tf wrote that title.. nuclear is defacto renewable
No, it's zero emission but not renewable.
Nuclear fission is actually by definition the least renewable energy source. Even coal and oil are renewable on long enough time scales. But there will never be more uranium than there is right now.
We actually don't have that much of it if we consider the long term future, only a thousand years or so. So nuclear is intended to be a bridge to eventual full renewable power generation and storage, an essential component in the present day but it's still a bridge.
Another thing to consider is that nuclear is the only power source that works in deep space away from the Sun. So if we're serious about exploring the solar system or further, we'd be best not to burn up all of our fissionable material right away.
Coal exist in the earth because back then the bacteria who could break down lignin and cellulose hadn’t evolved, so dead trees had the time they needed to compress.
There are such bacteria around now, though, and that means there will never be any new natural coal.
The process to produce coal is known for 100 years now. Its just not feasible, because no one needs coal. But its reversible. No one knows how to fuse uranium.
We actually know how. It's the cycle of thorium. You make U233 from Th232.
I wouldn't necessarily say never, it could potentially happen that a dead tree ends up in an environment that isn't conducive to lignin-eating bacteria getting to it, and I would not be at all surprised if it has happened and may continue to happen somewhere in the world since those bacteria evolved, though they would certainly be exceptional cases and almost definitely not happening at any significant scale.
It's also possible for those bacteria to go extinct one way or another. Again, not very likely. And if it did happen it would probably be due to some absolutely catastrophic disaster absolutely wrecking the Earth's ecosystem completely in which case we're probably not going to make it either, but hey, new coal!
Its not even zero emission...
What are the emissions, aside from waste heat?
The production of the uranium fuel, the gigantic building itself, the transport (the fule gets shipped around the world), the storage after its depleted.
Its definitely better than any Combustion fuels, but not at all better than actual renewables.
if you want to be like that nothing is. Solar requires vast amounts of rare earths to be mined and wind requires huge amount of unrecylable blades and generators to be produced. On total lifecyle damage to the environment all three are very low but non zero.
Solar requires vast amounts of rare earths to be mined
Not true, the newest solar panels don't need rare earths at that scale.
and wind requires huge amount of unrecylable blades and generators to be produced.
Both are recyclable and even if they were not they are not radioactive, poisonous or otherwise hazardous... The blades are from a Artificial resin And glas fiber and the generators are from normal industrial materials like iron aluminum and copper.
Over all actual renewables are much more environmentally friendly and have less emissions. But yes they are also not absolutely zero emission (even though that being possible)
This data is old as hell... Especially regarding technology that changes twice a year...
Data isnt milk, it doesnt go bad just because its old. This was on the front of a well maintained wiki article and is from a credible source. If you have more recent data from a credible source showing something fundamentally different please share it.
Because renewables don't change at all in a decade, and the ever-decreasing quality of uranium ore doesn't involve higher emissions than the benchmark of ranger and cigar lake from 2014. /s
Solar requires 0 rare earths, troll.
Huh, i thought they did require rare earths in construction, but apparently not. They do require silicon wafers boron and phosporus, and small instalations typically come with large li-ion bateries which clearly do require lithium. But the panels themselves dont. Still my point stand that ANY method of generation requires industrial activity which has downsides, pretending nuear is unique in this is dishonest.
Please dont call people trolls just because you disagree with them, this isnt reddit.
Lithiun is also not a rare earth, and is not required (doubly so in sweden). Even if you do choose to use it, you need it in significantly smaller quantities than uranium, and mining it is significantly lower impact.
The mining impact of PV and onshore wind is acceptably small (although should still be reduced further), the orders of magnitude worse impact of digging up or leeching uranium ore with lower energy density than coal, poisoning indiginous communities with the milling waste and then never cleaning it up is not.
You're sharing praeger U propaganda talking points. This is trolling.
iirc earlier solar panel construction required rare earths
In the last 10-15 years they've moved to more abundant materials
When considering these externalities for nuclear, you have to do the same for renewables as well. i.e. scrap turbine blades, concrete in dams, weathered PV panels, land use taken up by panels and turbines.
Remember that the materials used in most renewable generation are also shipped around the world and many have very dirty refining processes.
I'm a firm renewable energy supporter but you have to be fair to both processes.
You neglect the problem that the stuff from a nuclear reactor is literally unusable forever and becomes Special waste while the remains of renewables are recyclable, yes even turbine blades, there is just not enough market for it to attract a business so far, that will change of course with time, also the stuff is not toxic or radioactive...
Remember that the materials used in most renewable generation are also shipped around the world and many have very dirty refining processes.
Depends, newer version of the stuff don't need rare earths, or much less, meaning the dirtiest of it falls out of the equation.
I am fair, nuclear is just not future proof for large scale usage. It also takes to long to be "effective" 10 years to build one powerplant, and is waaaay to expensive. you could build more actually renewables for less money in the same time and the electricity from it is basically free as there are almost no operational costs.
Okay.
Make a PV system out of a strict subset of the materials in the reactor.
Put the PV system over top of Inkai mine.
Get more power than the uranium from the mine would produce for longer.
The 40 year guaranteed lifetime of the panels is longer than the 30 year lifetime of the average nuclear plant at shutdown.
Your materials can be recycled after.
The ground around the mine isn't poisoned with heavy metals permanently,
This all assuming everything goes perfectly for the nuclear plant and waste disposal.
The emissions from nuclear are primarily from mining (this is huge in some cases, enough to not consider it as low carbon, or negligible in others), enrichment, conversion, and fuel fabrication (these last three have no trustworthy data, but from the few steps that are public knowledge, are enough to put it higher than PV or wind).
Transport, and the building are negligible enough they're not worth considering.
In either case, it's largely irrelevant. The main harm is to the local environment of the mines (this is devistating) as well as the main reason the astroturfers come out in force, which is that it delays decarbonization due to being an ineffective use of resources.
have you seen how large wind turbines are ?
I have like 20 in visible range from my window, yes, whats your point?
how did they got there is my point. to build anything there are emissions.
Incredibly well quantified emissions that are in total lower than the emissions from mining uranium (except for two or three cherry picked mines which are supposed to be representative), or the emissions from building and decomissioning a nuke if you take real lifetimes and load factors.
wait per energy output? that seems wrong. also what about nukes?
Most uranium ore is lower energy density than low grade coal. Digging it up with diesel equipment after removing twice as much overburden with explosives in a coal powered country and then milling it with 10s to 100s of litres of sulfuric acid is incredibly dirty. All of the "representative" lifecycle studies use Ranger (which used a specific much cleaner more expensive process only suitable for some specific ores on ore 30-70x as concentrated) or Cigar lake which is 1000-2500x as concentrated.
Even after that nuclear is still relatively low carbon, but about 10x a modern wind turbine. It is largely irrelevant (the best llw carbon technology is the one that deploys soonest), but that doesn't stop the shills constantly lying to try and delay decarbonisation.
Thanks
Read the other comments explaining it.
Most of those costs are similar for renewables...rather than a building it's the production and installation of fields of solar panels, for example.
In both cases I'm pretty sure it's a negligible fraction of the lifecycle emissions compared to energy generated.
The problem is reliability, Europe sees more and more droughts building energy facilities that turn useful water into useless steam makes little sens when there are other options.
Also nuclear makes Sweden dependant on a country thaz exports nuclear fule.
And for solar the costs are shrinking and shrinking, the newest and most efficient panels don't even need rare earths anymore and are recyclable. Btw Sweeden would be better suited for Hydroelectric dams and Wind wich have even less such problems.
Might be a problem for landlocked countries like Switzerland or so but all swedish reactors are cooled with sea water which is not in short supply any time soon.
Seaside reactors have other problems like rising Sea levels... Just putting some wind turbines up would not lead to another Chernobyl when something bad happens...
Fukushima had structural risks and wasn’t compliant with international standards. Modern reactors don’t carry runaway reaction risks. They just shut down in the event of a power loss. There is zero risk of another Chernobyl with modern reactors.
Easily solved by building them one meter above expected future sea level 😂
And wind turbines have the problem of needing backup power plants when the wind is not blowing. The whole reason for the energy crisis that europe have right now is because germanys backup plants can't run as their supplier have their hand full trying to murder their neighbour.
Wind and solar are great stuff. Puting solar cells on every south facing roff is a no brainer. Hydro- and geothermal powerplants only work where the geography allows it and are in these places also no brainers. But wind is a whole different beast. If you have a good way to save the excess power generated when they are runing then they are super. But right now, outside of repumping back water in to hydro dams, there are no good ways of utilizing it. That leaves at best 50% of a normal country's power demand to be covered by either fossil fuels or nuclear. Unless you are a climate change denier then that choice is pretty simple. Nuclear is the only viable option if you want to keep the lights on.
Sweden?
Drought?
Anyway I'm not a civil engineer or geologist or renewable energy engineer or anything, so I won't pretend to know what the best path is. I'm just hoping they did their studies correctly and are picking the best option.
But even if they're not, it's good they're moving away from fossil fuels, whichever direction they move in.
Well no, that's the thing. They've replaced moving away from fossil fuels now with promising they're going to in 2045
Renewables need all of that too plus they generate SHITLOADS of waste.
Oh so exactly like renewables that actually produce more co2 during their life cycle?
Nuclear fission is actually by definition the least renewable energy source
But if you go according the strict physical principle every energy source is non-renewable
The sun fuses a finire amount of hydrogen, earth has a finire amount of latent heat, the moon a finire amount of gravitational inertia etc.
And there's a little paradox if you think about it, how can fusion be non-renewable but solar, that use radiation from the sun fusion, be renewable?
A bit of a stretch maybe, but I'm considering us to be discussing whether an energy source is renewable on Earth. The Sun is not renewable, but by the time that it's no longer viable the Earth will be long gone as well! So as long as the Earth exists, I would say that solar PV and other solar driven processes like wind and hydro are renewable.
By these standards yes, deep geothermal and tidal are "not renewable" either.
but by the time that it's no longer viable the Earth will be long gone as well
But that's exactly the "problem", there's enough fertile material for potential millions of years of consumption, and that's for fission alone.
I think the debacle is more because the definition of "renewable" is a little arbitrary than the dilemma if nuclear is renewable or not
I think we both agree on fertile material as discussed in another comment, the longevity issue is mostly with conventional LWRs burning up our fuel rapidly.
I'm just being pedantic about the sun, lol
mostly with conventional LWRs burning up our fuel rapidly
Well, yes, the obvious counter argument being that, you will never build more advanced reactors on scale (some are already available), or develop new fuel cycle if you stunt the evolution process and block the technology we already have.
Imagine saying to be favourable to installing solar panels but only when they will be 100% recyclable and with efficiency close to the theorical maximum
This would be relevant if any reactor had ever gotten its energy from primarily from fertile material. None have so it is not.
We would if ecologist weren't shutting down any research on this subject.
"It wouldn't have bankrupted every program that tried if you'd just let us fill every body of water with lethal levels of Pu240, Cs137 and Tc99" isn't a great counter argument.
That's look like not renewable, but like "smaller resources cost".
Fission and fusion are two different things.
Will have more when the sun explodes.
"Renewable" typically means renewable on human time scales, so fossil fuels don't count.
Biofuel would be renewable.
If you consider fusion to be "nuclear", that's renewable. But yeah, not fission.
It is zero emission though.
A thousand years is a massive over-estimate. Providing the 6TW or so of final energy with the stuff assumed to exist that's vaguely accessible for costs that don't exceed renewables' total cost is well under a decade.
No breeding program has ever done a full closed cycle and even if it were to happen, the currently proposed technologies only yield about 50 years.
I'm sorry what? How do you renew fissile material?!?
It's a little bit complicated and I don't want to write a wall of text but:
Waste fuel can be recycled, if your reactor has a breeding ratio higher than 1 then it has net positive production of fissile materials. Potentially all uranium and thorium of the planet could be used.
The argument being, if you consider the word "renewable" in the strictest sense, no energy source is renewable, entropy can only increases: solar depends by the sun burning a finire amount of hydrogen, geothermy depends by earth inner heat which is a finire amount ecc.ecc.
The common usage of renewable is along the line of "immensely big proportional to human consumption" and in this sense there's a strong argument to consider nuclear renewable.
Calling an LWR renewable because somebody somewhere might run a closed fuel cycle eventually is like calling oil renewable because you can make hydrocarbons by electrolyzing CO2 and water.
It's and absurd and ridiculous lie.
With the same argument calling solar and wind renewables just because, hypothetically someone somewhere can fully recycle turbines and panels without having to extract new raw materials is an absurd and ridiculous lie (?)
Except it has happened at least once at >99% yield.
Otherwise, first fast reactor has been built in 1946, we're basically done and there's absolutely no more industrial research needed as it happened at least once /s
You're now trying to misdirect with an unrelated statistic. The current market saturation of recycling isn't the amount of a panel that can be recycled.
Breeding some fissile fuel is not closing the fuel cycle. No reactor has ever prodiced the same material it ran on. Closed cycle nuclear is not even proof of concept.
The current market saturation of recycling isn't the amount of a panel that can be recycled.
The current market for nuclear reprocessing isn't the amount reprocessable either.
But to adhere to your argument, it's the probability for a given panel to be recycled; if there isn't an economic rationale, because recycled materials from panels is more expensive than vergin materials, then it's called being out of market, not market saturation.
In reality we aren't recycling solar panels.
No reactor has ever prodiced the same material it ran on
This happen routinely even in non breeder reactors, industrial nuclear nuclear reprocessing is a thing and many reactors in the world run on MOX fuel with plutonium extracted from spent LWR fuel.
You only need a breeding ratio higher than 1 because otherwise fissile content will keep diminishing.
Arguably there's no more base research needed, both breeding and nuclear reprocessing are time tested process. What we need is industrial scale up, which is a little bit further than a proof of concept
You've now switched from closed cycle to using the dregs via reprocessing. Entirely unrelated concepts (and reprocessing is also ecologically awful and uneconomical in addition to not meaningfully reducing mining).
In reality all solar panels in large parts of europe built since 2015 will be recycled.
This happen routinely even in non breeder reactors, industrial nuclear nuclear reprocessing is a thing and many reactors in the world run on MOX fuel with plutonium extracted from spent LWR fuel. You only need a breeding ratio higher than 1 because otherwise fissile content will keep diminishing. Arguably there’s no more base research needed, both breeding and nuclear reprocessing are time tested process. What we need is industrial scale up, which is a little bit further than a proof of concept
A soup of random plutonium isotopes isn't usable for MOX. MOX-2 has never happened.
You cannot even keep your bizarre straw man tangent straight.
Entirely unrelated concepts
A closed cycle require reprocessing, how else would you recover fissile content in exhaust fuel? Magic?
in addition to not meaningfully reducing mining
Because of the low fissile content. Still 20% net reduction in virgin uranium
In reality all solar panels in large parts of europe built since 2015 will be recycled
This is a fallacy called Texas sharpshooter. We'll know if they will be recycled in 20 years, how can we verify this now? How can this be an argument of any value?
A soup of random plutonium isotopes isn't usable for MOX
This sentence doesn't make sense whatsoever, MOX-2 isn't even a thing that exist, you've just made it up...
This is a fallacy called Texas sharpshooter. We’ll know if they will be recycled in 20 years, how can we verify this now? How can this be an argument of any value?
No, because there is a specific piece of legislation mandating it, a clear well costed industrial plan, and idle recycling facilities waiting for panels to finally wear out.
What you've done is the "nothing can ever start happening more than it is now" fallacy which nuke shills love to roll out.
Not understanding that bombarding Pu240 and Pu239 with neutrons produces different isotope ratios than U238 is a very good way of demonstrating that you actually understand reprocessing /s
idle recycling facilities waiting for panels to finally wear out
If they're idle why can't reprocess actual panels ending in waste fields?
Also there's a big flaw in tour argument.
Tokyo protocol was a specific piece of legislation, reduction emissions plant etc.
So was that Paris agreement
And many others
Have we solved climate change?
Not understanding that bombarding Pu240 and Pu239 with neutrons produces different isotope ratios than U238
I beg you to read more than the first paragraph of Wikipedia.
Pu239 is fissile and is burned in place of the U235 content of enriched uranium.
Pu240 neutron capture and become Pu241, which is also fissile.
The matrix in most cases is still U238 usually from tailings.
When I say that what you say doesn't make sense is not an insult, literally, your words haven't a complete sense.
Unfortunately most reactors are not breeders and we are trying our best to lock the waste away forever which ruins any chance of recovery when we finally do migrate to breeder cycles. I like to compare our current reactors to burning just the bark off of logs and then tossing the rest in a smoldering heap, with 95-99% of the energy still retained in the waste.
Breeder reactors would indeed extend the long term viability of nuclear fission immensely, we should be using them exclusively.
you do not need a breeder to recycle most of it. also that 95% is still there for future us to use when we are able to.
No it's not. That's just delusional. All the ideas of a sustainable uranium fuel cycle are based on non-existent technology. Uranium is a finite resource and we have nowhere near enough of it to power the world, even if you ignore all the other problems.
there is enough U238 to last until we get there. except if you think fusion is more than 500 years away (yes, that number is out of my ass)
tf wrote that title.. nuclear is defacto renewable
No, it's zero emission but not renewable.
Nuclear fission is actually by definition the least renewable energy source. Even coal and oil are renewable on long enough time scales. But there will never be more uranium than there is right now.
We actually don't have that much of it if we consider the long term future, only a thousand years or so. So nuclear is intended to be a bridge to eventual full renewable power generation and storage, an essential component in the present day but it's still a bridge.
Another thing to consider is that nuclear is the only power source that works in deep space away from the Sun. So if we're serious about exploring the solar system or further, we'd be best not to burn up all of our fissionable material right away.
Coal exist in the earth because back then the bacteria who could break down lignin and cellulose hadn’t evolved, so dead trees had the time they needed to compress. There are such bacteria around now, though, and that means there will never be any new natural coal.
The process to produce coal is known for 100 years now. Its just not feasible, because no one needs coal. But its reversible. No one knows how to fuse uranium.
We actually know how. It's the cycle of thorium. You make U233 from Th232.
I wouldn't necessarily say never, it could potentially happen that a dead tree ends up in an environment that isn't conducive to lignin-eating bacteria getting to it, and I would not be at all surprised if it has happened and may continue to happen somewhere in the world since those bacteria evolved, though they would certainly be exceptional cases and almost definitely not happening at any significant scale.
It's also possible for those bacteria to go extinct one way or another. Again, not very likely. And if it did happen it would probably be due to some absolutely catastrophic disaster absolutely wrecking the Earth's ecosystem completely in which case we're probably not going to make it either, but hey, new coal!
Its not even zero emission...
What are the emissions, aside from waste heat?
The production of the uranium fuel, the gigantic building itself, the transport (the fule gets shipped around the world), the storage after its depleted.
Its definitely better than any Combustion fuels, but not at all better than actual renewables.
if you want to be like that nothing is. Solar requires vast amounts of rare earths to be mined and wind requires huge amount of unrecylable blades and generators to be produced. On total lifecyle damage to the environment all three are very low but non zero.
Not true, the newest solar panels don't need rare earths at that scale.
Both are recyclable and even if they were not they are not radioactive, poisonous or otherwise hazardous... The blades are from a Artificial resin And glas fiber and the generators are from normal industrial materials like iron aluminum and copper.
Over all actual renewables are much more environmentally friendly and have less emissions. But yes they are also not absolutely zero emission (even though that being possible)
these things are easy to look up, eg this is from the ipcc https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CO2_Emissions_from_Electricity_Production_IPCC.png nuclear is on a par or better than most renewable sources.
This data is old as hell... Especially regarding technology that changes twice a year...
Data isnt milk, it doesnt go bad just because its old. This was on the front of a well maintained wiki article and is from a credible source. If you have more recent data from a credible source showing something fundamentally different please share it.
Because renewables don't change at all in a decade, and the ever-decreasing quality of uranium ore doesn't involve higher emissions than the benchmark of ranger and cigar lake from 2014. /s
Solar requires 0 rare earths, troll.
Huh, i thought they did require rare earths in construction, but apparently not. They do require silicon wafers boron and phosporus, and small instalations typically come with large li-ion bateries which clearly do require lithium. But the panels themselves dont. Still my point stand that ANY method of generation requires industrial activity which has downsides, pretending nuear is unique in this is dishonest.
Please dont call people trolls just because you disagree with them, this isnt reddit.
Lithiun is also not a rare earth, and is not required (doubly so in sweden). Even if you do choose to use it, you need it in significantly smaller quantities than uranium, and mining it is significantly lower impact.
The mining impact of PV and onshore wind is acceptably small (although should still be reduced further), the orders of magnitude worse impact of digging up or leeching uranium ore with lower energy density than coal, poisoning indiginous communities with the milling waste and then never cleaning it up is not.
You're sharing praeger U propaganda talking points. This is trolling.
iirc earlier solar panel construction required rare earths
In the last 10-15 years they've moved to more abundant materials
When considering these externalities for nuclear, you have to do the same for renewables as well. i.e. scrap turbine blades, concrete in dams, weathered PV panels, land use taken up by panels and turbines.
Remember that the materials used in most renewable generation are also shipped around the world and many have very dirty refining processes.
I'm a firm renewable energy supporter but you have to be fair to both processes.
You neglect the problem that the stuff from a nuclear reactor is literally unusable forever and becomes Special waste while the remains of renewables are recyclable, yes even turbine blades, there is just not enough market for it to attract a business so far, that will change of course with time, also the stuff is not toxic or radioactive...
Depends, newer version of the stuff don't need rare earths, or much less, meaning the dirtiest of it falls out of the equation.
I am fair, nuclear is just not future proof for large scale usage. It also takes to long to be "effective" 10 years to build one powerplant, and is waaaay to expensive. you could build more actually renewables for less money in the same time and the electricity from it is basically free as there are almost no operational costs.
Okay.
Make a PV system out of a strict subset of the materials in the reactor.
Put the PV system over top of Inkai mine.
Get more power than the uranium from the mine would produce for longer.
The 40 year guaranteed lifetime of the panels is longer than the 30 year lifetime of the average nuclear plant at shutdown.
Your materials can be recycled after.
The ground around the mine isn't poisoned with heavy metals permanently,
This all assuming everything goes perfectly for the nuclear plant and waste disposal.
The emissions from nuclear are primarily from mining (this is huge in some cases, enough to not consider it as low carbon, or negligible in others), enrichment, conversion, and fuel fabrication (these last three have no trustworthy data, but from the few steps that are public knowledge, are enough to put it higher than PV or wind).
Transport, and the building are negligible enough they're not worth considering.
In either case, it's largely irrelevant. The main harm is to the local environment of the mines (this is devistating) as well as the main reason the astroturfers come out in force, which is that it delays decarbonization due to being an ineffective use of resources.
have you seen how large wind turbines are ?
I have like 20 in visible range from my window, yes, whats your point?
how did they got there is my point. to build anything there are emissions.
Incredibly well quantified emissions that are in total lower than the emissions from mining uranium (except for two or three cherry picked mines which are supposed to be representative), or the emissions from building and decomissioning a nuke if you take real lifetimes and load factors.
wait per energy output? that seems wrong. also what about nukes?
Most uranium ore is lower energy density than low grade coal. Digging it up with diesel equipment after removing twice as much overburden with explosives in a coal powered country and then milling it with 10s to 100s of litres of sulfuric acid is incredibly dirty. All of the "representative" lifecycle studies use Ranger (which used a specific much cleaner more expensive process only suitable for some specific ores on ore 30-70x as concentrated) or Cigar lake which is 1000-2500x as concentrated.
Even after that nuclear is still relatively low carbon, but about 10x a modern wind turbine. It is largely irrelevant (the best llw carbon technology is the one that deploys soonest), but that doesn't stop the shills constantly lying to try and delay decarbonisation.
Thanks
Read the other comments explaining it.
Most of those costs are similar for renewables...rather than a building it's the production and installation of fields of solar panels, for example.
In both cases I'm pretty sure it's a negligible fraction of the lifecycle emissions compared to energy generated.
The problem is reliability, Europe sees more and more droughts building energy facilities that turn useful water into useless steam makes little sens when there are other options.
Also nuclear makes Sweden dependant on a country thaz exports nuclear fule.
And for solar the costs are shrinking and shrinking, the newest and most efficient panels don't even need rare earths anymore and are recyclable. Btw Sweeden would be better suited for Hydroelectric dams and Wind wich have even less such problems.
Might be a problem for landlocked countries like Switzerland or so but all swedish reactors are cooled with sea water which is not in short supply any time soon.
Seaside reactors have other problems like rising Sea levels... Just putting some wind turbines up would not lead to another Chernobyl when something bad happens...
Fukushima had structural risks and wasn’t compliant with international standards. Modern reactors don’t carry runaway reaction risks. They just shut down in the event of a power loss. There is zero risk of another Chernobyl with modern reactors.
Easily solved by building them one meter above expected future sea level 😂
And wind turbines have the problem of needing backup power plants when the wind is not blowing. The whole reason for the energy crisis that europe have right now is because germanys backup plants can't run as their supplier have their hand full trying to murder their neighbour.
Wind and solar are great stuff. Puting solar cells on every south facing roff is a no brainer. Hydro- and geothermal powerplants only work where the geography allows it and are in these places also no brainers. But wind is a whole different beast. If you have a good way to save the excess power generated when they are runing then they are super. But right now, outside of repumping back water in to hydro dams, there are no good ways of utilizing it. That leaves at best 50% of a normal country's power demand to be covered by either fossil fuels or nuclear. Unless you are a climate change denier then that choice is pretty simple. Nuclear is the only viable option if you want to keep the lights on.
Sweden?
Drought?
Anyway I'm not a civil engineer or geologist or renewable energy engineer or anything, so I won't pretend to know what the best path is. I'm just hoping they did their studies correctly and are picking the best option.
But even if they're not, it's good they're moving away from fossil fuels, whichever direction they move in.
Well no, that's the thing. They've replaced moving away from fossil fuels now with promising they're going to in 2045
Renewables need all of that too plus they generate SHITLOADS of waste.
Oh so exactly like renewables that actually produce more co2 during their life cycle?
But if you go according the strict physical principle every energy source is non-renewable
The sun fuses a finire amount of hydrogen, earth has a finire amount of latent heat, the moon a finire amount of gravitational inertia etc.
And there's a little paradox if you think about it, how can fusion be non-renewable but solar, that use radiation from the sun fusion, be renewable?
A bit of a stretch maybe, but I'm considering us to be discussing whether an energy source is renewable on Earth. The Sun is not renewable, but by the time that it's no longer viable the Earth will be long gone as well! So as long as the Earth exists, I would say that solar PV and other solar driven processes like wind and hydro are renewable.
By these standards yes, deep geothermal and tidal are "not renewable" either.
But that's exactly the "problem", there's enough fertile material for potential millions of years of consumption, and that's for fission alone.
I think the debacle is more because the definition of "renewable" is a little arbitrary than the dilemma if nuclear is renewable or not
I think we both agree on fertile material as discussed in another comment, the longevity issue is mostly with conventional LWRs burning up our fuel rapidly.
I'm just being pedantic about the sun, lol
Well, yes, the obvious counter argument being that, you will never build more advanced reactors on scale (some are already available), or develop new fuel cycle if you stunt the evolution process and block the technology we already have.
Imagine saying to be favourable to installing solar panels but only when they will be 100% recyclable and with efficiency close to the theorical maximum
This would be relevant if any reactor had ever gotten its energy from primarily from fertile material. None have so it is not.
We would if ecologist weren't shutting down any research on this subject.
"It wouldn't have bankrupted every program that tried if you'd just let us fill every body of water with lethal levels of Pu240, Cs137 and Tc99" isn't a great counter argument.
That's look like not renewable, but like "smaller resources cost".
Fission and fusion are two different things.
Will have more when the sun explodes.
"Renewable" typically means renewable on human time scales, so fossil fuels don't count.
Biofuel would be renewable.
If you consider fusion to be "nuclear", that's renewable. But yeah, not fission.
It is zero emission though.
A thousand years is a massive over-estimate. Providing the 6TW or so of final energy with the stuff assumed to exist that's vaguely accessible for costs that don't exceed renewables' total cost is well under a decade.
No breeding program has ever done a full closed cycle and even if it were to happen, the currently proposed technologies only yield about 50 years.
I'm sorry what? How do you renew fissile material?!?
It's a little bit complicated and I don't want to write a wall of text but: Waste fuel can be recycled, if your reactor has a breeding ratio higher than 1 then it has net positive production of fissile materials. Potentially all uranium and thorium of the planet could be used.
The argument being, if you consider the word "renewable" in the strictest sense, no energy source is renewable, entropy can only increases: solar depends by the sun burning a finire amount of hydrogen, geothermy depends by earth inner heat which is a finire amount ecc.ecc. The common usage of renewable is along the line of "immensely big proportional to human consumption" and in this sense there's a strong argument to consider nuclear renewable.
Calling an LWR renewable because somebody somewhere might run a closed fuel cycle eventually is like calling oil renewable because you can make hydrocarbons by electrolyzing CO2 and water.
It's and absurd and ridiculous lie.
With the same argument calling solar and wind renewables just because, hypothetically someone somewhere can fully recycle turbines and panels without having to extract new raw materials is an absurd and ridiculous lie (?)
Except it has happened at least once at >99% yield.
And happens regularly commercially at >70% yield.
So you continue to repeat stupid and absurd lies.
Could you back your claims up?
Because in Europe and US the recycling rate if solar panels is around 10% and that without considering we might being miscalculating their real impact
Otherwise, first fast reactor has been built in 1946, we're basically done and there's absolutely no more industrial research needed as it happened at least once /s
You're now trying to misdirect with an unrelated statistic. The current market saturation of recycling isn't the amount of a panel that can be recycled.
Breeding some fissile fuel is not closing the fuel cycle. No reactor has ever prodiced the same material it ran on. Closed cycle nuclear is not even proof of concept.
The current market for nuclear reprocessing isn't the amount reprocessable either. But to adhere to your argument, it's the probability for a given panel to be recycled; if there isn't an economic rationale, because recycled materials from panels is more expensive than vergin materials, then it's called being out of market, not market saturation.
In reality we aren't recycling solar panels.
This happen routinely even in non breeder reactors, industrial nuclear nuclear reprocessing is a thing and many reactors in the world run on MOX fuel with plutonium extracted from spent LWR fuel. You only need a breeding ratio higher than 1 because otherwise fissile content will keep diminishing. Arguably there's no more base research needed, both breeding and nuclear reprocessing are time tested process. What we need is industrial scale up, which is a little bit further than a proof of concept
You've now switched from closed cycle to using the dregs via reprocessing. Entirely unrelated concepts (and reprocessing is also ecologically awful and uneconomical in addition to not meaningfully reducing mining).
In reality all solar panels in large parts of europe built since 2015 will be recycled.
A soup of random plutonium isotopes isn't usable for MOX. MOX-2 has never happened.
You cannot even keep your bizarre straw man tangent straight.
A closed cycle require reprocessing, how else would you recover fissile content in exhaust fuel? Magic?
This is a fallacy called Texas sharpshooter. We'll know if they will be recycled in 20 years, how can we verify this now? How can this be an argument of any value?
No, because there is a specific piece of legislation mandating it, a clear well costed industrial plan, and idle recycling facilities waiting for panels to finally wear out.
What you've done is the "nothing can ever start happening more than it is now" fallacy which nuke shills love to roll out.
Not understanding that bombarding Pu240 and Pu239 with neutrons produces different isotope ratios than U238 is a very good way of demonstrating that you actually understand reprocessing /s
If they're idle why can't reprocess actual panels ending in waste fields?
Also there's a big flaw in tour argument. Tokyo protocol was a specific piece of legislation, reduction emissions plant etc. So was that Paris agreement And many others Have we solved climate change?
I beg you to read more than the first paragraph of Wikipedia. Pu239 is fissile and is burned in place of the U235 content of enriched uranium. Pu240 neutron capture and become Pu241, which is also fissile. The matrix in most cases is still U238 usually from tailings.
When I say that what you say doesn't make sense is not an insult, literally, your words haven't a complete sense.
Unfortunately most reactors are not breeders and we are trying our best to lock the waste away forever which ruins any chance of recovery when we finally do migrate to breeder cycles. I like to compare our current reactors to burning just the bark off of logs and then tossing the rest in a smoldering heap, with 95-99% of the energy still retained in the waste.
Breeder reactors would indeed extend the long term viability of nuclear fission immensely, we should be using them exclusively.
you do not need a breeder to recycle most of it. also that 95% is still there for future us to use when we are able to.
No it's not. That's just delusional. All the ideas of a sustainable uranium fuel cycle are based on non-existent technology. Uranium is a finite resource and we have nowhere near enough of it to power the world, even if you ignore all the other problems.
there is enough U238 to last until we get there. except if you think fusion is more than 500 years away (yes, that number is out of my ass)
U238 is not fissile so that's not very useful.
......
Wtf no.