Nuclear (hopefully fusion at some point) is the only plausible way to meet energy needs in the future (that we currently know of). Fear of nuclear waste isn't irrational, but highly overblown because catastrophic events are more emotionally compelling than the slow degradation of either living standards and/or environment caused by competing technology.
30 years ago, I would have said the same thing. But right now solar is seeing technological advances at an exponential rate, such that by the time we build a nuclear power plant, get it approved, and get it running, solar will be both cheaper and safer while using less space.
So you claim that and that one "paper" from 2019 calculating worst case and with 2019 battery prices. Bad thing is battery prices are falling through the floor and 6 years make all the difference.
> Nuclear (hopefully fusion at some point) is the only plausible way to meet energy needs in the future (that we currently know of).
This is simply false. At this point, its falsity has been sufficiently well demonstrated and communicated that you should have known it was false. If you are not deliberately lying, it's only because you steered yourself away from learning the truth.
I think you probably just disagree with OP about the levels of our energy needs in the future.
If we just sustain human life and pleasure then yeah renewables are probably fine. If we want to pursue highly energy intensive applications and then further if we want to pursue those applications with mobility then we need nuclear.
We can pursue high energy intensive activities with renewables, higher than if we use fusion.
On Earth, solar allows high energy use before we run into limits from direct thermal pollution, since it uses energy already hitting the planet rather than introducing new energy.
In space, the energy available from sunlight vastly exceeds any available from fusion, and the feasibility difference tilts even more toward solar.
For mobility in space, beamed power will be best, and solar works with that just fine, even out to interstellar distances.
I think there are a lot of in-depth trades that can be done to show specifically when nuclear is appropriate vs solar, and I'm sure solar will win a lot of those, but I'm just going to reach for the easy ones here.
Radio telescope on the dark side of the moon, using solar would require long transmission lines. Autonomous vehicles on Mars (already use nuclear energy via RTGs). Any deep space mission where building a nuclear reactor and launching it is lower effort than complex energy beaming.
I don't think a radio telescope uses much power at all. And beamed power should work fine on the night side of the moon, beaming power via laser from collectors in space. The apertures on either end would just be a few meters.
I have to question the moon as a location for such telescopes vs. positioning them in space. We've built (small) space radio telescopes already, but none have been placed on the moon.
Solar and wind aren’t reliable energy sources. They’re not dispatchable 24x7 and fluctuate along various timescales. Storing renewable energy for 24 hours doubles the cost. Storing it seasonally increases the cost 150x. Show me any place, anywhere, which is using renewable for baseline energy production 24x7.
At this point, that’s sufficiently well known that you should have known it. If you’re not deliberately lying, it’s only because you steered yourself away from learning the truth.
Life spans of reactors can cause instability. Nuclear requires unstable mines for unstable materials which are unstably finite. Controlled by unstable governments and where by a nuclear explosion causes a very unstable aftermath. I see nothing stable about nuclear.
Unless, you mean renewable being "unstable" in the sense of no wind, no sun equates to no power. Then yes, but only until the fuel is spent.
However, renewables are stable when resources are available, stable in providing consistent clean fuel and stable in cost on upkeep than say one of a nuclear reactor.
Which is why you combine all three.
> Show me any place, anywhere, which is using renewable for baseline energy production 24x7.
El Hierro, the smallest of the Canary Islands, holds a unique distinction as the only island to operate solely on wind and waterpower for 28 consecutive days.
The facility ingeniously combines wind generation with pumped storage hydroelectric generation. Now that's cool.
I do know it. And I know that the intermittency can be dealt with at finite and tolerable cost, and the resulting solutions are likely to be cheaper than those using nuclear power.
Those seemingly stuck on advocating nuclear power do not seem to understand the advances made both in storage technology and in system design to deal with intermittency.
To be fair, Chernobyl was an older and unsafe reactor design in comparison to the newer ones we have today.
Anecdotally, I live near the Palo Verde nuclear powerplant in Arizona, we receive all of our electricity through a combination of solar (clouds are very rare here) and nuclear. These 2 factors mean energy is abundant in the state, and necessary in the summer for survival; air conditioning is a necessity due to the extreme temperatures in the summer.
The Palo Verde plant was commissioned in the 1980, and provides more power than any other reactor in the US. Since its not located near a body of water, it uses treated wastewater for cooling. It is a Pressurized water reactor design similar to the ones used on Naval vessels, a much safer design than the one used in Chernobyl, and none of which have ever experienced a meltdown or critical failure. Overall, I've never experienced any anxiety regarding the reactor not too far from where I live, it is the least of my concerns.
I believe the future will need to be a combination of renewables, to put all our eggs in one basket in foolish. Smaller and safer self contained nuclear reactors (like the ones used on Submarines) seem very promising for data centers. AI is on the rise, for better or worse, and it's power demands are constantly growing.
On the other hand, assuming the industry doesn't completely stagnate, "X was an older and unsafe reactor design in comparison to the newer ones we have today" will always be true.
I'm not worried about another Chernobyl. We've had one already, all reactor designs have been tested over and over again to avoid a repeat. The real risk is in all the small and seemingly insignificant things working together in unexpected ways. There will always be a nonzero chance of an incident, and due to the nature of nuclear reactors the impact of an incident is essentially unlimited.
Think of it like commercial airliners. Are they safe? Yes, absolutely. They are the safest method of travel available. I have zero worry about my safety when stepping on an airplane. But despite the tiny odds airplanes do crash from time to time, simply because there are so many of them.
An airplane crash has a smouldering crater and a few hundred dead as its result. Not great, but not terrible either: as a society we build a monument and move on. Would we still be flying airplanes if - no matter how unlikely - a crash meant that an entire city would become uninhabitable?
Good hypothesis, I would like to believe the general census would be no. Just because the impact of thought of it occurring is more devastating than the pro of flying to destination in one. I wouldn't want to fly even if there was a .1% of failure whereby it could catastrophically destroy many lives.
I don't refute that we couldn't move on. as we can take the result, analyse and not repeat. Learn from it and move on. Next plane crash causes less crater.
However a nuclear implosion you can't move on and nor is it over once it's occurred. How do you move on from a nuclear imposition? Japan and Hiroshima? They're still fighting the aftermath today and that was a nuclear bomb the same significant difference.
But if the reactor is a protected to 99.9% efficiency and that 1% could cause a aftermath that lasts forever, sure you can take the data like the plane crash and ensure it doesn't make the same sized crater but the results of the first are still devastating. Unlike the plane which is now old news.
If nuclear was a requirement and that other sources of energy were a scarcity then it would be different. But where by we have acres of desert we are not researching enough in to how to harness the energy, have oceans where winds blow, water is nearly endless, do we research that on a large scale for data centres?
It doesn't make sense for nuclear. Technically yes, you are making clean energy but at what expense and on a very dirty political basis.
Nuclear reactors do not surprise explode. The Chinese designs are passively safe: cut off all power and they'll simply sit there. They do not require active cooling.
The Gen 4 designs, which they also have, are physics safe: literally drop bombs on them and they still won't fail (bombing a nuclear plant in general is an over stated risk for other reasons too). They're building those now too.
> Nuclear reactors do not surprise explode. The Chinese designs are passively safe: cut off all power and they'll simply sit there. They do not require active cooling.
The same was said of Fukushima. And it was - until a tsunami fried all the backup local power keeping the control systems alive. Turns out the "passive cooling" still requires some valves to be controllable...
