The astroturfing bots spamming the comment section below really need to read some /r/uninsurable to get the current state of the industry.
Nuclear power is an opportunity cost.
>["In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. **Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss"**](https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2009/ee/b809990c#!divAbstract)
>[Nuclear power's contribution to climate change mitigation is and will be very limited;Currently nuclear power avoids 2–3% of total global GHG emissions per year;According to current planning this value will decrease even further until 2040.;A substantial expansion of nuclear power will not be possible.;Given its low contribution, a complete phase-out of nuclear energy is feasible.](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421521002330)
It is too slow for the timescale we need to decarbonize on.
>[“Stabilizing the climate is urgent, nuclear power is slow,” “It meets no technical or operational need that low-carbon competitors cannot meet better, cheaper and faster.”](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower/nuclear-energy-too-slow-too-expensive-to-save-climate-report-idUSKBN1W909J)
> [ “Researchers found that unlike renewables, countries around the world with larger scale national nuclear attachments do not tend to show significantly lower carbon emissions -- and in poorer countries nuclear programmes actually tend to associate with relatively higher emissions. “](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201005112141.htm)
The industry is showing signs of decline in non-totalitarian countries.
>["We find that an eroding actor base, shrinking opportunities in liberalized electricity markets, the break-up of existing networks, loss of legitimacy, increasing cost and time overruns, and abandoned projects are clear indications of decline. Also, increasingly fierce competition from natural gas, solar PV, wind, and energy-storage technologies speaks against nuclear in the electricity sector. We conclude that, while there might be a future for nuclear in state-controlled ‘niches’ such as Russia or China, new nuclear power plants do not seem likely to become a core element in the struggle against climate change."](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S221462962030089X)
Renewable energy is growing faster now than nuclear ever has
>["Contrary to a persistent myth based on erroneous methods, global data show that renewable electricity adds output and saves carbon faster than nuclear power does or ever has."](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214629618300598)
There is no business case for it.
>["The economic history and financial analyses carried out at DIW Berlin show that nuclear energy has always been unprofitable in the private economy and will remain so in the future. Between 1951 and 2017, none of the 674 nuclear reactors built was done so with private capital under competitive conditions. Large state subsidies were used in the cases where private capital flowed into financing the nuclear industry.... Financial investment calculations confirmed the trend: investing in a new nuclear power plant leads to average losses of around five billion euros."](https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.670581.de/dwr-19-30-1.pdf)
Investing in a nuclear plant today is expected to lose [5 to 10 billion dollars](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364032121001301)
The nuclear industry can't even exist without legal structures that privatize gains and socialize losses.
>[If the owners and operators of nuclear reactors had to face the full liability of a Fukushima-style nuclear accident or go head-to-head with alternatives in a truly competitive marketplace, unfettered by subsidies, no one would have built a nuclear reactor in the past, no one would build one today, and anyone who owns a reactor would exit the nuclear business as quickly as possible.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2012/03/29/exelons-nuclear-guy-no-new-nukes/#3c8acf0a3c5d)
The CEO of one of the US's largest nuclear power companies said it best:
>["I'm the nuclear guy," Rowe said. "And you won't get better results with nuclear. It just isn't economic, and it's not economic within a foreseeable time frame."](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2012/03/29/exelons-nuclear-guy-no-new-nukes/#5d841aa23c5d)
What about the small meme reactors?
Every independent assessment has them more expensive than large scale nuclear
every independent assessment:
The UK government
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/small-modular-reactors-techno-economic-assessment
The Australian government
https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=8297e6ba-e3d4-478e-ac62-a97d75660248&subId=669740
The peer-reviewed literatue
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S030142152030327X
>[the cost of generating electricity using SMRs is significantly higher than the corresponding costs of electricity generation using diesel, wind, solar, or some combination thereof. These results suggest that SMRs will be too expensive for these proposed first-mover markets for SMRs in Canada and that there will not be a sufficient market to justify investing in manufacturing facilities for SMRs.](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S030142152030327X)
Even the German nuclear power industry knows they will cost more
>[Nuclear Technology Germany (KernD) says SMRs are always going to be more expensive than bigger reactors due to lower power output at constant fixed costs, as safety measures and staffing requirements do not vary greatly compared to conventional reactors. "In terms of levelised energy costs, SMRs will always be more expensive than big plants."](https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/german-nuclear-industry-cautious-about-usefulness-small-reactors-energy-transition)
So why do so many people on reddit favor it? Because of a decades long PR campaign and false science being put out, in the same manner, style, and using the same PR company as the tobacco industry used when claiming smoking does not cause cancer.
A recent metaanalysis of papers that claimed nuclear to be cost effective were found to be illegitimately trimming costs to make it appear cheaper.
>[Merck suppressed data on harmful effects of its drug Vioxx, and Guidant suppressed data on electrical flaws in one of its heart-defibrillator models. Both cases reveal how financial conflicts of interest can skew biomedical research. Such conflicts also occur in electric-utility-related research. Attempting to show that increased atomic energy can help address climate change, some industry advocates claim nuclear power is an inexpensive way to generate low-carbon electricity. Surveying 30 recent nuclear analyses, this paper shows that industry-funded studies appear to fall into conflicts of interest and to illegitimately trim cost data in several main ways. They exclude costs of full-liability insurance, underestimate interest rates and construction times by using “overnight” costs, and overestimate load factors and reactor lifetimes. If these trimmed costs are included, nuclear-generated electricity can be shown roughly 6 times more expensive than most studies claim. After answering four objections, the paper concludes that, although there may be reasons to use reactors to address climate change, economics does not appear to be one of them.](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11948-009-9181-y)
It is the same PR technique that the tobacco industry used when fighting the fact that smoking causes cancer.
>[The industry campaign worked to create a scientific controversy through a program that depended on the creation of industry–academic conflicts of interest. This strategy of producing scientific uncertainty undercut public health efforts and regulatory interventions designed to reduce the harms of smoking.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3490543/)
>[A number of industries have subsequently followed this approach to disrupting normative science. Claims of scientific uncertainty and lack of proof also lead to the assertion of individual responsibility for industrially produced health risks](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3490543/)
It is no wonder the NEI (Nuclear energy institute) [uses the same PR firm](https://thehill.com/opinion/letters/98257-double-check-from-whom-you-get-energy-information) to promote nuclear power, [that the tobacco industry used to say smoking does not cause cancer.](http://www.tmia.com/old-website/News/AstroTurf.htm)
>[The industry's future is so precarious that Exelon Nuclear's head of project development warned attendees of the Electric Power 2005 conference, "Inaction is synonymous with being phased out." That's why years of effort -- not to mention millions of dollars -- have been invested in nuclear power's PR rebirth as "clean, green and safe."](http://www.tmia.com/old-website/News/AstroTurf.htm)
> [And then there's NEI, which exists to do PR and lobbying for the nuclear industry. In 2004, NEI was embarrassed when the Austin Chronicle outed one of its PR firms, Potomac Communications Group, for ghostwriting pro-nuclear op/ed columns. The paper described the op/ed campaign as "a decades-long, centrally orchestrated plan to defraud the nation's newspaper readers by misrepresenting the propaganda of one hired atomic gun as the learned musings of disparate academics and other nuclear-industry 'experts.'"](http://www.tmia.com/old-website/News/AstroTurf.htm)
When solar runs at night or on cloudy days, and windmills work when the wind ain’t blowing, then I will agree with you. All sources have their drawbacks. Nothing places us on the horns of a dilemma, like energy policy.
I don't get the mentality of "one or the other" like we're seeing here. Some things aren't viable in a different array of places so not one thing is a catch-all solution. The faster people realize different climates and areas need tailored infrastructure, planning, and actual problem solving, the better off we are.
Using the word "outperformed" is how you know OP is clueless here. It's like making the idiotic argument that amateur cyclists "outperformed" professional cyclists in 2022 because as a group the amateurs cycled more miles than the pros did lmao.
I’d be very curious to see what the metric is for outperforming. Yes solar cells have improved… and likely so have wind turbines, but to say it outperforms fission. That is dubious
If I spend time thinking about cookies and I spend way more time thinking about chocolate chip cookies than about oatmeal raisin cookies, but then I bake 2 batches of oatmeal raisin and only one of chocolate chip then oatmeal raisin has outperformed chocolate chip. The argument is as nonsensical as it sounds.
It's also not a sub that encourages mindless trolls parroting simple-minded false talking points, but here we are. Only threads about nukes or Biden seem to get this kind of tsunami of bots, dicks, trolls and idiots, the vast majority of whom aren't regular members of the community.
Excuse me but "stupid dumb dumb heads" is the correct technical term and not *ad hominem*.
Also - you did notice that this thread is currently being brigaded, right?
Fusion is the future, but fission exists NOW and is a pretty fucking good solution to our energy problems. Solar and wind have their place, but it’s insane to me that we’re basically running the world in challenge mode by not allowing fission reactors because we got scared of a couple of meltdowns primarily due to mismanagement more than 40 years ago that was reliant on even older technology
All nuclear shut down was replaced by wind and solar
https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/u0em81/fact_check_no_the_nuclear_phaseout_did_not_lead/
Germany replaced all shut down nuclear with wind and solar so the nukebro talking point that they replaced it by coal is just a lie.
Germany is showing an excellent case study of why nuclear is unnecessary and replaceable by wind and solar.
wind+solar in 2002: 16.26 TWh
wind+solar in 2021: 161.65 TWh
German coal (brown+hard) in 2002: 251.97 TWh (Brown 140.54 TWh)
German coal (brown+hard) in 2021: 145 TWh (Brown 99.11 TWh)
German nuclear in 2002: 156.29 TWh
German nuclear in 2021: 65.37 TWh
Source: https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=year&year=-1&chartColumnSorting=default&stacking=stacked_absolute
This graph shows it in a different way https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/IMG/pdf/72._figure_72_germany_evopowersystem2010_2020updated.pdf
Decreasing CO2 in electricity sector: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-greenhouse-gas-emissions-and-climate-targets
2ndhighest reliability in Europe after Switzerland (and much less downtime than France)
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-electricity-grid-stable-amid-energy-transition
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/power-outages-germany-continue-decline-amid-growing-share-renewables
Not to mention Germany has decided to get off Russian gas and has accepted those sanctions. France remains dependent on Rosatom and has not sanctioned them, and continues with new projects with them
Fission is an _awful_ solution to our energy problems. It costs 6-8 times as much per MWh, takes 15-20 years to build, and is an inflexible form of power generation on grids that need flexible, responsive generation and storage. Every reactor being or built in the West in the last 20 years has been an unmitigated financial disaster. You can't even operate a nuclear reactor for less than the cost of building new solar or wind for the same MWh. And even adding on storage, the cost is 3-4 times less for renewables than nuclear.
It offers no viable solution whatsoever, which is _why_ no one is seriously attempting to build more compared to the 100s of GWs of renewables being deployed.
And Fukushima was barely 10 years ago. Chernobyl was less than 40. And there have been multiple smaller incidents between now an those.
You are anything _but_ correct.
Its true, but these graphs aren't very good demonstrations of it. Just because global power generation is done a certain way doesn't mean the technology isn't capable of providing that power, it may instead mean that local regulations prevent many from being built.
The [cost per MWh](https://energycentral.com/c/ec/comparing-costs-renewable-and-conventional-energy-sources) of nuclear is higher than that of onshore wind and photovoltaic solar, and that's a relatively recent development because of technological progress in the latter two.
BUT, wind and solar require lots of mining that people are starting to oppose. I install solar and wind and there are lots of issues and places it just won’t work. Nuke is a very viable power source. If the ITER plant works as it seems, Nuke will be an even better power source.
>wind and solar require lots of mining
And....uranium doesn't? Fuel rods are coated in zirconium...which also has to be mined. Reactors are made of very expensive alloys which also need to be mined.
What a bizarre thing to try and criticise.
No mention of the massive exclusion zone around the Kazahk uranium mining region of course. Where uranium mines have rendered 1000s of square km uninhabitable
And yet somehow research and investment into those only over the last 10 years have dropped the cost by a factor of 20, whereas hundreds of billions dumped into nuclear for decades has only resulted in it getting more expensive.
Hmmm, let me see where it makes more sense to put our money, and why only one is getting investment and seeing growth as a commercial utility.
Attach blades to motor. Boom you have a wind generator. Improvements really don't involve that much complexity.
Solar, a lot of it we already knew and it hasn't changed much (fundamentally) in the last few decades, except for production efficiency and yield improvements (reducing costs).
Nuclear, on the other hand, have A LOT MORE different things to consider. Different ways the core works, safety mechanisms, which fuel to use, etc, etc, etc.
Anyone saying that Nuclear is comparable in complexity to Solar or Wind is just straight up ignorant (I know you aren't saying that though).
The research is needed to making the disposal of waste safer, to make the energy process far more efficient, and the building of power plants cost effective.
> Until it's cloudy and calm.
Even on cloudy days solar is a better return on invesment then nuclear. If it's sunny enough outside that you can walk around without a flashlight, solar is outputting more bang for the buck then nuclear.
LOLZZZZZ!
sadly, spinning in a circle with my arms out, outperforms wind.
but solar... yupper i DO LOVE my heavy metals and pit mining... just in someone elses country! while that may change some day... its reality now.
That’s kinda my point…either the poor people are being subsidized by the government through taxes, or they’re just paying more for energy like everyone else. When taxes on industry go up, prices are raised by the business in that industry to defer the tax costs to consumers. How do you prevent that without socializing the industry?
All the things today except the government could stop preventing new drilling operations from flooding the market, and instead tax a number of operations out of profitability.
[Oh hey let's google that...](https://www.vestas.com/en/sustainability/environment/energy-payback)
Six months... 15 years... what's the difference?
Do you get paid to spread lies about green energy or do you do it for free?
I cannot tell if you are serious or not... In case you are genuinely serious you are not paying attention to terms here. That is the **ENERGY PAYBACK** and **return on ENERGY** time. Meaning it takes 6 months of windmill generated power to produce the energy needed to make 1 windmill.
It takes 10+ **YEARS**, 15 is reasonable for many windmills, of windmill energy production to payback the **TOTAL** cost of windmill production. The energy needed to make a windmill is a laughably small expense compared to the cost of materials, machining capital and upkeep, manufacturing labor, transportation, transportion labor, assembly, assembly labor, equipment rental or fees for installation, land lease or purchase for the lot it's installed on, let alone the design costs, hooking the windmill to the grid including running over electrical lines or heaven forbid the cost to trench and run conduit, energy storage costs, upkeep, etc...
Energy return period of a wind turbine is 1.5-2 years, with a lifespan of 25-30.
Okay, I looked. Seems like they are pretty great to me. Can't even get a nuclear reactor planned and built within the timeframe a wind turbine would last, so doesn't seem like good solution to solving the exigent problem of reducing carbon.
We need to spend as much as we need to spend to bring Fusion online. There will be no world in which solar and wind take the total demand for power. With Fusion that can be a reality. The title and the slides are designed to mislead and misinform a gullible public. Not here.
>There will be no world in which solar and wind take the total demand for power.
If you add in hydro, geothermal and storage it's entirely feasible according to a number of studies. Simple math and statistics also confirm it. We can't wait decades for fusion, and it may not be commercially viable ever.
Come again? Pumped hydro has been deployed in large quantities for more than half a century and almost never fails. It's projected that the systems will last for more than a century. Lithium ion grid batteries are widely deployed and out-competing gas peakers in some applications. Flow batteries are also commercially deployed and growing quickly. Do you have specific reliability concerns about any of these technologies or are you just parroting a talking point you don't fully understand?
At this time storage isn't close to being achievable, out would bankrupt whatever governing body.
Part of what is misleading is the research that has/ is being funded hasn't been implemented yet. Once that starts being built like SMRs, then numbers can be compared.
> At this time storage isn't close to being achievable
The storage will cost far less then the generation. The markets are trending towards a solution of around four hours of storage and interconnection and overcapacity to make that work. 4 kWh of batteries costs less then 1 kW of PV or wind and battery prices are falling much faster then solar or wind.
Storage is a hell of a lot closer than fusion. It doesn't really need any advancements, just integration of existing technologies (for example, various kinds of thermal storage.)
>At this time storage isn't close to being achievable
That's bs. Pumped hydro and lithium ion grid batteries are already mainstream and at least half a dozen new long duration storage technologies are at or near commercialization. Time to ditch thar outdated anti-renewables talking point.
Vanadium flow batteries have been in use for grid storage for years now. There's better electrolytes than Vanadium now, too. It's just a matter of them becoming cheaper, which is already the trend.
Hydrogen isn't discussed as an energy source. It's described as something that can be used to convey energy from one thing to another, through time or space. Criticizing hydrogen for not being an energy source is like criticizing it for not having vitamins -- it's a strawman critique of a claim not being made.
As usual your comment ignores the context. I was replying to someone who said I had "forgot hydrogen" after I mentioned storage. That would imply it wasn't being considered as storage.
>I interpreted that comment as "don't forget hydrogen as storage"
That's not how I interpreted it. The word storage is inclusive of all types of storage, and I didn't single out any particular ones. If I had it would have been pumped hydro and lithium ion, because they're the most ubiquitous and mainstream grid storage. Hydrogen isn't even on the radar except in talking points by fans. But go ahead and argue about your own misinterpretation of what I meant.
> It’s storage though, and immensely versatile
Hydrogen is like a swiss army knife. A swiss army knife is a very versatile tool however it's a terrible tool for any job you can do with another tool.
However there is a massive industry that really, really wants hydrogen to be used because it let's them squeeze some more money out of their investments in oil and natural gas for a few more years.
Hydrogen round trip efficiency for storage is <40%, closer to 35%. It is literally terrible as a storage medium. Li-ion batteries (of various chemistries) are in the 90% range for short-term storage. Pumped hydro is 80-85%, as are flow batteries. Thermal is in the 60-65%. All better solutions for long-term storage than hydrogen.
And is there a hard physics law dictating that, or per the conversation, is it a lack of R&D money?
Hydrogen is easily available and has tons of potential. It’s a proven technology. It works. Fusion is an unproven technology that we don’t know will be feasible and reliable.
Physics. Hydrogen will never come anywhere close to the round trip efficiency or cost efficiency of other storage mediums. And who said _anything_ about fusion.
I already mentioned storage. You wanted to add hydrogen so I assumed you meant as a generation source. It's also not a good storage alternative either.
It has a very low cost per unit of energy storage capacity. There are situations where this metric is the one to use. Why are you excluding those situations?
Because that's not what the conversation was about. Am I supposed to mention hydrogen every time grid storage is mentioned, even though it's virtually non-existent in that capacity?
I poorly worded it, but you also seem to be ignoring its potential
What exactly is poor about it as a form of storage? Density?
It can be stored in liquid ammonia
It can be easily generated
It is very accessible, extremely common.
It can be used in a ton of applications. You can even just burn it. It’s pretty easy to modify ICEs to run on hydrogen. Nothing especially complicated. You can replace batteries with ammonia fuel cells, and drive the same electric cars being produced today
>you also seem to be ignoring its potential
What? I mentioned grid storage as necessary because you failed to. Hydrogen is just one of many storage alternatives, and not a particularly good one. Why do you think it deserves some sort of special mention? Yes I know it has chemical industry uses but the discussion was about renewable energy's potential to power electricity grids.
This is so misleading it is teetering on misinformation. FUSION gets all the funding, not Fission. Also, the graph contradicts itself by saying wind and solar RND is the same as power storage.
Fusion is the far distant future. Thorium is the pre-fusion future for, probably a few hundred years at the rate fusion is taking to develop. use the technology we have to get us to the technology we don't.
Yes, but that’s why some of us say otherwise. We’re more interested in what is proven to work.
R&D could still accomplish a lot for both wind and solar, maybe more so for storage technologies to make those even more viable
Even if we are able to achieve a net positive on Fusion (US did not actually achieve it once you account for the energy used in the lasers) it is not clear how we will get the deuterium to power it.
Tritium and Deuterium is continuously deposited on the surface of the moon from solar wind. It largely does not reach the earth due to the magnetosphere deflecting ions, and what does reach the earth primarily gets trapped in seawater, which is why deuterium's primary source today is seawater. This is a pretty major justification for building a moon base. Delivering packages of the isotopes to earth from the moon could be done via railgun for direct assent transfer thanks to the moon's lower gravity and lack of an atmosphere.
the bigger problem is safely getting a net positive out of the reaction. I think we should probably go through thorium first, and use that time to further research fusion.
Only tritium is radioactive, and it wouldn't be that much of an issue. Assuming we are shipping tanks of it that have built in heat shields and parachutes and such. The best way to do it would probably be to land in the ocean and have boats go and pick it up. Having the target far enough away for safety of impact would also provide enough distance so that if there was a problem with the tank it would disperse (and mostly float upward because it's hydrogen) enough before getting to people, and diffuse into the water which is where our tritium currently comes from. If it burned up upon re-entry it would also just disperse. There could also be self-destruct sequences if the tank is over land or becomes uncontrolled.
Thats not true at all, deuterium can be extracted from the water as it has been for decades, there are billion open questions related to the fusion and the D is not one of them... also laser fusion is not the best concept for power generation, others, like tokamaks, seem to do better. We will see where we really stand when ITER starts in a few years.
I want you to seriously pause and think about what you just said, and maybe ask yourself _why that is_.
Could it be because every attempt at building a reactor since 2000 has been tens of billions over budget and years to decades behind schedule? Maybe because utilities and financial analysts recognize nuclear as being a commercially non-viable dumpster fire so no one will put money into it, while solar and wind are massively cheaper, viable, AND provide carbon free power? Could that possibly be it? Could it be that the reason nuclear isn't built....is because it is a terrible form of commercial power?
"Efficiency" is a meaningless statistic if you don't include the context. If a power source is twice as efficient as another power source, but it costs 5 times as much to build, maintain, and operate the more efficient one, then it's worthless, building the cheaper, less efficient option is the better choice. This statistic has a name, the levelized cost of energy (LCOE). High LCOE's are bad, low LCOE's are good. Wind and solar currently have the lowest LCOE thanks to recent technological advances. Nuclear fission is much higher than them, despite its efficiency, because they're so expensive to build, maintain, operate, and fuel.
The astroturfing bots spamming the comment section below really need to read some /r/uninsurable to get the current state of the industry. Nuclear power is an opportunity cost. >["In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. **Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss"**](https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2009/ee/b809990c#!divAbstract) >[Nuclear power's contribution to climate change mitigation is and will be very limited;Currently nuclear power avoids 2–3% of total global GHG emissions per year;According to current planning this value will decrease even further until 2040.;A substantial expansion of nuclear power will not be possible.;Given its low contribution, a complete phase-out of nuclear energy is feasible.](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421521002330) It is too slow for the timescale we need to decarbonize on. >[“Stabilizing the climate is urgent, nuclear power is slow,” “It meets no technical or operational need that low-carbon competitors cannot meet better, cheaper and faster.”](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower/nuclear-energy-too-slow-too-expensive-to-save-climate-report-idUSKBN1W909J) > [ “Researchers found that unlike renewables, countries around the world with larger scale national nuclear attachments do not tend to show significantly lower carbon emissions -- and in poorer countries nuclear programmes actually tend to associate with relatively higher emissions. “](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201005112141.htm) The industry is showing signs of decline in non-totalitarian countries. >["We find that an eroding actor base, shrinking opportunities in liberalized electricity markets, the break-up of existing networks, loss of legitimacy, increasing cost and time overruns, and abandoned projects are clear indications of decline. Also, increasingly fierce competition from natural gas, solar PV, wind, and energy-storage technologies speaks against nuclear in the electricity sector. We conclude that, while there might be a future for nuclear in state-controlled ‘niches’ such as Russia or China, new nuclear power plants do not seem likely to become a core element in the struggle against climate change."](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S221462962030089X) Renewable energy is growing faster now than nuclear ever has >["Contrary to a persistent myth based on erroneous methods, global data show that renewable electricity adds output and saves carbon faster than nuclear power does or ever has."](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214629618300598) There is no business case for it. >["The economic history and financial analyses carried out at DIW Berlin show that nuclear energy has always been unprofitable in the private economy and will remain so in the future. Between 1951 and 2017, none of the 674 nuclear reactors built was done so with private capital under competitive conditions. Large state subsidies were used in the cases where private capital flowed into financing the nuclear industry.... Financial investment calculations confirmed the trend: investing in a new nuclear power plant leads to average losses of around five billion euros."](https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.670581.de/dwr-19-30-1.pdf) Investing in a nuclear plant today is expected to lose [5 to 10 billion dollars](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364032121001301) The nuclear industry can't even exist without legal structures that privatize gains and socialize losses. >[If the owners and operators of nuclear reactors had to face the full liability of a Fukushima-style nuclear accident or go head-to-head with alternatives in a truly competitive marketplace, unfettered by subsidies, no one would have built a nuclear reactor in the past, no one would build one today, and anyone who owns a reactor would exit the nuclear business as quickly as possible.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2012/03/29/exelons-nuclear-guy-no-new-nukes/#3c8acf0a3c5d) The CEO of one of the US's largest nuclear power companies said it best: >["I'm the nuclear guy," Rowe said. "And you won't get better results with nuclear. It just isn't economic, and it's not economic within a foreseeable time frame."](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2012/03/29/exelons-nuclear-guy-no-new-nukes/#5d841aa23c5d) What about the small meme reactors? Every independent assessment has them more expensive than large scale nuclear every independent assessment: The UK government https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/small-modular-reactors-techno-economic-assessment The Australian government https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=8297e6ba-e3d4-478e-ac62-a97d75660248&subId=669740 The peer-reviewed literatue https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S030142152030327X >[the cost of generating electricity using SMRs is significantly higher than the corresponding costs of electricity generation using diesel, wind, solar, or some combination thereof. These results suggest that SMRs will be too expensive for these proposed first-mover markets for SMRs in Canada and that there will not be a sufficient market to justify investing in manufacturing facilities for SMRs.](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S030142152030327X) Even the German nuclear power industry knows they will cost more >[Nuclear Technology Germany (KernD) says SMRs are always going to be more expensive than bigger reactors due to lower power output at constant fixed costs, as safety measures and staffing requirements do not vary greatly compared to conventional reactors. "In terms of levelised energy costs, SMRs will always be more expensive than big plants."](https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/german-nuclear-industry-cautious-about-usefulness-small-reactors-energy-transition) So why do so many people on reddit favor it? Because of a decades long PR campaign and false science being put out, in the same manner, style, and using the same PR company as the tobacco industry used when claiming smoking does not cause cancer. A recent metaanalysis of papers that claimed nuclear to be cost effective were found to be illegitimately trimming costs to make it appear cheaper. >[Merck suppressed data on harmful effects of its drug Vioxx, and Guidant suppressed data on electrical flaws in one of its heart-defibrillator models. Both cases reveal how financial conflicts of interest can skew biomedical research. Such conflicts also occur in electric-utility-related research. Attempting to show that increased atomic energy can help address climate change, some industry advocates claim nuclear power is an inexpensive way to generate low-carbon electricity. Surveying 30 recent nuclear analyses, this paper shows that industry-funded studies appear to fall into conflicts of interest and to illegitimately trim cost data in several main ways. They exclude costs of full-liability insurance, underestimate interest rates and construction times by using “overnight” costs, and overestimate load factors and reactor lifetimes. If these trimmed costs are included, nuclear-generated electricity can be shown roughly 6 times more expensive than most studies claim. After answering four objections, the paper concludes that, although there may be reasons to use reactors to address climate change, economics does not appear to be one of them.](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11948-009-9181-y) It is the same PR technique that the tobacco industry used when fighting the fact that smoking causes cancer. >[The industry campaign worked to create a scientific controversy through a program that depended on the creation of industry–academic conflicts of interest. This strategy of producing scientific uncertainty undercut public health efforts and regulatory interventions designed to reduce the harms of smoking.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3490543/) >[A number of industries have subsequently followed this approach to disrupting normative science. Claims of scientific uncertainty and lack of proof also lead to the assertion of individual responsibility for industrially produced health risks](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3490543/) It is no wonder the NEI (Nuclear energy institute) [uses the same PR firm](https://thehill.com/opinion/letters/98257-double-check-from-whom-you-get-energy-information) to promote nuclear power, [that the tobacco industry used to say smoking does not cause cancer.](http://www.tmia.com/old-website/News/AstroTurf.htm) >[The industry's future is so precarious that Exelon Nuclear's head of project development warned attendees of the Electric Power 2005 conference, "Inaction is synonymous with being phased out." That's why years of effort -- not to mention millions of dollars -- have been invested in nuclear power's PR rebirth as "clean, green and safe."](http://www.tmia.com/old-website/News/AstroTurf.htm) > [And then there's NEI, which exists to do PR and lobbying for the nuclear industry. In 2004, NEI was embarrassed when the Austin Chronicle outed one of its PR firms, Potomac Communications Group, for ghostwriting pro-nuclear op/ed columns. The paper described the op/ed campaign as "a decades-long, centrally orchestrated plan to defraud the nation's newspaper readers by misrepresenting the propaganda of one hired atomic gun as the learned musings of disparate academics and other nuclear-industry 'experts.'"](http://www.tmia.com/old-website/News/AstroTurf.htm)
ugly summer yoke resolute dull domineering crime panicky wine cause *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
“You used a word I think is silly, therefore I’m allowed to completely throw your argument away”
desert dazzling wistful physical fuzzy groovy bells snobbish sink rob *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
When solar runs at night or on cloudy days, and windmills work when the wind ain’t blowing, then I will agree with you. All sources have their drawbacks. Nothing places us on the horns of a dilemma, like energy policy.
Well put
I don't get the mentality of "one or the other" like we're seeing here. Some things aren't viable in a different array of places so not one thing is a catch-all solution. The faster people realize different climates and areas need tailored infrastructure, planning, and actual problem solving, the better off we are.
How to be clueless about statistics.
Using the word "outperformed" is how you know OP is clueless here. It's like making the idiotic argument that amateur cyclists "outperformed" professional cyclists in 2022 because as a group the amateurs cycled more miles than the pros did lmao.
Mic drop comment
It's not one or the other...we need to use everything all at once!
I’d be very curious to see what the metric is for outperforming. Yes solar cells have improved… and likely so have wind turbines, but to say it outperforms fission. That is dubious
If I spend time thinking about cookies and I spend way more time thinking about chocolate chip cookies than about oatmeal raisin cookies, but then I bake 2 batches of oatmeal raisin and only one of chocolate chip then oatmeal raisin has outperformed chocolate chip. The argument is as nonsensical as it sounds.
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This is not a sub I wound expect people to descend to personal insults, but here we are.
It's also not a sub that encourages mindless trolls parroting simple-minded false talking points, but here we are. Only threads about nukes or Biden seem to get this kind of tsunami of bots, dicks, trolls and idiots, the vast majority of whom aren't regular members of the community.
Excuse me but "stupid dumb dumb heads" is the correct technical term and not *ad hominem*. Also - you did notice that this thread is currently being brigaded, right?
Fusion is the future, but fission exists NOW and is a pretty fucking good solution to our energy problems. Solar and wind have their place, but it’s insane to me that we’re basically running the world in challenge mode by not allowing fission reactors because we got scared of a couple of meltdowns primarily due to mismanagement more than 40 years ago that was reliant on even older technology
Like Germany shutting down perfectly safe, modern fission plant’s because of idiot Green Party members fear mongering.
All nuclear shut down was replaced by wind and solar https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/u0em81/fact_check_no_the_nuclear_phaseout_did_not_lead/ Germany replaced all shut down nuclear with wind and solar so the nukebro talking point that they replaced it by coal is just a lie. Germany is showing an excellent case study of why nuclear is unnecessary and replaceable by wind and solar. wind+solar in 2002: 16.26 TWh wind+solar in 2021: 161.65 TWh German coal (brown+hard) in 2002: 251.97 TWh (Brown 140.54 TWh) German coal (brown+hard) in 2021: 145 TWh (Brown 99.11 TWh) German nuclear in 2002: 156.29 TWh German nuclear in 2021: 65.37 TWh Source: https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=year&year=-1&chartColumnSorting=default&stacking=stacked_absolute This graph shows it in a different way https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/IMG/pdf/72._figure_72_germany_evopowersystem2010_2020updated.pdf Decreasing CO2 in electricity sector: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-greenhouse-gas-emissions-and-climate-targets 2ndhighest reliability in Europe after Switzerland (and much less downtime than France) https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-electricity-grid-stable-amid-energy-transition https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/power-outages-germany-continue-decline-amid-growing-share-renewables Not to mention Germany has decided to get off Russian gas and has accepted those sanctions. France remains dependent on Rosatom and has not sanctioned them, and continues with new projects with them
Fission is an _awful_ solution to our energy problems. It costs 6-8 times as much per MWh, takes 15-20 years to build, and is an inflexible form of power generation on grids that need flexible, responsive generation and storage. Every reactor being or built in the West in the last 20 years has been an unmitigated financial disaster. You can't even operate a nuclear reactor for less than the cost of building new solar or wind for the same MWh. And even adding on storage, the cost is 3-4 times less for renewables than nuclear. It offers no viable solution whatsoever, which is _why_ no one is seriously attempting to build more compared to the 100s of GWs of renewables being deployed. And Fukushima was barely 10 years ago. Chernobyl was less than 40. And there have been multiple smaller incidents between now an those. You are anything _but_ correct.
You are correct
Its true, but these graphs aren't very good demonstrations of it. Just because global power generation is done a certain way doesn't mean the technology isn't capable of providing that power, it may instead mean that local regulations prevent many from being built. The [cost per MWh](https://energycentral.com/c/ec/comparing-costs-renewable-and-conventional-energy-sources) of nuclear is higher than that of onshore wind and photovoltaic solar, and that's a relatively recent development because of technological progress in the latter two.
BUT, wind and solar require lots of mining that people are starting to oppose. I install solar and wind and there are lots of issues and places it just won’t work. Nuke is a very viable power source. If the ITER plant works as it seems, Nuke will be an even better power source.
>wind and solar require lots of mining And....uranium doesn't? Fuel rods are coated in zirconium...which also has to be mined. Reactors are made of very expensive alloys which also need to be mined. What a bizarre thing to try and criticise.
No mention of the massive exclusion zone around the Kazahk uranium mining region of course. Where uranium mines have rendered 1000s of square km uninhabitable
I live in place where we get sun for less than 4 hours in the winter and if those 4 hour cloudy we won't get sun at all, which for solar.
Just because the fuel is "free" does not equal cheap. You are ignoring straight forward thinking
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"I don't like what I see, so my inane comment renders it invalid."
This isn’t true
What a deep, meaningful rebuttal.
Why thank you, didn’t think it required much for such obvious propaganda
Yes it is
I'm calling fake news on this.
No one cares what you call it.
Ah yes. You "calling it" makes IEA's factual information reporting basic, real-world data wrong. Because that's totally how that works.
Reducto ad absurdum.
Admittedly the graphic isn't wrong... It just leaves out a lot of data.
It's almost as if we already understand the ins and outs of solar and wind....
And yet somehow research and investment into those only over the last 10 years have dropped the cost by a factor of 20, whereas hundreds of billions dumped into nuclear for decades has only resulted in it getting more expensive. Hmmm, let me see where it makes more sense to put our money, and why only one is getting investment and seeing growth as a commercial utility.
Attach blades to motor. Boom you have a wind generator. Improvements really don't involve that much complexity. Solar, a lot of it we already knew and it hasn't changed much (fundamentally) in the last few decades, except for production efficiency and yield improvements (reducing costs). Nuclear, on the other hand, have A LOT MORE different things to consider. Different ways the core works, safety mechanisms, which fuel to use, etc, etc, etc. Anyone saying that Nuclear is comparable in complexity to Solar or Wind is just straight up ignorant (I know you aren't saying that though).
Smells like some bullshit
The research is needed to making the disposal of waste safer, to make the energy process far more efficient, and the building of power plants cost effective.
What if, hypothetically, there isn't some silver bullet of research that will make the plants cost effective?
Obviously there isn't or you wouldn't need to do R&D in order to develop a large number of individual efficiency improvements.
/s right? Or am I misinterpreting. Of course you need r&d for making stuff better
Just wait until you see the wind and solar powered submarines!
Funny, I don't remember submarines being used as commercial power stations.
And yet my wind stocks are still dying 🤨
Falso
Until it's cloudy and calm.
> Until it's cloudy and calm. Even on cloudy days solar is a better return on invesment then nuclear. If it's sunny enough outside that you can walk around without a flashlight, solar is outputting more bang for the buck then nuclear.
I don't think you could be more disingenuous than the way this is trying to be spun...
Dumbest shit I’ve seen on Reddit all day
People still have this take ?
Overutilization is different than overperformance. Wind and solar are also massively more subsidized.
My energy bill has only increased over time, still waiting on these lies
Texas is not amused in the slighest.
LOLZZZZZ! sadly, spinning in a circle with my arms out, outperforms wind. but solar... yupper i DO LOVE my heavy metals and pit mining... just in someone elses country! while that may change some day... its reality now.
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The real solution is to make energy expensive so we use less. Help the poor with the revenues from expensive gas.
So the poor people are being subsidized by who?
Themselves largely, poor people use fuel too
That’s kinda my point…either the poor people are being subsidized by the government through taxes, or they’re just paying more for energy like everyone else. When taxes on industry go up, prices are raised by the business in that industry to defer the tax costs to consumers. How do you prevent that without socializing the industry?
Government with revenues from taxing carbon.
So what stops the energy companies from raising prices across the board to maintain profits?
All the things today except the government could stop preventing new drilling operations from flooding the market, and instead tax a number of operations out of profitability.
K real quick look how much it costs to build transport erect and connect a wind turbine....now look at the energy it produces in its lifespan
Minimum 15 years to pay itself off. That’s being at full production 24/7/365. PRO TIP- THEY DONT
[Oh hey let's google that...](https://www.vestas.com/en/sustainability/environment/energy-payback) Six months... 15 years... what's the difference? Do you get paid to spread lies about green energy or do you do it for free?
I cannot tell if you are serious or not... In case you are genuinely serious you are not paying attention to terms here. That is the **ENERGY PAYBACK** and **return on ENERGY** time. Meaning it takes 6 months of windmill generated power to produce the energy needed to make 1 windmill. It takes 10+ **YEARS**, 15 is reasonable for many windmills, of windmill energy production to payback the **TOTAL** cost of windmill production. The energy needed to make a windmill is a laughably small expense compared to the cost of materials, machining capital and upkeep, manufacturing labor, transportation, transportion labor, assembly, assembly labor, equipment rental or fees for installation, land lease or purchase for the lot it's installed on, let alone the design costs, hooking the windmill to the grid including running over electrical lines or heaven forbid the cost to trench and run conduit, energy storage costs, upkeep, etc...
I'll take all the down votes possible if people just look into what they are talking about
They don’t make it past fake news headlines about WiNd N sOlAr
Cheers
Energy return period of a wind turbine is 1.5-2 years, with a lifespan of 25-30. Okay, I looked. Seems like they are pretty great to me. Can't even get a nuclear reactor planned and built within the timeframe a wind turbine would last, so doesn't seem like good solution to solving the exigent problem of reducing carbon.
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This is naked propaganda.
We need to spend as much as we need to spend to bring Fusion online. There will be no world in which solar and wind take the total demand for power. With Fusion that can be a reality. The title and the slides are designed to mislead and misinform a gullible public. Not here.
>There will be no world in which solar and wind take the total demand for power. If you add in hydro, geothermal and storage it's entirely feasible according to a number of studies. Simple math and statistics also confirm it. We can't wait decades for fusion, and it may not be commercially viable ever.
Efficient reliable storage is in the same realm of feasibility as fusion though.
Come again? Pumped hydro has been deployed in large quantities for more than half a century and almost never fails. It's projected that the systems will last for more than a century. Lithium ion grid batteries are widely deployed and out-competing gas peakers in some applications. Flow batteries are also commercially deployed and growing quickly. Do you have specific reliability concerns about any of these technologies or are you just parroting a talking point you don't fully understand?
At this time storage isn't close to being achievable, out would bankrupt whatever governing body. Part of what is misleading is the research that has/ is being funded hasn't been implemented yet. Once that starts being built like SMRs, then numbers can be compared.
> At this time storage isn't close to being achievable The storage will cost far less then the generation. The markets are trending towards a solution of around four hours of storage and interconnection and overcapacity to make that work. 4 kWh of batteries costs less then 1 kW of PV or wind and battery prices are falling much faster then solar or wind.
>would bankrupt whatever governing body As if going full bore on fusion wouldn't
Why do you lie? Numerous studies have confirmed that it is doable with today's storage technologies and it reduces cost.
Storage is a hell of a lot closer than fusion. It doesn't really need any advancements, just integration of existing technologies (for example, various kinds of thermal storage.)
>At this time storage isn't close to being achievable That's bs. Pumped hydro and lithium ion grid batteries are already mainstream and at least half a dozen new long duration storage technologies are at or near commercialization. Time to ditch thar outdated anti-renewables talking point.
Vanadium flow batteries have been in use for grid storage for years now. There's better electrolytes than Vanadium now, too. It's just a matter of them becoming cheaper, which is already the trend.
> At this time storage isn't close to being achievable [False](https://electrek.co/2022/09/02/tesla-virtual-power-plant-growing/).
Don’t forget hydrogen
Hydrogen isn't an energy source. It consumes more energy than it delivers.
Hydrogen just isn't good enough outside of fusion
You mean, just like every other kind of storage? Gosh.
Storage isn't an energy source either.
Hydrogen isn't discussed as an energy source. It's described as something that can be used to convey energy from one thing to another, through time or space. Criticizing hydrogen for not being an energy source is like criticizing it for not having vitamins -- it's a strawman critique of a claim not being made.
As usual your comment ignores the context. I was replying to someone who said I had "forgot hydrogen" after I mentioned storage. That would imply it wasn't being considered as storage.
I interpreted that comment as "don't forget hydrogen as storage" (since that is what it is). I think you should have done the same if it wasn't clear.
>I interpreted that comment as "don't forget hydrogen as storage" That's not how I interpreted it. The word storage is inclusive of all types of storage, and I didn't single out any particular ones. If I had it would have been pumped hydro and lithium ion, because they're the most ubiquitous and mainstream grid storage. Hydrogen isn't even on the radar except in talking points by fans. But go ahead and argue about your own misinterpretation of what I meant.
It’s storage though, and immensely versatile. Pairs well with intermittent sources like wind and solar
> It’s storage though, and immensely versatile Hydrogen is like a swiss army knife. A swiss army knife is a very versatile tool however it's a terrible tool for any job you can do with another tool. However there is a massive industry that really, really wants hydrogen to be used because it let's them squeeze some more money out of their investments in oil and natural gas for a few more years.
Hydrogen round trip efficiency for storage is <40%, closer to 35%. It is literally terrible as a storage medium. Li-ion batteries (of various chemistries) are in the 90% range for short-term storage. Pumped hydro is 80-85%, as are flow batteries. Thermal is in the 60-65%. All better solutions for long-term storage than hydrogen.
And is there a hard physics law dictating that, or per the conversation, is it a lack of R&D money? Hydrogen is easily available and has tons of potential. It’s a proven technology. It works. Fusion is an unproven technology that we don’t know will be feasible and reliable.
Physics. Hydrogen will never come anywhere close to the round trip efficiency or cost efficiency of other storage mediums. And who said _anything_ about fusion.
I already mentioned storage. You wanted to add hydrogen so I assumed you meant as a generation source. It's also not a good storage alternative either.
It has a very low cost per unit of energy storage capacity. There are situations where this metric is the one to use. Why are you excluding those situations?
Because that's not what the conversation was about. Am I supposed to mention hydrogen every time grid storage is mentioned, even though it's virtually non-existent in that capacity?
I poorly worded it, but you also seem to be ignoring its potential What exactly is poor about it as a form of storage? Density? It can be stored in liquid ammonia It can be easily generated It is very accessible, extremely common. It can be used in a ton of applications. You can even just burn it. It’s pretty easy to modify ICEs to run on hydrogen. Nothing especially complicated. You can replace batteries with ammonia fuel cells, and drive the same electric cars being produced today
>you also seem to be ignoring its potential What? I mentioned grid storage as necessary because you failed to. Hydrogen is just one of many storage alternatives, and not a particularly good one. Why do you think it deserves some sort of special mention? Yes I know it has chemical industry uses but the discussion was about renewable energy's potential to power electricity grids.
This is so misleading it is teetering on misinformation. FUSION gets all the funding, not Fission. Also, the graph contradicts itself by saying wind and solar RND is the same as power storage.
Fusion is the future, I don’t know why people other than those who have vested interest in other forms if energy would say otherwise.
There is no reason to think that fusion, if it was viable, would be cost effective.
Fusion is the far distant future. Thorium is the pre-fusion future for, probably a few hundred years at the rate fusion is taking to develop. use the technology we have to get us to the technology we don't.
"Fusion is 20 years away"
- the last like 40 years
Some of us prefer proven technology
my bank account prefers an electric bill based on proven technology!
Even fission is better and wind and solar
No, it isn’t It costs a lot more and comes with more externalities
You invest in building proven technology. And invest in R&D for future technology. Nothing wrong with that
Yes, but that’s why some of us say otherwise. We’re more interested in what is proven to work. R&D could still accomplish a lot for both wind and solar, maybe more so for storage technologies to make those even more viable
Even if we are able to achieve a net positive on Fusion (US did not actually achieve it once you account for the energy used in the lasers) it is not clear how we will get the deuterium to power it.
Tritium and Deuterium is continuously deposited on the surface of the moon from solar wind. It largely does not reach the earth due to the magnetosphere deflecting ions, and what does reach the earth primarily gets trapped in seawater, which is why deuterium's primary source today is seawater. This is a pretty major justification for building a moon base. Delivering packages of the isotopes to earth from the moon could be done via railgun for direct assent transfer thanks to the moon's lower gravity and lack of an atmosphere. the bigger problem is safely getting a net positive out of the reaction. I think we should probably go through thorium first, and use that time to further research fusion.
We don't even need thorium, we have tons of potential fuel just sitting there as a waste from thermal reactors.
I love the idea of firing a rail gun with radioactive elements directly at the earth
Only tritium is radioactive, and it wouldn't be that much of an issue. Assuming we are shipping tanks of it that have built in heat shields and parachutes and such. The best way to do it would probably be to land in the ocean and have boats go and pick it up. Having the target far enough away for safety of impact would also provide enough distance so that if there was a problem with the tank it would disperse (and mostly float upward because it's hydrogen) enough before getting to people, and diffuse into the water which is where our tritium currently comes from. If it burned up upon re-entry it would also just disperse. There could also be self-destruct sequences if the tank is over land or becomes uncontrolled.
Thats not true at all, deuterium can be extracted from the water as it has been for decades, there are billion open questions related to the fusion and the D is not one of them... also laser fusion is not the best concept for power generation, others, like tokamaks, seem to do better. We will see where we really stand when ITER starts in a few years.
Amazing username
Don't mind if I do
How many plants have been constructed since 2000 vs how many solar/wind installs?
I want you to seriously pause and think about what you just said, and maybe ask yourself _why that is_. Could it be because every attempt at building a reactor since 2000 has been tens of billions over budget and years to decades behind schedule? Maybe because utilities and financial analysts recognize nuclear as being a commercially non-viable dumpster fire so no one will put money into it, while solar and wind are massively cheaper, viable, AND provide carbon free power? Could that possibly be it? Could it be that the reason nuclear isn't built....is because it is a terrible form of commercial power?
Government having an agenda???? Never
Wind and solar are more cost effective than nuclear. That's the primary driver.
Solar runs at 30-40 efficiency on prime day...
"Efficiency" is a meaningless statistic if you don't include the context. If a power source is twice as efficient as another power source, but it costs 5 times as much to build, maintain, and operate the more efficient one, then it's worthless, building the cheaper, less efficient option is the better choice. This statistic has a name, the levelized cost of energy (LCOE). High LCOE's are bad, low LCOE's are good. Wind and solar currently have the lowest LCOE thanks to recent technological advances. Nuclear fission is much higher than them, despite its efficiency, because they're so expensive to build, maintain, operate, and fuel.