this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
306 points (93.0% liked)
Asklemmy
43945 readers
830 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'm also not against nuclear per se. My problem is, handling the radioactive stuff is what makes it very expensive and there is no way around that at this point. For example I see many issues storing that waste. It is true that these geological structures have been there for millions of years. But once you drill into them, this isn't the case any more. We have massive problems finding a final storage repository, and for several reasons. We've tried for decades. My prediction is that it'll be massively expensive to look after these things in the tousands of years to come. At some point there will be an issue, water will get in and more billions of money will be needed to clean that up. This will not be payed for by the people who used that electricity.
It makes me a bit angry that nuclear is massively subsidised. They get subsidised when building plants, they didn't have to have the money for dismantlement ready. I bet this will be some more 100 billions for the german taxpayer. They probably only pay a fraction of the needed research. If they're basically only paying for operation, I can tell, why this looks feasable for people and nobody believes the actual numbers.
And it's a bridge technology anyways. There's no way around that. Once the real deal is around, you need to accept that and slowly phase it out.
I believe in the studies, the state of the art in research and actual numbers. Without factoring the subsidies I just talked about in, we talked about the study in the USA where nuclear power was 5 times as expensive to generate. And those are real electricity prices. The subsidies and unaccounted cost of waste storage that become just extra profit for those companies, get on top.
So why do you want to pay extra for electricity? Why do you want to create more and more difficult to solve problems? Why invest even more money in such a dying technology? I mean, I'm okay if we don't switch off those existing plants before they're due. They're here and we may as well use them to cut down CO2. But please. If science tells you it is expensive and difficult by some huge factor. Don't throw more billions and billions at yesterdays technology and research in blind hope that you'll be able to bridge that gap somehow. It's not competetive as of today. And you'll need more and more money to stay in business in the future.
I don't want to pay that with my taxes. And we need that money for the energy transition. To address some of the issues you mentioned. Especially like you said for the last few percent getting close to 100% renewable. That will also be expensive. And now we need money to make changes to the energy grid and afford more offshore wind for example. And politics to really think hard and have the right incentives for people and companies in place. The off-shore wind park will generate energy day and night for decades to come once you build it. The energy grid and energy storage facilities will be an investment. Please don't waste all the money because I want someone to build a carbon-neutral helicopter to fly to these off-shore windmills and service them.
There had been a time where your nuclear was the right choice. Now it's a money-losing business for the people. And renewable would be an investment into their future. The actual numbers tell the same story. So I'm more against stupid and expensive choices, than against nuclear specifically.
I want to pay for something that works. That's how you wisely invest money. And what works is a mix or nuclear and renewables.
But ecologist are pushing hard their propaganda against nuclear so we would have to use gas or coal for decades before the smart grid can work.
As for the cost, it doesn't account for storage. Unlike nuclear that does account for dealing with wastes. Wastes that are far, far less of a problem than what ecologists are afraid of.
Again, that's simply false. Around the world, the taxpayer ends up paying the major portion of the cost needed to dealing with that. Look it up.
And a mix of nuclear and renewables isn't that smart. These two don't complement each other. Nuclear doesn't 'balance out' the fluctuations of renewable by pushing the rods more in or pulling them out. Look at the diagrams. Nuclear produces a constant amount of energy, day and night. It is theoretically possible, but practically not feasible to cycle this too much. They do not complement each other. You'd need almost the same energy storage facilities you'd need without nuclear being in the mix. It's a waste. And I don't know who listened to too much propaganda. If the studies and numbers tell a different story, maybe reflect a bit on your previous knowledge. I've also grown up learning nuclear is a cheap way of generating energy and it produces less CO2. But technology has made advancements and the first thing just isn't true (anymore).
And you're generating more cost for future generations. Dealing with the waste. Dismantling those reactors is a huge ordeal. You end up with vast amounts of concrete that is expensive to treat. That isn't an investment, that's a liability. On the other hand, a wind farm is an investment.
(Sorry. I don't want to argue with you specifically. I'm more annoyed by politics for making the wrong decisions. And getting us to in the situation where we now burn all that coal that we wanted to get away from. This was the original subject of this discussion anyways. We're now in that situation and we can't change the past. But we can make the right decisions for the future, now. And I expect politicians to know how much for example 100 billions of money is. And they should do scientific studies with the current state of knowledge and then do the calculation and do what's best.)
You know that there are fou tries already having most of their power from nuclear right? There is no theory crafting to make about it. We're already doing it.
Meanwhile there is no country running with wind or solar. Balancing those is theoretical because we never did it on a country scale.
That's hard facts. The only renewable energy that's proven to work on a country scale is hydro/marine.
And no, nuclear is not so expensive. Germany for example spent much more on renewables than France did to build its whole nuclear parc.
Finally, talking about wastes and stuff is a distraction. Co2 is a life threatening problem on a global scale. Nuclear will never be dangerous like that, so the point is moot. Anything that can help remove co2 emission should be used. This includes nuclear.
Where do you get these numbers?