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What do you think about the renewables vs nuclear debate? (self.energy)

submitted 2 years ago by zksmk to c/energy

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Some key points:

nuclear causes fewer deaths, both animal and human alike
nuclear takes up far less space, and therefore destroys far less of the environment compared to solar farms, hydro, or wind farms
nuclear is stable and not an intermittent source, no issues with grid storage, unlike renewables, which currently solve this with fossil peaker plants
nuclear is hard to turn off so to meet fluctuating demand solely on it, you'd need an excess of nuclear, which is a waste
nuclear excess could encourage other use of electricity, such as electric heating or transport, however
nuclear when it does go bad, goes really bad, mostly in that a large area has to be abandoned for a long long time (historically still fewer deaths than renewables per unit of energy produced tho)
nuclear can cause the proliferation of nuclear weapons
nuclear is a lot harder to spin up, requires extensive education and is hard and takes a long time to build a plant, compared to renewables
all that nuclear waste and no plan other than shove it in somewhere, in a mountain, and keep it secret, keep it safe.

Yay or Nay?

What say you?

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[–] sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Seems like a false dichotomy to me.

We cannot survive on either nuclear or renewables alone. We need every form of energy we can get our hands on, anything practical.

Eventually even people who think that fossil fuels aren't going to destroy the earth are going to have to deal with the reality that there are limited resources on this earth that are easily accessible. Thing is, energy isn't a luxury; it's a requirement for life. We need energy for nearly everything we do, and there is no shortcut or cheat code. We need energy to eat, we need energy to rest, we need energy to make it through summers, we need energy to make it through winters. Without enough sustainable energy in whatever form that takes, there will be a genocide.

So if there's a form of energy we can make use of, we must. If it's going to be energy positive, we need it.

[–] zksmk 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Seems like a false dichotomy to me.

Oh, agreed, personally. There's room for all these technologies, and sometimes even a necessity for only some of them, due to a lack of proper alternatives in some places. And it's not always the same technology. There's no one size fits all answer, for every place on Earth.

This is a debate worth having only in a specific localized context, and not to find some generalized rule imo. I never understood why it had to be either/or.

[–] exohuman@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

I am a fan of renewables first and nuclear second. I am not against nuclear but if society collapses into war or chaos the nuclear plant will be a disaster. This is currently happening in Ukraine. Russia is attacking nuclear power stations and turning off radiation monitoring. Also, we need to store waste on the moon or something. Why pollute earth with that stuff?

No inhumane disasters happen from renewable energy so my vote is for that.

[+] ex_06 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] zksmk 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

nuclear safety requires something very near to 0 corruption

Oh definitely, I'd never want my country to build a nuclear fission plant, due to how incompetent and corrupt both the system and mentality around doing these kind of things is around here. I'd be way too worried the thing would explode (despite all the safety measures) because somebody washed some money through the project, the funding got cut beyond safety limits or somebody simply got lazy and didn't do proper maintenance, alas. Ty, but no ty, at least for another half a century, we're not mature enough. I'm sure this applies to many poorer and smaller countries across the globe.

Fusion I'd feel safe with, but that's a dream within a dream.

Said that, I never support the ‘‘renewables are intermittent’’ point

I do wish we had better developed and more universal grid storage tech than just pumped hydro. A large/continental-sized grid is cool and all, but energy independence is still important in geopolitics unfortunately, and simply in practical terms in general too.

[–] tallwookie@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

nuclear is far cleaner than coal, has less impact on the environment than solar or hydroelectric, and newer reactor designs (ie: thorium salt) can even use the waste uranium/plutonium of a traditional reactor, but there are a number of issues with nuclear as you have listed.

renewable/sustainable power sources have their own issues though - solar is "clean" but basically useless at night or if there is heavy cloud cover (and the manufacturing process requires a lot of chemicals), wind turbines are also "clean" but do nothing if there is no wind, hydroelectric has the same issue and it also requires a reservoir/lake, ruining hundreds/thousands of acres of habitat (some would say changing the habitat, but it's underwater now), and geothermal is not widely available due to geography - it may have the lowest impact of all of the preceding options.

ANY and ALL energy generation sources are required though - we're only 0.6 on the Kardashev scale, after all.

[–] AlienSkyler 2 points 2 years ago

I think nuclear will be necessary at least temporarily in order to get off fossil fuels fast enough to stop climate change maybe after that we can try for more renewable energy sources and rely less on nuclear power luckily there seem to be some recent technological advancements where it has been discovered how to use the waste to produce more energy another way but you're right, I am concerned about capitalists cutting corners to save money and causing deaths that were entirely preventable