Air quality will improve, just not CO2
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Creek_flood
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_County_coal_slurry_spil...
[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_County_water_crisis
Also there is a single case that happened from a non-western design. When looking at western countries like France, it shows how incredibly safe the whole industry is end to end.
It's our unique freedom-themed nonsense, not the Soviet dictatorial-nonsense, which means we have radiation standards strict enough that it's not possible to convert a coal plant into a nuclear plant without first performing a nuclear decontamination process due to all the radioisotopes in the coal.
That said, perhaps that's actually a problem with the coal plants rather than nuclear standards: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-69285-4
> When looking at western countries like France, it shows how incredibly safe the whole industry is end to end.
Relative to coal, absolutely. But don't assume western countries are immune to propaganda on these things, nuclear reactors are there for the spicy atoms, not the price tag or public safety.
The exclusion zone is nonsense because many that live in that zone has lower cancer rates then those outside. The idea is based on a invalid assumption about radiation an a linear relationship between radiation and harm. An I do think the standards we apply are to extreme in many cases mostly dating back to this misunderstanding about radiation.
As for the locality to nuclear plants and cancer, this is as far as I know been shown in many countries and as far as I know at least can mostly be explained by nuclear plants usually being built in industrial areas that often used to have coal plants and other industry going on.
> nuclear reactors are there for the spicy atoms, not the price tag or public safety.
Not sure what 'spicy' means in this context. In terms of price tag they are objectively a fantastic deal if built in larger numbers. Even in places where they were not built in the numbers they did in France, they are good life time deal, and give relativity stable long term prices.
And they don't have to be 'there' for public safety, they just need a good record on public safety and they do.
In places like Austria and Germany we have many known cases where a nuclear plant was planned and was prevented by activists, only to be replaced by coal, in both cases impacting 10000s of lives being worse financially in the long term.
My parents who lived in central Europe during Chernobyl hate nuclear power, while believing lots of nonsense that was in the news back then.
I have no idea if that's true, but it sounds very plausible.
However, if it was true, it would make it very much easier for governments to justify big spends on pro-nuclear propaganda. I mean, the USA managed to make test-detonations into a tourism opportunity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Las_Vegas#Atomic_te...
Yes indeed. But that wasn't why they were built*, and that safety comes with an enormous cost. Ironically not including the exclusion zone, even with that included the amortised cost is quite small, but rather all the things that Chernobyl didn't have but should've plus all the international inspections and regulations to make sure nobody's secretly got a weapons program, either deliberately or via organised crime.
* Even just plain simple diversity of energy supply is good, as per another comment I made on this topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47309196
> The exclusion zone is nonsense because many that live in that zone has lower cancer rates then those outside. The idea is based on a invalid assumption about radiation an a linear relationship between radiation and harm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samosely
That's a tiny sample size, consisting of people who are in poverty (and already mostly elderly) and can therefore be expected to have unusual health outcomes. Which could be higher or lower cancer rates, depending on what else is going on. Like, cancer won't get you if you pickle your liver too hard first with moonshine.
Though yes, the linear relationship between radiation and harm is known to be an oversimplification.
> Not sure what 'spicy' means in this context.
Radioisotopes. They're really useful for a lot of stuff, but the options for making them are mostly "fission plant" or "particle accelerator". This includes but is not limited to weapons.
> In terms of price tag they are objectively a fantastic deal if built in larger numbers. Even in places where they were not built in the numbers they did in France, they are good life time deal, and give relativity stable long term prices.
The cheapest are cheap, but the average and the trend line says they're mostly now a worse option than PV+batteries. Your milage, as the saying goes, may vary, so I wouldn't be even mildly surprised if e.g. Alaska says "hydro and nuclear" given this graph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Alaska_electricity_genera...
> In places like Austria and Germany we have many known cases where a nuclear plant was planned and was prevented by activists, only to be replaced by coal, in both cases impacting 10000s of lives being worse financially in the long term.
Indeed. It was terrible for the environment and general population health that we didn't have a huge roll-out of nuclear power up until the 2010s when renewables got interesting.
But unfortunately, although even the full cost (both monetary and to lives lost) of Chernobyl would, if amortised over all reactors, be much smaller than for fossil plants, the scale of that accident would have been an existential threat to many smaller nations. Arguably, it was existential damage to the USSR, even. People don't want to be subjected to someone else's game of Russian Roulette, not even when the overall odds of survival go up.
Apso not sure if you are including coal mining, and all of the deaths and negative health outcomes as a result of the industry
https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/how-chernobyl-ha...
So The "worst case scenario" for nuclear power is creating a new wildlife park free from human interference.
So The "worst case scenario" for nuclear power is creating a new wildlife park free from human interference [and emptying out half of Los Angeles]
Have you ever seen the common medical advice that pregnant women should avoid eating more than a few servings of seafood every week, and avoid certain kinds entirely, because they’re all contaminated with mercury? A huge portion of that mercury comes from burning coal. How’s that for an exclusion zone?
I don’t think nuclear is the answer to things. But replacing every ounce of coal used for fuel with nuclear would still be a win.
I think that the last time I checked, when you take into factor the CO2 emissions and everything, Nuclear is the best source of Energy.
> I don’t think nuclear is the answer to things
I think that I am interested in seeing thorium based reactors or development with that too. That being said, Nuclear feels like the answer to me.
Feel free to correct me if you think I am wrong but I don't think that there is any better form of energy source than nuclear when you factor in everything.
No economy on the planet needs 24/7 peak power production. The times humans work correspond nicely with the times the sun is out.
Yes I agree but their extraction at scale is still very C02 Expensive.
> No economy on the planet needs 24/7 peak power production. The times humans work correspond nicely with the times the sun is out.
With Nuclear energy, let's face it. If you have a nuclear plant running, the input is just some uranium which we have plenty of. Thereotically we have no problem with running at peak power production.
You are also forgetting that Sun can be blocked during times of rains and Wind is unpredictable as well.
If you can work with solar panels only that's really really great. Unfortunately that's not how the world works or how I see it function :(
You are forgetting that markets operate after work and the late night culture and so many other things. You need lights at energy and quite a decent bit. You are also forgetting that if we ever get Electric vehicles then we would need energy during late night as well.
A lot of energy in general is still needed during nights and would we be still burning coal for that?
With all of this, I am not sure why you'd not like Nuclear?
We already have wires that cross continents to smooth out supply variations. It's exceedingly rare you get no sun and no wind over entire continents for an extended period.
> You are forgetting that markets operate after work and the late night culture and so many other things.
I'm not forgetting it, they just use less power.
You can see this easily in charts of supply/demand throughout the day: https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook#section-net-demand-tren...
> A lot of energy in general is still needed during nights and would we be still burning coal for that?
Again, batteries.
I can be wrong but you would probably lose tons of efficiency even within High Voltage DC lines if everyday late night we take energy from different countries. Also this is getting outside of topic of discussion for me because one of the reasons we want Nuclear or Green energy in general is also the environmental plus the sovereign plus the long term affordability plans.
Another point from your first comment but if we run peak production in nuclear say in a country A, then the country A can also give power to Country B at late night similar to what you are proposed for solars.
> Again, batteries.
Once again, within my first comment I raise issue of battery. You mention a comment and I respond and then we get to batteries again.
I have no problem with solar at all without batteries but batteries really flip the equation in terms of environmental concerns.
My question is plain and simple, Why not Nuclear? I understand, I am not against Solar. Although environmentally, I feel like battery is a valid concern.
I am just saying that long term, Nuclear seems to be the better/best option. Why not Nuclear? That is a question which it seems that you may not have answered and that's a discussion worth having as well In my opinion too.
We can agree on this, correct?
Yes. Because they're the answer here.
> Also this is getting outside of topic of discussion for me because one of the reasons we want Nuclear or Green energy in general is also the environmental plus the sovereign plus the long term affordability plans.
Good luck with nuclear sovereignty, if that's your concern. How many uranium mines are in the UK?
> Why not Nuclear?
/me gestures at the last 50 years of historical evidence
"Why not try nuclear" is like "why not try communism?" for physics nerds. We have tried it.
I can't speak about UK but considering how cheap Uranium is, can UK not do cost analysis. Uranium is abundant material compared to Oil/Coal.
> /me gestures at the last 50 years of historical evidence
> "Why not try nuclear" is like "why not try communism?" for physics nerds. We have tried it.
Maybe, but I think that, I can speak about the problem within US which I can better explain but US had nuclear fearmongering attempts and Senators passed laws which increased regulations on it to the point that some regulations contradict past regulations.
Nuclear power plants being built on loan in such a flimsy regulatory market was what lead to the downfall essentially within US
Nuclear fearmongering and lobbying efforts from Oil Industry as they are one of the most strong opposers of nuclear energy[0]
Once again, how do I explain this but nuclear produces 3.2x less carbon emissions than Solar[1]
We are able to build hydropower plants, we are able to launch spaceships into moon and outer space. It's definitely possible to build nuclear if lobbying effort decreases.
I'd say that its our dependence on Oil and Coal which have been the problem. I have nothing against solar and that is something that I am saying from the start. At some point we should look towards transition towards nuclear as well. To give up on that would simply not be ideal.
[0]: https://climatecoalition.org/who-opposes-nuclear-energy/
[1]: https://solartechonline.com/blog/how-much-co2-does-solar-ene...
Wait until you hear how cheap and abundant sunlight and wind are!
Economically useful uranium deposits are only proven in a handful of countries.
> We are able to build hydropower plants, we are able to launch spaceships into moon and outer space. It's definitely possible to build nuclear if lobbying effort decreases.
This is the "well we haven't tried real communism" argument again.
I was going to ask you 3-4 questions but then I searched them upon myself and I do think that the results are more (positive?) than I thought.
Solar could feed world's energy needs by 0.3% and I think that Excess Solar could be used for green Hydrogen etc. too when needed for burstable energy source and smart grids in general to fix the ramp-up/ramp-down problem
I think one of the only things that I was sort of worried about mainly was the fact that Batteries produce lots of Co2 emissions and harm to the planet when mined but it seems that they have lifespan of about 10 years and can be carbon negative 3-4 years.
I don't know, I go through waves of doubt over Solar. I might need to learn more about Solar because I feel like I can just agree to whatever side I hear the recent data's from. Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics it seems.
But I feel like although solar is right direction too, we probably need smarter grids and just improvements within grid infrastructure in general too. Another point about Solar could be that there can be a more personal adoption of it whereas I can't build my own nuclear power plant so I do agree with you.
I'd still say that there is a lot of greenwashing in the Climate Change community to treat wood-chips and trees as fuel source and all the problems that stem from that with timber industry.
So although there are short-comings in Solar given its intermittent nature. I do agree that unless Govt.s create nuclear, it could be a good bet for personal actions/ even Govt.s to diversify at the very least from Oil.
I still think that though there is something wrong where People are wrongfully worried about nuclear. India for example had 3% of its energy coming from Nuclear and I looked at wiki and we planned even more but anti nuclear protests started happening after Fukushima Disaster :(
I am still really interested about Thorium Reactors and the race towards building it though. They are mostly disaster-free and Indian in particular has quite a large reserve of Thorium (25% of the world supply). The govt. is working on making 100GW to raise thorium's ratio in energy to almost ~10% estimate from 3% till 2047 which would still be impressive given that total energy would skyrocket as well till then.
India has true chances of being Energy Independent long term if it focuses on nuclear and Solar both rather than focusing on Solar given any advancement in Thorium reactor will be huge for us. For reference Coal : Thorium power ratio for same mass is 1:3.5 Million and its even more efficient than Uranium.
Also Thorium cannot be used for Nuclear Bombs in the sense of a fission unless you drop it at someone complete point blank but at that point its worthless compared to missiles so we can genuinely share this technology all across the world.
Thorium Reactors long term feel the future to me. So maybe I am too bullish on Thorium.
Solar is nice but atleast personally, Investments in Thorium Reactors could make India Energy Independent given 25% of the supply. We also recently found a huge jackpot in lithium and other minerals in Kashmir recently so I suppose long term India can be sovereign in manufacturing batteries for Solar production as well.
There is such a massive possibility in nuclear especially more so for India and general consensus also being within Scientific community that nuclear energy is cleanest forms of energy. The Combination means that, I'd want my govt. to take some risks in nuclear research/projects given how big the reward can be and that's also why I vocally support Nuclear. Much more than Solar. But I'd say that any govt. has their own risk profile and maybe Solar can be boring but works technology for Energy Independence so I just hope that Solar & Thorium both show some good numbers long term as well. So it isn't as if I am anti Solar as much as I am very pro nuclear energy long term.
Relevant Video: Thorium Reactors: Why is this Technology Quite So Exciting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSFo_92cJ-U
Nuclear power is expensive, enough that “what about night” is solve by building extra solar and batteries. Also, renewables wreck the economics of base load power that needs to run all the time to pay back loan, but can’t compete with solar during the day.
Is there any particular reason why you think Nuclear is bad in all honesty as its worth having a discussion here? Why do you feel Nuclear Energy is a hazard?
I understand if you feel Chernobyl or any event makes it sound dangerous but rather, Please take a look at this data on the number of death rates per unit of electricity production[0]
Oil is roughly 615x more deadly than nuclear. Nuclear, Solar and Wind (the renewables) are all less deadly and are 0.03,0.02 and 0.04 respectively and nuclear is a reliable source of energy source which can be used in actual generation.
Nuclear is very much a green energy. I'd like to hear your opinion about it.
[0]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...
Even within Chernobyl Disaster, it was a series of mistakes which led to the full scale disaster IIRC so it isn't as if a single mistake
Also Thorium based Nuclear Reactors wouldn't have this issue from what I understand as in the idea of explosions or anything,
> Nuclear plants are great if they actually happen to get built
I get this part but shouldn't this mean that people should be more vocal about support for Nuclear. We are vocal about support for Solar, might as well be vocal about support for Nuclear and Solar both too?
And people are (mostly irrationally) terrified of it, which matters in democracies.
And off course societal (and geopolitical) acceptance issues.
I don’t understand what you mean by “no learning curve”. Do you mean that the learning curve is particularly steep for plant operators?
We make too few nuclear power plants for them to have a noticeable learning curve, and recently each subsequent one ends up more expensive than the latest, notably because of safety regulation. Korea and I think China had the best success in that regard (and France in the 80s) by being able to make real series, but you don't really see those now except maybe China.
More here: https://ourworldindata.org/learning-curve
Right. One thing I've rarely heard emphasized is that, while nuclear power is not at all the same as nuclear weapons, it's still infrastructure that can be repurposed from one to the other. A world where nuclear is the predominant base load power source is a world where nuclear weapons are more accessible due to the proliferation of sibling technologies.
That is, nuclear power plants only kill people by radioactivity in the case of an accident. Coal power plants do it in normal operation. As well as coal dust having a PM2.5 dust problem which kills people.
Make it about nuclear vs coal because people say coal is better than nuclear because it's not scary radiation, and it actually is.
> "Both are bad"
Nuclear generates more power from a Kg of fuel, with less CO2 pollution and fewer deaths. It's not bad, but even if it was bad it's not "both sides", it's much less bad.
[yes coal disasters also kill hundreds of people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aberfan_disaster ]
For that matter, it has killed many, many more than the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan!
When multiple systems are combined the percentage of things filtered out is:
Pollutant Typical removal Dust / particulate matter 99–99.9%+ Sulfur dioxide (SO₂) 90–98% Nitrogen oxides (NOx) 70–90% Mercury 80–95%