eli5 isn’t finding a place to store nuclear waste easier than that covering acres of land with wind turbines and solar panels?

Question

Nuclear power is relatively safe when managed responsibly, and provides a consistant power output. When it comes to hydro electric , solar or wind; it is possible that drought, impaired sunlight, and days with low wind could lead to a day with zero energy or low energy output.

In: 4

Answer 1

> When it comes to hydro electric , solar or wind; it is possible that drought, impaired sunlight, and days with low wind could lead to a day with zero energy or low energy output.

Sure. But here and now in France, nuclear reactors are having to shut down because it’s getting too hot. Literally. Climate change means they can’t get sufficiently cold water to cool the reactors.

There is a certain group of people who have elevated nuclear power almost to the status of a religion. The unfortunate fact is that there are no easy solutions, and nuclear isn’t some sort of holy miracle.

A couple of major problems with nuclear:

1. the energy costs of building a nuclear reactor are huge. It takes 5-7 years for a nuclear plant to produce enough energy to pay for its construction. For a wind turbine, the same only takes 18 months.
2. the construction *time* is huge. It takes 10-15 years to build a nuclear reactor from scratch. So for nuclear to be a major part of the solution to our climate crisis, we would have had to start building all the reactors we needed 10 years ago. We can’t afford to keep burning coal for another 10-15 years while we wait for new nuclear reactors to come online
3. nuclear energy is *expensive*. It’s one of the most expensive forms of energy.
4. as pointed out above, it depends on plentiful cooling water, which is not always available (and may become more and more of a problem as climate change worsens)

Nuclear waste is probably the _smallest_ problem with nuclear energy.

There are a lot of reason why it’s just not that attractive. It’s not profitable so private companies don’t want to do it without government funding. It’s unpopular with the population. And it doesn’t even solve the problem, because we can’t afford to wait the 10+ years it takes to build reactors.

So wherever we can use nuclear power, great, let’s do it. In particular, let’s keep the reactors *we have* going for as long as possible. But it is naive magical thinking to hope/believe that nuclear is a magic wand that could just solve all our climate/energy problems.