holy shit people stop fucking talking when you dont grasp a concept, nuclear energy is genuinely the most green energy there is by a longshot when all factors are considered.
this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023
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Nuclear is so 1954 - renewables are the future!
The nuclear we built in the 50s is. The technology has come a long way since then, we just haven't built any.
[deleted]
You need a baseline for a stable power grid, which renewables alone can't provide.
@Claidheamh @ndsvw
It depends on the renewables. Wind and photovoltaics have stability issues. Hydro and geothermal are more stable. Nuclear is compact and high power but has huge waste disposal issues.
The waste disposal is a solvable issue, that is still less nefarious than fossil fuel emissions. If you set the goal to replace ALL fossil fuel power generation, then nuclear is a necessary component of a renewable energy based grid. Geothermal and hydro are great and necessary, but can't provide a reliable base load for the entire grid. Nuclear plants are complemental to renewables, not competition.
@Claidheamh
Nuclear is also very expensive. Bioenergy is the one I missed. That is far cheaper than nuclear and could be scaled up easily. I'm sure there will be a need for both the existing nuclear and indeed some fossil fuels for a while yet. But I think we should focus on getting our renewable energy resources in place in advance of building any new nuclear plants.
I don't support any continued burning it fossil fuels. That's what every previous generation said and look at the thermometer.
The waste disposal is a solvable issue
Strangely enough it hasn't been solved in the almost 70 years of nuclear energy. And I doubt it will be solved in the next 70 years either.
What do you mean hasn't been solved? Nuclear waste is being processed and stored constantly and with high safety. Not to mention reprocessing which could be done if not for being outlawed.
[deleted]
The pyramids weren't buried 1km under the surface in flowing salt which will further engulf the waste for geologic time scales.
Also we didn't forget about the pyramids. What does that even mean? People have lived right next to them since they were built.
[deleted]
Yes there are archaeological sites which have been forgotten and rediscovered.
Nothing you're saying is a strong argument about self sealing deep storage waste burial sites. I don't think you realize just how little waste nuclear reactors produce, they're not pyramids, they're a few barrels across years.
[deleted]
I'm well aware of the hazards communication projects. Not really relevant to deep salt storage.
Thousands of years is nothing across geologic time scales.
Yeah 11 tons is literally nothing. That's only 575 m^3 of uranium.
That's a third by mass of the average single German households trash production across the same time period. And it's more dense, so less volume.
[deleted]
What's the problem with how the waste is managed right now?
[deleted]
You don't need to plan "1000's of years into the future." Why does Nuclear require a multi-generational plan on a scale that no civilization has ever attained, but burning fossil fuels which will kill most of us within a few generations doesn't? It's a distraction, the solution to nuclear waste was solved in the 50's and the reality is that dangerous nuclear waste is useful and should be recycled, and the low-order nuclear waste isn't dangerous for anymore then a century at most, and even then it's only if you consume it.
[deleted]
10.500 tons of highly radioactive waste until 2080
Ok, but in 2022 alone Germany emitted 746 000 000 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere. I'll take the 10.500 of easily containable waste over 60 years, please. In fact, let's do 5x that. Or even 10x.
It's called nuclear reprocessing and it was banned as a compromise between the USSR and the USA because it can also be used to make weapons. The USSR is gone now, and any country that wants to do it is more then welcome to withdraw from the nuclear reprocessing treaty. They can do it unilaterally without any risk at all and that takes care of their existing and future high-order nuclear waste in one fell-swoop.
Complaining about down votes is some small dick reddit energy, don't do that in the future. We are on Lemmy now.
Now to answer your question. "Renewables*" are supplementary. Wind/Solar cannot provide baseline power, and will never be able to provide baseline power for the grid. Any kind of magical energy storage you can come up with that would allow renewables to replace a power plant also requires exotic/expensive tech that would be more expensive then Nuclear power and still doesn't address baseline power consumption. This kind of question is also used as a distraction by the fossil fuel industry so that you have countries like Germany replacing nuclear power with coal and strip mining.
Why are they building coal in the first place? Because "renewables" do not produce enough base-line power. If Germany could use magically renewable energy to meet all of their energy demands, they would probably do it, but that isn't the reality. In the future try to avoid framing solar/wind as competitors to nuclear power. Both are needed, and unlike nuclear power which hasn't been built on any scale since the 70's, solar/wind are absolutely used everywhere they can be and if they aren't sufficient in cases like Georgia, Nuclear should 100% be the answer because if it's not used you will have coal or gas instead. "Just asking questions" like that shows you don't understand power-generation and you have fallen for the fossil fuel industries propaganda.