88-2: Only Markey, Sanders Oppose 'Expensive, Risky' Nuclear Power Expansion
88-2: Only Markey, Sanders Oppose 'Expensive, Risky' Nuclear Power Expansion
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88-2: Only Markey, Sanders Oppose 'Expensive, Risky' Nuclear Power Expansion | Common Dreams
This is the one side of the aisle I think Bernie is always on the wrong side of. Nuclear power of some form will be required for a full transition away from fossil sources, and it should be telling how fast other nations like China are dumping money into it. It is cleaner and causes fewer accidents per GWh than any fossil source ever has- it's just been demonized for decades by those who stand to benefit from it being restricted and painted as a "non-green" energy source.
The problem is that humans cut corners for power and profit, and the nuclear industry is no exception.
i’m not sure what you’re talking about… The nuclear energy industry has a track record of safety and extensively regulated engineering that surpasses virtually any other industry
sure, and you think this isn't also happening in every single other industry right now?
That's a regulatory problem and not a fundamental mechanics problem. the logic of "well it's good but humans will cut corners" means we should never do anything at all.
We have not in fact always done better
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Rock_uranium_mill_spill
all reactors are built near water and susceptible to some sort of flooding though. i realized that after German Biblis was hit by a flood earlier this month
Nuclear is the most expensive energy technology used, so expansion is only useful if all renewable sources are already built out to the limit
This is not the case, so investing in renewable is the smarter choice environmentally and fiscally
Of course, the route we took in Germany reducing nuclear to upscale coal is even stupider, but it is far too late to reverse that
don’t y’all buy excess power from France’s nuclear base capacity? Like 1.6TWh a year?
It is not the most expensive for any intrinsic reason. It's not necessarily that complex to operate. It's expensive because bureaucracy that has been strapped to it to make switching to it harder, which was designed to keep dirty energy in demand longer. It is the safest power source we have available (including renewables). There's no reason it's so expensive except to attempt to kill it.
It's the most expensive if you don't already have the infrastructure & experience needed to support it. Of course in places where nuclear is barely used or not used at all, it's going to be more expensive than others. But the US doesn't have such a problem – in large part due to lifetime extensions (which allow plants to operate for another 20-40 years, up to a maximum of 80 years), which bring nuclear's cost down to comparable to renewables. Without lifetime extensions though, nuclear indeed would be more expensive than renewable energy.
Renewable energy also gets subsidized significantly more than any other form of energy – in the US, solar and wind both get roughly about 16x the $/MWh of nuclear, and 2x the total amount of budget. The EU also puts like half of its total energy subsidies into renewables (and a third into fossil fuels) and almost none in to nuclear. That should probably be taken into account too.