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France's Power Prices Jump 22% as Heatwave Trims Nuclear Output (oilprice.com)
submitted 2 days ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] -5 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Nuclear energy isn’t a solution to anything. Solar and Windmills are much better, there really isn’t any argument for nuclear energy (if you want to teach me a better one, why don’t we start by building a nuclear repository in your region?).

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  • [–] 3 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    "why don't we start by building a nuclear repository in your region" really isn't the own you think it is? Like sure? I genuinely do not think that would be a problem for my life at all

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  • [–] -5 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    Your personal comfort isn’t consent, a repository binds an entire region for a timescale (100,000 years) that outlasts every democratic institution we have. Nobody alive can consent on behalf of the thousands of generations that timeline covers. The reason siting takes decades everywhere is precisely that “I personally wouldn’t mind” isn’t how legitimate consent works. You need actual buy-in from residents, municipalities, parliaments, not one guy’s shrug.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    Nuclear energy is the most energy dense form of power generation on the planet, and nothing else comes close. When fuel rods are "expended" taken out of a reactor after their 2 year cycle for the first time ~95% of the energy still remains in the rod. Chemical reprocessing can filter out the decay products and put the fissionable or fertile materials back into production.

    Additionally, nuclear is one of the safest sources of power production on the planet. Disasters have occurred at places like Chornobyl, fukushima, and three mile island. And there's a reason we don't build reactors like that anymore. Every time an incident has occurred the rules for this power generation have been updated to ensure that such an incident can't happen again.

    As far as building a nuclear repository in my region? We are. We are are standing in the beginning of the next golden age of nuclear power.

    While wind and solar are good to have for redundancy and diversity of power generation, they cannot change their generation ability easily at any point of day, during any weather conditions, regardless of external factors.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago

    Nuclear’s global share fell from 17.5% (1996) to ~9% (2024) and is flat outside China. That’s not a golden age. Of the 63 reactors under construction worldwide, all but four are backed by China or Russia. No country has an operating repository yet, not even Finland. France had more than half its fleet down in 2022 from corrosion, and had to throttle reactors again this year from heat. And unlike renewables — ~40% of German renewable capacity is literally owned by private citizens and farmers through energy co-ops — nuclear requires the kind of capital and secrecy that only states or utilities can provide. 19 EU reactors are still fully fuel-dependent on Russia’s Rosatom right now, which bundles its reactor exports with political influence programs. That’s not a coincidence, it’s structural.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago (1 child)

    Nuclear fission is the current cleanest way of generating on demand power, assuming you aren't able to build a water based powerplant. If done correctly they can be built in such a way that they inherently fail in a state that renders them inert. I'm not all too familiar with the process, but that last time I looked, with proper refining of spent fuel, the waste was 10% or less than the original fissionable material.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    The average reactor running today is 32 years old - “inherently fail-safe” describes future designs, not the existing fleet. On reprocessing: Germany has banned it by law since 2005, so that “10%” argument doesn’t even apply to the case you’re probably picturing. And reprocessing plants like La Hague, which separate weapons-grade plutonium, are exactly the kind of high-security, low-transparency facilities that make nuclear a political problem, not just a technical one.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 day ago

    I was not aware that you were referring to current infrastructure, I assumed since you were talking about solar and wind, which also need more build outs, that we were talking about building new infrastructure. I also wasn't making any judgments based on legislation, since a decent amount of their justifications are "nuclear bad", I will grant you that it is a considerable hurdle in most places of the world. This is also why I chose not to factor in the fact that nuclear fuel is generally also very useful for weapons which is another large political hurdle. As to your point about the secrecy of the refining facilities, I personally am opposed to security through obscurity, and I cannot currently think of a reason why the facilities need to be opaque, especially considering that I believe it helps alleviate large amounts of the political issue.

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