this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2024
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It is not.
And there is no large margin.
Referencing several sources that consider a vast array of power generation technologies, from offshore wind to biomass, terrestrial wind, solar, gas, coal and nuclear, and nuclear energy has high start up costs and it's also not the cheapest per megawatt of power. It's basically middle of the road on most of the stats I've seen.
Solar, by comparison, has had a much higher LCOE as recently as 5-10 years ago. Most power construction projects take longer than that to plan and build, then operate for decades. Until the last few years, solar hasn't even be a competitor compared to other options.
Beyond direct cost nuclear has been one of very few green energy sources, the nuclear materials are contained and safely disposed of. Unless there's a serious disaster, it's one of the most ecologically friendly forms of energy. The only sources better are hydroelectric, and geothermal. The only "waste" from nuclear is literal steam, and some limited nuclear waste product. A miniscule amount compared to the energy produced.
Last time I checked, all of the nuclear waste that's ever been produced can fit in an area the size of a football field, with room to spare. For all the energy produced, it's very small.
Yet, because of stuff like Chernobyl and Fukushima, everyone seems to hate it.
I live in Ontario, Canada, our entire power infrastructure is hydroelectric and nuclear. I'm proud of that.
Nuclear isn't the demon that people believe it is.
LCOE of solar is lower than nuclear for eleven years now. Wind has had lower LCOE than nuclear for 14 years now. See figure 52.
Building a new nuclear power plant takes 9-12 years on average. Hinkley Point C in southeast England was announced in 2008 (16 years ago) and is projected to be finished in 2028, with costs now being estimated around $40 billion. These long realisation times are not a european issue alone, as Korea's Shin-Hanul-1-2 faces similar problems.
Safely storing nuclear waste is expensive, too.
Maybe I shouldn't step in this but here it goes. My personal opinion is that nuclear isn't good or bad, it's an option that's available. I have never heard a nuclear activist say that nuclear energy is superior to renewables. It's not black and white, it's all a complex mix of demands and limitations that dictate if renewables are better for an area or nuclear. It's a whole lot of gray, but nuclear energy isn't as dangerous as some make it out to be.
Your comment is valid, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
I wouldn't say that nuclear is the best option, nor cleanest, nor safest. Like anything, it's all circumstantial. Sometimes it makes sense, sometimes other options are simply better.
From what I've seen, nuclear is the best for base load on a grid scale. Basically: the load that the grid continually has, is well served by nuclear. To my understanding, most nuclear generation is fairly slow to ramp up and down, compared to other technologies, so keeping it at a relatively steady level, with minor adjustments and changes through the day as required, is the best use case for it. It's stable and consistent, which is to say it doesn't vary based on external factors, like the weather, where solar/wind are heavily influenced by external factors.
It's entirely on a case by case basis.
You're right, you shouldn't have stepped in. At least,you shouldn't have stepped in and build a strawman. The discussion you entered is about costs, not dangers.
You're wrong, I didn't talk about dangers and I didn't put up a strawman. If you wanted to pin a logical fallacy on my argument you should have said I made a generalization fallacy or an informally fallacy because I was so vague. It's actually pretty telling that you're attributing a lot of intention where there was none. I am not going to spend the time or energy to make a legitimate argument with some random jerk on the internet that ultimately just gets us Internet points. I have more important things to do with my time.
And honestly my only reason for posting is to make the comment number go up one tick to keep these communities going. I really don't care about what you think and unless you're in a position of power no one else does either.
Edit: I'll downvote myself, I don't approve of anyone behaving like either of us.
Your one and only fact-related statement was literally
But sure, you weren't talking about dangers lol.
You're right, I was careless. It wasn't a strawman though. It's still a generalization or informality fallacy. If you're going to head in so hot at least have use the right terms.
You argued against an argument I didn't make. That's the definition of a strawman.
No. And pretending it is longer for solar is false too. https://www.lazard.com/media/2ozoovyg/lazards-lcoeplus-april-2023.pdf
Thanks, that LCOE reference shows that nuclear is on par with several other technologies.
It thoroughly disproves the point that it is more expensive "by a large margin". At most it's a bit more costly than some things, but it's also not far off from some other options, so it's definitely not expensive... At least not by a large margin.
Is that a bad reason really? When nuclear goes bad it goes really bad and it can go bad due to human error which is something that will always be present. When a solar panel catastrophically fails it doesn't render the surrounding environment uninhabitable for decades.
The thing is, nuclear problems are big and scary events, but they're rare.
Think like plane crash vs other transportation accidents: they make bigger news, but they're actually safer than most other solutions.
Here's the data: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh
It does seem that your solar example is the one thing that's safer than nuclear sccording to this chart though, so maybe you knew!
I'm not just talking about deaths though. If a bad nuclear accident happens it makes a large part of the surrounding area uninhabitable and the fallout in the air can cause long term very nasty health problems for a lot of people. If that happened near a big city the results would be devastating. Considering that the other clean energy options are comparable in terms of danger per output during general operation it just doesn't seem worth it. Obviously I'm not a nuclear engineer and maybe I need to read up on it more but that's my current thoughts on the matter.
As for the rarity, they may be but we are operating on an indefinite time scale. Sooner or later something is going to happen again with how complex those things are. Especially with corporations involved that are more concerned with making their stocks go up than keeping people safe. Here's a better explanation of what I'm talking about - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_accident
Those are very good points.
This specific source doesn't highlight it and I don't have the opportunity to find something else at the moment, but when I first heard about it ( in a ted talk that I can't remember the name of... ) they had highlighted that health complications followed similar curves. The worsts of course being burning stuff due to dumping it in the air, but that most renewables had their lot of injuries too, that their just less publicized.
Here's my full take of nuclear/renewables
My understanding is that most power grid depending on renewables need an alternate energy source for when power demands ramp up: they need some energy sources that they can tune depending of needs, at the drop of a hat.
Hydro does that, you can let more or less water through. (I happen to live aomewhere where most of our energy is Hydro) Things like wind or solar are more complicated.
As an energy appoint source, I think nuclear is a good fit for some use cases.
You took the words right out of my mouth.