"... We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win..." -JFK
We used to see difficulties like that as a challenge we could overcome, instead of running away in fear of risk.
See the other posts in this thread, where this has already been covered: solar and wind are not a replacement for coal. By rejecting nuclear, you are choosing coal, de facto, for the base load.
Why build a reactor? Because it's safer than solar, and cheaer in the long run. Why do you want a power source that kills more people per kWh?
Nuclear has very low running costs (practically no fuel) and a lot of the startup costs are temporary (new design approval). Intermittent technologies like solar and wind need expensive extra redundency and battery storage. Show me the batteries you are going to use, at a price cheaper than both coal and nuclear, Not some vaporware future technology, something we can buy right now. (the grid isn't a battery, even though most people using solar right now use the grid as if it was).
Nuclear isn't easy or cheap, but it's the least worst method we have for generating power. Other technologies will always have niche uses, of course, but choosing to wait for some mythical future technology to become available is choosing to let coal plants continue polluting the world.
> By rejecting nuclear, you are choosing coal, de facto, for the base load.
I'm not. I'm picking natural gas, which while still a fossil fuel, is much cleaner and releases far less CO2 per kwh generated.
Nuclear still takes a decade to build. A decade. I don't have to show you the batteries today, as long as they're built and in production in the next 10 years, which they will be. The Tesla Gigafactory will produce 50GWh of battery capacity per year: http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/corner-office-mar...
Nuclear isn't the least worst method. Solar, wind, and batteries are the least worst method.
> but choosing to wait for some mythical future technology to become available is choosing to let coal plants continue polluting the world.
Safe nuclear is this mythical future technology you speak of.
That's not a small amount. Nuclear releases 0 CO2.
> 50GWh of battery capacity per year:
Thank you for making my point for me. At that rate, we might have enough battery power (assuming no replacements) in a century or two. We need TWh capacity, not GWh, to change the world over to intermittent generation sources.
You have a strange sense of "least worst", given incidentsw like these happen fairly regularly in the oil and gas industries. Nuclear hasn't killed anywhere near this many people.
Natural gas releases half as much CO2 as coal, and in practice also results in a lot of methane release which according to some researchers makes its warming impact as bad as coal's, at least over the next few decades.
That's what worries me. This "dead" technology still contributes a lot more to the United States' energy budget than solar and wind combined, despite strong resistance to nuclear and everybody pushing renewables like crazy. It looks like the winner of this fight — between a technology people are eager to declare "dead" and other technologies that are apparently stillborn — is fossil fuel.
Coal has been replaced by a combination of natural gas and renewables in every state. As more renewables come online, natural gas plants will run even less.
I'm tired of humanity throwing money down the well that is the nuclear power industry. Pay for the damn turbines and panels already and be done with it (the US alone has enough wind energy potential for 10x its current energy use).
Note: Wind is already so cheap, Exelon's CEO (who manages the largest commercial fleet of nuclear generators in the US) is threatening plant closings if they don't get a bailout.
Do I care that natural gas is going to pick up the slack? Of course not. The natural gas boom won't last forever, prices will rise, and with coal no longer meeting EPA emissions requirements and nuclear plants decommissioned, there will only be one power source to pick up the slack: renewables.
> Wind is already so cheap, Exelon's CEO (who manages the largest commercial fleet of nuclear generators in the US) is threatening plant closings if they don't get a bailout.
Am I missing something? I don't see anything about a bailout in that article. Unless I overlooked something, it sounds like he's just saying that government subsidies on wind power are excessive, which is the opposite of asking for a bailout.
"Exelon, which operates six nuclear power plants in Illinois, says it needs help because — although it made more than $2 billion last year — it has lost about $1 billion in the past five years on three of its plants: Clinton, Quad Cities and Byron. The nuclear plants are having a hard time competing in the marketplace partly because plentiful supplies have driven down the price of natural gas.
The utility says it is unwilling to run any nuclear plant at a loss, though its nuclear fleet is profitable overall. It says Illinois needs all of its nuclear plants for reliability and low-carbon power generation. It also warns that 8,000 jobs in Illinois would be lost if the plants were shuttered."
"This really is a critical time in the 41-years at the Quad Cities station where we have never been in a position where me may have premature shutdown," said Bill Stoermer, Senior Communications Manager at Exelon in Cordova. "We really need the state legislature to act. They of course are focused on the budget and to try to get some budget resolved. We certainly understand that, however we're going to be forced to make some decisions by the end of the year regarding our plans here in Illinois."
"Exelon was happy to embrace risk when wholesale power prices were on the rise and profits from its generation business were flowing, Hendrickson said. Only now, in a market where nuclear power is under pressure from relatively inexpensive natural gas and wind, is the company asking for help in the form of a $300-million-a-year subsidy."
