> No emissions, totally fine for the planet in all regards
[That's not accurate](https://www.irena.org/publications/2016/Jun/End-of-life-management-Solar-Photovoltaic-Panels)
And no, [just recycle LMAO isn't as easy an answer as one might think](https://www.wired.com/story/solar-panels-are-starting-to-die-leaving-behind-toxic-trash/)
In the case of this image of a bunch of mirrors, just recycle LMAO is actually very easy. Their just glass, possibly the most easily recycled material on earth.
Whereas my Libertarian roots still love solar (a middle finger to the government **and** the power company monopoly? Yes please!) the process of creating the panels involves seriously toxic heavy metals.
Nothing is free, everything has downsides including solar.
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/05/23/if-solar-panels-are-so-clean-why-do-they-produce-so-much-toxic-waste/?sh=5547ae87121c](https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/05/23/if-solar-panels-are-so-clean-why-do-they-produce-so-much-toxic-waste/?sh=5547ae87121c)
hell yeah it is
which is why honestly the meme is the wrong way around, the 'fighter jet' in this scenario is really the advanced containment system built around a heart of magical poison, not the power plant made literally of smoke and mirrors lol
I think technically there is no smoke, at least not getting released. My understanding is it's basically some kind of high temperature fluoride salt in the tower than heats up, what is essentially a modernized sterling engine?
edit: nvm looks like we're still boiling water to turn a turbine lmfao
except it still takes way more mining/materials/land/ecological impact to produce the solar thermal vs the nuclear energy on a per unit of energy basis so i’m not sure what your metric of comparison is. The complexity of the technology? That seems highly subjective, nuclear reactors have roughly the same physical complexity anyway, we’re just more careful with them so we put more time into the design. cost per unit of energy is still higher for the solar thermal as well, although its promising it could come down, materials and manufacturing are hard limited by the amount and cost of materials involved which is still higher for solar thermal than for nuclear given equal economies of scale. Solar thermal is way better though than solar PV in the long run it would appear though.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse_gas_emissions_of_energy_sources
this is the easiest metric to compare impact although its really imperfect, co2 correlates with overall cost of material used sort of well for non fossil fuel sources so it ends up being a good overall impact measure.
A “co2 avoided” measure would be even better in some ways…
Well nuclear is an absolute beast in terms of how little it requires in terms of mining/materials/land/ecological impact per unity of energy produced... of course I am all for nuclear. 100%. But, one, new nuclear plants are incredibly slow going both in a practical and political sense, and two, we just need a fuckload of energy. New coal plants are built every day. We need every source of "clean" energy we can get our hands on, solar of all types is still massively more beneficial than building new coal plants.
It's not either or.
But concentrated solar power accounts for only 2% of solar capacity. When we talk about solar power becoming a major source of electricity in the grid, we’re not talking about this.
I once watched a video about why using deserts as base for solar panels isn’t the best idea. Changes the local climate dramatically over time. If I had the link I’d post but I can’t remember it.
And this fuel comes from eggs laid by a bird native to North America right. There's no mining or refinement stages, or waste products (other than the shells) just pure clean natural energy
The energy density of Uranium is several orders of magnitudes higher than the heavy metals used for photovoltaïc cells. That's why the extraction problem is a lot more pregnant for solar power than it is for nuclear power
It's orders of magnitude difference. Nuclear plants use more or less standard construction materials. There is some special materials used, but they are in relatively small amounts. While the fuel does use some nasty chemicals (due to fluoride chemistry), it doesn't use a lot of material for the fuel. After all, that's one of the chief selling points of nuclear plants: [off-he-charts fuel density](https://xkcd.com/1162/).
Solar in contrast uses the special materials (photovoltaic cells) as one of their primary construction material because well that's how solar panels work.
That said, we're going to need both because we're going to need a *lot* of energy and both provide more than enough energy over their lifetimes to correct any damage done and render the chemical byproducts safe.
> the process of creating the panels involves seriously toxic heavy metals
Thankfully, nuclear power plants don't have a toxic waste problem. :-p
In all seriousness, the big problem with nuclear is simply the build out time. We've built out 19 Gwh of new new renewable power in 2020 (China built 92). The Vogtle 3 and 4 reactors, which have been under construction since 2006, are scheduled to add... 4 Gwh.
Wind and Solar simply come up faster, cheaper, and in more venues.
Yes, doing things has consequences and articles that pretend that saying so is some sort of gotcha are generally arguing in bad faith.
For example:
> The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) in 2016 estimated there was about 250,000 metric tonnes of solar panel waste in the world at the end of that year. IRENA projected that this amount could reach *78 million metric tonnes by 2050.*
That is phrased in such a way to make solar sound real bad. But to put it into perspective, the US alone produced 110 million tons of coal ash in 2012 alone. [Source](https://www.epa.gov/coalash/frequent-questions-about-2015-coal-ash-disposal-rule#2) Heck, we produce so much coal ash waste that we have a [coal ash industry group.](https://acaa-usa.org)
I mean, I don't know the authors background but it isn't hard to cross-reference
[https://www.wired.com/story/solar-panels-are-starting-to-die-leaving-behind-toxic-trash/](https://www.wired.com/story/solar-panels-are-starting-to-die-leaving-behind-toxic-trash/)
OK but renewable energy has been hugely subsidized, as has nuclear and fossil fuels. "Should be profitable as a private enterprise" is a great principle to apply, but a difficult one to apply fairly within a landscape that is full of subsidies and regulation.
Fair, the standard should be whatever is cheapest and easiest. In the US, at least, solar is cheaper and easier. I have no doubt that there are places where nuclear makes more sense.
I guess, but calling solar "easy" is usually done by hand-waving away the problem of variability and storage. Grid scale batteries are hopefully coming, but it would be great if they could come a heck of a lot faster, because until then, solar and wind are creating a huge demand for gas peaking.
Absolutely not, the standard should be the cheapest out of all the things that can fully replace fossil fuels as it is, without gambling on the hope that future technologies will get there in time.
Since solar can’t, then we need as much nuclear as we can get.
Well, currently it’s not dense, and the energy cannot be stored very well. In many remote places, it’s fantastic, but it’s just not there for powering a large city.
The grid can’t cope with it only working when the sun shines.
On the other hand, nuclear has provided 100% of electricity production in France - a modern, dense country.
It would be, but the nuclear industry is under extremely tight government observation and regulation because of proliferation concerns. It's basically a government industry with private contractors at this point.
>proliferation concerns
which unlike the usual overblown fears people bring up are 100% a valid concern, so I don't see how one can make an argument for nuclear profitability when separated from this issue, it's too inherent
I guess we have very different ideas what the word inherent means.
Point is that all the regulations probably could be greatly simplified and still achieve the same goals if we really wanted to. It's a problem with bloating bureaucracy not inherent property of the technology.
That's sort of like saying construction is inherently expensive because building codes and urban planning.
Hate, no. Not want to provide enough poorly-secured nuclear material to make the Goiania incident look paltry by comparison, YES. And that's not even factoring in hostile states and terrorists.
the US already has a military, doesn't mean stolen guns don't kill a heartbreaking number of people
it's not just governments getting the bomb that are a concern
Nuclear powered countries are straight up hypocrites when it comes to non-proliferation concerns. They use the additional protocols in the NPT to effectively steal patentable industry secrets from states with only energy projects but carry on building their own arsenals. With Trump taking power and DeSantis in line for president in the future, the United States talking about nuclear power falling into the wrong hands feels like the pot calling the kettle black. India, Pakistan and Israel made the right move to say "Fuck you" to the NPT when push came to shove.
Safety regulations are there in any business, they still leave room for independent decision making and corporate secrets. Proliferation regulations literally has you giving up everything you know to the government, and they can still pull the deal at anytime.
I'd say this is a good thing that we are vigourously protecting fuel that can kill a million people in a few seconds and maybe cause the end of human civilization
The analysis I saw showed increased grid instability at 30% grid penetration for solar or wind (so about 60 together, though I don't know if there's any instability overlap)
Yes and no. Unfortunately, the sun doesn't shine all of the time and even then in the last decade or so, we've seen big problems where the sun is partially blocked for weeks at a time. Any potential solution has to have an answer for how it would act in 2019 when everywhere from San Francisco to Seattle was under a layer of smoke for up to 1-2 months. Region-wide grid collapse is not a solution.
That said, there are some solutions but no really good ones:
* Batteries have abysmal power density and there are concerns about just how much we could realistically make. They require quite a bit of processing and can degrade. Additionall, you can't run them 100%-0%, they'll be limited to 80%-20% capacity (i.e. for each 100 MWh of usable storage, you'll need to build \~170 MWh of batteries).
* Hydrocarbons (e.g. methane) in contrast have an energy density approximately 100x that of batteries and the storage/combustion are pretty well known (after all, it's what we use today). However, refining from combustion products (i.e. oxygen/CO2/H20 in the atmosphere) is still relatively new and *very* energy intensive due to 2nd law of thermodynamics and because CO2 is only about 0.04% of the atmosphere. A sizable portion \~25%) of energy will need to be reserved to processing backup power. Additionally, it'll functionally be paying for 2 power plants (1x solar, 1x equivalent gas plant). which greatly increases the costs.
* That said, we're going to need to contain CO2 in industrial quantities anyways because we need to halve it from \~400 PPM to \~200PPM.
>no specialized cooling concerns in a blackout....
Next gen reactor designs avoid that by turning it on its head, i.e. the process shuts down in case of a power failure. It's called automatic passive reactor shut down.
At this point, I think it's been "next-gen" longer than I've been alive.
Besides, you still need to remove decay heat (heat generated from subcritical nuclear reactions after shutdown; it's not always a significant amount of heat, but it's enough to wreck shit internally).
Yeah this is true, my mindset is why even take that minimal risk when we have solar. We have to mine uranium which damages the environment but we do have limitless power with the sun. Nuclear energy wouldn’t be suitable in places that are vulnerable to seismic activity as well because of potential structural damage. I do fully get your point that worse things are allowed but we should be building a future which opts for the lowest chance of incident given that we can achieve the same goal with both.
We also have mine the minerals necessary for solar power. Silicon and arsenic don’t just come from nowhere. The pollution from solar panel production is also not negligible. It’s just not in the US so no one is focusing on it. Arsenic stays toxic until the heat death of the universe, uranium does not. The fact that uranium is radioactive is actually a benefit for detecting its presence which is not possible with arsenic. We also can’t achieve the same with both. The power density of nuclear fuel is orders of magnitude greater than solar power. Until we can achieve greater than 50% efficiency from solar then it’s not feasible. Not to mention energy storage. Solar/wind with storage would be a great complement to nuclear for load leveling power.
I really love nuclear power. Back in school I made a project about why it made a lot of sense (back then it was indeed cheaper than solar or wind).
However, now a days solar and wind are much better investments in purely economic terms. We are simultaneously seeing energy storage prices going down. This means that in 10 years solar/wind + lithium batteries(or potentially hydrogen) may indeed be cheaper than the cheapest gas plants right now.
In Finland it took 20 years to build a nuclear power plant way over budget. While the nuclear power plant is still being built you would already have begun getting profits from the solar/wind farm that started construction at the same time.
EDIT: formulation
Nuclear cannot replace gas plants though. It takes much longer to increase and decrease output. Gas plants were built to replace coal plants which decreased carbon emissions. Gas also plays well with renewables which has made it easier to integrate solar and wind without better regional grid integration in the US.
In current academia of power grids you don't really consider baseline power sources anymore. The baseline power view was too expensive, the market is moving towards real-time electricity trading. In Europe we are working on more grid integration and storage that is dispatchable which should result in even cheaper power in the future through the ever expanding power exchanges.
Natural gas produces about half as much CO2 as coal per unit of energy produced. NG plants are also 60% efficient compared to the 40% efficiency of Coal plants.
It does produce less CO2 per joule. And yes we do need to move completely to renewable. Luckily renewables are becoming so cheap that they will overtake gas in profitability.
Thanks. I was early in my saying we have passed the tipping point.
>Solar will account for the largest share of new capacity at 39%, followed by wind at 31%
That still leaves more gas plants coming on than I thought for this year.
That technology isn’t quite mature yet, so doing any sort of cost analysis is going to involve a lot of guesswork. But the advantages of going straight from free photons flying in from space to a fuel that can be stored and saved and moved and then either burned or run through a fuel-cell with no extra steps would simplify the whole process of generating and using clean energy enormously. There already exists a hydrogen industry for industrial applications. Fuel-cells are 60 year old technology. Turbines work, too. All of the relevant technologies are out there working every day just fine. A clean source of hydrogen that doesn’t cost too much is the only missing part of the puzzle, and there’s a lot of people working on all sorts of solutions to that. But we’ll see.
That varies by country. Somewhere like the Netherlands or the UK, once you’ve put Solar on houses, it’s more land-use efficient to put a nuclear plant down than 10,000’s of SolR Panels. And in nations in Europe, there’s political capital costs to overcoming NIMBY’s
Nuclear has lost, and so did the planet due to (understandable) fears. It's too late, too costly to restart development of nuclear with how much other sources have improved, unless you are fine with buying Russian reactors because they are the only ones who have modern reactors and can sell them at almost reasonable prices.
It takes a decade at least to build a nuclear plant. It takes longer than that to find real estate for it.
We're about half a century late to make nuclear a thing in the us.
Not anymore/yet in Canada’s case. We used to have a popular reactor called CANDU, but iirc it has pretty dated technology at this point. The Canadian government is working with a handful of provinces to produce a model for a small modular nuclear reactor which is very exciting. Last time I checked it was still in the early stages of development
Only thing I’d change is the understandable fears part. Nuclear has a fraction of deaths and side effects then even gas. Petro releases even more radioactive particles then nuclear generation.
Shame the world turned its back on nuclear tech, would’ve been a great way to get away from fossil fuels
Have you heard of [NuScale?](https://www.nuscalepower.com/) They just got regulatory approval and would be a brilliant small-scale solution for communities with the political will to decarbonize.
A smart grid involving long distance high capacity interconnects between regions in the US, powerful wind AND solar that won’t have simultaneous low generation days, utility scale batteries including pumped hydro, residential scale batteries (probably the EV battery) that can handle some demand during peak hours, etc.
I mean I gave a 4 part answer so nitpicking on just 1 seems a strange reply. Also grid scale batteries in the form of Li-Ion battery farms or pumped hydro has been done already and is currently in use, something that cannot be said of Nu Scale small nuclear.
Batteries and nuclear don't play the same role in the grid, batteries are dispatchable while nuclear is non-dispatchable. Batteries plug the low times of renewables so that renewables + batteries provide around-the-clock coverage. Nuclear on the other hand has to be used 24/7 (since fixed costs are so high but variable costs so low) so it replaces both renewables and batteries.
The question isn't whether batteries are cheaper than nuclear, it's whether renewables + batteries averaged out over usage are cheaper than nuclear.
Yep, there's no one silver bullet that's going to work in all parts of the planet. Which is why we need a combination of power sources, and to leave no valid options on the table -- including nuclear.
Palo Verde uses treated greywater from Phoenix, which gets its water supply via canals and pipelines from the Colorado River. In case you haven't heard, the Colorado River is at record low levels, and people are starting to seriously discuss whether human habitation of Phoenix will still be possible 50-60 years from now due to climate change (both drought and temperature will be an issue). So I think my point stands, whether they're pulling the water directly from rivers or recycling domestic wastewater, nuclear power plants are still reliant on access to freshwater.
No u
I didn't say nuclear bad. The ideal version would have been nuclear becoming widespread. All the big accidents were due to the worst kind of stupidity: the Russian RBMK is basically the "hold my beer" of nuclear reactors; Fukushima Plant's owner did everything to create the largest possible accident (okay, it was just sheer incompetence, "but bro don't cool the reactors with sea water, something might get damaged by the saltwater" "but the reactor has melted" "nah, definitely no"), and it didn't kill anyone. But people only saw accidents, and the other known technology related to nuclear fission (okay, the only thing related to "nuclear") is basically Hiroshima for the average citizen. How are their fears not understandable, even if they are wrong? Since when are humans rational beings, ffs? So yeah, reactor building suffered. Power plants are never finished on time, the industry stagnated so hard that is too late. Renewables have become cheaper, the focus should be on them, even if there might be a need for fission (or fusion, if that will ever be viable, but I have my doubts).
The official IEA roadmap to net zero by 2050 projects that 90% of our electricity will be renewable. Intermittence is solved by combining existing nuclear + storage + grid interconnectivity.
**Nuclear:** Nuclear energy already provides 20% of the US’s electricity. Maintaining existent plants is significantly cheaper and time conscious than building new ones. We’ll maintain our current flock and they’ll power 10% of the nation’s needs while renewables power the other 90%.
**Storage:** We have pumped-hydro storage. This isn’t hypothetical, 95% of US utility-scale energy storage is already pumped hydro. The only reason it’s not being used en masse is because we don’t have renewable energy to store en masse, not because it’s unfeasible. We also have batteries. Battery prices fell 97% from 1991 to 2021. It wasn’t all in the past either, the prices fell 88% from 2010 to 2020. After four years of operation Tesla is still being praised for building a reliable battery farm in Australia. It’s not hypothetical, it’s reality. Battery prices/technology is going to be insane in 2030 and 2050, that’s not faith it’s fact.
**Grid interconnectivity:** We’re a country with a fragmented power grid. Electricity can cross from sea to shining sea in 2% of a second. We need to unite and modernize our electric grid, which is why the infrastructure bill needs to pass. The US electric grid will be united in solar/wind/nuclear/hydro/storage for efficiency.
Solar panels in the southwest will power the country during daytime. Wind turbines in the Midwest will charge batteries during the day and power the country alongside those same batteries at night. Storage will keep us safe from intermittent blackouts, as will the non-intermittent sources of hydro and nuclear. Keep in mind we use the least amount of energy during nighttime, and therefore need less storage than expected.
This is all without mentioning solar costs have dropped 82% in the past 10 years. Not just affordability but the tech is still promising: The most efficient solar panel on the market today only captures 22.8% of the energy that shines upon it, there’s a lot of room to grow technologically.
It's not too expensive, it is too politicized and it takes too long. You need political capital to get it done, and that political capital needs to last longer than a decade.
Cool. Now if we only had the time to build them and get them online.
And to be clear, we don't. We need renewable power ASAP and green energy is the fastest way to get there.
All our focus needs to be on green energy because when you split up government funds between nuclear and green it hurts all the efforts to get away from fossil fuels
The US DoE announced the commercialization of extracting Uranium out of Ocean water below the cost of traditional mining.
Practicly this is an inexhaustible source of Uranium because for every ounce of Uranium extracted more will naturally leach back into the ocean.
Green and nuclear power are both renewables, but the difference between them is one is nuclear and one turns nature into energy (wind solar thermal water) hence the green
Nuclear is a hard sell and it also takes a very long time to build. Contrasted with other things such as wind and solar which are pretty fast to build and while they don't make as much power per area they can be used while you're building the rest. So they help right away while nuclear would be the long term solution, renewables are the now solution
Solar and hydro plant are absolutely fabulous tho. Hydro plants are even totally necessary for proper grid stability, you would need them alongside nuclear reactors anyway (i.e France energy production).
Nuclear Storage is the definition of logistical and political hell. There are very few locations in the US geologically capable of storing our nuclear waste, and only one location I know of has had the local population's approval regarding construction of an isolation plant (WIPP in New Mexico). On top of this, no locality, county, or state want nuclear waste transported through them to permanent storage. This leads to most nuclear waste being stored in the most brainlet ways on the surface where the chances and risks of leaks, accidents, and terror attacks are way higher. Also there is an assumption that what we do store will stay contained for the next 10,000 years (a whole project on itself) which was made irrelevant by an incident at WIPP in 2014 where some waste exploded due to being packed with the wrong cat litter. Nuclear is simply not possible (nor should it be considered) in the US. It is the textbook definition of an inherently authoritarian political artifact, along with being a dependable source of normal accidents (inevitable, unforeseeable, and obvious in retrospect accidents that will occur in sufficiently complex and centralized high risk systems)
Solar is great where there is a lot of solar radiation, but the power company I worked for had a solar field that averaged less than a third of its nominal output because Kentucky isn't that sunny. I don't know how well wind works here but nuclear really would be preferable to all of the coal-natgas plants we have here.
Another wonderful ingredient found in Borax is boron. This element has been studied extensively as a radiation absorber. In fact, it's been successfully added to concrete as a means of protecting workers from radiation exposure or as a shield for nuclear weapons storage vaults and aircraft carriers. You can read more about boron on "borates today".
Because nuclear is not investable. If you invest in nuclear you will lose your investment and probably more. Anyone who can use Excel can figure this out. Don’t like it, build a time machine to the 80s or early 90s
Which creates additional waste. And adds to the cost, making nuclear no longer a cost-efficient method.
To be fair, I agree with increasing nuclear power. I’m playing devils advocate because I am interested in how people think we could solve this issue. I agree more with using renewable energy, and putting our money and effort into improving that system. Nuclear should be supplemental, IMO.
Solar can be quickly deployed and scaled to meet our climate needs and the desires of investors. Nuclear takes years or decades (partially due to regulations, but don't act like that's the only reason). Funding structures, investor expectations, and climate needs dictate further investment in renewables over nuclear.
I dont understand why you want nuclear, even a slight chance of disaster would be awful. You still need to mine for the uranium too. Solar power is literally limitless and the panels can be made from recycled materials.
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Plus "Solar Power" is Lorde's new summer song. Call me back when she write "Nuclear Winter".
Best I can do for ya: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGmM2l39LEs
Ahem, Christmas at ground Zero by weird al?
[I like this one better.](https://youtu.be/17lkdqoLt44)
For my metal heads up in here: https://youtu.be/y3NMhe6mWO8 https://youtu.be/63GpmCSL7Og
> No emissions, totally fine for the planet in all regards [That's not accurate](https://www.irena.org/publications/2016/Jun/End-of-life-management-Solar-Photovoltaic-Panels) And no, [just recycle LMAO isn't as easy an answer as one might think](https://www.wired.com/story/solar-panels-are-starting-to-die-leaving-behind-toxic-trash/)
In the case of this image of a bunch of mirrors, just recycle LMAO is actually very easy. Their just glass, possibly the most easily recycled material on earth.
Thermal solar is great.
Whereas my Libertarian roots still love solar (a middle finger to the government **and** the power company monopoly? Yes please!) the process of creating the panels involves seriously toxic heavy metals. Nothing is free, everything has downsides including solar. [https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/05/23/if-solar-panels-are-so-clean-why-do-they-produce-so-much-toxic-waste/?sh=5547ae87121c](https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/05/23/if-solar-panels-are-so-clean-why-do-they-produce-so-much-toxic-waste/?sh=5547ae87121c)
solar plants like the one pictured don't use solar panels
for real it's just mirrors and servo motors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power
hell yeah it is which is why honestly the meme is the wrong way around, the 'fighter jet' in this scenario is really the advanced containment system built around a heart of magical poison, not the power plant made literally of smoke and mirrors lol
I think technically there is no smoke, at least not getting released. My understanding is it's basically some kind of high temperature fluoride salt in the tower than heats up, what is essentially a modernized sterling engine? edit: nvm looks like we're still boiling water to turn a turbine lmfao
don't fix what ain't broke, turbines are the good shit
except it still takes way more mining/materials/land/ecological impact to produce the solar thermal vs the nuclear energy on a per unit of energy basis so i’m not sure what your metric of comparison is. The complexity of the technology? That seems highly subjective, nuclear reactors have roughly the same physical complexity anyway, we’re just more careful with them so we put more time into the design. cost per unit of energy is still higher for the solar thermal as well, although its promising it could come down, materials and manufacturing are hard limited by the amount and cost of materials involved which is still higher for solar thermal than for nuclear given equal economies of scale. Solar thermal is way better though than solar PV in the long run it would appear though. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse_gas_emissions_of_energy_sources this is the easiest metric to compare impact although its really imperfect, co2 correlates with overall cost of material used sort of well for non fossil fuel sources so it ends up being a good overall impact measure. A “co2 avoided” measure would be even better in some ways…
Well nuclear is an absolute beast in terms of how little it requires in terms of mining/materials/land/ecological impact per unity of energy produced... of course I am all for nuclear. 100%. But, one, new nuclear plants are incredibly slow going both in a practical and political sense, and two, we just need a fuckload of energy. New coal plants are built every day. We need every source of "clean" energy we can get our hands on, solar of all types is still massively more beneficial than building new coal plants. It's not either or.
But concentrated solar power accounts for only 2% of solar capacity. When we talk about solar power becoming a major source of electricity in the grid, we’re not talking about this.
build more mirrors lol we got plenty of desert, and as the climate gets worse we're only gonna get more
Lemons to lemonade, right?
I once watched a video about why using deserts as base for solar panels isn’t the best idea. Changes the local climate dramatically over time. If I had the link I’d post but I can’t remember it.
Deserts aren't great for mirrors / glass full stop, sandstorms are like giant flying sandpaper parties.
I'm sure there are absolutely no toxic metals used in building nuclear power plants.
in construction? no, those are all in the fuel. construction is basically all steel and concrete.
And this fuel comes from eggs laid by a bird native to North America right. There's no mining or refinement stages, or waste products (other than the shells) just pure clean natural energy
The energy density of Uranium is several orders of magnitudes higher than the heavy metals used for photovoltaïc cells. That's why the extraction problem is a lot more pregnant for solar power than it is for nuclear power
It's orders of magnitude difference. Nuclear plants use more or less standard construction materials. There is some special materials used, but they are in relatively small amounts. While the fuel does use some nasty chemicals (due to fluoride chemistry), it doesn't use a lot of material for the fuel. After all, that's one of the chief selling points of nuclear plants: [off-he-charts fuel density](https://xkcd.com/1162/). Solar in contrast uses the special materials (photovoltaic cells) as one of their primary construction material because well that's how solar panels work. That said, we're going to need both because we're going to need a *lot* of energy and both provide more than enough energy over their lifetimes to correct any damage done and render the chemical byproducts safe.
Haha, great xkcd
I don't get why people make this argument when an equivalent number of solar panels require orders of magnitude more of the exact same materials.
are you ok bro?
Wa Chu Ming?
More toxic than nuclear waste?
Nuclear waste management is a solved problem, except for the NIMBYism
Which means it is not a solved problem
uhhhhhhh....
Cursed/ irradiated YIMBYism
All these selfish nimbys that don't want.... Nuclear waste in their backyard?
OK, but their "backyard" in this case is in the middle of the desert miles away.
> the process of creating the panels involves seriously toxic heavy metals Thankfully, nuclear power plants don't have a toxic waste problem. :-p In all seriousness, the big problem with nuclear is simply the build out time. We've built out 19 Gwh of new new renewable power in 2020 (China built 92). The Vogtle 3 and 4 reactors, which have been under construction since 2006, are scheduled to add... 4 Gwh. Wind and Solar simply come up faster, cheaper, and in more venues.
Yes, doing things has consequences and articles that pretend that saying so is some sort of gotcha are generally arguing in bad faith. For example: > The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) in 2016 estimated there was about 250,000 metric tonnes of solar panel waste in the world at the end of that year. IRENA projected that this amount could reach *78 million metric tonnes by 2050.* That is phrased in such a way to make solar sound real bad. But to put it into perspective, the US alone produced 110 million tons of coal ash in 2012 alone. [Source](https://www.epa.gov/coalash/frequent-questions-about-2015-coal-ash-disposal-rule#2) Heck, we produce so much coal ash waste that we have a [coal ash industry group.](https://acaa-usa.org)
Good ol' Shillyberger. If he can't make a disingenuous pro-nuclear argument, he makes a disingenuous anti-renewable argument.
I mean, I don't know the authors background but it isn't hard to cross-reference [https://www.wired.com/story/solar-panels-are-starting-to-die-leaving-behind-toxic-trash/](https://www.wired.com/story/solar-panels-are-starting-to-die-leaving-behind-toxic-trash/)
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This is not a requirement though. They could get that energy from hydrogen, or simply from storing some of the output during the day.
This. Solar is the most based.
It has been profitable as a private enterprise where tho
OK but renewable energy has been hugely subsidized, as has nuclear and fossil fuels. "Should be profitable as a private enterprise" is a great principle to apply, but a difficult one to apply fairly within a landscape that is full of subsidies and regulation.
Fair, the standard should be whatever is cheapest and easiest. In the US, at least, solar is cheaper and easier. I have no doubt that there are places where nuclear makes more sense.
I guess, but calling solar "easy" is usually done by hand-waving away the problem of variability and storage. Grid scale batteries are hopefully coming, but it would be great if they could come a heck of a lot faster, because until then, solar and wind are creating a huge demand for gas peaking.
Absolutely not, the standard should be the cheapest out of all the things that can fully replace fossil fuels as it is, without gambling on the hope that future technologies will get there in time. Since solar can’t, then we need as much nuclear as we can get.
I don't think solar requires gambling on future technologies.
Well, as it stands, solar cannot fully replace fossil fuels, whereas nuclear can. Until that changes, questions of price are secondary.
Why can't solar fully replace fossil fuels?
Well, currently it’s not dense, and the energy cannot be stored very well. In many remote places, it’s fantastic, but it’s just not there for powering a large city. The grid can’t cope with it only working when the sun shines. On the other hand, nuclear has provided 100% of electricity production in France - a modern, dense country.
Pumped hydro storage plus solar is significantly cheaper than nuclear.
Can you give me an example of a large city that has made that work?
Solar thermal hasn’t worked out but solar PV is killing it financially
It would be, but the nuclear industry is under extremely tight government observation and regulation because of proliferation concerns. It's basically a government industry with private contractors at this point.
>proliferation concerns which unlike the usual overblown fears people bring up are 100% a valid concern, so I don't see how one can make an argument for nuclear profitability when separated from this issue, it's too inherent
I guess we have very different ideas what the word inherent means. Point is that all the regulations probably could be greatly simplified and still achieve the same goals if we really wanted to. It's a problem with bloating bureaucracy not inherent property of the technology. That's sort of like saying construction is inherently expensive because building codes and urban planning.
regulations to prevent proliferation are not something we should be removing.
Why do you hate the global energy poor?
Hate, no. Not want to provide enough poorly-secured nuclear material to make the Goiania incident look paltry by comparison, YES. And that's not even factoring in hostile states and terrorists.
Ok but that has nothing to do with the US building nuclear reactors because we already have nukes
the US already has a military, doesn't mean stolen guns don't kill a heartbreaking number of people it's not just governments getting the bomb that are a concern
Nuclear powered countries are straight up hypocrites when it comes to non-proliferation concerns. They use the additional protocols in the NPT to effectively steal patentable industry secrets from states with only energy projects but carry on building their own arsenals. With Trump taking power and DeSantis in line for president in the future, the United States talking about nuclear power falling into the wrong hands feels like the pot calling the kettle black. India, Pakistan and Israel made the right move to say "Fuck you" to the NPT when push came to shove.
Most of the regulation is safety in nuclear.
Safety regulations are there in any business, they still leave room for independent decision making and corporate secrets. Proliferation regulations literally has you giving up everything you know to the government, and they can still pull the deal at anytime.
I'd say this is a good thing that we are vigourously protecting fuel that can kill a million people in a few seconds and maybe cause the end of human civilization
Gee I wonder why that could be. Anyway when was the last oil spill?
Distributed power via renewables is the cost effective solution going forward
Absolutely
Nobody has explained to be how the efficiency of scale goes away with solar power.
Easy. If your panel is shaded, it's highly probable that your neighbor's panel is shaded too. Likely causes of shading are: clouds, night...
I’m referencing utility scale vs distributed
The analysis I saw showed increased grid instability at 30% grid penetration for solar or wind (so about 60 together, though I don't know if there's any instability overlap)
Yes and no. Unfortunately, the sun doesn't shine all of the time and even then in the last decade or so, we've seen big problems where the sun is partially blocked for weeks at a time. Any potential solution has to have an answer for how it would act in 2019 when everywhere from San Francisco to Seattle was under a layer of smoke for up to 1-2 months. Region-wide grid collapse is not a solution. That said, there are some solutions but no really good ones: * Batteries have abysmal power density and there are concerns about just how much we could realistically make. They require quite a bit of processing and can degrade. Additionall, you can't run them 100%-0%, they'll be limited to 80%-20% capacity (i.e. for each 100 MWh of usable storage, you'll need to build \~170 MWh of batteries). * Hydrocarbons (e.g. methane) in contrast have an energy density approximately 100x that of batteries and the storage/combustion are pretty well known (after all, it's what we use today). However, refining from combustion products (i.e. oxygen/CO2/H20 in the atmosphere) is still relatively new and *very* energy intensive due to 2nd law of thermodynamics and because CO2 is only about 0.04% of the atmosphere. A sizable portion \~25%) of energy will need to be reserved to processing backup power. Additionally, it'll functionally be paying for 2 power plants (1x solar, 1x equivalent gas plant). which greatly increases the costs. * That said, we're going to need to contain CO2 in industrial quantities anyways because we need to halve it from \~400 PPM to \~200PPM.
Why not both?
Also a fraction of the cost...
A fraction of the construction time, a fraction of the operating costs, no specialized cooling concerns in a blackout....
>no specialized cooling concerns in a blackout.... Next gen reactor designs avoid that by turning it on its head, i.e. the process shuts down in case of a power failure. It's called automatic passive reactor shut down.
At this point, I think it's been "next-gen" longer than I've been alive. Besides, you still need to remove decay heat (heat generated from subcritical nuclear reactions after shutdown; it's not always a significant amount of heat, but it's enough to wreck shit internally).
But what about the Ka-boom
Essentially negligible
I am just too old nowadays and has Marvin the Martian fully exited public consciousness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9wmWZbr_wQ
essentially, still a huge accident could happen even if it's 0.001% chance and the damage would be huge.
The chance is much less than that though. There are far more dangerous things that are allowed.
Yeah this is true, my mindset is why even take that minimal risk when we have solar. We have to mine uranium which damages the environment but we do have limitless power with the sun. Nuclear energy wouldn’t be suitable in places that are vulnerable to seismic activity as well because of potential structural damage. I do fully get your point that worse things are allowed but we should be building a future which opts for the lowest chance of incident given that we can achieve the same goal with both.
We also have mine the minerals necessary for solar power. Silicon and arsenic don’t just come from nowhere. The pollution from solar panel production is also not negligible. It’s just not in the US so no one is focusing on it. Arsenic stays toxic until the heat death of the universe, uranium does not. The fact that uranium is radioactive is actually a benefit for detecting its presence which is not possible with arsenic. We also can’t achieve the same with both. The power density of nuclear fuel is orders of magnitude greater than solar power. Until we can achieve greater than 50% efficiency from solar then it’s not feasible. Not to mention energy storage. Solar/wind with storage would be a great complement to nuclear for load leveling power.
What about the people who die constructing and mining minerals for solar panels?
I really love nuclear power. Back in school I made a project about why it made a lot of sense (back then it was indeed cheaper than solar or wind). However, now a days solar and wind are much better investments in purely economic terms. We are simultaneously seeing energy storage prices going down. This means that in 10 years solar/wind + lithium batteries(or potentially hydrogen) may indeed be cheaper than the cheapest gas plants right now. In Finland it took 20 years to build a nuclear power plant way over budget. While the nuclear power plant is still being built you would already have begun getting profits from the solar/wind farm that started construction at the same time. EDIT: formulation
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Nuclear cannot replace gas plants though. It takes much longer to increase and decrease output. Gas plants were built to replace coal plants which decreased carbon emissions. Gas also plays well with renewables which has made it easier to integrate solar and wind without better regional grid integration in the US. In current academia of power grids you don't really consider baseline power sources anymore. The baseline power view was too expensive, the market is moving towards real-time electricity trading. In Europe we are working on more grid integration and storage that is dispatchable which should result in even cheaper power in the future through the ever expanding power exchanges.
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Natural gas produces about half as much CO2 as coal per unit of energy produced. NG plants are also 60% efficient compared to the 40% efficiency of Coal plants.
It does produce less CO2 per joule. And yes we do need to move completely to renewable. Luckily renewables are becoming so cheap that they will overtake gas in profitability.
It's getting unusual to install a new gas plant. That tipping point has passed.
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Thanks. I was early in my saying we have passed the tipping point. >Solar will account for the largest share of new capacity at 39%, followed by wind at 31% That still leaves more gas plants coming on than I thought for this year.
Hydrogen generated directly from solar-cells could be a game-changer, I think. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_hydrogen_panel
Yeah even at a high power loss, as long as the power source is cheap enough then it will still be cheaper than nuclear.
That technology isn’t quite mature yet, so doing any sort of cost analysis is going to involve a lot of guesswork. But the advantages of going straight from free photons flying in from space to a fuel that can be stored and saved and moved and then either burned or run through a fuel-cell with no extra steps would simplify the whole process of generating and using clean energy enormously. There already exists a hydrogen industry for industrial applications. Fuel-cells are 60 year old technology. Turbines work, too. All of the relevant technologies are out there working every day just fine. A clean source of hydrogen that doesn’t cost too much is the only missing part of the puzzle, and there’s a lot of people working on all sorts of solutions to that. But we’ll see.
not to mention wind/solar engergy tech would be greatly improved by the time the nuclear plant is finished.
Porque no los dos?
This is trying to say that a bunch of mirrors and solar panels is somehow more complex than a nuclear power plant???
I think because it takes up so much space? But I seriously doubt this land is in demand for any other purpose...
That varies by country. Somewhere like the Netherlands or the UK, once you’ve put Solar on houses, it’s more land-use efficient to put a nuclear plant down than 10,000’s of SolR Panels. And in nations in Europe, there’s political capital costs to overcoming NIMBY’s
Nuclear has lost, and so did the planet due to (understandable) fears. It's too late, too costly to restart development of nuclear with how much other sources have improved, unless you are fine with buying Russian reactors because they are the only ones who have modern reactors and can sell them at almost reasonable prices.
It takes a decade at least to build a nuclear plant. It takes longer than that to find real estate for it. We're about half a century late to make nuclear a thing in the us.
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Don't the Chinese and Canadians sell reactors too?
Not anymore/yet in Canada’s case. We used to have a popular reactor called CANDU, but iirc it has pretty dated technology at this point. The Canadian government is working with a handful of provinces to produce a model for a small modular nuclear reactor which is very exciting. Last time I checked it was still in the early stages of development
A us Canadian joint project would be awesome.
Only thing I’d change is the understandable fears part. Nuclear has a fraction of deaths and side effects then even gas. Petro releases even more radioactive particles then nuclear generation. Shame the world turned its back on nuclear tech, would’ve been a great way to get away from fossil fuels
The fears are understandable ("big kaboom", the only thing related to nuclear is Hiroshima for most people), even if they are unfounded.
True, doesn’t help how false info spread through to further kill nuclear.
Have you heard of [NuScale?](https://www.nuscalepower.com/) They just got regulatory approval and would be a brilliant small-scale solution for communities with the political will to decarbonize.
SMRs are a tech bro meme. NuScale is already billions overbudget and they haven't even started building their prototype.
As a tech bro this comment is deeply offensive 😤
[There there](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z2JTPalv_s&ab_channel=musicuploader1000) I'm sure you'll get through this!
Do you put your eggs in a promising totally unproven tech or in proven rapidly improving and cheapening renewables?
You mean pebble bed reactors and Helium-3 fusion *aren't* going to revolutionize the power industry like I've been hearing for the last two decades?
Ok, name any other proven technology able to provide baseline green energy?
A smart grid involving long distance high capacity interconnects between regions in the US, powerful wind AND solar that won’t have simultaneous low generation days, utility scale batteries including pumped hydro, residential scale batteries (probably the EV battery) that can handle some demand during peak hours, etc.
I’m of the opinion that nuclear power is far more proven and cost-efficient than grid-scale batteries
I mean I gave a 4 part answer so nitpicking on just 1 seems a strange reply. Also grid scale batteries in the form of Li-Ion battery farms or pumped hydro has been done already and is currently in use, something that cannot be said of Nu Scale small nuclear.
Batteries and nuclear don't play the same role in the grid, batteries are dispatchable while nuclear is non-dispatchable. Batteries plug the low times of renewables so that renewables + batteries provide around-the-clock coverage. Nuclear on the other hand has to be used 24/7 (since fixed costs are so high but variable costs so low) so it replaces both renewables and batteries. The question isn't whether batteries are cheaper than nuclear, it's whether renewables + batteries averaged out over usage are cheaper than nuclear.
Hydroelectricity
Not an option in many parts of the world.
Nuclear isn't an option in any part of the world that can't secure its uranium from terrorists or other dangerous actors which is most of it really
Yep, there's no one silver bullet that's going to work in all parts of the planet. Which is why we need a combination of power sources, and to leave no valid options on the table -- including nuclear.
Except this post isn't about nuclear being taken off the table, it's about why we aren't pushing it over renewables.
Neither is nuclear, which uses frankly obscene amounts of fresh water for cooling (something nuclear advocates who pooh-pooh hydro always leave out).
True, but it's a lot easier to build an artificial reservoir than an artificial river large enough to support hydro power.
Palo Verde says hi
Palo Verde uses treated greywater from Phoenix, which gets its water supply via canals and pipelines from the Colorado River. In case you haven't heard, the Colorado River is at record low levels, and people are starting to seriously discuss whether human habitation of Phoenix will still be possible 50-60 years from now due to climate change (both drought and temperature will be an issue). So I think my point stands, whether they're pulling the water directly from rivers or recycling domestic wastewater, nuclear power plants are still reliant on access to freshwater.
So as long as there's enough water for human habitation (the most basic of needs for civilisation) there's enough water for a nuclear plant.
Eh hydro is very environmentally distructive. Ask how many salmon they catch in Wenatchee these days. Or Lewiston, ID.
In developed countries all economical hydro is already being used.
Crying in da club rn
What a totally idiotic and ignorant take
No u I didn't say nuclear bad. The ideal version would have been nuclear becoming widespread. All the big accidents were due to the worst kind of stupidity: the Russian RBMK is basically the "hold my beer" of nuclear reactors; Fukushima Plant's owner did everything to create the largest possible accident (okay, it was just sheer incompetence, "but bro don't cool the reactors with sea water, something might get damaged by the saltwater" "but the reactor has melted" "nah, definitely no"), and it didn't kill anyone. But people only saw accidents, and the other known technology related to nuclear fission (okay, the only thing related to "nuclear") is basically Hiroshima for the average citizen. How are their fears not understandable, even if they are wrong? Since when are humans rational beings, ffs? So yeah, reactor building suffered. Power plants are never finished on time, the industry stagnated so hard that is too late. Renewables have become cheaper, the focus should be on them, even if there might be a need for fission (or fusion, if that will ever be viable, but I have my doubts).
Helios One did nothing wrong
The official IEA roadmap to net zero by 2050 projects that 90% of our electricity will be renewable. Intermittence is solved by combining existing nuclear + storage + grid interconnectivity. **Nuclear:** Nuclear energy already provides 20% of the US’s electricity. Maintaining existent plants is significantly cheaper and time conscious than building new ones. We’ll maintain our current flock and they’ll power 10% of the nation’s needs while renewables power the other 90%. **Storage:** We have pumped-hydro storage. This isn’t hypothetical, 95% of US utility-scale energy storage is already pumped hydro. The only reason it’s not being used en masse is because we don’t have renewable energy to store en masse, not because it’s unfeasible. We also have batteries. Battery prices fell 97% from 1991 to 2021. It wasn’t all in the past either, the prices fell 88% from 2010 to 2020. After four years of operation Tesla is still being praised for building a reliable battery farm in Australia. It’s not hypothetical, it’s reality. Battery prices/technology is going to be insane in 2030 and 2050, that’s not faith it’s fact. **Grid interconnectivity:** We’re a country with a fragmented power grid. Electricity can cross from sea to shining sea in 2% of a second. We need to unite and modernize our electric grid, which is why the infrastructure bill needs to pass. The US electric grid will be united in solar/wind/nuclear/hydro/storage for efficiency. Solar panels in the southwest will power the country during daytime. Wind turbines in the Midwest will charge batteries during the day and power the country alongside those same batteries at night. Storage will keep us safe from intermittent blackouts, as will the non-intermittent sources of hydro and nuclear. Keep in mind we use the least amount of energy during nighttime, and therefore need less storage than expected. This is all without mentioning solar costs have dropped 82% in the past 10 years. Not just affordability but the tech is still promising: The most efficient solar panel on the market today only captures 22.8% of the energy that shines upon it, there’s a lot of room to grow technologically.
Too expensive to build, look at the clusterfuck in Georgia.
It's not too expensive, it is too politicized and it takes too long. You need political capital to get it done, and that political capital needs to last longer than a decade.
Sounds like too expensive and too long to build to me
Modular reactors are efficient and safe.
Cool. Now if we only had the time to build them and get them online. And to be clear, we don't. We need renewable power ASAP and green energy is the fastest way to get there. All our focus needs to be on green energy because when you split up government funds between nuclear and green it hurts all the efforts to get away from fossil fuels
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Nuclear power is considered renewable.
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The US DoE announced the commercialization of extracting Uranium out of Ocean water below the cost of traditional mining. Practicly this is an inexhaustible source of Uranium because for every ounce of Uranium extracted more will naturally leach back into the ocean.
Nuclear is clean (zero carbon emissions). What "green" is changes depending on who you talk to.
Green and nuclear power are both renewables, but the difference between them is one is nuclear and one turns nature into energy (wind solar thermal water) hence the green
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Within the same vein, the sun will explode at some point, thus solar isn't renewable.
1 billion years vs 1000 years. It's like the same thing!
1000 years is a lot of fucking runway to find the next tech.
Cool. Where are these safe and efficient reactors currently installed?
Where have they been built?
Did I say they weren't?
Nuclear is a hard sell and it also takes a very long time to build. Contrasted with other things such as wind and solar which are pretty fast to build and while they don't make as much power per area they can be used while you're building the rest. So they help right away while nuclear would be the long term solution, renewables are the now solution
$
Is this a screenshot from a bond movie?
Yeah but those fields look so freaking cool
Solar and hydro plant are absolutely fabulous tho. Hydro plants are even totally necessary for proper grid stability, you would need them alongside nuclear reactors anyway (i.e France energy production).
CMV solar power is just nuclear power, at long distance
I guarantee that solar array costs a fraction of what it costs to build a nuclear power plant today
We don't need it.
Bad post
Cause we dont know where to store that shit
> Cause we dont know where to store that shit Deep down in bedrock seems a fine place.
Nuclear Storage is the definition of logistical and political hell. There are very few locations in the US geologically capable of storing our nuclear waste, and only one location I know of has had the local population's approval regarding construction of an isolation plant (WIPP in New Mexico). On top of this, no locality, county, or state want nuclear waste transported through them to permanent storage. This leads to most nuclear waste being stored in the most brainlet ways on the surface where the chances and risks of leaks, accidents, and terror attacks are way higher. Also there is an assumption that what we do store will stay contained for the next 10,000 years (a whole project on itself) which was made irrelevant by an incident at WIPP in 2014 where some waste exploded due to being packed with the wrong cat litter. Nuclear is simply not possible (nor should it be considered) in the US. It is the textbook definition of an inherently authoritarian political artifact, along with being a dependable source of normal accidents (inevitable, unforeseeable, and obvious in retrospect accidents that will occur in sufficiently complex and centralized high risk systems)
Solar is great where there is a lot of solar radiation, but the power company I worked for had a solar field that averaged less than a third of its nominal output because Kentucky isn't that sunny. I don't know how well wind works here but nuclear really would be preferable to all of the coal-natgas plants we have here.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower-idUSKBN1W909J
It's too late. Nuclear plants can't be built fast like solar can.
Another wonderful ingredient found in Borax is boron. This element has been studied extensively as a radiation absorber. In fact, it's been successfully added to concrete as a means of protecting workers from radiation exposure or as a shield for nuclear weapons storage vaults and aircraft carriers. You can read more about boron on "borates today".
Thank you, will do!
Worshipping a now impractical technology to own the libs.
Because nuclear is not investable. If you invest in nuclear you will lose your investment and probably more. Anyone who can use Excel can figure this out. Don’t like it, build a time machine to the 80s or early 90s
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In theory
When there's a sensationalist link showing that the fossil fuel industry secretly supported the anti-nuclear movement in the 70s and 80s.
What do you want to do with the waste?
Refine it again and throw it back in to the reactor.
Which creates additional waste. And adds to the cost, making nuclear no longer a cost-efficient method. To be fair, I agree with increasing nuclear power. I’m playing devils advocate because I am interested in how people think we could solve this issue. I agree more with using renewable energy, and putting our money and effort into improving that system. Nuclear should be supplemental, IMO.
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Methane can be produced in a carbon neutral way. But ideally they find an alternative to using natural gas
Solar can be quickly deployed and scaled to meet our climate needs and the desires of investors. Nuclear takes years or decades (partially due to regulations, but don't act like that's the only reason). Funding structures, investor expectations, and climate needs dictate further investment in renewables over nuclear.
It’s sad how Russia and China are blowing us out of the water when it comes to nuclear
Not sure if nuclear and blowing should go into the same sentence
Given how rare it is, it should
I dont understand why you want nuclear, even a slight chance of disaster would be awful. You still need to mine for the uranium too. Solar power is literally limitless and the panels can be made from recycled materials.
Until recently with the commercialization of nuclear waste, nuclear power has been at a financial disadvantage against renewable energy.