New testing conducted at France's oldest PV system have shown that its solar modules can still provide performance values in line with what the manufacturers promised.
The great thing about nuclear power is that the real cost only comes after the power has been generated. How do you store the spent fuel cells and what do you do with the reactor when it can’t be used anymore. Just before that happens you spin the plant into its own company. When that company goes bankrupt the state needs to cover the cost, as it isn’t an option to just leave it out in the open.
Here’s all of Switzerland’s high level nuclear waste for the last 45 years. It solid pellets. You could fit the entire world’s US’ waste on a football field.
It’s not the greatest challenge mankind have faced.
Also want to point out, most of that is container, not spent fuel. The safety standards are so ridiculously high that they basically guarantee zero risk.
More people (per plant) are exposed to elevated levels of radiation due to coal power, and that’s not even including the health risk of all the other shit they release
In Germany, we’ve got a location with 47,000 cubic meters: https://www.bge.de/en/asse/
That requires some pretty tall stacking on that football field. Or I guess, you’re saying if you’d unpack it all and compress it?
Also, we really should be getting the nuclear waste out of said location, since there’s a known risk of contamination. But even that challenge is too great for us, apparently.
Mainly, because we don’t have any locations that are considered safe for permanent storage. It’s cool that Switzerland has figured it out. And that some hypothetical football field exists. But it doesn’t exist in Germany, and I’m pretty sure, Switzerland doesn’t want our nuclear waste either.
I mean, can you blame them? Why would anyone want toxic waste in their backyard? Not to mention that the search is mainly conducted by companies, which have a vested interest in not making all the issues transparent.
Having said that, I am not aware of the ‘scientists’ coming up with good suggestions either. Gorleben got hemmed and hawed around for the longest time, but its selection process was non-scientific from the start.
It’s genuinely not easy to find a location where anyone would be willing to claim that it will remain unaffected by geodynamic processes for millions of years. And we don’t have a big desert or some other unpopulated area where you could chuck it without political opposition, when it’s not 110% safe to do so.
Why would anyone want toxic waste in their backyard?
It’s not toxic, nor is it in their backyard.
Not to mention that the search is mainly conducted by companies, which have a vested interest in not making all the issues transparent.
What issues?
It’s genuinely not easy to find a location where anyone would be willing to claim that it will remain unaffected by geodynamic processes for millions of years.
I’m speaking strictly of the mass. Most the volume on those containers are likely structure to make sure there is no accidental leak, similar to Switzerland.
I also misremembered, it was all of US’ waste that could fit on a single football.
Unfortunately, there’s not much structure to these, no. It’s nuclear waste from the 60s and early 70s, when there were practically no safety laws in place yet. They just got dumped down there in steel barrels. In a salt mine, which now has water entering it. I’m hoping, the barrels got at least filled up with concrete, but I have no idea.
It’s not that difficult to store it’s just a rock. You just pop it in a sealed casket, put it underground, mark the location as do not enter and then forget about it. Hardly the greatest of economic challenges.
Anyway you’re assuming that we won’t have a way of recycling it in the future and there’s increasing evidence that we will be able to pretty soon.
That is a horribly naive underselling of what’s involved in storing nuclear waste. How do you transport it? What do you do in the event of an accident during transport? Where is it stored now? Is it somewhere we can get good transport in? How do you mark something “do not enter” for tens of thousands of years? Think of what languages existed during the Roman Empire, and then realize that we’ll have to store it for orders of magnitude longer than that.
Logistics, logistics, logistics. They are not easy for even the simplest projects.
We do have the recycling technology. It’s not a far off thing; been developed for decades. If there’s a good reason for a nuclear renaissance, it’s in using the waste we already have, and recycling it down to something that’s only dangerous for centuries, not millennia.
All of the infrastructure for transporting nuclear waste already exists for transporting the existing nuclear waste.
Realistically it’s the only viable long-term option it’s infinitely better than fossil fuels and Fusion power would be nice but doesn’t exist yet at least not outside of a lab and I don’t think even in the lab particularly efficient.
Realistically it’s the only viable long-term option
No, it isn’t. Solar+wind+storage will do fine.
Fusion power would be nice but doesn’t exist yet at least not outside of a lab and I don’t think even in the lab particularly efficient.
And the fact that you word things this way makes it pretty clear to me you have no idea what you’re talking about and haven’t actually researched anything about it.
Solar and wind are just different ways of capturing energy from a fusion reaction (Sol), but down the line after much of the energy is diffused. If we can replicate that reaction here, every cent and second spent on solar panels is the equivalent of buying watered down drinks at a bar instead of drinking straight from the still. Until we can replicate fusion, fission is still far better than any fossil fuel and more stable than water/wind. The problems are people, not the rocks that heat up
The two nearest nuclear plants to me both had to do serious cleanup after problems were discovered, it’s not just the list of big problems people worry about - especially when the nuclear lobby say things like ‘they’re safe as long as they’re run properly and no one cuts corners, but please don’t regulated them properly or they won’t be cost effective’
Rich people stand to make a monopoly if we’re all dependent on nuclear and they can’t have that monopoly with solar and wind - maybe it’s time to accept a lot of pro nuclear talking points come financially interested parties too.
especially when the nuclear lobby say things like ‘they’re safe as long as they’re run properly and no one cuts corners, but please don’t regulated them properly or they won’t be cost effective’
This this this, so much this. Yes, they can be safe. That safety comes with heavy regulation. That makes them incredibly expensive, and once you get there, it’s just not worthwhile anymore.
No, because until we solve the storage issues with electricity. You need a reliable baseline power source in the grid. Solar has 0% cost effectiveness at night.
Nuclear is 100 times more environmentally friendly than coal. Even with the long term waste storage issues.
We’ve basically solved the storage issues through about eighty different methods that have various applicability in different situations. They just need to be scaled up at this point.
It’s actually better. No traditional power plant can match demand exactly, and large amounts of power are wasted as a result. A wind+solar+storage solution can match demand very close. This means we don’t need to replace every GWh of coal and gas with a GWh of renewable. The lack of wasted power takes off a pretty big chunk.
Me too. Fuck the Greens. Joke political party in so many ways. Even if I lived under a system where First Past the Post voting wasn’t the norm, I’d be looking for parties other than the Greens.
Wow, imagine where we’d be if Oil and Gas hadn’t convinced almost everyone that solar was never going to work well.
Imagine where we’d be if people didn’t automatically think nuclear power=Homer Simpson
Is it too much to ask for people to not get their political opinions from cartoons?
Instructions unclear, politics informed by WW2 doctor Seus propaganda.
The great thing about nuclear power is that the real cost only comes after the power has been generated. How do you store the spent fuel cells and what do you do with the reactor when it can’t be used anymore. Just before that happens you spin the plant into its own company. When that company goes bankrupt the state needs to cover the cost, as it isn’t an option to just leave it out in the open.
Privatise profit communalism cost.
world’sUS’ waste on a football field.It’s not the greatest challenge mankind have faced.
Also want to point out, most of that is container, not spent fuel. The safety standards are so ridiculously high that they basically guarantee zero risk.
More people (per plant) are exposed to elevated levels of radiation due to coal power, and that’s not even including the health risk of all the other shit they release
In Germany, we’ve got a location with 47,000 cubic meters: https://www.bge.de/en/asse/
That requires some pretty tall stacking on that football field. Or I guess, you’re saying if you’d unpack it all and compress it?
Also, we really should be getting the nuclear waste out of said location, since there’s a known risk of contamination. But even that challenge is too great for us, apparently.
Mainly, because we don’t have any locations that are considered safe for permanent storage. It’s cool that Switzerland has figured it out. And that some hypothetical football field exists. But it doesn’t exist in Germany, and I’m pretty sure, Switzerland doesn’t want our nuclear waste either.
I’m gonna hazard a guess that the “consideration” was not from actual scientists but rather activist homeowner groups in every potential site.
NIMBYism and nuclear, name a more iconic duo
I mean, can you blame them? Why would anyone want toxic waste in their backyard? Not to mention that the search is mainly conducted by companies, which have a vested interest in not making all the issues transparent.
Having said that, I am not aware of the ‘scientists’ coming up with good suggestions either. Gorleben got hemmed and hawed around for the longest time, but its selection process was non-scientific from the start.
It’s genuinely not easy to find a location where anyone would be willing to claim that it will remain unaffected by geodynamic processes for millions of years. And we don’t have a big desert or some other unpopulated area where you could chuck it without political opposition, when it’s not 110% safe to do so.
Yes. I do it a lot.
It’s not toxic, nor is it in their backyard.
What issues?
Good thing we don’t need to.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Good thing we don’t need to.
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
It is toxic and they wrote “NIMBY”, which means “not in my backyard”, which is what I used figuratively here.
Depends on the location. In Asse, there is water entering into the caverns, for example.
You should inform the BGE about it. They’ll be glad to hear all their challenges are solved.
I’m speaking strictly of the mass. Most the volume on those containers are likely structure to make sure there is no accidental leak, similar to Switzerland.
I also misremembered, it was all of US’ waste that could fit on a single football.
Unfortunately, there’s not much structure to these, no. It’s nuclear waste from the 60s and early 70s, when there were practically no safety laws in place yet. They just got dumped down there in steel barrels. In a salt mine, which now has water entering it. I’m hoping, the barrels got at least filled up with concrete, but I have no idea.
It’s not that difficult to store it’s just a rock. You just pop it in a sealed casket, put it underground, mark the location as do not enter and then forget about it. Hardly the greatest of economic challenges.
Anyway you’re assuming that we won’t have a way of recycling it in the future and there’s increasing evidence that we will be able to pretty soon.
That is a horribly naive underselling of what’s involved in storing nuclear waste. How do you transport it? What do you do in the event of an accident during transport? Where is it stored now? Is it somewhere we can get good transport in? How do you mark something “do not enter” for tens of thousands of years? Think of what languages existed during the Roman Empire, and then realize that we’ll have to store it for orders of magnitude longer than that.
Logistics, logistics, logistics. They are not easy for even the simplest projects.
We do have the recycling technology. It’s not a far off thing; been developed for decades. If there’s a good reason for a nuclear renaissance, it’s in using the waste we already have, and recycling it down to something that’s only dangerous for centuries, not millennia.
All of the infrastructure for transporting nuclear waste already exists for transporting the existing nuclear waste.
Realistically it’s the only viable long-term option it’s infinitely better than fossil fuels and Fusion power would be nice but doesn’t exist yet at least not outside of a lab and I don’t think even in the lab particularly efficient.
No, it isn’t. Solar+wind+storage will do fine.
And the fact that you word things this way makes it pretty clear to me you have no idea what you’re talking about and haven’t actually researched anything about it.
Solar and wind are just different ways of capturing energy from a fusion reaction (Sol), but down the line after much of the energy is diffused. If we can replicate that reaction here, every cent and second spent on solar panels is the equivalent of buying watered down drinks at a bar instead of drinking straight from the still. Until we can replicate fusion, fission is still far better than any fossil fuel and more stable than water/wind. The problems are people, not the rocks that heat up
Not Chernobyl?
That too along with 3MI, and decades of negative propaganda from the fossil fuel industry.
The two nearest nuclear plants to me both had to do serious cleanup after problems were discovered, it’s not just the list of big problems people worry about - especially when the nuclear lobby say things like ‘they’re safe as long as they’re run properly and no one cuts corners, but please don’t regulated them properly or they won’t be cost effective’
Rich people stand to make a monopoly if we’re all dependent on nuclear and they can’t have that monopoly with solar and wind - maybe it’s time to accept a lot of pro nuclear talking points come financially interested parties too.
This this this, so much this. Yes, they can be safe. That safety comes with heavy regulation. That makes them incredibly expensive, and once you get there, it’s just not worthwhile anymore.
Imagine where we’d be if leftists embraced nuclear power instead of killing it off everywhere they could.
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You think if we take away 50 years of burning fossil fuels we’d be in “the same situation as we’re in now”?? Wtf are you smoking?
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It literally is, though I suspect the greens are the useful stooges of the fossil fuel propaganda.
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So I quoted this sentence:
And then you started talking a bunch of blah blah about renewables, which I will note is NOT in that sentence.
And you did not mention nuclear, which I will note is the entire SUBJECT of that sentence.
No, because until we solve the storage issues with electricity. You need a reliable baseline power source in the grid. Solar has 0% cost effectiveness at night. Nuclear is 100 times more environmentally friendly than coal. Even with the long term waste storage issues.
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Hydroelectric plants, batteries, generation on site, wave power, geothermal, … There are lots of ways to reduce the need of non renewable energy.
We’ve basically solved the storage issues through about eighty different methods that have various applicability in different situations. They just need to be scaled up at this point.
It’s actually better. No traditional power plant can match demand exactly, and large amounts of power are wasted as a result. A wind+solar+storage solution can match demand very close. This means we don’t need to replace every GWh of coal and gas with a GWh of renewable. The lack of wasted power takes off a pretty big chunk.
Here in Italy, the only parties that seem to be favorable to nuclear are right-wing.
And of course, they got elected and didn’t actually do anything towards it.
Never trust right-wingers to do literally anything.
If a right wing party promises to take all the money from the rich and redistribute it to the poor, they’re lying.
If a right wing party promises to invest in public transit, they’re lying.
If a right wing party promises to pass a law enshrining LGBTQ rights, they’re lying.
They’re just a bunch of fucking liars, all they exist for is to make rich people richer.
Oh, I trust them to do everything I wouldn’t like them to do.
For example, so far they’ve been following through with removing LGBTQ rights and lowering taxes for the rich, just as they promised.
I’d like to specifically blame the vocal greens and not left or center left people in general.
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Me too. Fuck the Greens. Joke political party in so many ways. Even if I lived under a system where First Past the Post voting wasn’t the norm, I’d be looking for parties other than the Greens.
Compromised political party.