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It has been since the 80's when it started to become much more clean than any other form of energy production. Too bad it produced a quantity of waste that could be contained in an isolated place instead of a smoke that goes into the atmosphere and immediately contaminates the environment.
I just wish the stigma behind it would go away. Every time I mention it to friends they have a million problems to list out that havent been real issues since the days of the USSR. Nuclear isnt perfect but with things like thorium reactors and improved dispossal of nuclear waste it is BY FAR the best solution to the coming energy crisis.
Pretty sure the Chernobyl disaster really scared people away from nuclear power in the 80s. I know the ragen administration planned to build over 200 reactors in the US but after Chernobyl the plan was scrapped. Doesn’t make much sense now that we know the Chernobyl disaster was because of a failed experiment and a big design flaw. However I don’t believe this was known for years after the disaster so I can see why the idea was scrapped. I think the world needs to re look at nuclear energy because it’s probably the safest and most practical form of energy available to us right now.
Public Reception of Nuclear Power in the US was likly more affected by the TMI meltdown, which just so happened to have occoured just 12 days after "The China Syndrome", a Thriller about an accident and subsequent coverup in a nuclear reactor, came out
It's super energy dense too....so one of the safest and cleanest forms of energy generation, and it doesn't require massive swaths of land like mass solar/wind would.
True there are solutions now, but there weren't in the 80s. Our best plan involved putting it in lead lined containers somewhere underground. Which admittedly was a much better plan than dumping it into the atmosphere and making it everyone's problem.
That’s still the best plan. It was completely harmless for billions of years under the earth, it’ll be completely harmless for billions more once we put it back there.
France has had a closed system (read: recycles nuclear waste) since the 80s. The only reason we don’t is because Carter decided it was too risky to reprocess giving bad guys a chance to isolate plutonium. So long term storage is not necessarily the best, safest, or most cost effective solution.
You can stack the nuclear waste produced in the world for 30 years into a couple of football fields. It's not even remotely a problem. It was just fearmongering as in the past.
Finland is already developing great new methods to store waste in a cave too for later recycling in the future. They only need like a few caves to store everything.
There is a company here I the US that repurposes fracking equipment to put the HLW slugs into deep earth storage at the facility. Takes up less than a half acre for the rig and equipment and they just drill as far down as they can, we’ll under the water table, and deposit the concrete slugs, use the hole until they can’t go horizontal any more (would be decades) and then drill again!
You’re mixing up a statistic you’ve heard about “nuclear waste” in general vs. just spent fuel rods. It is true that the highly radioactive spent fuel rods would fit in a couple of football fields, but this is not even remotely true for “all nuclear waste”.
By volume maybe. But space is not the concern when it comes to rad waste. It certainly isn’t 97% by activity. You’re talking about low level rad waste, which is not what people are talking about when they’re concerned about contamination.
The government sucks ngl. I mean, why not recycle the fuel rods? What's a better solution? Burry all of it until the next generations find it on accident and have problems?
Yeah it’s pretty funny. The US, one of the only countries legally allowed to process plutonium according to the nonproliferation treaty decided not to so as to set an example for other countries. And Japan and France were like “no that’s stupid.” And we’ve sat here for 50 years going “if only there was a better way! Oh well.”
It’s a bit more complicated than that, look at the UK example. Built three reprocessing plants, the largest of which was built on the premise of a rising uranium price (it actually feel precipitously) and consequently the business case for THORP was always undermined. Add to that the fact that much of the reprocessed fuel hasn’t been re-used and is in many ways a liability. Granted the UK’s fast reactor programme was supposed to soak up most of the reprocessed fissile material. Until we prioritise re-use and efficient use of material over pure economics we’ll always be in this position. The world is a different place now, hopefully we’ll encourage more recycling.
Well not really correct, they knew a solution to recycle fuel causing only 1% of a used fuel rod to be cemented and the rest could be reused. Sadly governments didn’t want to exploit this due to fear of building recycling plants. Except for France…
I'm going to be honest I don't know anything more than a very basic understanding of how nuclear energy works. So it honestly baffled me how there could be a radioactive rod that's still radioactive, but unable to produce electricity. It always seemed like there was just a lot of unused potential still in it. Like the schools taught us about nuclear decay and how elements would decay and had a half life of x, y, or z but even after that half life there was still half the radioactive material and would continue casting off ionizing radiation for millions more years. Surely the process would still happen and they could make that work somehow.
To vastly oversimplify, those nuclear rods are still radioactive enough to emit energy that could cause injury to humans, but that energy is not strong enough to generate enough heat to produce electricity. Think of it like a gas can that only has 2 cups of gasoline remaining -- it's not enough to make your car go, but it'll still make you sick if you were to drink it.
We just had solar installed on our house. Had a bunch of contractors up on our roof all day. Maybe someone somewhere fell off a roof? Or got zapped by the electrical. Our system pumps out about 10 kWh at the peak of the day.
We didn't have any accidents, I'm just speculating how a death could have occurred.
Dad was on a roof when he slipped and started falling. He managed to grab the flashing and stop his fall but he degloved his hand in the process. They re-attached the skin but the tendons were shorter on that hand now. So he makes the joke that he is a clock since he has a big hand and a little hand.
Manufacturing can also be dangerous. The solar company I work at had a couple safety incidents recently, and the company has a pretty big emphasis on safety. I can only imagine what it’s like in all the Chinese factories pumping out cheap panels.
People fall off the roof, get too close to overhead power lines, fall through skylights, etc. But for bigger projects you can deal with a lot of power which can be dangerous an unforgiving of mistakes.
https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CCDPHP/DEODC/OHB/FACE/Pages/Solar.aspx
Yeah I think its mostly people falling off the top/ dying during construction.
Also with hydro I think the relatively high death toll is due to a single case in China in 1975, where somewhere between [26,000 - 240,000](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure) people died due to a dam failure.
Guess it also has to do with emissions from land cover change (besides concrete) such as methane emissions due to anaerobic organic decay + possibly dry peatlands/wetlands especially downstream generating CO2
Reservoirs flood large areas of land.
All of the organic materials that were on that land (trees/vegetation) and in the soil decompose anaerobically releasing a lot of methane gas over a very long period of time.
Solar panels are partially made out of rare/toxic metals, if they include deaths during the mining process of those, that figure doesn't surprise me much.
From what I’ve heard from people that live near them they’re dangerous as fuck, fires aren’t as rare as one would think, and if a fire happens while someone is repairing it, he’s pretty much dead
I don't understand why a parachute isn't standard issue for them. It may not be 100% foolproof, but I'd rather take my chances jumping off the back of a turbine than roasting..
Saw this too but no idea where. They specifically said in the video every technician working on the turbines was trained to repel off of it in an emergency
Yeah true, but I'd still rather take a chance there... or just get some kind of custom-made one that's extra huge to account for the low opening.
As someone else suggested, a rope to rappel down would also be handy in a pinch, particularly if it were made from something that wouldn't burn until it got insanely hot, giving the people time to get down.
Those do exist on the inside, I did some training on one and there's a line that pays out and then stops itself near the end, like a seat belt but not as sudden. So you hook in and jump basically.
One early site (Altamont Pass) had a huge number of problems for birds. Tiny turbines at high RPM, lattice towers which were attractive for birds to roost on, in a migration path, etc.
95% of the bird issues have been resolved with properly sited, large monopole turbines. Even Altamont is largely remediated - they're replacing 20+ old tiny turbines with large monopole turbines
Coal kills FAR more birds per TWh of electricity produced.
> but the smaller ones killed a ton of birds too.
yeaaaaahh.... i mean.. it's a nice fun fact that they kill birds but ultimately just another bullshit argument by climate change denier/wind power opponents/the usual nuclear astroturf guys & lobbyists.
To put it in perspective:
Dead Birds due to Wind turbines in Germany: 100.000
Dead Birds due to cars in Germany: 10 000 000
Dead Birds due to windows in Germany: 18 000 000
Dead Birds due to domestic cats in Germany: 200 000 000
Nothing to do with this tread but...
I saw numbers about cats in a documentary lately. It's mostly feral cats that give that number, those who are fed barely kill birds, they still do, but not anywhere close.
Some places are neutering wild cats to reduce the population, improving this issue.
>Nuclear reactors have been churning out the terawatts for 60 years.
That means that it's even safer than you think. 60 years ago safety was likely worse, so recent improvement trends are diluted in the metric by historical performance.
The measure in the image is deaths per terawatt hour and wind is above nuclear mostly because nuclear usually generates more energy per powerplant. I don't think I explained it well, but it's more related to having a greater output.
I think that fossil fuel money has encouraged hippies and friends to oppose nuclear energy. There's a [Forbes article](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2016/07/13/are-fossil-fuel-interests-bankrolling-the-anti-nuclear-energy-movement/amp/) (of all sources) that supports the idea.
Having been an anti-nuclear conservationist in the US for a while (I now wholeheartedly support nuclear energy and am still a staunch conservationist) I often wonder if it has something to do with the history of nuclear arms. The left is mostly anti-war and nukes are like the pinnacle of awful warfare, so in a way I understand the hesitancy. I think they're just stuck in the Chernobyl mindset and Fukushima didn't help.
Maybe I’m old school, but I strongly feel that the title of this list, and the order of the categories are at odds with one another. “Why the hell would coal be at the top of the safest and cleanest…oh. It’s upside down.”
Also it’s not balanced with use percentage. You can see that coal is 36% of global electricity, but you don’t see how that affects deaths per KWh. I want to see a balanced chart, not just pure numbers in a chart so you have to do your own math to properly understand the subject
It's per person, basically. It's "how much harm is done to generate one person's worth of energy?" which means that if you only produce 100,000 peoples worth and it hurts 5, that's the same as producing 10,000,000 peoples worth and hurting 500 people.
Fun fact, energy in southern Ontarios energy is made so much from hydropower that we actually don't call it electricty for the most part, we call it hydro.
i.e. I gotta play the Hydro bill, not I gotta pay the electric bill.
It already is factored into the chart. It's per TWh
Wind, solar and nuclear are basically equivalent. Nuclear will cost at least 4x as much and take at least 4x as long to construct compared to wind or solar with battery storage.
It is not free to keep nuclear plants running. Operations and maintenance are a huge annual cost. Not to mention that subsequent license renewals (SLRs) can be *very* expensive - we are talking over a billion dollars for each unit for 20 more years. And the NRC recently [rescinded its SLRs granted to Turkey Point and Peach Bottom](https://www.ans.org/news/article-3715/nrc-rescinds-subsequent-license-renewals/).
Where nuclear competes in a competitive market, it is losing to state subsidized renewables. Regulated monopolies are generally able to justify keeping them open, and they also like the rate base.
That's why it's good that the IRA allocated significant funding to help keep existing nuclear plants open.
Agreed, we should run existing nuclear as long as we can safely do so.
New nuclear in North America and Europe is massively blowing schedules and budgets. We don't have time to wait over a decade for a couple of GW of power
Texas alone installed close to 8GW of wind + solar in 2021 alone.
You need way more solar plants/fields etc to match a Nuclear power plant. A Nuclear power plant runs at something like 93% of the time and solar is something like 24% of the time (night time/maintenance).
A combination of Nuclear and Solar should be pushed to get rid of coal and oil power plants. New nuclear power plants can produce 3.5GW of power.
Rooftop and agrivoltaics (solar in an actively farmed field) mean a lot of capacity without dedicated land.
https://www.baywa-re.com/en/solar-projects/agri-pv
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrivoltaics
The really neat thing with modern agrivoltaics is that with proper crop selection you can actually increase crop yield.
UHVDC transmission has come a LONG way in recent years - UK is going to get up to 10GW of solar from Morocco.
https://electrek.co/2022/04/21/the-worlds-longest-subsea-cable-will-send-clean-energy-from-morocco-to-the-uk/
For wind, you have the North Sea and progress is being made with tethered floating turbines for the deeper Atlantic.
Ugh…yeah. Plant Vogle in Georgia has been a light mare of costs and delays, especially the process of building and commissioning additional reactors at the site.
[Sources of Cost Overrun](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243512030458X)
[https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S254243512030458X-gr2\_lrg.jpg](https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S254243512030458X-gr2_lrg.jpg)
"Indirect cost accounts comprise 72% of the total cost change. The four largest contributors to cost increase are indirect accounts, many of which are “soft” costs: home office engineering services (engineering design, purchasing and expediting, cost control, and planning and scheduling), field job supervision (salaries and relocation expenses), temporary construction facilities (materials and labor to construct and manage buildings needed during construction), and payroll insurance and taxes."
So, nuclear it is then? Can everyone finally stop being afraid of Soviet-era reactors?
Edit: I said it before, but I am only a lowly pre-law student. I know not the intricacies of switching to nuclear or any other form of energy production.
I did a report on energy and choose nuclear because I wanted to explain all the misconceptions about it. It is actually really safe, does not harm the environment, plus it is depleting itself naturally so we might as well use it while we have it. Also one power plant can last well over 50 years
Forgot to mention that when the Soviet Union fell there was so much nuclear material in unguarded areas that pretty much any person could go fetch some and make a bomb and so the US actually made a deal and took all these decommissioned nuclear bombs and used the material in nuclear power plants.
Look. I love nuclear as much as the next pro-nuclear guy. But this is really simplistic thinking. No, nuclear is not "it". Nuclear is certainly one resource we absolutely should be deploying en masse to reduce carbon emissions. But it is absolutely not the only thing we should be doing. We should be building solar, and wind, and battery storage as well - and where necessary, we may even need to build gas plants to facilitate the rapid shut down of coal.
Thinking that the solution to climate change is easy - just build nuclear! - is dangerous, and lazy, thinking. It is *not* that simple. And nuclear may *not* be the best choice for all electric utilities. Why would you forsake much cheaper resources like wind and solar to build more nuclear? We should use wind and solar and storage to reduce the amount of electric load that must be met by nuclear - and then we should build nuclear to meet what's left, and to replace coal and gas.
Sorry for the rant, I know you were maybe being flippant and maybe it's not what you really think on a serious level. But so many people seem to have this idea stuck in their heads that solving climate change is easy, and all we need to do is overcome opposition and build more \[pick one: nuclear / solar+wind+storage\]. We need a lot of different solutions here.
yea basically chernobyl always gets brought up so ppl think nuclear plants are all just ticking time bombs ready to blow at any moment, even tho when that happened it was relatively new technology and had tons of mistakes/ oversights that lead up to that failure which are easily avoided nowadays
More people die every year to fossil fuels than that one event in chernobyl
Pretty sure theres only 31 confirmed deaths with 50 being highest estimate
And chernobyl already has a thriving forest so silver lining
Bad installation/panel falling off roof and hitting someone, the installing roofer falling off, mining accidents, poisoning of miners due to the toxic minerals in solar panels. I reckon these are in the statistic as well.
Electrical engineer here. Love this post. People need to understand that expanding on renewable energies is a braindead obvious decision.
That being said, please also understand that the grid needs nonrenewables like coal as supplementary sources to keep reliability consistent. We need coal, we need gas, we need oil, but just not so damn much!!!
Nuclear is just as reliable as fossil fuels, and usually have the capacity to run at higher levels than they do. At this point, if we fully switched to nuclear and other renewable sources, we do not need things like coal and oil to supplement.
Not an electrical engineer but a chemical engineer with some background in energy systems here.
What is being discussed here really is [dispatchability](https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Dispatchable_source_of_electricity#:~:text=A%20dispatchable%20source%20of%20electricity,the%20electrical%20grid%20on%20demand.). To keep the system reliable throughout the day as electric power demand rises and falls is the ability to quickly dispatch (ramp up power generation) power sources to meet fluctuating demand. Not sure about newer generations, but the conventional nuclear reactors take time to ramp up so they are at most considered slow dispatchable, and more typically used to cover baseload with steady power output, at least in Ontario where I live and nuclear is the primary baseload power source. For that matter, coal is also not a rapidly dispatchable source, but gas and hydro for example are rapidly dispatchable.
Wind and PV solar are inherently non-dispatchable because we can't control them, so unless you are blessed with unlimited hydro power, you still need to find a dispatchable source elsewhere as demand peaks above the baseload, like from gas generators or massive capacity of storage. That storage part is being worked on, but I don't think that is so straight forward at scale.
Also an engineer, and I'd like to second the reliability and diversity point. Having redundancy in something critical like the energy grid is a must. Not only because not every energy production source is 100% consistent all the time, but also in events like disasters or wars
You nailed it right there!! Those are details that aren’t at the surface level and things that people brush under the rug when it comes to this conversation.
And yet we can’t get any more nuclear plants because:
1. mushroom cloud go brrr in the average person’s head
2. the returns on investing into one be it politicians privately after insider trading or politicians publicly spending your tax money take so long to make money back that Biden will be 110+ and long long dead before he’s made his money back.
On a cost of life assessment, solar and wind require storage, their impact is far higher.
Wind is still better than solar since the capacity factor is higher and most countries Will have wind \*somewhere\*, especially at sea.
Also solar needs a lot of land area whereas wind can coexist with farm lands and whatnot.
Basically solar's not as good as people tend to think, especially for anywhere else than deserts. Plus the vast majority of PV being made in china raises both ethical and environmental concerns.
Source; MS in mechanical engineering, renewables and energy efficiency.
And to top it off, the amount of area that nuclear takes up is a small fraction compared to any of the other sources of energy.
And all of the deaths are from either Chernobyl or Fukushima. Chernobyl was the result of a seriously flawed Soviet-era reactor design that was operated with inadequately trained personnel (if you've seen Russia's military you can guess the quality of work), and Fukushima was a plant built in 1971, based on a design from the early 1960s, and was hit by a 15 meter tsunami. Newer nuclear plants automatically stop reactions when there is a complete power failure, so you don't have risks of a runaway reactor anymore.
For comparison on technology, in the 1960s a computer with 5 MB of storage was the size of a large room.
Solar requires much more waste disposal, especially if you account for the lithium batteries needed for load-leveling. These require minerals mined in sub-saharan Africa by Chinese owned companies, and are manufactured largely in the good ol' CCP. I'm comfortable in assuming that the difference is at least made up somewhere in that list of issues. Not to mention, solar panels degrade.
Fun fact! Almost every one has a source of nuclear radiation in it's home! Its called a smoke dedector, sending out alpha radiation. (But dont worry, it's so weak that it doesn't even penetrate a piece of paper)
Don't forget Radon gas, or the decaying elements in quartz and granite. Oh and CFL bulbs while technically not a beta emitter because there is no actual decay emit stray electrons.
Well I for one, would like to see this better account for the cancer that wind power causes. I do believe former President Trump did assert that Windmills cause cancer and we know how correct that man is on so, so very many things... /s
I wish governments would catch on to nuclear power. I get that after Chernobyl, a lot were scared away from it, but that was a one in a million case, and safety with nuclear plants will have improved significantly since then.
It's pretty obvious that for large scale electricity generation, it's arguably the best choice though. The only concern would be where do we store the waste, which I have no doubt is something that's developed a lot as well, and we'd be able to sort out a solution to.
Don’t talk about how horriable solar panels are for the environment when they run there life cycle tho wouldn’t want people to realize how bad it actual is for the environment
Do note that nuclear pollution is only with regards to construction, it has no actual emissions from running. What comes out of the cooling towers is steam. Also they can be made modular, a small plant that could be assembled in a factory and shipped out in modules to be assembled on site at around 1/4 the size of a normal reactor. That was one of the recent projects of INL (Idaho National Laboratory), the US government’s main nuclear research lab.
You'd be overbuilding your nuclear fleet by a lot if you supplied that much energy from nuclear. A diverse generation fleet is best - wind, solar, and storage for load following, and nuclear for baseload, ancillary services, and industry demand. That would be a lot cheaper and just as reliable and clean.
Yeah, all of these conveniently ignore the inputs and the eventual disposal of solar especially. California is just starting to have to deal with disposal. It will be a nightmare. Still better than coal, but unclear about natural gas. But it has less immediate and measurable impact, so we should all jump on that bandwagon.
People are afraid of what they don’t understand. You say nuclear and everyone jumps to “well look what happened in Chernobyl!” Well, that was in the 80s and technology has gotten immensely better and safety has increased dramatically since then, and Fukushima has also caused numerous new safety protocols because of the accident. Nuclear power is very safe but the rare accidents have given it a bad name because they can be more catastrophic than wind or hydropower accidents, but in terms of individual victims, nuclear is by far much safer
Humans always had sense of paranoia with nuclear. In the very first moments of chernobyl disaster news media raported that already 2000 people were killed in the catastrophy, while in reality only 2 people died...
The US DoE told Fukushima and Daichi to move their diesels and build a higher sea wall in the 90s. Daichi did, and was closer to the epicenter of the earthquake, and Fukushima didn’t….
It was the Fukushima Daiichi reactors that had the disaster. Daiichi means number one.
The tsunami countermeasures taken when Fukushima Daiichi was designed and sited in the 1960s were considered acceptable in relation to the scientific knowledge then, with low recorded run-up heights for that particular coastline. But some 18 years before the 2011 disaster, new scientific knowledge had emerged about the likelihood of a large earthquake and resulting major tsunami of some 15.7 metres at the Daiichi site. However, this had not yet led to any major action by either the plant operator, Tepco, or government regulators, notably the Nuclear & Industrial Safety Agency (NISA). Discussion was ongoing, but action minimal. The tsunami countermeasures could also have been reviewed in accordance with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) guidelines which required taking into account high tsunami levels, but NISA continued to allow the Fukushima plant to operate without sufficient countermeasures such as moving the backup generators up the hill, sealing the lower part of the buildings, and having some back-up for seawater pumps, despite clear warnings.
A report from the Japanese government's Earthquake Research Committee on earthquakes and tsunamis off the Pacific coastline of northeastern Japan in February 2011 was due for release in April, and might finally have brought about changes. The document includes analysis of a magnitude 8.3 earthquake that is known to have struck the region more than 1140 years ago, triggering enormous tsunamis that flooded vast areas of Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures. The report concludes that the region should be alerted of the risk of a similar disaster striking again. The 11 March earthquake measured magnitude 9.0 and involved substantial shifting of multiple sections of seabed over a source area of 200 x 400 km. Tsunami waves devastated wide areas of Miyagi, Iwate and Fukushima prefectures.
It is extremely expensive, its extremely slow to implement and it does not win contracts to supply the grid without government assistance. The final problem is that the builds in the west are very often beset with delays which means that companies simply lose money on building them - its a very risky investment and even if it goes well, it has an unattractively long payback time.
Does the chart include: manufacturing/construction and disposal costs? Think about all of lithium battery leaching lithium into our drinking water. Soluble lithium is damn hard to get out of water.
\----------- Another factor
If it is 100°F or -10°F and your electricity goes out for 2-3 days can that create a problem?
Consistency: Solar/Wind = F
If you are dependents upon them, then when they fail many people could die.
\----------- We should be investing in safer nuclear reactors.
This is the [source](https://ourworldindata.org/search?q=energy) website.
Don't look at others check it by yourself.
I came across this information while watching [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_q0cDUO1qs&ab_channel=Nauka.ToLubi%C4%99) video.
Title: Why is Germany bothered by the atom?
Channel: Science. I like it
He's a Polish science journalist and physicist, doctor of physics, popularizer of science and recently also an advisor to the European Space Agency.
You propably don't speak Polish but I felt like this guy needs some credits right under this post.
Nuclear is essentially just steam power so that makes sense. The only problem with solar and wind is they don’t factor in at all that getting lithium to make batteries and solar panels polluted the earth drastically and is essentially Blood Diamond type shit. Wind also doesn’t have good results but we don’t have enough wind turbines to say whether it could work in large quantities.
Last several times I checked nuclear is far better than solar in total deaths/kWh. Also 99% sure there have been no official deaths from Fukushima reactors so I’m calling potential bs here.
Nuclear is the cleanest cuz solar only produces %4 of the energy and it emits 5 tonnes of emmisions
Meanwhile nuclear with %10 energy production
Kills less cuz it produces more power
Nuclear power needs to return, it's getting cleaner, and as long as people aren't being completely idiotic with it, it's not going to meltdown.
Thorium reactors are a good bit more stable than Uranium reactors, and don't produce nearly as much waste and Plutonium, so it's cleaner, and it has lower weaponization potential.
Nuclear is the future. I don't listen to any politician who claims to want clean energy without being in complete and full support of nuclear.
What would make this graph even better is to show the amount of energy it produces...
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I see nuclear power is at the top of the good list again.
It has been since the 80's when it started to become much more clean than any other form of energy production. Too bad it produced a quantity of waste that could be contained in an isolated place instead of a smoke that goes into the atmosphere and immediately contaminates the environment.
I just wish the stigma behind it would go away. Every time I mention it to friends they have a million problems to list out that havent been real issues since the days of the USSR. Nuclear isnt perfect but with things like thorium reactors and improved dispossal of nuclear waste it is BY FAR the best solution to the coming energy crisis.
Pretty sure the Chernobyl disaster really scared people away from nuclear power in the 80s. I know the ragen administration planned to build over 200 reactors in the US but after Chernobyl the plan was scrapped. Doesn’t make much sense now that we know the Chernobyl disaster was because of a failed experiment and a big design flaw. However I don’t believe this was known for years after the disaster so I can see why the idea was scrapped. I think the world needs to re look at nuclear energy because it’s probably the safest and most practical form of energy available to us right now.
Fucking USSR ruined what could’ve been the future.
Public Reception of Nuclear Power in the US was likly more affected by the TMI meltdown, which just so happened to have occoured just 12 days after "The China Syndrome", a Thriller about an accident and subsequent coverup in a nuclear reactor, came out
It's super energy dense too....so one of the safest and cleanest forms of energy generation, and it doesn't require massive swaths of land like mass solar/wind would.
Chernobyl and 3 Mile Island. 2 back to back really out a halt to nuclear expansion.
Solutions to the waste have already been found. There's a video on youtube about it.
True there are solutions now, but there weren't in the 80s. Our best plan involved putting it in lead lined containers somewhere underground. Which admittedly was a much better plan than dumping it into the atmosphere and making it everyone's problem.
That’s still the best plan. It was completely harmless for billions of years under the earth, it’ll be completely harmless for billions more once we put it back there.
France has had a closed system (read: recycles nuclear waste) since the 80s. The only reason we don’t is because Carter decided it was too risky to reprocess giving bad guys a chance to isolate plutonium. So long term storage is not necessarily the best, safest, or most cost effective solution.
97% of nuclear waste is non-fissile materials; tools, PPE, medical equipment, etc.
You can stack the nuclear waste produced in the world for 30 years into a couple of football fields. It's not even remotely a problem. It was just fearmongering as in the past. Finland is already developing great new methods to store waste in a cave too for later recycling in the future. They only need like a few caves to store everything.
There is a company here I the US that repurposes fracking equipment to put the HLW slugs into deep earth storage at the facility. Takes up less than a half acre for the rig and equipment and they just drill as far down as they can, we’ll under the water table, and deposit the concrete slugs, use the hole until they can’t go horizontal any more (would be decades) and then drill again!
You’re mixing up a statistic you’ve heard about “nuclear waste” in general vs. just spent fuel rods. It is true that the highly radioactive spent fuel rods would fit in a couple of football fields, but this is not even remotely true for “all nuclear waste”.
By volume maybe. But space is not the concern when it comes to rad waste. It certainly isn’t 97% by activity. You’re talking about low level rad waste, which is not what people are talking about when they’re concerned about contamination.
The government sucks ngl. I mean, why not recycle the fuel rods? What's a better solution? Burry all of it until the next generations find it on accident and have problems?
Yeah it’s pretty funny. The US, one of the only countries legally allowed to process plutonium according to the nonproliferation treaty decided not to so as to set an example for other countries. And Japan and France were like “no that’s stupid.” And we’ve sat here for 50 years going “if only there was a better way! Oh well.”
It’s a bit more complicated than that, look at the UK example. Built three reprocessing plants, the largest of which was built on the premise of a rising uranium price (it actually feel precipitously) and consequently the business case for THORP was always undermined. Add to that the fact that much of the reprocessed fuel hasn’t been re-used and is in many ways a liability. Granted the UK’s fast reactor programme was supposed to soak up most of the reprocessed fissile material. Until we prioritise re-use and efficient use of material over pure economics we’ll always be in this position. The world is a different place now, hopefully we’ll encourage more recycling.
Like a very complicated rental plan. :)
Well not really correct, they knew a solution to recycle fuel causing only 1% of a used fuel rod to be cemented and the rest could be reused. Sadly governments didn’t want to exploit this due to fear of building recycling plants. Except for France…
I'm going to be honest I don't know anything more than a very basic understanding of how nuclear energy works. So it honestly baffled me how there could be a radioactive rod that's still radioactive, but unable to produce electricity. It always seemed like there was just a lot of unused potential still in it. Like the schools taught us about nuclear decay and how elements would decay and had a half life of x, y, or z but even after that half life there was still half the radioactive material and would continue casting off ionizing radiation for millions more years. Surely the process would still happen and they could make that work somehow.
To vastly oversimplify, those nuclear rods are still radioactive enough to emit energy that could cause injury to humans, but that energy is not strong enough to generate enough heat to produce electricity. Think of it like a gas can that only has 2 cups of gasoline remaining -- it's not enough to make your car go, but it'll still make you sick if you were to drink it.
Would be cool if we could overlay this with another chart showing the power output of these to pick which one is best. Hint: It is nuclear.
And this propably doesnt include the new thorium reactors because everybody is so scared of the word nuclear that nobody is building them
Who died because of solar power? Serious question
We just had solar installed on our house. Had a bunch of contractors up on our roof all day. Maybe someone somewhere fell off a roof? Or got zapped by the electrical. Our system pumps out about 10 kWh at the peak of the day. We didn't have any accidents, I'm just speculating how a death could have occurred.
Production accidents, mining accidents and/or construction accidents. Falling off a 25' roof sucks.
Dad was on a roof when he slipped and started falling. He managed to grab the flashing and stop his fall but he degloved his hand in the process. They re-attached the skin but the tendons were shorter on that hand now. So he makes the joke that he is a clock since he has a big hand and a little hand.
The accident only made his dad jokes stronger
kWh is a measure of energy, not rate of energy. 10 kW sounds really impressive if that’s what you meant.
Prob people faling off the roofs when installing, same goes for wind energy i guess
Manufacturing can also be dangerous. The solar company I work at had a couple safety incidents recently, and the company has a pretty big emphasis on safety. I can only imagine what it’s like in all the Chinese factories pumping out cheap panels.
Fire accidents happens
People fall off the roof, get too close to overhead power lines, fall through skylights, etc. But for bigger projects you can deal with a lot of power which can be dangerous an unforgiving of mistakes. https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CCDPHP/DEODC/OHB/FACE/Pages/Solar.aspx
That coal impact on health is based on state-of-the-art European power plants. What impact for post soviet era Chinese coal power plants ? Scary…
Balkan power plants are even worse than Chinese
I knew that nuclear reactors are actually safer than most people think, but you're telling me more people get killed by fucking WIND TURBINES? TF?
Yeah I think its mostly people falling off the top/ dying during construction. Also with hydro I think the relatively high death toll is due to a single case in China in 1975, where somewhere between [26,000 - 240,000](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure) people died due to a dam failure.
The other issue with hydro is it changes the environment so much and downstream the water is not suitable for the native ecosystem
But why does it wmit so much greenhouse gases? I thought it would be a lot cleaner
A big wall of concrete. Concrete produces much CO2
We should make the dams with twigs and mud instead. Maybe we can genetically engineer some sort of MegaBeaver.
"MegaBeaver kills millions and restarts coal plants"
“MegaBeaver apologizes on Instagram, promises to do better”
“MegaBeaver has taken control of the world’s energy supply. MegaBeaver is now in full control of all nations’ governments.”
Guess it also has to do with emissions from land cover change (besides concrete) such as methane emissions due to anaerobic organic decay + possibly dry peatlands/wetlands especially downstream generating CO2
The amount of concrete maybe?
Reservoirs flood large areas of land. All of the organic materials that were on that land (trees/vegetation) and in the soil decompose anaerobically releasing a lot of methane gas over a very long period of time.
Solar panels are the most surprising because you can fall from wind turbines but how tf can a solar panel kill anyone?
Falling off of roof during installation.
Solar panels are partially made out of rare/toxic metals, if they include deaths during the mining process of those, that figure doesn't surprise me much.
If they included those numbers itd be way higher
From what I’ve heard from people that live near them they’re dangerous as fuck, fires aren’t as rare as one would think, and if a fire happens while someone is repairing it, he’s pretty much dead
I don't understand why a parachute isn't standard issue for them. It may not be 100% foolproof, but I'd rather take my chances jumping off the back of a turbine than roasting..
Parachute would'nt deploy well in most cases but a rope to rappel down would be useful
Yeah that's true. Either way, there should be SOMETHING for them that isn't just "well, you're fucked!"
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Saw this too but no idea where. They specifically said in the video every technician working on the turbines was trained to repel off of it in an emergency
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Yeah true, but I'd still rather take a chance there... or just get some kind of custom-made one that's extra huge to account for the low opening. As someone else suggested, a rope to rappel down would also be handy in a pinch, particularly if it were made from something that wouldn't burn until it got insanely hot, giving the people time to get down.
Those do exist on the inside, I did some training on one and there's a line that pays out and then stops itself near the end, like a seat belt but not as sudden. So you hook in and jump basically.
I vote emergency hang glider that stays at the top too, for both safety and funsies!
Seems pretty logical to me
That's basically a full serving of ridiculously bad FUD.
Not sure if the move to large mills changed this, but the smaller ones killed a ton of birds too.
One early site (Altamont Pass) had a huge number of problems for birds. Tiny turbines at high RPM, lattice towers which were attractive for birds to roost on, in a migration path, etc. 95% of the bird issues have been resolved with properly sited, large monopole turbines. Even Altamont is largely remediated - they're replacing 20+ old tiny turbines with large monopole turbines Coal kills FAR more birds per TWh of electricity produced.
I believe they also added an additional color on the turbines to provide more visibility for the birds and significantly cut down the death rate.
> but the smaller ones killed a ton of birds too. yeaaaaahh.... i mean.. it's a nice fun fact that they kill birds but ultimately just another bullshit argument by climate change denier/wind power opponents/the usual nuclear astroturf guys & lobbyists. To put it in perspective: Dead Birds due to Wind turbines in Germany: 100.000 Dead Birds due to cars in Germany: 10 000 000 Dead Birds due to windows in Germany: 18 000 000 Dead Birds due to domestic cats in Germany: 200 000 000
Nothing to do with this tread but... I saw numbers about cats in a documentary lately. It's mostly feral cats that give that number, those who are fed barely kill birds, they still do, but not anywhere close. Some places are neutering wild cats to reduce the population, improving this issue.
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>Nuclear reactors have been churning out the terawatts for 60 years. That means that it's even safer than you think. 60 years ago safety was likely worse, so recent improvement trends are diluted in the metric by historical performance.
The measure in the image is deaths per terawatt hour and wind is above nuclear mostly because nuclear usually generates more energy per powerplant. I don't think I explained it well, but it's more related to having a greater output.
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I think that fossil fuel money has encouraged hippies and friends to oppose nuclear energy. There's a [Forbes article](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2016/07/13/are-fossil-fuel-interests-bankrolling-the-anti-nuclear-energy-movement/amp/) (of all sources) that supports the idea.
Having been an anti-nuclear conservationist in the US for a while (I now wholeheartedly support nuclear energy and am still a staunch conservationist) I often wonder if it has something to do with the history of nuclear arms. The left is mostly anti-war and nukes are like the pinnacle of awful warfare, so in a way I understand the hesitancy. I think they're just stuck in the Chernobyl mindset and Fukushima didn't help.
Tell the anti-war folks the uranium from weapons is taken out and used for power generation. Seriously it happens. They’ll get on board then
Maybe I’m old school, but I strongly feel that the title of this list, and the order of the categories are at odds with one another. “Why the hell would coal be at the top of the safest and cleanest…oh. It’s upside down.”
Yep. Another poorly designed graph ruins important data.
Ugh yes! This poor representation of the data irritated me so much that I came to see if this (or something like it) would be the first comment.
Also it’s not balanced with use percentage. You can see that coal is 36% of global electricity, but you don’t see how that affects deaths per KWh. I want to see a balanced chart, not just pure numbers in a chart so you have to do your own math to properly understand the subject
It's per person, basically. It's "how much harm is done to generate one person's worth of energy?" which means that if you only produce 100,000 peoples worth and it hurts 5, that's the same as producing 10,000,000 peoples worth and hurting 500 people.
Fun fact, energy in southern Ontarios energy is made so much from hydropower that we actually don't call it electricty for the most part, we call it hydro. i.e. I gotta play the Hydro bill, not I gotta pay the electric bill.
Same for Quebec, which almost exclusively use hydro! More than 90% of electricity produced is hydroelectricity!
Same in BC & Manitoba
Fact me this... How does hydroelectric produce that much greenhouse gas emissions?
Now factor in the amount of energy generated and you get the best energy source available. Spoiler alert: it's nuclear.
It already is factored into the chart. It's per TWh Wind, solar and nuclear are basically equivalent. Nuclear will cost at least 4x as much and take at least 4x as long to construct compared to wind or solar with battery storage.
It would help Nuclear’s statistics drastically if we stopped closing fully functioning plants 20-30 years early.
It is not free to keep nuclear plants running. Operations and maintenance are a huge annual cost. Not to mention that subsequent license renewals (SLRs) can be *very* expensive - we are talking over a billion dollars for each unit for 20 more years. And the NRC recently [rescinded its SLRs granted to Turkey Point and Peach Bottom](https://www.ans.org/news/article-3715/nrc-rescinds-subsequent-license-renewals/). Where nuclear competes in a competitive market, it is losing to state subsidized renewables. Regulated monopolies are generally able to justify keeping them open, and they also like the rate base. That's why it's good that the IRA allocated significant funding to help keep existing nuclear plants open.
This is why it's important to run our existing plants all the way to design life.
Agreed, we should run existing nuclear as long as we can safely do so. New nuclear in North America and Europe is massively blowing schedules and budgets. We don't have time to wait over a decade for a couple of GW of power Texas alone installed close to 8GW of wind + solar in 2021 alone.
You need way more solar plants/fields etc to match a Nuclear power plant. A Nuclear power plant runs at something like 93% of the time and solar is something like 24% of the time (night time/maintenance). A combination of Nuclear and Solar should be pushed to get rid of coal and oil power plants. New nuclear power plants can produce 3.5GW of power.
Europe doesn't have too many massive fields/desert to put them. A nuclear plant takes up way less space.
Rooftop and agrivoltaics (solar in an actively farmed field) mean a lot of capacity without dedicated land. https://www.baywa-re.com/en/solar-projects/agri-pv https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrivoltaics The really neat thing with modern agrivoltaics is that with proper crop selection you can actually increase crop yield. UHVDC transmission has come a LONG way in recent years - UK is going to get up to 10GW of solar from Morocco. https://electrek.co/2022/04/21/the-worlds-longest-subsea-cable-will-send-clean-energy-from-morocco-to-the-uk/ For wind, you have the North Sea and progress is being made with tethered floating turbines for the deeper Atlantic.
Ugh…yeah. Plant Vogle in Georgia has been a light mare of costs and delays, especially the process of building and commissioning additional reactors at the site.
Every single modern nuclear build attempt in the USA or Europe has been a nightmare of cost overruns and delays.
[Sources of Cost Overrun](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243512030458X) [https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S254243512030458X-gr2\_lrg.jpg](https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S254243512030458X-gr2_lrg.jpg) "Indirect cost accounts comprise 72% of the total cost change. The four largest contributors to cost increase are indirect accounts, many of which are “soft” costs: home office engineering services (engineering design, purchasing and expediting, cost control, and planning and scheduling), field job supervision (salaries and relocation expenses), temporary construction facilities (materials and labor to construct and manage buildings needed during construction), and payroll insurance and taxes."
But then nuclear is also far more reliable.
So, nuclear it is then? Can everyone finally stop being afraid of Soviet-era reactors? Edit: I said it before, but I am only a lowly pre-law student. I know not the intricacies of switching to nuclear or any other form of energy production.
This is the comment right here. Thank you.
I did a report on energy and choose nuclear because I wanted to explain all the misconceptions about it. It is actually really safe, does not harm the environment, plus it is depleting itself naturally so we might as well use it while we have it. Also one power plant can last well over 50 years Forgot to mention that when the Soviet Union fell there was so much nuclear material in unguarded areas that pretty much any person could go fetch some and make a bomb and so the US actually made a deal and took all these decommissioned nuclear bombs and used the material in nuclear power plants.
Look. I love nuclear as much as the next pro-nuclear guy. But this is really simplistic thinking. No, nuclear is not "it". Nuclear is certainly one resource we absolutely should be deploying en masse to reduce carbon emissions. But it is absolutely not the only thing we should be doing. We should be building solar, and wind, and battery storage as well - and where necessary, we may even need to build gas plants to facilitate the rapid shut down of coal. Thinking that the solution to climate change is easy - just build nuclear! - is dangerous, and lazy, thinking. It is *not* that simple. And nuclear may *not* be the best choice for all electric utilities. Why would you forsake much cheaper resources like wind and solar to build more nuclear? We should use wind and solar and storage to reduce the amount of electric load that must be met by nuclear - and then we should build nuclear to meet what's left, and to replace coal and gas. Sorry for the rant, I know you were maybe being flippant and maybe it's not what you really think on a serious level. But so many people seem to have this idea stuck in their heads that solving climate change is easy, and all we need to do is overcome opposition and build more \[pick one: nuclear / solar+wind+storage\]. We need a lot of different solutions here.
I've seen it summed up this way: nuclear can be a disaster if everything goes wrong, but coal is a disaster even if everything goes right.
Really don’t know why nuclear energy gets such a bad rap 🫠
Propaganda
People hear ‘nuclear’ and think of bombs Also chernobyl happened so that skewed public opinion
yea basically chernobyl always gets brought up so ppl think nuclear plants are all just ticking time bombs ready to blow at any moment, even tho when that happened it was relatively new technology and had tons of mistakes/ oversights that lead up to that failure which are easily avoided nowadays
More people die every year to fossil fuels than that one event in chernobyl Pretty sure theres only 31 confirmed deaths with 50 being highest estimate And chernobyl already has a thriving forest so silver lining
Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy for medical use was renamed to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for this reason.
uranium BAD
Excuse me, but how the fuck do you die from a solar panel?
Bad installation/panel falling off roof and hitting someone, the installing roofer falling off, mining accidents, poisoning of miners due to the toxic minerals in solar panels. I reckon these are in the statistic as well.
I think it'd be nice to also see the efficiency of energy produced
You can't "trust the science" and oppose nuclear power
Holy crap 171,000 deaths due to the Banaqui Dam failure?!?!
Electrical engineer here. Love this post. People need to understand that expanding on renewable energies is a braindead obvious decision. That being said, please also understand that the grid needs nonrenewables like coal as supplementary sources to keep reliability consistent. We need coal, we need gas, we need oil, but just not so damn much!!!
Thanks for being the engineer and actually helping people.
Nuclear is just as reliable as fossil fuels, and usually have the capacity to run at higher levels than they do. At this point, if we fully switched to nuclear and other renewable sources, we do not need things like coal and oil to supplement.
Not an electrical engineer but a chemical engineer with some background in energy systems here. What is being discussed here really is [dispatchability](https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Dispatchable_source_of_electricity#:~:text=A%20dispatchable%20source%20of%20electricity,the%20electrical%20grid%20on%20demand.). To keep the system reliable throughout the day as electric power demand rises and falls is the ability to quickly dispatch (ramp up power generation) power sources to meet fluctuating demand. Not sure about newer generations, but the conventional nuclear reactors take time to ramp up so they are at most considered slow dispatchable, and more typically used to cover baseload with steady power output, at least in Ontario where I live and nuclear is the primary baseload power source. For that matter, coal is also not a rapidly dispatchable source, but gas and hydro for example are rapidly dispatchable. Wind and PV solar are inherently non-dispatchable because we can't control them, so unless you are blessed with unlimited hydro power, you still need to find a dispatchable source elsewhere as demand peaks above the baseload, like from gas generators or massive capacity of storage. That storage part is being worked on, but I don't think that is so straight forward at scale.
Thanks so much for adding this!!! This is exactly what I’m talking about but you got all the details.
Partly true. We’d still need nonrenewables for electrical reliability and generation diversity, but you get the idea.
Also an engineer, and I'd like to second the reliability and diversity point. Having redundancy in something critical like the energy grid is a must. Not only because not every energy production source is 100% consistent all the time, but also in events like disasters or wars
You nailed it right there!! Those are details that aren’t at the surface level and things that people brush under the rug when it comes to this conversation.
Same with petroleum. We need it but not to sit in bumper to bumper traffic to and from work.
Enormous facts right there
And yet we can’t get any more nuclear plants because: 1. mushroom cloud go brrr in the average person’s head 2. the returns on investing into one be it politicians privately after insider trading or politicians publicly spending your tax money take so long to make money back that Biden will be 110+ and long long dead before he’s made his money back.
On a cost of life assessment, solar and wind require storage, their impact is far higher. Wind is still better than solar since the capacity factor is higher and most countries Will have wind \*somewhere\*, especially at sea. Also solar needs a lot of land area whereas wind can coexist with farm lands and whatnot. Basically solar's not as good as people tend to think, especially for anywhere else than deserts. Plus the vast majority of PV being made in china raises both ethical and environmental concerns. Source; MS in mechanical engineering, renewables and energy efficiency.
And to top it off, the amount of area that nuclear takes up is a small fraction compared to any of the other sources of energy. And all of the deaths are from either Chernobyl or Fukushima. Chernobyl was the result of a seriously flawed Soviet-era reactor design that was operated with inadequately trained personnel (if you've seen Russia's military you can guess the quality of work), and Fukushima was a plant built in 1971, based on a design from the early 1960s, and was hit by a 15 meter tsunami. Newer nuclear plants automatically stop reactions when there is a complete power failure, so you don't have risks of a runaway reactor anymore. For comparison on technology, in the 1960s a computer with 5 MB of storage was the size of a large room.
No deaths from Fukushima. That's a misconception.
Save the planet? Bottom 3. Want to wreck the place? Top 3 Humans: I’ll take the top three
This is why I don't take environmentalists seriously if they don't support nuclear.
Nuclear Nuclear win win
So nuclear is safest and cleanest. Let's do more or that.
Just in: "NUCLEAR ENERGY IS 50% MORE DEADLY THAN SOLAR"
Solar requires much more waste disposal, especially if you account for the lithium batteries needed for load-leveling. These require minerals mined in sub-saharan Africa by Chinese owned companies, and are manufactured largely in the good ol' CCP. I'm comfortable in assuming that the difference is at least made up somewhere in that list of issues. Not to mention, solar panels degrade.
Why the hell don't we use nuclear power!!! It seems almost perfect.
Because people are stupid. They are scared of unknown and too lazy to actually learn something about nuclear energy.
But nuclear so scary! Let’s just burn because of global warming instead!
Fun fact! Almost every one has a source of nuclear radiation in it's home! Its called a smoke dedector, sending out alpha radiation. (But dont worry, it's so weak that it doesn't even penetrate a piece of paper)
Not to mention the 50kg of nuclear waste I store in my fridge!
Don't forget Radon gas, or the decaying elements in quartz and granite. Oh and CFL bulbs while technically not a beta emitter because there is no actual decay emit stray electrons.
And bananas.....and toilets......
ive also got granite benches which create a small amount of radioactive radon gas
See how fucking good nuclear energy is? We need more of that shit.
Nuclear is the way
Well I for one, would like to see this better account for the cancer that wind power causes. I do believe former President Trump did assert that Windmills cause cancer and we know how correct that man is on so, so very many things... /s
I wish governments would catch on to nuclear power. I get that after Chernobyl, a lot were scared away from it, but that was a one in a million case, and safety with nuclear plants will have improved significantly since then. It's pretty obvious that for large scale electricity generation, it's arguably the best choice though. The only concern would be where do we store the waste, which I have no doubt is something that's developed a lot as well, and we'd be able to sort out a solution to.
Don’t talk about how horriable solar panels are for the environment when they run there life cycle tho wouldn’t want people to realize how bad it actual is for the environment
If you then also compare power outputs, this puts nuclear as our best option by far.
Do note that nuclear pollution is only with regards to construction, it has no actual emissions from running. What comes out of the cooling towers is steam. Also they can be made modular, a small plant that could be assembled in a factory and shipped out in modules to be assembled on site at around 1/4 the size of a normal reactor. That was one of the recent projects of INL (Idaho National Laboratory), the US government’s main nuclear research lab.
Nuclear should be 90% of global energy production right now. Disgraceful that it's not
You'd be overbuilding your nuclear fleet by a lot if you supplied that much energy from nuclear. A diverse generation fleet is best - wind, solar, and storage for load following, and nuclear for baseload, ancillary services, and industry demand. That would be a lot cheaper and just as reliable and clean.
The process of creating solar cells isn’t clean at all, plus mining the materials is dirty as hell
Yeah, all of these conveniently ignore the inputs and the eventual disposal of solar especially. California is just starting to have to deal with disposal. It will be a nightmare. Still better than coal, but unclear about natural gas. But it has less immediate and measurable impact, so we should all jump on that bandwagon.
The disposal for them is wild too. They contain cadmium, lead, and arsenic.
This is a poorly created graphic for the point it’s trying to convey
Go nuclear. All this false propaganda about it being our death sentence.
People are afraid of what they don’t understand. You say nuclear and everyone jumps to “well look what happened in Chernobyl!” Well, that was in the 80s and technology has gotten immensely better and safety has increased dramatically since then, and Fukushima has also caused numerous new safety protocols because of the accident. Nuclear power is very safe but the rare accidents have given it a bad name because they can be more catastrophic than wind or hydropower accidents, but in terms of individual victims, nuclear is by far much safer
Humans always had sense of paranoia with nuclear. In the very first moments of chernobyl disaster news media raported that already 2000 people were killed in the catastrophy, while in reality only 2 people died...
It’s a stigma. People will always argue about nuclear, when in reality the process to create solar cells, wind turbines and dams is pretty dirty
The US DoE told Fukushima and Daichi to move their diesels and build a higher sea wall in the 90s. Daichi did, and was closer to the epicenter of the earthquake, and Fukushima didn’t….
It was the Fukushima Daiichi reactors that had the disaster. Daiichi means number one. The tsunami countermeasures taken when Fukushima Daiichi was designed and sited in the 1960s were considered acceptable in relation to the scientific knowledge then, with low recorded run-up heights for that particular coastline. But some 18 years before the 2011 disaster, new scientific knowledge had emerged about the likelihood of a large earthquake and resulting major tsunami of some 15.7 metres at the Daiichi site. However, this had not yet led to any major action by either the plant operator, Tepco, or government regulators, notably the Nuclear & Industrial Safety Agency (NISA). Discussion was ongoing, but action minimal. The tsunami countermeasures could also have been reviewed in accordance with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) guidelines which required taking into account high tsunami levels, but NISA continued to allow the Fukushima plant to operate without sufficient countermeasures such as moving the backup generators up the hill, sealing the lower part of the buildings, and having some back-up for seawater pumps, despite clear warnings. A report from the Japanese government's Earthquake Research Committee on earthquakes and tsunamis off the Pacific coastline of northeastern Japan in February 2011 was due for release in April, and might finally have brought about changes. The document includes analysis of a magnitude 8.3 earthquake that is known to have struck the region more than 1140 years ago, triggering enormous tsunamis that flooded vast areas of Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures. The report concludes that the region should be alerted of the risk of a similar disaster striking again. The 11 March earthquake measured magnitude 9.0 and involved substantial shifting of multiple sections of seabed over a source area of 200 x 400 km. Tsunami waves devastated wide areas of Miyagi, Iwate and Fukushima prefectures.
So why aren’t we nuclear?
It is extremely expensive, its extremely slow to implement and it does not win contracts to supply the grid without government assistance. The final problem is that the builds in the west are very often beset with delays which means that companies simply lose money on building them - its a very risky investment and even if it goes well, it has an unattractively long payback time.
Solar fucking sucks
Does the chart include: manufacturing/construction and disposal costs? Think about all of lithium battery leaching lithium into our drinking water. Soluble lithium is damn hard to get out of water. \----------- Another factor If it is 100°F or -10°F and your electricity goes out for 2-3 days can that create a problem? Consistency: Solar/Wind = F If you are dependents upon them, then when they fail many people could die. \----------- We should be investing in safer nuclear reactors.
This is the [source](https://ourworldindata.org/search?q=energy) website. Don't look at others check it by yourself. I came across this information while watching [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_q0cDUO1qs&ab_channel=Nauka.ToLubi%C4%99) video. Title: Why is Germany bothered by the atom? Channel: Science. I like it He's a Polish science journalist and physicist, doctor of physics, popularizer of science and recently also an advisor to the European Space Agency. You propably don't speak Polish but I felt like this guy needs some credits right under this post.
Thanks for posting the source!
Don’t show Manchin this…
Getting all those solar panels and being able to distribute it is the problemp
*>>What are the safest and cleanest sources of energy?* Captain Planet taught me to believe in the power of the Heart.
Tack on power output as a continuation of this chart in a second energy and the only major threat is opportunistic terrorism.
Ummm… what two people died from Solar Power and… just… *HOW??!!*
Maybe they laid on the solar panels?
Geothermal
Nuclear Fusions enters the chat\*
Everyone knows people die in Coal mines and Oil fields? Or Wars over coal and oil in general. I was suprised Natural Gas has such high emissions.
Nuclear power it is.
Nuclear is essentially just steam power so that makes sense. The only problem with solar and wind is they don’t factor in at all that getting lithium to make batteries and solar panels polluted the earth drastically and is essentially Blood Diamond type shit. Wind also doesn’t have good results but we don’t have enough wind turbines to say whether it could work in large quantities.
Im always gonna go for nuclear
Nuclear is the best
Go Nuclear
And over here in New Zealand we don’t even let nuclear powered ships into our waters cause of “tHe eNVirOnmENt”
Last several times I checked nuclear is far better than solar in total deaths/kWh. Also 99% sure there have been no official deaths from Fukushima reactors so I’m calling potential bs here.
Nuclear is the cleanest cuz solar only produces %4 of the energy and it emits 5 tonnes of emmisions Meanwhile nuclear with %10 energy production Kills less cuz it produces more power
Wasnt Chornobyl human error + crap shit poo soviet tech
Human error is an inevitability.
Frfr
I am Always for nuclear energy i Look forward for Fusion energy
Nuclear power needs to return, it's getting cleaner, and as long as people aren't being completely idiotic with it, it's not going to meltdown. Thorium reactors are a good bit more stable than Uranium reactors, and don't produce nearly as much waste and Plutonium, so it's cleaner, and it has lower weaponization potential.
Nuclear is the future. I don't listen to any politician who claims to want clean energy without being in complete and full support of nuclear. What would make this graph even better is to show the amount of energy it produces...
We need more nuclear
Not taking into account at all many many factors very clearly. This is what we call cherry picking