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U.S. Seeks to Boost Nuclear Power After Decades of Inertia | Measures moving through Congress to encourage new reactors are receiving broad bipartisan support (www.nytimes.com)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Isn't nuclear one, if not the most, expensive form of energy production once you factor in stuff like maintenance and disposal?

Not trying to do the whole hot take thing here, I genuinely don't get why investing in nuclear is still pursued versus investing in renewable sources when mobility and land isn't an issue.

EDIT:

“Tackling the climate crisis means we must modernize our approach to all clean energy sources, including nuclear,” said Representative Diana DeGette, Democrat of Colorado. “Nuclear energy is not a silver bullet, but if we’re going to get to net zero carbon emissions by 2050, it must be part of the mix.”

kind of provides at least a partial answer: Time. Though this quote gave me graphite control rod vibes:

Some Democrats and Republicans in Congress have criticized the N.R.C. for being too slow in approving new designs. Many of the regulations that the commission uses, they say, were designed for an older era of reactors and are no longer appropriate for advanced reactors that may be inherently safer.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (2 children)

There's a lot to unpack in nuclear being the most expensive form of energy production, like:

While nuclear absolutely must be held to extremely rigorous safety standards, I seem to remember that the fossil industry leveraged the nuclear panic in the 80s to lobby all manner of bullshit red tape on top of good regulations, and that has dramatically increased time and financial cost to building new reactors.
Does that also factor in all externalities, like radiological waste from coal fire plants, and the damage from carbon emissions contributing to climate change? Or are we only counting the externalities of nuclear?
Are we also including new generations of reactors, which are supposedly safer, produce less waste, and less able to be used for nuclear weapons production? Or are we just looking at the reactor designs from 70 years ago that represent all of what's in operation in the US today? Can you imagine trying to argue for solar or wind with designs from 70 years ago? It'd be a pretty hard sell.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Thank you for taking the time.

I'm pretty sure that nuclear power is vastly more expensive to produce and maintain. Especially when comparing to solar/wind, since fossil power isn't desirable at all due to emissions.

Solar and wind generation is so much more efficient than even two decades ago, newer designs of nuclear plants aren't really any more efficient, but safer and more expensive. So I'm still not getting the push for more nuclear.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I think for me, the best argument is having an energy backbone. I, admittedly, have little evidence on this front, but I'm skeptical about the long term cost effectiveness of grid scale batteries. Batteries don't last forever, and these are fuck off big batteries, and we're going to need a lot of them by yesterday, and they have to work, and they have to not burn down the entire grid capacity if one of the batteries cooks off (something lithium is terrible at, but I don't think they use lithium at grid scale, usually). And on top of that, from what I recall, grid scale batteries are really, really, really expensive, though I'm not 100% sure if I'm remembering that rught. It just seems like it would make more sense, both in terms of logistics and economics, to have an energy backbone comprised of safer, modern fission reactors.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Yeah, I mostly agree on that. Nuclear may be more expensive and risky, but it's also very predictable. That kind of enables it to act as a sort of safety net to smooth over the variable nature of renewables, though changing the output of a nuclear power plant is a very slow process, AFAIK.

I'm not against nuclear power per se, I'm viewing it as more of a band-aid until more mature and universal grid buffers can fill the gap smoothing out the renewable input. Nuclear may very well be a necessary step for some nations to reach their climate targets, I'm not informed enough to judge that. But I fear that the money invested, lobbying and public opinion influenced by that seemingly easy alternative directly hinder the development and deployment of technologies that lead to a renewable, cheap and reliable grid.