• FinishingDutch@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    34
    arrow-down
    7
    ·
    6 months ago

    I’ve got solar panels on my roof, and being Dutch windmills are in my blood. But I’m also not blind to the reality that both wind and solar will only get you so far. And there’s already a lot of opposition to wind farms - they ruin the view, endanger birds and there’s health concerns due to noise and shadow projection.

    If we just build even one nuclear powerplant, we could basically just… not do wind. And we’d have pleeeenty of power for the coming energy transition, change to electric vehicles, etc.

    But noooo… nuclear is scary. Especially to the people who only cite Fukushima and Chernobyl in regards to safety. That’s the same as banning air travel because of 9/11 and the Tenerife disaster. Nuclear power is safe, cheap and we owe it to the planet to use it wisely instead of more polluting alternatives.

    • stebo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      6 months ago

      building new nuclear plants is barely an option though because it costs tons of money and, more importantly, takes like 10 years to build. However I agree we shouldn’t decommission the existing ones if they still are in a good state

      • FinishingDutch@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        edit-2
        6 months ago

        Well, here in the Netherlands we definitely need far more energy in the near future. We’re moving away from natural gas for heating and fossil fuels are going away in favor of electric vehicles. Add in things like heat pumps, more people getting airconditioning, data centers and other growing energy needs.

        Basically, right now we have ‘just about’ enough electricity available, but soon it won’t be. We already import quite a bit of energy from other countries, which makes us inherently vulnerable.

        Nuclear plants are expensive and take a long while to build. Which is why I hold politicians responsible for not pushing them through years ago. The best time to build a nuclear plant was ten years ago. The second best time is today.

      • FinishingDutch@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        18
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        6 months ago

        Even the link itself mentions how it’s not really a good metric to use as it doesn’t factor in whole lot of externalities. I.e coal is cheaper, but when it creates air pollution that shortens your lifespan, is it worth the tradeoff? Nor does it factor in things like energy density: a nuclear power plant is far smaller than the amount of land needed to put up enough wind turbines to match its output.

        Basically… LCOE looks like a neat gotcha, right up until you look past that first diagram.

        https://www.mackinac.org/blog/2022/nuclear-wasted-why-the-cost-of-nuclear-energy-is-misunderstood

      • Strykker@programming.dev
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        6 months ago

        Power from nuclear plants in Ontario is some of the cheapest to produce in the province, because the plants have been running for literal decades.

      • Forester@yiffit.netOP
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        6 months ago

        Its expensive to build new bespoke massive, built on site reactors. I’m not arguing for more of them I’m saying lets run them for their full service lives as they were so expensive to produce. However if we are discussing new installations i’d love to start making a lot of small modular light water reactors in factory conditions. Economies of scale.

        • bstix@feddit.dk
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          6 months ago

          I agree. Smaller local modern salt reactors would be a better use of nuclear than investing in the conventional centralised nuclear plants. However they’re still in the experimental phase and not easily available. I too would love if “we” starting making a lot of them, but there’s no finished design or anyone offering to build them for mass deployment.

          Right now, with the currently available options, renewable is the only cheap mass produced energy source that can beeasily deployed everywhere and in different scales.

          Hopefully the container sized nuclear plants will eventually be as easy to setup.

          Renewables also have a similar issue with storage. It exists mainly in experimental projects. It’s extremely local if it even makes financial sense to do it. In places where existing nuclear or hydro is available it will not be make much financial sense to store excess renewable energy with a loss.

    • SapientLasagna@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      6 months ago

      It’s kinda the same though isn’t it? Opposition to nuclear power, opposition to wind, solar, geothermal, hydro. Seems like maybe what people want most of all is to stick their heads in the sand and just have everything stay the same forever. It was a multi-decade effort to get people off of leaded gas FFS.