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
In theory maybe. In practice finding a hole in the ground to bury nuclear waste permanently is not something that anyone has had much success with.
Many people don’t like living too close to wind turbines, but they really really don’t like a permanent nuclear waste storage facility near where they live.
The issue with nuclear waste is that is needs to be stored not just for a few years or decades or centuries, but what in terms of human organizations is basically forever.
There are some fun issues with marking a site in such a way that somebody as far removed from us in the future as the first guy to decided to domesticate a wolf in the past is from us, still understands not to dig the shit back up.
Warning signs that last longer than any language has lasted in the past are a challenge.
The other issue is that you don’t just need a hole in the ground. You need a cavern that is stable across millennia. No earthquakes, no earth movements of any kind, no groundwater seeping in….
Ideally it should be in some place dry, geologically stable far away from any place where humans now live, might live in the future and from any thing we might want to dig up in the future.
With climate change and everything it is hard to predict where there will be deserts and fertile lands centuries from now.
Even if you find some place like that, you still need to get your nuclear waste there.
Right now a majority of the spent nuclear fuel is stored near the reactors where they were used. You need to load them up and transport them by rail and truck to some hole in the desert.
People don’t like having nuclear waste transported though their neighborhood either.
Ensuring that the transport is safe and can for example withstand an accident or a container falling of a bridge or similar is a thing people work on. (Google CASTOR container).
One issue is who pays for all that.
Currently nuclear power plants are not very profitable compared to other energy sources. If you make it the companies problem to transport secure and permanently store the waste for the next however many millennia there won’t be any profit left for them.
If they have to set money aside for a guard or maintenance person looking over the nuclear waste storage site 2 centuries from now, they will not do that and instead declare bankruptcy and leave the taxpayer with the bill.
Most times that part comes up, somebody will point to theoretical designs of newer reactors that produce less waste and methods to reuse spent fuel and in other ways try to talk around the problem by pointing at solutions that don’t solve everything and don’t exist yet.
Meanwhile putting a few solar panels on the roofs of every new home and a bunch of wind power farms off shore or on ridges and hills where there is good reliable wind is rather uncomplicated.
You are correct that evening out the output of renewable energy is an issue. storing electricity with things like pumped storage or chemical or thermal batteries is a challenge, but it is one people are working on and have successfully implemented.
You are dead wrong in your belief that a nuclear power plant will be able to shrug of a drought without issues.
Nuclear power plants are build next to rivers and lakes and oceans for a reason. They need the water for cooling. A nuclear power plant that relies on a river of cold water, will not be able to deal with the river running dry or the water getting too hot either.
Nuclear power is slightly less dependent on environmental factors than most renewables but far from actually independent.
Nuclear power can be a useful tool but it is not a panacea.
One other thing to think about is that nuclear plants like all other major industrial installations are, as you mentioned, “safe when managed responsibly”.
The “managed responsibly” part can be an issue in some places. Corruption and regulatory capture combined with greed of the managers and owners can be devastating to any installation.
It can be bad for a coal a gas plant and catastrophic for a hydro electric damn or nuclear power plant.
If the management can save money by bribing regulators or lobbying politicians to relax regulations, they just might. Look at places like Bhopal for how this might go.
The recent trend of China helping to build nuclear power plants in developing countries with high corruption is worrying as is the tend in places like the US to abolish more red tape and regulations and the way energy companies have influence in politics.
Do you trust the same people who run for example the Texas energy grid not to take small chance of something going horribly wrong if it saves them money?
If you think that government running things would be safer, you haven’t heard of Chernobyl.
Solar panels have far less spectacular failure modes.
Latest Answers