Why Britain Is Struggling With Nuclear Power | The government wants more nuclear plants to help tackle climate change, but delays and soaring costs are complicating the effort.
Why Britain Is Struggling With Nuclear Power | The government wants more nuclear plants to help tackle climate change, but delays and soaring costs are complicating the effort.
The government wants more nuclear plants to help tackle climate change, but delays and soaring costs are complicating the effort.
I refuse to buy into this talk of nuclear bad vs. renewables good (or the other way). Nuclear plants SHOULD take a long time to build and SHOULD be crazy expensive and built with safety factors and for 1 in 5000 year weather occurrences, that make us engineers hurt when doing the risk analysis.
They will still be needed eventually to provide base loads on dark, cold, still days if net 0 really is the plan and replace all the coal and gas and trash burners.
11I sortof agree, but nuclear is used by technopositivists as a mirage to push global warming under the rug. Sure, we can use nuclear for essential stuff if there's no other way, but the priority is to decrease consumption and consume smarter. I am all for nuclear if it powers ambulances. I don't want nuclear to power the tenth plastic-shit plant building the next thing nobody needs or a billion SUVs.
- We gave nuclear plants to private companies, but no private companies are crazy enough to insure them. We taxpayers are doing that. This is essentially a huge subsidy.
- The anti-greens are always reminding us about how Germany tried to get rid of nuclear and ended up opening coal plants, as in Germany was a monolithic bloc. No. The german public wanted no nuclear and the German private sector opened coal mine. Their only flaw is not to have impose quotas on their industry.
7Coal use in Germany has actually continued to decrease since the nuclear plants were turned off. Germany just tends to import a bit more energy (mostly hydro from Scandinavia/Austria/Switzerland, wind from Denmark or solar/nuclear from France) from its neighbors because that's cheaper than running gas or coal plants in Germany. (And of course there are also the economic woes which have led to slowing demand for energy.)
5I am all for nuclear if it powers ambulances. I don't want nuclear to power the tenth plastic-shit plant building the next thing nobody needs or a billion SUVs.
How is this different from Solar and Wind exactly? Wind and Solar can be used to power shitty consumer garbage factories just as easily as nuclear can?
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Nuclear plants SHOULD take a long time to build and SHOULD be crazy expensive and built with safety factors and for 1 in 5000 year weather occurrences
This is why it is, in fact, bad compared to renewables. The same money spent on renewables would start producing energy much sooner without the still-unsolved problem of disposing of nuclear waste.
I do agree that existing nuclear should be retained but it's very hard to see how new investment in it can be justified, given how much more the same investment in renewables and storage would deliver.
2All of the nuclear waste ever produced by the entire 70+ year history of the civilian nuclear industry in the US can be fit safely into dry casks and placed one layer high onto 3 football fields.
99+% of that waste by mass is Transuranics, which are unburned fuel. Reprocess that out and of the other 1%, half of it can be separated out in 50 years, and the rest will decay to background in about 300. It's not a short period of time, but it's a human manageable period of time. We have human institutions that have lasted 300 years.
We haven't "solved" nuclear waste because it's simply not a pressing issue technically, and there's no institutional will to, mostly due to politics.
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Renewables don't work well together with "base generation". And nuclear only runs remotely profitably (and, in many cases, safely) if it runs continuously at full steam. Nuclear and renewables are a terrible match.
Renewables even out across larger geographical areas (which means grid upgrades are useful) and they can be paired with other flexible on-demand generation: fossil gas, hydrogen, batteries.
1Even better transmission line helps renewables provide baseline load. It's sunny in Nevada when it's dark in Maine and vice versa.
Serious high power transmission lines can work as a "battery" as the earth spins. Connecting east coast to west coast would give each time zone a 3hr buffer of working renewables.
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We used to build our own nuclear power stations. Now we rely on foreign companies.
Yay privatisation! Make a quick buck now at the expense of future generations.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_Kingdom
3There is probably a lot of political momentum against new nuclear because of the Windscale meltdown in the 50s.
3The history of meltdowns resulted in a whole lot of safety rules, which cost something to comply with. They also prevent meltdowns.
3Possibly but I'm also confident that a lot of safety systems have improved since the 50s. Cars in the '50s were practically death traps, yet we still have cars today and no one seems to have a problem with that
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Renewables are way, way cheaper. Nuclear is finished. I'm sick of hearing its supporters never ending excuses.
-1A lot of astroturfing from nuclear lobby.
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1I'm sick of hearing its supporters never ending excuses.
Don't be so naive about nuclear just because it's expensive and takes a long time to build does not mean that it isn't a good system. We need the base load what else are you going to use fossil fuels or you just hoping it will always be windy and always be sunny?
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