Is nuclear energy the most cost effective energy source?

Duke is building 2 new plants right now. Those new plants arent profitable, they just have too much sunk cost to stop building.

There is a big clean up cost

in germany the no atom lobbyists maked a law that its illegal to build new reacrors so we still run the 50 year old ones

...

nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/col/lee/review-schedule.html
nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/col/levy/review-schedule.html

Neither has been approved yet, so construction has not started.
Everyone wants to get started, but the kikes at the NRC who control it refuse to let them.

First applied to build it in 2007/8
Now its 2016 and they are still trying to get a permit

>Not knowing about the EBR-II reactor
In 1994 the Clinton appointed Head of The Department of Energy who subsequently shut down Argonne National Laboratories EBR-II reactor. Which in 1986 had actually demonstrated a full shut down without the emergency backup systems was possible with natural physics. meaning it was completely safe. They also ordered that they dismantle the facility and demanded that the physicists and engineers not publicize the event or their work.
The head of the Department of Energy was an executive vice president of a natural gas plant prior to their position in the government. It was also a black woman.

Nuclear energy was killed by political corruption and the natural gas companies. Even without Thorium the nuclear reactor technology existed to be completely safe.

And since they started shutting down reactors their CO2 emissions have rose despite their goal of reducing them.

I wouldn't call it cost effective, but it is a pretty sound investment over the long term.

It costs billions to construct a safe nuclear reactor these days and the bill won't get paid off for decades, even with the soaring energy prices.

It doesn't cost as much as you'd think to build one, most of the cost is regulatory & political in nature

>most of the cost is regulatory
True dat

The level of risk is seen as being so high that nuclear new builds have to jump through lots of hoops politically and financially.

In construction too, modern safety measures have to be extensive and water tight, which costs more and more with the extra qualification and certification needed.

It's no wonder that the appetite for nuclear is decreasing given the difficulty and cost of actually getting plants built these days. Thankfully though we can still claim it to be a "Green" energy source, so some governments see it as a worthwhile investment to help meet CO2 emissions targets (like the UK for example).

Donald Trump will fix that
He talked a buncha times about these fucking environment impact studies or w/e

Nor does the government have to allow people to file frivolous lawsuits against anything nuclear.

Even then, none of this would be relevant if the NRC would just GIVE THEM THE PERMIT TO START BUILDING

not him but there are 4 AP1000s under construction in the US right now

nei.org/Knowledge-Center/Nuclear-Statistics/US-Nuclear-Power-Plants/New-Nuclear-Plant-Status

Still took 6 years for those to be approved
Could be 10 more if they didn't take so damn long, and that is only the ones who applied for permits.

thats the reason theyre trying to put together blanket one-size fits all reactor designs, because each reactor is usually a custom build that has to be individually licensed each time, but if you have a standard modular unit, you can skip some of the regulatory bullshit

Maybe, but it looks like the bulk of the time is spent on environmental stuff, so i'm not sure how much that will improve things.

Standard modular unit is something that should have been done long ago.

>actually demonstrated a full shut down without the emergency backup systems was possible with natural physics. meaning it was completely safe.
First of all, that has nothing to do with it being cheap to build or cheap to clean up afterward. Breeders are way harder to build and much more expensive than conventional reactors.

Secondly, that only makes it safe against a power failure of cooling systems. It doesn't mean there are no other catastrophic failure modes, and it certainly doesn't make it "completely safe".

>Insisting on keeping the old ones, even though older unsafe reactors lead to shit like Chernobyl happening (granted, probably more due to staff idiocy but it can't have helped)
>If anyone points this out to them they'll just make the old ones shut down too without building new ones

No, not even close. Unless, you live close. lol

New ones can have problems, too.

Chernobyl and Fukushima were both caused by things meant to improve safety. Chernobyl went during a test of an emergency shutdown mode. Fukushima went because of an unnecessary just-in-case shutdown of the main generators, making the backup generator a single point of failure, triggered by a natural disaster which took out that backup.

So when engineers say, "Oh, we put lots of effort into safety." that doesn't mean it's safe. Their efforts to make it safe can introduce new failure modes which surprise them.

The hard truth of engineering is that you can analyse a design all you like, but the real world still ends up surprising you. For instance, you can't assume that the construction workers and inspectors that would be hired today are as conscientious and as willing to risk their jobs telling bosses unpleasant truths as the ones of past generations.

These old-design reactors were run for a long time before their flaws were discovered. We can't really know the new designs are safer until as large a number of reactors are run for as long.

>Chernobyl went during a test of an emergency shutdown mode
not even close. they just wanted to see how much power they could get out of their system once the steam supply was cut to the turbines. basically testing the inertial production from the turbines. then the had to supply backup power to Kiev, starting operating at full power without ECCS, then pulled out almost all their control rods to increase power after their controls failed to stop the power from going under 30 MW.

and fukushima happened because of a fucking station blackout and flooded generators, not that they didnt know an earthquake/tsunami like that couldnt happen

>fukushima
>older than chernobyl
>lacked any fucking safety feature of the modern era.
>diesel backup and nothing else
>fukushima dai ni, the sister plant of fukushima dai ichi a few miles away, managed with minor damage because it had an antiquated steam pump system that worked despite the fact that they also lost diesel backup
>"muh evil modern safety features"

blow you head off please.

My state's near power utility monopoly, is building new reactors at an existing site and checking sites out for a completely new nuclear power station.

Fukuhsima Dai Ichi had the catastrophic failure because of an unforseen plumbing error.

They used firetrucks to pump water into the primary coolant loop. Yet because there was no circulation going on. The water went a different direction, and into the heat exchanger. The reactor vessel it self had no instrumentation to tell them if there was water in the blasted thing or not.

So they followed the back up back up back up plan.

>they just wanted to see how much power they could get out of their system once the steam supply was cut to the turbines
Do you not understand what the point of that was? The diesel backup generator (to keep the plant's systems running, including the cooling system) took time to start up. They wanted to use the turbine as a flywheel to provide power (to the plant, not the grid) during that startup time.

>fukushima happened because of a fucking station blackout and flooded generators, not that they didnt know an earthquake/tsunami like that couldnt happen
They:
1) built the backup generators where they could be flooded by a tsunami, so no, they didn't properly anticipate that in the design, and
2) shut down the main reactors and generators when the earthquake hit, even though the reactor wasn't damaged by it, just as a precaution.

Because they had the backup, they let it become a single point of failure under circumstances where it was likely to fail. It wasn't as crazy stupid as what they did in Chernobyl, but it was still a consequence of a chain of fucking dumb decisions.

I explained Chernobyl and Fukushima together, as examples of real-world catastrophic failure, both of which were fucked specifically by things done for safety purposes (the backup power test at Chernobyl, and the precautionary shutdown at Fukushima).

I never claimed either was a new design, I was making the point that things done with the intent of increasing safety can end up causing a disaster, so engineers telling you they've put a bunch of stuff in the new reactors that should make them safer can't simply be assumed to have achieved their intended result.

>1) built the backup generators where they could be flooded by a tsunami, so no, they didn't properly anticipate that in the design, and
they built tubing around the intakes up to the top so they wouldnt be flooded, so they did design for that, just not effectively enough. they knew that an almost identical earthquake and tsunami happened in the past in the same location.

>2) shut down the main reactors and generators when the earthquake hit, even though the reactor wasn't damaged by it, just as a precaution.
of course they shut down the reactor. why the fuck would you think allowing it to run during the earthquake and tsunami somehow be safer? there would only be more decay heat

>that radioactive shit.
Where do you monkeys throw your shit?

>of course they shut down the reactor. why the fuck would you think allowing it to run during the earthquake and tsunami somehow be safer? there would only be more decay heat
Why do you think they needed the backup generator to run? If they hadn't shut the reactor down, it would have just continued operating normally. It wasn't damaged in the quake, it was simply shut down as a precaution because there was a quake.

They shut it down, their backup power went down, and then they had no power to pump coolant, so the core melted from decay heat.

>but it was still a consequence of a chain of fucking dumb decisions.
THIS
Nukes are perfectly safe in THEORY, as long as you don't let humans run them.
:^)

...or there's a power outage.

>it would have just continued operating normally

All 3 running reactors were shut down automatically in response to detection of the earthquake, not in response to detection of any damage to the reactors.

If any one of the three and its turbines was in working condition (and it certainly sounds like the direct damage to these systems from the earthquakes and tsunami weren't bad), it could have continued providing AC power for the primary cooling systems of all three reactors.

Maybe I'm wrong about the ability of the reactors to continue generating power, but they definitely triggered an emergency shutdown because of the measured strength of the earthquake, not because of any detected damage (which also would have triggered an automatic shutdown).

For the meltdown to happen, there also had to be failures of grid power, the diesel generators, the battery backup, and the passive fresh water emergency cooling system, and additionally, they had to excessively delay the decision to use the last-resort sea water emergency cooling system.

Because of all these backup systems, despite the fact that they were necessarily untested under real-world emergency conditions, they were casual about shutting down the primary source of power which normally powered the cooling pumps and prevented meltdown.

France dumps it in the ocean off africa

>I've never taken a course in project engineering or engineering econ

The total cost including all financing is determined extremely early in the development of any utility scale facility, even just a power substation.

Including the admittedly high up front cost of developing a nuclear plant and the cost of storage for waste, nuclear power is still much, much cheaper (and cleaner) than coal.

Maybe you should levy your own argument against coal. Who--if anyone--includes the environmental cost of coal? In places where the environmental cleanup costs are levied as additional taxes, coal is generally much less favorable than other sources, no?

The risk is greater than the reward. Just imagine the risk if Germany got their Nuclear Fission reactor fully operational...yes the reward is good but in terms of what's been going on throughout the last 20 years, faults and flaws have caused catastrophe. Chernobyl was a good example but still to this day many people don't even know where Americas worst ever nuclear waste spill happened...

Some perspective please.
If you include clean-up and fusion research costs, the money spent would power the entire planet on renewable. But you carry on with your meme-ing

...

High upfront cost but reactors last a long long time.

Chernobyl for example was still running and delivering energy 14 years after the big accident.

you know that a fission reactor only uses a few gramms of radioactive elements

ayy lmaNO

it uses on average about 200 tonnes of uranium each fuel cycle

>Chernobyl
>few hundred dead people mostly because ZSRR didn't give a fuck about proper evacuation
>full of life nowadays, little human population because everyone is scared
>Fukushima
>Oh fuck radioactivity that probably didn't even kill anyone
>Meanwhile actual catastrophe is caused by fucking tsunami
>People still remember Fukushima more than the actual tsunami
People are literally less afraid of giving everyone weapon so another guy off his meds can just shoot you down in broad daylight.

>bringing in gun control somehow
fuck off feinstein

I brought it for shitposting purposes. I don't even have a strong opinion on it.

oh i meaned fussion im from germany bot words are more different

>Chernobyl
>few hundred dead people mostly because ZSRR didn't give a fuck about proper evacuation
>Fukushima
>Oh fuck radioactivity that probably didn't even kill anyone
1) It's more about the areas needing to be permanently abandoned than the short-term death count. Each disaster cost a city.
2) The actual death tolls are disputed and essentially unknowable.
3) If these disasters (and more easily covered-up leakages and secret dumping to the environment), keep happening, it could seriously affect people's health globally.

Nuclear power supplies only about 10% of the world's electricity, which in turn is under 20% of the world's energy use, making it under 2% of the world's energy supply.

Is a mere 2% of the energy supply worth losing any number of cities over? Is it worth any amount of nuclear weapon proliferation risk? Any amount of risk of contaminating the entire Earth?

If you want to talk about the harm of fossil fuels, nuclear barely makes a dent in their use. There are far simpler, less costly, and less worrisome ways of reducing fossil-fuel-related pollution by a few percent.

Since much of the energy is used for specifically chemical processes or applications requiring highly portable or locally-storable energy, nuclear power would be an inefficient replacement for applications other than grid electricity. To shift the world to run primarily on nuclear power would require at least a hundredfold expansion. Once-in-a-decade disasters would become every-month disasters, if the same standard of safety was maintained, unlikely with the technical talent and supply of conscientious workers being spread a hundred times more thinly.

Nuclear is to energy as the space shuttle was to orbital launch: a high-profile, high-cost, disaster-prone irrelevancy, best put aside and forgotten except as a cautionary example.

>1)
Chernobyl doesn't need to be abandoned. Most of it is just fear mongering. If we really needed to move to Chernobyl then we would.
>2)
That's because people try to blame increase in radiation for causing every cancer related death. Small radiation doses are withstood fine.
>3)
But it doesn't. You know what is murdering tons of people every day. FOOD COMPANIES AND BAD DIET/NO EXERCISE. Last I checked more than 35% of Americans are obese and you are afraid that miniscule increase in radiation will get them cancer. We are alright with pumping tons of needless sugar and hindering all of our living functions considerably with tons of fat but are afraid of being silently killed by scary radiation happening thousands of kilometers away.
>worth losing any number of cities over?
Ukraine "lost" one city, which was literally nothing, and again people can settle there just fine without any noticeable effects on health since some time.
>Is it worth any amount of nuclear weapon proliferation risk
Of course every good use of nuclear energy that has no affect on nuclear weapons is bad cause nuclear weapons are bad. Fast flying metal kills people better remove all metal.
>Any amount of risk of contaminating the entire Earth?
Yes. There is always risk in something. You can't live without risking death. And Earth contamination could only be done with massive nuclear weapon launches, not atomic energy.
>If you want to talk about the harm of fossil fuels, nuclear barely makes a dent in their use
Only hydroelectrics are even comparable to cost effectiveness of nuclear, and they need geographic placement and fuck up a lot of other shit on top of killing people. Nuclear is doing way more than other energy type nowadays even with nobody letting nuclear do its job.
>Since much of the energy is used for specifically chemical processes
More and more things are run on electricity as tech progresses.

>Only hydroelectrics are even comparable to cost effectiveness of nuclear
This is total, unmitigated bullshit. Nuclear is one of the more expensive options (basically only oil and immature renewable technologies are worse), while hydroelectric is one of the least expensive options.

>>under 2% of the world's energy supply
>Nuclear is doing way more than other energy type nowadays
You're just completely in the realm of fantasy, aren't you?

>You're just completely in the realm of fantasy, aren't you?
Considering I was on post length limit, it does more compared to wonderful solar and wind.
>Nuclear is one of the more expensive options
Considering it's only expensive thanks to retarded safety measures because somehow 3 people killed by radiation equals 5 hitlers. Fueling it is dirt cheap, running isn't bad either.
>hydroelectric
AH a power source that needs specific geographic placement and requires you to fuck up a few ecosystems in half the cases.

Also nice energy use. I don't know what's the reason for some yet to be explained term of world's energy supply that doesn't have to do with electricity production. What are you even counting there?

> Nuclear is one of the more expensive options
who tells you this?
It's completely untrue

Dams haven't been built for decades, its doubtful that'll change any time soon.
They are not cheap either.

>it's only expensive thanks to retarded safety measures

>> Nuclear is one of the more expensive options
>It's completely untrue

Cheaper per KWH is cheaper than anything else

If they need to spend billions just fighting the NRC for a permit, thats not a real cost, thats an invented bureaucratic cost, which could be gone tomorrow if a pro-nuclear president was elected.

the NRC is self-governed

>If they need to spend billions just fighting the NRC for a permit, thats not a real cost, thats an invented bureaucratic cost
Tell me some more about how in your idealized fantasy world, nuclear power has negligible risks, regulating it is just wasting money, and we should ignore the observed costs in favor of ones that you made up.

Less risk than Solar. People fall to their death maintaining solar panels more often than die due to nuclear power plant failures or maintenance.

So how many cities have had to be abandoned because of solar power? How many thousands of years into the future will old solar panels have to be contained and guarded before their threat to human life is ended? How many countries have gained nuclear arms by abusing technology exported to them on the condition that they'd only be used for peaceful solar power generation?

Also, the figure that claim was based on was produced in a biased, dishonest way. The truth is that nobody knows how many people have died from nuclear plant failures, due to the difficulty of identifying the cause of any given case of cancer, or even in their operation, since a lot of the history of nuclear plants took place in secretive and dishonest countries, like the Soviet Union, and they took the absolute minimum figure that could possibly be true, with available evidence.

Tell me how a decade of environmental impact studies has anything to do with reducing/eliminating that risk

>Chernobil
We dont lost the city we made the worlds biggest radioactive waste disposal

I mean its already radioactive
we have a sarcopharg
workers without fears

We should use trains to bring the barrels there a crane throws them in the sarcophag then we put the new hull over it

Hmmm, interesting. Probably as good as anywhere. A little mutation at the bottom of the sea might be speed up evolution down there.

Faggots like you need to learn what risk means

It's not just the frequency or likelihood of an accident - an essential component of risk is the severity of any potential outcome.

What happened to the thorium meme? Last time I was on Veeky Forums, it was /thorium/

The US Navy literally has had a bunch of mobile nuclear reactors all over the Globe since the 60s and they haven't had a single issue.

Quit your petty fear mongering shit. The success rates for nuclear engineering are indisputable and no one is honestly surprised both Russia and Japan fucked up.

Honestly,what's the Alternative? Coal? Natural gas? Don't even pretend they're any way safer and better for the environment.

Brilliant

If you count the nuclear explosion happening all day every day in the sky raining down free energy upon us, then yes.

>not using nuclear plants to supply base load
>not also using photovoltaics to supply peak load
>not also using wind for intermittent generation

it's like you don't even want to nofossil

you honestly sound like you don't want to understand how the reactor works

No, a combination of coal, gas and hydro is

Reminder that the coal plant close to your city spews out more radioactive shit than nuclear power ever has. Not to mention all the other pollution.

Nuclear power plants will have close to none radiation emissions once breeder reactors become mainstream. Today's nuclear waste is literally tomorrows fuel.

Uranium (and other fissiles) is the only fuel source that could last us for a loong time and doesn't require black magic like controlled fusion. There's a fuckton of uranium dissolved in the ocean.