Nuclear power?

What does Veeky Forums think of nuclear power in comparison to say, solar or wind?

Pic related.

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_debate
xkcd.com/1162/
youtube.com/watch?v=1mHtOW-OBO4
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#United_States
world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/uranium-resources/military-warheads-as-a-source-of-nuclear-fuel.aspx
hiroshimasyndrome.com/the-uranium-explosive-myth.html
youtu.be/rcOFV4y5z8c
youtube.com/watch?v=pVbLlnmxIbY
youtube.com/watch?v=HEYbgyL5n1g
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

Energy demands are too large for just solar and wind at the moment. Nuclear works nicely to supplement those until they become more efficient but nuclear has its own issues. Nuclear is still infinitely better than any type of fossil fuel so don't worry about the issues with adding more nuclear plants until we completely eliminate fossil fuel production.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_debate

TL;DR fuck Al Gore

OP here. I've heard arguments that they're really fucking expensive, but I've also heard argument that they're cheap as shit. What are they?

Like, are they just cheap once you get standardized reactors and economy of scale or?
Also, why the fuck is no one using IFR style breeder reactors? Whats with all the LWR, aren't those wasteful as heck?

(pls help, I'm not scientifically bright, but I've been trying to learn).

Retarded. People only like it because it sounds science-y

i don't know which cuck decided it was a good idea to use nuclear without having a waste-solution.

OP here, correct me if I'm wrong, but can't you feed the majority of the waste back into an IFR style reactor, and then take that tiny amount of residue, and bottle that shit up in special containers, and toss em into the deep ocean, where the pressure will take it and bury it under about 4 miles of ocean? Good fucking luck getting that shit for proliferation, terrorists.

It's hard to assess the true cost of nuclear because extreme government regulations/subsidies/what have you are in play. Based on everything I've read, it's cheaper than coal and more expensive than hydro if you exclude the possibility of a catastrophic event.

Damn Pripyat pic is just like Pripyat in stalker. Nice.

>nuclear power
hazmat waste
>solar or wind
no hazmat waste
Yes it's that simple, you morons.

Can solar and wind produce power in the quantities that we need? In the long run, do solar and wind not produce, pound for pound more waste than nuclear? And besides, the heavy metals in solar panels for all intents and purposes do not degrade. They last forever, and will forever pollute, where at least radiation has an end date via half lives.

I'm not of the belief that it's that simple, user.

You're not wrong.

Agree, though it's difficult to get a straight estimate of the costs due to politics. How much of the cost of nuclear is due to legal barriers and regulation?

If those costs are significant, in theory (given the political will) government could step in and ameliorate them.

>Nuclear works nicely to supplement those until they become more efficient
>Can solar and wind produce power in the quantities that we need?

Relevant: xkcd.com/1162/

Nuclear waste is a meme, you can recycle the fuel bars is just that you create plutonium and other things that require either extensive control in storage or inmediate application.

Nuclear waste is worse than global warming imo. A lot of reactors are in 'decommision' phase longer than their operating life and the industry around them is worth an absurd amount of money. I'm not against nuclear power, but i am stronly against more Uranium reactors. Bring on thorium or some other safer clear nuclear power, and i think most people would not bat an eye at it.

>nuclear power
generates enough power to not need to also use fossil fuel as a suplement, so no contrbution to climate change
>solar or wind
doesn't, large indirect contribution to climate change, + rare earth mining for solar panels is very toxic

See? I can oversimplify too!

what about the fact that solar is not a continuous power source. when the sun is not shining, you have no power.

>we can have power at night if we just store the energy in batteries.
yes, why not string thousands of lithium batteries together that have a lifetime of about 10 years. solar is truly the way to go.

>when the sun is not shining, you have no power.
When the sun is not shining, we'll have loads of other problems to deal with. But that will probably still take billions of years.

ha

Correct me if I'm wrong, OP here again, but isn't solar and wind worse for the environment than nuclear? The toxic heavy metals and low standards for quality control raise some ethical issues, contrasting the immense amount of money the U.S. government has put down on every safety issue since three mile island.

For instance, people are worried about a fuel fire on like a transport truck or rail car, but like, those containers are as far as I've gathered, indestructible.

youtube.com/watch?v=1mHtOW-OBO4

Does a non-relevant xkcd comic exist?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#United_States
It's pretty cheap if you consider its total lifetime cost and total energy produced. Its just the huge startup cost that turns the private sector and the tax payers off. Hopefully small modular reactors will become commercial products soon and we can all finally agree that nuclear is the best power source.

This is actually why I'm going into nuclear engineering, I want to help revolutionise and pioneer the second age of nuclear power. If I make some good money doing it, so what?

Nuclear power is infinitely better. It upsets me that people are so skittish about it. It's so much safer than wind and more productive than wind and solar. Though I will agree with and argue that we should use nuclear power, but we should be using more advanced designs and methods to try to reduce any risks of failure and any potential environmental damage until they are negligible.

Also, wind power is a total meme. Apparently the windmills are super resource intensive and have a very VERY short lifespan. The more I look into it the stupider it sounds. Yes, you can use wind for little stuff, but the bigger stuff is just silly as fuck.

To be fair to solar, you don't have to use chemical batteries to store energy. You could store the energy as heat and then the only battery you need is water. Last time I checked, water doesn't go bad in 10 years. Alternative energy like solar can work, we just need to be creative and come up with better solutions to the problems that they present.

Good time to do it too, all the old engineers are going to be retiring soon.

>Good time to do it too, all the old engineers are going to be retiring soon.
Precisely, that's why I'm targeting the field. And I agree, nuclear, even fission, is far more beneficial and the least environmentally detrimental when nuclear waste is handled correctly.

Well, godspeed mister nuclear man. Just remember to look both ways when crossing the street and to empty your pockets before you head home and you'll be all set.

Why does it upset you? Fukushima is still leaking, Tokyo being in the east got raped. Of course people have a right to be concerned its not the best answer by any means.

Anybody who eats fish has a right to be skeptical

>Took a 9.1 magnitude earthquake and a tsunami to cause a local issue that didn't kill anyone
>nuclear is too dangerous

Don't forget, that Fuckyoushibe's reactor designs were several decades old, and it's been determined that a more modern reactor wouldn't have failed in such a manner.

Also, don't forget, if you don't live in the circle of fire, you're probably never going to see any sort of earthquake over an 8.1, which is literally an order of magnitude lower than a 9.1 in destructive power.

Will do, chief.

>What does Veeky Forums think of nuclear power in comparison to say, solar or wind?

it requires massive strip mines that decimate the environment to extract trace amounts of the fuel that then must be refined in incredibly energy intensive processes.

Totally unviable in my opinion.

I'm a proponent of deep geothermal, industrial scale, power plants set near oceans so use that abundant clean energy to extract hydrogen from water to replace petroleum in internal combustion engines and to provide the power for reverse osmosis to supply clean water for the worlds populations and industries.

My idea works, provided massive infrastructure investment. Would cost less than it took to bail out the banks during the last major financial collapse.

Viable with if we can find the political will. Sustainable on time scales exceeding the demise of the sun when it goes red giant.

>My idea works
Prove it

>Prove it
prove that fluid heat transfer and steam turbines function?

its off the shelf technology that has been around for over 50 years.

Considering you need a water to cool down nuclear, what effects play out on polluting our waterways?

...

>My idea works, provided massive infrastructure investment.
so does nuclear

Radioactive waste is contained unlike fossil fuel pollution.
People complain about how it as to be stored but it take magnitudes more space to set up solar farms (which also has to have exposure to sun which usually involves decimating the surrounding environment) then it does to build a warehouse for waste storage (which can be built anywhere and are usually constructed in desolate and uninhabited areas that are devoid of life).

Solar and wind are making great strides in energy efficiency, but there are places where they're not feasible. Nuclear would probably be our main power source had we not gotten spooked by Chernobyl and Three Mile Island (and we'd almost certainly have figured out how to reduce the chances of such accidents happening and mitigate the damage), so now we're stuck with King Coal for some fucking reason (despite the waste from coal being so much more of a threat than nuclear waste).

>Nuclear would probably be our main power source had we not gotten spooked by Chernobyl and Three Mile Island
Except that no it fucking wouldn't because oil and coal are much more economically viable than nuclear energy.

Nuclear energy would be more economically viable today if there was proper funding for research in it like other energy sources. Take the IFR for example: 10 years into a 13 year production the democrats get in and shut down the whole deal because they're scared of nuclear. We would have cheaper reactors if it weren't for Chernobyl/Fukishima crybabies.

Nuclear itself is cheap, government restrictions because they're scared, despite modern nuclear reactors being safer and environmentally less detrimental than fossil fuels, solar and wind.

Nuclear safety isn't really a problem .... so long as you can guarantee responsible government for the next couple of centuries while the waste stabilises. Which, of course, no-one can.

Renewables aren't going to be able to entirely satisfy demand in areas of high population density.

Still, it'd be silly not to take advantage of cheap energy where it's available. Domestic solar could provide a substantial amount of power in many areas, with negligible impact. Industrial-scale solar is already more viable than nuclear in desert or near-desert climates (high insolation, low inherent land value); which includes much of the south-western US.

At a minimum, solar production should be required to meet or exceed the power used for air conditioning, given that the availability of solar power and the demand for a/c are so strongly correlated.

>Nuclear energy would be more economically viable today if there was proper funding for research in it like other energy sources.
So nuclear power would be cheaper if we were more willing to throw massive amounts of money at nuclear research facilities?

>10 years into a 13 year production the democrats get in and shut down the whole deal because they're scared of nuclear.
Yeah dude it was totally the democrats who are responsible for that. Never mind the fact that the majority of Democrats voted to NOT shut down the plant. Those damn hippies are ruining this country, I tell ya.

why can we all just agree that nuclear power is great.

> Nuclear itself is cheap
This is nonsense on stilts.

And it's not due to regulation; if it was, nuclear would be cheap in third-world shitholes where environmental regulations are an alien concept.

It's still the most expensive source going, even with the current near-zero interest rates (nuclear's primary cost is capital servicing). The only reason it gets built at all is as insurance against future instability in fossil fuel supply; once it's built, you have a fairly reliable GW of power for the next 4-5 decades.

>The only reason it gets built at all is as insurance against future instability in fossil fuel supply
actually, it's to produce fuel for nuclear weapons

10% of USA power is generated from nuclear warheads purchased from Russia. Maybe in North Korea and Iran that's true but that's not getting past anybody.

what point do you think you're making? We use dismantled nuclear warheads, which are low-enriched uranium. Russia isn't just selling us warheads that could be readily made into weapons. I'm pretty sure that would be breaking all sorts of treaties.

>majority of Democrats voted to NOT shut down the plant
Well that took a lot of digging through congress but you're right. Didn't seem that democrats were supportive considering John Kerry repeatedly proposed bills against the reactor (including the approved termination) and with Hazel O'Leary backing him.

I'm not sure how you think dismantling nuclear warheads isn't the opposite of producing fuel for nuclear warheads. If you think that they didn't contain weapons grade uranium at the time of sale then read this:

Surplus weapons-grade HEU resulting from the various disarmament agreements led in 1993 to an agreement between the US and Russian governments. Under this Russia would convert 500 tonnes of HEU from warheads and military stockpiles (equivalent to around 20,000 bombs) to LEU to be bought by the USA for use in civil nuclear reactors.

world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/uranium-resources/military-warheads-as-a-source-of-nuclear-fuel.aspx

Yes, but they dont and cant just shove the enriched uranium from a bomb straight into the reactor. Uranium used for nuclear reactors is significantly diluted and will never blow up like a nuclear bomb. You're feeding a dated myth, mate.

hiroshimasyndrome.com/the-uranium-explosive-myth.html

It is diluted long before it is sold to foreign countries. Unless they want them to build a nuclear bomb, then sure they may send them the enriched stuff, but either way nuclear reactors are absolutely not part of the equation whatsoever.

world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/uranium-resources/military-warheads-as-a-source-of-nuclear-fuel.aspx

Obviously they don't throw 90% U-235 in the reactor. Note the part where I mention that HEU is converted to LEU. I mean that it's incentive for those governments to get rid of nuclear weaponry and the uranium that fuels it.

Sorry the double and triple negatives make it an exceptionally confusing read.

>I'm a proponent of deep geothermal, industrial scale, power plants set near oceans so use that abundant clean energy to extract hydrogen from water to replace petroleum in internal combustion engines and to provide the power for reverse osmosis to supply clean water for the worlds populations and industries.My idea works, provided massive infrastructure investment. Would cost less than it took to bail out the banks during the last major financial collapse.Viable with if we can find the political will. Sustainable on time scales exceeding the demise of the sun when it goes red giant.

shameless bump quote of my own response, best response in thread.

also links to relevant nuclear videos.

how it works: youtu.be/rcOFV4y5z8c
pro arguments: youtube.com/watch?v=pVbLlnmxIbY
con arguments: youtube.com/watch?v=HEYbgyL5n1g

That picture is such bullshit I stopped reading there.

>That picture is such bullshit I stopped reading there.

the picture is satire of the diametrically opposed preconceptions of the consequences of nuclear energy often held by the public on the subject.

maybe you weren't smart enough to realize as much.

the conversion of HEU to LEU was due to the end of the cold war and was more or less forced in order to end tension. That doesn't mean you can disregard the rest of history. Sure, not all nuclear factories today are created with the purpose of creating nuclear weapons but even if we discovered a magical energy source today nuclear plants would still exist. The point is the US and Russia need nuclear plants to keep topping up their nuclear weapon supply and we still have them despite the fact that the general population looks at it so negatively. If wind had a view this negative about it, there would be no wind plants.

>Its just the huge startup cost that turns the private sector and the tax payers off.
It's not a question of cost
It's a question of impossibility to get approval to build it

>And it's not due to regulation
It is 100% due to regulation that the US isn't a majority nuclear power country
The NRC takes decades to approve a new design, then another decade to approve a permit to START construction on a nuclear plant.

They simply did not approve any new power plants between the late 70's and like 2012
It was not a question of cost, it was a question of a bureaucracy saying "no".

Regulation was also horrendous for nuclear power plants adding years to construction

But most importantly the NRC was founded to end nuclear development, and it successfully did so

It is not a politics thing, it is not a money thing, it isn't really a regulation thing.

By not a politics thing I mean, its not congressmen or liberals or hippie protestors being against nuclear

It's a federal bureaucracy that is the #1 thing stopping nuclear development.

>its not congressmen or liberals or hippie protestors being against nuclear

Bill Clinton actively did his best to stop all nuclear research and development.

He even shut down the Integral Fast Reactor at a decommissioning cost that was GREATER than the cost to finish completion, which had only 3 years left. When asked why, he simple said 'It was about sending a message'.

Later in his State of the Union speech in 1994, he said:

>‘We are eliminating programs that are no longer needed, such as nuclear power research and development’

>It's a federal bureaucracy that is the #1 thing stopping nuclear development.

speculating: the source of the "red tape" comes from lobbying from Coal and Petrol industry lobbying and campaign contributions designed to keep the market for energy under their control.

I suggest that this dynamic, as described above, applies equally well to all viable alternatives to fossil fuels.

>nuclear isn't economically viable
$0.05 has been deposited in your account. Thank you for helping us take on the world's toughest energy challenges™

- ExxonMobil

fail safe is a meme. everybody wants to be cost effective

natural gas isn't a fossil fuel, and it's been growing rapidly

>natural gas isn't a fossil fuel

false.

What are the pro's vs con's?
Could someone explain it like I'm retarded?

Cons:
>Dangerous radioactive waste
>Meltdown is dangerous, can harm environment, very expensive to clean
>Huge startup cost to build
>Aids nuclear weapons proliferation

Pros:
>Considering its lifetime cost and lifetime energy output it's one of the cheapest sources of energy
>Emits near zero CO2 directly and indirectly
>Produces enormous amounts of energy
>Fuel is cheap and abundant
>Arguably has the lowest number of deaths per unit energy produced of any power source. (According to WHO no one has been killed as a result of nuclear power apart from Chernobyl)

Probably more pros and cons that I missed but those are the ones that just popped into my head.

>solar power
>no hazmat waste

Fucking kill yourself you non-STEM brainlet. Why dont you actually read up on solar energy before jumping to conclusions. Solar panel waste products are gallium arsenide, copper-indium-gallium-diselenide, and cadmium-telluride, all of which are cancer causing, organ rotting, soil poisoning, non recyclable toxins.