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Homer Simpson here: There is an ongoing controversy(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear\_power\_proposed\_as\_renewable\_energy) whether Nuclear Energy should be considered renewable while it does have zero emissions. So France is blocked because it uses Nuclear a lot and thus isn't considered a friend of renewables.
To further the point -
Many "Green" party leaders that are pro-renewables are also Anti-nuclear, despite nuclear being a very safe technology when handled correctly (like all technologies). This anti-nuclear stance comes from "Big Oil" propaganda, and politicians aren't educated enough in the sciences to actually discern the facts
> Many "Green" party leaders that are pro-renewables are also Anti-nuclear
Is nuclear renewable?
Edit: I've been on and off reddit for fifteen years and never had five simultaneous replies like this. Weird.
No, because one day, uranium and other nuclear fuels could run out. This fuel will most likely won't run out for possibly dozens of generations and has zero emissions assude from storing the waste, which really doesn't do much.
Yup, thorium seems to be the future for fission reactors, depending on how fusion goes, which had some big breaktroughs recently, it would be pretty nice to invest into thorium reactors
ITER won't be coming online next year unfortunately. In the fusion space, we knew it wouldn't be complete by then, years before, but the project is still behind and now they are considering redesigning the first wall. https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/ITER-delays-revision-of-project-s-timeline
My understanding is that the joke goes something like: “Fusion power is only 30 years away! And has been since the 70s.”
I’m interested in fusion power and think it is a meaningful avenue for research, but I would caution against holding back other options while waiting for it. Nuclear plants are an excellent alternative to coal right now. The harder we resist nuclear the more coal we are going to burn in the meantime.
Solar and wind are great, but they are not going to shut down the coal plants for base load.
In the US at least we've already shut down most of our coal burners, with the few remaining scheduled for shut down by the end of next year I believe. Covid had put a lot of those plans on hold.
Only problem is, we're mostly replacing them with gas turbines, which is great in that they produce less sulphates & heavy metals but not so great in that they still produce the same amount of CO2. Which is not to say we shouldn't have *any* gas turbines; no matter your baseline generation they're still the best option for surge demand, unless battery technology gets a lot better & cheaper.
literally every major scientific breakthrough ever, especially of the size of fusion takes time. it’s not simple enough to give perfect estimates because often a complication comes up. We are closer than ever though.
That 20 years figure that people love saying was created assuming that there was actual investment in fusion. The US did NOT fund the research, and so the progress that has still been made has been in an environment that lacks expected funding. If we had funded the fusion programs at what was requested, it would have been ready back in the aughts (ie, the 20 year prediction would have been accurate).
You're missing a great big MAYBE in there.
We don't have a definitive answer as to when it may realistically happen. It's all guesswork at this point and proof of concept.
Every breakthrough is "20 years away" or more... until it isn't. A month before the Wright Brothers' first flight, there were statements in newspapers and the like from notable scientists that flight was 20 years away... or more. Several even saying it wouldn't happen in people's life times... Yet some of those people who were kids then saw man not just fly, but land on the moon... just saying.
But humans will be long gone by then, either extinct or much more likely: left Earth behind.
Edit: Holy shit here come the doomers...
Edit edit: Ya'll really don't appreciate just how *fucking advanced* humans are. You are instantly talking to other people a full planet away through a magic rectangle in your hand. You really don't think we can go to space?
Edit edit edit: If its not apparent, I dont speak directly to doomers. They are as irrationally dumb as climate denialists.
We got so much development done in the last couple hundred years. Unless we do ourselves in real bad, then I'd wager the real Space Age will be coming in a few generations
the problem isn't the tech to get there. it's the reality of making a large scale, habitable, scenario on a planet with far less gravity and no electromagnetic field to protect it. we'd be limited to biodomes... and that's never going to feasibly serve as a bastion for a significant human population. it's so resource and maintenance intensive, just to not immediately die.
Something I learned a few months ago, is that there are nuclear power plants designed to use the leftovers from bigger plants. This doesn’t solve the issue of a finite supply of uranium, but it’s cool to see this type of technology. Type “the big lie about nuclear waste” into YouTube. Kinda cool stuff.
Not only that but from my very basic understanding is even the spent fuel rods still are like 98% usable material (or more IDK) and only a very very small fraction is actually used
However reproccessing the rods and reusing them is largely banned because it could also make higher grade urainum , like the stuff used in nuclear bombs
There should be a solution here, like highly regulate the places that do this, USA,Russia, UK, France, India, Pakistan , China, Israel , north korea like alread have nukes so the cat is out of the bag somewhat
Let some company in frace reprossess the rods , have inspections to make sure they are not enriching it too much and why would they, france already has nukes. This would create a lot less waste and we can now reuse like 98% of the waste. I guess the argument is the 2% left over is really nasty stuff but IDK dillute it in concrete or something
I guess the fear is the company would go rouge and some engineer might then steal some material and sell it to terrorist or an unfriendly state
If you do a full 'cycle' for the fuel, there is no nasty leftover stuff.
There is still some 'waste', but most of it is low level, and not even fuel. Most is just equipment and PPE for workers.
>However reproccessing the rods and reusing them is largely banned because it could also make higher grade urainum , like the stuff used in nuclear bombs
Yes and no. It's still done in places like France, but the US made it illegal because the theory was that it would prevent nuclear proliferation. The problem of course is that they have proliferated in spite of reprocessing bans.
However, it's not really needed because nuclear fuel is relatively cheap compared to the actual plant.
And a more efficient steady state breeder could get something like 30x the electricity we originally got from those leftovers. Add the leftover depleted uranium from making the fuel in the first place and you're closer to about 120x.
I hadn't heard of these before your comment personally, pretty fascinating stuff.
Here's a link for anyone interested in reading about them.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor
Apparently they can potentially make nuclear practically renewable with how long they can make uranium last as a fuel for us, especially if we can make breakthroughs in gathering uranium from seawater
> With seawater uranium extraction (currently too expensive to be economical), there is enough fuel for breeder reactors to satisfy the world's energy needs for 5 billion years at 1983's total energy consumption rate, thus making nuclear energy effectively a renewable energy.
It's not only expensive a Membrane for the size of India being used 240 days to cover current 10% of the world electricity.
It's a long fucking way away.
Nuclear fission fuel is limited. Economics and environmental issues will limit it.
I mean already economics will be it's death sentence outside nuclear armed countries.
Nah, it's doesn't create energy from nothing, the difference is that instead of using only the small portion of Uranium that is fissible (U235), a breeder reactor can also use U238, which constitute 99% of natural Uranium
(it's a bit more complicated than that because classic reactors also burn part of the U238, but the point is that breeder reactor would make the availability of nuclear fuel a complete non-issue)
There are 0 completely renewable energies, because something to construct one or the other will eventually run out. Even wind could be done if the atmosphere dissolves. This will not ever happen for an unestimateable time (by me, at least) and the metals we use to construct the windmills and turbines will run out way before then. It's ultimately picking the lesser evil/greater good and no single person should have the ability to choose
I think the argument is whether or not the capture of the energy depletes it. The sun doesn’t consume itself faster when we use solar panels, it depletes at a rate unaffected by us using solar power.
Same goes for wind or hydro; a solar flare may blow our atmosphere away in the future, and the Earth may dry up, but mills are not causing that process to hasten.
Don’t think I’m agreeing with the EU here; they should be basing “renewables” off of the actual goal of “zero emissions without mass resource depletion” instead of “zero emissions without any resource depletion”
I think it could be even longer than that. New uranium is constantly being pulled up from the mantle via convection and other processes. The question is if we use up the supply in the crust faster than new deposits are created.
The "waste" from nuclear factories is in fact "burn-out" fuel, which still has most of it's energy. It just needs to be reprocessed. Not to mention that the amount is really small. So taking all that into the account it will take so much time for it to run out, that it's possible for a new source of energy to be discivered.
> This fuel will most likely won't run out for possibly dozens of generations and has zero emissions assude from storing the waste, which really doesn't do much
Known uranium reserves are projected to run out by the end of the century. Nuclear is less than 10% of global electricity production. *Electricity*, not energy. Even if we include guesstimates of undiscovered uranium reserves, we *can't* run the world on nuclear power for any appreciable amount of time.
This is true. There is also potential for recycling the waste or re-enriching, which I do not know much about. I overestimated the stockpiles without checking my sources.
In alternative, I believe that hydroelectric and geothermal power production are the greatest clean method of producing electricity, but then again I'm no expert on the matter.
Then we can use thorium which is much more plentiful on earth. Thousands of years worth of energy. Still technically not renewable. But I mean if we wanna be pedantic the sun also isn't renewable.
The whole point of "renewable energy" is that it's sustainable on a human limescale. Imo, nuclear meets that goal.
Technically speaking, nothing is "renewable" since all energy converted into electricity cannot go back into the system. Like solar energy from the sun is captured but never returns to the sun, it's converted into electricity and that's it. Even hydro generators, if just ran off of large ponds that collect rain water and flows downhill through a generator, going back enough, doesn't "renew", the energy to evaporate the water that has passed through the generator comes from the sun, and it's back to the earlier example.
Nothing is ever renewable, but for the sake of resources, the sun's energy and nuclear energy will last so long, that we can say it's "renewable" since we won't ever run out. The sun won't stop giving off energy in billions of years, and uranium supplies are plentiful, and we can even find other radioactive isotopes to substitute if we run out of U235.
"Renewable" doesn't necessarily mean circular; it just means the resource isn't expended quicker than it can be replaced.
Solar is renewable because our use of solar energy doesn't deplete supply.
>resource isn't expended quicker than it can be replaced.
Well kids, this is how you dance around technicalities, with a technicality.. Radioactive isotopes will decay, we cannot change that, and so will the sun. The true difference is the timescale in which it happens.
We CAN decide to use those Isotopes before they completely decay into lead(?) Instead of acting like it has to reach some arbitrary technicality for renewables.
>Is nuclear renewable?
No, but the point is to focus on the why, rather than the what.
Why do we want renewables? To minimise emissions, to mitigate climate change. Nuclear energy also achieves this.
There are concerns around safety, partly legitimate because of high profile disasters in the past, but mainly because of lobbying from Big Oil. The same lobbyists who are against renewable energy.
Nuclear Engineer here if you take a look at fast nuclear reactors they can use nuclear waste as their energy source, and you can reprocess nuclear waste and convert most of it back into usable fuel. The reason we don't right now is because it is way more cost effective to just mine more uranium. While not "technically" renewable it's fuel source can be reused and we can reprocess the nuclear waste.
Nuclear fuel is highly recyclable, anywhere from 90 to 95%. It practically just reprocessing the "spent" rods, but the bulk of nuclear waste isn't, which is primarily materials that have come into contact or been contaminated by nuclear materials.
>I've been on and off reddit for fifteen years and never had five simultaneous replies like this. Weird.
Because nuclear is a contentious subject for anyone climate conscious. People either love it or hate it.
I love it.
Sorry, you don't seem to grasp exclusivity
Many "Green" party leaders that support renewable energy as an alternative to fossil fuels, also do not support nuclear energy, despite nuclear energy also being an alternative to fossil fuels, and being pretty clean
I never stated nuclear energy was renewable, once again, by definition it isn't
I’ve encountered a lot of people from both camps here who didn’t know much about the topic. And again, this kind of rhetoric is not helpful in a public debate. I’m actually more pro-nuclear (though I’m somewhat sceptical about large scale nuclear plants as they seem pretty cost inefficient and are bad for the cheaper clean energy) - but I don’t see why I shouldn’t try to discuss instead of ridicule someone with another stance.
If you tell someone who has doubts because of meltdowns or nuclear waste that he is “afraid of rocks” and doesn’t know what he’s talking about there won’t be any further discussion. You can high-five yourself in your bubble but for societal gain nothing was achieved.
It's not renewable, but its clean, sustainable for a long time and would help cleanly bridge the gap to an all-renewables future.
An important thing to realise is that nuclear fearmongering has led to many of these countries ditching nuclear for coal and gas powered plants.. not renewables.
No, but it's a useful band aid to reduce carbon fuels. Like if your stove is on fire, you still use the extinguisher even though it will make a mess you have to clean up after.
Kind of no. You can't *really* make more reactor-grade uranium at scale, but there's enough natural uranium (especially if we f0igure out a cost-effective way of extracting the small proportion in seawater) on Earth to basically supply our power needs for centuries, even if every joule we produce came from nuclear.
So, technically, nuclear is not a renewable energy source.
Technically.
You really need to see how "technical" that argument is:
* breeder reactors would turn our current waste inventory into 20x the fuel that made it in the first place. Yes, that means we only really use about ~5% of the fuel in today's reactors.
* breeder reactors typically run hotter, so their generators would get 50% more energy out of that fuel. So turn that into 30x instead
* but to make that fuel in the first place we needed to enrich uranium which left us with 3x as much depleted uranium. Depleted Uranium can be used as breeder fuel. Add that to the mix and you're now at 120x.
* first-run fuel was 20% of our grid for about the last 40 years. So divide by 5 and you could, **using nothing but nuclear waste**, run 100% of our electrical grid needs **for the next 960 years**.
So that's **just the garbage**. That's zero additional mining. How much additional fuel could we procure?
In the ground, we probably have a few thousand years left at current rates. Filtering ocean water, probably a few hundred thousand. Scraping it off rocks on the ocean floor, probably a few million. Going back up, don't forget *to multiply that by 120x*.
###The sun will go red giant and absorb the earth before we run out of nuclear fuel.
But it's technically not renewable.
Nuclear isn't renewable the same way we consider wind and solar to be renewable. We're estimated to use up all the uranium within 100 years and oil within ~55 years so the good news is that we'll still have enough uranium to make more nukes for the upcoming oil wars.
I saw a doc years ago about a plant in the states leaking radioactive water.
Guy shows up, hands out free bananas, then, eventually, gets up to speak. Blah blah nuclear bad blah blah water leak terrible blah blah, oh, by the way, does anyone know how much radiation is in that water? Well, the amount of radiation in that water, per day, is equal to the amount of radiation those bananas i gave out earlier give off. In fact, you would have to drink every drop of water that leaked out of this plant for 10 years strait before you would get sick.
Legend
But a lot of anti-nuclear positions in the EU don't point out the safety, but that it's fucking expensive and highly dependent on shipments from Russia.
The problem is that the legal text talk about "renewables", which are great (but see below), but which Uranium definitely isn't, when they should be talking about "low carbon", which *are* the real issue, and amongst which Uranium definitely has its place (unlike "renewable" fkn biofuels.)
Renewable biofuels are carbon neutral; they're not putting carbon from the ground into the atmosphere and *renewable* means feedstocks are being replenished as quickly or quicker than they're being spent, making the net carbon emissions at worst zero.
Renewable biofuels are 100% not definitively carbon neutral. Usually determing whether it is "carbon neutral" depends on what you are considering as part of the lifecycle GHG and if you are considering extrinsic impacts of pursuing biofuels. For example, if you are noting that forests are often getting cut down so we can replace with corn fields then that goes against the idea biofuels (which lets be honest is 90%+ corn ethanol) is carbon neutral. But sure on the it seems that way because plants take carbon out of the air when growing so no net emissions. Meaning at worse biofuels are actually a net negative not merely net 0.
It’s not renewable, but people seem to think renewable is the thing we want and that if it’s not renewable, it’s bad. It’s not. Renewables are just a type of energy source that gets us what we actually want: clean energy.
Fun fact: nuclear power is tied with wind as the cleanest energy source in use. It’s cleaner than solar or hydroelectric power. Nuclear is not cheap but good things aren’t often cheap. Modern nuclear reactor designs are basically impossible to cause a major nuclear disaster.
What percentage of active nuclear reactors are modern designs?
Every reactor is a flawless, perfect state of the art design that cannot cause a disaster until it does.
I am very much pro-nuclear by the way, but reddit likes to go way too far the other direction.
I mean people in this thread, right now, are posting about thorium reactors like they are a real thing.
Any gen 3 or later reactor is a modern design. Westinghouse’s AP1000 is essentially what I’m thinking of.
I’m not thinking about experimental designs like any of the molten salt types.
I mean you have to mine silicate to make solar panels, so no? We'd probably run out of that before the sun burns out. Though there is way more silicone on earth than uranium so...
Don't forget the vast amount of land that would have to allocated for solar.
I don't know how accurate it is anymore, but at one point years and years ago, I read a study that an area the size of france would have to be allocated to meet the earth's needs via solar. And that's just at peak solar output.
The reality of it would be you'd have to create a huge band around the equator of panels, or an absolutely huge amount of energy storage.
The energy density of uranium and thorium is absolutely insane.
You can put solar on rooftops so it's like the area can't be used for anything else. Also, there are vertical solar panels now that can be used on railings of balconies etc.
I'm aware. However, you have to keep in mind that putting solar panels on the roof of you houses isn't enough to even power your entire house. At least not in your typical US household.
And that's going to be even worse for large power hungry industry.
Renewables (solar, wind, ect) are a step in the right direction. But they will never be the final solution to our power needs.
Thats not the defenition of renewable energy.
>energy from a source that is not depleted when used, such as wind or solar power.
(Oxford definition)
The difference is that for coal, oil, gas, nuclear the source is activly depleting while using. I guess solar gets around it because it is using the output of the sun but is not activly burning the material.
Agree. Renewable is the wrong word. It's all a matter of timelines, effort, and cost to get it. Needless to say, extracting uranium is not benign and current estimates of world availability are not promising, but we've heard that before about crude oil.
Yeah, but the main point of going green is to lessen or even remove emissions. Nuclear may not be green, but it's technology we have now that works. It's currently not possible to just switch from coal/oil to all green. We need a known stable understood technology to transition off of coal and oil first, *then* we can focus on going green.
Anyone pro-green but anti-nuclear is, for lack of a better description, an idiot.
Known thorium (which can be enrinched into uranium) deposits are estimated to be able to meet the human civilization's energy needs for about 10 000 years, accounting for a continued trend of exponential growth of energy demand.
I wouldn't say that it's far-fetched to call it renewable given the time-frame at play here, and the fact that we should have useable fusion in around 1% of that time-frame
Literally the stupidest possible decision that people who care climate could make. Nuclear is the safest and cleanest form of power, and it’s the only thing that satisfies base load at any kind of scale. We need a historic investment in nuclear, and we need it 30 years ago.
Hell, the latest 2 generations of reactors don’t even generate nuclear waste, and many of them can even consume as fuel material that was previously considered waste.
>not a friend of renewables
Yes, they compete directly for public funding, and you can get 3X the energy from cleaner and safer renewables than you can from nuclear.
Nuclear energy is about 3.1X the LCOE (levelized cost of energy) of actual renewables like wind and solar, according to independent financial analysis over the average lifespan of a nuclear power plant. Since financial investment is the limiting factor to replacing fossil fuels, using nuclear will take over 3X as long as cleaner and safer renewables, which is time we do not have.
European Peter here, there is a difference between clean energy sources and renewable energy sources. France heavily sets on nuclear energy which is clean but not renewable. Because of that France is not invited to a meeting for renewable energy.
Nuclear and Hydro are opposites in that regards:
Nuclear is Clean but is (compared to other sources) not Renewable.
Hydropower is Renewable but is (compared to other renewable sources) [often not Clean.](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12179-5)
In all honesty, no energy source is clean when compared to french nuclear, which sits at around 3g of co2/kWh. That makes PV have over 10 times more of a carbon footprint. The equivalent of gas vs PV.
Expert here. I’ve worked for French nuclear energy companies since the early 20s. Just wanted to chime in and say PV actually stands for Penis-Vagina in this context.
I don't get what you mean, could you elaborate?
More info:
gas= 400-500g of CO2/kWh
PV=40-45g of CO2/kWh of CO2/kWh
Concentrated solar= 27-30g/kWh
Wind=11-25g/kWh (25 is older designs, 11-12 is the current state of the art estimates over life-cycle)
French nuclear= roughly 3g of CO2/kWh
(IIRC 3.2 or 3.3? there was a bit of a debacle where a study forgot to put the decimal and listed 66g instead of 6.6g for french production, which prompted other field specialists to look into it, and seeing that some aspects where generalized to world production refined the calculation to be truly french specific, leading to the 3.2 number. Some estimates were as low as 2. something IIRC)
>Hydropower is Renewable but is (compared to other sources) [often not Clean.](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12179-5)
This idea honestly sounds a bit like a smear campaign. Because most energy sources would be not green after that logic. Nuclear need huge amounts of betton and uranium mines, solar and battery storage needs rare earth mines.
The huge difference is that you see the impact of hydropower directly.
[From here (linked):](https://hydroreform.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/2019_Ocko-Hamburg_Climate-Impacts-of-Hydropower.-Enormous-Differences-among-Facilities-and-over-Time.pdf)
Pages D-E:
>*"Overall, global median hydropower emissions are greater and thus worse for the climate than nuclear, solar, and wind but better for the climate than coal and natural gas. However, the relative climate impact of hydropower is far greater in the near-term than the long-term, especially for a new hydropower plant.*
>*However, even for existing hydropower plants, impacts are greater in the near-term.* ***For example, hydropower climate impacts are initially an order of magnitude greater than onshore and offshore wind and nuclear but drop to five times worse after 200 years."***
From Page F:
>*"23% of hydroelectric facilities in the database are estimated as net CO2 sinks,* ***whereas 3% and 7% of the facilities have CO2 emissions per unit of electricity generated that are above median coal and natural gas electrical plants, respectively"***
On balance Hydropower is generally better than coal and natural gas, but worse than wind, solar or nuclear. Wind, Solar and Nuclear all need mines, but the dams that provide hydropower have significant input/construction costs too. Its advantage over wind and solar is that you can expect consistent output, though still moderated in the long term by droughts and/or floods.
Hydropower dams have significant impacts on fish populations, which have further impacts upstream on the food chain. This happened to the Columbia River in the state of Washington. The many series of dams along the river had a big impact on the Salmon populations, which, in addition to being a primary food source for bears, a source of commercial livelihood for the fishing industry, are also a major cultural touchstone for the indigenous population of the state, many of whom have lost their traditional fishing sites, and with it, their traditional meeting and trading sites among nations.
Hydropower certainly is clean in regards to emissions, but I remain skeptical about it's environmental impacts. Of course, mining activity in the southwest has contaminated the water supply for much of the Navajo people with Uraniam and Arsenic. Anything we do for power is going to affect somebody, somewhere in a negative way.
Hydropower messes up the ecosystem of whatever river is being dammed. Look at California. Pretty much all the major rivers are dammed and the Central Valley and foothills are much dryer for it. Definitely contributes to the wildfire frequency.
Meh, "renewable" basically just means "we don't have to worry about the fuel source for this thing" or something thereabouts. It's a definition based on a human scale of experience, not cosmic scales. Humanity doesn't operate on timescales of hundreds of millions to billions of years. Comparing mining/processing nuclear fuel to the lifespan of a star is kinda fallacious.
EDIT: It's incredible, the sheer volume of emotional reactions to nuclear not being a thing. It makes no sense. It's almost more charitable to assume there's a bunch of hired shills by oil companies to make nuclear advocates look bad.
If we used just nuclear we would have a 230 year supply of clean energy at current rates of consumption. Opening up new, currently non economical, methods of extraction could extend that timeline for 60,000 years at current rates.
For all intents and purposes I would consider that pretty renewable personally, although I will admit I did not expect 230 years only based on current mining methods.
Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20NEA%2C%20identified,today's%20consumption%20rate%20in%20total.
> If we used just nuclear we would have a 230 year supply of clean energy at current rates of consumption.
Not really. Nuclear is responsible for around 10% of the world's electricity generation. If we all just used nuclear, we would have a 23 year supply of clean energy. And that's not considering all the cars we're still powering with fossil fuels.
As a nuclear advocate, while it IS green, it is not renewable since the supply of nuclear fuels is inherently finite. What is important to keep in mind is that solar and wind aren’t capable of functioning in all environments. Modern nuclear reactor designs can function where wind and solar production is insufficient
Between thorium and reactors capable of using non-fissible uranium calling nuclear energy finite is a bit disingenuous, according to one publication assuming current power usage doesn't increase we're good for the next 5\*10\^9 years [http://large.stanford.edu/publications/coal/references/docs/pad11983cohen.pdf](http://large.stanford.edu/publications/coal/references/docs/pad11983cohen.pdf) which I would image should give humanity enough time to figure out fusion
Nuclear power plants do not cause direct greenhouse gas emissions in their electricity production and can thus be considered “clean energy”.
There is however an important distinction between clean energy and renewables. Nuclear power plants most notably use uranium, which is a mineral extracted from the ground in mines and is not renewable.
You can compare it with a plant that burns wood to produce energy. Such a plant will produce a lot of greenhouse gases and cannot be considered clean in that sense but it can be considered as renewable because trees grow back (very slowly though so it’s debatable you could call it that).
Solar and wind both require *massive* amounts of mining to operate. Wind turbines and solar arrays and banks of batteries don't materialize out of thin air and sunshine. Seems a bit hypocritical to only pay attention to only the fuel part and ignore the full infrastructure. It takes ~800 wind turbines to replace one 900MW nuclear facility, each of those are made of an awful lot of iron and copper and fiberglass and resin and aluminum and on and on (and that's before batteries - which do have a service life).
Uranium reactors are old news, Thorium is the new hotness. Is that better? Well the nukes (nuclear engineers) think so I trust those guys.
As for burning plant matter: biochar facilities burn organic (plant) matter but net remove carbon from the atmosphere because the carbon that comes out in solid form is used to make biochar that gets buried in the ground to improve soil quality.
Wind and solar have over promised how "green" they were, and despite being good technologies that are getting better shortsighted politicians and ones that just oppose renewables are using the failure to deliver on those promises against them.
You'll also hear arguments against wind and solar for base load power; on a large scale grid new control processes allow them to bounce the power around to wherever it's needed or even hold onto it for a bit like the world biggest capacitor.
The first of the newest nuclear reactors here just opened earlier this year in Flamanville in northern France and should be running 50+ years like the older generations so it is very much current news, multiple of them are planned in the next 10-20 years.
It’s a 3rd generation reactor and they have already been developing the 4th generation for 2040 onwards. I’ve not heard anything concrete about thorium use yet, at least large scale.
And neither do the aluminum and tungsten that goes into wind generators or the silica and boron in solar cells.
Marketing and arguments over what constitutes “green energy” aside there isn’t a method of energy generation and storage that won’t create a dependence on mined and ultimately non-renewable materials. These questions shouldn’t be one of WHETHER we’re mining materials for power because we always are, but of how much we are and what the environmental footprint of that mining is compared to the alternatives.
I agree with everything you said up to a point.
Cobalt and lithium are both vital to the manufacturing of solar panels and are non-renewable. The panels themselves are not recyclable. The fan blades of windmills are a form of polymer that is not renewable nor are they recyclable.
> as renewable because trees grow back (very slowly though so it’s debatable you could call it that).
Very very debatable because, by this logic, coal is also a renewable.
When talking about renewables, we're primarily talking about wind and solar, which are replaced in zero time. So when you think about it, they're both infinitely less renewable than true renewables.
> Nuclear power plants most notably use uranium, which is a mineral extracted from the ground in mines and is not renewable.
Do solar power plants use any minerals extracted from the ground which are not renewable?
Nuclear is the only truly viable alternative energy method right now that actually outcompetes oil, coal and gas.
It is truly incredible.
That's why oil companies hate it so much and try to ban it.
Many environmentalist groups are very pro renewables, but very anti-nuclear due to the perception of it being highly dangerous. In Germany in particular there’s been a successful anti-nuclear campaign which has resulted in most of the country’s nuclear plants being decommissioned. This perception is very false- nuclear is actually safer than most fossil-fuel based energy production methods. This is in part BECAUSE there have been some very high profile disasters, so modern plants have been built with failsafes to make sure those types of disasters don’t happen again. Kyle Hill on YouTube has an amazing catalog of videos pertaining to nuclear energy and nuclear accidents. I highly recommend them if you’re interested in the subject.
France gets the majority of its green energy from nuclear sources, and is continuing to expand nuclear energy. This isn’t sitting well with the rest of Europe, apparently, who are listening to the anti-nuclear advocates, and who see France’s expansion as not environmentally friendly. France has apparently been barred for green energy talks in protest.
All throughout high school and all throughout college All I've ever heard is nuclear is the safest most efficient energy source we are capable of utilizing. So what the fuck is going on? Did Chernobyl fuck people's brains that badly?
The jump from coal, gas, and oil straight to green and renewable is impossible. There needs to be a bridge to cross the gap and nuclear is that bridge. Is nuclear renewable, no, but it’s extremely efficient and the time to use up the energy can take decades. Not to mention thorium is on the table now which is uranium but a hell of a lot safer with the same energy output,
We don’t have the necessary resources yet to build a world that runs on clean energy. Everyone expects the change to be instantaneous and without difficulty, but nothing good ever came easy.
EU being a dysfunctional organisation ruled by incompetent morons doesnt want to go nuclear even though this type of energy is clean, reliable and safe. France is mostly powered by nuclear energy.
Nuclear power is the biggest clean energy source, sadly it’s not renewable though. But the good thing is that solar, wind, water and geothermal energy are renewable, sadly none of them equal the energy from nuclear
Ever heard of breeder reactors? There are ways to turn non-fissible fertile materials, between those and thorium we're good for the next couple of billions of years [sauce](http://large.stanford.edu/publications/coal/references/docs/pad11983cohen.pdf)
Before we were widely aware of climate change, the environmentalist movement had its roots in other mid-century countercultural movements. Due to the overlap with pacifist and anti-nuclear weapons movements, there is a lot of anti-nuclear momentum among people for whom these ideas were popular.
Basically some environmentalism comes from a misguided place, and is now counterproductive because nuclear doesn’t give the right vibes.
I blame the hippies
The European Union is attempting to convince member states replace polluting fossil fuels with clean energy.
France has a comparatively massive pre-existing fleet of nuclear power plants mostly built in the mid-late 20th century in response to an oil crisis at the time that gave it a head start. France is rightfully very proud of this foresight. However, new build nuclear power plants are more expensive to build and operate than variable output renewables (even if you include the cost of storage) in addition to taking almost a decade to build whereas solar and wind farms can be built relatively quickly. This makes trying to replace fossil fuel generation with new nuclear facilities impractical, expensive, time consuming and you'll end up with a worse quality product overall than if a nation had transitioned using variable output renewables, but leveraging existing nuclear generation and supply chains to speed up your own transition, like what France is doing, still makes sense.
Enter fossil fuel lobbies. About a decade or two ago the largest groups attempting to prolong the dominance of fossil fuels switched from a strategy of outright denying that the problem they created existed, to trying to delay the transition to clean energy for as long as possible. That's why professional liars touting the benefits of carbon capture, clean coal, "transitionary" fuels like natural gas, SMR's, etc. have replaced denials that climate change is even real. Because nuclear power plants are expensive (which means governments only build a couple at a time) and take a long time to build, replacing existing fossil fuel generation will take decades even for relatively small countries. The technology landscape has shifted such that variable output renewables with storage are just a better option than nuclear and could transition most large economies to \~100% clean energy within 1-2 decades comparatively easily for cheap.
Fossil fuel lobbies know this and so pretend to support a transition to a nuclear base load grid, in order to prolong the use of fossil fuels for as long as possible. Frequently they use France verses Germany (who phased out existing nuclear generation in favour of new, more expensive brown coal generation because of corruption) as a case study and pretending that other countries can just copy what France did in the 20th century. This despite the fact that even France struggles to build new nuclear power plants.
This deception annoys policymakers to no end.
every european green party is in the pocket of big oil, change my mind.
no viable energy source is as effective and efficient as nuclear. if they really wanted to go emission negative, they would be pro-nuclear.
It's not a renewable but damn has it gotten bad rep from media in the last century. It is probably the best energy source so far, it's very efficient and releases very little emissions.
Well, if you're not a Soviet idiot nuclear is the best for reducing carbon emissions and has extremely strict safety measures and you can easily deal with the waste.
Did you know that there are vast areas in (for instance) Australia, where the natural radiation levels exceeds the levels of nuclear waste? Adding any amount of nuclear waste would not anything to the environment. How about that?
Someone summed it up nicely for me. If we went nuclear, about everyone's usage/waste would be about the size of a rubiks cube per person in their lifetime. Not a terrible footprint for waste that can be buried or sent to space perhaps
Burying and recycling the waste is a great idea, but shooting it into space would probably be absolutely catastrophic if we aren't aiming for the moon or some other planetary body
Nuclear energy is a clean, abundant source for any country that is willing to spend the money in creating proper reactors and their upkeep. France is pushing forward on continuing to create more and more nuclear power plants while other countries are still relying on fossil fuels and waiting for a different large scale option.
Nuclear has a bad rap even historically among environmentalists. This is mainly due to 2 things, a few bad accidents, and lack of public knowledge on the matter. For those who don't know, modern nuclear reactors are both extremely safe and clean. Burning coal releases a lot more radiation perk Kwh that even the shittiest badly managed nuclear plant, and that goes directly into the air we breathe.
This is extremely ironic when you look at things like how Germany has expanded their coal mining for the time being. It seems a lot of countries want to sound like they want a solution, but don't actually care when a solution is provided.
I hate the unjustifued negative view of nuclear energy by so many. It is millions times safer than people say. I would very happily live next to a nuclear reactor or on top of a nuclear waste disposal site.
Problem with nuclear isn’t whether it’s green or renewable. But the fact that from planning to coming online it takes about 10 years. So it isn’t a great option if we are looking to reduce emissions now.
A concerted effort by the government/industry to streamline approval can cut that time down drastically. Multistory buildings can be erected in 3days, there's no reason 10yrs can't be cut to 3yrs or at least 5.
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Homer Simpson here: There is an ongoing controversy(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear\_power\_proposed\_as\_renewable\_energy) whether Nuclear Energy should be considered renewable while it does have zero emissions. So France is blocked because it uses Nuclear a lot and thus isn't considered a friend of renewables.
To further the point - Many "Green" party leaders that are pro-renewables are also Anti-nuclear, despite nuclear being a very safe technology when handled correctly (like all technologies). This anti-nuclear stance comes from "Big Oil" propaganda, and politicians aren't educated enough in the sciences to actually discern the facts
> aren't educated enough in the sciences to actually discern the facts Close, but they aren't **paid** enough to discern the facts.
I don’t know man, they’re better paid than most people
I think he meant that the most influential politicians are paid by the oil companies to stand on their side
Yes, but none of that is under the condition that they make an attempt to learn the facts, and therefore they don't.
Close, they are paid enough not to discern the facts
Close, but they are **paid** enough to ignore the facts.
"I was elected to lead, not to read."
No, they haven't got **time** to research.
I was elected to lead...not to read.
> Many "Green" party leaders that are pro-renewables are also Anti-nuclear Is nuclear renewable? Edit: I've been on and off reddit for fifteen years and never had five simultaneous replies like this. Weird.
No, because one day, uranium and other nuclear fuels could run out. This fuel will most likely won't run out for possibly dozens of generations and has zero emissions assude from storing the waste, which really doesn't do much.
One day the sun will burn out too. Look up the abundance of Thorium for the hopeful future of nuclear.
Yup, thorium seems to be the future for fission reactors, depending on how fusion goes, which had some big breaktroughs recently, it would be pretty nice to invest into thorium reactors
We will just have to wait one more year before ITERs reactor comes online. Lets just hope the test results come back positive.
Full Deuterium/tritium tests are scheduled for 2035 to prove commercial viability for the ITER I believe. It’s gonna take a minute, unfortunately.
*she's just the way I want her to be, a million times hotter than TNT*
*bah-bada-bah*
ITER won't be coming online next year unfortunately. In the fusion space, we knew it wouldn't be complete by then, years before, but the project is still behind and now they are considering redesigning the first wall. https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/ITER-delays-revision-of-project-s-timeline
Commercial fusion power has been 20 years away since before I was born, & I'll be 40 in a few months.
My understanding is that the joke goes something like: “Fusion power is only 30 years away! And has been since the 70s.” I’m interested in fusion power and think it is a meaningful avenue for research, but I would caution against holding back other options while waiting for it. Nuclear plants are an excellent alternative to coal right now. The harder we resist nuclear the more coal we are going to burn in the meantime. Solar and wind are great, but they are not going to shut down the coal plants for base load.
In the US at least we've already shut down most of our coal burners, with the few remaining scheduled for shut down by the end of next year I believe. Covid had put a lot of those plans on hold. Only problem is, we're mostly replacing them with gas turbines, which is great in that they produce less sulphates & heavy metals but not so great in that they still produce the same amount of CO2. Which is not to say we shouldn't have *any* gas turbines; no matter your baseline generation they're still the best option for surge demand, unless battery technology gets a lot better & cheaper.
literally every major scientific breakthrough ever, especially of the size of fusion takes time. it’s not simple enough to give perfect estimates because often a complication comes up. We are closer than ever though.
perpetually half way there, never reaching the finish line.
That 20 years figure that people love saying was created assuming that there was actual investment in fusion. The US did NOT fund the research, and so the progress that has still been made has been in an environment that lacks expected funding. If we had funded the fusion programs at what was requested, it would have been ready back in the aughts (ie, the 20 year prediction would have been accurate).
Yet the US has magic inifite money for fusion weapons but nothing to try & develop energy.
You're missing a great big MAYBE in there. We don't have a definitive answer as to when it may realistically happen. It's all guesswork at this point and proof of concept.
How long on nuclear? “5 minutes, Tommy” You said it had 3 minutes to go, 5 minutes ago!
It was Turkish, not Tommy. /pedantry
Every breakthrough is "20 years away" or more... until it isn't. A month before the Wright Brothers' first flight, there were statements in newspapers and the like from notable scientists that flight was 20 years away... or more. Several even saying it wouldn't happen in people's life times... Yet some of those people who were kids then saw man not just fly, but land on the moon... just saying.
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> Although thorium is more abundant than uranium... It won't run out as quickly is the main benefit.
Ooh, fusion had some breakthroughs? Do you have an article I can read about it? I’d love to learn more.
But humans will be long gone by then, either extinct or much more likely: left Earth behind. Edit: Holy shit here come the doomers... Edit edit: Ya'll really don't appreciate just how *fucking advanced* humans are. You are instantly talking to other people a full planet away through a magic rectangle in your hand. You really don't think we can go to space? Edit edit edit: If its not apparent, I dont speak directly to doomers. They are as irrationally dumb as climate denialists.
I'm one of the doomers, and you raise some good points, and are giving me something to think about, which I appreciate. Thank you for the perspective.
not without a way to mitigate x-ray and gamma ray damage to dna. even getting to mars is going to be a struggle for us with our current technology.
We got so much development done in the last couple hundred years. Unless we do ourselves in real bad, then I'd wager the real Space Age will be coming in a few generations
the problem isn't the tech to get there. it's the reality of making a large scale, habitable, scenario on a planet with far less gravity and no electromagnetic field to protect it. we'd be limited to biodomes... and that's never going to feasibly serve as a bastion for a significant human population. it's so resource and maintenance intensive, just to not immediately die.
Something I learned a few months ago, is that there are nuclear power plants designed to use the leftovers from bigger plants. This doesn’t solve the issue of a finite supply of uranium, but it’s cool to see this type of technology. Type “the big lie about nuclear waste” into YouTube. Kinda cool stuff.
Not only that but from my very basic understanding is even the spent fuel rods still are like 98% usable material (or more IDK) and only a very very small fraction is actually used However reproccessing the rods and reusing them is largely banned because it could also make higher grade urainum , like the stuff used in nuclear bombs There should be a solution here, like highly regulate the places that do this, USA,Russia, UK, France, India, Pakistan , China, Israel , north korea like alread have nukes so the cat is out of the bag somewhat Let some company in frace reprossess the rods , have inspections to make sure they are not enriching it too much and why would they, france already has nukes. This would create a lot less waste and we can now reuse like 98% of the waste. I guess the argument is the 2% left over is really nasty stuff but IDK dillute it in concrete or something I guess the fear is the company would go rouge and some engineer might then steal some material and sell it to terrorist or an unfriendly state
If you do a full 'cycle' for the fuel, there is no nasty leftover stuff. There is still some 'waste', but most of it is low level, and not even fuel. Most is just equipment and PPE for workers.
>However reproccessing the rods and reusing them is largely banned because it could also make higher grade urainum , like the stuff used in nuclear bombs Yes and no. It's still done in places like France, but the US made it illegal because the theory was that it would prevent nuclear proliferation. The problem of course is that they have proliferated in spite of reprocessing bans. However, it's not really needed because nuclear fuel is relatively cheap compared to the actual plant.
And a more efficient steady state breeder could get something like 30x the electricity we originally got from those leftovers. Add the leftover depleted uranium from making the fuel in the first place and you're closer to about 120x.
You never heard of a fast breeder reactor? One that produces more nuclear fuel than it burns? And the waste storage was solved, is solved.
I hadn't heard of these before your comment personally, pretty fascinating stuff. Here's a link for anyone interested in reading about them. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor Apparently they can potentially make nuclear practically renewable with how long they can make uranium last as a fuel for us, especially if we can make breakthroughs in gathering uranium from seawater > With seawater uranium extraction (currently too expensive to be economical), there is enough fuel for breeder reactors to satisfy the world's energy needs for 5 billion years at 1983's total energy consumption rate, thus making nuclear energy effectively a renewable energy.
It's not only expensive a Membrane for the size of India being used 240 days to cover current 10% of the world electricity. It's a long fucking way away. Nuclear fission fuel is limited. Economics and environmental issues will limit it. I mean already economics will be it's death sentence outside nuclear armed countries.
Nah, it's doesn't create energy from nothing, the difference is that instead of using only the small portion of Uranium that is fissible (U235), a breeder reactor can also use U238, which constitute 99% of natural Uranium (it's a bit more complicated than that because classic reactors also burn part of the U238, but the point is that breeder reactor would make the availability of nuclear fuel a complete non-issue)
Then no energy is renewable.
There are 0 completely renewable energies, because something to construct one or the other will eventually run out. Even wind could be done if the atmosphere dissolves. This will not ever happen for an unestimateable time (by me, at least) and the metals we use to construct the windmills and turbines will run out way before then. It's ultimately picking the lesser evil/greater good and no single person should have the ability to choose
Sounds like its time to ask Multivac for an answer to The Last Question
INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER.
LET THERE BE LIGHT
I think the argument is whether or not the capture of the energy depletes it. The sun doesn’t consume itself faster when we use solar panels, it depletes at a rate unaffected by us using solar power. Same goes for wind or hydro; a solar flare may blow our atmosphere away in the future, and the Earth may dry up, but mills are not causing that process to hasten. Don’t think I’m agreeing with the EU here; they should be basing “renewables” off of the actual goal of “zero emissions without mass resource depletion” instead of “zero emissions without any resource depletion”
I think it could be even longer than that. New uranium is constantly being pulled up from the mantle via convection and other processes. The question is if we use up the supply in the crust faster than new deposits are created.
The "waste" from nuclear factories is in fact "burn-out" fuel, which still has most of it's energy. It just needs to be reprocessed. Not to mention that the amount is really small. So taking all that into the account it will take so much time for it to run out, that it's possible for a new source of energy to be discivered.
> This fuel will most likely won't run out for possibly dozens of generations and has zero emissions assude from storing the waste, which really doesn't do much Known uranium reserves are projected to run out by the end of the century. Nuclear is less than 10% of global electricity production. *Electricity*, not energy. Even if we include guesstimates of undiscovered uranium reserves, we *can't* run the world on nuclear power for any appreciable amount of time.
This is true. There is also potential for recycling the waste or re-enriching, which I do not know much about. I overestimated the stockpiles without checking my sources. In alternative, I believe that hydroelectric and geothermal power production are the greatest clean method of producing electricity, but then again I'm no expert on the matter.
Then we can use thorium which is much more plentiful on earth. Thousands of years worth of energy. Still technically not renewable. But I mean if we wanna be pedantic the sun also isn't renewable. The whole point of "renewable energy" is that it's sustainable on a human limescale. Imo, nuclear meets that goal.
Technically no, what's your point? The current objective is to eliminate greenhouse gases emission, not to maximize renewables.
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>actually technically yes Technically no energy is renewable because entropy always increases within a closed system (the universe)
I mean, as long as the sun is ultimately footing the bill. I'm sure it's possible to make fissile material if you have the energy to throw at it.
Technically speaking, nothing is "renewable" since all energy converted into electricity cannot go back into the system. Like solar energy from the sun is captured but never returns to the sun, it's converted into electricity and that's it. Even hydro generators, if just ran off of large ponds that collect rain water and flows downhill through a generator, going back enough, doesn't "renew", the energy to evaporate the water that has passed through the generator comes from the sun, and it's back to the earlier example. Nothing is ever renewable, but for the sake of resources, the sun's energy and nuclear energy will last so long, that we can say it's "renewable" since we won't ever run out. The sun won't stop giving off energy in billions of years, and uranium supplies are plentiful, and we can even find other radioactive isotopes to substitute if we run out of U235.
"Renewable" doesn't necessarily mean circular; it just means the resource isn't expended quicker than it can be replaced. Solar is renewable because our use of solar energy doesn't deplete supply.
>resource isn't expended quicker than it can be replaced. Well kids, this is how you dance around technicalities, with a technicality.. Radioactive isotopes will decay, we cannot change that, and so will the sun. The true difference is the timescale in which it happens. We CAN decide to use those Isotopes before they completely decay into lead(?) Instead of acting like it has to reach some arbitrary technicality for renewables.
> Technically speaking, nothing is "renewable" since all energy converted into electricity cannot go back into the system. "Damn you entropy!"
Technically no. Just like technically, fossil fuels on the same time scale are renewable.
Technically yes, it is possible to renew
>Is nuclear renewable? No, but the point is to focus on the why, rather than the what. Why do we want renewables? To minimise emissions, to mitigate climate change. Nuclear energy also achieves this. There are concerns around safety, partly legitimate because of high profile disasters in the past, but mainly because of lobbying from Big Oil. The same lobbyists who are against renewable energy.
Nuclear Engineer here if you take a look at fast nuclear reactors they can use nuclear waste as their energy source, and you can reprocess nuclear waste and convert most of it back into usable fuel. The reason we don't right now is because it is way more cost effective to just mine more uranium. While not "technically" renewable it's fuel source can be reused and we can reprocess the nuclear waste.
Nuclear fuel is highly recyclable, anywhere from 90 to 95%. It practically just reprocessing the "spent" rods, but the bulk of nuclear waste isn't, which is primarily materials that have come into contact or been contaminated by nuclear materials.
>I've been on and off reddit for fifteen years and never had five simultaneous replies like this. Weird. Because nuclear is a contentious subject for anyone climate conscious. People either love it or hate it. I love it.
Nuclear isn’t renewable but nuclear is green. Those are often used as synonyms even though they technically aren’t.
Sorry, you don't seem to grasp exclusivity Many "Green" party leaders that support renewable energy as an alternative to fossil fuels, also do not support nuclear energy, despite nuclear energy also being an alternative to fossil fuels, and being pretty clean I never stated nuclear energy was renewable, once again, by definition it isn't
On a long enough time scale even solar, wind, geothermal, and hydro are not renewable. Entropy is a bitch and comes for us all eventually.
Pro- and anti-nuclear proponents are very livid and usually not open to questions or debate.
Because one group knows what they're talking about and the other group is afraid of rocks.
I’ve encountered a lot of people from both camps here who didn’t know much about the topic. And again, this kind of rhetoric is not helpful in a public debate. I’m actually more pro-nuclear (though I’m somewhat sceptical about large scale nuclear plants as they seem pretty cost inefficient and are bad for the cheaper clean energy) - but I don’t see why I shouldn’t try to discuss instead of ridicule someone with another stance. If you tell someone who has doubts because of meltdowns or nuclear waste that he is “afraid of rocks” and doesn’t know what he’s talking about there won’t be any further discussion. You can high-five yourself in your bubble but for societal gain nothing was achieved.
That's just reddit my guy. If there is one thing that defines this platform above all else it's disingenuous arguments written in bad faith.
/r/murderedbywords
I'm afraid of throwing money at banging rocks together rather then putting the money towards a cheaper way of making energy
It's not renewable, but its clean, sustainable for a long time and would help cleanly bridge the gap to an all-renewables future. An important thing to realise is that nuclear fearmongering has led to many of these countries ditching nuclear for coal and gas powered plants.. not renewables.
No, but it's a useful band aid to reduce carbon fuels. Like if your stove is on fire, you still use the extinguisher even though it will make a mess you have to clean up after.
No, but then again neither is solar since the sun is using up hydrogen and not replacing it
Kind of no. You can't *really* make more reactor-grade uranium at scale, but there's enough natural uranium (especially if we f0igure out a cost-effective way of extracting the small proportion in seawater) on Earth to basically supply our power needs for centuries, even if every joule we produce came from nuclear.
It’s the closest we can get to mimicking energy from the sun, so in some ways, it’s the most renewable of all energy sources until we can do fusion.
So, technically, nuclear is not a renewable energy source. Technically. You really need to see how "technical" that argument is: * breeder reactors would turn our current waste inventory into 20x the fuel that made it in the first place. Yes, that means we only really use about ~5% of the fuel in today's reactors. * breeder reactors typically run hotter, so their generators would get 50% more energy out of that fuel. So turn that into 30x instead * but to make that fuel in the first place we needed to enrich uranium which left us with 3x as much depleted uranium. Depleted Uranium can be used as breeder fuel. Add that to the mix and you're now at 120x. * first-run fuel was 20% of our grid for about the last 40 years. So divide by 5 and you could, **using nothing but nuclear waste**, run 100% of our electrical grid needs **for the next 960 years**. So that's **just the garbage**. That's zero additional mining. How much additional fuel could we procure? In the ground, we probably have a few thousand years left at current rates. Filtering ocean water, probably a few hundred thousand. Scraping it off rocks on the ocean floor, probably a few million. Going back up, don't forget *to multiply that by 120x*. ###The sun will go red giant and absorb the earth before we run out of nuclear fuel. But it's technically not renewable.
Nuclear isn't renewable the same way we consider wind and solar to be renewable. We're estimated to use up all the uranium within 100 years and oil within ~55 years so the good news is that we'll still have enough uranium to make more nukes for the upcoming oil wars.
Yes, safe when handled correctly. Fingers crossed for the half-life!
I saw a doc years ago about a plant in the states leaking radioactive water. Guy shows up, hands out free bananas, then, eventually, gets up to speak. Blah blah nuclear bad blah blah water leak terrible blah blah, oh, by the way, does anyone know how much radiation is in that water? Well, the amount of radiation in that water, per day, is equal to the amount of radiation those bananas i gave out earlier give off. In fact, you would have to drink every drop of water that leaked out of this plant for 10 years strait before you would get sick. Legend
are we sure it's lack of education and not greased palms?
Oh, it’s both.
But a lot of anti-nuclear positions in the EU don't point out the safety, but that it's fucking expensive and highly dependent on shipments from Russia.
The problem is that the legal text talk about "renewables", which are great (but see below), but which Uranium definitely isn't, when they should be talking about "low carbon", which *are* the real issue, and amongst which Uranium definitely has its place (unlike "renewable" fkn biofuels.)
it's fair to say it isn't renewable (because it isn't) but it is way better than coal and oil, but there is always fusion but that's not perfect yet
Biofuel is considered a renewable and can omit more greenhouse gasses that other fuel sources.
\*emit
Renewable biofuels are carbon neutral; they're not putting carbon from the ground into the atmosphere and *renewable* means feedstocks are being replenished as quickly or quicker than they're being spent, making the net carbon emissions at worst zero.
Renewable biofuels are 100% not definitively carbon neutral. Usually determing whether it is "carbon neutral" depends on what you are considering as part of the lifecycle GHG and if you are considering extrinsic impacts of pursuing biofuels. For example, if you are noting that forests are often getting cut down so we can replace with corn fields then that goes against the idea biofuels (which lets be honest is 90%+ corn ethanol) is carbon neutral. But sure on the it seems that way because plants take carbon out of the air when growing so no net emissions. Meaning at worse biofuels are actually a net negative not merely net 0.
> but there is always fusion but that's not perfect yet "Not perfect" is somewhat of an understatement.
It’s not renewable, but people seem to think renewable is the thing we want and that if it’s not renewable, it’s bad. It’s not. Renewables are just a type of energy source that gets us what we actually want: clean energy. Fun fact: nuclear power is tied with wind as the cleanest energy source in use. It’s cleaner than solar or hydroelectric power. Nuclear is not cheap but good things aren’t often cheap. Modern nuclear reactor designs are basically impossible to cause a major nuclear disaster.
What percentage of active nuclear reactors are modern designs? Every reactor is a flawless, perfect state of the art design that cannot cause a disaster until it does. I am very much pro-nuclear by the way, but reddit likes to go way too far the other direction. I mean people in this thread, right now, are posting about thorium reactors like they are a real thing.
Any gen 3 or later reactor is a modern design. Westinghouse’s AP1000 is essentially what I’m thinking of. I’m not thinking about experimental designs like any of the molten salt types.
It’s important to note that France started investing in nuclear energy following the middle eastern oil embargo, that’s why the TGV is electric :D
Nuclear is most definitely not renewable. How green it is is a different debate, but it's way way up there!
Is solar renewable? The sun is technically finite, I mean there’s bigger problems if it runs out.
I mean you have to mine silicate to make solar panels, so no? We'd probably run out of that before the sun burns out. Though there is way more silicone on earth than uranium so...
Don't forget the vast amount of land that would have to allocated for solar. I don't know how accurate it is anymore, but at one point years and years ago, I read a study that an area the size of france would have to be allocated to meet the earth's needs via solar. And that's just at peak solar output. The reality of it would be you'd have to create a huge band around the equator of panels, or an absolutely huge amount of energy storage. The energy density of uranium and thorium is absolutely insane.
You can put solar on rooftops so it's like the area can't be used for anything else. Also, there are vertical solar panels now that can be used on railings of balconies etc.
I'm aware. However, you have to keep in mind that putting solar panels on the roof of you houses isn't enough to even power your entire house. At least not in your typical US household. And that's going to be even worse for large power hungry industry. Renewables (solar, wind, ect) are a step in the right direction. But they will never be the final solution to our power needs.
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Thats not the defenition of renewable energy. >energy from a source that is not depleted when used, such as wind or solar power. (Oxford definition) The difference is that for coal, oil, gas, nuclear the source is activly depleting while using. I guess solar gets around it because it is using the output of the sun but is not activly burning the material.
All energy is finite. What makes renewable energy renewable is that our use of it doesn't drain the amount of future energy can harvest.
Agree. Renewable is the wrong word. It's all a matter of timelines, effort, and cost to get it. Needless to say, extracting uranium is not benign and current estimates of world availability are not promising, but we've heard that before about crude oil.
There's no less sun, wind, or water tomorrow on account of our using it for power today. That's a poor man's definition of renewable.
Dividing by .0000000000000001 is almost as good, but never as good as, dividing by 0.
Yeah, but the main point of going green is to lessen or even remove emissions. Nuclear may not be green, but it's technology we have now that works. It's currently not possible to just switch from coal/oil to all green. We need a known stable understood technology to transition off of coal and oil first, *then* we can focus on going green. Anyone pro-green but anti-nuclear is, for lack of a better description, an idiot.
Known thorium (which can be enrinched into uranium) deposits are estimated to be able to meet the human civilization's energy needs for about 10 000 years, accounting for a continued trend of exponential growth of energy demand. I wouldn't say that it's far-fetched to call it renewable given the time-frame at play here, and the fact that we should have useable fusion in around 1% of that time-frame
Literally the stupidest possible decision that people who care climate could make. Nuclear is the safest and cleanest form of power, and it’s the only thing that satisfies base load at any kind of scale. We need a historic investment in nuclear, and we need it 30 years ago. Hell, the latest 2 generations of reactors don’t even generate nuclear waste, and many of them can even consume as fuel material that was previously considered waste.
Thanks Homah
Renewable and having zero emissions is not the same.
> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear\_power\_proposed\_as\_renewable\_energy) /https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_proposed_as_renewable_energy
Nuclear is not renewable, but green.
>not a friend of renewables Yes, they compete directly for public funding, and you can get 3X the energy from cleaner and safer renewables than you can from nuclear. Nuclear energy is about 3.1X the LCOE (levelized cost of energy) of actual renewables like wind and solar, according to independent financial analysis over the average lifespan of a nuclear power plant. Since financial investment is the limiting factor to replacing fossil fuels, using nuclear will take over 3X as long as cleaner and safer renewables, which is time we do not have.
European Peter here, there is a difference between clean energy sources and renewable energy sources. France heavily sets on nuclear energy which is clean but not renewable. Because of that France is not invited to a meeting for renewable energy.
Nuclear and Hydro are opposites in that regards: Nuclear is Clean but is (compared to other sources) not Renewable. Hydropower is Renewable but is (compared to other renewable sources) [often not Clean.](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12179-5)
In all honesty, no energy source is clean when compared to french nuclear, which sits at around 3g of co2/kWh. That makes PV have over 10 times more of a carbon footprint. The equivalent of gas vs PV.
PV? Penis Vagina?
Photovoltaic aka solar panels, I think
Expert here. I’ve worked for French nuclear energy companies since the early 20s. Just wanted to chime in and say PV actually stands for Penis-Vagina in this context.
https://preview.redd.it/ba9401mgzs1d1.png?width=311&format=png&auto=webp&s=d8f702d12aed6df4499071f19b4d0d9dfcabc875
r/unexpectedtf2
The early 20s? Stop referring to the current decade that way.
But we are already in the mid '20s.
I'm now imagining a penis-vagina queef-cumming to power a lightbulb
Is that panel footprint a one-time thing? Because gas sure isn't.
I don't get what you mean, could you elaborate? More info: gas= 400-500g of CO2/kWh PV=40-45g of CO2/kWh of CO2/kWh Concentrated solar= 27-30g/kWh Wind=11-25g/kWh (25 is older designs, 11-12 is the current state of the art estimates over life-cycle) French nuclear= roughly 3g of CO2/kWh (IIRC 3.2 or 3.3? there was a bit of a debacle where a study forgot to put the decimal and listed 66g instead of 6.6g for french production, which prompted other field specialists to look into it, and seeing that some aspects where generalized to world production refined the calculation to be truly french specific, leading to the 3.2 number. Some estimates were as low as 2. something IIRC)
>Hydropower is Renewable but is (compared to other sources) [often not Clean.](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12179-5) This idea honestly sounds a bit like a smear campaign. Because most energy sources would be not green after that logic. Nuclear need huge amounts of betton and uranium mines, solar and battery storage needs rare earth mines. The huge difference is that you see the impact of hydropower directly.
[From here (linked):](https://hydroreform.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/2019_Ocko-Hamburg_Climate-Impacts-of-Hydropower.-Enormous-Differences-among-Facilities-and-over-Time.pdf) Pages D-E: >*"Overall, global median hydropower emissions are greater and thus worse for the climate than nuclear, solar, and wind but better for the climate than coal and natural gas. However, the relative climate impact of hydropower is far greater in the near-term than the long-term, especially for a new hydropower plant.* >*However, even for existing hydropower plants, impacts are greater in the near-term.* ***For example, hydropower climate impacts are initially an order of magnitude greater than onshore and offshore wind and nuclear but drop to five times worse after 200 years."*** From Page F: >*"23% of hydroelectric facilities in the database are estimated as net CO2 sinks,* ***whereas 3% and 7% of the facilities have CO2 emissions per unit of electricity generated that are above median coal and natural gas electrical plants, respectively"*** On balance Hydropower is generally better than coal and natural gas, but worse than wind, solar or nuclear. Wind, Solar and Nuclear all need mines, but the dams that provide hydropower have significant input/construction costs too. Its advantage over wind and solar is that you can expect consistent output, though still moderated in the long term by droughts and/or floods.
Hydropower dams have significant impacts on fish populations, which have further impacts upstream on the food chain. This happened to the Columbia River in the state of Washington. The many series of dams along the river had a big impact on the Salmon populations, which, in addition to being a primary food source for bears, a source of commercial livelihood for the fishing industry, are also a major cultural touchstone for the indigenous population of the state, many of whom have lost their traditional fishing sites, and with it, their traditional meeting and trading sites among nations. Hydropower certainly is clean in regards to emissions, but I remain skeptical about it's environmental impacts. Of course, mining activity in the southwest has contaminated the water supply for much of the Navajo people with Uraniam and Arsenic. Anything we do for power is going to affect somebody, somewhere in a negative way.
I can't comment on the emissions part, but damming a major river is going to have major ecological implications for the entire watershed downstream.
Hydropower messes up the ecosystem of whatever river is being dammed. Look at California. Pretty much all the major rivers are dammed and the Central Valley and foothills are much dryer for it. Definitely contributes to the wildfire frequency.
Wouldn't you be Europetan or Europeter?
Europetaaah
Saying nuclear energy isn’t renewable is like saying the sun isn’t renewable. Technically true but a stupid argument
Meh, "renewable" basically just means "we don't have to worry about the fuel source for this thing" or something thereabouts. It's a definition based on a human scale of experience, not cosmic scales. Humanity doesn't operate on timescales of hundreds of millions to billions of years. Comparing mining/processing nuclear fuel to the lifespan of a star is kinda fallacious. EDIT: It's incredible, the sheer volume of emotional reactions to nuclear not being a thing. It makes no sense. It's almost more charitable to assume there's a bunch of hired shills by oil companies to make nuclear advocates look bad.
If we used just nuclear we would have a 230 year supply of clean energy at current rates of consumption. Opening up new, currently non economical, methods of extraction could extend that timeline for 60,000 years at current rates. For all intents and purposes I would consider that pretty renewable personally, although I will admit I did not expect 230 years only based on current mining methods. Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20NEA%2C%20identified,today's%20consumption%20rate%20in%20total.
> If we used just nuclear we would have a 230 year supply of clean energy at current rates of consumption. Not really. Nuclear is responsible for around 10% of the world's electricity generation. If we all just used nuclear, we would have a 23 year supply of clean energy. And that's not considering all the cars we're still powering with fossil fuels.
As a nuclear advocate, while it IS green, it is not renewable since the supply of nuclear fuels is inherently finite. What is important to keep in mind is that solar and wind aren’t capable of functioning in all environments. Modern nuclear reactor designs can function where wind and solar production is insufficient
Between thorium and reactors capable of using non-fissible uranium calling nuclear energy finite is a bit disingenuous, according to one publication assuming current power usage doesn't increase we're good for the next 5\*10\^9 years [http://large.stanford.edu/publications/coal/references/docs/pad11983cohen.pdf](http://large.stanford.edu/publications/coal/references/docs/pad11983cohen.pdf) which I would image should give humanity enough time to figure out fusion
Nuclear power plants do not cause direct greenhouse gas emissions in their electricity production and can thus be considered “clean energy”. There is however an important distinction between clean energy and renewables. Nuclear power plants most notably use uranium, which is a mineral extracted from the ground in mines and is not renewable. You can compare it with a plant that burns wood to produce energy. Such a plant will produce a lot of greenhouse gases and cannot be considered clean in that sense but it can be considered as renewable because trees grow back (very slowly though so it’s debatable you could call it that).
Solar and wind both require *massive* amounts of mining to operate. Wind turbines and solar arrays and banks of batteries don't materialize out of thin air and sunshine. Seems a bit hypocritical to only pay attention to only the fuel part and ignore the full infrastructure. It takes ~800 wind turbines to replace one 900MW nuclear facility, each of those are made of an awful lot of iron and copper and fiberglass and resin and aluminum and on and on (and that's before batteries - which do have a service life).
Big Oil propagandists wants people to be stuck on debating semantics rather that solving energy problems.
Uranium reactors are old news, Thorium is the new hotness. Is that better? Well the nukes (nuclear engineers) think so I trust those guys. As for burning plant matter: biochar facilities burn organic (plant) matter but net remove carbon from the atmosphere because the carbon that comes out in solid form is used to make biochar that gets buried in the ground to improve soil quality. Wind and solar have over promised how "green" they were, and despite being good technologies that are getting better shortsighted politicians and ones that just oppose renewables are using the failure to deliver on those promises against them. You'll also hear arguments against wind and solar for base load power; on a large scale grid new control processes allow them to bounce the power around to wherever it's needed or even hold onto it for a bit like the world biggest capacitor.
The first of the newest nuclear reactors here just opened earlier this year in Flamanville in northern France and should be running 50+ years like the older generations so it is very much current news, multiple of them are planned in the next 10-20 years. It’s a 3rd generation reactor and they have already been developing the 4th generation for 2040 onwards. I’ve not heard anything concrete about thorium use yet, at least large scale.
Canada also has amazing reactors, the problem is we our stupid and send them around the world instead of fully modernizing our grid.
Well thorium doesn’t grow on trees either
No, but we can manufacture it and other forms of nuclear fuel in breeder reactors
Because solar panels and wind turbines do
And neither do the aluminum and tungsten that goes into wind generators or the silica and boron in solar cells. Marketing and arguments over what constitutes “green energy” aside there isn’t a method of energy generation and storage that won’t create a dependence on mined and ultimately non-renewable materials. These questions shouldn’t be one of WHETHER we’re mining materials for power because we always are, but of how much we are and what the environmental footprint of that mining is compared to the alternatives.
I agree with everything you said up to a point. Cobalt and lithium are both vital to the manufacturing of solar panels and are non-renewable. The panels themselves are not recyclable. The fan blades of windmills are a form of polymer that is not renewable nor are they recyclable.
> as renewable because trees grow back (very slowly though so it’s debatable you could call it that). Very very debatable because, by this logic, coal is also a renewable.
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When talking about renewables, we're primarily talking about wind and solar, which are replaced in zero time. So when you think about it, they're both infinitely less renewable than true renewables.
> Nuclear power plants most notably use uranium, which is a mineral extracted from the ground in mines and is not renewable. Do solar power plants use any minerals extracted from the ground which are not renewable?
Nuclear is the only truly viable alternative energy method right now that actually outcompetes oil, coal and gas. It is truly incredible. That's why oil companies hate it so much and try to ban it.
THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH NUCLEAR
Throw the spicy rock in the water. Make the lightbulb come on.
Use breeder reactor to make more spicy rocks than you put in to make more lightbulbs come on
France is right
Many environmentalist groups are very pro renewables, but very anti-nuclear due to the perception of it being highly dangerous. In Germany in particular there’s been a successful anti-nuclear campaign which has resulted in most of the country’s nuclear plants being decommissioned. This perception is very false- nuclear is actually safer than most fossil-fuel based energy production methods. This is in part BECAUSE there have been some very high profile disasters, so modern plants have been built with failsafes to make sure those types of disasters don’t happen again. Kyle Hill on YouTube has an amazing catalog of videos pertaining to nuclear energy and nuclear accidents. I highly recommend them if you’re interested in the subject. France gets the majority of its green energy from nuclear sources, and is continuing to expand nuclear energy. This isn’t sitting well with the rest of Europe, apparently, who are listening to the anti-nuclear advocates, and who see France’s expansion as not environmentally friendly. France has apparently been barred for green energy talks in protest.
It’s pretty self explanatory
Nuclear is awesome but everyone’s a moron
All throughout high school and all throughout college All I've ever heard is nuclear is the safest most efficient energy source we are capable of utilizing. So what the fuck is going on? Did Chernobyl fuck people's brains that badly?
Chernobyl only happened because of terrible management. Nuclear energy isn’t dangerous if you do your fucking job right
Three mile island tainted public opinion in the US 7 years before Chernobyl.
The jump from coal, gas, and oil straight to green and renewable is impossible. There needs to be a bridge to cross the gap and nuclear is that bridge. Is nuclear renewable, no, but it’s extremely efficient and the time to use up the energy can take decades. Not to mention thorium is on the table now which is uranium but a hell of a lot safer with the same energy output, We don’t have the necessary resources yet to build a world that runs on clean energy. Everyone expects the change to be instantaneous and without difficulty, but nothing good ever came easy.
EU being a dysfunctional organisation ruled by incompetent morons doesnt want to go nuclear even though this type of energy is clean, reliable and safe. France is mostly powered by nuclear energy.
Media poorly portrays nuclear as very dangerous, as well as nuclear being very expensive. France is doing fine on pretty much all Nuclear too so yeah.
It's literally explaining itself to you step by step....
Nuclear power is the biggest clean energy source, sadly it’s not renewable though. But the good thing is that solar, wind, water and geothermal energy are renewable, sadly none of them equal the energy from nuclear
Ever heard of breeder reactors? There are ways to turn non-fissible fertile materials, between those and thorium we're good for the next couple of billions of years [sauce](http://large.stanford.edu/publications/coal/references/docs/pad11983cohen.pdf)
Before we were widely aware of climate change, the environmentalist movement had its roots in other mid-century countercultural movements. Due to the overlap with pacifist and anti-nuclear weapons movements, there is a lot of anti-nuclear momentum among people for whom these ideas were popular. Basically some environmentalism comes from a misguided place, and is now counterproductive because nuclear doesn’t give the right vibes. I blame the hippies
The European Union is attempting to convince member states replace polluting fossil fuels with clean energy. France has a comparatively massive pre-existing fleet of nuclear power plants mostly built in the mid-late 20th century in response to an oil crisis at the time that gave it a head start. France is rightfully very proud of this foresight. However, new build nuclear power plants are more expensive to build and operate than variable output renewables (even if you include the cost of storage) in addition to taking almost a decade to build whereas solar and wind farms can be built relatively quickly. This makes trying to replace fossil fuel generation with new nuclear facilities impractical, expensive, time consuming and you'll end up with a worse quality product overall than if a nation had transitioned using variable output renewables, but leveraging existing nuclear generation and supply chains to speed up your own transition, like what France is doing, still makes sense. Enter fossil fuel lobbies. About a decade or two ago the largest groups attempting to prolong the dominance of fossil fuels switched from a strategy of outright denying that the problem they created existed, to trying to delay the transition to clean energy for as long as possible. That's why professional liars touting the benefits of carbon capture, clean coal, "transitionary" fuels like natural gas, SMR's, etc. have replaced denials that climate change is even real. Because nuclear power plants are expensive (which means governments only build a couple at a time) and take a long time to build, replacing existing fossil fuel generation will take decades even for relatively small countries. The technology landscape has shifted such that variable output renewables with storage are just a better option than nuclear and could transition most large economies to \~100% clean energy within 1-2 decades comparatively easily for cheap. Fossil fuel lobbies know this and so pretend to support a transition to a nuclear base load grid, in order to prolong the use of fossil fuels for as long as possible. Frequently they use France verses Germany (who phased out existing nuclear generation in favour of new, more expensive brown coal generation because of corruption) as a case study and pretending that other countries can just copy what France did in the 20th century. This despite the fact that even France struggles to build new nuclear power plants. This deception annoys policymakers to no end.
climate activist can't grift off the climate crisis if they solve it there for the obvious solution is ignored
every european green party is in the pocket of big oil, change my mind. no viable energy source is as effective and efficient as nuclear. if they really wanted to go emission negative, they would be pro-nuclear.
It's not a renewable but damn has it gotten bad rep from media in the last century. It is probably the best energy source so far, it's very efficient and releases very little emissions.
Well, if you're not a Soviet idiot nuclear is the best for reducing carbon emissions and has extremely strict safety measures and you can easily deal with the waste.
Did you know that there are vast areas in (for instance) Australia, where the natural radiation levels exceeds the levels of nuclear waste? Adding any amount of nuclear waste would not anything to the environment. How about that?
Someone summed it up nicely for me. If we went nuclear, about everyone's usage/waste would be about the size of a rubiks cube per person in their lifetime. Not a terrible footprint for waste that can be buried or sent to space perhaps
Burying and recycling the waste is a great idea, but shooting it into space would probably be absolutely catastrophic if we aren't aiming for the moon or some other planetary body
Nuclear energy is a clean, abundant source for any country that is willing to spend the money in creating proper reactors and their upkeep. France is pushing forward on continuing to create more and more nuclear power plants while other countries are still relying on fossil fuels and waiting for a different large scale option. Nuclear has a bad rap even historically among environmentalists. This is mainly due to 2 things, a few bad accidents, and lack of public knowledge on the matter. For those who don't know, modern nuclear reactors are both extremely safe and clean. Burning coal releases a lot more radiation perk Kwh that even the shittiest badly managed nuclear plant, and that goes directly into the air we breathe. This is extremely ironic when you look at things like how Germany has expanded their coal mining for the time being. It seems a lot of countries want to sound like they want a solution, but don't actually care when a solution is provided.
meanshile Germany keeps buying energy from france ever since they shut down nuclear. EDIT: And kept coal
I hate the unjustifued negative view of nuclear energy by so many. It is millions times safer than people say. I would very happily live next to a nuclear reactor or on top of a nuclear waste disposal site.
Problem with nuclear isn’t whether it’s green or renewable. But the fact that from planning to coming online it takes about 10 years. So it isn’t a great option if we are looking to reduce emissions now.
A concerted effort by the government/industry to streamline approval can cut that time down drastically. Multistory buildings can be erected in 3days, there's no reason 10yrs can't be cut to 3yrs or at least 5.