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Young climate activist tells Greenpeace to drop ‘old-fashioned’ anti-nuclear stance
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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That is factually false information. There are solid arguments to be made against nuclear energy.
https://isreview.org/issue/77/case-against-nuclear-power/index.html
Even if you discard everything else, this section seems particularly relevant:
https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-is-nuclear-energy-good-for-the-climate/a-59853315
Long lead times against nuclear have bee raised for the last 25 years, if we had just got on with it we would have the capacity by now. Just cause the lead time is in years doesn't mean it isn't worth doing.
when is the best time to plant a tree? 30 years ago. When is the second best time? now.
Surely the second best time would have been 29 years ago
Don't fuck this up for me bro
"But I won't see the benefit in MY lifetime!"
Now, where have we heard that kind of reasoning and logic before? What current crisis has been caused by that way of thinking?
As others pointed out, to build that many nuclear power plants that quickly would require 10x-ing the world's construction capacity.
My counterpoint is that if we had "just got on with it" for solar, wind, and battery, we would have the capacity by now and the cost per kwh of that capacity would be approximately half as much as the same in nuclear. And we would have amortized the costs.
No it wouldn't. China laid more concrete in 5 years than the entire world did in 100 years. I highly doubt that converting the entire world to nuclear is going to use that much more concrete. I mean hell, they laid like 15 or 20,000 miles of high speed rail in just a few years. They built like 300 million apartment units.
Long lead times, cost overruns, producing power at a higher price point than renewables, long run time needed to break even, even longer dismantling times and a still unsolved waste problem. Compared to renewables that we can build right now.
Did you read the quote? 15-20 years, as in decades before 1 nuke plant is built. I agree in that politicians of the past should have led us to a more sustainable and resilient energy future, but we're here now.
Advanced nuclear should still be 100% pursued to try to get those lead times down and to incorporate things like waste recycling, modularity, etc., but the lead time in decades absolutely means nuclear power might not be something worth doing.
The IPCC puts the next 10-20 years as the most important and perilous for getting a hold on climate change. If we wait for that long by not rolling out emission-free power sources, transit modes, or even carbon-free concrete, etc., then we might cross planetary boundaries that we can't come back from.
Nuclear is a safe bet and bet worth pursuing. I would argue that, along with that source from the IAEA, old nuclear is note worth it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashiwazaki-Kariwa_Nuclear_Power_Plant
the largest fission plant was literally working 5 years after construction started
fission plants are just more expensive now because we don't make enough of them.
I guess safety standards changed but even wind power kills more people per watt than fission so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Nuclear could've easily worked if people didn't go full nimby in the past few decades
And there are solid counter-arguments to those. Would we have long lead times if nuclear power had been developed to the point where it was easier to build and we had more workers already trained in building them?
The more experienced construction workers you have, the more experienced scientists and engineers making necessary components, the cheaper it gets. Look at how expensive computers used to be compared to today. If we hadn't of had Luddites getting in the way of nuclear power for half a century then we wouldn't have this issue.
All the more reason to move forward with nuclear power and continue improving it before it really is too late.
"Long lead times" is utter, fucking bullshit. I'm sick and tired of "pro-environment" useful idiots shilling against nuclear power. What's your alternative? Renewables that can't scale to meet demand due to the laws of physics, geography, and engineering limitations? More coal and oil plants? Huge battery farms for storing electricity from renewables; the kind of batteries that devastate the environment with mining and destroy third world communities? Fusion power plants in two centuries? Get real and stop being a moron.
You know that the idea we should be investing in nuclear is being pushed by the very same people who for decades were telling us we didn't need to worry about climate change, right?
They're trying to get "useful idiots", as you so eloquently put it, to also support nuclear energy, rather than going all-in on renewables.
The "useful idiots" in this scenario are not the people opposing nuclear. They're the ones suggesting it's actually an economical idea, and in so doing either explicitly or (more often) implicitly suggesting that we shouldn't invest too much in actual renewable energy.
Why do you think it has to be only one or the other? Do you really think this is a problem with a single choice that fixes it? Where is your critical thinking?
There is no "all-in" on renewables. Renewables as they are today aren't truly renewable. Where's the lithium going to infinitely come from for batteries? How about the cadmium used to manufacture some of the most efficient and long lasting solar panels? How are we going to clean those up? I can bring up a TON of issues with "renewables". That doesn't mean we don't use them.
Stop being so simple minded, this is the most complicated problem we've ever faced and it cannot be solved with a simplistic "all-in" investment in renewables. I'm not even suggesting nuclear is an "economical" idea. The only person here caring about "economical" are the anti-nuclear shills like you.
We're past the point of needing to be concerned with economical. The reality is that nuclear power is the cleanest, most effective source of power we have right now. You really need to educate yourself on renewables, the manufacturing process behind them, and the infrastructure required to make them viable. They aren't as "clean" or "renewable" as you think.
Nuclear, solar, wind, and hydropower are what we need. You cannot achieve clean energy without nuclear and hydropower. It's literally physically impossible. The laws of physics are not on your side and I really don't know how to get this through to Luddites any more.
But why would you go with a more expensive option when a cheaper one exists? Nuclear is much more expensive than renewables, has at least as many problems in terms of its environmental impact, and won't actually come online for at least a decade. It's not a viable option.
And just to head off what I expect is the next pro-nuclear counter: environment and energy scientists have known for over a decade that renewables are perfectly fine at providing so-called "baseload" power.
Right, also nuclear power helps maintain centralization and authoritarian control of populations. Decentralization everywhere is the future for both energy and security reasons.
Eh, I agree that decentralisation is good, but I don't think you need such an extreme conspiracy to explain why.
It's not about "authoritarian control". It's just about corporate profits.
Money and power, it's both. I agree that during "normal" times it's primarily greed driving centralization, at least of things like electricity generation so that usage can be metered and charged for.
But here are people out there that want power and they are willing to do extreme things to get or keep it. Of the top of my head:
I'm sure you've heard about other countries having societal issues and the state shuts down the internet? This is what centralization makes possible. It's been done, it will be done again. When power is at risk, extreme measures are taken, and centralization facilitates this.
It's not just construction workers, it's the management, it's the regulators, it's the suppliers, and the design and engineering teams. Most countries have lost all of that capability apart from places like South Korea, Finland, Russia, France and China.
China currently has 22 nuclear reactors under construction, 70 in the planning phase, and they currently operate 55. Well that is less than the United States, they will surpass the US soon. They seem to have figured it out.
There are solid arguments to be made against both nuclear and renewables (intermittence, impact of electricity storage, amount of raw material, surface area). We can't wait for perfect solutions, we have to work out compromises right now, and it seems nuclear + renewable is the most solid compromise we have for the 2050 target. See this high quality report by the public French electricity transportation company (independent of the energy producers) that studies various scenarios including 100% renewable and mixes of nuclear, renewables, hydrogen and biogas. https://assets.rte-france.com/prod/public/2022-01/Energy%20pathways%202050_Key%20results.pdf
Those aren't arguments against nuclear power; those are arguments against the incompetence of entities like Southern Company and Westinghouse, as well as the Public Service Commission that fails to impose the burden of cost overruns on the shareholders where they belong.
I should know; I'm a Georgia Power ratepayer who's on the hook paying for the fuck-ups and cost overruns of Plant Vogtle 3 and 4.
It would've been way better if they'd been built back in the '70s, since all indications are that the folks who built units 1 and 2 actually had a fucking clue what they were doing!
That is true, building a nuclear power plant doesn't help. The problem is how many we closed down in a panic, in particular after Fukushima. We could make great strides towards cleaner energy and cutting the actually problematic power plants (coal, gas) out of the picture as we slowly transition to renewables-only if we had more nuclear power available.
Of course, in hindsight it's difficult to say how one could have predicted this. There's good reasons against nuclear energy, it just so happens that in the big picture it's just about the second-best options. And we cut that out first, instead of the worse ones.
Your arguments didn't actually invalidate the comment you replied to. They are just arguments against nuclear being a short-term solution.
We need both, short and long term ones. Wind and water cannot be solely relies upon. Build both types.