Nuclear energy good
I worked at a nuclear power plant for a decade, ask me anything
In my opinion, yes. Very safe. And state owned so electricity prices were kept low
The only reasonable argument I’ve heard against nuclear is about water waste for cooling. How much water does it require?
Waste water? Zero. Basically the plant has three water loops, which exchange heat, but none of them interact(mix) with one another. Loop A is the nasty one. Very hot and at a high pressure. 450 degrees C, 4.5 MPA. Stays liquid all the time. This is heavy water or D2O. It’s not radioactive by nature, but ends up radioactive by touching the fuel rods all the time. This is a closed loop system water never changes state, or leaves the loop. Loop B is the steamy one. Interacts with A in boilers, gets heated to becomes steam and goes through the turbine to make power. Not radioactive, although still pretty nasty as it has a lot of chemicals to prevent pipe corrosion. Just regular water though. Never leaves the loop. Loop C is seawater. Fresh and cold out of the ocean, gets pumps through through heat exchangers to condense loop B. The two never actually touch. All of loop C gets pumped back into the ocean. About 2 degrees warmer, but other than that it’s the exact same.
No water waste at all.
That sounds awesome. So once they’re filled they don’t need anymore water for A and B, and C is just heat sink unaltered. Thanks for the in depth explanation!
I had this misconception from something I read about freshwater use in nuclear plants in France, but I just looked it up and it says they return 98% of all water used to the source. Nuclear energy? Yes, please!
What’s the thing that’s closest to convincing you that nuclear energy is bad? (I don’t think it’s bad, btw, but I don’t know anything about it.)
Its very, very regulated. And it should be cause there’s not really any room for error. But it drives the cost of everything up. Construction, maintenance, operation, testing, everything is so regulated and convoluted and expensive. I don’t know if there is a better way to do that all though, I’m not really smart enough to say.
There isn’t enough lithium on the planet to run the world on wind and solar with current battery technology, so critical support for nuclear.
I support nuclear, but I don’t think this is a great argument. There are a lot of batter chemistry options other than lithium, and lithium isn’t a great choice for things like fixed power generation anyway.
Which are the better currently-available options for battery-based large-scale storage of energy generated by wind and solar?
Obviously non-battery options like pumped storage exist, but this requires very specific geographic features to be practical, and can’t be done everywhere.
Well for one, pumping water uphill during the day using solar/whatever. And then at night the pumps become hydroelectric turbines as the water flows back down.
The non battery options are often the most cost effective when available. For batteries the molten salt ones look really promising; they are huge and run hot but are very cheap per kWh. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-salt_battery
Coal literally leaks more radioactive waste into the environment than nuclear ever will. When you burn coal, you also burn trace amounts of uranium or thallium, making it uncontainable. Nuclear waste is containable.
nuclear energy > everything else by a long shot
yes i will proselytize chapo until there is a 100% nuclear acceptance rate
No, the sun is bad
If the sun is bad, why does it try to actively give Kissinger, Obama, and Trump cancer whenever they go outside?
