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

(arstechnica.com)
425 points nixass | 1 comments | 02 Apr 21 18:00 UTC | HN request time: 0.222s | source
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philipkglass ◴[02 Apr 21 18:07 UTC] No.26674051[source]▶
I hope that the federal government can provide incentives to keep reactors running that would otherwise close prematurely.

5.1 gigawatts of American reactors are expected to retire this year: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46436

It's a shame that the US is retiring working reactors while still burning fossil fuels for electricity. Reactors are far safer and cleaner than fossil electric generation. It's mostly the low price of natural gas that is driving these early retirements. Low gas prices have also retired a lot of coal usage -- which is good! -- but we'd make more climate progress if those low prices didn't also threaten nuclear generation.

Some states like New York already provided incentives to keep reactors running for climate reasons:

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=41534

Federal policy could be more comprehensive.

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DennisAleynikov ◴[02 Apr 21 18:20 UTC] No.26674195[source]▶
if we are to come out the other side of this climate emergency we must keep our reactors online. the purity testing of what do we do with the waste is not helpful critique when we are still reliant on coal
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snuxoll ◴[02 Apr 21 18:28 UTC] No.26674304[source]▶
The ignorance of the externalities of fossil fuels and a bipolar hyper focus on those of nuclear energy is mind boggling at this point.

I’m all for developing renewables, but we cannot abandon the one good technology we have for generating massive amounts of energy our base loads demand without polluting our air.

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1. godelski ◴[02 Apr 21 21:39 UTC] No.26676267[source]▶
There's also an ignorance of the externalities of renewables. Yes, they are magnitudes better than fossil fuels, but it amazes me how much people bring up uranium mining and ignore everything to do with rare earth mining in general. Or talk about waste storage of heavy metals and lithium. The problem is that everything has a cost. You can't make good comparisons if you only look at the costs of one system and the benefits of another. These are extremely complicated equations that people act like they are simple. I also frequently see a lot of belief that the issues are purely political (renewables and nuclear) when there is so much technical challenges still left.

There's no free lunch.

I want to make it clear that I'm not trying to say "nuclear > renewables" or even "renewables > nuclear" (this is a dumb comparison imo), but rather that every time we have these conversations in HN and most places we aren't even attempting to make a one-to-one fair comparison. I just wish that, especially on a technical form, that the conversations would focus on technology and science rather than the politics. Though I understand that not every (anyone) is really qualified to talk technically so we talk politically because we still want to engage.