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0 pointskgabis3y ago0 comments

Your assessment of nuclear power is completely wrong. Nuclear is the cheapest, most sustainable and widely supported source of clean electricity. Even in Germany more people support nuclear power than oppose it.

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myrmidon3y ago

What is the source for your beliefs?

I'm assuming you are talking about nuclear fission because fusion is pretty much a pipe dream right now.

A 2020 report (https://www.lazard.com/media/451419/lazards-levelized-cost-o...) by Lazard (investment bank) points out significantly higher levelized cost of energy for nuclear energy compared to renewables.

In additions, most recently built reactors finished neither on time NOR on budget, and most of those were just expansions/additional blocks for existing plants, which is a big "free" decrease in risk/problems already compared to new plants (compare that with renewable costs which are trending down).

Nuclear is also absolutely not sustainable: Mining fuel is a dirty business and reserves are limited.

Nuclear proliferation is another undesirable side effect, and both nuclear waste and decomissioned plants are difficult and expensive to clean up.

Regarding popular support: What is your source for this? Maybe it is talking about delaying decomissioning of existing plants to keep electricity prices lower? I am extremely doubtful that this "support" could be leveraged into securing new places to build plants anyway.

Also consider that specifically the German electricity mix is basically 50% renewables already-- scaling that up seems more doable, faster, cheaper, and ultimately environment friendly than starting to build nuclear plants on a massive scale NOW.

kgabisOP3y ago

Lazard doesn't account for energy storage and grid expansion so it shouldn't be used to compare intermittent and baseload energy sources. If there's political will NPPs can be and are constructed on time, like in ROK, PRC or 70's France. Your argument about sustainability even more so applies to renewables considering how much more resources have to be mined to build such low density and intermittent energy source. Also, renewables occupy a lot of space that can and should be rewilded. Using nuclear reactors to produce nuclear weapons is not easy (see Iran) and nuclear waste can be stored underground. Decomissioning of NPPs can be done after 80 or 100 years of operation which is a crazy long time given how short the lifespans of wind turbines and solar panels are. Germany electricity mix is 50% renewables yet right now it's emitting 8x more CO2 per kWh than France. I wonder why that's the case? Maybe energy policy should be more about decarbonisation rather than building renewable capacity?

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