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.
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The problem with nuclear waste storage isnt a technical one or a lack of suitable sites, its a political issue.
We have plenty of candidate sites around the world that would be ideal for the long term storage of nuclear waste and the technology involved is fairly simple enough.
But no one wants to live next to a nuclear waste site, even after you’v explained all the waste is buried a couple kilometers underground in a shielded concrete sarcophagus that’d be safe to stand next to.
> 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.
There are huge salt mines under lake Erie that are perfect for storing nuclear waste. 1500 feet down, already dug and have been geologically stable for 400 million years.
It might be easier to find a safe place for nuclear waste deposit, but it’s not easy getting to that place and preparing it. Installing solar panels is actually quite quick and easy, specially if they installed on a rooftop. Wind turbines are a bit more complicated on construction and logistics, but they don’t need to be the only building on the area, you can raise cattle or plant stuff around it.
There is also the issue of public perception, even though nuclear power plants don’t emit any toxic gases, it has a big “chimney” that releases “smoke”. That’s not smoke, that’s clean water vapor, but a big chimney scares people.
In Brazil, if we build another 20 nuclear power plant, the same size of the one we already have, we could turn off 100% of our fossil fuels and coal power plants. I don’t know what effect that would have on energy prices though.
if we use the last seventy years as evidence and also the way we deal with the rest of the waste
obviouly not
Well the Eli5 is no. Because nuclear waste will be harmful for longer than history will exist. We talk about several million years. Not only must the storage location be safe for millions of years, without the risk of leakage into the ground water. So every earthquake, volcano or wathever must be taken into account for millions of years. And then we need to secure it so that our ancestors in a million years will not accidently open the vault. How should we even communicate that. Look at how much language changed in 100p years. How much will it change in 1 million year. And the waste is not the only problem. The reactors themselves will be a problem as well for a long time. Not as long as the waste but still long enough to be a major headache.
Atomic power was a great illusion as the great solution. It is debatable if it is useful as a transitioning technology but there is no alternative to renewable green energy if we want a long term solution.
There’s lots of interesting points both sides here. I just wanted to add that while there is still plenty of Uranium available to mine – this nuclear fuel is only mined in a very limited number of countries. So it makes for a little bit of a political hotcake. Just think about if Texas seceded – they’ve got 2 nuclear plants but no uranium mines so they’re gonna have to make good friends with Canada, Australia, Namibia, Niger, Russia or Kazakhstan to keep their reactors fueled. Moving uranium around from overseas is pretty costly to protect against potential accidents or terrorist incidents.
Long term things might change a lot when it becomes feasible for us to mine Uranium in space. And then again maybe not if you still land up with a political power situation where only one or two companies or countries control all the fuel sources found in space.
The biggest problem is finding a solution to nuclear that will work for millions of years. We have no idea what elements of our language and symbols will last that long or even if it will become the problem of a completely different intelligent race by then and we have no way to communicate that the stuff we buried there was dangerous.
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