Unlike most technologies nuclear power plant building cost has increased over time (5 times) Mostly among other things (e.g lack of standardization except France), the huge current cost is because of irrational, overengeenered safety specifications. America could trivially build cheap power plants like in 70s and it would still make statistically less deaths than wind or solar and be the most cost effective energy source on earth.
Even taking into account modern occidental power plants, they are still mostly competitive with fossil and destroy other clean energy sources. Source: https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-a...
The most cost efficient way today is to use renewable sources like wind and solar when they produce, and natural gas when they don't. Gas powered generators can on demand easily be turned on or off, and pipe lines makes the import/export very cost effective so it can reach the target market quickly with minimal costs. The combination also allow for partial build up and short time between investment and revenue, while nuclear plants have all the cost up front and take long time to build.
It should not be a major surprise that many new natural gas power plants is currently being built in the US, and in the rest of the world. If I read the articles/numbers correctly it is the most common type of new power plants being built, with the second most common being wind in areas where wind expect to be profitable.
The good news is that natural gas is also replacing coal and oil. The bad news is that they are replacing nuclear. Natural gas is about half as dirty as coal, but half as dirty as coal does not sound that great of a replacement for nuclear.
Russia and China disagree with you. The French and American troubles with building new nuclear plants is more linked to the demise of the state-driven industry in those countries than to some inherent difficulties with nuclear itself.
Plenty of opportunity for cost cutting.
With one exception (Flammanville, 11 years over schedule and 400% over budget) no new plants are planned.
No we aren't. The only plant expected to close soon is Fessenheim, but every others are planned to work for at least twenty more years. EDF just started «le grand carénage»[1] which is a big investment plan to make the plants work 10 more years, up to 60. (Which is in twenty years)
Source: my wife works at Dampierre en Burly's plant, which is one of the oldest running plant in France, and is part of this program (starting next year there).
A law («loi TECV») was voted in this direction a few years ago, stating that 35% of the reactors should be closed by 2025, but none of the four leading political parties in France have any will to respect it (including the current government, which is here to stay until 2022…). This law was 100% communication and nobody really believed it when it was passed.
[1]: https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_car%C3%A9nage (in French only though)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_St... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France
You have to account for the externalities of the only cheaper thing out there (fossil fuels).
And then there's this
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...
Unless you're lucky to live next to hydro, or unless you do like China and steamroll over your citizens building massive hydro, there's nothing cheaper, overall, than nuclear.
Nobody ever could! Nuclear power generation, from its infancy, has been outrageously subsidized, both directly (i.e. DoE grants, government funding of waste disposal) and indirectly (industrial-scale refining of fuel as a side effect of the weapons industry). Once those sources dried up it just plain stopped making sense.
At the end of the day it needs to stand on its own to make sense, and it can't, especially when compared to its green (and largely unsubsidized!) competitors. People who really want this to happen need to solve the technical problems and then come back with a plan.
To riff on the title: it's not "anti nuclear" to be anti-pro-nuclear. Make it work first before shouting about it on the internet.
Against new green tech yes, it's a better argument.
Why? Why does such a critical piece of civilization NEED to make money on a free market? Why is it absurd to expect governments to help fund power generation like they are expected to fund other infrastructure (and healthcare, in most of the developed world)?
As a side note, it irritates me how often this is the case for many simple and important (but, apparently, hard) questions, that must have a correct answer.
That is simply factually untrue. You can get cost effective nuclear plants from China or South Korea right now.
The core problem with nuclear has always been that if every reactor is a bespoke thing, it will be expensive. Mass production helps with nuclear as with everything else, that has been true whenever we saw a large expansion of nuclear power.
Trying GenIV reactors on a 'small' scale is simply not possible.
> The big problem is that nuclear is essentially a big government project, and America is very bad at those.
Then go to South Korea and order 50 reactors, give them access to US labor and let them build it.
First the author tells us that if we consider ourselves pro or anti nuclear we can't possibly have thought through the pros and cons of nuclear power. It must be because we identify ourselves as left or right. Or green or not.
Then he tells us that if we _do_ have a policy position, we are probably wrong because "its complicated". All of which I find mildly insulting.
Then he proceeds to look at nuclear "purely though the lens of climate change", which as far as I'm concerned is not useful because many of the reasons one might choose to be anti-nuclear are not climate change related.
If such people do comment on the article, I'd rather hope they comment on specifics rather than just say "writer is a snob, article sux".
Which evidence? IPCC reports nuclear as being highly needed.
As an aside, I was surprised by the repeated use of "climate hawk" throughout the article as an identity that we might be interested in taking on. Could they have said e.g. "people concerned about climate change"? I may just not know the term's history.
I'm currently driving a VW SUV company car in a german suburb and the amount of hate I receive because of it is ramping up daily. Even from people driving similar polluting cars, like high-powered station wagons.
The other day my wife was breastfeeding our child in our car while I was quickly grabbing something from a store when it was 36°C/96.8°F outside, so I naturally left the car running so the AC would keep them cool. I was barely a minute out of the car when a woman came knocking on the window, gesturing my wife to turn off the car, giving her the finger etc.
I can't imagine similar things happening even 5 years ago.
Or even simple the process of making policy turns into what are you and what are you not, rather then what are your actions or lack their off.
I the simply fact that you are born gay, straight, polish or any other identifiable group is what defines you and therefore defines your life.
If you're black and want to vote Democrat, that's not identity politics. I don't even think that it's identity politics if you vote Democrat because you think everyone on the Republican side is a racist who hates you. It becomes identity politics when you vote Democrat because of course you're going to vote Democrat, because you're black. When it's unthinkable for a black to do anything else, then it's identity politics.
That, I think, is most peoples' definition. I have a different one. To me, identity politics is when politics becomes your identity. It's essentially tribalism. Instead of "I think this is the better policy" or "I like this better", you decide that your identity is Democrat/Republican/liberal/conserative. That's who you are.
Even when deregulation things like airplanes, logistics and lots and lots of other industry has been very beneficial.
I don't think people even realize to what absurd extend the anti-nuclear movement had managed to attack nuclear energy. To the point where it is basically impossible to build any kind of new reactor in the US.
There are only two types of regulation, for extremely tiny research reactors that are whole unsuited for researching actual power reactors. Or full deployment ready reactors that meet all the regulation of a current reactor.
Now the current regulation says that you need to have a way to cool steam. Well, a sodium or molten salt reactor (or lots of others) simply don't have steam that can be cooled. Meaning that LOTS of technical requirements that are only valid for one specific type of reactor and a specific way of building that reactor is valid at all.
Now we can argue over the expect right regulation needed to run a nuclear plant but arguing that 'deregulation' as a concept is so horrible that its worth trying to destroy the biggest source of carbon free energy is beyond dogmatic and wholly irrational.
Its simply outright refusing to deal with the problems of the nuclear industry based on principle rather then actually trying to evaluate the real problems with the current set of regulations (that are widely acknowledged by people from the industry and even within the government itself).
Furthermore, the Trump administration is already deregulating the nuclear industry, so you're getting your wish.
I would be willing to bet that it will be dramatically cheaper than $10T "deals" floated so far. Shit, getting fusion to work with net energy gain will likely cost less than $1T all in all (although it'll take time).
If done properly, we could finally end up with electricity that's "too cheap to meter", and massively reduce the need for coal, oil, and gas, all without having to hobble the entire domestic industries and force them to burn coal in China instead.
Living in New York, all of the nuclear facilities will be decommissioned in my lifetime, and the ratepayers or taxpayers will be paying for upkeep of the storage components for decades or centuries. We already have to provide direct subsidy just to keep them operating as they aren’t financially viable.
That’s why nuclear doesn’t get built today.
[0] https://strangesounds.org/2014/06/us-nuclear-waste-storage-m...
[1] https://trib.com/news/state-and-regional/govt-and-politics/s...
It'll get frozen under hundreds of meters of ice (very good radiation absorber, plus a natural heat sink) and begin a hundred million year voyage to the sea. At which point it won't be radioactive any more and will get transported and dumped into deep ocean by the icebergs.
With looming climate change, energy crisis, overpopulation and other problems, you can't be sure that we'll be in a stable enough world long enough to be completely safe.
No, i think the main arguments against nuclear is the impact of the problem if something goes really wrong and that everybody is cutting corners making a technology more unsafe than it could be.
It's a shame there's no avherald for nuclear power, I bet it would be an interesting read. C. Perrow had access to industry journals when documenting the chapter on nuclear in his "Normal accidents" book. The incidents described there were mind-boggling.
I'm yet to understand why this part of the argument is often so readily dismissed.
The other main argument I hear all the time is that building a new nuclear power plant today is so expensive that it will never pay for itself at current electricity prices.
But countries with high nuclear usage, like France, show that doesn't have to be the case.
If the US proclaimed a new Manhattan Project to go nearly full nuclear for new energy production, it could probably standardize designs, implement fall back safety features, and reduce regulatory costs.
A lot of the cost for nuclear in the United States is that you need an army of 800 dollar an hour attorneys to get approval/fight lawsuits trying to stop you.
Making the collapse of society a little worse isn't something we should worry about.
But don't we? We have to be completely polarized on every topic. How else will the binary political system survive?
OK, onward without the sarcasm ... This same kind of critical thinking must be applied to every issue, or we'll just end up in the dark ages again.
From what I can tell, energy consumption per capita is lower today than 30 years ago in many developed countries, including the US. While the rest of the world is far from reaching those levels of use, it may point to a cap in the need for more power.
There's not a single country in the world which manages to run on solar and wind only or which could in a realistic future.
Even EU ETS (the most developed offset system) is much too slow to cause major dent in the problem.
Where most climate predictions require us to stop altogether to avoid most painful results of climate change.
"Carbon neutral" has a precise definition, and that's definitely not it.
Over here we are:
- cutting down the very few square kilometers of forest we have because the EU declared that everyone has to be carbon neutral or pay fines, and 'wood pellets' are considered 'renewable' energy sources by the administration. The cabinet minister in charge has admitted to the absurdity but stated he is not going to stop the practice as this would lead to being fined.
- keeping open severely damaged aging nuclear plants even when under the protest of several neighboring countries recognizing the dangers. The person in charge of this matter at the energy minister's cabinet just moved through he revolving door and got a very cozy 'job' at the company that owns and operates the plants. The energy minister was not amused as it is customary to await the next elections before cashing in and this person moved in a potential election preamble period.
- The nuclear test facility operated by the government has once more run out of storage space for nuclear waste. In the 'good old days' they just dumped all the waste in the North Sea (it's still there), but now they have to store it. The cement vats they have been using were leaking in the past, and now they have ran out of space for storing them as the piles keep on growing.
Nuclear might be sound in theory, but humans just can't handle the responsibility in practice. And the one answer a neoliberal market economy based socio-economic system is incapable of providing is abstinence, as it is systemically antithetical to it and outside of its potential solution space.
Because if you're talking about Belgium, half of what you said is plainly wrong.
