Nuclear should be considered part of clean energy standard, White House says

I went back and forth a few times with my opinion on nuclear over the years and some points I've gathered, good and bad are:

-Nuclear is indeed a low-carbon energy source.

-It's also what you would want as baseload.

-The costs of storing waste properly have been underestimated - a few years ago nuclear operators reached a deal with the German government through which they paid 23bln Euros to make the waste the government's problem. The overall sentiment is that they were let off the hook easily and the total cost will be much higher.

-Both nuclear plants and waste storage facilities are easy targets for terrorism - fortunately that didn't happen yet, but things like Stuxnet proved that it's entirely in the realm of possibility. My pet conspiracy theory is that this, not Fukushima was the reason Germany eventually accelerated its plans to phase out nuclear.

-You can reprocess spent nuclear fuel which helps both with fuel accessibility and waste management.

-It's trivially easy to use the reprocessing infrastructure to create weapons-grade plutonium.

-Nuclear is generally safe.

-That being said its mode of failure makes a large area inhospitable essentially forever. Topsoil radiation measurements usually don't give the full picture of the problem.

-Every nuclear disaster resulted in increased safety by uncovering design flaws which were a result of cutting corners, so especially in the decade after Fukushima costs went up around 24% making nuclear the single low-carbon source to become more, not less expensive.

-As it stands even China cannot deploy nuclear fast enough to compete with renewables on delivered MWh. Since 2012 wind consistently delivered more energy in China than nuclear and the gap has been widening ever since. With the cost of storage plummeting we're heading towards a future where centralised power generation may become antiquated.

----

Overall nuclear has some advantages but there aren't enough of them to break the trend of using renewables + gas and storage, which on average replace coal faster and cheaper.

It's basically a textbook example of "worse is better".

China still has trouble transporting renewable energy from where it is generated (in the west) to where it is needed (in the east). They are trying to solve that problem with UHV transmission lines, but they aren't there yet.

Nuclear plants can be built close to where they are needed, it's an advantage over renewables.

> The overall sentiment is that they were let off the hook easily and the total cost will be much higher. Even if it is more costly, who cares. It's national infrastructure that serves everybody, high costs are acceptable in light of the CO2 crisis. And it's not as if that money was burned or stolen by few people - it goes to local nuclear industry which employs many local inhabitants.

This 'nuclear is costly' argument would be relevant if there was a cheaper-than-nuclear replacement for coal energy with similar consistent availability and safety record. There isn't one.

> nuclear plants and waste storage facilities are easy targets for terrorism - fortunately that didn't happen yet, but things like Stuxnet proved that it's entirely in the realm of possibility.

As far as we know from public resources, Stuxnet wasn't a terrorist operation, but a state-controlled operation. And it wasn't a nuclear disaster - it was destruction of expensive equipment due to poor operational security (virus on USB drives hacked the network and destroyed the equipment).

Nuclear plants are NOT an easy target for terrorism, and they are NOT the preferred target for terrorists. When we read about some real terrorist attacks, it's clear they go for large death numbers and best visibility. The newer plants with domes are built to withstand a plane crash, a terrorist would have to be brainwashed by anti-terrorist agency to crash the plane into a nuclear plant instead of big city.

Lots of things are in the realm of possibility, but let's get real. Crazies attacking a nuclear power plant is a pretty small manageable threat, both in terms of probability of successful execution and in terms of potential resulting damage. Yes some people and equipment will have to be maintained to guard the plants, but it's not a big deal.

> -It's trivially easy to use the reprocessing infrastructure to create weapons-grade plutonium.

Yes, but again that is not a very relevant problem because in most countries where nuclear energy would be most benefitial in decreasing CO2 production already have plutonium sitting ready in nuclear weapons and can make more - US, China, India, US, Europe.

> nuclear has some advantages but there aren't enough of them to break the trend of using renewables + gas and storage

Gas power is not something we should prop up at all when we have the option to build more nuclear power plants. Gas burning produces CO2, nuclear operation does not.

I don't agree with you and most experts don't either. Storage is a solved problem. Nuclear is a solved probem. Energy storage on the scale of 1 week+ in cases of blizzards, and other freak weather events which are only going to get worse over the next century is not viable. Nuclear is here and it's safe and it's dependable and it might be the only way to save our planet (or at least us humans, the planet would do just fine without us).

Doesn't change the fact that nuclear capacity is currently not growing nearly as fast as renewables.

I think nuclear is also the least disruptive, least ecological footprint of all technologies we have. The amount of Lithium mined, the production of solar panels, plus all the install locations. Solar might be cheaper, but overall it means we need to move and manufacture much much more stuff, and all of that requires energy and land use changes. In order to fully power our economies with solar, we need to gobble up even more land than we are already using. That literally means deforestation and destruction of other habitats for wildlife.

Nuclear is the lowest footprint, biggest-bang-for-the-buck technology.

Please excuse this question, but how do you think Lithium is "mined"?

Because of non-scientific ideologues. If all the pro-nuke people sabotaged solar rollouts would you say that solar was less viable, or would you blame the sabotage?

Nuclear is also quite expensive.

Who has been sabotaging nuclear reactors?

Take a look at some Lithium mines here:

https://www.mining-technology.com/features/top-ten-biggest-l...

Lithium mining has serious environmental impact:

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/lithium-batteries-environmen...

GreenPeace, for example, has been lying about nuclear power forever. All the radiation grifters on Youtube who talk about scintillations per m^3 of seawater as proof that Fukushima is killing Californians, etc.

"Concerned citizens" who demand endless studies about things we already have a good understanding of.

People who ignore the 10,000 deaths per week worldwide because of coal power but focus on the ~2 deaths from Fukushima.

Right, smear. Sabotaging the process.

Oh, smear campaigns. I though you mean people were sabotaging reactors.