- cross-posted to:
- climate@slrpnk.net
- cross-posted to:
- climate@slrpnk.net
Nuclear doesn’t just have one problem. It has seven. Here are the seven major problems with nuclear energy and why it is not a solution to the climate crisis.
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- delay
- cost
Are mostly political and mostly due to anti-nuclear opposition. France did a oil to nuclear electricity transition in 10 years while increasing (a lot) is total capability.
It was technologically, politically and economically feasible in the 70s. I agree that one should not dismiss the political aspect of the question, but I am unwilling to consider it as a stronger argument than “yes but conservatives are resisting renewables”. If we are having a political discussion, then we should consider that political positions are subject to change.
- Weapons proliferation risks
True. The more nuclear power, the more plutonium out there. That’s the only good argument in the 7 I believe. It is still pretty hard to enrich uranium or plutonium to weapon grade. If you could do that, I don’t think it would be much harder to simply start from uranium ore (which are present in much more places than commercially mined, most nations have deposits).
- Meltdown risk
Dams killed more people than all nuclear plants incidents. Coal mines accidents much much more. The result remains the same whether you count in absolute number or per TWh generated.
Fukushima Dai-ichi, Japan in 2011
Number of death: between 0 and 1. Reminder: it was caused by a tsunami that killed 19000 people, including several during dam failures.
Saint-Laurent France in 1980
Number of death: zero. France is a very nuclear-heavy country, yet the power plants that have killed the most in France are… dams again. 423 deaths.
- Mining Lung Cancer Risk
It says that almost 400 death can be attributed to uranium mining between 1950 and 2000
1950 alone had 643 miners die in coal mines in the US alone. In China it is much more.
- Carbon-Equivalent Emissions and Air Pollution
Fun thing about these indirect emissions is that they are made of estimates from electricity used. The more nuclear or sustainable electricity in your mix, the lower willbe used there.
- Waste Risk
Stable solid waste stored under the water bed poses no risk. Here again, the dispersion of waste is mostly due to political opposition to geological storage. I’d rather have dangerous materials stored a kilometer underground below where I live than dispersed in the air I am breathing.
When you started comparing numbers of deaths you lost me, for several reasons. Comparing deaths of nuclear meltdowns with dams or coal mining seems a bit of a stretch to me, because it’s like forgetting how radiation works. It’s not visible but the toll of radiation on other living beings and the environment is, and should not be neglected imo.
For the comparison of uranium mining and coal mining, I am not sure that talking about these specific numbers of deaths help to get the whole picture. What I mean is that due to coal mining employing more workers than uranium mining, in a way I am not surprised by the numbers you provided. I wanted to find something showing the percentages of mortality rates by mining sector but I didn’t manage to do so. If you or anyone have something, please share.
In relation to nuclear waste, I totally disagree mainly because the ocean is not a dumpster. Apart from that, last time I checked, there were unresolved issues with this technique. Potential leaks (from defective unit, material degradation, earthquakes etc) that endanger marine environment. These are even more concerning because of difficulties of monitoring because they are in the seabed. Out of sight, out of mind does not apply to nuclear waste.
It’s not visible but the toll of radiation on other living beings and the environment is, and should not be neglected imo.
When I am saying that the death toll from Fukushima is between 0 and 1 it is because the effect of radiation is accounted for and that the level of exposure we are talking about makes it possible that it raises additional deaths by 1. When a zone is declared radioactive, humans tend to avoid it, which does wonders for all other lifeforms.
because the ocean is not a dumpster.
Oh sorry! I think I used a mistranslation, I did not mean to say “water bed” but "water table. I am not talking about using the ocean as a dumpster. It would be a very poor idea. We are talking about geological storage, which means within the rockbed, in geologically stable regions, below the layers where water is found. All the projects I am aware off are land based. And when they are below the water table, there is very little ways for it to raise to the surface.
Renewables have a showstopper OTOH. Energy storage. So nuclear is still a better choice today regardless of the problems. 🤷♂️
Energy storage is an issue also due to the mining it needs.
Still, I don’t understand why you think this one problem you mention is more important than the 7 of the article, to the point of saying:
nuclear is still a better choice today regardless of the problems
Could you please explain?
Nuclear for better or worse, is a stable and well known technology. That works. Almost 24/7 and reliably. But renewables aren’t reliable at all, when there is no sun, there is no energy from solar panels, when there is no wind, there is no energy from wind farms etc. Of course, there is also hydro but even that depends on drought seasons and when there is surplus you can’t store it. And options for hydro are geographically dependent and not infinite. Basically, if you want to go full renewable, you need a huge amount of energy storage. Not just huge, but HUUUGE. And we aren’t capable of building these today. Perhaps in the future. You can say there is hydrogen, but it has problems on its own and not feasible today if ever. Bottom line is renewables are not a reliable source of energy without energy storage which isn’t there by far.
You massivly underestimate what hydro can do today. The reservoirs can be used as storage and those are massive. Norways hydro storage is 87TWh. That is about 11 days of electricity consumption of the entire EU in itself. Obviously there are issues with that, but it is a lot of storage.
Solar and wind are weather dependent. So a large enough grid will have times with lower production, but it is never really nothing. With strong connections that massivly reduces storage needs. For the EU:
So overcapacity is another great option. Add a bit of battery storage to balance the grid and high renewable grids are entirly possible. Even with limited hydro.
That is not to mention geothermal, biomass, hydrogen, adapting electricity consumption and a bunch of other more niche technologies.
You are citing Norway which has very favorable geography. But that’s hardly true in general. About grid - think about long winter nights where people are running heat pumps and worse means of heating tech. Will this grid be able to, let’s say, provide energy for a week? I doubt you could, assuming Norway provides their storage, distribute it all over EU. Biomass outputs CO2 and is only possible at small scale. Where are these hydrogen storages?
Anyway, I’m all for renewables and non-nuclear if somebody draws a plan that is well defined and realistic. But AFAIK we have no such plan, do we?
Obviously it depends on the location and how different technologies develop in the future, but it is certainly possible.
Nuclear is not
stable norreliable. Reliability for me is also related to safety. It is well know that this technology has issues related to problems briefly mentioned in this article in the following sections:- Weapons Proliferation Risk
- Meltdown Risk
- Waste Risk
Also, it looks like you did not address any of the problematic aspects of nuclear. Which include the points above and the following:
- Long Time Lag Between Planning and Operation
- Cost
- Mining Lung Cancer Risk
- Carbon-Equivalent Emissions and Air Pollution
Edit: the strikethrough, I thought it was used a synonym of “reliable”. Now that I think of it,I suppose it was in relation to the power grid?
I thought it was used a synonym of “reliable”. Now that I think of it,I suppose it was in relation to the power grid?
Yep, it is a constant flow of energy.
About the problems - yes, there are problems and not minor ones, but OTOH we don’t have an alternative, do we? Also CO2 emissions are exaggerated - mining and other activities could involve more e-vehicles I suppose. What air pollution we are talking about? CO2?
This article is mainly parroting the anti-nuclear fear mongering funded by oil companies for decades.
I’m not too sure about this take. There is also another one:
The shared history of oil and nuclear energy - The Maastricht University History Department Blog
The oil company Mobil in particular invested heavily in the development of this technique during the 1960s. Therefore, when Mobil got into uranium mining in 1968, their engineers got quickly ahead of the traditional mining companies in furthering the development of the leaching technique in the uranium sector. In the ten years following the entry of Mobil in the uranium (…)
A 1976 Federal Trade Commission report found that twelve of the top 25 uranium mining and milling companies in the United States that controlled 95% of all US uranium reserves were partly owned by oil firms.
According to the World Health Organization, about 7.1 million people die from air pollution each year, with more than 90 percent of these deaths from energy-related combustion. So switching out our energy system to nuclear would result in about 93 million people dying, as we wait for all the new nuclear plants to be built in the all-nuclear scenario.
No one is proposing we stop building renewables while we build more nuclear. This is a bad faith argument and just dumb. Stop building oil and gas plants build renewables and nuclear. The best thing to do is build nuclear on top of existing coal or gas thermal plants.
- Long Time Lag Between Planning and Operation This is a fair criticism but it’s fundamentally misunderstanding the reasons it takes to long to build. Construction takes to long and costs to much because every plant is custom and we don’t have people with experience building them. It’s we start building new ones we will gain that experience and improved modularity.
- Cost Cost is a factor but the LCOE of renewables depends on batteries which they don’t factor in or existing fossil fuel plants to provide peaker and base load.
The clean up costs are exaggerated by first generation designs. I’m currently eating dinner in Fukushima prefecture and I have no fear or concern over contaminated food. The reactor designs the have melted down did so because they did not have passive safety systems which all modern designs include.
Storage of waste is also overblown. All the high level waste the United States had created would fit in a modern NFL stadium. And only 5% of that is actually waste. 95% is firtile fuel and could be recycled and put into a breeder reactor. We only generate this much waste because we never invested in breeding or recycling.
Lastly with waste it does not need to be long lived isotopes like cesium or plutonium. Recycling and breeding can turn these actinides into fissile fule reduces the half-life down to hundreds of years not thousands or millions.
- Weapons Proliferation Risk
This is true, historically governments wanted weapons with their power so the designs we invested in were only ever dual use. Modern designs are much harder to turn into weapons. This was a deliberate choice and we don’t have to make it again.
- Meltdown Risk
Chernobyl was not a meltdown but something worse as it went prompt critical and created a super critical steam explosion. Had it not flashed both is moderating and coolant instantly it would not have melted down. That design was a cost savings choice without concern for the outcomes.
TMI was a meltdown. And it was due to a lack of passive safety systems and lots of procedural issues that were resolved. There have been no meltdown in the United States since TMI because of those changes. Most running reactor could suffer the same type of failure but don’t because we changed the procedures to prevent it.
Fukushima is perhaps the most valid criticism of “modern” as they decided not to build the sea wall high enough and put the backup pumps and generator on a lower level. It could have been avoided and should have been but humans are not great at evaluating risk.
- Mining Lung Cancer Risk
This is true of all mining and the best argument for recycling our waste.
- Carbon-Equivalent Emissions and Air Pollution
I think they said things but the arguments seem to be renewables create less CO2 which ignores storage and reliance on existing fossil plants. Again no one is suggesting that we don’t keep building renewables only that we stop building fossil plants.
- Waste Risk
Waste is currently a choice not an inevitability. We could choose to recycle, we could choose to breed, and we could choose to use the thorium cycle but we don’t because dumping is cheaper. same with coal ash and gas emissions, we didn’t actually calculate the cost of being responsible. If we did I would expect nuclear to end up costing far less than fossil fuels.
Or we skip to the obvious conclusion:
Tio little, too late.
It will take too long to implement and will not solve the energy need when it is done. And it will cost more than anyone wants to pay.
Pushing nuclear, is just a strategy to obfuscate the discussion and prolong the life of oil infrastructure.
Except oil companies are the ones pushing this anti nuclear nonsense and always have been. Greenpeace was funded primarily by the Exxon group.
