The head of this year’s United Nations’ climate talks has called for governments and businesses to tackle global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions in all regions and sectors if they want to stop the planet from passing a key temperature limi...
In theory, nuclear power generation may be safe. In practice it is not. There were two major catastrophes that killed thousands, first in Chernobyl and then in Fukushima. Fukushima wasn’t that long ago either. In practice, one should not underestimate the irrational greed of managers. There are calculations of how much damage insurance for nuclear power plants would cost. Since the risk, which can be calculated from the damage multiplied by the probability of occurrence, is very high because the damage in an accident would be so incredibly great that companies cannot afford it and always taxpayers have to save them, which shows the risk the taxpayers bear with nuclear power plants. Many nuclear power plants are very old and extremely expensive to maintain. So you would have to build new power plants in order to install the latest safety technology. Incidentally, the new security technology does not help against invaders either, as can be seen in the Ukraine. This super great security technology is enormously expensive. Renewable energy sources are simply unbeatably cheap because you get the energy from the earth and the sun as a gift. It is already the case that countries with many renewable energy sources, such as Denmark, are depressing the European energy market with their cheap electricity, and conventional energy sources are not getting prices that low. Then there is the biggest problem, nuclear waste. Uranium 235 and its fission isotopes are harmless after 1 million years. So the nuclear waste has to be guarded for 1 million years. Labor costs are bigger than money in the world exists and most countries don’t have repositories because it’s impossible to find a safe place for the next 1 million years. From the generated energy one also has to subtract the large amount of energy that is consumed firstly by the enrichment of uranium in gigantic centrifuges and secondly by the creation of uranium in mining. Only vehicles with combustion engines are used for this and the mining itself emits a lot of CO2. In addition, the uranium deposits are not that large given our high energy consumption. That is why India is researching thorium reactors, but none of them are productive yet. I think fusion reactors are a much better way to spend research money. Nuclear power plants need a lot of water for cooling. In view of the climate change, there were big problems in France last year to cool the nuclear power plants because the rivers did not deliver enough water due to little rain. As a result, many power plants had to be shut down and electricity had to be imported at great expense. By importing uranium from abroad, one also becomes extremely dependent on other countries and on their uranium prices. As you can see, given the huge advances in renewable energy sources, I think nuclear power plants are very poor options for generating energy.
Your premise is specious
Firstly you are just picking up on my first point and secondly no one would have been harmed in either disaster if a wind farm had been set up.
Does that mean wind power kills fewer people per kWh than nuclear?
And on which timeline? Nuclear power has come a LONG way since 3MI, let alone Chernobyl.
One human has died from failures of a modern nuclear plant in the last 15 years.
I don’t know the stats, but it’s quite likely that a non-zero number techs have died servicing and installing the wind facilities.
In which case, they’re about even - or wind is worse. But in the grand scheme, it’s a non issue either way.
In your argument as to when a nuclear power plant kills people, as I see it, you consider the period too short. It may be that few or no one dies from the direct explosion, but the worst thing about the accidents is the immense amount of gamma radiation. Radiation deaths often do not occur immediately, but only after some time. It is therefore difficult to estimate how many deaths are due to radiation from nuclear catastrophes, but to estimate it with one death is definitely too low in my opinion. The number of deaths from nuclear power is certainly not comparable to solar or wind power due to its magnitude.
What is that magnitude?
“Overall, based on statistical modelling of the radiation doses received by workers and local residents, a total of 4000 deaths will eventually be attributable to the Chernobyl accident”(Pflugbeil, S. (2006). Chernobyl – Looking back to go forwards: the September 2005 IAEA Conference. Medicine, Conflict and Survival, 22(4), 299–309. https://doi.org/10.1080/13623690600945230) “Environmental fallout from the accident affected cropland, forests, rivers, fish and wildlife, and urban centres. In the three countries most affected, nearly 800 000 ha of agricultural land was removed from service, and timber production was halted on nearly 700 000 ha of forest.”(Pflugbeil, S. (2006). Chernobyl – Looking back to go forwards: the September 2005 IAEA Conference. Medicine, Conflict and Survival, 22(4), 299–309. https://doi.org/10.1080/13623690600945230) “Studies have found that exposed populations had anxiety levels twice as high as normal, with a greater incidence of depression and stress symptoms.”(Pflugbeil, S. (2006). Chernobyl – Looking back to go forwards: the September 2005 IAEA Conference. Medicine, Conflict and Survival, 22(4), 299–309. https://doi.org/10.1080/13623690600945230)
I’m sorry but I didn’t have the time to find the values for Fukushima as well. There are a lot of different numbers, but I think these are also validated by the UN and WHO and are pretty informative
You’re not arguing in good faith. Full stop.
I love you. Reddit has that weird cult of nuclear energy bros and I never once saw someone actually successfully stand up to them. I’m never leaving lemmy. 😭
You cannot run a society solely on renewables. You can run a society with zero emissions.
Your first statement is manifestly untrue. We ran societies solely on renewables for over 5000 years. But we certainly can’t run our present society solely on renewables. Actually, I think nuclear energy has an important role in creating a zero emission society; there are places its just too difficult to get renewable energy to with current technology. But it’s not a silver bullet; we can’t run our present society solely on nuclear energy either. We need to be clear-headed about the limitations and, yes, risks of using nuclear energy, so that we can make smart decisions about how to use it and not create another huge environmental problem for our great-grandchildren to deal with.
Many internet nuclear enthusiasts seem to imagine that we could just swap fossil fuels for nuclear energy and carry on our merry way with nothing much changing in society; but that’s not any more realistic than doing that by swapping fossil fuels for renewables. We are never going to be able to maintain our society as it is now without fossil fuels; things will have to change in a very big fundamental way. I’ve observed that nuclear energy enthusiasm on reddit has tended to act as a form of climate quasi-denialism. Misguided faith in a tech solution that will just fix everything without major social repercussions ultimately prevents us from acknowledging the difficult and unpleasant reality that large structural change is necessary, change that will inevitably impact the standard of living of people in wealthy countries for the worse.
Erm.
Of course Iceland has a natural advantage but geothermal will probably have a renaissance with those fancy new plasma drills. This is not a matter of possibility or even cost but political will. Unless you’re literally Saudi Arabia renewables will be cheaper in the long run.
Even here in New Zealand, we’re consistently over 90% renewables, and we’re not really trying that hard.
With all due respect you’re ignoring the fact that we’re doing immeasurabley more damage now by refusing to accept nuclear as our baseline source of electricity. You cannot run today’s society without a predictable and reliable source such as nuclear, geothermal, hydro or ff.
The fact is that we SHOULD have been using the tech available to us the entire time to avoid ruining the ecosystem in the ways that we have been. We should be using geothermal and hydro where applicable but that’s not going to work for every scenario, for all other scenarios we would be better off with non-privately owned nuclear power until the day comes when we can store enough renewable energy that nuclear is no longer necessary.
Try telling that to the renewables bros.
When nuclear companies, private investors and insurance companies aren’t even interested in nuclear, far preferring renewables, then you know how pointless it is. Besides of course, the nuclear vanity projects to maintain R&D and military test applications.