Being pro-nuclear was a very valid position up until a few years ago. Now solar has gotten so cheap that there is practically no reason to do it except to protect yourself against US imperialism.
Solar still has some huge problems when it comes to seasonality and day/night cycle. You either need massive battery build out or some other form of energy to handle base loads and/or offset when solar isn’t producing enough.
Not saying solar isn’t part of the future, but we literally can’t just rely on solar.
Battery tech is getting super good though, and the materials are recyclable. If solar becomes cheap enough we could even store it in creative (but less efficient) batteries like lake batteries or weight batteries and the like.
While I consider myself pro nuclear, there is something that gets forgotten everytime this conversation comes up.
The problem with nuclear isn’t that the waste is impossible to handle, it’s that humans are too short sighted to follow through with it.
Thats not even the biggest problem with nuclear power as the waste angle, at scale, will hit us decades in the future. The more urgent problem hitting us now on even on existing deployed nuclear plants is cooling water.
The byproduct of nuclear power generation is lots AND LOTS of waste heat. You have to get rid of this every second to continue to produce electricity. This is why nuclear power plants are typically built next to a large body of water. However, with reduced water supplies in reseviors theres less water to use for cooling nuclear plants. A double whammy is with climate change increasing temperatures, the water that remains is already hotter than it was, meaning it can carry away even less heat.
If a plant can’t get rid of its heat it needs to curtail (reduce) electricity production. This isn’t just theoretical. Its happening now in 2026 to existing power plants:
At the time when Europe was experiencing its worst heatwave is recorded history, many European reactors had to be turned down or off. 2026 isn’t the first time this has happened either, you can go back in the last 5 years or so and see many reports of nuclear plant curtailment because of lack of cooling capacity (cool water).
When we know global temperature are rising, it looks like this will just get worse. How can we say nuclear is the future when the conditions for it working well are already declining?
To the disposal argument i like to ask; are we handling our waste from burning fossil fuels well?
Is run away climate change “doing it well”?
Would you rather your waste be buried in the ground or pumped into the atmosphere?
Containing the waste and burying it in the ground is the default for nuclear, meanwhile doing the same for CO2 is very challenging and it may never be viable.
Being better than fossil fuels is a pretty low bar.
And yes better nuclear than oil but the whole thing about nuclear is that it has a very delayed start time, so the argument of needing it ASAP supports solar if anything.
The fact is that humans are just not well equipt to deal with problems beyond human scales.
We’re not good at accurately assessing risks beyond human time scales and we’re not good correctly prioritizing action when the benefit is beyond human time scales.
IMHO another big issue with nuclear is concentration of power. nuclear is quite stable, but not always and when it fails you suddenly loose a huge bunch of production that becomes hard to replace. (and Im not even getting into safety here)
France had to deal with a lot of issues just this year, with around 20% of their nuclear plants unoperative, which increased prices dramatically.
Solar is mostly distributed by design (and need) and failures are smaller
A hailstorm wiped out 350mW of solar in Texas in 2024. But, they learned that the angle of panels was critical to avoid damage and now they have a hail storm mode that increases the angle to protect the panels.
Not sure if panels can survive hurricanes, certainly not tornados.
Agreed. Are we seriously forecasting 5000 years of stable, deep, under-mountain storage.
For all those years, waste storage is a prime target for contaminating locales.
The other quality argument I’ve heard from Lemmy, is that the security requirements for nuclear plants are essential and costly, due to plants being a similar target for creating contamination.
Essentially, nuclear power is a fascist tech, due to the centralised, militaristic, security apparatus required for the life of the plant and waste.
While I consider myself pro nuclear, there is something that gets forgotten everytime this conversation comes up.
Nuclear produces waste, which is mentioned often but it is usually responded by pointing out that it could be recycled and the worse to be buried.
Here is what people miss:
Are all our nuclear waste handled correctly today? If not then why should we imply that they will be in the future.
The problem with nuclear isn’t that the waste is impossible to handle, it’s that humans are too short sighted to follow through with it.
And imo that’s a very valid argument on why we should use solar as much as we can.
Being pro-nuclear was a very valid position up until a few years ago. Now solar has gotten so cheap that there is practically no reason to do it except to protect yourself against US imperialism.
Solar still has some huge problems when it comes to seasonality and day/night cycle. You either need massive battery build out or some other form of energy to handle base loads and/or offset when solar isn’t producing enough.
Not saying solar isn’t part of the future, but we literally can’t just rely on solar.
This isn’t a problem at City scales and beyond. You just can’t buy a bunch of nazi batteries so there isn’t a corp greasing politicians to build it.
Battery tech is getting super good though, and the materials are recyclable. If solar becomes cheap enough we could even store it in creative (but less efficient) batteries like lake batteries or weight batteries and the like.
Nuclear, both fission and fusion (which will never happen anyway) are relics of an era of cheap fossil fuels and relative world order.
Solar electricity is viable at scale but also indicates a change in our species’ living arrangements on this planet.
You do realize that you can support multiple things? You don’t have to be antinuclear to be pro-solar.
You need to choose a thing to build there is not unlimited budget.
Thats not even the biggest problem with nuclear power as the waste angle, at scale, will hit us decades in the future. The more urgent problem hitting us now on even on existing deployed nuclear plants is cooling water.
The byproduct of nuclear power generation is lots AND LOTS of waste heat. You have to get rid of this every second to continue to produce electricity. This is why nuclear power plants are typically built next to a large body of water. However, with reduced water supplies in reseviors theres less water to use for cooling nuclear plants. A double whammy is with climate change increasing temperatures, the water that remains is already hotter than it was, meaning it can carry away even less heat.
If a plant can’t get rid of its heat it needs to curtail (reduce) electricity production. This isn’t just theoretical. Its happening now in 2026 to existing power plants:
Hungary - Aug 2026 Hungary plans to shut down only nuclear power plant amid drought
Romania - Aug 2026 Nuclear power plants are being shut down as Europe’s drought becomes an energy crisis
France & Switzerland - Aug 2026 Droughts cause nuclear power plants in Europe to reduce output
At the time when Europe was experiencing its worst heatwave is recorded history, many European reactors had to be turned down or off. 2026 isn’t the first time this has happened either, you can go back in the last 5 years or so and see many reports of nuclear plant curtailment because of lack of cooling capacity (cool water).
When we know global temperature are rising, it looks like this will just get worse. How can we say nuclear is the future when the conditions for it working well are already declining?
Fuck, that’s a terrifying thought. Bring on the panic attacks! Yay!
To the disposal argument i like to ask; are we handling our waste from burning fossil fuels well?
Is run away climate change “doing it well”?
Would you rather your waste be buried in the ground or pumped into the atmosphere?
Containing the waste and burying it in the ground is the default for nuclear, meanwhile doing the same for CO2 is very challenging and it may never be viable.
But we are comparing solar to nuclear.
Being better than fossil fuels is a pretty low bar.
And yes better nuclear than oil but the whole thing about nuclear is that it has a very delayed start time, so the argument of needing it ASAP supports solar if anything.
The fact is that humans are just not well equipt to deal with problems beyond human scales.
We’re not good at accurately assessing risks beyond human time scales and we’re not good correctly prioritizing action when the benefit is beyond human time scales.
Big Oil predicted global warming pretty spot on, they just fought it and hid the findings instead.
To some extent I think we’ve gotten pretty good at long term predictions on things like this, but no one wants to hear it.
IMHO another big issue with nuclear is concentration of power. nuclear is quite stable, but not always and when it fails you suddenly loose a huge bunch of production that becomes hard to replace. (and Im not even getting into safety here)
France had to deal with a lot of issues just this year, with around 20% of their nuclear plants unoperative, which increased prices dramatically.
Solar is mostly distributed by design (and need) and failures are smaller
A hailstorm wiped out 350mW of solar in Texas in 2024. But, they learned that the angle of panels was critical to avoid damage and now they have a hail storm mode that increases the angle to protect the panels.
Not sure if panels can survive hurricanes, certainly not tornados.
Maybe they should keep some AA batteries around just in case another hailstorm hits.
fire it into space futurama style
Let’s just not do it Space 1999 style.
Would you trust a SpaceX rocket with radioactive waste?
I would. If my goal was crashing that waste into a random subdivision or exploding on the launchpad dirty bomb style.
We also have limited potential stores of uranium. When Chinese reactors all get on line, maybe 40 years left.
Agreed. Are we seriously forecasting 5000 years of stable, deep, under-mountain storage. For all those years, waste storage is a prime target for contaminating locales.
The other quality argument I’ve heard from Lemmy, is that the security requirements for nuclear plants are essential and costly, due to plants being a similar target for creating contamination.
Essentially, nuclear power is a fascist tech, due to the centralised, militaristic, security apparatus required for the life of the plant and waste.
Calm down, Francis.
Guess which single country is making all the PV panels?