Shuttering of New York facility raises awkward climate crisis questions as gas – not renewables – fills gap in power generation
When New York’s deteriorating and unloved Indian Point nuclear plant finally shuttered in 2021, its demise was met with delight from environmentalists who had long demanded it be scrapped.
But there has been a sting in the tail – since the closure, New York’s greenhouse gas emissions have gone up.
Castigated for its impact upon the surrounding environment and feared for its potential to unleash disaster close to the heart of New York City, Indian Point nevertheless supplied a large chunk of the state’s carbon-free electricity.
Since the plant’s closure, it has been gas, rather then clean energy such as solar and wind, that has filled the void, leaving New York City in the embarrassing situation of seeing its planet-heating emissions jump in recent years to the point its power grid is now dirtier than Texas’s, as well as the US average.
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While it was a net benefit to close this specific plant, fossil fuel power plants pump radioactive particles into the environment along with other pollutants.
Sounds less like it needed to be closed than that it needed to be repaired. It wasn’t a problem because it was a nuclear plant, that was actually good and we need more nuclear plants. It was a problem because it was poorly maintained.
It was also a problem because it was a nearly 70 year old power plant design that would likely cost less to replace with a modern design from scratch than to try and repair the existing facility.
But anti-nuclear sentiment is strong enough that people don’t understand how much they have improved since the 1950s so they assume a new plant will be as bad for the environment as this one.
Or maybe it’s because nuclear power is ridiculously expensive and new designs are still a black hole in the budget. Wind and solar exist, right now, and are also carbon free, while being cheaper and not leaving the next 100 generations with radioactive waste. For which, by the way, we have but one final storage solution. Or is the facility in Finnland even up and running yet?
Oh good info. I am Pro Nuclear and Pro renewable. I think modern reactors have a real place in our future grid, but yeah old leaky reactors we should get rid of.
I trust nuclear can be built safely, problem is I don’t trust the humans building, maintaining, and running it to not cut corners. I flat out didn’t trust nuclear that’s run for profit as shareholders will demand cost cutting to maximize profits, and I didn’t know if I’d trust publication funded nuclear to stay properly funded.
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I’m aware, but, if we push for nuclear in the US right now, it will be for profit, and that’s why I’m apprehensive. If we can keep it public and ensure proper funding, then I’m for it.
But you have to compare its safety with what will replace it. Gas is known to produce fumes that poison the air we breathe and warm the climate. This will lead to people dying.
So which is worse? I suspect the answer is gas because we consistently underestimate the danger from fossil fuels and overestimate the danger from nuclear. But you’d have to do some kind of risk assessment to be certain.
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According to you. I believe the opposite.
We need to measure the actual dangers (in terms of lives lost, illnesses, etc.) and risks (in terms of probability of various outcomes) involved in order to arrive at an informed conclusion regarding this issue.
Natural gas kills people every day. This plant might, hypothetically, kill people in the future. Barring strong evidence that the second outcome is dramatically larger or more likely, the default should be to avoid killing people now.
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Well I’m afraid you’re doing a very poor job of it. If you are truly an expert on this topic it should be easy for you to provide some research that supports your position here. If there is any. Or you can just assert you’re a brilliant expert who should be unquestioningly believed on the basis of a comment on Lemmy. We’ll have to see which is the more effective educational technique.
It does matter, unqualified opinions holding equal weight with expert opinions/analysis is a serious issue in society.
First we have no way of confirming that this person is really an expert and considering they have shown no real advanced knowledge of the topic, count me skeptical.
Second, this completely misunderstands the nature of science and expertise. Science works because it is a process that uses documentation of evidence to arrive at logical and probabilistic conclusions. Experts are not magical unicorns that spray forth truth. They are experts because they have a deep familiarity with the research in their field. Their roles is to share this research, not boldly state opinions and then fall back on their authority when challenged. That is the rhetoric of demagogues.
In fact, I think it is precisely this misunderstanding about the nature of expertise that has led to the problem you’ve described but misunderstood.
He absolutely isn’t an expert. He may very well have done what he claims, but if so the military training he received simply teaches him to diligently read from a book and follow the steps listed there. He’s no more an expert based on this training than someone is an artisan baker for following the recipe on the back of a box or Betty Crocker.
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how was it leaking radioactive material into the water? It’s a PWR plant, that’s not coming from the reactor itself.
Oh, seems like the spent fuel pool was leaking. Cool, not even the plant itself, literally just the waste storage. Fascinating.
With that logic they should be ripping out every hydroelectric dam as well.
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I’ve always been pro nuclear. But what I’ve come to understand is that nuclear accidents are traumatizing. Anybody alive in Europe at the time was psychologically damaged by Chernobyl. Don’t forget also that the elder Xers and older worldwide lived under the specter of nuclear annihilation.
So you’ve got rational arguments vs. visceral fear. Rationality isn’t up to it. At the end of the day, the pronuclear side is arguing to trust the authorities. Being skeptical of that is the most rational thing in the world. IDK how to fix this, I’m just trying to describe the challenge pronuclear is up against.
I’m pro nuclear based on the science, but I’m anti nuclear based on humanity. Nuclear absolutely can be run safely, but as soon as there’s a for profit motive, corporations will try to maximize profits by cutting corners. As long as there’s that conflict I don’t blame people for being afraid.
“Afraid” after seeing unfettered capitalism cut corners in every way it can, with zero regard for human life.
I am not sure it’s fear so much as it is a logical response to the current situation to not want more nuclear in this context when renewables are so much cheaper.
I am not “afraid” of nuclear power, I just think it’s a really bad option right now and that its risks, like all other forms of power generation, need to be considered carefully, not dismissed out of hand.
Being afraid of what can go wrong is still being afraid. It’s not an insult.
Being afraid does not mean it’s irrational or unjustified.
It’s risks are pretty minimal, in the grand scheme. I won’t say non-existent of course. The possibility of a release is always there, but the impact is going to be measured in negative public perception, not deaths. One of the reasons the plants cost so much to build is because they have to stick a real big concrete dome over the dangerous bit.
This comes off as you’re anti nuclear but you know you can’t say that, so you do the trick where you say you’re pro butttt.
Except that modern nuclear technologies like LFTR are objectively way safer, and even with 60s technology and unsafe operation, nuclear has fewer deaths per MWh than just about every other form of energy generation. It’s just that nuclear’s failures are more concentrated and visible.
Oh absolutely the corporations are going to want to maximize profit. There are just a lot of things they can’t get out of, especially when it comes to safety.
The nuclear industry (in the US) since TMI has had a heavy amount of oversight from its regulatory body. That the plants pay for, too, which is good.
And let’s not forget that every reactor type was “very safe” at the time. It’s true, every power plant can have problems and fail, but if a nuclear one does, consequences could be WAY worse.
First off, RBMK (Chernobyl) wasn’t safe as designed. In the US, the style of reactor wouldn’t have made it through the required licensing.
Second of all, the consequences being way worse is an exaggeration. If a nuclear power plant has a small release, the (real, scientific) impact would be minimal. If it has a large release then something else happened and the reactor containment was destroyed and whatever massive natural disaster did that is causing waaaaayy more problems. We’re probably all dead anyway.
People are afraid of radiation because you can’t see or smell or hear it. Which is probably a good thing considering you are surrounded by it all the time.
Someone recently said to me that if people had been introduced to electricity by watching someone die in an electric chair, they’d refuse to have power in their homes. People were introduced to radiation by an atomic bomb.
People are afraid of radiation because you can’t see or smell or hear it. Which is probably a good thing considering you are surrounded by it all the time.
People: “I’m going to enjoy this sunny day with my shirt off and no sunscreen”
Same people: “I don’t want a nuclear plant anywhere in my country.”
Also fun are the 5G haters who don’t realize that 5G is being delivered over 3.4 ghz to 4.2 ghz but they’re ok with the wireless home phones doing 2.4ghz. Also fun fact for those who don’t know but you can actually destroy cellular tissue with ultrasound if the amplitude is high enough. Of course the range for this is very short and ultrasonic imagers don’t have the power to do this but ultimately this can be summarized as “everything is dangerous if you use enough of it” which just seems obvious and shouldn’t need to be mentioned.
You got it. I’ve had this discussion and the anti nuclear boils down to “somewhat, somehow, something, someone, maybe, possibly, perhaps may go wrong. Anything built by man could fail”. There’s no logic, just fear.
At this point, you can be economically anti-nuclear. The plants take decades to build with a power cost well above wind/solar. You can build solar/wind in high availability areas and connect them to the grid across the states with high power transmission lines, leading to less time that renewables aren’t providing a base line load. One such line is going in right now from the high winds great plains to Illinois, which will connect it to the eastern coastal grid illinois is part of.
We also have a hilarious amountof tech coming online for power storage, from the expected lithium to nasa inspire gas battery designs, to stranger tech like making and reducing rust on iron.
There is also innovation in “geothermal anywhere” technology that uses oil and gas precision drilling to dig deep into the earth anywhere to tap geothermal as a base load. Roof wind for industrial parks is also gaining steam, as new designs using the wind funneling current shape of the buildings are being piloted, rivaling local solar with a simplier implementation.
While speculative, many of these techs are online and working at a small scale. At least some of them will pay off much faster, much cheaper and much more consistently before any new nuclear plants can be opened.
Nuclear’s time was 50 years ago. Now? It’s a waste to do without a viable small scale design. Those have yet to happen, mainly facing setbacks, but i’m rooting for them.
As someone who works nuclear field adjacent (and has pretty frequent convos with people working for Plant Vogtle, the plant that’s nearly done adding 2 units in Ga) I completely agree about the expense. You can’t do full scale nuclear quickly or cheaply enough for it to realistically compete over the short term. Honestly, somewhat rightfully so. I wish every industry had the regulatory hurtles to cross before they got to impact the environment. And they have to pay for their regulators.
As for SMRs, I’m also hopeful there. Mostly because of you could get a small enough one you could literally take it anywhere in the world and power a small town with ease.
there is one cool thing about nuclear though, if you know what you’re doing they’re ripe for government subsidy investment. One and done, they’ll run for like 30-50 years. No questions asked. It’s really just the upfront build cost that’s the problem.
The georgia plant just opened 7 years late and 17 billion over cost. It is already running residents $4+/month in fees, with up to $13+/month being discussed, and that outside of the cost of electricity. It far, far over ran even huge government subsidies, with the feds putting up 12 billion.
There are much better places to put those billions now than in incredibly late and overly expensive “modern” nuclear.
To be completely fair to them, a ton of the delay was over lawsuits. I mean, you’d definitely end up dealing with those regardless of where you put upa NPP, but just giving them that small benefit f doubt there.
I’m a customer of theirs, paying the stupid fee. They got all celebratory about getting to the end and now the bill has to be paid and oh look, it’s the customers paying. Joy.
I work nuclear industry adjacent, so I guess it’s job security. And with that disclaimer I’ll add this:
Building new plants is definitely going to take too long. If we get small modular reactors that will help. Same way if we get better batteries for solar and wind storage or new tech in geothermal. The simple point is that we are 50+ years behind. We gotta try anything and everything. It’s our only hope at this point. And no matter what, it’s going to cost. Money, land, your view from your backyard. People aren’t willing to sacrifice anything to get it done, and that’s how it’s going to end for us if we don’t change. And that’s true for literally every problem we have. Nimby-ism will be the death of us.
Nimby-ism
this
most of that is going to be skill issues. “modern nuclear reactors” are multiple factors simpler than existing gen 2 and 3 plants. The problem is that they don’t exist, and nobody wants to fund them right now.
If none of them have been built, then they aren’t “modern” reactors. They are “theoretical” or “promising designs,” with any improvements being just as “potential” as other unproven techs.
they are modern reactor designs, forgive me for not speaking like an autistic nerd who has a hyper fixation on weird shit for 12 fucking seconds.
They are modern reactors. Just like the RBMK is an old and antiquated reactor, even though they aren’t being built anywhere. Same thing for BWR reactors, which aren’t nearly as common as PWR even though they may be built every so often.
While renewables get build without subsidies, because they pay off anyway.
there are a lot of subsidies for renewables right now. They both have use cases, and different advantages. Nuclear is just particularly apt for the exact situation we’re in right now.
As economists say, diversify investments.
You mean being in need of green energy as soon as possible? I don’t see nuclear helping short term.
not immediately, but a very low carbon energy source that lasts for upwards of half a century? That’s incredibly invaluable.
Especially if something were to plateau in solar or wind power for example.
the solution is never build an RBMK plant ever again. And invest in gen IV designs, which are inherently safe, and have basically no active safety features, because they dont need them.
lived under the specter of nuclear annihilation.
That specter’s back though.
Not quite the same level as the cold war, but yeah, it’s back baby
That’s putting it mildly. Most people alive at the time were as certain as they could be that a nuclear apocalypse was right around the corner. Kids were told as much in school. Right now it’s floated as a possibility, but most people don’t take it seriously or aren’t aware of it much at all.
Nor will they. Nuclear bombs have been coopted by the ever churning content machine that is western media into “this is an explosion, but it’s really fucking big”.
Shit, look at what’s happened to Godzilla. We have Godzilla Minus One vs Monsterverse Godzilla. I don’t think I need to break down how trivial Monsterverse Godzilla is by comparison. “Very big, very cool, big explodey lizard wow” is about all Godzilla amounts to in the West, and it is a walking metaphor for a nuclear bomb.
Why would anyone be afraid of something so trivialized? We’ve been fucking powerscaled into not caring about nuclear bombs.
Nuclear weapons weren’t “coopted.” It’s extremely unlikely because any country that uses would similarly be glassed. Sure, it’s not zero, but probably not too far off.
I clearly meant nuclear bombs as a concept.
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i’m sorry, we power scaled a 3kilometer wide sun on earth?
As far as something to be afraid of on a day to day basis, yes. This is speaking of both the real world and fiction. Fiction is obvious as to why, Goku can fucking blow up galaxies or some shit. Superman becomes God at some point or whatever.
In the real world, when is the threat of a singular nuke ever the case? Seriously, when? It’s always total thermonuclear annihilation. You never hear about a singular nuke. Most people fear being shot or stabbed more than total nuclear annihilation. The idea is too abstract.
I use to be very pro nuclear. I’d write letters to papers and such explaining how the waste, which is the main concern most people have, is not as big of a problem as people think - and that certain manufacturing processes produce other waste products that are very bad and people just don’t think about those…
Anyway, I changed my mind some time back. There are three main things that have turned me against nuclear.
- The first thing was that I read a detailed analysis of the ‘payback time’ of different forms of energy generation. i.e. the amount of time it takes for the machine to produce more energy (in dollar terms) than it cost to build and run it. Nuclear fairs very poorly. It takes a long time to pay itself back; but wind was outstandingly fast; and solar was surprisingly competitive too (this was back when solar technology wasn’t so advanced. That’s why it was surprising). So then, I got thinking that although nuclear’s main advantage over coal is its cleanliness, wind is even cleaner, and easier to build, and safer, and pays itself off much much faster. And Australia has a lot of space suitable for wind power… so I became less excited by nuclear energy.
- The second thing is that as I grew older, I saw more and more examples of the corrupting influence of money. Safely running a nuclear power-plant and managing waste is not so hard that it cannot be done, but is a long-term commitment… and there are a lot of opportunities for unwise cost-cutting. My trust in government is not as high as it use to be; and so I no longer have complete faith that the government would stay committed to the technical requirements of long-term safe waste management. And a bad change of government could turn a good nuclear power project into a disaster. It’s a risk that is far higher with nuclear than with any other kind of power.
- The third and most recent thing is that mining companies have started turning up the rhetoric in support of nuclear power. They were not in favour of it in the past, but they smell the winds of change, and they trying to manipulate the narrative and muddy the waters by putting nuclear into the mix. They say nuclear is a requirement for a clean future, and stuff like that. But that’s not true. It’s an option, but not a requirement. By framing it as a requirement, they trigger a fight between people for and against nuclear, and it’s just a massive distraction form what we are actually trying to achieve. If the fight just stalls, the mining companies win with the status-quo. And if nuclear gets up, they win again with a new thing to mine… It’s not nice
So yeah, I’m not so into nuclear now. It’s not a bad technology, but the idea of it is a bit radioactive, just like the waste product.
Don’t forget also that the elder Xers and older worldwide lived under the specter of nuclear annihilation.
This movie didn’t help.
(Good movie by the way; Jack Lemmon’s “I can feel it” line at the end of the movie really scares the crap out of you.)
Being skeptical of trusting “authorities” is only rational if you’re still living with boomer information. There are plenty of designs now that would have made Fukushima a non-issue. Until fusion comes along, nuclear is easily our best option alongside renewables.
I am sympathetic to the don’t trust the powers that be viewpoint. For example I just assume everything an economist says is the exact opposite of what we should do.
What I look for is multiple independent groups able to present the same data showing the same results. For example I trusted the first Covid vaccine because Universities and multiple government agencies of different countries agreed. If it was just the Orange White House administration lawyers claiming this shit is the bomb yeah I am not getting it.
Guess we need to basically just keep saying “look you don’t trust the government, and that’s fine. Here is the science for all these other places”
Well there are plenty of rational arguments against nuclear. Its very expensive and time consuming to build, so its better to build renewables that can start generating power in a couple of months vs at least a decade for nuclear.
Then they are actually pretty significantly more polluting than renewables due to the amount of concrete they use. And decommissioning them is a costly and expensive process that also releases a lot of carbon. And theres only one permanent storage facility in the world for nuclear waste. And theres the fact that due to needing a constant and highly skilled workforce, they need to be near population centres but far enough away that people feel safe, which makes it hard to plan.
And also specifically for the reactors mentioned in the article, they were built in the 60s, they are not nearly as safe as modern reactors.
Also the nuclear waste is a big problem, it will be around for thousands of years. We have a nuclear plant near us and none of the waste has ever left the site, it just keeps getting added to big casks on a concrete slab outdoors and is a big potential vulnerability.
Most radioactive waste is just mildly contaminated and has a relatively short danger period in the realm of a century or less. The truly dangerous stuff represents the smallest amount of waste and that’s the crap people have been trying to put very deep underground for decades. For whatever reason the political will just hasn’t been there. For now it rests on-site in casks designed to keep it safely stored for a very long time, but it will eventually need a permanent home.
Coal waste is a bigger problem
There is a simple answer that nobody will implement. Thorium reactors, very veyy low chances of meltdowns
But the governments won’t do it because you can’t convert thorium to bombs
Disagree, sorry.
Thorium is unproven in a commercial setting, molten salt reactors in general are plagued with technological difficulties for long term operations and are limited currently to just a few research reactors dotted about the globe.
There’s no denying that originally a lot of the early nuclear reactors chose uranium because of its ability to breed plutonium for nuclear weapons proliferation but nowadays that’s not a factor in selection. What is a factor is proven, long-lasting designs that will reliably produce power without complex construction and expensive maintenance.
Well i didn’t know this. I will read up more on this. Thank you.
that’s true, but so is everything that hasnt been built since the decline of nuclear power. Frankly i don’t think it really matters anymore. We struggle to build existing gen 2 and 3 plants now, we don’t have gen 4 plants off the ground yet, and thorium is in that camp.
FWIW, I’m an Xer against nuclear power, but not for the reason you outlined: it’s because it’s an overall bad approach to energy generation.
It produces extremely long-lasting waste, on timescales humans are not equipped to deal with. It has a potential byproduct of enabling more nuclear weapons. The risks associated with disaster are orders of magnitude greater than any other power generation system we use, perhaps other than dams. It requires seriously damaging mining efforts to obtain the necessary fuel. It is more expensive.
We have the tech to do everything with renewables and storage now.
It’s not my trauma, it’s my logic that leads me to be generally against nuclear. (Don’t have to be very against it, no one wants to build these now anyway.)
It produces extremely long-lasting waste, on timescales humans are not equipped to deal with.
Very little waste compared to burning coal or oil which also produces waste we aren’t equipped to deal with. See oh idk global warming.
Also, dont coal plant spew out loads of radiation?
Not loads per say, but the workers are exposed to more radiation than a nuclear reactor operator would be.
and the public, birds, animals, wildlife, anything outside potentially. (realistically most of it should be scrubbed but uh…)
A lot compared to renewables. Did you read what he said? “We have the tech to do everything with renewables and storage now.”
Nuclear is unexpectedly safer and less polluting than renewables. That’s including stuff like Chernobyl. Also less expensive overall. The plant itself is expensive yes but for the energy output/cost per watt it’s by far cheaper last I checked.
Worth mentioning it’s actually quite small by mass (only 1% or so of what goes in), but only a few places actually separate out those isotopes.
Yeah nuclear waste is super overblown we can very easily store it away which isn’t exactly great but we fuckn bury our garbage so I’m cool with putting nuclear waste in some sort of vault
You volunteering to have it stored where you live?
Yup right in my room preferably, keeps the heating bill down
Oh a serious note sure, most nuclear waste is actually PPE which is only mildly radioactive. Uranium glass will give you more radiation exposure than a bin of that stuff
I never argued for coal power. I don’t know if you’re an oil/gas lobby shill or what, but I said absolutely nothing about coal, oil, or gas, none of which are good options vs. renewables.
Huh? Bro what. What kinda oil shill would be promoting fuckn nuclear
What kinda oil shill would be promoting fuckn nuclear
Nuclear is incredibly expensive, uneconomic and for all countries starting only now would delay phasing out fossil fuels by decades of planning and construction. When they could start reducing fossil fuels and emmissions right now by building renewables and adding storage successively over years.
So the actual answer is: all of them. They know fossil fuels don’t have a future, so they have long changed to delay tactics.
Nuclear is very expensive to build it’s the cheapest to maintain. Even accounting for horrible disasters like Chernobyl it’s safer and less polluting. But yes, renewables are great! Most of our power where I live is from a dam. My grandpa had his house heated primarily via solar energy. They generated enough power through solar that they were able to sell it off to the energy dudes. When solar was bad they’d get power from the nearby wind turbines or the dam. All this stuff is great, it’s way better than coal but a single nuclear plant would out perform all of that energy generation and ultimately, cost less.
it’s the cheapest to maintain.
only if you dont count cost of salaries. Nuclear takes a lot of highly skilled people to run/maintain.
You tell me why people advocate for a more dangerous, more expensive option.
I figure it’s in the best interests of non-renewables to slow adoption of renewables any way they can - advocating for big expensive projects that typically go way over budget as the answer to the fossil fuels issue feels like a way for them to push back their reckoning.
A decade ago I thought nuclear was a good option, I’ve seen the data in the intervening time and renewables have scaled too quickly for nuclear to have any chance of keeping up. (At least, not without more research, as I think another commenter suggested should be our primary focus of any dollars allocated to nuclear.)
But I’m getting all the down votes, not counter arguments, so you tell me what’s going on.
I won’t aim to change your mind but I’ll add that one of the reasons they’re so expensive is, at least in the US, there is simply a struggle to build mega engineering projects. From project management to the blue collar skills required (nuclear isn’t the only large scale engineering project with cost overruns). Things were more favorable in the 80s when plants were built somewhat regularly and the country had collective experience completing these projects.
Renewables are similar too on both the installation and design side. More experience in manufacturing, developing, and installing helps to lower costs.
Yes, then deregulation really began, gutting our unions and thereby our trades. It robbed us of valuable experience for the benefit of a handful of wealthy people. It wasn’t a fair trade and we need to reverse it asap if we want to have a.futire as a society.
Well I’m not calling anyone an oil shill so I’m sure you’ll feel very persecuted no matter what’s said to you
Fair criticism. I’ll think on this.
There have been more deaths and major environmental disasters with fossil fuels than with all nuclear accidents combined (including the less reported ones that happened in the 50s and 60s). Nuclear plants are generally safe and reliable. They do not produce excessive waste like wind (used turbine blades) and solar (toxic waste from old panels that cannot be economically recycled).
Nuclear is the superior non-carbon energy source right now. Climate change is an emergency, so we shouldn’t be waiting on other technologies to mature before we start phasing out emitting power plants in favor of emission-free nuclear plants.
If I were advocating for more use of non-renewables, your comment would make sense in this context.
I am arguing against non-renewables getting more funding.
But really my arguments don’t matter, the market has decided and I feel like these nuclear posts are becoming mostly sour grapes and not any kind of legitimate discussion about what things nuclear would need to do to be price competitive.
Probably should be mentioned too that there’s the very clever idea of simply repurposing existing coal power plants to run nuclear fuel. The main ‘expense’ of nuclear power plants, as I understand, is the general equipment itself, not the nuclear core. Those can be built much quicker than building an entire plant from scratch.
the problem with this concept, is that nuclear plants are built ground up to be a containment vessel. If you can build a core that produces heat, very effectively, and very safely, this is definitely an option. But even the external building of a nuclear reactor is going to be a containment vessel of some kind.
the market sucks at doing anything other than profits for an increasingly small populace
thermal reactor skill issue, just use a fast reactor design.
Btw the mining is vastly less significant to something like coal, oil, and probably even natural gas production. It’s just a fraction of the volume being mined, to produce the same amount of energy.
I did not compare it to oil., coil or natural gas. I am not sure why you are using those as some kind of comparison or justification.
because you literally talked about mining. You mentioned the environmental impact of mining, which is still significantly less, than any other form of extraction. Except for maybe natural gas. Though im not familiar with how that works.
It requires seriously damaging mining efforts to obtain the necessary fuel.
Maybe you weren’t referring to nuclear, but judging by the fact that the literal entire rest of the post refers to nuclear, and you are yelling at me about how you didn’t mention it, im going to assume, for lack of any better context, that you meant mining in regards to nuclear.
I don’t think I understand what you’re trying to say. I’m saying nuclear power requires mining to get the fuel. It’s just one negative point about the power source. I didn’t compare it to any other form of power generation in that regard.
Edit: I should have said “non-renewable form” - I’m listing it as a negative around nuclear because it’s not a (direct) negative in renewables.
i mean even solar panels require mining material. Rare earth materials at that. Wind? Same deal there, hydro? Same deal there. Literally every form of energy production requires extraction processing and refining. Nuclear is arguably one of the least significant contributors, most of it’s primary extraction and processing is very similar to how large buildings and structures are built. The secondary extraction is very minimal. Compared to something like solar where you need continual extraction, processing, and refining, of rare earth materials in order to turn funny photon energy into electrical energy so we can bitch and yell at each other for no reason.
Wind is arguably better than solar, but it has the cool side effect of using fiberglass, particularly in the blades, which is basically landfill from the factory, due to how they wear, and how you can’t really dispose of them.
Of course mining material is a negative, but we can literally leech uranium out of the ground using zero human involvement, while it’s probably not great for the environment itself. That might even be a marked improvement over something like solar, nuclear probably has one of if not the lowest recurring cost of extraction for producing energy.
I’m not sure what the point of mentioning that is unless you legitimately believe that free energy exists. It’s entirely redundant otherwise.
You make a really good point with the comparison to dams. It’s not that it’s not a great way to generate power, but it is a fact that the worst case scenarios for failure are really really bad. It’s perfectly rational to worry about that. Consider, for example, how both dams and nuclear plants have been targeted by Russia in Ukraine. No one is worried if they smash a few solar panels
Thank you for considering what I am saying. I really appreciate at least one person being open to thinking about their position.
The problem IMO is that there are a lot of entrenched beliefs here, but none of this is black and white
The only reason I put myself through these discussions is I used to be pro-nuclear. (And am not nearly as anti-nuclear as pro-nuclear people think me to be.) 😂
Shut up Xer they said it’s a security problem don’t use your logic
I beg you Lemmy, dont be like a redditor that just reads the purposefully inflammatory headlines and gets mad over it. Always assume a headline is supposed to get a specific emotional response from you and read the article.
For this one the environmental concerns people had were not about carbon emissions, they were about groundwater contamination
It faced a constant barrage of criticism over safety concerns, however, particularly around the leaking of radioactive material into groundwater and for harm caused to fish when the river’s water was used for cooling.
The plant as well as NYs other plants that face a lot of criticism were built in the 60s long before much of the modern saftey measures and building techniques that make Modern reactors so safe. And thats why they were decommissioned, they were almost 60 years old and way past their initial life span. Not because of “Dumb environmental activists think taking nuclear power offline will decrease carbon emissions” like whoever wrote this headline is trying to get you to assume.
You are not immune to propaganda.
Modern is a misnomer. Most of our plants are 30+ years old. After 3 Mile Island, nuclear development ground to a halt in the US. No new nuclear power began development after 1979 except 2 new reactors at the existing Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Georgia that were approved in 2009.
And only one reactor at Indian Point came online in the 60s. Units 2 and 3 came online 12 and 14 years after unit one. And unit 1 was decommissioned in 1974 as it is, shortly after unit 2 came online.
In any case, why not fix the issue rather than just shutting the plant?
And that does not make the headline “inflammatory.” It is accurate. People just assume that nuclear will be magically replaced by renewables. But you can’t just do that. You can draw a direct line from the closure of Indian Point to the construction of 3 natural gas turbine plants.
Three natural gas-fired power plants have been introduced over the past three years to help support the electric supply needed by New York City that Indian Point had been providing: Bayonne Energy Center II (120 MW), CPV Valley Energy Center (678 MW), and Cricket Valley Energy Center (1,020 MW).
In any case, why not fix the issue rather than just shutting the plant?
Because just patching up an old faulty nuclear power plant thats past its expected service life is a recipe for disaster. Hence why we have service lifetimes for these things in the first place?
And that does not make the headline “inflammatory.” It is accurate
It absolutely is inflammatory. Its specifically trying to conflate environmental concerns of polluted groundwater with carbon emissions, to make it seem like the people who voiced those concerns are idiots.
thats past its expected service life
Citation needed. It received a 40-year permit to start because that was the max permit issued.
Lots of things last well past their “expected service life.” That is why there is the word EXPECTED. The problem was in the spent fuel pools. They could build brand new ones.
Tell me, what was the expected service life of the Brooklyn Bridge? Should people avoid it because continuing to use it is “a recipe for disaster?”
The fact is, intensive inspections would have been required for another permit to continue operating.
Listen, if you think we should build newer and better nuclear power plants, I am right with you. But until that happens, we cannot just flush what we have down the toilet.
Should we build wind and solar? Absolutely. But we also need green power that works when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing, and that is what Indian Point gave the state of NY for decades.
It absolutely is inflammatory. Its specifically trying to conflate environmental concerns of polluted groundwater with carbon emissions, to make it seem like the people who voiced those concerns are idiots.
It cites a “green win.” The groundwater issue is absolutely a green issue.
But even then, those pushing to close it down claimed it would be replaced by green energy. The National Resourced Defence Council claimed that “Indian Point Is Closing, but Clean Energy Is Here to Stay.” The claimed that “because of New York’s landmark 2019 climate legislation and years of clean energy planning and investments by the state, New York is better positioned today than ever to achieve its ambitious climate and clean energy goals without this risky plant.”
So, yes, it was absolutely advertised as a climate win that the NY would easily replace it with renewable energy, even when those 3 gas turbine plants were being bought online.
In any case, why not fix the issue rather than just shutting the plant?
Because the bean counters counted the beans and found that it wouldn’t be profitable.
Besides the text of the article, there is the issue that environmentalist fear-mongering about nuclear energy caused extreme hesitance to build a new plant and that has lead directly to greenhouse gas emissions increases.
Indeed, we are not immune to propaganda.
Environmentalists can’t stop oil and gas companies from drilling and fracking and spilling and polluting. If nuclear was profitable environmentalists wouldn’t be able to stop it either.
The only reason we have so many nuclear plants is because the government subsidized them because they produce material that can be used in weapons. Just the reactor on its own isn’t profitable for decades, which is too long for a company to wait for a return even in the good old days before profits needed to grow every quarter.
Well, nuclear can be profitable. It’s just that fossil fuels are more profitable.
But this is also where the government needs to step in. There should be a carbon tax to account for the climate change externality. Also, clean sources of power including nuclear should be subsidized.
Keep in mind that while environmentalists maybe can’t stop it, some of them happily join a coalition with NIMBYs and indeed, fossil fuel companies to stop nuclear.
Even if the government did start heavily subsidizing nuclear, it will take a decade for new plants to come online. In the meantime, hundreds of gigawatts of renewables will come online, and storage and efficiency technologies will improve immensely. Like I said in another comment, if renewable power lowers the price of electricity, the nuclear plant will take even longer to be profitable.
We can keep the existing plants we have going. And even in the future, I believe there is space for nuclear. It is still far more consistent at generating power.
And I doubt renewables will make power cheaper.
Listen, the companies building gas turbine generators are not stupid. They know they will run for decades. Renewable energy, while good, just cannot meet increasing demands for power on its own.
And I doubt renewables will make power cheaper.
Except it already has. It’s cheaper (hence a lower electricity price) to build new wind or solar than it is to continue operating a coal power plant. And because they’re renewable the only real costs are the initial construction and some fairly easy maintenance. Without the fuel costs the real price of electricity will go down over time. A rooftop solar system will pay for itself after 7-10 years and from then on the electricity is essentially free.
Meanwhile, when Vogtle 3 came online last year electricity prices in Georgia went up 3% because they passed along the cost of construction to customers.
Plus, building a nuclear power plant takes decades. Vogtle 3 started planning in 2006, and took a decade to build and didn’t come online until last year. In the meantime the price of solar dropped by 75%, and we’ve added 38 GW of solar capacity. Wind went down in price about 25% and added 130 GW of capacity.
So I’d rather wait a decade to tear down the gas turbine generators - or power them with biofuel somehow - than wait for a nuclear plant to come online.
I’ve checked and rechecked my power bill. Definitely not cheaper.
I live in the Great Lakes, where essentially it is cloudy 90% of the time from October-April. My home has a relative roof that faces east and west, not south. Rooftop solar does not pay for itself here so easily. And that is besides the regulations the power companies have placed on it, essentially eliminating even net metering and only giving you pennies for excess power production.
The planet can’t wait a decade while we build out renewables. We have to keep what nuclear we have going at least.
Well when you consider that reactors at the time werent as safe as they are now, and that we had several high profile nuclear reactor failures at around the same time, that were all pretty narrowly stopped from becoming even worse disasters and all those reactors were “Perfectly safe” until they werent and also just how deeply awful the effects of radiation is. Do you think its actually “fear mongering” or reasonable concern? I suppose the difference depends mostly on which side of the argument you are on.
The plant should have been closed for updating and modernization, not just closed permanently.
Nuclear is the only way we will get to carbon neutral emissions anytime soon.
You cant really just keep “modernising” ancient reactor designs forever. Eventually you’ll need to close them down and build something else.
And realistically it makes way way more sense to build Wind power than nuclear to get us to carbon neutral. We can build a 50mw wind farm in 6 months.
For comparison Hinkley Point C in the UK was announces in 2010 and is currently expected to be commissioned by 2029.
That means if we built wind instead we would have built 1900MW of capacity in the time it would have taken to build the NPP and by the time the reactors would generate power for the first time the wind farms would already have generated 17 GW/years of power. If we stopped building more wind farms when the NPP completed it would take the reactor 14 more years just to catch up to the wind farms. And if we continue to build wind farms nuclear literally never catches up as total wind capacity would overtake the capacity of the NPP by year 13.
Yes you can make arguments about the uptime of wind, but I think ive made my point. And thats not even factoring in the cost/MW of capacity.
This is a great point about renewables: A partially finished solar or wind power installation can produce some power and start recouping costs. A nuclear plant doesn’t start bringing in income until it’s completely finished, so all those billions tied up in design and construction are a liability for a lot longer.
You didn’t factor in that nuclear only takes forever because we haven’t done it in a long time and have lost all of the knowledge and skilled builders that know how to do it. If we properly pursued new nuclear plants in the US on a federal and state level it would absolutely be the best option.
I know you touched on it but the battery storage needed to make wind reliable would be enormous.
I’m a firm believer nuclear and renewables are what we need to be spending our time and money, not one or the other but both.
You didn’t factor in that nuclear only takes forever because we haven’t done it in a long time and have lost all of the knowledge and skilled builders that know how to do it.
I didn’t, because its not true.
France has been building new reactors consistently since they started in the 50s and yet their latest reactor Flamamville 3 has been under construction since 2007.
The only people that can do Nuclear quickly are China through a combination of lesser safety standards, their totalitarian government, and the massive scale at which they are building them.
know you touched on it but the battery storage needed to make wind reliable would be enormous.
You don’t need batteries to make windows viable, there are lots of solutions, the most obvious being to just overbuild it.
I’m a firm believer nuclear and renewables are what we need to be spending our time and money, not one or the other but both
I’m not, nuclear just doesn’t make sense to build right now, nuclesr is a medium tern solution to a long term problem that needs immediate solutions.
You get way way more MWs per $ with wind. Wind farms can be built in 6 months and start generating power immediately. Even the fastest NPPs can’t compete. Wind farms can be built anywhere because they take no workers to operate and requite much less lightly skilled workers to maintain and no water to oeprate (so arent affected by droughts). They are less hindered by planning regulations, nimbys and protest groups, can be built onshore or offshore and also don’t have the chance to make an area uninhabitable for generations.
The only advantages nuclear has is a smaller footprint which is mitigated by wind being dispersed and stable output. Which is something that can be compensated for in wind.
Canada’s CANDU reactors were built in the 60’s and are providing Ontario 60-80% of its power.
Shitty design and build are the main problem. Not the age
I don’t know if heavy water plants leaking tritium in their wastewater should be used as a good standard for the longevity of old reactor designs.
You’re worried about a bit of tritium being pumped into Lake Ontario?
The actual leak never got out, the only time there was a leak was some dumbass filled the wrong silo and had to dump it.
THANK YOU ffs
Modern nuclear technology is much safer than older stuff, additionally when the older plants are well maintained they are much safer than they’re made out to be.
This is one of those cases where pop culture doesn’t match reality and as a result people who are half informed do more damage to their cause by rejecting the good in pursuit of the great.
I’m 112% for replacing old outdated and unsafe infrastructure.
However, a new, updated, far safer plant will not get built to replace this one. Or any that close in the US until some people die off or shit really hits the fan energy-wise and people get more desperate. This is the least favorable time to build “safe” things.
This plant needed to be closed, but something has to replace it. And unless people start forcing renewables, shit like this is just the norm. Plant closes, nothing replaces it except fossil fuels, emissions go up.
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If you don’t know why that is so bad, you really shouldn’t be talking about how safe nuclear power is. Because even tho you’re right, you don’t know why.
You’re kind of gaslighting people by equating “this instance of a 70 year old badly maintained plant” to “how safe nuclear power is”.
Besides, I am pretty certain some oil and gas lobbying prevented better maintenance here.
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As long as they are run by corporations, they will not be well maintained.
The plant was from 1956, nearing a century of age by now. Old plants like this one explode in their running costs and typically accumulate more and more maintenance incidences each year, ultimately becoming a security risk.
The main problem though is that countries betting on nuclear power do fuck all with renewables, which makes it unsurprising that you have to resort to other means to fill potential gaps to replace them. In this case they could’ve built renewables, or even other nuclear plants, for several decades already in order to replace this ancient one.
Articles & comments like this are basically just paid propaganda pieces by the nuclear lobby.
Calling 68 years ‘nearing a century’ as a comparison is a bit of a stretch.
It is really old in nuclear power plant tech terms and needed to be replaced. A combination of renewable amd nuclear is the way forward, but people treat nuclear safety concerns like they do airplane crashes, acting like the sky is falling even when there are no deaths for years and safety keeps increasing.
A combination of renewable amd nuclear is the way forward
But why? There isn’t anything nuclear fills in to cover the cons of renewables. The old model of baseload power being cheap is no longer applicable, and that’s what nuclear is for.
Renewables are not effective everywhere, and while their power can be transmitted over long distances they can have periods of time where they are strained from extreme weather for longer than power storage can handle. Nuclear would be a less environmentally damaging way to cover those gaps compared to fossil fuels in some locations.
I’m thinking vast majority renewable with some nuclear, not like an even balance or anything like that.
Renewables are not effective everywhere
They are where people tend to live.
they can have periods of time where they are strained from extreme weather for longer than power storage can handle
This is how you hybridize things: you line up the pros and cons of each solution, and then use the pros of one to cover the cons of another.
Wind and solar are a good example. The wind is often at a standstill when the sun is brightest, and then wind picks up when the sun is blocked. There are lulls where you have neither, but the good news is that we have plenty of data for that. We can calculate an expected maximum lull for a region, and then add enough storage to cover that plus some more for a safety factor.
Nuclear does not actually help. Its pro is a low marginal cost for sitting at 100% all the time. Its biggest con (since we’re both in agreement that nuclear can be done safely) is high up front cost. Really high. Which means you had better leave it at 100% all the time, or that up front cost isn’t going to amortize well.
What happens when added to a renewable grid is that you hit an opposite problem: the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, and combined with nuclear baseload, you now have too much (which causes other problems on the grid). Now you need to do one of three things:
- Bring down the nuclear level
- Turn off solar or wind
- Store the power somewhere for later use
The first two mean economic waste. The third one means you still need storage–but then, why not forget nuclear entirely and use that money to build more storage? And keep in mind, nuclear is expensive as fuck to build. That money can go into a lot of storage.
They are where people tend to live.
This winter my home city had a power supply crisis. It was night time (I live in a high latitude so nights last a long time during winter) which meant no solar, and it was -30C, which meant the wind turbines all shut down (they can’t operate when it’s below -30C). The whole province was short of power, only the coal and natural gas plants were keeping the lights on. We dodged rolling blackouts but it was a close thing. Lots of people live here.
Bring down the nuclear level
Which is perfectly fine. Nuclear power plants can change how much power they’re putting out. It’s not “economic waste”, the term is “load-following power plant” and it’s routine for nuclear power plants.
You’re right that cold winters in northern latitudes present additional system constraints. But that doesn’t mean the renewables + storage strategy is flawed, it means we need more transmission and more storage, and gas backup will linger longer in such areas than it does in warmer areas. We’re still early in the transition and have a ton of low hanging fruit to capture before we need to really focus on the remaining 20%.
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Everything can be repaired. It just stops being cost effective at a certain point to do so.
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Indian Point was water cooled, hence the river water leakage and heating concerns. Water cooled plants don’t have those huge stacks you’re talking about. Those only exist on air cooled plants.
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Yeah, article just offhand mentions that radioactive material was leaking into the river…
Aww man, you were so close to having it figured out. It mentioned that in an off handed way because it left you, the reader, with an impression of what was happening without having to get into the details. Why would they do that? Because said details don’t line up with what you’ve been talking about.
If we look at the NY RiverKeepers website, a source biased towards getting rid of this plant, we find this article: https://www.riverkeeper.org/campaigns/stop-polluters/indian-point/radioactive-waste/radiological-leaks-at-indian-point/
In there is a leak to the radiological events since the plant opened: https://www.riverkeeper.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Indian-Point-Radioactive-Leaks-Sheet.pdf
Oh. No leaking reactors, no leaking primary or secondary cooling systems…most of the problem was with their holding ponds and there were some valve failures.
Now none of that is good but it’s a FAR cry from the “leaking reactor” narrative that you seem to have.
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Building new nuclear plants isn’t particularly easy when there are environmentalists clamoring to shut them all down and a general public that’s scared of atoms.
Also, don’t accuse articles of being “propaganda” and then call 68 years “nearing a century” to fearmonger for your own view instead.
Coming from the guy claiming people are “scared of atoms”. 🤡
So you agree that hyperbole is uncalled for?
It’s not hyperbole when we’re past 2/3s of a century.
I’m not the only person calling you out on it.
That must certainly mean you’re right! That’s how the internet works after all.
The industry also thinks the problem is regulations. It isn’t. If you have your shit in order, federal regulators have been willing to issue new nuclear plant permits and extend old ones. The actual probably is that the tech is fundamentally unaffordable; nobody wants to buy what they’re selling. SMRs are not likely to fix this, and there doesn’t seem to be any other fission tech on the horizon that would, either.
Two things I think we should do is subsidize reactors for reprocessing old nuclear waste, and put SMRs on ships. There are reasons for both that don’t directly show up on balance sheets.
There’s a reason someone as stupid as Homer can keep the plant working.
FYI: The Simpsons wasn’t real.
Nuclear engineers and techs are highly trained. Even the ones at Chernobyl were exceptionally good at their jobs; they were just fucked over by a broken system and hidden effects.
Im aware, it seems one or two people got the joke tho
You can’t claim to be an environmentalist and be anti-nuclear energy at the same time.
Depends on where you’re talking about. In Australia the right wing are using nuclear as a diversion to slow down the transition to renewables, so they can stay on gas and coal longer.
There’s no nuclear power in Australia, and the time needed to create the industry, train or poach workers, create a plant and get it up and running makes no environmental or economical sense compared to what they are already set to achieve with wind, solar and storage.
If you’ve already got nuclear up and running, use it, but each new plant needs to be compared to the alternatives for that specific location, and the track record of the nuclear industry and government in that location.
Amazing how the argument works both ways, almost as if it’s all bullshit and a post-hoc rationalization instead of an evidence based approach to policy.
There is no pre-existing system = great! No golden handcuffs and no entrenched powers. Start with a clean slate with tech developed by other nations
There is a pre-existing system = great! So everything is built up, all we have to do is run things a bit harder. When you have a hundred plants it isn’t that much more difficult to build one more.
I get it. Jane Fonda was cute back in the day and she made a movie about nuclear being scary. Arguments are crafted to fit the scary instead of the emotion instead questioned. And I do get it because I was raised to believe in god.
Yes you can
You sure can indeed. But running with one leg isn’t as efficient as two.
Its a wrong analogy. We have limited resources and investment in renewables are faster and more efficient. Every dollar spent on nuclear doesn’t go in renewables, so its better to focus the effort.
Nor with a stick up your ass
Are you saying that building nuclear power plants is analogous to having a stick in one’s ass?
No, I just thought that was as glib response to a complex issue as the one you provided (and along with the original post)
Hey man, thanks for the insightful and intelligent response then.
Nuclear is is the most stable and carbon neutral form of energy production to date. Not to mention the safest. And that’s not even considering EOL disposal and recycling figures that always get brought up with Nuclear but no one ever seems to talk about for Solar and Wind when their components reach end of their service life and have basically no plan for how to recycle or dispose of them in any way that isn’t a landfill.
https://www.greentechrenewables.com/article/can-solar-panels-be-recycled https://orsted.com/en/insights/the-fact-file/can-wind-turbines-be-recycled As volumes increase, the economics of recyling will increase as well, as will the developed techniques for recycling.
“the market will solve this problem” but woke?
The claim was that renewables don’t have a recycling story. I gave references showing that’s not true and the comments that these efforts are early days and ought to improve with scale. Your glib response adds nothing
Nuclear is in no way carbon neutral?
Nuclear power plants produce no greenhouse gas emissions during operation, and over the course of its life-cycle, nuclear produces about the same amount of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions per unit of electricity as wind, and one-third of the emissions per unit of electricity when compared with solar.
https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-essentials/how-can-nuclear-combat-climate-change.aspx
Per kilowatt produced, wind power is the only thing that competes and that assumes operating in areas ideal for wind turbines to function. If you’re trying to make land use efficient (because the less land we need to use, the more can be converted back to wilderness to sustain fragile ecosystems) and able to serve high density population areas, nuclear is the only viable option as a solid baseline.
Of course. The problem with waste is still there and you can also replace Nuclear with renewables, like Germany did. Nuclear shut down, coal also 20 % down, renewables on record heights.
Nuclear waste is no where near the problem propagandist make it out to be. And Germany shutting down nuclear plants is not the benefit you think it is. They might be using less coal (all the 2023 stats I’ve seen do not reflect that) but they are still using oil and gas and their energy imports of fossil fuels went up in '23. Shutting down nuclear plants has caused them to become less energy green, not more.
Like I’ve said, most of the people who support nuclear energy are ANTI-environmentlists. They don’t support it for the world. They just support it to rub their dicks in environmentalism’s face.
Absolute horseshit take.
Yes you have repeated your mind reading claims multiple times and attacked people instead of ideas.
Sounds like environmentalists need to support nuclear, a carbon-free power source. Then complaints like yours vanish.
I don’t understand where you think the most environmentally friendly power production option is anti environmental. It produces the least amounts of greenhouse and uses the least amount of land per kW produced. A properly run plant has no contamination of its environment, high level waste can be run through reactors again and again until fully expended and becomes low level waste that can be stored at the facility indefinitely. Where in the world are you getting the idea that nuclear power is bad for the environment?
Hard to imagine how anyone who’s concerned about climate change could see shutting down a carbon-free energy source as a “green win”.
There’s a legitimate argument that we can’t grow our way out of climate change, and the real solution to our emissions problem is degrowth and descaling of our obscene rates of consumption. In that sense, had they been closing the plant with the expectation of drastically reducing energy demand, it might have made sense.
Its not as though nuclear energy produces no waste, just extremely low levels of CO2 waste. But if you’re just going to replace energy demand (and continue to grow energy supply) with new coal/gas consumption, who are you fooling except yourselves?
In that sense, had they been closing the plant with the expectation of drastically reducing energy demand, it might have made sense.
I really hate this kind of reasoning. Even if we do manage to reduce our energy consumption, closing the nuclear plant would still be more harmful to the environment because we could have closed fossil fuel plants instead. Unless, of course, we’d manage to reduce energy consumption so much that we wouldn’t need any non-renewable energy sources - which I don’t think is very realistic assumption. Certainly not realistic enough to make such a gamble on.
The only way closing the nuclear plant would have been beneficial to the environment would be if the act of closing it would have caused a reduction in our energy consumption that is greater than the energy the plant itself was producing (minus some extra energy from fossil fuel plants that take up its “emission budget” to increase their own energy production). Which is also quite unrealistic. I actually think it makes more sense that it achieved the opposite effect, since closing the plant took up activists’ effort and environmental publicity, which could have been used to push for reducing consumption instead.
Even if we do manage to reduce our energy consumption, closing the nuclear plant would still be more harmful to the environment because we could have closed fossil fuel plants instead
At some point you have to acknowledge nuclear power (particularly from planes dating back to the 60s/70s) as their own waste problem.
And you can try to address this waste with more modern clean up techniques. Or you can decommission these old plants. But just waiting for derelict facilities to crumble, on the ground that “Nuclear Good / FF Bad” means another generation of Fukushima like events that drive people further from nuclear as a long term solution.
That’s not a legitimate argument because the West combined emits less CO2 than just China. The economy of the West is growing, but emitting less carbon because of more green power sources, one of which being nuclear
A lot of that is still the Wests carbon, just because our products and materials are now coming from China doesn’t mean we are absolved from the responsibility of those emissions. This is why reduce was meant to be the biggest part of reduce, reuse, recycle, and this means degrowth.
Blame solarbros and their useful idiots.
There’s a SHIT TON of propaganda surrounding solar because average people can get duped into buying it.
It’s a lot harder to rip people off with other forms of energy because communities need to make a collective decision to use them.
Any moron can get suckered into buying solar, which is why you see so many scumbags and useful idiots shilling it on forums
So unexpected !
Fucking anti nuclear dipshits.
I blame The Simpsons, much like South Park and their climate change denial, they’ve probably cemented the opinions of millions of people.
Nuclear power is expensive. If a plant is no longer safe to operate, it may make sense to shut it down for good.
Building the same capacity in renewables is often cheaper and faster than repairing an old plant or even building a new one.
Building the same capacity in renewables
People do not realize this is a tricky question. Because, no, replacing, say, 1000MW of nuclear with 1000MW of solar and wind actually DOES NOT give you the same capacity. You have to consider capacity factor, which is a measure of how much power it produces versus its theoretical maximum.
Nuclear generally has a capacity factor of 90%. They are essentially always pumping out their nameplate capacity except during shutdowns for maintenance and refueling.
Solar and win have capacity factors of 20-30%. They spend most of their time producing less than their nameplate capacity.
So you need ~3.5 times the amount of solar and wind to match the lost capacity of a nuclear plant. And that does not even consider the issue of storage.
Or the issue of space occupied, nuclear plants don’t take up anywhere near the same amount of space as renewables.
I know. The price per kWh is still better with renewables and the speed of construction doesn’t even compare.
There are a lot of people who do not. In any case, as I said, there is still the issue of storage. Nuclear is great because of the consistency of generation. It meets base loads. I believe there is plenty of space for both nuclear and renewables.
And you want to talk speed of construction and price per kWh, well, look at gas turbines. There is a reason Indian Point was replaced with those and not renewables. Yes, we have to pay a premium for consistent clean power, but it is worth it.
environmentalists who had long demanded it be scrapped.
That doesn’t sound right, it’s fossil fuel simps that are anti-nuclear
More likely they wanted it to be updated
Environmentalists have only come around to nuclear in the last half-decade or so. For a long time after 3MI and Chernobyl, nuclear was the devil.
There was a genuine split on the issue in environmentalist communities. The Sierra Club, for instance, has pretty much always been an advocate for nuclear when it replaces coal. The WWF has also advocated nuclear as a means of reduced mining and drilling.
But both of these endorsements are predicated on long-term waste mitigation and clean-up of industrial sites. The Yucca Mountain waste deposit site that never got built, for instance. Or modernized thorium recyclers to handle the byproducts of traditional uranium waste that the US declined to develop or deploy.
They also almost universally disapprove of the manufacture of plutonium, both because it contributes to higher levels of plant waste and because the plutonium becomes fissile material capable of ending all life on earth.
So it isn’t just “environmentalists came around on this lately”. Its a whole host of modernizations and waste management actions that NEVER GET BUILT and are then used to prod environmentalist groups into protest.
Must be a regional thing
My whole life nuclear was pushed
After Fukushima there was a pretty widespread movement to get rid of nuclear power.
They probably definitely wanted it closed. To bad they didn’t guess the likely alternatives that would take its place, an push for that too…
Literal power vacuum
One of the biggest environmental groups in the world is vehemently anti nuclear
https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/fighting-climate-chaos/issues/nuclear/
There does seem to be a portion of green types who are anti nuclear. You only heard those voices on the issue because the fossil fuel people knew they would benefit anyway.
Renewables are great but you take them when you can make them. Batteries to store it seen to be more expensive than anyone is willing to pay. Nuclear is expensive and only worth running at full throttle. The gaps are filled by fossil fuels which can be fired up very quickly.
Fuck biomass, that’s just chopping down trees to burn them. The fuck is green about that?
Environmentalists are always and forever the prime movers in national politics, don’t you know? Cause they’ve got billions of dollars at their disposal and an enormous base of employees to draw on for electoral activism and lots of friendly former-environmentalists in positions of elected / appointed authority.
Who can forget the wise worlds of former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, when he warned us all of the threat of the Environmentalist Industrial Complex?
As someone who was vehemently pro nuclear, unfortunately we missed the boat. The time to invest heavy in nuclear was 50 years ago and instead we did the opposite. Renewables have caught up and nuclear is so far behind that it makes zero sense to build any new reactors when we can just build out more renewable power gen and battery storage for less money and without the whole nuclear waste handling problem.
Best time to plant a tree was 50 years ago. Second best time is now.
Sure, if we could snap our fingers and have a bunch of nuclear plants it would make sense. But the tech is all ancient, and the regulatory structure is oppressive. It will take decades to build out the amount of nuclear capacity we need and cost inordinate amounts of money, and we’ve already passed the tipping point where renewables are the better choice.
Just as an example, it took us 14 years to build a single reactor in the Vogtle plant costing over $30 billion dollars. We’d need massive reforms to the regulations and supply chain for building reactors to bring those numbers down and that just won’t happen fast enough.
Even China, who is the world leader in nuclear power these days is slowing down building of new reactors in favor of renewables, and they do not have the regulations and supply issues we have in the USA.
Please don’t be so defeatist.
I wouldn’t call it defeatist, nuclear should never be more than a stopgap to 100% renewables. if anything, it’s awesome that we’ve gotten far enough with renewables that switching to them entirely is now a viable proposition. It sucks that we spent so much time dependent on fossil fuels when we could’ve been using nuclear, but the past is the past and the future is bright.
I will say, small modular reactors might have a place in the energy mix. They would be fantastic for more isolated grids where stability is difficult to achieve with 100% renewable energy. Think small island nations or remote areas. Also would be good for emergency and disaster recovery scenarios. We (as in the USA) also already have the supply chain to build them somewhat efficiently since we use them on our aircraft carriers. Just needs some tweaking to work well on land and for the regulations to loosen up to make it economically feasible.
Battery tech isn’t there yet, the production and sourcing isn’t green enough and the assurances aren’t there
A few years ago you would be right but we’re just about there, especially once sodium ion batteries become more mature which is definitely going to be a “next few years” thing, not a speculative maybe it’ll happen someday thing. There’s also ways to store power other than chemical batteries, like pumped storage hydro.
Eh. No shortage of useful idiots on these forums saying solar should replace nuclear.
They just don’t understand how the power grid works.
The term environmentalist has so much stupid baggage tied to it.
I’m tired of having to share labels with people who refuse to do anything other than small superficial personal choices. Folks who will baulk at the suggestion of a carbon tax, their energy bills going up, more nuclear plants being built near them or, subsidies and infrastructure for low income people who are seriously hurt by such changes.
This is a systemic problem that requires systemic changes that will fundamentally alter things we take for granted right now. It’s going to suck and it’s going to be hard, there is no easy simple way out.
Oh my favourite are the environmentalists pushing for EVs as if replacing an existing car with an EV is somehow greener. It’s good to push new sales to EVs but it’s bad to get people to drop still functioning cars for an EV. Then there is the power grid issue which is going to be a minor social and economic disaster at this point because seemingly no one is ready for it.
Before some knob assumes anything this is not a pro-ICE comment and I actually own an EV, this is someone urging society to think actions through before committing to them. A lot of unintended consequences have come of the various steps done to push EVs.
Ideally we work to remove the need to own a vehicle in the first place.
My favorite are people out here advocating for battery/hydrogen buses and trains, like we have overhead/third-rail electrification! IT IS A SOLVED TECHNOLOGY! It is older than internal combustion engines, for pete’s sake!
I see this as a failure to build renewables. Wind and solar and batteries are and were able to solve this, but changing infrastructure costs time, money and skill. The closing of the NPP was foreseeable, so is the climate change.
New York just completed the building of a 130MW wind farm off the coast of Long Island. The largest one in the country.
That doesn’t replace the 2 GW (peak) Indian point reactor, but it’s a step in the right direction.
Their 40 year license with the nuclear regulatory commission ran out and they felt that getting it relicensed was too expensive. Yeah a bunch of folks were hyperbolic about it, but holding a 40 year old reactor to modern standards isn’t bad either. It’s still economics that is holding nuclear back.
Their 40 year license with the nuclear regulatory commission ran out and they felt that getting it relicensed was too expensive.
No, they applied for a 20-year renewal but faced pushback from the state of New York and were forced to close in a legal settlement.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=47776
Indian Point’s owner-operator, Entergy, retired Units 2 and 3 before their operating licenses expired as part of a settlement agreement with New York State. Entergy had been seeking a 20-year license renewal for both reactor units since 2007. However, New York challenged the renewals, citing environmental and safety concerns resulting from the plant’s nearness to New York City.
Nuclear power is among the most “green” power sources around. The simple fact that this debate exists shows a lack of education surrounding the whole thing.
This isn’t an issue about closing down a nuclear plant because of misinformation about nuclear power plants. This plant was old and leaky and was harming local wildlife. It needed to be shut down.
Out Greens had the same idea. They wanted to close almost 6 gigawatt of nuclear and replace it all with gas plants. People thought they lost it. Then the invasion in Ukraine happened and gas prices went crazy. Nobody took them seriously after that and they are losing voters fast.
The people who wanted it shut down talked about local safety issues like groundwater contamination. Green advocates generally understand that nuclear is better for CO2 and it’s dumb to shut them down. Feel like the article is muddying the issue by using ‘green’ to mean multiple things.
YOU understands it is dumb to shut them down. You are not necessarily the average green advocate. The average anything advocate / activists these days are usually much dumber than the general concerned citizens.
I’d argue that impressions like that are given by somewhat misleading articles like this.
Germany enters the chat.
Germany’s electric energy emissions steadily went down despite exiting nuclear power because Germany actually invests in renewables.
Analysis of current situation without nuclear power (English translated)
Here, let the german Deputy of the Federal Chancellor and Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection tell you about nuclear energy. Starts at 24:56.
My English isn’t good enough to translate it all in detail, but these are the basics:
Germany shut down all nuclear power plants but 3, which will shut down soon. So we will be nuclear free in the future, no going back from there. Then he talks about the nuclear power plants in France, which are all ailing and will be extremely expensive to repair (at least 1 billion euros per power plant). They are only still working because they belong to the state, otherwise they would have been insolvent long ago. A newly planned nuclear power plant is already so expensive to plan that most investors have backed out. If this power plant is ever built, it will supply the most expensive electricity ever produced in Europe.You sure, though? "Not least as a result of the energy crisis, greenhouse gas emissions in the energy sector rose by 11 million tonnes of CO₂equivalent or 4.5 percent in 2022. This was due to the increased use of coal. "
Which is not surprising due to volatility of renewables and closing last nuclear power plants. They also import a lot from … France AFAIK.No nuclear plants were shut down in 2022. Emissions rose because gas was expensive and more coal was burned as a result. The downward trend has since resumed.
In 2023, Germany imported about 12 TWh from France which is about 2% of the total power consumption. Germany tends to export more energy than it imports. Imports and exports are a very normal thing because of the European power grid.
France has its own set of problems with all their nuclear power, namely very high (tax funded) maintenance costs and lack of cooling water in the dry summers.
Import/export is of course a very normal thing. However I bet those imports were mostly during winter and exports during summer. Again, it’s not a problem of averages, it’s a problem of peaks happening mostly during winter. If there is a windless day during winter, Germany would either have to import a lot of energy or burn tons of coal and gas.
Of course France’s nuclear power plants are not without issues, but look at the CO2/pollution emission map for Europe.
Not quite
