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Young climate activist tells Greenpeace to drop ‘old-fashioned’ anti-nuclear stance
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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Buying time isn't a great argument for nuclear when it takes so much longer than wind or solar to build a plant - median time of 88 months to build a nuclear plant compared to 8-14 for solar.
People will get on board when they see the cost per kwh.
So best time to do it was 88 months ago... What the next best time to do it?
Doing solar that's several times faster to build, cheaper per kwh, and doesn't require digging radioactive bullshit out of the ground seems like a better idea, no?
The answer is actually both. Highly developed nations have huge energy demands and they're probably going to need everything.
Not even close.
Solar is only cheaper per kWh if you take it in a vacuum. You need storage for times when solar generation isn't sufficient alone... You know... the literal half of the day that the sun isn't out. Solar + battery is not cheaper last I checked and won't be for a while. Forget the "digging lithium out of the ground" since you want to bring up the next point...
We have enough in currently accessible stockpiles for a long time... like a really long time. IIRC from current stockpiles we could last until 2100... So we'd have ~70 years to plan for either digging more or figuring out breeder reactors.
No.
You do understand that you can't quickly scale up nuclear production, necessitating storage for that too, right? Wind is comparable cost to solar too, and (depending on the area), does generate through the night.
The nuclear nonsense is pushed by the fossil fuel industry for good reason - it buys them an extra decade of being able to sell their product while people fight nuclear plants in their back yards that take years longer to build - all as we run out the clock to such a degree that we're at the point of that narrate pivoting to "well it's too late now - why dump fossil fuels?"
There is a proof of concept to beam solar energy from the space. Airbus is working on it, that could be a revolution.
Nuclear is most of the time over budget and planning. That's a fact.
Over budget and over planning is bad.
...but also irrelevant - I gave the average real world delivery times.
Which isn't unusual for large construction projects. Nuclear is biggest cost problem is that each power plant is essentially a mega civil engineering project. They require cooling ponds, cooling towers, huge reactors, turbines, and radiation shields.
All of which are fairly large structures that have to be built to pretty high tolerances and have little room for construction defects which are very common in the industry. I work in construction and I can tell you that the majority of construction projects, whether they are an office building, a highway or a bridge run over budget.
There are always going to be factors outside of the control of the design team and the developer. Contractors may run out of labor, supply chains may have many years to complete some of the equipment and these issues compound the schedule which is already very complicated. Do we have an even discussed the expanded and politicized planning and safety rules and certifications that a new nuclear plant is going to need to follow.
I think the solution for micro reactors is pretty intriguing, except we need lots of power not small amounts of power. But a mass-produced reactor that rules off of an assembly line in a factory is likely to be on time and on budget because they can correct for for the problem of building things in the field. It's really hard for people to fabricate complicated machines when they're being rained on in the middle of winter during a storm.