Loads of people love to pretend an NPP is just a hut with a magic gem inside delivering an endless amount of power for free. In reality they are huge, highly complex, high-security
facilities that take decades and billions to build and need to be operated and maintained by loads of highly trained staff in 24/7 shift operations. This isn’t to downplay their merit of providing CO2 emission free power, but for the love of god please appreciate the enormous effort and expense this is achieved with, especially when comparing it to renewables.
From what I understand, the costs and time needed to build a reactor would be far less if the constructions crews actually had experience building them.
Things that don’t exist yet aren’t a solution for problems we have now.
It’s not like we could now just build a thorium reactor that makes economic sense without decades of serious prototyping. And by that time we might have found that there are more pbolems with it than we thought.
Solar panels require a specific grade of silicone as a rare(ish) raw material input that requires extraction and heavy processing. Wind turbines don’t really use anything that is not readily available (steel, aluminum, fiber glass, etc.)
The technology to recycle solar panels still needs to be developed. The technology to recycle solar panel blades exists, but has not scaled up yet.
I’m not saying solar/wind have no material cost. I am saying the process for refining uranium requires extracting a lot of uranium ore.
You don’t actually need that much uranium though. Yeah it’s a big operation, but that stuff goes a long way.
Even wind power needs rare earth elements like neodymium and dysprosium, which pretty much only come from China and the mining operations there are kind of horror shows.
Well of course not, now. I never said it would fix the now problems we face. Had we started in the 1950s, or even the 70s, the impact of climate change would have been negligible and likely mitigated entirely by changes to society that we can’t possibly speculate given our current world. Unfortunately, money and greed played yet another part in destroying our futures by those who won’t be around to see what they’ve done or simply don’t care.
It’s almost like many things operate exactly like that but don’t have people spreading disinformation or fearmongering to the point where people are so pants shittingly terrified of them they won’t even consider it.
Sure, but hopefully you have no trouble believing that simultaneously, nuclear power companies and governments wanting to use nuclear, despite the risks, have been propagandizing for nuclear.
Pro-nuclear folks are often completely unaccepting of there being risks and externalized costs, which feels to me like they’re subject to propaganda (notwithstanding that I’m likely subject to different propaganda).
Loads of people love to pretend an NPP is just a hut with a magic gem inside delivering an endless amount of power for free. In reality they are huge, highly complex, high-security facilities that take decades and billions to build and need to be operated and maintained by loads of highly trained staff in 24/7 shift operations. This isn’t to downplay their merit of providing CO2 emission free power, but for the love of god please appreciate the enormous effort and expense this is achieved with, especially when comparing it to renewables.
From what I understand, the costs and time needed to build a reactor would be far less if the constructions crews actually had experience building them.
Hell yeah they bring high quality jobs as well as clean power
Things that don’t exist yet aren’t a solution for problems we have now.
It’s not like we could now just build a thorium reactor that makes economic sense without decades of serious prototyping. And by that time we might have found that there are more pbolems with it than we thought.
I mean, China is doing it right now, and we’ll have answers in a lot less than decades.
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Operating-permit-issued-for-Chinese-molten-salt-re
Not sure which unit MWt is. Anyway, let’s see how far they are in 7 years.
Strange source aside I’ve been hearing were on the edge of a breakthrough for thorium reactors and cold fusion for 40 years now.
If China had it working already then we would have heard it a lot louder from them.
Don’t forget about the environment cost of extracting unprocessed uranium ore.
Unfortunately renewables have nasty costs like this of their own.
Solar panels require a specific grade of silicone as a rare(ish) raw material input that requires extraction and heavy processing. Wind turbines don’t really use anything that is not readily available (steel, aluminum, fiber glass, etc.)
The technology to recycle solar panels still needs to be developed. The technology to recycle solar panel blades exists, but has not scaled up yet.
I’m not saying solar/wind have no material cost. I am saying the process for refining uranium requires extracting a lot of uranium ore.
You don’t actually need that much uranium though. Yeah it’s a big operation, but that stuff goes a long way.
Even wind power needs rare earth elements like neodymium and dysprosium, which pretty much only come from China and the mining operations there are kind of horror shows.
Sighs in thorium LFTR reactor noises.
That technology is nowhere near mature enough to provide a solution to the mentioned problems in the next decade or two.
Well of course not, now. I never said it would fix the now problems we face. Had we started in the 1950s, or even the 70s, the impact of climate change would have been negligible and likely mitigated entirely by changes to society that we can’t possibly speculate given our current world. Unfortunately, money and greed played yet another part in destroying our futures by those who won’t be around to see what they’ve done or simply don’t care.
It’s almost like many things operate exactly like that but don’t have people spreading disinformation or fearmongering to the point where people are so pants shittingly terrified of them they won’t even consider it.
Yeah, fossil fuel companies have spent the last 70 years propagandizing against nuclear because it’s their largest threat.
Sure, but hopefully you have no trouble believing that simultaneously, nuclear power companies and governments wanting to use nuclear, despite the risks, have been propagandizing for nuclear.
Pro-nuclear folks are often completely unaccepting of there being risks and externalized costs, which feels to me like they’re subject to propaganda (notwithstanding that I’m likely subject to different propaganda).