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We’ve postponed nuclear for +40 years, causing climate change to get further and further out of hands.
Thanks Greenpeace /s
Yeah, because it’ll tie budgets up for ten years building it, and in the meantime all the fossil fuel people can tap those final nails into our coffin while they line their pockets.
Ten years? More like twenty. Hinkley point C was started in 2013, supposed to be finished 2023. This year the estimation was corrected to 2029-2031.
Moving transport entirely over to the energy grid is going to take more energy than we currently generate - who’d of thought!
If America hadn’t responded to Chernobyl with fear of atomic power and instead adopted a “this is why communism will fail, look how much better we can do it” attitude, the climate crisis would be a non-issue right now
Plus ruzzians are shooting Ukraine with hyper rockets.
About fucking time.
I used to be pro-nuclear and I am still not worried about the safety issue. However, fissile material is still a finite resource and mining for it is an ecological disaster, so I no longer am in favor of it.
fissile material is still a finite resource
We have reserves that will last centuries, and it can literally be extracted from seawater just like lithium if the economics allow for it. Can’t comment on the mining impact, though. Is it any worse than rare earth metals?
There is no economical way to extract fissile material from sea water. This is no different from people saying you can mine gold that way. Technically, yes. Practically, no.
The only way we know to get the uranium necessary for reactors in the quantities we need to do it is to mine it. And we don’t even have enough to mine to last for a century at current consumption.
The world’s present measured resources of uranium (6.1 Mt) in the cost category less than three times present spot prices and used only in conventional reactors, are enough to last for about 90 years.
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/uranium-resources/supply-of-uranium
Sure, maybe some new practical way to make a reactor without uranium or to find uranium elsewhere might happen. But that’s a MIGHT. With what we know now, we need uranium and we need to mine it and there isn’t enough.
Dude. Read the rest of your source.
Thus, any predictions of the future availability of any mineral, including uranium, which are based on current cost and price data, as well as current geological knowledge, are likely to prove extremely conservative
In recent years there has been persistent misunderstanding and misrepresentation of the abundance of mineral resources, with the assertion that the world is in danger of actually running out of many mineral resources. While congenial to common sense if the scale of the Earth’s crust is ignored, it lacks empirical support in the trend of practically all mineral commodity prices and published resource figures over the long term. In recent years some have promoted the view that limited supplies of natural uranium are the Achilles heel of nuclear power as the sector contemplates a larger contribution to future clean energy, notwithstanding the small amount of it required to provide very large amounts of energy.
Of course the resources of the earth are indeed finite, but three observations need to be made: first, the limits of the supply of resources are so far away that the truism has no practical meaning. Second, many of the resources concerned are either renewable or recyclable (energy minerals and zinc are the main exceptions, though the recycling potential of many materials is limited in practice by the energy and other costs involved). Third, available reserves of ‘non-renewable’ resources are constantly being renewed, mostly faster than they are used.
Literally half the page you linked discusses how we’re not going to run out of resources anytime soon.
Known reserves are sufficient for 90 years because nobody wants to bother with further prospecting when supply hugely exceeds demand.
As someone who isn’t well versed on the topic, is the impact from mining fissile material worse than the impact of mining the stuff we need for batteries and storage of renewable? Big fan of renewables, and not trying to start some shit. Trying to learn. Lol
Batteries can be made from literal saltwater nowadays.
Otherwise, lithium mining is certainly not exactly good for the environment, but can be managed. Uranium (even the non-fissile) is pretty toxic and can contaminate the whole area.
What happened to the Navajo Nation due to uranium mining is disgusting and it’s what made me turn away from supporting the idea of nuclear power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_and_the_Navajo_people
The early and mid 20th century was the era of thousands of Superfund sites. This particular incident doesn’t seem any worse than average. We’re still dealing with the toxic aftermath of mining and processing all sorts of minerals with no regard for the environment during that time. Is uranium actually any worse than any other mineral in that sense?
Once you use up all the heavy elements by fission you just put the newly created light elements into fusion reactors and get the originals back
That’s currently science fiction.
From November 15.
How disappointing.
Renewables and storage are far superior, in almost every conceivable metric it’s not funny.
Yet we let conservatives hype up nuclear garbage and carbon recapture as the solution to climate change.
Still better than coal in every way.
Right so if you’re moving off of coal, the cheaper and better option (renewables) is the right move.
Not really, not right now it isn’t. If you want to cover baseload with wind and solar you’ll need energy storage. We haven’t got a solution that scales well, yet.
I just don’t see it in terms of fundamentals. We’ve heard this for years, yet countries that have denuclearized have not been able to go full renewables, they have become more dependent on fossil fuels. Storage has just not been able to keep up with demand, baseload is still necessary, and we don’t have other options.
We should absolutely keep investing in renewables and pushing forward, they help. There is no reason at the same time to prevent investment in nuclear and other non-carbon emitting solutions, and if tech companies are willing to foot the bill we shouldn’t complain. Every gigawatt counts at this point.
We’ve heard this for years, yet countries that have denuclearized have not been able to go full renewables, they have become more dependent on fossil fuels.
Which countries are you referring to? Germany for example denuclearized and replaced them with renewables, they didn’t become more dependent on fossil fuels (even if people like to say that).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#/media/File:Germany_electricity_production.svg
yeah here come the nukes. They missed all the fun and now they think it just makes sense.
Fuck
But they produce the strongest greenhouse gas by far. Water Vapour.
wanna bet how the cooling tower in gas and coal plants function?
That’s a shitty argument. The alternative is a windmill, not a coal powerplant.
geothermal anyone?
Thats what happens when they become more financially viable. Shouldn’t really surprise anybody.
Why would they be more financially viable now?
Because cost of megawatt-hour via nuclear power plant decreases every year. EVERY YEAR.
The reason the USA shut down old nuclear power plants decades ago was because they were very expensive. Some of those old reactors were recently acquired by Microsoft in the expectation that rising power demand (and therefor price) would make them viable again.
I’m sure the EU is expecting similar shifts in financial viability as the Russian aggression drags on, eliminating natural gas imports availability.
Because cost of megawatt-hour via nuclear power plant decreases every year. EVERY YEAR.
Nothing in that table is dropping every year.
Capital cost spiked a decade ago, and are now still higher than 2002 levels. Fuel spiked at a similar time and is now back to 2004 levels (but not as low as 2007). Similar story for operating costs.
Basically it looks like 2008 sent nuclear cost through the roof, and it’s only just recovering to start of the century prices.
yeah maybe because only the most cost effective ones remain? (natural selection)
…and because the older plants are simply written off already. If you already recouped the building costs, you can charge based on just the running cost.
Are you saying newer facilities aren’t more efficient but instead a random chance which coincidentally leads to anual efficiency gains?
If that were true, we wouldn’t need to guess. We could just look at the data showing that new plants provide cheaper electricity.
Thats why I linked the data.
