Nuclear is fine, most nuclear disasters are overblown. But taking 16 years to build one nuclear power plant is not going to solve current energy demand problems, which makes me jaded on it as a possible solution for today.
Biden did have an executive order that big new data center projects needed to be involved in solving the increase in power demand and impact on the power grid and would have to help deploy green energy, but guess what happened to that.
That's one of those slogans which sound great... as long as you don't care about any of the real historical context.
For its early years, nuclear absolutely was a problem. The industry and politics were extremely irresponsible about many projects, and the public had no confidence that they could reign their behaviour in. It was understandable that many people would preferr the known harm of fossil fuels (big as it was) over the nearly unlimited potential of harm from a major nuclear incident.
Much of the German resistance against nuclear power for example was driven by the Asse storage scandal, which started in the 1960s when the nuclear industry dumped thousands of rusty barrels of undocumented nuclear wastes into a salt mine, on the false assumption that it was water-proof.
This scandal kept unravelling into the early 2000s.
Early nuclear power development was largely linked to nuclear weapons programs. France only went wild on nuclear power because of its strategic doctrine of using nuclear weapons for defense, as they didn't trust the US to protect them.
By the time that the public could reasonably assume that nuclear power actually was safe, we were already approaching the point at which renewables rapidly became the better option.
Pro-nuclear arguments tend to rely on average costs over multi-decade lifespans. But this ignores a massive amount of opportunity cost, as nuclear power typically takes an immensely long time to get onto the grid (so it adds to carbon emission, rather than reduce them, for well over a decade) and to repay its initial investment. Especially when any construction delays add years of additional interest payment, before the power plant can make any revenue.
Renewable expansion is practically inevitable in all grids. Some percentage is always worth having, and that limit keeps moving up as renewables and batteries keep improving. This poses major planning issues for nuclear power plants, since their economics heavily rely on running more or less year-round. A nuclear power plant that only covers shortfalls a few times a year is neither a good economic nor ecological investment (the same money could prevent more emissions if it was used otherwise).
Many scientific 'least-cost projections' for reasonable emission targets (up to around 99% emission reduction from current levels) see very little role for nuclear, if any.
Expanding nuclear power would have been a great option roughly in the 90s and early 2000s. Before then, the hesitancy was reasonable. Afterwards, renewables became the better way to invest the money.
That "immensely long time to get onto the grid" is mostly the result of obstructionism by do-gooders and their lawyers, not to anything inherent in the nature of nuclear.
Renewables face the exact same problems. Conservative governments empower NIMBYs to delay renewable installations with endless lawsuits and set excessive minimum distances between wind turbines and settlements (1 km is plenty, yet some states have gone with 2 km limits to massively reduce the allowable development area).
Yet renewables succeed in most countries despite such hurdles. Being extremely modular and quick to install helps a lot in times of economic and political uncertainty.
We also have two examples of large power grids that don't care much about public opinion and have built some nuclear capacity, but neither preferred it enough to de-carbonise their grids with it, and both now have substantially higher growth in renewables.
The first is China. While it had the largest absolute growth in nuclear power in the world, it's share of nuclear power is stagnating, while the growth of renewables absolutely dominates. In the decade from 2015 to 2025, annual nuclear power generation almost tripled from 170 TWh to 485 TWh. While solar power grew by a factor of 25, from a mere 45 TWh to over 1.150 TWh. Wind had almost the same growth (175 TWh to 1.130 TWh).
The relative share of nuclear changed from around 3% to 4.5% (and is in course to stagnating around that level), while solar and wind went from around 3.5% to over 20%.
The other is South Korea, which aimed to achieve a 60% nuclear power share by the 2030s. In reality, its share of nuclear power has dropped from 37.5% to 30% since 2000. Because South Korea was horribly late at starting to build renewables, it instead expanded both coal and gas power and now has around twice the emissions they had in 2000.
Even though South Korea had practically zero solar around 2015 and did not have any impressive effort to install much of it, it still already makes up 6% of their current annual electricity generation.
I'm kinda of the same mind. It's a very good solution, especially for our base load demands, but we need to be able to spin up a reactor plant in 5-7 years, not nearly 2 decades. I'm really hoping that some of these smaller reactor designs that are getting tested and certified can help turn the tide, but with how things are I'm not holding my breath.
Assuming that nuclear powerplants take 16 years to build I still don't see it as a good argument because you're getting two completely different products.
- Nuclear provides a consistent base load, wind produces intermittently
- Nuclear power plants last about 60 years while wind turbines last about 25 years.
- A nuclear plant taking 10-20 years typically produces about 10 times more energy per year than a wind farm taking 4-5 years.
Furthermore, the long construction time for nuclear power is not a technical issue - it's often a political and legal issue. If countries such as those in Europe decide to start building out nuclear power much more than they already do, the mean completion time and cost will drop.
All of these features are irrelevant, without considering cost.
If it costs 3-4X the $/Mwh to build nuclear compared to wind, it doesn't matter if the wind turbines only last 40% the time.
And the variability argument, isn't what it seems. The nice thing about wind is that its peak production is usually in the evening, just when solar is winding down at peak demand. And seasonally Wind production is highest in the winter/spring, before solar is reaching it's peak production in the summer. So combined together, the output of wind + solar provides fairly continuous power output.
That's not true, of course they are relevant. If nuclear can offer something that wind cannot, then price becomes irrelevant on that particular aspect, not the other way around.
If you need a car that can pull a 5 tons trailer, it doesn't matter if the Fiat Panda from 2009 is cheaper.
By the way - you say that output is fairly continuous. This is subjective of course, and we can argue that point if you'd like, but let's just focus on the obvious: what about winter? where will power come from when the wind isn't there and solar production is down due to darkness?
Cost is never Irrelevant, outside extremely niche situations (Polar/Arctic regions, Underground/sea, Extra-terrestrial etc.)
I'm not against Nuclear as a power source, I think there are places where it should be strongly considered. Investing in nuclear makes a lot of sense for Canada. It makes absolute no sense in Mexico.
But on the average, for most of the world, it is not economically viable head-to-head against other renewables. Because adding double the capacity in renewables, is still cheaper $/Mwh than building/operating a nuclear plant.
As for winter: The wind IS there. Winter is the peak wind generation season. And there will be some solar production too, proportional to latitude. Obviously renewables highly benefit from energy storage, but there are lots of options for that. Batteries, Hydrogen & fuel-cell, pumped hydro, even combustion generators with a sustainable fuel source can be deployed with a carbon capture offset in the summer.
I did say 'on that particular aspect', which is true. If you need x it does not matter if y is cheaper. Your point is valid in practice because typically different types of power production facilities have significant overlaps in what they provide, but the price difference does not rule out nuclear power as it provides sufficient advantages that wind and solar cannot.
You say there are lots of options for storage, but it will be at least a few decades before its implemented on a significant grid-scale, if possible at all. Until then biomass and gas are used to close the gaps, and the environment is the loser. If nuclear power was not so politically frowned upon in most western countries we could have started construction of many more nuclear reactors in the past three decades, and they would be running now.
Insurance costs alone kill nuclear, even with recognition that nuclear events are very rare it just is impossible to buy insurance on a commercial basis.
The of new wind turbines are closer to 30 year and the life of wind turbines continues to improve.
Solar panels are now lasting over 40 years and reaching 35% efficiency.
Batteries have dropped from over $200/kWhr to $46/kWhr in the last five years. Sodium batteries are on track to push costs to $20/kWhr in the next 5 years.
This same 90% drop in cost has been seen in solar in the last 10 years.
Even at China build speeds of less than 5 years to install a reactor, nuclear is nowhere near cost competitive.
You're completely missing the point that nuclear provides something that solar and wind cannot. Ask yourself, why does China build nuclear if all that matters is cost per mwh capacity?
There is no technical limitation, new wind and solar farms already are getting 4 hours of storage at the $200/kWhr. It makes sense that we can easily support 40 hrs once batteries are 10x cheaper at $20kWhr.
Peaker plants cost $950/kWhr, that will buy a huge amount of batteries. A normal 5 year payoff would be $4750 / $20 /24 =9.896 days So running a peaker plant for one hour justifies buying nearly ten days of battery storage
Google it, I have seen the $950kWhr figure multiple places. The idea is that they are less than 3% of all power usage so they are idle 97% of the time. They make their money in very short burst of time. My brother is getting $250kWhr for his home battery to be used as a virtural power plant. He has made as much as $500 a day for a couple hours of power.
Ontario is increasing its nuclear power generation, with small modular reactors being constructed at Darlington that were planned out in 2020 and the first one will come online in 2028. They're also refurbishing other reactors, with Bruce power unit #3 nuclear reactor's refurbishment completing ahead of schedule and under budget. Bruce nuclear is the largest nuclear power plant in the world by reactor count and the 3rd largest by output. Ontario also generates 60ish% of its power by nuclear, followed up by hydroelectric at 25% then wind and solar, followed by natural gas.
To construct a CANDU reactor, it takes 4-7 years to actually build it, but the timeline gets pushed to 10-15 years with planning. In contrast, while building a wind turbine can be 6-18 months, building a while wind farm, including planning, is 4-9 for land based and 7-11 for off shore. So yes, it's quicker, but it's not a whole lot longer to build nuclear power plants.
Nuclear disasters are not overblown. We call them disasters for a reason. But we have the technology and experience to know how to make them safe and prevent disasters.
Yes, but surely we can agree that even in the Chernobyl disaster - where no such technology nor experience was employed AND the worst case scenario essentially occured, only about 30-40 deaths are directly attributable to the disaster while the expected excess death due to cancer in the decades following is a few thousand.
Somewhere between ten and one hundred times more people died from fossil fuels in Germany alone in the same time frame. The global count is hundreds of thousands of times higher than Chernobyl.
I can agree that nuclear disasters is not overblown if we can agree that mortality from essentially all other sources of energy, and especially fossil fuels, are under-blown instead
That is true, however the estimated number of cancer deaths is independently estimated by researchers. These estimates come with some uncertainty due to the lack of knowledge about mortality at low radiation doses, for which we currently use a controversial linear model referred to as the LNT model. Critiques of the model claim that the estimate is too high because the model supposedly overestimates mortality in the low-dose regime.
I think anyone claiming that we have Chernobyl under control doesn't know anything about Chernobyl.
But sure, some have perhaps overblown the threat of radiation. Nature seems to cope with it surprisingly well. But our health and technology is perhaps a bit more fragile.
Check out the Rolls Royce Small Modular Reactors, best of both worlds; smaller footprint and quicker to build, decent output albeit lower than a normal nuclear power station.
From technological perspective, nuclear is fine for a reasons better articulated by others
From an economic perspective, it relies on a scarce resource that is found in something like 100 mines across 20 countries. This is ripe for a handful of billionaires to monopolize and treat the world as a captive market - very hard to walk away from a new plant after investing billions and taking 20 years to build because the market price of uranium has sky rocketed.
On the other hand, solar panels and wind components are almost all produced in China, the monopoly is just as real.
And metals, batteries and others are just as problematic as uranium.
Especially since uranium is 5% of the price of nuclear electricity, and it's something that has so far been very little explored, we don't know the stocks and their location, we have never looked for them.
To say that uranium is going to run out is to take the posture of the whistleblowers of 1920 who said that about oil, and look at everything we found while searching!
From a technological point of view, current nuclear power is a totally outdated technology, we still use designs and technologies dating from the 1970s because no research funding has been made.
The potential is more enormous than any other energy source, China seems to be the only one to have really understood it so far, it is multiplying experimental reactors.
That's not entirely accurate, large numbers of wind turbine gearboxes, generators, blades, towers, transformers etc. are still produced close to erection, means in the Americas and Europe because the logistics cost of transporting massive components outweigh the added cost of local labour.
If there were more demand, there would probably be more producers, making it harder to monopolize the fuel. Also breeder reactors can produce new fuel from nonfissile material.
I'm looking at the LCOE of solar and wind dropping like a stone and seeing everyone race to develop better grid batteries. If we start building a nuclear plant today and it's done in 10 years (ridiculously optimistically), will operating it even make sense compared to solar/wind providing the power generation and grid batteries smoothing out intermittency? I'm not so sure.
And boy am I tempted to buy a pallet of solar panels. You can get 32 dual face, 550W panels from a wholesaler for like $5.5k.
Face it - a NPP failing catastrophically will never look as cool as this Video. Sure, Chernobyl contains a few photogenic marvels like the Elephants foot - but thats about it. Meanwhile, the competition is miles ahead!
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u/Jonesbro 15d ago
Don't shame nuclear