
Why nuclear energy is not the answer to solve climate change - blue1
https://www.leonardodicaprio.org/the-7-reasons-why-nuclear-energy-is-not-the-answer-to-solve-climate-change/
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stareatgoats
> Nuclear, though, doesn’t just have one problem. It has seven.

My main gripe with this article is that it limits the problems with nuclear to
7, I can think of at least a few more:

8\. Centralized source of energy: nuclear requires that a few plants supply a
vast network of energy consumers: this is one of the inherent problems of the
current setup which makes it highly sensitive to disruptions. Many renewables
on the other hand enables resilient local grids that can operate independently
if the central grid fails for any reason, and thus keep extend the
availability of such basic things as food supply during times of blackout. The
need for such a setup is starting to dawn on decision makers.

9\. Terrorist or wartime targets: Nuclear power plants scattered round your
landscape is the equivalent of offering adversaries free access to your self
destruction, not to mention the irreparable harm to the environment it
invites.

To name a few.

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zeotroph
The first argument (Long Time Lag Between Planning and Operation) is hard to
argue against. To my surprise even in China it takes rather long. And in
countries with a nuclear critical public is is a fantasy to think that going
with "just the facts" for a year or two will sway enough opponents, and then
go all-in with nuclear (as would be the case in an Ideal World).

The Cost argument [$151 (112 to 189)/MWh vs $43 (29 to 56)/MWh / $41 (36 to
46)/MWh for wind / solar PV] is also convincing, assuming the numbers are
correct. If it is really a factor of > 2 then this would even be enough to
bridge shortfalls of renewable energy due to lack of wind or sun, i.e.
building rather inefficient (40%?) long term thermal or battery storage.

Weapons Proliferation Risk, Meltdown Risk, Mining Lung Cancer Risk, Waste Risk
are tolerable when the alternative is a catastrophically warmer planet.

The "Carbon-Equivalent Emissions and Air Pollution" point counts the time it
takes for a nuclear plant to come online?

So ideally going full nuclear would have started 10 years or so ago, but in
the muddy real world this pure nuclear fantasy does not work. Time to bury it
and stop wasting time and energy fighting for it, just get solar panels and
build a wind farm already.

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polotics
How much coal does get burnt to produce your happy panel? How much oil to
transport it from China? How sustainable would solar and wind really be were
it to be produced only with solar and wind energy, what would the end to end
EROEI be? My guess: 0.8

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mbruce
That is a shockingly biased and simplistic comparison. Sort of like deciding
on the answer and picking a few “facts” to support it.

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StreamBright
It is actually full of lies. Cost as the problem of nuclear energy? 1 KWH
produced by nuclear power is roughly 3-4 times cheaper than produced by
renewables. This is excluding the impact of renewables on the grid. Weapons
Proliferation Risk??? Most of the nuclear power plants do not use or produce
plutonium at all. Nuclear weapons are produced in very specific facilities
that have a huge energy consumption. This article is a classical propaganda to
avoid the unavoidable use nuclear power for clear energy.

Humanity needs these energy sources that we can use in space and on Earth to
have a relatively small plant that produces a lot of energy without CO2. Yes
there are challenges but we did not stop using fire because it produces smoke.
We made burning safe over the last 400.000 years now we should make nuclear
energy safe.

~~~
sideshowb
In the UK the contract for hinkley c nuclear station was signed at something
like £90/GWh, which everyone seems unhappy with (CFO of edf resigned saying it
would bankrupt them, while opponents are saying it's too expensive).

Meanwhile we have new offshore wind going in at £50/GWh

If cost of nuclear isn't a problem can you contextualize those figures? Is it
a fair comparison, net of subsidies etc? I'd like to know.

~~~
StreamBright
You cannot talk about energy like that. What is the chance that 1 GWH is going
to be produced? With a nuclear power plant you can have guaranteed energy,
with renewables there is a chance that you get energy. You continously need to
balance consumption and production. You can only control non-renewables. This
is why building wind farms require the same amount of production is built
using gas turbines for the worst case scenario. The £50/GWh vs £90/GWh is for
the happy path best case scenario. I hope it makes sense.

~~~
sideshowb
update: the £50/MWh and £90/MWh are both commercial bids that will have
factored in probability of generation to the best of the bidders ability. the
companies making them will fail if they go hugely wrong. (though in the
nuclear case taxpayer might be left with cleanup)

You are correct that the non-constant nature of wind means you need to cost in
some storage, or transport via the grid (generally it'll be windy someplace or
other). But probability of generation is not the issue.

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realusername
What a biased article, pretty much every point is cherry picking.

Edit: Everything here
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Z._Jacobson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Z._Jacobson)
actually tells you the objectivity of this guy on nuclear energy.

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rossmohax
Don't know how the rest of facts check out, but Chernobyl is in Ukraine not in
Russia.

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SuddsMcDuff
In reason six the author talks about emissions and air pollution related to
nuclear power. Then shows an image of a nuclear plant releasing water vapour
into the air.

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akvadrako
Water vapor is the #1 greenhouse gas, so it's obviously a pollutant.

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perfunctory
An interesting comment on nuclear by senior vice president, development,
NextEra Energy Resources. Starts at 1h18m -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SXxJWUv-x4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SXxJWUv-x4)

Bottom line, at least in the U.S it's just uneconomical.

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fulafel
Important along with the current costs of the renewable competition is that
renewables keep getting cheaper every year. If lead time is 15 years, that's a
long time in incremental improvement on the wind/pv side.

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candiodari
This is stupid. Once you divide those costs by the power generated, they
become almost negligible.

To replace a nuclear power plant the size of an office building you need a
solar or wind farm the size of a decent village. And it's exponential. To
replace a large nuclear power plant, you need a solar farm that would rival
the average state capital in size. That makes those costs look very different.

~~~
fulafel
Area in obviously linear vs PV power, not exponential. Yes, the difference vs
nuclear gets exponential because nuclear reactors are 3D, but in practice the
reactor core size is always so small that it takes trivial space in the land
use sense.

There is no dearth of space in most countries to fit village / farm sized
solar arrays. 1 hectare per 1 MWH approx works out to good numbers considering
you can use the non arable land. You can google around about how land owners
bargain about leasing land to pv farms, it's pretty obviosu that even at the
current artificially low energy prices[1] it's working out well.

[1] meaning fossil plants mostly don't pay for externalities so electricity
price is largely determined by just fossil plant fuel / equipment costs.

~~~
candiodari
Sorry to say, but that doesn't work. 1 hectare/Mwh, abstract over any issues.
What happens when renewables actually achieve what they set out to do: what
happens when PV gets used for 50% of power ? What happens when it's at 80% ?

1 hectare/Mwh = 1e-5 km2/kwh

1e-5 km2/kwh * 450 billion kwh / 650000 km2 = 7 times the area of France

Obviously this is not practical. At 10% you'd have to destroy significant
amounts of the remaining nature in France. God help Belgium and the
Netherlands should they try this, so France is definitely not a worst case
scenario. You'd have to get the power from Africa. Yes, the US could (just
barely, and only with a _much_ bigger electricity grid). Russia could. China
is actually dicey (at 7% growth per year it won't stay dicey for long and dive
into "not happening" soon). Not many others.

Also: at any scale solar PV will displace so much nature it will be worse for
the planet than fossil fuels. At 1% ? No problem. But at 1%, fossil fuels
aren't a problem either. At 1%, coal would be tolerable. At 100% ? Nuclear
works. Alternatives ... uh ... None (I mean, there's fusion when it starts
working)

Simcity was right.

[https://www.worlddata.info/europe/france/energy-
consumption....](https://www.worlddata.info/europe/france/energy-
consumption.php)

[https://www.google.com/search?q=france+area](https://www.google.com/search?q=france+area)

~~~
fulafel
I mixed the units, obviously it's per MW and not MWh.

Anyway, many people have done this calculation and the lamd required in an 100
% pv scenario seems pretty reasonable:

[https://landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/127](https://landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/127)

[https://energy-age.blogspot.com/2017/04/how-much-land-
area-d...](https://energy-age.blogspot.com/2017/04/how-much-land-area-
does-100-solar.html?m=1)

Doing my own napkin calc for 100% PV globally: using 2.5e6 MW world
consumption, and 150 e6 sq km of land i get 60 km2 (6000 hectares) existing
land for each MW consumed. So panels would take 1/6000 of land, or maybe
1/1000 if the 1 MW was for rated max power and we actually average 1/6 of that

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lota-putty
Thorium MSR?

Aren't they a thing of future?

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smitty1e
One day science may discover who it was that argued "constant climate".

Arguments in favor of improving environmrntal stewardship are welcome.

Fear mongering invites a "Newton's Third Law" reaction against the messenger.

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LoSboccacc
most of these reasons are hogwash. the real issue with depending on nuclear is
peak uranium, regardless on where you put the date nuclear is not renewable,
could be part of an integrated strategy to move out of coal a fossil fuel but
cannot be the only answer to long term energy needs, which doesn't mean we
should not invest in it but that we are going to need an exit strategy.

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spdegabrielle
Let’s just be honest - the whole point of NP is weapons capability. NP isn’t
going away no matter how much it costs.

