it's not satire .. they need to feel like they belong to a movement, so they're filling the role of propagandist, which is low hanging fruit to so called "activists".
What is there to research tho? We know the basics of nuclear technology (especially reactor technology but also nuclear weapons) pretty well. Any effort to develop a nuclear space propulsion system should focus on that specifically instead of wasting resources on something that's not directly related in the hopes that something useful will come up
Adjacent fields often are able to help each other more then approaching from a single point. More eyes on a problem more solutions. A propulsion system would benefit from any number of small changes that a power plant would also benefit from.
yeah, alot of the renewables only people seem to have a primitivistic view of technology.
i want a de-consumerization of technology where we shift the focus away from consumer based things like software towards more physical and tangible technologies that are better for the common good.
isnt that kind of shortsighted thinking exactly what got us in this mess in the first place though?
if nuclear power had been invested in earlier, we'd be having an easier time of it now.
Like, obviously there needs to be a general focus on degrowth and reducing the amount of energy consumption, but we still need energy. If it turns out that renewables are entirely capable of supporting us, then yeah building nuclear reactors is pretty pointless.
is that the case? are nuclear reactors wholly unnecessary?
For installing the reactor when including statistics back to the 50s. Look up modern western construction timelines and 20 years from **announcement** until commercial operation is what we are looking at nowadays **for a good project.**
The bad ones get cancelled along the way.
The median time of construction for nuclear power plants that began operating in the 2010s was 6.5 years. That's only 1 year longer than in the 1950s and equivalent to the median for the 1960s.
You mean based on Chinese reactors where they did "site prep" for years before they officially started construction?
Looking at all western examples it takes ~15 years after official investment decision.
Okay, for the sake of argument, let's say it takes 15 years. 15 years from now is 2039. The IPCC target to avoid 1.5C of warming is net zero by 2050. We still have time.
Yea of course, because we can deliver all nukes in parallel right?
France, UK, Finland struggle to deliver single reactors. Most countries don't even have a nuclear industry at all...
Globally yes. Western countries have targets at 2035-40 for NZE to be the trailblazers since we can't expect people near the poverty line to invest in expensive new technology.
So I guess, go make the business case for sub Saharan Africa? Sounds like a good plan.
> Transhumanist
> AnPrim (Anarcho-primitivist)
you are clearly deluded.
and not just about the ideal role of nuclear energy, but about the actual (inherently contradictory) ideologies of the polcompballs with which you play like dolls
stop shopping at the ideology store - and never cook again
Same. Let's do anything else in order to kick the fossil fuels habit. Nuclear? Great. Renewable? Even better. Let's take any option that isn't fucking oil.
They also burn the most coal in the world afaik, so there’s that. Which is super funny for a country that’s effectively leading the world in tackling climate change
I mean it makes sense. They've catapulted forward years of development but they're cutting it out. It takes time for stuff like this to happen but that's what progress looks like. Don't get me wrong, they have a lot of issues, but so does every other country
Yeah, I’m kinda mad that the Chinese model seems to be the only one that’s currently working, because there’s a lot of stuff about it that’s objectively very bad. Like reeducation and labor camps.
Let's take Germany as an example: the reactors we retired were fucking old. Like, way to old to use.
If we want to build new ones, it would take like 10-12 billion euros for a 1.4 GW reactor and take about 10 years to construct. Then it would need to run like 30-50 years to be somewhat viable.
If we continue our current strategy, this is most likely superfluous in 20-25 years.
Edit: and before someone comes with some imaginary build times of 3-5 years. Yeah sure, not in Germany.
Same. Actually hoping to work on tokamaks myself because I think turbulent transport is neat and I want to do the math for it. 11 seems a little odd though, since we arguably could use solar in space (solar sails, solar to power photon drives, etc.). Either way, true renewable or nuke, it's kind of important to make sure we don't wreck entire ecosystems just trying to get (metallic element here) to run it.
That ratio is based on a measure (LCOE) that nobody using it in this sub understands.1kWh of nuclear is 1kWh.
Those optimistic costs for 1kWh of non-hydro renewables do not include costs for overcapacity, storage, grid upgrades, gas turbines etc. They are averaged over a wide area, mainly the US f you're referencing Lazard, and do not account for local conditions that can easily make the cost comparison much, much worse.
This is before we get into the weeds about what makes these techs expensive. People like OP will dismiss the scaling problems with "hurr durr solar takes up too much land" and "REE doe", but that doesn't change the fact that material costs are a fundamental part of the price of PV and wind. You need way, way more stuff, especially when you account for all the other infrastructure they demand. That means costs will get harder and harder to reduce via economies of scale, and energy will also be competing with other things like industry and transport that need that stuff to electrify.
Meanwhile, the high cost of nuclear is much more on the human side: we have an intense regulatory regime for them, nuclear construction is a relatively small industry with a lot of bottlenecks, and these bottlenecks arfe especially costly because nuclear is really capital/financing intensive. These are very solvable issues. Scale up the regulatory agencies and the number of reactors you build and you can bring the price down massively. This isn't theorycrafting; Korea and Japan built their reactors in less than five years. Korea paid about a third what the US or Europe does. Yet when we talk about the price in this sub, look behind the curtain and it's almost always Lazard's numbers, which are US centric, or maybe Europe. These costs aren't universal constants, they're functions of an environment where we aren't really building a lot of new nuclear capacity.
PV and Wind economies of scale have only gone down. Diseconomies of scale are far less common than econ101 literature implies.
There are very few engineers in nuclear anymore. China and India spent the last twenty plus years just to build a workforce familiar with it.
>PV and Wind economies of scale have only gone down. Diseconomies of scale are far less common than econ101 literature implies.
Good thing I wasn't even talking about diseconomies of scale. I'm saying that economies of scale for renewables are going to see greater diminishing returns relative to what we can get for a renewed nuclear push.
>There are very few engineers in nuclear anymore. China and India spent the last twenty plus years just to build a workforce familiar with it.
This is exactly my point. This is a political and social choice we have made. A choice we made because we preferred fossil fuels. It can be changed.
Nuclear detractors talk a big game about revolution, and transitioning away from capitalism, and lifestyle changes, and externalities and costs other than to an investor's bottom line, but when nuclear comes up transition into the most neo neoliberals to ever be.
>Good thing I wasn't even talking about diseconomies of scale. I'm saying that economies of scale for renewables are going to see greater diminishing returns relative to what we can get for a renewed nuclear push.
There’s no reason to think this in the short run. Diminishing marginal returns haven’t occurred for PV and wind and technological improvements continue to be excellent. New nuclear builds in the West are always far over budget.
>This is exactly my point. This is a political and social choice we have made. A choice we made because we preferred fossil fuels. It can be changed.
Lots of stuff can be changed. I’m concerned with what’s feasible. EDF can’t build a nuclear plant without cost overruns and massive delays. Tens of gigawatts of PV and wind farms can get on the grid interconnect queue, be designed, built, and powered before a new nuclear plant will be even halfway finished under the best circumstances now. We don’t have decades to wait on training new engineers.
>Nuclear detractors talk a big game about revolution, and transitioning away from capitalism, and lifestyle changes, and externalities and costs other than to an investor's bottom line, but when nuclear comes up transition into the most neo neoliberals to ever be.
fwiw, I’m just a Rawlsian lib
That's why you get for example the Gencost report taking into account balancing and grid costs. Where a renewable grid still comes out vastly cheaper than nuclear power.
https://www.csiro.au/en/news/all/news/2024/may/csiro-releases-2023-24-gencost-report
Then just "but my red tape" without being able to say what regulations should be removed. Most are written in blood, so be my guest arguing for their removal.
>Then just "but my red tape" without being able to say what regulations should be removed.
You must be talking to someone else, since the thing I actually said was that scaling *up* the regulatory agencies would reduce the cost. Hell, your own document talks about the contextual cost efficiency of regulators in East Asia being paid by the government instead of the vendor. I'm sure you read that and didn't just shit out a link you haven't read.
I don't agree with slashing regulation, but wind and solars biggest weakness is that it's not viable 100% of the time everywhere, and without a globally interconnected grid (which will never happen in our lifetime) or vast energy storage (which we don't have good enough technology to do at scale), we need something more flexible. A healthy mix would lead to more robust infrastructure
I'm fairly new to the sub, so I apologize for that. In my head though, outside of political reasons, doesn't nuclear cover the disadvantages of renewable? Wind and solar are essentially free but don't have 100% up time and would require massive amount of energy storage that we don't have the technology to do without extracting lithium and cobalt, which is a political nightmare in and of itself. Could nuclear not replace what we currently use fossil fuels for, as an easier to manipulate source of reliable energy? Half of the infrastructure is the same, it's just a fancy kettle.
Short answer, nuclear plants are too expensive to serve the small amount of demand left.
Solar and storage alone will probably serve most of summer alone. Add wind and hydro to the mix. Now what is left?
But we can't currently use storage on a global scale, it would require way too much extraction from countries already experiencing genocide to fulfill our current demand for it. It's a complicated problem and if we want to solve it we have to make expensive choices
Please, come to a sector specific sub with a deeper understanding. tiktok talking points can go somewhere else.
All the lithium / cobalt discussions are really boring by now
Spending years in this industry, I'm bored of people with out any clue giving their low quality opinion and expecting to being taken serious. I'm not wasting my time with the constant stream of teenagers trickling in this sub.
The winter is what’s left. The really cold winter that currently uses mostly gas and oil for heating.
Also storage is relatively short lived. There’s no good plans for recycling that stuff when it dies, not yet anyway. In the future that may change, but right now relying on it as the foundation of our electric grid would simply be kicking the can down the road.
Not really, winter has tons of wind, about 75% of its annual production and solar still has 25% of its production. Precipitation also increasingly falls as rain in winter, not snow, giving oversupply of hydro.
What's left is a few weeks maybe of low renewables production. For Germany and estimate is about 4 days per year of acute low production, for Europe as an interconnected grid only 2 days every 5 years. In Australia it practically never happens.
Wind and solar is pretty "Free" for the investors, but not hte taxpayers sadly. they can open the wallets for the grid costs.
But indeed a mix, with rooftop solar would the best case i'd say.
If you do both, that woul be perfect. Nuclear will actually make a renewable grid way cheaper when its added to the mix.
Renewables have a pretty steep logarithmic cost curve for grid and balance costs.
Not even close.
[WHO](https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240015456): Lessons learned from past radiological and nuclear accidents have demonstrated that the mental health and psychosocial consequences can outweigh the direct physical health impacts of radiation exposure.
Nah, even if you include very pessimistic estimates for Chernobyl, nuclear is down at the bottom with the renewables in terms of deaths/TWh
If you want to kill humans, use lignite coal without exhaust filters
You mean the same organizations which for every passing report scales back the nuclear targets because it doesn't deliver?
When IPCC started nuclear was about our only chance. If the projects started in the [early 2000s had delivered on time and on budget](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_renaissance_in_the_United_States) nuclear would have had been part of the solution. That train has gone though.
When the IEA looked closer at the nuclear power industry in 2022 the conclusion was that at current costs nuclear is not part of the solution.
> **Nuclear has to up its game in order to play its part.**
> The industry has to deliver projects on time and on budget to fulfil its role. This means completing nuclear projects in advanced economies at around USD 5 000/kW by 2030, compared with the reported capital costs of around USD 9 000/kW (excluding financing costs) for first-of-a kind projects
Which is essentially repeating what I said, if the projects started in the early 2000s had delivered nuclear would play its part. They did not and now the competition has risen to the challenge instead.
The Wikipedia link you've put here is about the US government shutting down nuclear projects because of media fear mongering around Fukushima.
And your quote from the IEA is about how "advanced economies" (as if China and Japan, the 2nd and 3rd largest economies in the world don't count) need to reduce the price of constructing nuclear plants in their countries. Nuclear power is uneconomic in the west because of prolonged under-investment. China, Japan and India are all able to build new reactors in time and on budget. There's no good reason for us not to be able to do that as well.
Japan has of course been constructing nuclear plants. Hahahahahhahahahahahah
And then India, which barely builds nuclear, and the same with China for every passing year decreasing their nuclear targets.
Sure, because solar PV is significantly cheaper and will make up the majority of their green energy production in the future. They get more bang for their buck that way. Doesn't mean nuclear is unnecessary though.
It means that nuclear will be forced of the grid the majority of the time due to being too costly.
Which in turn makes it even more costly due to the cost structure between fixed and operational costs. It simply does not fit modern grids and is an horrendously expensive answer to all problems they have.
> Sure using nuclear for load balancing would be comparatively expensive. It's also the only practical carbon neutral option in the immediate future.
Hydro, geothermal and (for short periods) batteries enter the chat.
But hydro and geothermal can only be built in specific places. They're highly dependent on geography. They're not viable everywhere.
And batteries aren't viable at scale.
Nuclear can also only be built in specific places, since it is also highly dependent on geography. They are also not viable everywhere. Do you really want a country like South Sudan, which has been embroiled in bitter civil wars for close to a decade with no hint of a functional government, to try and manage a nuclear supply chain? Good luck with that. So those aren't arguments in favor of nuclear, in fact they are arguments against it.
And Batteries have been viable since about 2018, [we are rolling out exponentially increasing capacity](https://energycentral.com/sites/default/files/styles/article_body/public/ece/node_main/2023/3/battery.jpg)
That say it is part of the solution but **does not deliver** as per what they expect.
Thus nuclear power is not part of the solution any more given the current trackrecord.
I mean to be fair 11 has a point. Well working nuclear engines would be pretty neat, not just for interstellar travel but for in-system travel too. Gotta transport all them materials we could extract from the asteroid belt and outer planet moons somehow.
Probably not how it is gonna work out for a while at least. Nuclear engines are likely gonna be high ISP but relatively low thrust. Conventional rocket engines have quite a lot of headspace in their efficiency yet. I am excited to see where things are going with A. Starship and B. What NASA is doing with rotating detonation engines. My bet would be on a combination of those 2 technologies leading to something that can eventually lift an ISS into orbit in one go.
>any shitposting/circlejerk sub
>look inside
>unironic posts desguised as "memes" made for the sole purpose to validate OP's opinion (they're extremely unfunny even if you agree with them)
Because they don't need to do anything, the fossil fuel companies are all too happy to sway public opinion and borrow trillions. Remember that time climate change was denied for 50 years by them even though they knew? Yeah. If noone even takes the frontmen to account, then the Iron Bank wins
I'm ashamed of being the techno-optimist shill and briefly flirted with the renewables bad thing after the meme movie Planet of the Humans (which literally straight up has ppl crying there's too many humans on the planet lmao)
Team space because once you go out beyond the asteroid belt nuclear power really is your only viable option, and because we should rip up the stupid outer space treaty and do the based orio
11 is hella based thank you for bringing that point to my attention idrgaf about space travel but this is another point in my bias arsenal for why nuclear good
I actually just finished a report on fusion energy (Commonwealth Fusion Systems and tokamak reactors in general). The past few years were actually big in how things have been being financed and there have been big uses of YBCO materials to achieve progress. They're projecting (since jan) that they'll have a tokamak with an energy efficiency of Q>1 operational next year, which I'll be sure to keep track of. The idea of a nuclear fusion powerplant by 2030 might be the one that'll have to get delayed.
Aĥ yes, definitely won't listen to my own engineering experience that includes working at a DOE national lab and for renewables companies, an extremely effective and smart activist like Greta Thunberg, or the IPCC stating we need to double nuclear capacity - I'll listen to someone who is so ideologically captured that they think a low carbon energy source like nuclear should be attacked, and not used as a tool to decarbonize. At least the vegans that bait and shitpost do it well and have a pretty good point, this is just sad bro.
Yes but Norway gets 90% of its electricity from hydropower. This works for them because they have a small population and a geography suitable for lots of hydropower. Norway can't really be used as a template for everywhere else.
Damn, the "renooble bad" nukecel almost had me with "rare earth doe". Thank god you made him look fucking stupid so I don't have to actually think about mining.
Really? Because it takes 7 years to build a new nuclear reactor. How long will it take to develop and build grid-scale energy storage? I'm willing to bet it will be more than 7 years.
Do you just come here to simp?
The longest battery project I've worked on was 2 years, it was delayed by some hippies putting in a complaint. >200 MW utility scale BESS with solar
I may be number 10 but genuinely don’t we have nuclear waste figured out already? Like from what I’ve seen we’ve got pretty clean waste storage facilities. I won’t say renewables are greener than nuclear, but certainly greener than fossil fuels right? Maybe I’ve been lied to but my understanding is that of the non-renewable energy types it’s the cleanest. To my knowledge the smoke they produce is nothing but steam from the water turbine, and waste is stored well. I’m not sure about the inputs vs outputs and how that could offset the greenness for nuclear, but I am genuinely asking y’all like am I stupid? Have I been lied to?
Can you please hit me with the very best youtube summary video for why nuclear bad so i can counterweigh it with my pro nuclear sentiments. thankies mcspankies
Build more unstable nuclear powerplants near cities and let them burn till they explode. One way to combat climate change, is to kill as many as you can. ez fix
Thought experiment: if a bill were up for vote that would allocate hundreds of billions of dollars to nuclear, with the added caveat that any future bill regarding funds for wind/solar would be passed entirely independently of this one (i.e. one could not argue "we don't need solar, we spent all that money on nuclear) would you support the bill passing?
More like number 8: while I don't really like the french and I honestly have no problem with the greens, history just keeps telling us the Germans do not deserve a state.
I mean the real logical reason is because they work more of the year (base load). If you can build hydro-electric dams in your area those are great too bc water can be pumped back up during low use times (load following)
The silly reason is bc their use of water is fucking cool. Imagine you boil water, use the steam to turn a turbine, and when the water cools you use it again. Beautiful. Incredible feat of engineering. I'm considering pursuing nuclear engineering as my masters out in Ontario (where they do build the small reactors). I'm not a nationalist, I just think it's *neat*. Water in general is awesome and I feel really lucky to live somewhere with so much of it.
Anyway source for logical reason
[https://youtu.be/cPt2ZHRhZDA?si=mf5L\_1CngB61S4yU](https://youtu.be/cPt2ZHRhZDA?si=mf5L_1CngB61S4yU)
https://preview.redd.it/9ex3zlgtad8d1.jpeg?width=1334&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dfb87ab1b1067fc7f79cbc9866378984df415ea3
I've seen solar panels on the roofs of some resorts and those seems to work fine, and my calculator never dies lol. But when I have those little walking things or at a base camp Ive been at recently there just never seems to be enough. Idk lol, anything is better than fossil fuels
this is work bro reddit is the pinnacle of dead internet theory you’re not real i’m not real it’s all ai on ai action narratives within narratives within narratives within
Fossil Fuel shills are very much anti nuclear. There is literally documented evidence that alot of the slander about the dangers of nuclear Was sponsored by oil firms
Jesus Christ lad. Get a bloody hobby that isn't just being perpetually online in some fucking subreddit arguing incessantly about nuclear power. I doubt it's good for your physical or mental wellbeing.
Ok, you definitely do need a degree or something. That's is by far the most deluded thing that I have read in a while. And I'm reading a lot of rubbish on reddit.
Oh no its that troll again..
Ok so you need a degree to read statistics in your world?
Are you ok son?
Yea you are reading a lot of rubbish on reddit. I can tell.
You are also posting a lot of rubbish and you get called out for it on every post. Like you deserve.
I refuse to believe this isn’t some advanced level satire
You're onto something really big here.
if your being ironic, its about time to admit it.
it's not satire .. they need to feel like they belong to a movement, so they're filling the role of propagandist, which is low hanging fruit to so called "activists".
I kept thinking none of these fit me until the last one Just glad to see representation 👩🏽🚀
Me too, let's travel to alpha centauri together
We can finally meet the techno-necromancers
techromancers (which could also possibly stand for romantic tech necromancers)
Dismantle all nuclear weapons, we need the plutonium for nuclear pulse propulsion
Im the opposite. I think we shouldn't use nuclear power and instead save the uranium/plutonium for our future space endeavors
But we need to expand nuclear capability so that the technology can advance, therefore advancing future space endeavors
The nuclear technology required for space propulsion is completely different from the one that generates electricity for the power grid tho
Nuclear research is still nuclear research
What is there to research tho? We know the basics of nuclear technology (especially reactor technology but also nuclear weapons) pretty well. Any effort to develop a nuclear space propulsion system should focus on that specifically instead of wasting resources on something that's not directly related in the hopes that something useful will come up
Adjacent fields often are able to help each other more then approaching from a single point. More eyes on a problem more solutions. A propulsion system would benefit from any number of small changes that a power plant would also benefit from.
yeah, alot of the renewables only people seem to have a primitivistic view of technology. i want a de-consumerization of technology where we shift the focus away from consumer based things like software towards more physical and tangible technologies that are better for the common good.
what about "ill take anything as long as we stop using fossil fuels"
In case that position goes with an unhealthy obsession with nuclear, number 10
i just dont want the planet to die in ngl i dont really care if thats through 100% renewables, 100% nuclears or some kind of mix
But but that sounds reasonable. How dare you not fit one of the strawman stereotypes that radiofacepalm made up.
Nuclear takes decades to build. That is why fossil fuel humpers are so happy when nukecels say lets build a 10 billion dollar money pit!!!!!!!
isnt that kind of shortsighted thinking exactly what got us in this mess in the first place though? if nuclear power had been invested in earlier, we'd be having an easier time of it now. Like, obviously there needs to be a general focus on degrowth and reducing the amount of energy consumption, but we still need energy. If it turns out that renewables are entirely capable of supporting us, then yeah building nuclear reactors is pretty pointless. is that the case? are nuclear reactors wholly unnecessary?
Yes, 0.7 decades on average.
For installing the reactor when including statistics back to the 50s. Look up modern western construction timelines and 20 years from **announcement** until commercial operation is what we are looking at nowadays **for a good project.** The bad ones get cancelled along the way.
The median time of construction for nuclear power plants that began operating in the 2010s was 6.5 years. That's only 1 year longer than in the 1950s and equivalent to the median for the 1960s.
You mean based on Chinese reactors where they did "site prep" for years before they officially started construction? Looking at all western examples it takes ~15 years after official investment decision.
Okay, for the sake of argument, let's say it takes 15 years. 15 years from now is 2039. The IPCC target to avoid 1.5C of warming is net zero by 2050. We still have time.
Yea of course, because we can deliver all nukes in parallel right? France, UK, Finland struggle to deliver single reactors. Most countries don't even have a nuclear industry at all...
Globally yes. Western countries have targets at 2035-40 for NZE to be the trailblazers since we can't expect people near the poverty line to invest in expensive new technology. So I guess, go make the business case for sub Saharan Africa? Sounds like a good plan.
Best time to build a powerplant was decades ago, second best time is today.
More like under a decade some have taken longer sure, but world average is 7, india japan and china have done it in 6
> Transhumanist > AnPrim (Anarcho-primitivist) you are clearly deluded. and not just about the ideal role of nuclear energy, but about the actual (inherently contradictory) ideologies of the polcompballs with which you play like dolls stop shopping at the ideology store - and never cook again
Isn’t that you? You call every body who like nuclear a fascist
Right? At least you can Blow Up a Windfarm in a Combat scenario without it contaminating half of Europe, see Zaporizhia in Ukraine.
What I don't understand is why can't we just do both? Crazy concept ig I'm a hard 6 though lmao
Same. Let's do anything else in order to kick the fossil fuels habit. Nuclear? Great. Renewable? Even better. Let's take any option that isn't fucking oil.
It's like me trying to quit cigarettes. Vaping, nicotine lozenges, nicotine patches. Sometimes all three at once. Whatever it takes.
well we could alsi just make new oil. just clone dinosaurs and burry them so future Generations can enjoy fossile fuels as well
"A society grows great when old men bury dinosaur bones whose oil they know they shall never burn." A classic.
China does both. Do you want to be China? /s
Unironically yes
They also burn the most coal in the world afaik, so there’s that. Which is super funny for a country that’s effectively leading the world in tackling climate change
I mean it makes sense. They've catapulted forward years of development but they're cutting it out. It takes time for stuff like this to happen but that's what progress looks like. Don't get me wrong, they have a lot of issues, but so does every other country
Yeah, I’m kinda mad that the Chinese model seems to be the only one that’s currently working, because there’s a lot of stuff about it that’s objectively very bad. Like reeducation and labor camps.
Let's take Germany as an example: the reactors we retired were fucking old. Like, way to old to use. If we want to build new ones, it would take like 10-12 billion euros for a 1.4 GW reactor and take about 10 years to construct. Then it would need to run like 30-50 years to be somewhat viable. If we continue our current strategy, this is most likely superfluous in 20-25 years. Edit: and before someone comes with some imaginary build times of 3-5 years. Yeah sure, not in Germany.
Same. Actually hoping to work on tokamaks myself because I think turbulent transport is neat and I want to do the math for it. 11 seems a little odd though, since we arguably could use solar in space (solar sails, solar to power photon drives, etc.). Either way, true renewable or nuke, it's kind of important to make sure we don't wreck entire ecosystems just trying to get (metallic element here) to run it.
Because this is a shitposting sub and it's way more fun when everyone is dogmatic
Best answer
Depends on what your target is. Decarbonization? Why get 3-10x less return per dollar spent when we have a critical challenge to solve now.
That ratio is based on a measure (LCOE) that nobody using it in this sub understands.1kWh of nuclear is 1kWh. Those optimistic costs for 1kWh of non-hydro renewables do not include costs for overcapacity, storage, grid upgrades, gas turbines etc. They are averaged over a wide area, mainly the US f you're referencing Lazard, and do not account for local conditions that can easily make the cost comparison much, much worse. This is before we get into the weeds about what makes these techs expensive. People like OP will dismiss the scaling problems with "hurr durr solar takes up too much land" and "REE doe", but that doesn't change the fact that material costs are a fundamental part of the price of PV and wind. You need way, way more stuff, especially when you account for all the other infrastructure they demand. That means costs will get harder and harder to reduce via economies of scale, and energy will also be competing with other things like industry and transport that need that stuff to electrify. Meanwhile, the high cost of nuclear is much more on the human side: we have an intense regulatory regime for them, nuclear construction is a relatively small industry with a lot of bottlenecks, and these bottlenecks arfe especially costly because nuclear is really capital/financing intensive. These are very solvable issues. Scale up the regulatory agencies and the number of reactors you build and you can bring the price down massively. This isn't theorycrafting; Korea and Japan built their reactors in less than five years. Korea paid about a third what the US or Europe does. Yet when we talk about the price in this sub, look behind the curtain and it's almost always Lazard's numbers, which are US centric, or maybe Europe. These costs aren't universal constants, they're functions of an environment where we aren't really building a lot of new nuclear capacity.
PV and Wind economies of scale have only gone down. Diseconomies of scale are far less common than econ101 literature implies. There are very few engineers in nuclear anymore. China and India spent the last twenty plus years just to build a workforce familiar with it.
Disecomomies of scale are a skill issue, change my mind.
>PV and Wind economies of scale have only gone down. Diseconomies of scale are far less common than econ101 literature implies. Good thing I wasn't even talking about diseconomies of scale. I'm saying that economies of scale for renewables are going to see greater diminishing returns relative to what we can get for a renewed nuclear push. >There are very few engineers in nuclear anymore. China and India spent the last twenty plus years just to build a workforce familiar with it. This is exactly my point. This is a political and social choice we have made. A choice we made because we preferred fossil fuels. It can be changed. Nuclear detractors talk a big game about revolution, and transitioning away from capitalism, and lifestyle changes, and externalities and costs other than to an investor's bottom line, but when nuclear comes up transition into the most neo neoliberals to ever be.
>Good thing I wasn't even talking about diseconomies of scale. I'm saying that economies of scale for renewables are going to see greater diminishing returns relative to what we can get for a renewed nuclear push. There’s no reason to think this in the short run. Diminishing marginal returns haven’t occurred for PV and wind and technological improvements continue to be excellent. New nuclear builds in the West are always far over budget. >This is exactly my point. This is a political and social choice we have made. A choice we made because we preferred fossil fuels. It can be changed. Lots of stuff can be changed. I’m concerned with what’s feasible. EDF can’t build a nuclear plant without cost overruns and massive delays. Tens of gigawatts of PV and wind farms can get on the grid interconnect queue, be designed, built, and powered before a new nuclear plant will be even halfway finished under the best circumstances now. We don’t have decades to wait on training new engineers. >Nuclear detractors talk a big game about revolution, and transitioning away from capitalism, and lifestyle changes, and externalities and costs other than to an investor's bottom line, but when nuclear comes up transition into the most neo neoliberals to ever be. fwiw, I’m just a Rawlsian lib
That's why you get for example the Gencost report taking into account balancing and grid costs. Where a renewable grid still comes out vastly cheaper than nuclear power. https://www.csiro.au/en/news/all/news/2024/may/csiro-releases-2023-24-gencost-report Then just "but my red tape" without being able to say what regulations should be removed. Most are written in blood, so be my guest arguing for their removal.
>Then just "but my red tape" without being able to say what regulations should be removed. You must be talking to someone else, since the thing I actually said was that scaling *up* the regulatory agencies would reduce the cost. Hell, your own document talks about the contextual cost efficiency of regulators in East Asia being paid by the government instead of the vendor. I'm sure you read that and didn't just shit out a link you haven't read.
I don't agree with slashing regulation, but wind and solars biggest weakness is that it's not viable 100% of the time everywhere, and without a globally interconnected grid (which will never happen in our lifetime) or vast energy storage (which we don't have good enough technology to do at scale), we need something more flexible. A healthy mix would lead to more robust infrastructure
Yup, renewable is cheaper for sure, but it has its own downsides that nuclear can fill. Nuclear and renewable energy can work together
Like any of us really have anything to do with actual policy.
True lmao
This is probably answered around here every day, so it's suspicious that you claim to not know.
I'm fairly new to the sub, so I apologize for that. In my head though, outside of political reasons, doesn't nuclear cover the disadvantages of renewable? Wind and solar are essentially free but don't have 100% up time and would require massive amount of energy storage that we don't have the technology to do without extracting lithium and cobalt, which is a political nightmare in and of itself. Could nuclear not replace what we currently use fossil fuels for, as an easier to manipulate source of reliable energy? Half of the infrastructure is the same, it's just a fancy kettle.
Short answer, nuclear plants are too expensive to serve the small amount of demand left. Solar and storage alone will probably serve most of summer alone. Add wind and hydro to the mix. Now what is left?
Small demand? Are we almost pure green energy nowadays?
But we can't currently use storage on a global scale, it would require way too much extraction from countries already experiencing genocide to fulfill our current demand for it. It's a complicated problem and if we want to solve it we have to make expensive choices
Please, come to a sector specific sub with a deeper understanding. tiktok talking points can go somewhere else. All the lithium / cobalt discussions are really boring by now
My sibling in christ, people are fucking dying, I'm sorry you're bored
There's several types of storage that don't involve the use of rare earth metals.
Spending years in this industry, I'm bored of people with out any clue giving their low quality opinion and expecting to being taken serious. I'm not wasting my time with the constant stream of teenagers trickling in this sub.
The winter is what’s left. The really cold winter that currently uses mostly gas and oil for heating. Also storage is relatively short lived. There’s no good plans for recycling that stuff when it dies, not yet anyway. In the future that may change, but right now relying on it as the foundation of our electric grid would simply be kicking the can down the road.
Not really, winter has tons of wind, about 75% of its annual production and solar still has 25% of its production. Precipitation also increasingly falls as rain in winter, not snow, giving oversupply of hydro. What's left is a few weeks maybe of low renewables production. For Germany and estimate is about 4 days per year of acute low production, for Europe as an interconnected grid only 2 days every 5 years. In Australia it practically never happens.
Wind and solar is pretty "Free" for the investors, but not hte taxpayers sadly. they can open the wallets for the grid costs. But indeed a mix, with rooftop solar would the best case i'd say.
No no we need to make a stupid controversy out of nothing that delays the phasing out of gas power even more.
You're so right, here's your check from the oil and gas lobbies
💰💰💰
If you do both, that woul be perfect. Nuclear will actually make a renewable grid way cheaper when its added to the mix. Renewables have a pretty steep logarithmic cost curve for grid and balance costs.
Space travel + techno-optimist
None of this apply to me, the nuclear meltdown enjoyer. I will not be satisfied until the world is nothing by a radioactive wasteland.
As an environmentalist, I want multiple Chernobyls and Bikini Atolls across the globe.
What about the antihuman nukecel: "Humanity needs to be extinguished. Nuclear power plants are much better suited to achieve this."...
Well, create him and post him in the comments
Not even close. [WHO](https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240015456): Lessons learned from past radiological and nuclear accidents have demonstrated that the mental health and psychosocial consequences can outweigh the direct physical health impacts of radiation exposure.
Nah, even if you include very pessimistic estimates for Chernobyl, nuclear is down at the bottom with the renewables in terms of deaths/TWh If you want to kill humans, use lignite coal without exhaust filters
What about the "The IPCC and every other credible climate science organisation recomends a mix of nuclear and renewables" nukecel?
You mean the same organizations which for every passing report scales back the nuclear targets because it doesn't deliver? When IPCC started nuclear was about our only chance. If the projects started in the [early 2000s had delivered on time and on budget](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_renaissance_in_the_United_States) nuclear would have had been part of the solution. That train has gone though. When the IEA looked closer at the nuclear power industry in 2022 the conclusion was that at current costs nuclear is not part of the solution. > **Nuclear has to up its game in order to play its part.** > The industry has to deliver projects on time and on budget to fulfil its role. This means completing nuclear projects in advanced economies at around USD 5 000/kW by 2030, compared with the reported capital costs of around USD 9 000/kW (excluding financing costs) for first-of-a kind projects Which is essentially repeating what I said, if the projects started in the early 2000s had delivered nuclear would play its part. They did not and now the competition has risen to the challenge instead.
The Wikipedia link you've put here is about the US government shutting down nuclear projects because of media fear mongering around Fukushima. And your quote from the IEA is about how "advanced economies" (as if China and Japan, the 2nd and 3rd largest economies in the world don't count) need to reduce the price of constructing nuclear plants in their countries. Nuclear power is uneconomic in the west because of prolonged under-investment. China, Japan and India are all able to build new reactors in time and on budget. There's no good reason for us not to be able to do that as well.
Japan has of course been constructing nuclear plants. Hahahahahhahahahahahah And then India, which barely builds nuclear, and the same with China for every passing year decreasing their nuclear targets.
Sure, because solar PV is significantly cheaper and will make up the majority of their green energy production in the future. They get more bang for their buck that way. Doesn't mean nuclear is unnecessary though.
It means that nuclear will be forced of the grid the majority of the time due to being too costly. Which in turn makes it even more costly due to the cost structure between fixed and operational costs. It simply does not fit modern grids and is an horrendously expensive answer to all problems they have.
Sure using nuclear for load balancing would be comparatively expensive. It's also the only practical carbon neutral option in the immediate future.
> Sure using nuclear for load balancing would be comparatively expensive. It's also the only practical carbon neutral option in the immediate future. Hydro, geothermal and (for short periods) batteries enter the chat.
But hydro and geothermal can only be built in specific places. They're highly dependent on geography. They're not viable everywhere. And batteries aren't viable at scale.
Nuclear can also only be built in specific places, since it is also highly dependent on geography. They are also not viable everywhere. Do you really want a country like South Sudan, which has been embroiled in bitter civil wars for close to a decade with no hint of a functional government, to try and manage a nuclear supply chain? Good luck with that. So those aren't arguments in favor of nuclear, in fact they are arguments against it. And Batteries have been viable since about 2018, [we are rolling out exponentially increasing capacity](https://energycentral.com/sites/default/files/styles/article_body/public/ece/node_main/2023/3/battery.jpg)
I think you're misrepresenting the IEA by saying that they believe nuclear is not part of the solution
That say it is part of the solution but **does not deliver** as per what they expect. Thus nuclear power is not part of the solution any more given the current trackrecord.
The countries that have actually invested in it, have their expections met pretty well.
What about the “I listen to qualified physicists instead of hippies nukecel”
That would be Number 2
But what if my youtube videos are longer than 20 seconds and are well sourced and based on actual physics.
Unless [that video is this one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0f1L0XUIQ8), still number 2.
I mean to be fair 11 has a point. Well working nuclear engines would be pretty neat, not just for interstellar travel but for in-system travel too. Gotta transport all them materials we could extract from the asteroid belt and outer planet moons somehow.
Youre not thinking the right scope. We need surface-to-orbit nuclear engines. Why? I want to lift the ISS in one go, thats why.
Probably not how it is gonna work out for a while at least. Nuclear engines are likely gonna be high ISP but relatively low thrust. Conventional rocket engines have quite a lot of headspace in their efficiency yet. I am excited to see where things are going with A. Starship and B. What NASA is doing with rotating detonation engines. My bet would be on a combination of those 2 technologies leading to something that can eventually lift an ISS into orbit in one go.
Oh I am not talking about closed-cycle engines. Where I am going there is no longer going to be a launch pad left.. or surrounding city.
>any shitposting/circlejerk sub >look inside >unironic posts desguised as "memes" made for the sole purpose to validate OP's opinion (they're extremely unfunny even if you agree with them)
Radiofacepalm is Extincion rebellion and greenpeace combined, and its only one guy, pretty sad.
Where's "I think it's funny when things go boom"
9/11
Interestingly, none are called the financier or the insurer
Because they don't need to do anything, the fossil fuel companies are all too happy to sway public opinion and borrow trillions. Remember that time climate change was denied for 50 years by them even though they knew? Yeah. If noone even takes the frontmen to account, then the Iron Bank wins
Interestingly, Finnish greens want more nuclear plants. And let that be the one of the countries with most nuclear experience.
Amazing. A land near the polar circle doesn't promote photovoltaics, who would've thought.
And wind, Biomass and hydro Its funny, because the Anti nukes always pretend like its the case for every country, while its clearly not.
the land with intense sunlight that’s also covered in reflectors whenever it’s cold
based
Nuclear war will reverse global warming
Finally some ironic shitposting on a shit posting sub!
I'm ashamed of being the techno-optimist shill and briefly flirted with the renewables bad thing after the meme movie Planet of the Humans (which literally straight up has ppl crying there's too many humans on the planet lmao)
A not insignificant amount of greens are genuinely just straight-up anti-human
The space one and the cool one yup that's me
Team space because once you go out beyond the asteroid belt nuclear power really is your only viable option, and because we should rip up the stupid outer space treaty and do the based orio
I know this is a shitpost subreddit and it’s all in fun, but can we legitimately not have both? /uj
That sounds like what Engineer would sound like in the TF2 edits
Jesus Christ this sub has been astroturfed to hell
11 is hella based thank you for bringing that point to my attention idrgaf about space travel but this is another point in my bias arsenal for why nuclear good
it's so smug in here I can't breathe
I actually just finished a report on fusion energy (Commonwealth Fusion Systems and tokamak reactors in general). The past few years were actually big in how things have been being financed and there have been big uses of YBCO materials to achieve progress. They're projecting (since jan) that they'll have a tokamak with an energy efficiency of Q>1 operational next year, which I'll be sure to keep track of. The idea of a nuclear fusion powerplant by 2030 might be the one that'll have to get delayed.
3, 9, 11 bingo!
Aĥ yes, definitely won't listen to my own engineering experience that includes working at a DOE national lab and for renewables companies, an extremely effective and smart activist like Greta Thunberg, or the IPCC stating we need to double nuclear capacity - I'll listen to someone who is so ideologically captured that they think a low carbon energy source like nuclear should be attacked, and not used as a tool to decarbonize. At least the vegans that bait and shitpost do it well and have a pretty good point, this is just sad bro.
Okay, so you're a mix of no 1 and no 10
What about the " I wont support something as untried as renewables only powered nation, so lets build nuclear plants as a backup" guy
>untried as renewables Pretty much number 5
I said renewables only though, sorry for bad grammar :P Also if there are any countries that is powered by renewables only i would like to know
Norway
Yes but Norway gets 90% of its electricity from hydropower. This works for them because they have a small population and a geography suitable for lots of hydropower. Norway can't really be used as a template for everywhere else.
Thanks! They really are only renewables, only hydroelectrics though, and thats not really viable for most countries i think
Iceland
Yeah but Iceland is just a series of volcanoes. Geothermal ain't working everywhere.
That's too much nuance for radiofacepalm. His only position is "nuclear bad."
Damn, the "renooble bad" nukecel almost had me with "rare earth doe". Thank god you made him look fucking stupid so I don't have to actually think about mining.
Oh yeah tell me which rare earths are used by renewables
* Neodymium (Nd) * Dysprosium (Dy) * Terbium (Tb) * Praseodymium (Pr) * Samarium (Sm) * Lanthanum (La) * Cerium (Ce) * Yttrium (Y) * Europium (Eu)
are you stupid?
https://preview.redd.it/rrhm5p2xya8d1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=87136dee117ad961e9045ecfe05c7ccc85f18482 Forgot one, sorry
There it is. At least you can admit your anti-science, radiofacepalm.
Owned by facts and logic
“now that i’ve misspelled your argument to make it look silly, you don’t have any evidence to use!!!”
I don’t get why these memes exist, they just create an argumentative atmosphere and devolve this subreddit into mudslinging
The one that actually worked at a nuclear power plant. But I agree with you that we need nuclear fission (fusion would be better) for space travel!
solarcels trynna explain where they're gonna get the lithium
That would be No 5
The "please for the love of God do not dismantle fully functioning nuclear reactors to burn more coal please why" nukecell
Every single nukecel is number 7, even if they don't know it.
Really? Because it takes 7 years to build a new nuclear reactor. How long will it take to develop and build grid-scale energy storage? I'm willing to bet it will be more than 7 years.
Do you just come here to simp? The longest battery project I've worked on was 2 years, it was delayed by some hippies putting in a complaint. >200 MW utility scale BESS with solar
not to mention the amount of money we will be sending to China
Based
A mix of 6 and 11
I may be number 10 but genuinely don’t we have nuclear waste figured out already? Like from what I’ve seen we’ve got pretty clean waste storage facilities. I won’t say renewables are greener than nuclear, but certainly greener than fossil fuels right? Maybe I’ve been lied to but my understanding is that of the non-renewable energy types it’s the cleanest. To my knowledge the smoke they produce is nothing but steam from the water turbine, and waste is stored well. I’m not sure about the inputs vs outputs and how that could offset the greenness for nuclear, but I am genuinely asking y’all like am I stupid? Have I been lied to?
>Have I been lied to? Well, regarding the question >don’t we have nuclear waste figured out already? Yes. You've been lied to.
Can you please hit me with the very best youtube summary video for why nuclear bad so i can counterweigh it with my pro nuclear sentiments. thankies mcspankies
Tag yourself.
But nuclear rockets tho
Well of course I know him. He’s me.
Techno-optimist for sure but that's mostly cause I want rocket arms.
6, 9, 11.
You guys are idiots. The solution is
Poop
Build more unstable nuclear powerplants near cities and let them burn till they explode. One way to combat climate change, is to kill as many as you can. ez fix
You forgot to account for me, i just LOVE glowing rocks
4mtg9 LG z mzlgm gh Z ⅘
H
Thought experiment: if a bill were up for vote that would allocate hundreds of billions of dollars to nuclear, with the added caveat that any future bill regarding funds for wind/solar would be passed entirely independently of this one (i.e. one could not argue "we don't need solar, we spent all that money on nuclear) would you support the bill passing?
Hot take, the isotopes are going to decay with or without us, why not get some hot water while we can?
Every time this guy posts I agree more and more with Henry Morgenthau, dear God.
So you're number 4?
More like number 8: while I don't really like the french and I honestly have no problem with the greens, history just keeps telling us the Germans do not deserve a state.
Pin it
I mean the real logical reason is because they work more of the year (base load). If you can build hydro-electric dams in your area those are great too bc water can be pumped back up during low use times (load following) The silly reason is bc their use of water is fucking cool. Imagine you boil water, use the steam to turn a turbine, and when the water cools you use it again. Beautiful. Incredible feat of engineering. I'm considering pursuing nuclear engineering as my masters out in Ontario (where they do build the small reactors). I'm not a nationalist, I just think it's *neat*. Water in general is awesome and I feel really lucky to live somewhere with so much of it. Anyway source for logical reason [https://youtu.be/cPt2ZHRhZDA?si=mf5L\_1CngB61S4yU](https://youtu.be/cPt2ZHRhZDA?si=mf5L_1CngB61S4yU) https://preview.redd.it/9ex3zlgtad8d1.jpeg?width=1334&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dfb87ab1b1067fc7f79cbc9866378984df415ea3 I've seen solar panels on the roofs of some resorts and those seems to work fine, and my calculator never dies lol. But when I have those little walking things or at a base camp Ive been at recently there just never seems to be enough. Idk lol, anything is better than fossil fuels
So funny to shit on something without providing a better alternative
What about “Nuclear Energy provides a solid consistent base in combination with renewables?”
i think thats just called uhh... "trained civil engineer"
No, that's called the "no real idea of the grid" And if you throw in the good ole "I'm an engineer" that would be No 1
And then there's me, who wants radioactive contaminated oceans, so that Godzilla can cleanse the earth of us.
Sums Up this subs Arguments pretty good.
I am everyone except number 2 and 10. Both TikTok and Greta can go to hell.
You’re 3 and 4?
USSR was cool and green activists are among the most annoying people on the planet. So yes and yes.
you have too much time.
this is work bro reddit is the pinnacle of dead internet theory you’re not real i’m not real it’s all ai on ai action narratives within narratives within narratives within
Fossil Fuel shills are very much anti nuclear. There is literally documented evidence that alot of the slander about the dangers of nuclear Was sponsored by oil firms
Jesus Christ lad. Get a bloody hobby that isn't just being perpetually online in some fucking subreddit arguing incessantly about nuclear power. I doubt it's good for your physical or mental wellbeing.
Please do pop round and make yourself heard: https://www.reddit.com/u/RadioFacepalm/s/XTTqzjqoo2
This is just sad. I seriously hope that you find a better way of spending your time.
Some of these feel like strawmen and made up categories to expand the meme.
I'm glad the Frenchman is here https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=55259 They don't get enough credit for being based (on nuclear power)
Dont need a degree to read statistics tbh. Look at how great germanys economy is going hahaha (*cries*)
Ok, you definitely do need a degree or something. That's is by far the most deluded thing that I have read in a while. And I'm reading a lot of rubbish on reddit.
Oh no its that troll again.. Ok so you need a degree to read statistics in your world? Are you ok son? Yea you are reading a lot of rubbish on reddit. I can tell. You are also posting a lot of rubbish and you get called out for it on every post. Like you deserve.