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LoveSausage ,
@LoveSausage@lemmygrad.ml avatar

Most corrupt government ever in Sweden. That’s the reason

cikano ,

Sucks that you’re getting downvoted, it’s basically true, this is just to make it seem like they’re gonna fix everything later while shelving any short and long term plans for hydro, wind and solar energy

LoveSausage ,
@LoveSausage@lemmygrad.ml avatar

Mainly it is a show for the rightwing voters. Funding will not happen. Sweden politics today is like lowfi US bribery system. It’s just that the Swedes don’t like to acknowledge the fact it’s so corrupt. 99% have their pockets filled one way or another.

spirinolas ,

Downvote me all you want but nuclear is not a long term solution. Short term at best.

It’s relatively clean compared to fossil fuels but it has several critical flaws on the long term.

For starters, it produces extremely toxic waste which we have no idea how to get rid of besides burying it and forget about it. Everytime someone mentions this all we hear is “we can create x method to dispose of it cleanly”. Right, but while we develop X method that shit keeps piling up. And when X method fails to work as we intended “oh, well, just keep bury it and lets start thinking about Y”.

And the biggest problem is this. Nuclear is actually relatively safe since the security regulations are (or should) be very strict. But all it takes is one bad enough disaster. Disasters like Chernobyl had the potential to leave half of Europe inhabitable for centuries. But, hey, as long as the regulations are strict and we have equipment and procedures that manage the human error we would be fine, right? Not really. Murphy’s law. The worst scenario will happen eventually. A obscure bug in the security systems, an unexpected natural disaster, war or terrorism. There’s always a failure point. In other energy types, we can manage that risk. One very rare disaster is not enough to make it not worth it if the good outweights the bad. Not in nuclear energy. Only one disaster can be potentially catastrophic and outweight all the good it made for decades or even centuries.

On the long term it is just not worth it. On the short term…it’s a gamble.

bouh ,

You are clueless about how nuclear wastes or radiation work. Any oil tanker sinking is a worst disaster than the worst nuclear accident ever was. A nuclear power plant is not a bomb. Radiations are not a magic disaster that erase life.

Meanwhile co2 is an actual life extinction threat, and Germany opened coal power plant to compensate for nuclear energy. What a great move ecologists! Bravo !

drewdarko ,

What does a sinking oil tanker have to do with anything? That’s just whataboutism. Nuclear waste, nuclear disasters and sinking oil tankers are all bad.

“Radiations” can absolutely “erase life”. You don’t think radiation can kill living things? That statement makes it clear you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Besides, It takes 10-15 years to make a new nuclear power plant. If you really care about sinking oil tankers and climate change you’d realize that we don’t have that much time.

bouh ,

Germany did nothing but burn coal and gas in 20 years since they’ve decided to leave nuclear energy. Is that your plan?

Radiations don’t erase life. Beaches would be full of dead bodies otherwise and you wouldn’t eat bananas. You have no clue about radioactivity obviously so you might as well trust people who do.

spirinolas , (edited )

“Radiations”

Ahahahah!

Regardless of how wise it is to use nuclear energy, we can all deduce, from your replies, that you know jack shit about what “radiations” actually is.

bouh ,

Is that something about how English language is so specific? It always come back to that when facts can’t be disproven.

ricdeh ,
@ricdeh@lemmy.world avatar

Then please illuminate how high energy radiation is not dangerous. I do not believe that you can do that, as you appear to never have attended a physics or biology class in your life

agarorn ,

Germany did nothing in the last 20 years? Are you high. Did you even think about looking up how the energy production changed during that time?

spirinolas ,

Any oil tanker sinking is a worst disaster than the worst nuclear accident ever was

You are delusional.

A nuclear power plant is not a bomb

I never said it was. A nuclear disaster is much worse than a bomb on the long term. A bomb causes immediate destruction and fallout which clears in a few years at most. A bomb like Hiroshima, which is by atomic bomb standards a very “dirty” bomb, gave a radiation dosage of about 360 mSv to survivors 1 mile from the epicenter. The radiation went down to 1/1000 in 24 hours and 1/1000 of that within a week.

Chernobyl firemen received 37 times the same dosage and the core kept emitting radiation to this day (though slowly diminishing) hence the sarcophagus.

Hiroshima was never even abandoned after the bombing. It is a thriving city today. Chernobyl and the surrounding regions had tp be evacuated and its access is restricted to this day. In the Russian invasion you had soldiers dying because they digged in contaminated soil. The melted core is, to this day, emitting deadly radiation and only the sarcophagus stops that poison from spreading. And it could’ve been much worse. And it will stay this way for centuries or even millenia. A breach in the sarcophagus is enough reason for panic. This was ONE disaster.

The current climate crisis is the result of over a century of CO2 emissions and multiple disasters. Chernobyl was just one and had the potential to turn half a continent uninhabitable. How many would we need to turn the planet into a wasteland in the immediate future?

I’m all to take measures to keep global warming in check but lets not burn the house down because the plumbing is not working.

bouh ,

You have 0 clue about radioactivity, how dangerous it is, how it works or even what it is. You are comically ignorant! You’ll certainly tell me that chernobyl killed more people than Hiroshima and nagasaki bombs now?

Everyone needs its scarecrow I guess. Beware of bananas btw, those things are radioactive too.

spirinolas ,

You failed to address any of my arguments. You only attacked me and put words in my mouth. I see no point to keep answering you.

pizzazz ,

Boi you’re the proverbial pigeon shitting on a chessboard.

ricdeh ,
@ricdeh@lemmy.world avatar

Bananas are not radioactive, as they do not contain a significant amount of radioisotopes that emit high energy ionising electromagnetic radiation or alpha/beta decay products.

bouh ,

Ignorance again! Or is it hypocrisy? What is significant? What is radioactive?

Ronno ,
@Ronno@kbin.social avatar

It is probably the only thing that can really buy us time. Sure we cannot dispose of its waste currently, but it buys us time to find a way. We will find a way to solve the waste issue. Besides, the waste produced is actually quite little, and we do have great solutions for storage. As for your second point, Chernobyl could have been an even worse disaster indeed, but it is a plant built in a time when it was fashionable to built bigger and larger plants. Today, the strategy is to built the plants smaller, making the impact of such disaster also smaller.

spirinolas ,

It is probably the only thing that can really buy us time

That’s the only way it would make sense as a solution. It’s a gamble, but it’s a risk worth taking in the short term. But that only works with already built reactors.

We will find a way to solve the waste issue

“we will”, but we haven’t. We’re creating a problem now and leave the solution for later which is exactly what got us into this mess. Always kicking the can down the road.

Today, the strategy is to built the plants smaller, making the impact of such disaster also smaller.

Still potentially catastrophic in a perfect storm. Remember Chernobyl had multiple reactors (who kept functioning) after the disaster. That was only one. I don’t think downsizing would solve the risk but I hope I’m mistaken. Remember how we went into panic when the Russians entered Chernobyl or whenever we see news about Zaporozhia?

We haven’t seen yet the worst possible nuclear energy disaster. I fear we might not see many…

Iceblade02 ,

Just to refute a simple statement for you, please stop spreading disinformation.

“we will”, but we haven’t. We’re creating a problem now and leave the solution for later which is exactly what got us into this mess. Always kicking the can down the road.

Nuclear waste is solved. Probably one of the most solved kinds of waste on the planet, unlike the waste your smartphone or pc will become in a few years.

Video Essay for your education, better than anything I could write up in five minutes.

PipedLinkBot ,

Here is an alternative Piped link(s): piped.video/watch?v=4aUODXeAM-k

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.

sneaky_b45tard , (edited )

I don’t get why people here are so hyped. Why is it a good thing to completely dump renewables?

the_kalash , (edited )

Yeah, both would be better. But if, for dumb political reasons, I had to choose one or the other, then it’s clearly gonna be nuclear. At least it’s viable as a singular source, which renewables would not be.

TWeaK ,

An extreme excess of renewables would be viable as a singular source to displace fossil fuels, and could be built more quickly than new nuclear. There already is some nuclear, the wind is always blowing somewhere, and the sun shines through the clouds.

Renewable generation is here now, it is proven and it is cheap & highly profitable.

nbafantest ,

Completely replacing fossil fuels is not here right now, it’s not cheap, and it’s not highly profitable.

This is almost completely wrong

TWeaK ,

Completely replacing fossil fuels with renewables is possible - and has been achieved - in some regions. Off the top of my head, both Denmark and Scotland have produced an excess of their daily consumption through renewables alone. It isn’t hard to imagine that if we built a large enough excess of renewable generation we could account for the times when the wind isn’t blowing by importing and exporting between areas where it is.

Nuclear can fill a role in the grid, and is needed long term for a bit of voltage and frequency stability, however a shit ton of renewables can be built and energised quicker than a little bit of nuclear.

If we want to turn off the fossile fuels as quickly and as much as possible, renewables are needed first. Investing in nuclear takes investment away from renewables and delays things. Cancelling renewables in favour of nuclear, like this, with 20 years to build 10 plants, is just ridiculous. How many MW of renewables could they build in 10 years with half that money?

bouh ,

They produced an excess of energy with renewable. For how long? What energy are they importing when they’re not? What fossile energy are they using to provide when they don’t? What about countries farther than 100km extremely windy sea?

Why should nuclear and renewable be opposed btw?

TWeaK ,

It isn’t an opposition, but a matter of priority.

The goal is to switch off fossil fuels as quickly as possible. Nuclear takes a long time, renewables can be done quickly - very quickly.

If we spend money on nuclear, that’s money that could have been spent on renewables, money that could have turned off fossil fuel generation more quickly. Thus it makes more sense -right now- to spend money on renewables. Once we have an excess of renewables and have reached net zero, then nuclear builds should come into play. While the nuclear is being built, rotating stabilisers can be installed to provide voltage & frequency stability.

bouh ,

It’s been 20 years that Germany decided to stop nuclear energy. They’re burning coal and gas since then, and it got us an energy crisis last year. It’s not faster to deploy renewable.

Mean time to build a nuclear power plant is 7.5 years btw. Not 20. But I’m sure 20 is a lot better for the narrative.

TWeaK ,

Switching off nuclear early is a mistake (excluding any technical concerns driving a shutdown). In my opinion, shutdown of a nuclear plant should be staged with completion of a new power plant on the same site. Half the regulatory paperwork is already there if it’s already a nuclear site.

Sweden are targeting 10 plants by 2045, in just over 20 years. Those 10 plants are probably already proposed and partially designed.

In 7.5 years you could build and energise a shit ton of renewables, and the infrastructure needed to connect it from various remote locations, using less than a quarter of the money they’re proposing here.

From what I can tell the biggest hurdle in Sweden is transmission infrastructure to make use of renewable capacity and potential. For Germany, pulling a guess out of my ass, I’d wager it’s more of a “Not In My BackYard” situation that’s clogged up development of onshore wind.

schroedingershat ,

You’re deliberately trying to conflate the time from before-site-selection to a finished plant with the time for finishing a particular reactor after ground breaking. An analogy would be claiming the average time for a solar plant is three minutes because screwing one panel on takes that long.

bouh ,

Or maybe there are actual studies considering all nuclear power plants built so a mean actually means something. But anti-nuclear people never were about actual facts I guess.

schroedingershat ,

Which are just as legit as all the studies that show how great oil, coal and gas are, and are peddled by the same peoe using the same methods.

Show me your study showing that the average time for a gen III or later plant is finished in 7.5 years from the time where sites are being assessed.

drewdarko ,

What fossil fuel will they import in the next 10-20 years that it will take to make the nuclear plants?

Nuclear and renewables shouldn’t be opposed. Ideally we would have both. The problem is we needed to stop burning fossil fuels a long time ago so we don’t have another 10-20 years to keep burning fossil fuels while we wait for nuclear plants to be made.

The fossil fuel industry knows that if we take the nuclear ONLY route that we will continue to burn their fuels for decades longer. So they lobby to support that option, hoping that a lot or some of the nuclear plants will never even get finish like we’ve seen happen so many times.

In addition to that, countries don’t have infinite money to spend on energy. So any amount of the budget spent on nuclear will mean less spent on solar and wind. Solar and wind are the only sources that can be deployed fast enough to allow us to avoid extinction.

bouh ,

It doesn’t take 20 years to build a nuclear power plant.

But it’s been 20 years Germany decided to get away from nuclear energy, and now they are the proud biggest co2 emmiter in Europe. And now importing fossil fuel from the US to power their energy. How many more years do you think it would take to power Germany with renewables when they were so determined to leave nuclear for the sake of ecology?

schroedingershat ,

That’s a weird way of spelling “having a right wing government cancel most of their renewable rollout 10 years ago” ie. what’s happening in sweden now.

Iceblade02 ,

Renewables aren’t being cancelled. What is being done is creating a target to construct nuclear power, which inherently means that Sweden is no longer aiming for 100% renewables, but instead a target where 100%=renewables+nuclear.

TWeaK ,

What’s being proposed here is 10 new nuclear plants to help cover 200% of current demand, which is the predicted demand in 20 years’ time.

Currently there are 3 plants in Sweden providing 30% of the country’s demand. If we assume the new plants are each as big as the current 3 (chances are they’ll be bigger), then you’re looking at at least 100% of the country’s current demand as nuclear power, or more than 50% of the predicted demand in 20 years.

With a conservative estimate, if all existing plants close and each new plant is 20% larger, that’s around 4 times the country’s current nuclear capacity, to be built over 20 years. 60% of the predicted demand in 20 years. That most definitely is putting nuclear before renewables, and will incur significant expense.

What I’m saying is that more of that money should go towards an excess of renewable capacity now, along with the transmission infrastructure to connect it, which can be built more quickly and cheaper than nuclear such that fossil fuels can be switched off sooner.

Once fossil fuels are completely replaced, then it will make sense to prioritise nuclear development. Right now, nuclear is a medium-long term solution to a short term problem, where fossil fuels end up being the only option in the meantime.

Iceblade02 ,

*10 nuclear reactors, not 10 plants. There are currently 6 reactors in operation in Sweden and another 4 were shut down by the previous government.

It’s essentially a plan to modernize and renew the Swedish nuclear fleet.

starlinguk ,
@starlinguk@kbin.social avatar

Scotland could provide enough renewable energy for the whole of the UK. The only reason the PM says they need more fossil fuel is that his family entered into a billion pound contract with BP.

TWeaK ,

I think Scotland’s total MW capacity is more than the UK’s demand, however the actual generated amount hasn’t been an excess of the country’s demand - not like Denmark, which has produced more than 100% of its capacity as renewables while exporting excess to other countries. However, that probably doesn’t account for curtailment - the grid operators can tell larger renewable generators to limit or switch off depending on demand.

When this happens typically the renewable generator still gets paid as if they were generating at capacity.

drewdarko ,

If we don’t replace fossil fuels now we go extinct. It’s really that simple.

calavera ,

Humanity won’t go extinct because of it, modern society is the one who will suffer.

nbafantest ,

I didn’t say that.

I was responding to TWeak who’s entire sentence was wrong.

Completely replacing fossil fuels is super expensive right now with renewables, and it’s not profitable.

schroedingershat , (edited )

Idiotic straw men about assuming order of storage rollout aside. Replacing just that portion which is profitable right now will lower emissions over the next century than stopping and building nuclear instead.

nbafantest ,

That is almost the complete opposite of what TWeak said lol

Iceblade02 ,

Sweden had fully displaced fossil fuels from its power grid with the help of a combination of Nuclear and Renewables. However, a policy of phasing out nuclear power by the previous gov:t has caused the reintroduction of fossil fuels into the grid. Of all the options, this is truly the most stupid timeline.

TWeaK ,

It gets worse: countries that phased out coal quickly for political reasons have often replaced them with many small containerised gas and diesel generators, that pollute far more per MW than the coal they replaced and are situated closer to populated areas, because it’s easier to hide a small-ish yard full of containers behind a tall sound-dampening fence.

tillimarleen ,

According to this en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Swedenthe phase out was already stopped in 2010, confirmed in 2016. Also here en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_SwedenI can see no significant rise in fossil fuel production when nuclear did go down.

Iceblade02 ,

It’s a recent development, and not by a huge amount, but it has been big new here since the so-called Karlshamn Power Plant (oil fired), generally reserved for shoring up the electricity supply during shortages returned into commercial service during the summer of 2020 due to the owning company determining it to be profitable (something which hadn’t happened in decades and as such made national headlines). Since then it has been active increasingly often. It is currently the only active fossil-fuel powered plant in the country AFAIK.

(Articles in Swedish, feel free to use a translator, or ask me to get it translated for you if you have trouble.)

di.se/…/lonsamt-for-kraftjatten-att-elda-olja-i-s…

www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/blekinge/experten-16

www.nyteknik.se/energi/…/965489

uniper.energy/…/allt-mer-frekvent-drift-pa-karlsh…

drewdarko ,

It’s takes 10-15 years to make a new nuclear plant. If you choose nuclear without renewables you would have to burn so much fossil fuels while waiting for your nuclear power to become ready that the human race would be extinct before you have a decarbonized energy grid.

the_kalash ,

lol. No.

Helluin ,

a fully nuclear grid is way less viable than a fully renewable one

the_kalash ,

No? Why would even think that?

Helluin ,

because nuclear power plants are very slow to regulate, which you need to be able to do in a power grid.

the_kalash ,

Right… You know what can’t be regulated at all? The weather.

CherenkovBlue ,
@CherenkovBlue@iusearchlinux.fyi avatar

Uh… France has operated their plants in load-following mode. It’s doable. Can’t control the weather though.

Helluin ,

even france barely uses the load-following mode on their power plants and instead use gas power plants because its increadibly un-economical. and yes you cant control the weather which is why renewables are more decentralized and widespread. its literally a non issue.

schroedingershat ,

Being able to pay even more than running at full power would cost to throw some energy away isn’t power regulation and doesn’t at all explain why france produces 10-20% of their electricity via dispatchable sources even on a warm summer night where demand is around half of their nuclear fleet’s alleged capacity.

ribboo ,

It’s just the target being dumped. We can’t go 100% renewable and have nuclear. So by expanding nuclear the target has got to go. Renewables will still be expanded in Sweden.

schroedingershat ,

It means your gas shares will pay dividends for a few extra years.

hypelightfly ,

People here have better reading comprehension apparently and know that dumping a 100% target doesn't mean dumping renewables.

sneaky_b45tard ,

Going ‘all in’ on something usually means neglecting everything else.

IWantToFuckSpez ,

10 reactors? How long is that gonna take to build? A single reactor can take at least 8 years. So hopefully they aren’t ditching renewables all together. You can build a lot of solar and wind farms in those 8 years.

TWeaK ,

This is exactly the issue. Nuclear is necessary in the long term for a clean grid, however it will take much longer than as well as take investment away from renewable projects - which could achieve net zero more quickly than nuclear.

We should be going hard on current renewable technology, build out a massive excess (to account for reduced generation, the wind is always blowing somewhere and the sun shines throguh the clouds), and then once we have met all our energy needs from clean energy and phased out fossil fuels we can focus on fortifying the grid - in particular at that point we will need large turbines with lots of rotating mass, for voltage and frequency stability, which is a perfect role for nuclear to fulfill.

Tuss ,

One of the problems that we have is that a big chunk of the country for a month don’t have a single ray of sunshine due to polar nights. The problem is that that is when it’s complete darkness leading up to the point and going out of it takes time as well so solar is not an option at that time of the year. On top of that most of the land is “disputed” by indigenous people (don’t mark my words it’s a very touchy subject I don’t know how to express it better) or it’s a nature reserve area so wind farms are out of the question. So the only thing we have left is hydropowered electricity which isn’t clean at all as it destroys the natural course of the river up stream, destroys the river beds down stream and extremely reduces the fish populations as well as any greenery relying on the reliability of the rivers.

With that said if we simplify it a bit about 46% of Swedens total energy production comes from the northern hydroelectric plants and wind farms and because of lacking infrastructure it can’t be transferred efficiently to southern Sweden where most of the consumption is happening. Of these 46% about only 30% is currently used but more companies have decided to establish their production in thr northern region due to the surplus of energy in this region.

Southern Sweden on the other hand gets a lot of their energy from unreliable wind farms as well as nuclear energy. However due to the layout of the land hydroelectric is only viable in some places which have already been exploited. We can only install so many wind farms until it affects quality of life to the people and animals living nearby. On a good day southern Sweden is having a net zero energy production and consumption. Those days are fewer and further in between. Currently since closing a reactor two years ago we have had to reinstate an oil burning facility as well as buying unclean electricity from abroad to keep up with demand.

So investing in nuclear to stabilise the production is one of very few options we currently have.

It’s either that or moving either part of the population or factories to the northern part which is not really viable or sustainable eitherm

TWeaK ,

It sounds like the biggest issue is transmission, you need high capacity transmission lines between the north and south. That way, you could not only use more than the 30% currently, but expand that capacity. Also, transmission between neighbouring countries could help.

Tuss ,

Currently we sell the surplus in the north to Finland and Norway as well as to Denmark and Germany in the south when we are over capacity.

What we would need is a better connection between north and south but that hasn’t been a priority until now and it’s 30 years too late.

TWeaK ,

What we would need is a better connection between north and south but that hasn’t been a priority until now and it’s 30 years too late.

The best time to plant a tree…

Nuclear takes a hell of a lot of subsidised state money, and that pot of money only ever grows. Renewables don’t need state money, they’re profitable on their own. Renewables will grow readily if the transmission infrastructure is there, and moreso if the planning process capacity is expanded (hire more civil servants), let alone if rates were subsidised anywhere near the same level as nuclear.

The best case scenario would be the government itself building state-owned renewable infrastructure, where the profit from selling cheap electricity on the commercial market would come directly back to the community. Most wind farms are owned by one company and managed & operated by another, with the turbine manufacturer providing turbine services. There’s no reason the government couldn’t be the owning company.

Iceblade02 ,

Funnily enough, projects for green steel and the construction of new massive factories in Northern Sweden mean that the power surplus is expected to be gone by 2030. We need more electricity production, from all carbon neutral sources being built everywhere, ASAP.

TWeaK ,

We need more electricity production, from all carbon neutral sources being built everywhere, ASAP.

Exactly. We need it quickly.

Renewables are here now and can be deployed quickly. Nuclear takes time and is often heavily delayed and over budget.

We need nuclear as well, but we need renewables first, to build capacity as quickly as possible. We need a huge excess of renewable capacity, to account for times when the full capacity isn’t available. We shouldn’t expect to be using the full capacity at any time.

Once we’ve phased out fossil fuels, then nuclear will be important. But right now nuclear only serves to sustain our dependency on fossil fuels.

Iceblade02 ,

Care to elaborate on this?

Once we’ve phased out fossil fuels, then nuclear will be important. But right now nuclear only serves to sustain our dependency on fossil fuels.

The two largest economies with the low reliance on fossil fuels for energy (Sweden & France) get significant portions of their energy production from nuclear power. Iceland relies on geothermal, and the others (Tajikistan, Switzerland, Costa Rica, Norway) have lots of hydro capacity, which are all excellent, but also largely dependent on geography.

TWeaK ,

I don’t have figures to hand, but I’d gladly dig into them with you, if you have suggestions.

Sweden does have some amount of fossil fuel generation. The article claims 3 nuclear plants provide 30% of the country’s needs right now, and says the target being set is for 10 new nuclear plants over the next 20 years. In 2045 (~20 years), demand is predicted to be double that of today.

If we assume all current nuclear plants will close and all new plants will be 20% larger, that means these 10 new nuclear plants will fulfill 60% of predicted demand in ~2045. Again, I’m happy to review actual numbers - I imagine most if not all of these 10 plants are at least in early design proposal stages, so there are some actual MW numbers to be crunched.

I think keeping Sweden’s nuclear at about 30-40%, while investing more into a large excess of renewables, would allow fossil fuels to be switched off more quickly. This would still mean investment and growth in nuclear, with maybe 5 or 6 plants (if the 3 existing plants have to close), but would get rid of fossil fuels more quickly.

In maybe 10 years’ time, with fossil fuels well and truly on their way out, that would be a better time to expand nuclear.

Iceblade02 ,

Our world in data has excellent stats on the topic, and I am quite familiar with the electricity production of Sweden (my home country). Excepting 2003 and 2010 (both quite cold winters) the share of electricity from fossil fuel sources has been sub 5% since 1997. Thus, for my own country I tend to look more at the share of all energy that comes from fossil fuels (currently 26%) rather than just electricity, but below is a chart detailing the shares of electricity produced by each category.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/e5e5c46d-e371-48cd-9bc9-e8f2dbe49df8.png

As you can see, investments in wind have been massive, adding 30 TWh of production (~15%) since 2010. However, in the meantime, nuclear energy has not only been neglected, but actively dismantled. Since 2010, some 15 TWh of production has been removed from the grid. Whilst this isn’t an issue in isolation, import demands for electricity from continental Europe have increased noticeably during the same time period. In 2010, we had net 0 power flow, whilst 2021 saw a net export of ~16TWh (mainly to a country that completely dismantled their fleet of nuclear reactors instead of their coal power plants and shall not be named)

What this means is that in a decade, with a population increase of 10% and a GDP increase of 20%, electricity availability has actually declined, which is becoming a serious problem now that some of the most energy intensive areas of society are starting to electrify in earnest (transports and heavy industries).

schroedingershat ,

Green steel is the perfect dispatchable load. The steps up until sponge iron require very little capex, with the input costs being driven by energy price it is a far better match for renewables.

Same goes for high temperature electrolysis.

The resulting iron stores 2-8kWh/kg with nothing more than a box as infrastructure (and maybe some oil or nitrogen to stop rust).

Both are so ideal as dispatchable loads that iron js seriously being considered as a fuel/energy carrier instead of hydrogen.

Then run the arc furnaces which are higher capex and labour cost but a fifth of the energy at a constant rate.

The idea of buildkng nuclear to run green steel is utterly deranged.

GenEcon ,

They are though. Focus on fossil fuels now and promise nuclear later - thats the plan.

MegaSloth ,

Hopefully not as long as offshore wind farms. If Swedish laws regarding os wind are similar to Danish, it’ll easily take 9-10 years from decision to actually begin building.

snake_baitman ,

fucking based

Aux ,

Finally! Some countries are starting to make rational decisions!

cyd ,

Great news. A zero emissions electricity grid requires nuclear, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future; new battery techs are not there yet, and other non-intermittent sources like geothermal are too small scale and/or geographically specific. An irrational aversion to nuclear power has been a big obstacle to decarbonization, so every step in this direction is to be celebrated!

TWeaK ,

We don’t need new tech, and while we do need nuclear in the long run, it is more important now that we switch off fossil fuels as quickly as possible. Nuclear is not fossil fuels, but it is notorious for taking a long time to build and get verified and turned on, as well as being horrendously late and over-budget. Renewables can be thrown up in a matter of months, are relatively very cheap and turn a profit quickly.

An irrational aversion to nuclear power is an obstacle, but there are plenty of rational objections and many of them point to nuclear being an obstacle/delaying tactic intended to sustain the fossil fuel industry for longer.

bouh ,

Irrational aversion to nuclear energy had countries stop building reactor for several decades, which lost the technical capabilities which now have to be reacquired.

The first reactor is hard to build and suffer delays and overcoats. The next ones are easier and cheaper. Like absolutely any other industrial project. Like renewable did over the last 20 years.

TWeaK ,

The first reactor is hard to build and suffer delays and overcoats. The next ones are easier and cheaper. Like absolutely any other industrial project. Like renewable did over the last 20 years.

Renewables did it with significantly lower risk and at significantly lower cost than nuclear.

Renewables cost more to build than a traditional coal power plant, but still far less than nuclear. Maintenance costs are comparible for renewables but more consistent, while nuclear can be much higher in a worst case scenario. Demolition costs are neglible for renewables (the equipment is sold on), while nuclear demolition almost always ends up requiring further state financing, billed to the taxpayer.

Like you say, development of nuclear tech has been stunted. Renewables are mature and cheap and mass produceable. Nuclear is needed long term, but renewables are ready now.

The goal isn’t to build the perfect utopian utlity network right away. The goal should be to switch off fossil fuels as quickly and as much as possible.

bouh ,

Except this is wrong. Wikipedia cost of electricity by source shows 81-82$/MWh for nuclear, 67-146$/MWh for offshore wind. Solar is 31-146.

A notable fact is also that renewable supporters are very often very against nuclear energy, and very much on favour of turning it off at all cost. I know no nuclear energy supporter who is against renewable energy.

If the goal is to remove fossil fuels from energy, some people should really stop fighting nuclear energy at all cost like they did for 40 years.

TWeaK ,

Offshore wind is more expensive than onshore wind, by far.

I’m not in favour of turning anything off until replacements are energised. One of my pet peeves is how fast coal has been switched off, only to be quietly replaced by tons of small, inefficient diesel and gas generators that can be installed near industrial estates and hidden behind fences. These pollute more per MW than the large coal plants they replace.

The goal isn’t just to remove fossil fuel from energy, the goal must be to remove it as quickly as possible. Renewables are the only answer for that specific goal.

Nuclear is needed long term. Existing nuclear plants should be maintained as long as possible, and replacement plants on the same site should have priority over new plants on new sites. However nuclear takes time to build and is very expensive. Renewables are quick and cheap.

Money and time are finite resources; focusing all of it and going hard on current renewable tech is the best way to quickly remove fossile fuels.

Once fossil fuels are gone, then we can see about expanding nuclear.

bouh ,

As quickly as possible is not the only parameter. Consequences is an important one too. We can technically turn off half the grid right now, but there would be severe consequences to that.

Smart grid is a cool thing, but we are far from it still if it needs to work from renewables only.

TWeaK ,

Well yes, we shouldn’t switch things off before replacements are switched on. But that means we should be targeting replacements that can be switched on quickly. Nuclear is not quick.

bouh ,

That is exactly the kind of fallacy I’m talking about. That somehow renewable and nuclear would be exclusive to each other. Or that renewable can replace all the fossile faster than a nuclear power plant can be built.

We need both. We need to start building nuclear power plants now, and we need to build renewables. This is the best allocation of resources. And this is the only solution out of fossiles.

TWeaK ,

I think you’re assuming an infinite capacity of funds and people to build the things. If that were true, then yes we should be going for both renewables and nuclear. However it isn’t, and renewables provide far better value and can be built far more quickly.

We need to build both, but we can’t build it all at once. It makes sense to build all or most of the cheap and quick renewables first, in an excess (which before long will become capacity again), to get the fossil fuels switched off as quickly as possible, and then fill out the portfolio with nuclear.

bouh ,

Wrong. The question is how expensive a determine MWh power is, not a single unit price ; prices for 2MWh of renewable or nuclear are comparable.

Secondly, renewable and nuclear don’t mobilise the same resources, both human and material, thus it will always be faster to build both at the same time.

Thirdly, renewable take a lot of space, which means it’s easy to build the first farms, but the more you have, the harder it is to find space for it to build ; not all countries are islands or massive continents with large deserts.

TWeaK ,
  1. You’re not really making sense there. Prices in MWh is what the market charges at, and renewables are FAR cheaper per MWh than nuclear. However there is a disconnect between the generation market and consumer markets - as a consumer, you don’t see any difference. Regardless, I haven’t been saying that 1MW of renewables is the same as 1MW of nuclear. I’ve been saying we need to build an excess of renewables everywhere to account for the times it isn’t available in some locations.
  2. Yes, they do. There are only so many people in the industry. I say this as an electrical engineer who has worked throughout (renewables, nuclear, factories, basically anything with HV). There is also production capacity, but we haven’t reached this yet with renewables and it can be expanded - however when we do get closer to it then it will make more sense to put money into nuclear. Money is also a limiting factor, particularly when it comes to government finance, and is perhaps the biggest limiting factor of all.
  3. Wind farms take up a lot of space, solar can go on roofs, hydro requires bodies of water. Hydro is very location specific, wind somewhat, solar not very much. However the biggest obstuction of all is the NIMBY attitude.
bouh ,

I’m talking prices to build 2MW power gen capacity, also considering the effective uptime, because wind or solar don’t have 100% uptime. Construction prices are equivalent for nuclear and solar. And nuclear doesn’t take 20 years to build, contrary to what anti-nuclear propaganda pretends.

Finally electrical engineers are not the only people needed for these projects. And if electrical engineers are the limiting factor to build new stuff, we’re simply screwed.

Aesthesiaphilia ,

Honestly I don't care if it's solar, wind, geothermal, biofuel, or nuclear, as long as it displaces fossil fuels. And it's feasible on a very near time scale.

If Sweden did an honest investigation and found that renewables would be more costly and take longer, let em get nuclear.

We need an "all of the above" approach. This fight between nuclear and renewables is just stirred up by fossil fuel interests. Either is good. Both is good.

Aurenkin ,

Yeah 100% agree with you. I’m surprised that this is the case given the 2045 time scale but we’ll have to wait a couple of decades and see how it pans out I guess.

schroedingershat ,

This isn’t an “all of the above approach” though, it’s a “cancel the short term plans and pretend we’re going to do something later” approach.

jonne ,

Yeah, if you decide to ramp up nuclear now, you’re only going to see the results in 10 years. Nothing is stopping you from continuing to add wind, solar and stuff like home/grid batteries in the meantime. Pretty sure Sweden has plenty of hydro storage options as well, which can be easily used to regulate the fluctuations wind and solar give you.

schroedingershat ,

Mines take a lot longer than 10 years, as do power-plants (the whole thing starting at permit submission and ending at last reactor coming online). 2045 is optimistic.

jonne ,

Yeah, 10 years was a best case scenario, where you basically already have the plans drawn up and are ready to build. Not sure what your point about mines is, I’m assuming they’d be importing uranium?

schroedingershat ,

Still requires expanding uranium production somewhere, and likely also buying from Russia.

jonne ,

Yeah, the Russia issue is kind of hilarious. You’re trying to reduce fossil fuel use so you’re not dependent on Russia for energy, so instead you’re going to use nuclear, which uses fuel rods almost exclusively refined by Russia.

Not sure if new mining would be needed, but I guess that depends on what happens in Niger.

visnae ,

Sweden has uranium reserves and produced it’s own uranium in the 60-s. Though I think laws currently prevent mining.

schroedingershat ,

I’m sure they’ll take just as much care for indigenous reindeer herders when choosing where to poison thousands of km^2 of land as they did when using them for hostage shield politics to sabotage the wind rollout.

Or is an entire country supposed to run indefinitely on the single year worth of reserves already known?

Rooty ,

Anti nuclear sentiment is pro-fossil fuel. You’re inventing problems and prolonging dependance on oil.

schroedingershat ,

Cancelling low carbon energy and making vague promises of spending 10x as much is definitely not a pro fossil fuel move /s

Rooty ,

A low carbon energy source is useless if it cannot cover peak loads, which are now being covered by fossil fuels. Years of greenie obstructionism now means that the nuclear plants that would have been built are now missing, and the solutions offered by the anti-nuclear lobby seems to be “let them have energy poverty, brownouts and outright blackouts are not our problem”. This will happen once coal and oil plants shut down, renewables alone cannot cover the demands, especially at peak load.

schroedingershat ,

Good thing your straw man isn’t what is being suggested by anyone anywhere.

Rakonat ,

Why are people in this thread acting like the intent here is to cut renewables? The target was deemed unrealisitic to hit andr raised concerns about reliability.

They are simply removing potential future renewables that have not been paid for or even ordered yet from the agenda and replacing the planned supply with nuclear, which is carbon neutral and requires less workers maintaining larger fields of solar and wind, two types of power that are not reliable during a Scandinavian blizzard… Something Sweden has to consider among many other things

Aesthesiaphilia ,

I can't find any indication that they're changing their target...it's just going from "100% renewable" to "100% fossil-fuel free".

Rakonat ,

Sounds like a win-win to me, Outdated Nuclear fission reactors are among the safest and cleanest forms of energy to ever exist, to say nothing of modern designs and theoretical ones that at the bare minimum could fill in the gap until Fusion becomes economically viable or manage some kind of orbital/space based solar collection grid.

Pelicanen ,

Two things that are relevant is that Sweden is very, very dark during the winter which reduces the profitability of solar and also that it’s extremely difficult to get approval for wind turbines right now.

Municipalities have the power to veto building projects and almost all of them choose to block wind power installations. Wind turbines generate sound, both audible and infrasound (which can disturb sleep), and are sometimes considered a bit of an eyesore which can both reduce the value of properties near them and make people less inclined to move to that region which reduces tax income for the municipality. This could be offset by taxation of the wind power, but currently all taxable income from wind turbines go to the state instead of any of the local governments.

There was recently an inquiry into how to make municipalities more likely to approve wind power construction and the restriction that the government gave them was that they were not allowed to suggest tax revenue being diverted to the local government. Which was the only suggestion that they said would be effective.

So… yeah.

TWeaK ,

If Sweden did an honest investigation and found that renewables would be more costly and take longer, let em get nuclear.

Bullshit. Renewables are cheap as chips.

Think of a traditional power plant. There are 4 main cost catagories: Construction, Maintenance, Fuel, Demolition.

  • In a traditional plant, over the life of the plant Fuel will by far be the biggest cost.
  • For renewables, Construction, Maintenance and Demolition cost more (issues such as remote locations, weather, smaller generators means more generators which increases the mean time to failure) however they have ZERO fuel cost.

Renewable generation is profitable as fuck, moreso than nuclear. Your average wind farm pays itself off in less than 5 years.

This is a right wing government backing the interests of fossil fuels, by implementing policy that delays any meaningful reduction in fossil fuel use.

Murvel ,

This is a right wing government backing the interests of fossil fuels, by implementing policy that delays any meaningful reduction in fossil fuel use.

Simply incorrect and ignorant and I could leave it at that.

But I won’t so here:

  1. Nuclear is carbon neutral
  2. The majority of Swedens energy production is still renewable and will continue to grow
  3. Nuclear is absolutely necessary for load balance
  4. Current nuclear plants are nearing their end of life and needs to be replaced
TWeaK ,
  1. I’m not critising nuclear for not being green.
  2. Renewables should grow (they’re profitable), but there should be further incentivised growth to help reduce reliance on fossile fuels more quickly.
  3. Yes, nuclear is brilliant for voltage and frequency stability. Large turbines have momentum in their spinning mass, when loads are switched on and off they keep spinning the same speed. However there are other options, eg rotating stabilisers, often used on very large ships but land installations are now being made also. These can be built without the nuclear red tape.
  4. Replacing existing nuclear plants is always a decent thing to do. You skip over many of the hurdles by building on the same site under the same nuclear permits. However taking money away from renewables to pay for this is questionable at best.

I think Sweden does have some geographical complications, along with a lackluster transmission network. These are much harder to get private investment for. However if there was a decent transmission network then there would be more utility of renewable generation in the north as well as the capability for import of energy from neighbouring countries or even export when Sweden has an excess.

Putting my balls on the table, I reckon if Sweden put all the money they’ve got in nuclear into transmission first and then renewables, I reckon they could switch off more fossil fuels more quickly.

Murvel ,

The points I listed are the strongest arguments to expand nuclear power which both the left and right of Riksdagen generally agrees on.

So how this is a right wing conspiracy to further the fossil energy industry as you point out is still to me a mystery, that’s all you need to explain.

TWeaK ,

The fact that left and right wing parties both currently (in the middle of soaring energy prices and a cost of livings crisis) agree with measures that support fossil fuel interests does not change the fact that the Swedish government (which is currently right wing) is implementing policies that benefit the fossil fuel industry.

Also, I question the nuance in that - I’m sure many in the left that support nuclear investment, but are less happy about renewable targets being scrapped.

However I apologise if I came on a bit too hard with it being a left vs right wing issue. It’s wealth vs society.

Willer ,

i heard that nuclear still kind of heats up the earth since its not outputting what has been put in by the sun before. Supposedly thats a problem since space is a good insulator.

Aesthesiaphilia ,

It's a negligible amount of heat. Something like 0.000001% of the greenhouse effect from fossil fuels. Almost unmeasurable.

nicman24 ,

have you ever been in Sweden? it is a a rocky mountainous and mostly dark region. they only renewables that they can easily manage is geothermal and iirc they do not have the correct crust for it

TWeaK ,

According to another comment they have plenty of renewables up in the north but only use about 30% of that capacity. So it seems the main issue is with the transmission network for the country, its ability to get power from one place to another.

Instead of investing in 20 year nuclear power plant plans, they should be looking at accessing and expanding the available renewable generation in the short term.

nicman24 ,

the wind mills would be in inaccessible areas so you are better to just go with nuclear and invest in transmission from settlement to settlement instead to the turbines

schroedingershat ,

For renewables, Construction, Maintenance and Demolition cost more

This is less true as time goes on. CCGT and coal has substantial overlap with all-in cost of firmed PV and onshore wind just in terms of capex and FOM. Nuclear O&M overlaps with all-in cost of wind or PV (although not the latter in sweden).

SMRs (most of the proposals to reduce cost) are also substantially less efficient than full sized reactors and the high grade Uranium or Uranium in countries you can pollute without consequence is mostly tapped out so prices are increasing (currently about $3/MWh for full scale or $6/MWh for an inefficient small reactor). By the time an SMR finally comes online, just the raw uranium will cost as much as renewables, let alone the rest of VOM (which is still a minority of O&M which is far, far less than Capex).

Anyone suggesting new nuclear should be regarded as either someone lying to maintain a nuclear weapons program, a scammer, or a russian agent trying to sell dependence on rosatom.

The first is potentially defensible, but they could also not lie instead.

Iceblade02 , (edited )

Sweden already has a significant surplus of electricity production, to the degree that we are one of the largest exporters in the EU and have had several bouts of negative spot prices this past summer.

However, we also have an effect deficit for the colder part of the year. Two-thirds of simulations by SVK (our national power distributor) find that the peak-load hour during the winter 26/27 will have a deficit equivalent to three gen-II nuclear reactors running at 100% (10’000MW), and 10 continuous hours of blackouts due to power shortage. This is during the coldest part of the year when solar is ineffective, and additionally is often combined with high-pressure fronts, which means low wind speeds.

In Sweden upwards of 75% of homes get their heating from electricity, and potentially a full day without power in temperatures of beyond -30°C would literally mean people freezing to death.

Our power bill for December was 800€, and we both have geothermal heating and reduced our indoor temperature significantly, averaging 14-18°C indoors for the month. This was more than January, February and March combined. Meanwhile, the bills for all summer months put together (May, June, July and I expect also August) cost less than the bill for April (100€).

The most viable short-term solution they’re looking at is (unfortunately) reopening old oil plants from the 60s & 70s however, this might not be possible either, due to newer EU legislations. Bringing them into compliance in time could cost 100’s of millions of SEK, which ironically is more than the “prohibitively expensive repairs” that the previous gov:t cited when they shut down 4 nuclear reactors 2015-2020.

Link to article for the doubtful - It’s in Swedish, so you’ll have to use a translator.

schroedingershat ,

Assuming you’re telling the truth that there’s a massive shortfall in December already (a provable lie ) then you are suggesting the solution for an urgent shortfall of around a TWh per year is to build 10GW of nuclear plants which will be ready in 2045 for €300 billion and run them at an operating loss for 10-11 months per year.

This in order to provide low grade heat which could be stored in a district heating system for a few dollars per kWh for a total cost of about 3% of your suggestion or even in batteries for about 20% of the cost (which would also run at a profit the rest of the year and make the hydro go further).

Nuke shills say some colossally stupid things, but this really takes the cake.

Iceblade02 ,

Since you couldn’t be arsed to check for yourself before throwing out baseless accusations, here’s a translation of a relevant part from the linked article. I doubt you’ll read it, but it’ll be here for anyone else that stumbles across this thread.

The past winter was at times dramatic, for example when several nuclear power reactors were shut down for repairs. But thanks to the fact that mainly households had previously reduced consumption clearly in step with the rampant electricity prices, Sweden managed to maintain the power balance even in the worst hour, the so-called peak load hour.

“But if we had maintained the consumption, we would have had to cut down.”, says Lowina Lundström, Division Manager Systems at Svenska kraftnät.

The electricity had not been enough

At that time, the import would not have been enough to cover the electricity demand during the peak load hour on December 16, 2022, between 09:00 and 10:00. The import was then at a maximum of 3,290 MW, approximately equivalent to three nuclear power reactors, which was the highest level to date.

(Svenska Kraftnät a.k.a Swedish Power Grids is our national power distribution agency)

Btw, your source is 4 years out of date, and accounts for neither daily nor hourly power balance.

Here’s an up to date source on monthly power balance.

Here’s a report on peak loads in various northern european countries.

Here is an actual relevant source on the topic (again, in Swedish).

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/6a7406ee-fbc2-49cb-8a0f-125d4ed3dc55.png

The above figure is taken from this report by SVK.

schroedingershat ,

So the problem was nuclear being unreliable, and you can’t comprehend the idea of picking the worst recent year before dropping demand due to covid (or clicking on the year dropdown or hitting the hourly output).

Iceblade02 ,

The capacity factor for nuclear power in Sweden (including losses from curtailment) was 83% of installed capacity during 2022, which exceeds the global average for that year (80%), by comparison wind had a capacity factor of 26% for the year. Hence, the issue is not reliability, but rather a lack of capacity. 1700MW (20%) of nuclear has been decommissioned since 2018 (which is why those stats are entirely irrelevant to the current situation). Hence that a the unexpected outage of a single reactor (1160 MW or 17% of total capacity) could have such a large impact.

Even with that outage, nuclear power remained the energy source with the greatest capacity % during the 22/23 winter (80%), despite being lower during peak demand. “Kärnkraft” is nuclear power.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/830d4f0a-ffa6-4f4e-8844-d0e2f83e0f0b.png

So, in summary, you are either clueless regarding our situation in Sweden (I sincerely hope that is the case) or actively spreading misinformation (which would be the more unfortunate option).

schroedingershat ,

Another bullshit attempt at paltering. Capacity factor isn’t reliability. Failing unpredictably when needed and when asserting that it will work then is unreliability. Your own assertion is that the need was for a handful of hours when the nukes failed.

Iceblade02 ,

Your own assertion is that the need was for a handful of hours when the nukes failed.

Don’t put words in my mouth, that is quite rude.

Capacity factor isn’t reliability.

It is a useful comparison figure to examine reliability. Your inability to comprehend the connection clearly highlights your incompetence on the subject.

Please, either spend some time educating yourself, or refrain from commenting further on the topic of nuclear power. Your lack of knowledge is causing you to (possibly inadvertently) contribute to the spread of disinformation.

schroedingershat ,

Please, either spend some time educating yourself, or refrain from commenting further on the topic of nuclear power. Your lack of knowledge is causing you to (possibly inadvertently) contribute to the spread of disinformation.

More attempted projection after having your lies pointed out. Pointing out your attempts at disinformation is the opposite. What you are doing is disgusting and intentional.

Pelicanen ,

So, you’re no longer arguing the topic but the person, do you have any rebuttal for the facts that they’ve presented? Any reason why you should be trusted above SVK?

schroedingershat ,

I pointed out your lies and contradictions.

You responded with condescending insults and accusations of ignorance.

Pelicanen ,

What are you talking about, when have I insulted you?

Regardless, you didn’t provide much of a rebuttal to the information other than calling it cherry-picked and bullshit attempts at paltering.

the_kalash ,

Good for Sweden, glad to see at least some contries have energy policies based in reality.

Diplomjodler ,

Yeah, let’s see how that one goes. Let me venture a guess: huge time and budget overruns with the taxpayer picking up the tab.

the_kalash ,

So the same as with renewables. Also who thought fighting climate change would be cheap?

Lemzlez ,

The difference being that when you’re 10 billion into a renewables project, you usually have SOME generation already, whereas your nuclear reactor isn’t doing shit until it’s fully completed.

I don’t mind nuclear, but the fact is that the reactors take decades to build, whereas renewables can be deployed far quicker. Going all-in on nuclear, and then twiddling your thumbs for 10-15 years while the reactors are built doesn’t sound like a great idea.

the_kalash ,

I agree, ideally you should do both in parallel. But it’s still better than doing a Germany and ditching nuclear for reneweables … and then realising you actually don’t have enough baseload so you add more coal power plants.

TWeaK ,

Erm, how many renewables projects are many years late? How many of them have taxpayers picking up the tab?

Renewables are cheap and quick to build, and turn a huge profit. Granted, that profit isn’t passed down to the energy consumer, but that’s an issue with the way electricity is sold to consumers. Most countries have a complete disconnect between the market for generators and the market for consumers, so the price of electricity on the consumer market will only go up even if the costs in the generation market go down.

On the generation market, nuclear electricity is more expensive than renewable electricity. Nuclear electricity is also heavily subsidised, while large scale renewables typically are not these days (because they’re profitable on their own).

bouh ,

Renewable energy is cheap because it’s plentifull when you don’t need it. Bravo. Meanwhile Germany produces 3 times more co2 than France thanks to ecologists banning nuclear energy. Bravo.

Renewable is also enormously subsidised.

toastus ,

And meanwhile France on average buys electricity from Germany because the German shit works (including the renewables) and the French nuclear plants are more often off than on.

Talk about reliable energy…
And there is always sun or wind somewhere.

bouh ,

Hahaha that is a so comically hypocritical stance I’m not even sure you’re serious!

ricdeh ,
@ricdeh@lemmy.world avatar

Just read and inform yourself for once in your life :)

TWeaK ,

France invested in nuclear hard at the right time. Things aren’t the same now. Germany fucked up and switched various things off (coal and nuclear) too eagerly, without encouraging enough development to replace it first.

Renewables typically aren’t subsidised these days. They’re profitable in their own right. You don’t even need to subise them, expanding capacity through the planning process will encourage their development - however subsidies could encourage even more.

bouh ,

“typically aren’t subsidised these days”. I’d like to know where you live. Because I’m pretty sure energy production is heavily subsidised, monitored and managed by governments in most places in the world.

TWeaK ,

I’m in the UK, and I’ve worked building wind farms for the last 8 years. The contracts are obviously quite nuanced and varied, and any business is going to do whatever it can to get grants and such to increase their revenue, but most of the ones I’m familiar with include payments by the wind farm to the local community.

England doesn’t just not subsidise them, they’ve actively banned new onshore wind farms for the last 6 years - the main development has been in Scotland. This ban came in with an end to subsidies, and as a result a lot of the smaller installs (eg 1-3 turbines) stopped being built, and the return on value investment to be at scale (10+ turbines ~3MW each or higher). The downside to this is that you have fewer community projects, in favour of larger, typically foreign owned power plants. There’s also a lot less venture capitalists building wind/solar farms and then selling them on immediately on completion (which is probably a good thing).

My favourite little wind farm was entirely community owned in Wales, just 2 turbines. They have school kids visit up there and they modified this exercise bike with a dynamo to power things like a light bulb, fan, USB charger and inverter for AC, so all the kids can see how hard they have to peddle to make the electricity. When they opened the place they had a local rugby player kick a ball over the blades lol. This was one of the last built with subsidies, but all of the money from the electricity generated goes back into the local community.

As for energy production being monitored and managed, somewhat. The distribution and transmission operators have decent information, but not in depth down to the generators themselves. It’s all typically privately owned through multiple entities and the government doesn’t have a huge amount of oversight - at the end of the day they have to listen to the experts, and the experts work in the private sector for the power companies, not in government.

agarorn ,

Ah yeas, stupid ecologist Merkel and her nuclear hate.

Thanks fully the green minister habeck extended the plants for 4 great more months this year.

CookieJarObserver ,

Fucking idiots.

nicman24 ,

tf wrote that title.. nuclear is defacto renewable

BobKerman3999 ,

I’m sorry what? How do you renew fissile material?!?

AbsolutelyNotABot ,

It’s a little bit complicated and I don’t want to write a wall of text but: Waste fuel can be recycled, if your reactor has a breeding ratio higher than 1 then it has net positive production of fissile materials. Potentially all uranium and thorium of the planet could be used.

The argument being, if you consider the word “renewable” in the strictest sense, no energy source is renewable, entropy can only increases: solar depends by the sun burning a finire amount of hydrogen, geothermy depends by earth inner heat which is a finire amount ecc.ecc. The common usage of renewable is along the line of “immensely big proportional to human consumption” and in this sense there’s a strong argument to consider nuclear renewable.

evranch ,

Unfortunately most reactors are not breeders and we are trying our best to lock the waste away forever which ruins any chance of recovery when we finally do migrate to breeder cycles. I like to compare our current reactors to burning just the bark off of logs and then tossing the rest in a smoldering heap, with 95-99% of the energy still retained in the waste.

Breeder reactors would indeed extend the long term viability of nuclear fission immensely, we should be using them exclusively.

nicman24 ,

you do not need a breeder to recycle most of it. also that 95% is still there for future us to use when we are able to.

schroedingershat ,

Calling an LWR renewable because somebody somewhere might run a closed fuel cycle eventually is like calling oil renewable because you can make hydrocarbons by electrolyzing CO2 and water.

It’s and absurd and ridiculous lie.

AbsolutelyNotABot ,

With the same argument calling solar and wind renewables just because, hypothetically someone somewhere can fully recycle turbines and panels without having to extract new raw materials is an absurd and ridiculous lie (?)

schroedingershat ,

Except it has happened at least once at >99% yield.

And happens regularly commercially at >70% yield.

So you continue to repeat stupid and absurd lies.

AbsolutelyNotABot ,

Could you back your claims up?

Because in Europe and US the recycling rate if solar panels is around 10% and that without considering we might being miscalculating their real impact

Otherwise, first fast reactor has been built in 1946, we’re basically done and there’s absolutely no more industrial research needed as it happened at least once /s

schroedingershat ,

You’re now trying to misdirect with an unrelated statistic. The current market saturation of recycling isn’t the amount of a panel that can be recycled.

Breeding some fissile fuel is not closing the fuel cycle. No reactor has ever prodiced the same material it ran on. Closed cycle nuclear is not even proof of concept.

AbsolutelyNotABot ,

The current market saturation of recycling isn’t the amount of a panel that can be recycled.

The current market for nuclear reprocessing isn’t the amount reprocessable either. But to adhere to your argument, it’s the probability for a given panel to be recycled; if there isn’t an economic rationale, because recycled materials from panels is more expensive than vergin materials, then it’s called being out of market, not market saturation.

In reality we aren’t recycling solar panels.

No reactor has ever prodiced the same material it ran on

This happen routinely even in non breeder reactors, industrial nuclear nuclear reprocessing is a thing and many reactors in the world run on MOX fuel with plutonium extracted from spent LWR fuel. You only need a breeding ratio higher than 1 because otherwise fissile content will keep diminishing. Arguably there’s no more base research needed, both breeding and nuclear reprocessing are time tested process. What we need is industrial scale up, which is a little bit further than a proof of concept

schroedingershat ,

You’ve now switched from closed cycle to using the dregs via reprocessing. Entirely unrelated concepts (and reprocessing is also ecologically awful and uneconomical in addition to not meaningfully reducing mining).

In reality all solar panels in large parts of europe built since 2015 will be recycled.

This happen routinely even in non breeder reactors, industrial nuclear nuclear reprocessing is a thing and many reactors in the world run on MOX fuel with plutonium extracted from spent LWR fuel. You only need a breeding ratio higher than 1 because otherwise fissile content will keep diminishing. Arguably there’s no more base research needed, both breeding and nuclear reprocessing are time tested process. What we need is industrial scale up, which is a little bit further than a proof of concept

A soup of random plutonium isotopes isn’t usable for MOX. MOX-2 has never happened.

You cannot even keep your bizarre straw man tangent straight.

AbsolutelyNotABot ,

Entirely unrelated concepts

A closed cycle require reprocessing, how else would you recover fissile content in exhaust fuel? Magic?

in addition to not meaningfully reducing mining Because of the low fissile content. Still 20% net reduction in virgin uranium

In reality all solar panels in large parts of europe built since 2015 will be recycled

This is a fallacy called Texas sharpshooter. We’ll know if they will be recycled in 20 years, how can we verify this now? How can this be an argument of any value?

A soup of random plutonium isotopes isn’t usable for MOX This sentence doesn’t make sense whatsoever, MOX-2 isn’t even a thing that exist, you’ve just made it up…

schroedingershat ,

This is a fallacy called Texas sharpshooter. We’ll know if they will be recycled in 20 years, how can we verify this now? How can this be an argument of any value?

No, because there is a specific piece of legislation mandating it, a clear well costed industrial plan, and idle recycling facilities waiting for panels to finally wear out.

What you’ve done is the “nothing can ever start happening more than it is now” fallacy which nuke shills love to roll out.

Not understanding that bombarding Pu240 and Pu239 with neutrons produces different isotope ratios than U238 is a very good way of demonstrating that you actually understand reprocessing /s

AbsolutelyNotABot ,

idle recycling facilities waiting for panels to finally wear out

If they’re idle why can’t reprocess actual panels ending in waste fields?

Also there’s a big flaw in tour argument. Tokyo protocol was a specific piece of legislation, reduction emissions plant etc. So was that Paris agreement And many others Have we solved climate change?

Not understanding that bombarding Pu240 and Pu239 with neutrons produces different isotope ratios than U238

I beg you to read more than the first paragraph of Wikipedia. Pu239 is fissile and is burned in place of the U235 content of enriched uranium. Pu240 neutron capture and become Pu241, which is also fissile. The matrix in most cases is still U238 usually from tailings.

When I say that what you say doesn’t make sense is not an insult, literally, your words haven’t a complete sense.

schroedingershat ,

Not every neutron capture causes fission. And throwing a random soup of fissile and fertile elements in a hole is how you get a meltdown or no reaction – they’re not fungible. Please stop digging your ignorance-hole deeper.

Maybe consider that PV panels aren’t kdentical and the ones built after the WESS are not the same? But there goes the nuance-allergy nuke shills have again.

Also this is all an incredibly stupid tangent in the first place, as renewables are renewable so long as they’re at least as recyclable as the nuclear plant. Yet again demonstrating the inability to push over your own straw man.

Now you’re also trying the condescending from a position of ignorance tactic on top of that. Stupid and ignorant or smug, pick one.

evranch ,

No, it’s zero emission but not renewable.

Nuclear fission is actually by definition the least renewable energy source. Even coal and oil are renewable on long enough time scales. But there will never be more uranium than there is right now.

We actually don’t have that much of it if we consider the long term future, only a thousand years or so. So nuclear is intended to be a bridge to eventual full renewable power generation and storage, an essential component in the present day but it’s still a bridge.

Another thing to consider is that nuclear is the only power source that works in deep space away from the Sun. So if we’re serious about exploring the solar system or further, we’d be best not to burn up all of our fissionable material right away.

vaalla ,

Will have more when the sun explodes.

AbsolutelyNotABot ,

Nuclear fission is actually by definition the least renewable energy source

But if you go according the strict physical principle every energy source is non-renewable

The sun fuses a finire amount of hydrogen, earth has a finire amount of latent heat, the moon a finire amount of gravitational inertia etc.

And there’s a little paradox if you think about it, how can fusion be non-renewable but solar, that use radiation from the sun fusion, be renewable?

evranch ,

A bit of a stretch maybe, but I’m considering us to be discussing whether an energy source is renewable on Earth. The Sun is not renewable, but by the time that it’s no longer viable the Earth will be long gone as well! So as long as the Earth exists, I would say that solar PV and other solar driven processes like wind and hydro are renewable.

By these standards yes, deep geothermal and tidal are “not renewable” either.

AbsolutelyNotABot ,

but by the time that it’s no longer viable the Earth will be long gone as well

But that’s exactly the “problem”, there’s enough fertile material for potential millions of years of consumption, and that’s for fission alone.

I think the debacle is more because the definition of “renewable” is a little arbitrary than the dilemma if nuclear is renewable or not

evranch ,

I think we both agree on fertile material as discussed in another comment, the longevity issue is mostly with conventional LWRs burning up our fuel rapidly.

I’m just being pedantic about the sun, lol

AbsolutelyNotABot ,

mostly with conventional LWRs burning up our fuel rapidly

Well, yes, the obvious counter argument being that, you will never build more advanced reactors on scale (some are already available), or develop new fuel cycle if you stunt the evolution process and block the technology we already have.

Imagine saying to be favourable to installing solar panels but only when they will be 100% recyclable and with efficiency close to the theorical maximum

schroedingershat ,

This would be relevant if any reactor had ever gotten its energy from primarily from fertile material. None have so it is not.

bouh ,

We would if ecologist weren’t shutting down any research on this subject.

schroedingershat ,

“It wouldn’t have bankrupted every program that tried if you’d just let us fill every body of water with lethal levels of Pu240, Cs137 and Tc99” isn’t a great counter argument.

nitrolife ,
@nitrolife@rekabu.ru avatar

That’s look like not renewable, but like “smaller resources cost”.

Aux ,

Fission and fusion are two different things.

CookieJarObserver ,

Its not even zero emission…

evranch ,

What are the emissions, aside from waste heat?

CookieJarObserver ,

The production of the uranium fuel, the gigantic building itself, the transport (the fule gets shipped around the world), the storage after its depleted.

Its definitely better than any Combustion fuels, but not at all better than actual renewables.

Womble ,

if you want to be like that nothing is. Solar requires vast amounts of rare earths to be mined and wind requires huge amount of unrecylable blades and generators to be produced. On total lifecyle damage to the environment all three are very low but non zero.

schroedingershat ,

Solar requires 0 rare earths, troll.

Womble ,

Huh, i thought they did require rare earths in construction, but apparently not. They do require silicon wafers boron and phosporus, and small instalations typically come with large li-ion bateries which clearly do require lithium. But the panels themselves dont. Still my point stand that ANY method of generation requires industrial activity which has downsides, pretending nuear is unique in this is dishonest.

Please dont call people trolls just because you disagree with them, this isnt reddit.

schroedingershat ,

Lithiun is also not a rare earth, and is not required (doubly so in sweden). Even if you do choose to use it, you need it in significantly smaller quantities than uranium, and mining it is significantly lower impact.

The mining impact of PV and onshore wind is acceptably small (although should still be reduced further), the orders of magnitude worse impact of digging up or leeching uranium ore with lower energy density than coal, poisoning indiginous communities with the milling waste and then never cleaning it up is not.

You’re sharing praeger U propaganda talking points. This is trolling.

Aesthesiaphilia ,

iirc earlier solar panel construction required rare earths

In the last 10-15 years they've moved to more abundant materials

CookieJarObserver ,

Solar requires vast amounts of rare earths to be mined

Not true, the newest solar panels don’t need rare earths at that scale.

and wind requires huge amount of unrecylable blades and generators to be produced.

Both are recyclable and even if they were not they are not radioactive, poisonous or otherwise hazardous… The blades are from a Artificial resin And glas fiber and the generators are from normal industrial materials like iron aluminum and copper.

Over all actual renewables are much more environmentally friendly and have less emissions. But yes they are also not absolutely zero emission (even though that being possible)

Womble ,

these things are easy to look up, eg this is from the ipcc https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CO2_Emissions_from_Electricity_Production_IPCC.png nuclear is on a par or better than most renewable sources.

CookieJarObserver ,

This data is old as hell… Especially regarding technology that changes twice a year…

Womble ,

Data isnt milk, it doesnt go bad just because its old. This was on the front of a well maintained wiki article and is from a credible source. If you have more recent data from a credible source showing something fundamentally different please share it.

schroedingershat ,

Because renewables don’t change at all in a decade, and the ever-decreasing quality of uranium ore doesn’t involve higher emissions than the benchmark of ranger and cigar lake from 2014. /s

Aesthesiaphilia ,

Most of those costs are similar for renewables...rather than a building it's the production and installation of fields of solar panels, for example.

In both cases I'm pretty sure it's a negligible fraction of the lifecycle emissions compared to energy generated.

CookieJarObserver ,

The problem is reliability, Europe sees more and more droughts building energy facilities that turn useful water into useless steam makes little sens when there are other options.

Also nuclear makes Sweden dependant on a country thaz exports nuclear fule.

And for solar the costs are shrinking and shrinking, the newest and most efficient panels don’t even need rare earths anymore and are recyclable. Btw Sweeden would be better suited for Hydroelectric dams and Wind wich have even less such problems.

Aesthesiaphilia ,

Sweden?

Drought?

Anyway I'm not a civil engineer or geologist or renewable energy engineer or anything, so I won't pretend to know what the best path is. I'm just hoping they did their studies correctly and are picking the best option.

But even if they're not, it's good they're moving away from fossil fuels, whichever direction they move in.

schroedingershat ,

Well no, that’s the thing. They’ve replaced moving away from fossil fuels now with promising they’re going to in 2045

Testnummer37 ,

Might be a problem for landlocked countries like Switzerland or so but all swedish reactors are cooled with sea water which is not in short supply any time soon.

CookieJarObserver ,

Seaside reactors have other problems like rising Sea levels… Just putting some wind turbines up would not lead to another Chernobyl when something bad happens…

JasSmith ,

Fukushima had structural risks and wasn’t compliant with international standards. Modern reactors don’t carry runaway reaction risks. They just shut down in the event of a power loss. There is zero risk of another Chernobyl with modern reactors.

Testnummer37 ,

Easily solved by building them one meter above expected future sea level 😂

And wind turbines have the problem of needing backup power plants when the wind is not blowing. The whole reason for the energy crisis that europe have right now is because germanys backup plants can’t run as their supplier have their hand full trying to murder their neighbour.

Wind and solar are great stuff. Puting solar cells on every south facing roff is a no brainer. Hydro- and geothermal powerplants only work where the geography allows it and are in these places also no brainers. But wind is a whole different beast. If you have a good way to save the excess power generated when they are runing then they are super. But right now, outside of repumping back water in to hydro dams, there are no good ways of utilizing it. That leaves at best 50% of a normal country’s power demand to be covered by either fossil fuels or nuclear. Unless you are a climate change denier then that choice is pretty simple. Nuclear is the only viable option if you want to keep the lights on.

evranch ,

When considering these externalities for nuclear, you have to do the same for renewables as well. i.e. scrap turbine blades, concrete in dams, weathered PV panels, land use taken up by panels and turbines.

Remember that the materials used in most renewable generation are also shipped around the world and many have very dirty refining processes.

I’m a firm renewable energy supporter but you have to be fair to both processes.

CookieJarObserver ,

You neglect the problem that the stuff from a nuclear reactor is literally unusable forever and becomes Special waste while the remains of renewables are recyclable, yes even turbine blades, there is just not enough market for it to attract a business so far, that will change of course with time, also the stuff is not toxic or radioactive…

Remember that the materials used in most renewable generation are also shipped around the world and many have very dirty refining processes.

Depends, newer version of the stuff don’t need rare earths, or much less, meaning the dirtiest of it falls out of the equation.

I am fair, nuclear is just not future proof for large scale usage. It also takes to long to be “effective” 10 years to build one powerplant, and is waaaay to expensive. you could build more actually renewables for less money in the same time and the electricity from it is basically free as there are almost no operational costs.

schroedingershat , (edited )

Okay.

Make a PV system out of a strict subset of the materials in the reactor.

Put the PV system over top of Inkai mine.

Get more power than the uranium from the mine would produce for longer.

The 40 year guaranteed lifetime of the panels is longer than the 30 year lifetime of the average nuclear plant at shutdown.

Your materials can be recycled after.

The ground around the mine isn’t poisoned with heavy metals permanently,

This all assuming everything goes perfectly for the nuclear plant and waste disposal.

schroedingershat ,

The emissions from nuclear are primarily from mining (this is huge in some cases, enough to not consider it as low carbon, or negligible in others), enrichment, conversion, and fuel fabrication (these last three have no trustworthy data, but from the few steps that are public knowledge, are enough to put it higher than PV or wind).

Transport, and the building are negligible enough they’re not worth considering.

In either case, it’s largely irrelevant. The main harm is to the local environment of the mines (this is devistating) as well as the main reason the astroturfers come out in force, which is that it delays decarbonization due to being an ineffective use of resources.

Aux ,

Renewables need all of that too plus they generate SHITLOADS of waste.

nicman24 ,

have you seen how large wind turbines are ?

CookieJarObserver ,

I have like 20 in visible range from my window, yes, whats your point?

nicman24 ,

how did they got there is my point. to build anything there are emissions.

CookieJarObserver ,

Read the other comments explaining it.

schroedingershat ,

Incredibly well quantified emissions that are in total lower than the emissions from mining uranium (except for two or three cherry picked mines which are supposed to be representative), or the emissions from building and decomissioning a nuke if you take real lifetimes and load factors.

nicman24 ,

wait per energy output? that seems wrong. also what about nukes?

schroedingershat , (edited )

Most uranium ore is lower energy density than low grade coal. Digging it up with diesel equipment after removing twice as much overburden with explosives in a coal powered country and then milling it with 10s to 100s of litres of sulfuric acid is incredibly dirty. All of the “representative” lifecycle studies use Ranger (which used a specific much cleaner more expensive process only suitable for some specific ores on ore 30-70x as concentrated) or Cigar lake which is 1000-2500x as concentrated.

Even after that nuclear is still relatively low carbon, but about 10x a modern wind turbine. It is largely irrelevant (the best llw carbon technology is the one that deploys soonest), but that doesn’t stop the shills constantly lying to try and delay decarbonisation.

nicman24 ,

Thanks

bouh ,

Oh so exactly like renewables that actually produce more co2 during their life cycle?

the_kalash ,

There is enough thorium (which can be turned into uranium) in the earth crust to power humand kind for tens of thousand of years. It’s defacto renewable.

Aesthesiaphilia ,

"Renewable" typically means renewable on human time scales, so fossil fuels don't count.

Biofuel would be renewable.

If you consider fusion to be "nuclear", that's renewable. But yeah, not fission.

It is zero emission though.

thomasloven ,

Coal exist in the earth because back then the bacteria who could break down lignin and cellulose hadn’t evolved, so dead trees had the time they needed to compress. There are such bacteria around now, though, and that means there will never be any new natural coal.

Fondots ,

I wouldn’t necessarily say never, it could potentially happen that a dead tree ends up in an environment that isn’t conducive to lignin-eating bacteria getting to it, and I would not be at all surprised if it has happened and may continue to happen somewhere in the world since those bacteria evolved, though they would certainly be exceptional cases and almost definitely not happening at any significant scale.

It’s also possible for those bacteria to go extinct one way or another. Again, not very likely. And if it did happen it would probably be due to some absolutely catastrophic disaster absolutely wrecking the Earth’s ecosystem completely in which case we’re probably not going to make it either, but hey, new coal!

GenEcon ,

The process to produce coal is known for 100 years now. Its just not feasible, because no one needs coal. But its reversible. No one knows how to fuse uranium.

bouh ,

We actually know how. It’s the cycle of thorium. You make U233 from Th232.

schroedingershat ,

A thousand years is a massive over-estimate. Providing the 6TW or so of final energy with the stuff assumed to exist that’s vaguely accessible for costs that don’t exceed renewables’ total cost is well under a decade.

No breeding program has ever done a full closed cycle and even if it were to happen, the currently proposed technologies only yield about 50 years.

joshuaacasey ,
@joshuaacasey@lemmy.world avatar

how is it not renewable? If we build modern nuclear plants those plants can use the spent nuclear fuel that is just…currently sitting around in piles of storage. Sounds like the ultimate win to me!

synapse1278 ,
@synapse1278@lemmy.world avatar

You are probably refering to thorium-based nuclear power plants. Until this day, there isn’t such a power-plant in a production-ready state. Because it’s far from simple, not only because of technical challanges, but also potentially catastrofic environmental impact. I encourge you to read more if you are intrested.

Fondots ,

Just because you can use the same fuel twice (or even 3, 10, 100, 1000 times) doesn’t mean it’s renewable. You can’t do that ad infinitum, at a certain point there will simply not be fissile material left in the spent fuel to use, and no more will ever be formed on earth (at least not in any meaningful quantities, I’m sure eventually fusion experiments or something may start spitting out uranium, but by the point we can do that at any meaningful scale we’d clearly have fusion pretty well figured out so fission would be a moot point.) What is here is what we have to work with until we start mining asteroids or what have you.

And on a much bigger timescale (and I’m talking the absolute mind-breaking cosmic sort of timescale that’s really kind of not worth mentioning because it’s so far out from our human frame of reference so I’m only mentioning it because it’s really cool to think about,) eventually all of the fissile material that exists in the universe today will cease to be all on its own whether or not we do anything with it as it decays into more stable elements. A bit more will be created along the way thanks to neutron stars and supernovae and such, but even that slows down and stops as we inch closer to the heat death of the universe.

On the other hand, given enough time and the right conditions, every ounce of carbon on this planet- plants, animals, plankton, plastic happy meal toys, could potentially become fossil fuels, coal, oil, natural gas, etc. and can keep going around the carbon cycle. Unfortunately that’s a process that can take thousands or millions of years and we use fossil fuels much faster than they can be replenished. Even if earth becomes uninhabitable and we have to all up and leave, the carbon in our bodies and whatever we take with us will end up in a new carbon cycle on whatever new rock we end up on, and can potentially keep going as long as we do.

Nuclear is cleaner than fossil fuels but is in no way renewable, no matter what tricks we use to get the most use out of it, there is a finite supply.

Fossil fuels are dirty and not really renewable on a useable timescale for us.

Renewables like solar, wind, and hydro will be a viable option as long as the sun is shining, the earth has an atmosphere, and there is liquid water. Technically there will come a day when those also run out on us but those are also kind of prerequisites for us to live here, so kind of a moot point.

And geothermal will potentially be an option as long as the Earth’s core stays hot, so hundreds of millions if not billions or tens of billions of years, which puts us in the sort of timescale where we have to worry about things like the sun turning into a red giant and engulfing the inner planets, so we’ll have bigger things to worry about than keeping the lights on.

CookieJarObserver ,

Wtf no.

Diplomjodler ,

No it’s not. That’s just delusional. All the ideas of a sustainable uranium fuel cycle are based on non-existent technology. Uranium is a finite resource and we have nowhere near enough of it to power the world, even if you ignore all the other problems.

nicman24 ,

there is enough U238 to last until we get there. except if you think fusion is more than 500 years away (yes, that number is out of my ass)

Diplomjodler ,

U238 is not fissile so that’s not very useful.

nicman24 ,

......

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