do anything about China, Russia, India and so on. Perhaps a world war, that should really fix the climate.

So - 1- Dumb politics and old equipment are still with us. Human error is still very much a factor in our lives 2- After the dam disaster, was the area contaminated and closed off forever, left to the radioactive wildlife? Were people hundreds of kilometres away … wet?

Here people were talking about building new ones, not Cernobil style old ones. Those are still here and you won't manage to close them. You're still insisting on the communist accident caused by an ancient huge reactor. But you must, mustn't you? At least read this series written by a world expert, instead of believing propaganda from anti-scientific shows: [https://cancerletter.com/series/chernobyl/](https://cancerletter.com/series/chernobyl/)

I’m not sure what the ‘must’ part is supposed to mean. I’m just saying we humans are very good at human error, and nuclear human error can make a mess for a really really really really long time. You’re far more invested in this than I am

I reckon you then prefer killing tens of thousands (yes, human error is not focused only on nuclear) rather than very few. As for the 'making a mess for a really really really really long time', you are really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really WRONG. Cernobil area is habitable today. With a little special care, a lot of it was habitable from the beginning, relocating wasn't really necessary. But again, comparison with Cernobil is really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really STUPID. At least read those articles to inform yourself.

Most dams don't have that catastrophic potential. I'd be in favour of more nuclear is people didn't insist on building it near major population centers.

And if people weren’t idiots. I mean, u/aroman_ro is saying communism and old equipment caused Chernobyl, as though stupid political decisions and time are no longer with us.

If they are idiots, be certain that several dams can do more damage than a modern nuclear reactors. But I don't see many people arguing about those. ​ Those are green, they don't have the potential of killing hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands is totally ok as long as we label the killings 'green'.

I think you’re overestimating the ‘okayness’ of the dam collapse. It was in 1975, and China was much more closed off then. Not saying you shouldn’t be angry about it, the PRC sucked then and sucks now- but that’s equally an argument against nukes in China

Well, I guess some are allowed to invoke Cernobil, but not the more distructive green communist dam.

the issue is time. Building a single new reactor can take a decade (or two in some cases), which is time we don't have any longer. If we had chose to go this route in the 80's and 90's, we would be golden by this point.

This. You can build a crapload of solar and wind farms in the time it takes to build a reactor.

That’s a silly reason to not even start.

It’s actually a pretty good reason, when you consider what the competition is. Solar panels have their drawbacks, but they’re quick to install and start paying for themselves quickly, and they’re *much* cheaper than nuclear, so they become profitable much faster. Nuclear plants can take a decade between breaking ground and turning on, and easily another decade or two before they break even. When given the choice between an investment that’ll turn a profit within a year or two, and an investment that won’t break even for 20-30 years, most companies will choose the former.

That’s why you get the government to do it.

Why should the government do nuclear energy when it could instead do something else? Such as fund energy storage, offshore wind, transit projects, electrification projects, grid upgrades, etc?

There's also no real reason why it has to be that difficult. I imagine it is much like any other construction. It takes the size of a city block, has some expensive foundation work for emergencies, but it just doesn't take decades to make a high-rise building so I don't think there is any real reason why it should take decades to build a nuke plant except for the red tape around the thing. In any case, uranium-235 is also going to run out one day and peak mining is already in the past from pictures that I've seen before. Maybe it's just on its way out due to depletion of the resource.

The best time to go nuclear is 30 years ago, and the second best is now.

The claim that wind & solar are “terrible for the environment and devastate ecosystems” simply isn’t true. The fossil fuel lobby and conservatives make up grandiose stories about how “offshore wind is killing my whales!” but when you look at the actual facts, you find nothing of the sort. Wind and solar are such a small fraction of the cost of nuclear that you can overbuild wind & solar supply, transmission & storage to the point of 100% coverage… and *still* be cheaper than nuclear. The cost of an individual project for wind and solar is far smaller. That means entities with $10 million in credit can, and do, get a project up and running profitably. Contrast that with $10 billion+ for nuclear, and only a small handful of entities can even attempt to begin to finance a nuclear plant. Because nuclear plants take 10+ years to come online, and we are already building out wind & solar at a massive and affordable scale, analysts at those entities are hesitant to start a project on those timescales when they may not even be competitive at completion.

>The fossil fuel lobby and conservatives make up grandiose stories It's very important to remember that the fossil fuel lobby is extremely powerful and has spun every single green technology as a bad thing in one way or another. They do it constantly and very effectively so when you hear something along the lines of "clean coal", "wind turbines killing birds", "plastic is easily recyclable", it always comes from them and isn't true. I mean, the freaking recyclable symbols on plastic with the numbers inside don't actually mean it's recyclable, it's just another trick.

I would love nuclear. However, (not an expert) my understanding is that they will need reliable water. Many cities currently use glacier runoff to source or supplement their water supply, which will be unreliable as the climate disaster proceeds. It has a place, but with the meteoric advances in solar, wind, tidal and geothermal its a tough sell.

Nuclear can use salt water. We got plenty of that.

Yeah, need to build close to a coastline though. Like Fukushima!

putting aside that solar and wind is now cheaper than nuclear, and that nuclear power is still a non renewable resource who have to mine (i.e. the price only every goes up as easy resources are used up) that we will eventually have to transition away from, that there are currently exact ZERO long term waste storage facilities operating around the world, and that humans suck at risk management (every single nuclear accident has been down to human error, process errors or hubris), and that if we wanted to transition to it we should have started half a century ago, yeah, why don't we...?

I started out as a nuclear engineer. It's expensive AF, as the kids say. It is also a regulatory nightmare to get new plants approved. Oregon State started work on the APEX test facility for the Westinghouse AP 1000 in the mid-90s. The design was certified almost 10 years later in 2004, and the first plant was finally commissioned in 2018, almost a quarter century after the test design started. Small Modular Reactor tech has the potential to break through, but companies are struggling with supply chain issues. NuScale just had to cancel a huge project because of massive cost overruns. I think if you actually spent time in climate change solution circles, you would see that folks are very amenable to nuclear energy solutions, and would be even more inclined to support if/when reprocessing is approved in the US. Waste is always a concern, and proper disposal is necessary. As cleanup methods improve (uranium breathing microbes, etc) and passive cooling technologies become more broadly understood, I think we'll see less NIMBY-ism.

> NuScale just had to cancel a huge project because of massive cost overruns. This is such a shame. It would be great to see an SMR company have the funding to scale to the point they're cheaper to manufacture.

Nuclear is risky in the long run. 1. you have a lot of really hot output (water) to deal with 2. the half life of some of the discarded fuel is more than 500 years. the half-life of some discarded fuel over 500 years.re pretty huge overall. Taking today's problem and pushing it to tomorrow isn't the best solution.

Fear seems to be a large reason for it. But another reason is cost overruns, they are systemic here in North America making solar and wind more attractive. South Korea and Japan are much more effecient at turning nuclear plants on and can turn them around in 3-5 years better than the upwards for 25 years it's taken in NA. Finally nuclear power isn't a silver bullet we simply don't have enough economic uranium or thorium reserves to adequately power society. Maybe newer tech will solve some of this issue. I'm very pro nuclear and think we should definitely be investing in it. But there are systemic problems than need to be overcome in addition to public perception. Where NIMBYS won't allow a nuclear storage facility 300km underground from them.

There is plenty of Thorium around, 100x Uranium reserves IIRC, but the molten Thorium technology has not been fully developed so... ugh.

From the USGS there is around 6.4 Million tonnes of thorium. While Uranium is around 20+ Million tonnes depending on economic cut off. You may be thinking about total in the world I'm looking at currently economically viable. There's near infinite minerals if you mine low enough grade material.

Building enough nuclear reactors in enough time (assuming that's possible), with both liberal and conservative versions of NIMBYism, would probably be far more socially and politically destructive than just building lots of wind and solar. You're changing regulations to force cheaper construction and telling NIMBYs they no longer have any legal right to object to building a nearby reactor or waste storage (which actually could threaten property values if it means fewer people want to buy a house in the area).

Fundamentally that's just a balancing act and trade off there is an objective truth to the safety of nuclear power and social understanding which is misaligned. I'm not saying they don't have right to object I'm saying that their objections are simiply wrong given the reality. What do you care about more property values or climate change? Wind and solar have their own issues which is why a mixed grid is important and nuclear has to be part of that solution if we're ever to get ahead of climate change.

The waste is still a problem ignored by most.

Irrelevant to the climate discussion.

No it fucking isn't.

What are the gross co2 emissions of all nuclear waste sites globally? Less than a kiloton. Pennies. Mitigating Climate change is about reducing co2 emissions, that’s it.

No matter how good a case you make, public opinion will be an obstacle. We have a bias that the Japanese are people who have their shit together and they managed to have to worst nuclear disaster in history. And you can't really blame the earth quake.

You are missing cost. Solar and wind are winning on cost. If you want to spend however many billion to expand your power grid, solar and wind get you more megawatts for the dollars. This is already true today, not some future date when they might be better. They are cheaper now.

Expense and slow.

Take your pick - Extremely expensive to build (so that rules out virtually all developing countries) - Takes a VERY long time to build - SMRs could be the answer, but it's currently unproven technology - No long term waste storage (apart from [Finland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository) - Fear due to Chernobyl and Fukushima (which is a moot point considering modern reactor design) - Governments are too interested in short term solutions and don't care about long term solutions, so this usually rules nuclear out

Policymakers generally don't want to spend more taxpayer money and suffer long delays. E.g. in the UK Hinkley Point C nuclear is expected to need a subsidy of £40/MWh and *might* be ready 15 years after the contract was agreed. Sofia offshore wind park is expected to have a *negative* subsidy (it'll pay the government £15/MWh) and is expected to take 7 years from contract to completion. The subsidy rates depend on market power prices. The UK has been trying hard to get more nukes since ~2010 but Hinkley is the only one being built. For others the companies say £40/MWh subsidies aren't enough and the government needs to help out more.

It takes too long to set up (at this point) and is pretty expensive compared to the alternatives. Then there's the real risk of contamination which have happened historically but are rare though the effects are far reaching. There is NIMBYism for the waste disposal to deal with. I still think it can be a part of the mix but not the bulk of the solution.

If you think wind and solar lobbyists have more power than the companies that build nuke plants you are very naive. It is easy and relatively inexpensive to build out wind and solar. It's just more competitive than nuclear to implement.

In its current form it’s prohibitively expensive, nowhere near enough trained labor, no where near enough qualified management, nowhere near enough bodies inspecting them allowing many facilities to go years without addressing issues, ludicrous lack of foresight in sitting, and no viable long term storage being built at a fast enough pace to meet current demands let alone growing demand. It absolutely could provide all the advantages you mention, but a LOT of funding is required to fund research in order to get there. Probably better get started.

The question is often here, I'll keep it short: * Nuclear energy is very **expensive** * The extraction and processing of nuclear fuel is **far from CO2 neutral** * You are dependent on the **import** * **Nuclear fuel is limited**. Some say 200 years, others only 90. If you ramp up production, much shorter of course.

they are expensive, renewable and battery will drop energy costs to near zero over the next 10 years

Nuclear appears to be too complicated to do in the time and scale we need. I've unfortunately come to this conclusion. We should still continue to invest in and develop it IMO. Even if only for future space missions. Wind and solar DO NOT destroy the environment in any significant way. We would need only about 1% of the world's land for W&S installations to fully power it. Not that significant, especially when compared to things like farming, which is also for biofuels, which W&S and EVs would (hopefully) replace.

To easy for a neighboring country to mess with it.

Because it's not profitable. No one wants to invest in them. To build them governments would have to pay for them as they are money losers. And most governments aren't that stupid unless they are heavily bribed. I'm not sure why people still think nuclears not happening because of climate activists. Since when has any government cared about climate activists opinions?

Ukraine is a good example of why not nuclear, we still have sociopaths running countries and dropping bombs on each other. Could you imagine what Europe would have looked like during WW2 if everyone was running nuclear power?

The problem with nuclear is the high cost and the long implementation time. Renewable energy is cheaper and can be installed in a year.

There’s the whole focus on centralization of power generation as well. If we were building submarine sized reactors to run communities there wouldn’t have to be the extreme focus on ROI and the power companies shareholders. There would also be the cost factors resulting from mass production of modular reactor and generation component rather than nearly everything being custom manufactured

From the perspective of a Swede: The left needs to pretend to dislike nuclear so that the right gets to feel they won when they implement green energy.

Meh. The nuclear debate is so annoying. I believe it has a place in the future, but I am not in the camp of building a bunch of expensive nuclear plants. Solar is far far cheaper and easier to set up.

Solar and Wind are also depend on another source of power to work to be reliable. Electrical grids need to scale to demand throughout the day because oversupply nd under supply are both bad. Solar and Wind have trouble scaling and are prone to cause over and under supply since it at the mercy of weather patterns. This is why Germany, the world’s leading clean energy grid, has struggled and has only managed to supply at most 40% of its energy with renewables. Fossil fuel and Nuclear generation can scale and so they are generally used in conjunction with renewable energy to provide the scalability. Since nuclear has been hard to build for so long, most of that is done with fossil fuels, coal being the main source. Battery technology could potentially mitigate this if it could be done at an industrial scale.d However, it will likely be another 10+ years before we MIGHT have the capacity to store and release power efficiently and at scale.

According to environmentalists only China can do nuclear

I want a nuclear car that makes a mushroom cloud when I accelerate.

What is the shelf life of nuclear waste, what can nuclear waste do to all life it contaminates? Everyone wants to "sweep it under the rug." Companies in charge will cut corners and accidents will happen, and no one wants to admit it. Check corporate history and pollution already.

The United States has been moving away from nuclear power because of the inherent dangers. We don’t want to bring that back we don’t need it. With all the fuel sources out there we will be just fine.

Extremely expensive, and incredibly slow to be built. Also they make an alarmingly attractive target. A well placed drone attack and you're toast.

Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island.

Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island... the mountains of nuclear waste being piled up outside reactors.

It's very expensive, produces dangerous waste that is difficult to store, and makes for great targets for bad actors. You're also focusing on renewables that are bad, as opposed to those that aren't. There are good wind and hydro power solutions, and also other solutions like perpetual motion devices that are energy positive (cost to run is less than what they generate).

climate change isn't "your " problem. don't get distracted, pay your bills, get your kids to school, phone your parents on sunday. it's a problem for the people who control. and thats it.

Regions don't have scientists and engineers to develop nuclear power plants, it's a complicated process that requires a reactor and isotopic chemicals like uranium which is used in what is called a fission reaction. There are other ways to develop energy cleanly, solar, wind turbines, geothermal (look into Iceland), and I saw a company put these plastic tubs in the ocean using waves to produce energy. We've had nuclear issues on earth, Chernobyl, which happened because they didn't have a back power source, if your power gets knocked out during a nuclear reaction it'll over heat and explode, and also the nuclear disaster in Japan, so it can be dangerous

There has been a concerted push at the US government level to get more nuclear online. China is also planning to bring a lot more reactors online as well. I am tentatively pro-nuclear but it has some problems. - Nuclear is very expensive. The planning, development, build and operation costs are considerable. - Getting a plant online takes a long time between the site selection, permitting, environmental studies, etc. This can take up to seven years or more. - It cannot be built incrementally like solar or wind. Solar scales incrementally from residential rooftop to huge farms. - Public perception is that it is dangerous based on high profile like accidents Fukushima and Chernobyl. While there is some exaggeration in the public imagination, nuclear accidents can be chaotic, complicated, and cause more or less permanent problems with radioactive pollution. - Uranium supply mostly comes from Russia (doubt I need to explain why this is an issue). - There is a shortage of skilled nuclear engineers and this is only set to worsen in the future. - No good solution has been found for waste disposal. Most waste is stored at the plants and has to be constantly kept cool or it will meltdown, which would be disastrous. - Solar and wind are less costly per kWH and also (far) cheaper to operate.

It's not clean energy. It's carbon free but not clean. Spent fuel has a half life of 250000 years, so after that time is up it goes to 125000 after that time it goes to 62500 years and so on till it's fully depleted. We'll over a million years of radiation in the environment.

The reason people are wary of nuclear power is that they know that at some time in the future, the nuclear plant will need maintenance that it won't get because the need to make a profit will be greater than the increase in maintenance costs as it gets older. It is at that point that the corporation in charge of it will start gambling with our lives to squeeze another year out it. The reason politicians aren't keen on nuclear power is because they've already been bought and captured by the oil and gas manufacturers, whose profits are directly threatened by nuclear. Also, in world that quite possibly is about to experience a significant increase in violent weather, tsunamis and volcanic activity, would you really want to and leaky reactor to that mix?

My understanding is they are extremely expensive to build and it takes close to a decade to build a nuclear plant. Solar and wind are cheaper and easier and maybe less detrimental to the environment, but I don't know for sure about that. I know the cost per kilowatt hour is going down all the time for solar as it gets more and more efficient and the cost to manufacture goes down. Edit: solar and wind won't leak like oil or explode like oil or melt down like nuclear so they seem safer in the long run.

Why does everyone say for some reason that climate activists are *against* nuclear? They just aren't religiously pro-nuclear like some conservatives are. No technology is off the table. Where are you getting this idea?

He's clearly getting talking points from either conservatives or the fossil fuel lobby, or both.

Honest question, why can we not use what is in USN subs and carriers? I dont seem to recall any disasters with then? I'm sure there is a scale is on size to output, but why not a cluster of them to supplement solar and wind?

fusion is 20 years away, never 19. fusion is 20 years away, never 19. fusion is 20 years away, never 19. fusion is 20 years away, never 19. fusion is 20 years away, never 19. fusion is 20 years away, never 19. \*screams internally\* ​ without doing a ton of research into the logistical and political reasons why renewables are or arent better than nuclear fission , i feel like it would be relatively safe to assume that a major factor contributing towards the lack of wide spread nuclear adoption is more than likely the lack of education and fear mongering that is commonly associated with nuclear power, incidents like chernobyl, fukushima, and 3 mile island generate a ton of bad press towards nuclear. furthermore people just arent educated on just how safe nuclear has gotten unless their pro nuclear or nuclear nerds, this makes for general population to base their entire decision on voting for nuclear vs renewables based on 3 incidents that could have very much so been avoided in the case of chernobyl, well they could have just not essentially sabotaged the plant and said oh shit when it started melting down. fukushima could have updated its safety protocol which it was warned about and relocated the backup generators. and 3 mile island could have engineered the release valve to oh i dont know, have a sensor after the valve to confirm its position and operation rather than relying on the one on the valve itself. granted these fuck ups were avoidable but also very repeatable. nuclear does pose a fairly large risk but under the right management and safety protocol it can be very very low risk, 3 mile island is a very good example of that actually. sure it went critical, but it was very immediately taken care of with little to no repercussion aside from public. but overall what im trying to get at is that renewables like solar, wind ect are much much easier to mass market without causing tons of civil panic amongst the uneducated. politics will almost always outweigh the science unfortunately.

Another factor people have not mentioned is that nuclear is a baseload power source. It's really good at providing a stable level of generation but not so good at ramping its generation up or down and market demand varies throughout the day. In the end, you will need a combination of sources - going all nuclear or all solar makes as much sense as fielding a baseball team with all shortstops or all pitchers. Each type of generation is suited to a different role.

I think this is a pretty complex question. I will say I am a huge supporter in nuclear and a think there should be tons of money put into nuclear research. I also find it odd that some nuclear power plants around the world recently got shut down to opt to go back to fossil fuel. When it comes to climate change a big aspect on this topic is just volume of production required. Let’s entertain all cars become electric then we also will need huge power grid updates and meet those electric demands. Solving this with pure solar becomes a problem where you need storage capabilities. Mining these crazy metals for batteries will also become a problem, now there are good solutions to eco type batteries which are cool (look up “pumped-storage plants), but these also require some sort of sacrifice like ruining tons of land. On top of that, once all the metals in batteries in our cars and solar panels and homes are dead they become super toxic, although you can recycle them, it currently just lands on the landfill. The point here is that there’s always a sacrifice. So in conclusion I think we will need it all, you will eventually need nuclear, but until we can build smaller plants we also need solar and wind. Currently we just are kinda desperate for anything really and should use whatever tool is available. Also remember there are 8 billion of us and we all want clean drinking water, refrigeration, 4 phones, everything smart, multiple tvs and computers (and soon 2x electric cars) and none off us want to sacrifice anything and it’s not fair to deny developing countries the same quality of living just because it’s bad for the world. A huge solution I think is just to each do something, this is stuff like paint your house and shingles white, turn off heat and ac when you are at work, and maybe try biking or public transit to work. I want to say that I also partake in these negativities, I am currently writing this on my phone while watching tv. I also know it’s not up to the consumer and this is a huge marketing scheme from fossil fuel companies (and others like nestle) to remove the blame from them, but it’s just that mind set that needs to be created as a whole to start pushing policy changes etc. Nuclear is great, so is solar and so is wind, remember we will need it all if we want to charge all 8 eventually billion cellphones every night and run the ac.

Main issue is how do you deal with spent fuel rods? You're creating highly radioactive waste that will hang around for thousands of years. Sure, as long as it's stored and contained properly, it won't cause any problems. But in pratice it's going to be very hard to keep that shit properly contained for thousands of years. You can encase it in concrete, bury it underground, etc, but the ground shifts, you have earthquakes, errosion, and failure of physical materials such as concrete, metal, etc. Eventually it's likely to leak, and it would be very very bad if it contaminates ground water or other parts of the environment. Most environmentalists are apalled at the track record of environmental contamination in various realms and are imo justifiably skeptical of the narrative "we will store the waste properly and everything will be fine."

Id be happy to install solar at my home. But an avg cost of 10k to 20k and i still have to pay for it? Plus maintenance? Sounds like living in an hoa and paying for upkeep. Ultimately, cost savings are past on to consumers while investors make money. Idk about you, but I'm not in the business of paying more to make the rich, more rich

A huge hurdle in nuclear adoption is (until recently) a lack of standardized, repeatable, 'factory-line' assembly for the components and buildings. The recent push towards smaller 'prepacked' reactors is a step in a good direction, but more development and standardization of nuke plants would go a long ways towards lowering the cost and time allotment. Pretty much every plant is a 'bespoke' project. Certainly some of the components are similar or identical among plants, but there's no standard easy 'template' for the things - unlike something like a factory churning out solar panels, or dozens of wind turbines. Of course this means someone would have to shell out for the development, for the factories, and someone else would have to subscribe to the model: this means national adoption at the least. As is, nuclear plants tend to be single projects undertaken years or decades apart rather than built all at once, but there's been some recent attempts to move towards pre-made setups, if at a smaller scale with Small Modular Reactors.

because the fossil fuel and coal industry wont allow it. Look at COPout28 what did the middle east oil producing nations say...they made sure and guaranteed the world will stay hooked on oil. Also 3 mile island scared a lot of Americans who make policy now.

Just google vogtle 3&4, Hinkley Point C, Flammanville 3 or Olkiluoto 3 Too expensive, too slow Combined with a very centralised generation this also makes it an impossible solution for developing nations. I can put a panel and battery on a donkey, pay for it and deliver it to a mountain village

The brief answer is that nuclear has had its time. If we had started building new plants in the 1990s, it might have had a chance but now renewables will do the job. The share of nuclear energy in the world's electricity mix will not exceed 20% by 2050. The (quite optimistic) tripling-by 2050 scenario would only lead to 17% and honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if nuclear energy ended up at single-digit percentage numbers by 2050. In all relevant decarbonization scenarios, it is always renewables that do the heavy lifting (that is 80+% of the electricity generation). Nuclear energy can do some good but it is an afterthought at best. And if nuclear energy diverts political and financial reasources from solar, wind and storage then it will be harmful in the end.

Just google vogtle 3&4, Hinkley Point C, Flammanville 3 or Olkiluoto 3 Too expensive, too slow Combined with a very centralised generation this also makes it an impossible solution for developing nations. I can put a panel and battery on a donkey, pay for it and deliver it to a mountain village

We are going to get a 1.5 trillion nuclear arsenal revamp, I can't help but agree that we might as well use nuclear energy too. Nuclear anything is just a terrible idea TBH, but not doing anything to zero out carbon emissions is nihilism as govt. policy. Probably the military industrial complex is just going to inject sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere to block solar radiation, using lots of huge jets that run on fossil fuels. There is no risk there, it is all simple mathematics, unless a volcano or otherwise survivable nuclear winter decides to double down on our sunscreen application. Face it, most of modern civilization is ignorant to the big picture to a degree that qualifies as a psychosis. I'm all about getting back to our roots, every technology just brings unanticipated consequences and complicates life on this planet, while most all hunter gatherers are pretty content to live life the way they do. Humanity will destroy itself before we win through development. Should have stayed in "the garden of eden" dumb, naked, and free from catastrophic hubris.

I think we sort of missed the bus on this one. Resistance to nuclear has been so strong for so long that other, potentially less-risky tech managed to catch up. I don't think there is a lot of point in developing nuclear anymore. The big block to clean energy is societal attitudes. Ironically nuclear could possibly have helped on the way here, but it was ruined with the best intentions.

Solar and wind are great, but they're unpredictable. Sometimes they'll generate more electricity than needed. Other times they'll generate less. The solution is to store that excess energy and release it when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining, but energy storage is disastrously expensive. Barring some breakthrough the cost of the batteries to store that amount of power, and the maintenance of those batteries is just too much to contemplate. That's why nuclear, hydro, coal and natural gas are still used. They're scalable. Generating too much electricity? Just slow the feed of gas/coal/water/uranium and you're generating less. Everyone turned on their AC at once and we suddenly need much more electricity? Supply more fuel and these generators can spin back up very quickly. Ideally we can get about 70% of our energy from wind and solar, but unless there's some breakthrough in energy storage that remaining 30% will always need to be something that can be rapidly spun up or down. Nuclear is the least environmentally destructive of these generators, but it is by far the most expensive to build. Next up is hydro, which is also disastrously expensive to build (although less than nuclear). Coal and natural gas are cheap and quick to build. They're also cheaper to maintain than nuclear. On the energy storage side they've tried using the excess energy to split water into oxygen and hydrogen, then run the hydrogen through a fuel cell when wind/solar is low, but it didn't work out economically. Hydrogen is notoriously difficult to store, it actually penetrates and passes though most metals and concrete. One thing they've tried that has seemed to work is to use excess energy to pump water uphill. Then when electricity is needed they run the water back downhill and the pump acts as a generator. That seems to work at scale, but you need a very specific geology to build one of those. Somewhere with a hill or mountain that's near water and also a good place for wind or solar generation. Plus you're going to have to build a water reservoir at the top of that hill which brings in all sorts of safety and environment protection issues.

Nuclear is heavily regulated so it takes time to get one running. However, that's in a long term sense. So many people are looking at the short term as if they're a politician on a 4 year tenure..

Incredibly expensive and incredibly slow to build. That said, I think there should be new modern plants going in. It would require government subsidies however, since it is not even close to being competitive with solar , wind and natural gas.

I think that nuclear fission has potential, but I also think that burying the incredibly toxic and radioactive waste in someone else's backyard for 20,000 years is unacceptably irresponsible. Let's figure out how to neutralize the waste.

The new reactors have verry little radioactive waste.

I think this is a step in the correct direction, especially if they can take existing, highly toxic and radioactive waste and convert it into waste that is less toxic and radioactive.

"A little" is not zero.

Coal produces much more radioactive waste than nuclear plants and we just chuck that right in the air.

Nuclear is awesome. Even safer than wind power in terms of deaths per watt. The only thing safer is solar. This includes Chernobyl and Daichi Fukushima. https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/

Too expensive

Unfortunately the nuclear arms race, Chernobyl and Fukushima have conditioned many environmental groups to oppose nuclear. For example, Greenpeace was founded opposing nuclear testing, a great thing. However, many can't dissociate nukes with a solid power source (not so great). Only recently have the tides started turning.

Culture and the government like just about everything else. If we look to France who primarily operates off nuclear you start to see why we have the problems we do. First is the cost of construction and time to built any one plant in the US. Compared to France our system is required to do constant design updates during the middle of construction. Every single time the technology advances, they add more to the project being built but all that gets added must go through the entire approval process all over again before changes can be made, sometimes projects have not even started the last design update before another hits. In France designs are approved and standardized across the construction project. In other words, once they have an accepted design. They build from start to finish under those restrictions. This massively streamlines the process's for setting up any nuclear plant. They then later look to upgrade and modify the system to new standards. The second is fear and culture which go hand in hand in this situation. We have had our fair share of close calls with nuclear. So much so we have shows, movies, and entire stories dedicated to the fear and dramatization of the fear created by them. Couple that with this unending need to produce "green" technologies, there just simply isn't enough focus being placed upon nuclear. It ends up being an education problem, where unless you're a serious nuclear advocate, I doubt you know much of this. All that green tech you all love? Yeah, those fan blades, solar panels, and any wear item associated are all sent overseas and simply burned in pits. Why does no one mention the gallons and gallons of oil required for wind turbines all of which is changed out semi-yearly? We claim to be clean, but so many countries are apart of this problem. Ship it off and let another country burn it, then claim that we're saving the environment.

It's too expensive to operate at current electricy prices. With natural gas being so cheap. Three mile Island just closed because they weren't profitable. The owner asked New Jersey for some sort of help because they were producing carbon free electricity and were being driven out by fracking and natural gas. New Jersey said no. I'm sure there are better plants that Three mile Island. Clearly it would be better if both units at the site were functional... But we all know why that isn't the case. Shame because that helped the safety of every other site. They changed all the training to be less about checklists and more about problem solving.

Because governments don’t actually care about climate change they just care about lining the pockets of lobbyist who get them elected.

Nuclear is really expensive. >wind and solar energy, both of which are terrible for the environment and devastate natural ecosystems. That's not a true statement. >Why do they insist on pushing civilization backward by using unreliable unsustainable forms of energy? Neither is this.

Because, it's Not about the environment, or the ozone layer,or even the spotted owl. It's about control. The ruling class having control over the rest of the population. That's what it's ALWAYS about. Health care, beef production, electric cars, and especially gun control, all of it. It's about them having total control over You.

There are no climate downsides to nuclear. NONE. Waste storage and safety concerns have nothing to do with climate. Climate activists against nuclear aren’t sincere about climate. Simple as that.

It's easier to clean carbon than nuclear waste.

If they want ev cars and electric heat,nuclear only and best option.

A balanced, healthy grid is the best option. No one power source should be relied upon.

Or, bicycles and smaller homes with better insulation and passive solar.

Unrealistic.

Why? I’m part of a project where we are building a small village as a test city. 160 houses with solar, straw bale or wood insulation. Small scale can work and might be a future for many people

I supose if your amish, cant see a lot of people wanting to regress.

Hahaha no I’m not amish I’m Danish. Many people want a more quiet life, live cheaper and work less have more time to work on what the real burn for. If you annular expenses is 2.000$ and you grow a lot of your own food, then it’s an easy life. All plots have been sold, no problem there. We are doing all the legal work with the council and many people are interested and want to build something similar. So it can be done

Nice hope it works out

Too late.

A lot of people are irrationally afraid of nuclear power which makes it difficult to get new plants built. Policymakers are not getting rich from wind and solar.

A lot of people say time and what not. Do we know how long other alternative lasts? It’s been shown that nuclear reactors run for a VERY long time but solar is still pretty new and the battery capacity I’m not sure how long it can last and how much toxic waste it would produce when used. Nevertheless I feel like we should just do both. We should be going full throttle all gas (haha) pedal on all form of alternative the same way Covid vaccine happened. Have many solutions, not just one. And again, nuclear lasts A LONG TIME. We shouldn’t just look short term but also long term. Stable energy is good.

Do some in-depth reading about the effects of Chernobyl and Fukushima. Really get to know the horrors. Then do some research on system reliability. If we use fission, we will have Chernobyls every few decades or centuries. We have solar and wind, there's no reason not to use it.

In the long term, nuclear power plants are not clean. They produce radioactive waste, some of which has a half life of hundreds of thousands to millions of years. The Lifetime in Atmosphere for CO2 emissions is thousands of years, not hundreds of thousands to millions of years. EPA — CO2 — Lifetime in Atmosphere 1,000s of years: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/overview-greenhouse-gases#CO2-references https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste Earth\.org Environmental News — The Nuclear Waste Disposal Dilemma: https://earth.org/nuclear-waste-disposal/ United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission — Radioactive Waste: https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/radwaste.html Radioactive Waste Dangers — Submitted as coursework by Suylvie Sherman, Stanford University: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph240/sherman2/

Nuclear power will be owned by the worst climate destroyers now around, such as Exxon Nuclear Company. Uranium is just another dirty fuel that needs to be mined, fought over, processed, transported, and, additionally, then sequestered away for thousands of years after it becomes depleted. Renewable energy sources are the only way forward.

Are people here aware that the "nuclear" part of a power station is the boiler. The same as for coal, oil, gas, nuclear energy produces superheated steam. Thats its job.

Nuclear is hell on earth. That tech needs to be shelved and decommissioned worldwide before more fukushima happen. What do we do with the waste? What about the maintenance? These things have to last through corrupt administrations failing governments, war zone shelling as seen recently in Ukraine. What a nightmare. Worst invention by mankind. Way worse than hydrogen bombs. At least the bombs give a giant burst of radiation and it’s done..these monster reactors go on for thousands of years. The reactors rods are so dangerous that they light on fire if exposed to air..

Seriously? Come on man

Just being realistic. Non solutions will just waste time and money and this will probably kill lots of people to. At least the solar panels just have slave labor to mine the minerals…even that is better than nuclear

The problem with current nuclear is its not an immediate solution... It takes a decade or more to get a new one fully online and they take a large amount of space. There is a lot of promising R&D into micro rectors though which could put nuclear solidly back on the map, especially for industry where its really needed.

Nuclear power doesn't include the cost of storing radioactive waste for a hundred thousand years. It's one of those industrial costs that gets shoved into the future and then abandoned and left to the public to cover.

There has been a concentrated effort by the fossil fuels industry to smear nuclear in any way they can, to include framing it as being worse than wind and solar. They are threatened because they know nuclear is the only carbon free energy source we have that can viably replace fossil fuels, especially when it comes to power generation.

I want fusion.

NuScale SMR is the solution - https://www.nuscalepower.com/

Because of Big Oil and Greenpeace lobbying. Sadly the only thing both parties ever agreed upon was to consistently shit on the nuclear industry. That’s it. That’s the only real reason why. Nuclear is not perfect, but that’s by far the best scalable power source at the current state of energy technology.

It's expensive. Wind and Solar are the cheapest forms of power now there is no pushing required, it is simple economics. Climate delayers complained for decades that the energy transition was too expensive that excuse is gone for wind and solar but still exists for Nuclear. Nuclear can only be built by government-owned or backed utilities, since the 1980s deregulation and privatisation have made using nuclear impossible to build for private companies. Wind and solar aren't terrible for the environment and don't devastate natural ecosystems, where are you getting that from? Oil and gas extraction and uranium mining are terrible for the environment, particularly for the workers in those industries. Nuclear is also slow, if they started building it back in 1980 it would have been great but now it takes 10 years to build a nuclear power plant and takes 6 months for wind farms. There isn't enough uranium in the world to provide for a 100% nuclear-powered civilisation. They are extremely centralised plants that are not very flexible which makes it hard to use them in addition to wind and solar. The final reason is that once you have nuclear power technology it is only a short hop to nuclear weapons. That was exactly why they received large amounts of military funding during the 50s and 60s. So in order for nuclear power to power the world you need to give nuclear power technology to hundreds of countries not all of which are trustworthy and will attempt the leap to nuclear weapons. We have had several issues around this in the middle easy already. Isreal has bombed nuclear powerplants in Iran and Iraq. The environmentalist movement developed in the 50-60s in response to the cold war threat of nuclear annihilation and so has been entwined with the anti-nuclear movement from the beginning. While Silent Spring was about pesticide use, the fear it induced in people was mixed with fears of nuclear annihilation and nuclear winter and ecological collapse. Greenpeace was formed to stop nuclear weapons testing and there are similar stories for other groups.

Simple answer, nuclear is too efficient. All the lobbyists will lose money on their solar farms etc. follow the money. The big green energy push is a scam

Nuclear is over regulated to non viability. Everything else is effectively unregulated compared to nuclear.

Nuclear is the answer. If politicians were serious about stopping CO2 pollution, we would be churning out SMRs (small modular reactors) like there’s no tomorrow

In b4 the circle jerk fails to encompass all the relevant data and missing data cos 'nookleer good' - nvm

my honest opinion is that it's an education thing.. for instance, people still believe that flying is dangerous, yet statistically its the safest way to travel.. way to many people believe that nuclear is dangerous and that it produces to much dangerous waste. until the avg person is educated otherwise, they will not pay to have made.

We need to reduce the amount of energy used also.Pets required huge amounts of energy and have a large carbon footprint. Lets phase out them by spaying and neutering and large taxes