I don’t get it. Current nuclear power solutions take longer to set up, have an effectively permanently harmful byproduct, have the (relatively small) potential to catastrophically fail, almost always depend on an abundant supply of fresh water, and are really expensive to build, maintain and decommission.

If someone ever comes up with a functional fusion reactor, I could see the allure; in all other cases, a mix of wind, wave, geothermal, hydro and solar, alongside energy storage solutions, will continually outperform fission.

I suspect that the reason some countries like nuclear energy is that it also puts them in a position of nuclear power on the political stage.

[–] zigmus64@lemmy.world 8 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

In what universe do those other power generation methods even come close to nuclear power?

It would take about 800 wind turbines or 8.5 million solar panels to replace the power output of one nuclear reactor.

And the fissile material can be reprocessed after it’s been spent. Like 90% of the spent fuel can be reprocessed and reused, but the Carter administration banned nuclear waste recycling in the US for fears it would hasten nuclear proliferation.

https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/fuel-recycling/processing-of-used-nuclear-fuel

Wind, hydro, solar, and geothermal are all great. Anything is better than coal or gas power generation. But to say these green power generation methods come close to nuclear… not a chance.

[–] Hexadecimalkink@lemmy.ml 10 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

I can set up 20 GW of solar panels to match the capacity of a 4 GW nuclear power plant. And I can set up 20 GW of PV in a year. China installs about 30 GW of solar capacity in a quarter.

It takes about 8-10 years to build a nuclear power plant. In 8 years, I could have installed the equivalent of 8 nuclear power plants using Solar PV that it would take me to build one nuclear power plant.

[–] riodoro1@lemmy.world 1 points 21 minutes ago

Then get to work.