Is it time to go nuclear?

Nuclear power will never take off because it isn't viable without massive state incentives, tax break and supports.

Even then it is a dodgy proposition, economy wise.

Countries like China were cost or economic considerations are secondary to growing the economy quickly, can run with it but even they have their doubts.

Nuclear isn't cost effective now and it is losing that game more each day.

Other than that id have no problem with it.

Benny mcc wrote: »

F*#k off with nuclear. We don t want it and it has no place here .

Nah, I'll continue to say what I think.

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Just about everything in the quotes above is incorrect. Nuclear provides a good base load. PV requires a load balance and the panels last about 20 years after which time most of the materials cant be recycled. Also takes up enormous space.

Who will pay for Nuclear though?

That is the reason it isn't the dominant power source.

It is going to have to be the State as no one else will invest their money unless some one else has agreed to take the cost hit, always the taxpayer.

It had massive potential as an energy source, has a part to play for some countries energy but it's viewed as the past.

Deleted User wrote: »

Just about everything in the quotes above is incorrect. Nuclear provides a good base load. PV requires a load balance and the panels last about 20 years after which time most of the materials cant be recycled. Also takes up enormous space.

Do you know how much space a nuclear plant takes up ? Not just the foot print, the area around it where no one wants to/should live ? Do the maths its quite eye opening, if you cover the same area with current efficiency PV you get close (50-75%) to the name place capacity of the plant.

What do you think is cheaper/cleaner to recycle, PV or a nuclear power plant, without adopting the nuclear industry method of digging a hole, burying it and a waiting for another generation to deal with it ?

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Let's roll the clock back 5 years shall we ?

One of the amazing things about nuclear is the many ways different countries can screw it up. Fake parts and fake safety certs ? Just one more way to have multiple reactors shut down for an extended period without warning.


Nuclear is totally dependent on hydro or fossil fuel to load balance every day. And relies on fossil to carry the increased load in winter even when you schedule refuelling cycles for the summer.

PV lasts. So probably no need to recycle. Older panels would use silver for contacts so very recyclable. Even panels using exotic materials wouldn't use much of it. And most panels use silicon so essentially purified sand.

You have it so totally arse about backwards and plain wrong, it borders on comedy.

As you can see, nuclear energy has by far the highest capacity factor of any other energy source. This basically means nuclear power plants are producing maximum power more than 92% of the time during the year.

That’s about 1.5 to 2 times more as natural gas and coal units, and 2.5 to 3.5 times more reliable than wind and solar plants.

https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/nuclear-power-most-reliable-energy-source-and-its-not-even-close

It does not need duplication of generation capacity to reliably provide power due to downtime - that's Solar PV and wind you are thinking of. Solar doesn't work at night and barely works when there is significant cloud cover. Likewise, there are entire weeks when there isn't enough wind to boil a few kettles. If wind was the only power source, we would be breaking out the candles and shivering without heating for days at a time.

PV's don't last, they steadily lose generation capacity as they age and are kaput by 30 years at the outside. Some panels have a significant cadmium content and are expensive and difficult to deal with in terms of recycling.

Benny mcc wrote: »

F*#k off with nuclear. We don t want it and it has no place here .

Says who?

cnocbui wrote: »

There are people on boards who cheerfully talk about the great benefits to be had of building dams and flooding several valleys to provide pumped storage to make PV and wind not look like they suck as much as they do.

You talk of footprint - that madness is a real footprint.

That's terrible ! You would probably get a complete nuclear power plant in that space, and when the plants finished with, none of that nasty cadmium to get rid of.

mickuhaha wrote: »

I think we need electricity at nearly a third of the cost it is now to pull people away from fossil fuels and for people to use more of it. I don't think we can go solar, wind power and battery storage fast enough to do that. I think we need nuclear sooner rather than later.

That is pretty much the first rule of Nuclear.
It takes decades to do built it safely.
It takes Millennia to dispose of the toxic waste left behind.

We needed to start before the qualifiers for Italia '90

Then there is the space issue. If you can't get permission for a microchip factory next door to an existing microchip factory, how in the name of blazes to you think permission will be forthcoming for a Nuclear power plant..... It will never happen. Nimbys, My Field, protected Flora, protected Fauna, special areas of conservation, protected waterways...There is nowhere to put it unless putting the entire thing underground is an option. (and its not)

Then there is the mindblowing level of incompetence, senseless greed and corruption that prevails in all of the current political parties in the country,
It would have to be a 20 year minimum duration government backed and funded project with quality and safety up the wazoo, thereby dispensing with any semblance of value, transparency or program. Completely ignorant junior ministers having a hand in exploration licenses, known (dog on the street) bent politicians having influence on zoning laws, fraudulent insurance claims, TDs hiring plant and equipment to the local council for the love of god, you couldn't make the stuff up. The only hope of switching on a bloody lightbulb would be to outsource the whole kit and kaboodle to Bechtel, Aecom or Hochtief and just double the national debt every 5 years.

The solution must either be multi-faceted, or a scientific break-through equivalent to sustained cold fusion (which cannot be counted on)

It requires modifying human behavior.
Grid spikes at ad breaks in the world cup and Corrie are beyond stupid and are totally avoidable.
The expectation that 2 million homes can turn on their kettles at the same time has been fostered by a Western consumer entitled attitude and that is only the tip of the iceberg.
There are solutions, there is no magic bullet and a massive education program from primary schools onward is required to get the importance of it into the human consciousness to modify adult behavior. A smart grid, small scale residential storage, competitive feed-ins are all parts of the solution.
The biggest and hardest challenge is for the entire population to genuinely give one fcuk per day about the impacts of their behavior.
(He says, as he types out a message on the dual screen of a plastic laptop in a flouro lit room - Just to highlight how little information is actually put out about our lifestlye impacts because if it was consumer behavior would drop off, and sure you can't be doin that.)

Deleted User wrote: »

A small amount of easily contained waste as opposed to thousands or millions of tonnes of toxic waste.

A what amount of what.......

yeah, we need to build a sarcophagus to keep the solar panels from belching out isotopes...nope
We have run out of storage space from the contaminated groundwater from the wind farm and have to release it untreated into the ocean....nope

And that is without even looking into the mining processes involved in creating fuel grade material in the first place.....have you heard of yellowcake ?
Natural uranium contains 99% U238 and only about 0.7% U235 by weight.
for the 27 tonnes give or take of Fuel grade U235 a 1000MW reactor will need per year, that means somewhere in the world (Kazakhstan, Canada, Australia or Namibia probably) there will be 385t of U238 lying around. Extracted but unwanted. Then there is the reality that this combined Uranium is at a very low percentage (0.07% at Olympic Dam for example) within the extracted ore. All of a sudden you have 964,285t of ore extracted to power a 1000MW reactor for a year.
All of which was extracted, transported, processed and finally delivered to the other side of the world using HYDROCARBON FUELS.

Do you know what the Hanford site is ? (586 square miles) - It would be the 7th largest Irish County

53 million US gallons (200,000 m3) of high-level radioactive waste[4] stored within 177 storage tanks, an additional 25 million cubic feet (710,000 m3) of solid radioactive waste, and areas of heavy Technetium-99 and uranium contaminated groundwater

But don't let the truth get in the way of a good story you saw on a pamphlet sponsored by General Electric or Dupont or whoever.;)