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Nuclear power has its issues, but I think burdening future generations with old nuclear plants is better than burdening them with a catastrophic climate change. I would much rather see developing countries building nuclear than building coal.

Reducing emissions of energy production as fast as possible should be the first priority now, and nuclear can be helpful there. After this problem has been dealt with, then we have plenty of time to switch completely to better alternatives, like renewables.

Even a worst-case scenario like Chernobyl is still way, way less bad for nature than the consequences of climate change. Thanks to lack of humans, the area around Chernobyl is actually doing better biodiversity-wise than before the disaster.

I don't think it's an either-or scenario. There are other options and other factors at play. The assumption of global peace for thousands of years in a world dotted with world-ending bomb material is a big gamble.

The current politics of energy production and consumption, the state-by-state compartmentalization and lack of wider cooperation hampers cleaner options (spoiled-views NIMBYism and regional politics).

Wind, solar, and hydro coupled with transcontinental UHV power transmission could solve it with much simpler technologies.

> Wind, solar, and hydro coupled with transcontinental UHV power transmission could solve it with much simpler technologies.

Belarus just built a single nuclear power plant that reduces their natural gas consumption in the energy sector by 25% and saves 7 million tons of CO2 annually:

> https://twitter.com/RosatomGlobal/status/1323580827377258507

Just imagine how many wind and solar farms you would need to achieve that.

And, remember, neither wind mor solar provide baseload.

Baseload is the demand side of the equation. Sure, no single wind or solar farm can meet localized baseloads over a 24 hour period, like a single nuclear or hydro station can. However, given distributed solar and wind turbines at sites across 1000s of kilometres, working in conjunction with high voltage 700+ kV transmission, it is possible. Hence my assertion that the problem is social/political, and not a technical/physical limitation.

It is a priority problem at the core.

That nuclear power plant cost roughly $10 billion and took thirty years from planning to commissioning. Wind turbines cost around $1.5M per MWp and have a capacity factor of about 0.3 or so, so those same ten billion could have bought roughly an equal amount of wind power which could've most likely been built a bit faster than 30 years time. Of course you need to add some storage for baseload capacity which will increase cost a bit, but then again you don't need to save money for decommissioning a radioactive hunk of steel and concrete when the plant reaches EOL, you don't have risks of nuclear proliferation, and no radioactive waste, and you don't lose 2GW of generation at once for ten days when a couple of turbines need some repairs, like when that power plant's transformers exploded.

Southern Belarus seems to be pretty well suited for solar power too, which might even be a little bit cheaper than wind turbines.

Nuclear is not terrible for saving CO2, but the benefits are not as dramatic as you make them seem.

We need large scale green energy build out projects like we did for fossil fuels.

That is more of a grind rather than a big bang quick reward.

Think of it like leveling up to make ones character super robust as opposed to a few high power weapons.

Risks go way down, agency improves and future people thank us rather than regret us.

You’ve set up a false dichotomy. It isn’t either nuclear or coal. It’s other renewables like solar and wind and they are eating nuclear’s lunch because they are just better in every way. The answer is neither nuclear or coal.

But what if it is a dichotomy? Right now, the “answer” seems like it’s going to be coal and oil and natural gas and screw the planet, so I think we need every tool we can get.

I agree that wind and solar are the better power sources, but Nuclear is good at baseload in a way that renewables can't reproduce quite so easily. We also need to build sufficient storage eventually, probably when renewables have >60% or so marketshare for electricity.

> You’ve set up a false dichotomy. It isn’t either nuclear or coal.

It isn’t a false dichotomy, it is simply the truth:

> https://haas.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/WP304.pdf

Germany is phasing out nuclear with the result that their regulator has to ban coal plants from being shut down and start building new gas plants.

Yeah the clean up operation is rarely factored in. In my own country they don't even have a long term storage site yet. Nuclear reactors will run on tax €$ and I wonder how the government will respond when nuclear energy ends up more expensive than renewables.

Nobody has a solid answer to waste yet.

Huge timelines too. Many generations of people get exposed to those costs and risks.

Yeah, you begin to see why nuclear is so capital intensive seeing detailed photos of the infrastructure like this. Even a task as simple as moving a metal rod between two buildings involves purpose built remote controlled machinery. And the soviets built these RMBK reactors as cheap as they could, cutting a lot of corners.

I've been hopeful someone would work around this with a clever design, production line style manufacturing, etc. But so far every attempt has floundered. The latest serious one, NuScale, is still going forward, but they've slipped on schedule, price, and have lost a few backers already, so it's not looking great.

> Before the first few dozen nuclear reactors have been properly decommissioned, within a reasonable timeframe and for a reasonable budget, I think we have absolutely no business building more of them and burdening future generations with them.

Yes, because climate change does not pose a threat to mankind at all, we should waive for the most efficient weapon we have against it.

Yes, because we have plenty of other options that are cheaper and don't burden future generations with a huge radioactive mess.

Of course we might have to reconsider if everyone should commute to some pointlesss office job in an F150 every day... And pergaps having as much electricity available as you need at a fixed low price is also something that we might just not be able to provide without ruining the entire planet.

When we have an answer to the waste, we can talk about efficiency.

On nuclear build up timelines, and remember we cannot be rushing it, because we do not have answers to the fuckups and risks and waste, a build out effort like we did for fossil fuels would combat the problem as well and would have the benefits delivering for us a very long time.

Besides, tons of people need work. So we put that work out there, many families see higher standards of living and mere mortals can do the vast majority of that work too.

>we have absolutely no business building more of them and burdening future generations with them.

I arrive at the same conclusion each time I visit the topic.

And I do not blame advocates of this form of power. Advancement is hard, the rewards compelling.

However, I would rather live less, longer, and look over to my young 5 year old granddaughter and know she has a chance at experiencing something like I did, a clean, beautiful world, more harmonious than we know.

We have excluded ourselves from some of it. The coming decades may see us excluded from much more as climate temp rises.

Read about the wet bulb limit. 135F, I believe it is? At or above that temp, we cannot endure, will die a heat death without tech running. Like "Total Recall" and those people needing air, when the fans stop...

I feel we may know enough to be super dangerous, and our skill, resolve to get what we know as right as we can just does not appear to be enough.

Fukushima may melt its way into the water cycle, and is already polluting the oceans. Being real here, the increase is not much, but the timeline on our exposure to changes and risks is so long. Hard to say what it all means, could mean.

It all makes me want to support and be a part of the mother of all clean, renewable energy build outs!

Just switch us over.

We did what it took for fossil fuels. And that work meant income for so many, new tech, opportunities of all kinds, and the returns have been amazeballs!

And we did well, but here we are warming the place. Costs and risks on that are amplifying same as rewards did.

Nuclear happened, and we got to work on that. The returns have been great, but the misalignment between our nature, cost and risk exposure are more severe.

Here we are excluded from parts of our world and we do not really know the longer term outlook for either of these things.

All that effort got us great tech!

And we have an opportunity to build out again, and thr ability to do it, and it appears green energy, renewables can be aligned fairly well to our nature, cost and risk exposure lower, and we just need to find the will to do the work!

Unlike oil and nukes, renewables are more of a grind than loot box, but doing it could mitigate some of what is to come for us, as well as deliver great jobs, good opportunity and all that good stuff.

It will, or is likely to mean we live a bit differently, but so what! We did that before, can again, and it is not like we have to give the others up, so we do have what we made and can use it where we really must.

Lots of work to be done, tons of families raising kids, living lives, planet standing a much better chance at remaining healthy...

And throughout that time, we can continue to improve on that basic misalignment that comes with nuclear and end what is now well understood harm associated with fossil fuels.

Seems like a step backwards. I see it as a pause, step to the side.

A regroup and big push toward a lower cost and risk future.

Future people will thank us. And we will have done well by our world and ourselves along the way.