The problems with nuclear power aren’t meltdowns, but the facts that it often takes decades just to construct a new plant, it creates an enormous carbon footprint before you get it running, it has an enormously resource-intensive fuel production process, it contributes to nuclear proliferation, it creates indefinitely harmful waste, and even if we get past all of that and do expand it, that’s just going to deplete remaining fuel sources faster, of which we only have so many decades left.
It’s not a good long term solution. I agree we should keep working plants running, but we can’t do that forever, and we still need renewable alternatives - wind, hydro and solar.
And it wasn’t some nebulous group of NIMBYs that worked against nuclear power, it was the fossil fuel lobby. I don’t know why people keep jumping to cultural explanations for what is clearly a structural issue. The problem isn’t some public perception issue, but political will, and that tends to be bought by the fossil fuel lobby.
If we built breeder reactors we could use the spent waste fuel to power the entire US for 1000 years. That runs into plutonium existence problems, but it’s a political problem, not a resource problem.
However, I still agree with what you’ve said. We should limit our nuclear footprint to key isotope production, but we really shouldn’t be doing that until we’ve gone full carbon neutral.
Edit: In case you can’t see the reply to this comment, my conversation partner has given me more information I didn’t have before. Breeder reactors are neat, but they have more issues than I originally knew. (Still a badass concept though :P) https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.2968/066003007
The problems with nuclear power aren’t meltdowns, but the facts that it often takes decades just to construct a new plant, it creates an enormous carbon footprint before you get it running, it has an enormously resource-intensive fuel production process, it contributes to nuclear proliferation, it creates indefinitely harmful waste, and even if we get past all of that and do expand it, that’s just going to deplete remaining fuel sources faster, of which we only have so many decades left.
It’s not a good long term solution. I agree we should keep working plants running, but we can’t do that forever, and we still need renewable alternatives - wind, hydro and solar.
And it wasn’t some nebulous group of NIMBYs that worked against nuclear power, it was the fossil fuel lobby. I don’t know why people keep jumping to cultural explanations for what is clearly a structural issue. The problem isn’t some public perception issue, but political will, and that tends to be bought by the fossil fuel lobby.
Also there is good science on why we actually can switch to entirely renewables: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/23/no-miracles-needed-prof-mark-jacobson-on-how-wind-sun-and-water-can-power-the-world
Re: Remaining fuel.
If we built breeder reactors we could use the spent waste fuel to power the entire US for 1000 years. That runs into plutonium existence problems, but it’s a political problem, not a resource problem.
However, I still agree with what you’ve said. We should limit our nuclear footprint to key isotope production, but we really shouldn’t be doing that until we’ve gone full carbon neutral.
Edit: In case you can’t see the reply to this comment, my conversation partner has given me more information I didn’t have before. Breeder reactors are neat, but they have more issues than I originally knew. (Still a badass concept though :P) https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.2968/066003007
Thank you for providing a bigger picture