Comment by AndyPa32
5 months ago
I disagree with cheapest. If you factor in twenty years build time and nuclear waste disposal, the whole thing is not economically viable.
Then there's a problem with nuclear fuel. The sources are mostly countries you don't want to depend on.
You are of course right with your assessment that nuclear is green, safe and eco-friendly. That's a hard one to swallow for a lot of eco activists.
It is expensive because of the regulatory burdens associated with making it unreasonably safe. By unreasonably safe I mean that harms predicted by radiation models are unscientific, and death rate expectations are far lower than alternative power generation technologies.
Nuclear fuel storage is relatively straightforward, and volumes have potential to be reduced 30x through recycling.
Nuclear power plants require international laws and international cooperation for insurance, because one serious incident, such as Chornobyl, can wipe a continent.
In Ukraine, profits from all nuclear plants will cover damages, caused by Chornobyl, in 1000-5000 years IF nothing more will happen to Chornobyl or other an other nuclear power plant in those years, which is unlikely.
Still, though, if nuclear continued growing at the same pace it was until the 80s we'd be in a massively better spot climate change wise.
Sure, these days its too expensive in relative terms but switching back to fossil fuels due to all the Chornobyl/Three Mile panic (but mainly likely because of the cost) might end up being one of the bigger mistakes in human history.
We can make nuclear safe (enough) but after one big incident nobody wanted the political career suicide to push for this. So we are stuck with criticizing stone-age level nuclear power because we never took it further. The West never stopped doing something just because the USSR didn’t do it properly.
If we did the same with commercial air travel after the first disasters we’d still cross the oceans in boats. Car accidents kill 10-15 times more people every year worldwide than Chernobyl did but we don’t give up on cars either. Heck, smoking kills 7-8 times more people than cars every year (that’s 80-100 Chernobyls worth every year) and we still allow it.
The reasons are political not technically or financially insurmountable obstacles. We didn’t shut down nuclear in Europe for “green” reasons or because we can’t improve it, or because it kills too many people, but because enough Russian money went into politicians’ pockets to do this.
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What kind assumptions is this based on?
> can wipe a continent
Sorry, but no.
Chernobyl exclusion zone is less than a single area of the Agent Orange usage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chernobyl_radiation_map_1...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aerial-herbicide-spray-mi...
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> harms predicted by radiation models are unscientific,
Where are your scientific alternative models?
Long build times are often the result of constantly changing regulations. Also it’s interesting that build times in Japan are almost 2 times smaller than in US.
Nuclear doesn't have a great record in other countries either. I might have the wrong figures but Hinkley Points C is over 2 times over budget and likely to be 5+ years late.
The exemption being France and maybe China?
France did a programme of nuclear power stations rather than the 1 or 2 offs that seem to be the norm elsewhere and that seems to have worked pretty well.
I'd be surprised if HPC is competitive with solar + wind + BESS when it comes online but I could well be wrong
No, the exceptions are builds like HPC.
The average build time is currently 6.5 years. The median is lower at 5.8. The variations across both time and space of those average are neither large nor particularly systematic.
There have always been outliers, so if you focus on those you can "prove" anything you like.
https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/nuclear-constructi...
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In France, the last construction is Flamanville EPR. It is at least 5 times over budget and 15 years late
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Pl...
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It won’t be competitive with anything.
But that’s OK, Theresa May signed a guarantee that they’d get paid an uncompetitive price by the taxpayer, regardless.
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South Korean company build a NPP in 7 years in Saudi Arabia.
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but comparing to solar / wind there you also have to factor batteries production, battery replacement, wind turbine replacement and recycling (they are not easily recyclable), cleaning solar panels etc.
'recyclable' is such a vague term. E.g. radiation-affected typically easily recycled materials are very hard to deal with (think e.g. pipe steel from power plants) and are effectively non-recyclable, instead of close to 100% recyclable, as their non-contaminated counterparts.
Opposed to that, battery recycling is mostly hard to deal with in terms of economics, and admittedly the chemistry involved is complex, but at least from a technical point of view, plenty of solutions are available - and the tech is coming in relatively quickly now that the demand is there (remember, first generation EVs are just now getting closer to EOL).
It's slightly amusing that recycling of a wind turbine is treated as if it was a big deal - yes the laminated rotor parts can't be part of circular economies, but the total material amount of this laughably small. All the metal components are very easily recycled.
I'm talking about wind turbine wings. A lot of stuff is fiberglass and have to be buried.
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They are easily recyclable. Nuclear isn’t, unless of course you have a 24/7 protected and monitored by 100’s of people storage place to keep all that safe for the next 10000 years. Very ‘cheap’ indeed.
From a technical point of view, nuclear waste is a solved problem. The issue is political.
Ibidem for the fuel: yes, you can depends on wild countries; You can also depends on Australia, Canada and India, which seems like not-so-bad countries (in my opinion);
> From a technical point of view, nuclear waste is a solved problem
When it comes to nuclear waste repositories real experts official publish: "Internationally, it is understood that there is no reliable scientific basis for predicting the process or likelihood of inadvertent human intrusion."
Source: https://international.andra.fr/sites/international/files/201...
I have no idea how this information relates to the parent post;
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Solved problem? Have you ever waited 10000 years to see if the waste really decomposes and the area where it was stored is safe for kids to play?
Ergo FBR, no 10000y+ nuclear waste, problem solved
(there is still very low amount of waste that have a long half-life, really not a big deal)
How is it not economically viable given it is actively used since multiple decades in France? I also disagree with saying it is the cheapest, in practice it is actually pretty expensive compared to solar and wind, but economically nuclear makes a lot of sense, it fits a really good role in the grid
Just that it is used does not mean it is economically viable if the government is deeply involved - which is the case in France.
That’s not how economic viability works. EDF posted €11.4bn net profit in 2024[0] and France is the world’s largest net exporter of electricity precisely because nuclear is economically viable.
Government involvement doesn’t negate viability, it enables it, just like with roads, ports, or any other infrastructure requiring long-term capital deployment.
0: https://www.enerdata.net/publications/daily-energy-news/fran...
Until we solve the long-term energy storage problem that renewable sources have, we're going to need a backup of some sort. Something you can turn up late at night in the middle of winter.
So far the cleanest solution we've come up with is gas plants, but gas plants made Europe extremely dependent on Russia. The alternatives are oppressive regimes or the US, which has been starting trade wars seemingly out of boredom.
Nuclear fuel, on the other hand, is exported not only by Kazachstan, but also Canada and Australia. In terms of "countries you don't want to depend on", I'd rather have Canada than Qatar.
I'm not sure if the economics still work out if you factor in the ineffective, half-assed Russian sanctions that have Europe fund Russia's war economy. The only alternative is probably coal, but only if you don't hold coal to the same standards in terms of waste disposal and nuclear exposure of the public as nuclear plants.
Nuclear isn't cheap, in part because it's become a niche market only some countries still participate in, but the politics and large-scale economics aren't as bad as the anti-nuclear crowd make them seem. They'd probably be bad for America, because the mighty oil industry stands to lose money and they'd need to import their fuel, but for countries already importing their fuel the balance is completely different.
Infuriatingly, the crowd that wants to do something about global warming also seems to think every nuclear reactor is going full Chernobyl within the decade. All of the parties I even consider voting for are staunch anti-nuclear activists for no documented reason other than "we don't like it".
> we're going to need a backup of some sort. Something you can turn up late at night in the middle of winter.
AFAICT this is not really nuclear. They excel at constant production, not switch ability to fill in around renewables.
Nuclear can be turned up and down relatively easily. It's on/off that takes a long time. And you can supplement nuclear with pumped storage hydro to steepen its turn up/down curve in extremis.
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sure state funded solar panel that you need to change every 10 year and batteries with rare minerals are cheaper.
Not true, lifetime is longer and there are no rare earth elements in battery cells themself. Rare earth are not really rare btw.
Solar panels can now last as far as 30 years.