[haweemwho]

> Only nuclear power is carbon-free [...]

You can stop reading right there as this immediately identifies this piece as disingenuous at best, more likely though propaganda.

The whole process is definitely not "carbon-free". Uranium extraction, transport and processing produce emissions. Building the plants and maintaining them does. Eventually demolishing does. Transporting the used fuel as well as building and maintaining storage facilities does.

All those factors are usually brought up in detail for things like solar and wind plants. It's just disingenuous not to count them for nuclear power.

[SoftTalker]

All of that can be true and yet still trivial in comparison to the emissions that would be eliminated by replacing all fossil-fuel electrical generation with nuclear.

Nuclear works at night and in locations that aren't good for solar or wind generation. Nuclear with a relatively small number of generating sites feeding a large distributiion network fits in with our existing electricial infrastrucure better than the widely dispersed generation that solar and wind provide.

We need leadership that will just clear the way for liquid metal, fast neutron reactors that don't need refined fuel and produce less waste. If you believe that carbon emissions are an existential threat to human survival, it's time to stop fretting about nuclear proliferation and waste disposal. The challenges of those issues are tiny compared to global climate change.

[haweemwho]

Well, you didn't actually address my comment, which had nothing to do with solar working at night or similar. It's useful to keep separate arguments separate since jumping around if something doesn't suit your liking is not a sincere discussion style.

> If you believe that carbon emissions are an existential threat to human survival

FWIW, I don't believe that. Humans will survive, unless we do something like a nuclear weapons armageddon, but that's not because of climate change. Not directly at least. Those of us in privileged will have an easier time adapting to a changing climate, the rest of our species won't have it so easy. And later generations will need to live with the consequences as well. But they will adapt too. If they've never seen a frozen north pole, it will not be odd to them.

Even if it was an existential threat to human survival, I wouldn't care. Why would I? It's a species that mostly doesn't care about other species survival. Did you recently check how many species we have brought to extinction? Over 90% of large predatory fish are gone (shark, tuna, ...). Buffalos almost went extinct. Gorillas, sea turtles, .. I don't think the human species has much moral ground to argue it should survive and I won't move a finger to help.

[RC_ITR]

> unless we do something like a nuclear weapons armageddon

FWIW, the only way nuclear weapons wipe out all of humanity is if they start unprecedentedly large fires that change the climate.

At peak, we had about 80k nukes (way less now). That’s nowhere near enough to kill all 8bn people (as spread out as we are).

The way nukes end humanity is blacking out the sun and reducing plant/food output.

[haweemwho]

> At peak, we had about 80k nukes (way less now). That’s nowhere near enough to kill all 8bn people (as spread out as we are).

Directly? Probably not. But the contamination from fallout is more than sufficient to poison a significant fraction of humans over a not-too-long time horizon and provide everybody else with a significant cancer risk. The ensuing chaos and resulting breakdown of civilization will do the rest. Don't believe it? Ever seen the panic when toilet paper is at risk to run out at Walmart?

Those who still remember the Chernobyl disaster are aware what that meant for Europe. A single plant, and everybody got warned and could take precautions.

[RC_ITR]

I suggest you look into the decay rate of fallout and the relative amount of nuclear material in bombs vs power plants.

There’s just not that much nuclear material in a given bomb (and the whole point is to release as much energy as possible as quickly as possible), whereas Chernobyl is dangerous because the elephants foot is gigantic and still uranium.

[haweemwho]

Modern crisis research [1] shows that a sudden loss of just 10% of a population (that is, essentially over night) would have devastating consequences. Basically, breakdown of society as we know it.

Now combine that with nuclear winter and resulting consequences for crops and lifestock. We don't all need to die directly from bombs. Just a minor disruption in stability and hunger and civil unrest do the rest.

[1] It's pretty fascinating how vulnerable our societies are. Other results are things like .. 3 days power outage and you'd also be on the verge of civil war if government doesn't immediately pour in enormous resources in crisis management.

[jonahx]

> It's a species that mostly doesn't care about other species survival.

As opposed to which species that do?

[haweemwho]

Geez, I'm really worried about discussion styles here.

Nobody claimed that other species do. That has little to do with the question of why I should care about our's surviving.

[jonahx]

Your argument is "Why care about a selfish species that kills other species indiscriminately while pursuing its own ends?"

But that is every species. So why care about any of them? Why even care that we are killing off the gorillas or fish? They are equally selfish -- only less powerful.

And if your answer is that you don't, then you're just arguing for nihilism. If you do, then again: what do you think is so specially evil about humans?

[haweemwho]

I appreciate that you elaborated your thoughts. That makes for a much nicer discussion!

I'd turn your argument around. We seem to not care about any of the N-1 species. Why treat the remaining one specially? Because we belong to it? I don't find that convincing. Maybe we're focusing too much on individual freedom that suddenly caring about the species as a whole seems is odd. The population around me, as a whole, is giving pretty few f*ks about me. I basically just return that attitude.

Or, to formulate it differently, I'd get on board caring about not just the survival but flourishing of our species, if we'd extend that courtesy to all the other species around us.

[satvikpendem]

> And if your answer is that you don't, then you're just arguing for nihilism

Sure, and nihilism is a useful philosophy too.

[Manuel_D]

Correct, but transport, steel manufacturing, etc. are also required for solar, wind, hydro, and whatnot. The real question you're asking is, "what is the net carbon emissions of nuclear power?".

And the answer is that it's lower than most renewables: https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and...

[schainks]

_All_ powerplants have those problems, not _just_ nuclear. I agree it's a bit sensationalist of them to not consider the whole picture and declare nuclear "carbon free".

What are the total carbon emissions over the life time of usage including construction, operation, maintenance, and destruction of a nuclear plant vs a fossil plant?

I wouldn't be surprised if a nuclear plant emits far less carbon overall than a fossil-powered plant while operational for the same power generation and lifetime of use when considering those factors.

[haweemwho]

"X is the only foo that doesn't suffer from Y!"

"But it does!"

"Well so does every other foo!"

You see that this is not a good argument, don't you?

[Brusco_RF]

This is why we look at the actual amount of carbon released, not just a binary yes/no. I mean even if you had a magic power source that did not emit one single molecule of C02, a FUD spreader like you could use that exact same argument the first time a worker sparks a cigarette.

So tell me, how much C02 does mining uranium emit as compared to a coal station on a kg/Watt basis? six orders of magnitude less? seven?

[haweemwho]

> a FUD spreader like you

Eh, what? That's not a very nice thing to say.

> So tell me

No, I don't need to. I refuted a claim. You can move the goal posts, but I won't participate in that game.

Obviously a coal plant emits more CO2 than a nuclear fission plant. But the criticized sentence contained the words "carbon free". Which is just not true. I don't see how pointing that out is FUD.

[Swenrekcah]

I think if the original poster had mentioned in a balanced way and as kind of a footnote that, sure nuclear isn’t 100% carbon free but has some emissions, then people wouldn’t have reacted so harshly.

As it stands, the poster said that this (a bit exaggerated) claim somehow negates anything else there and that’s just wrong.

For practical purposes, nuclear power is as green as it gets so attacking it in this way is rather cheeky.

[quantum_mcts]

> You can stop reading right there as this immediately identifies this piece as disingenuous at best

Or you can keep reading it and see that it literally says "It is a misnomer to say renewables are carbon-free compared to nuclear power." And discusses the very things you stated was disingenuously discounted.

[jvanderbot]

One tanker could supply the worlds uranium needs. Zero required to transport sun and wind. Beats the thousands used for oil and gas.

[onethought]

These articles never answer the question: if the suggested cost of nuclear power investment instead went to batteries and renewables, what’s the Gigawatt difference?

We know nuclear is clean. But Solar and batteries are cleaner AND recyclable.

[gcheong]

I think it's more disingenuous not to have quoted the rest that qualifies this statement compared to renewables:"...and able to meet growing U.S. calls for electrification and global needs for basic economic growth". The rest of the article goes into details about what you get for the amount of resources put into renewables vs nuclear and why nuclear outperforms once an investment is made.

[evilos]

Almost nothing about civilization is emissions free. In the context of comparing energy sources, it's a totally reasonable statement. It's only when you present it cut-off like you did that it sounds wrong. You're criticizing half of the tagline of the article, of course it won't contain all the nuances.

[tomp]

Probably a good idea to read the rest of the article. They explain why.

> Whereas nuclear power accounts for all materials through the decommissioning phase—and surprisingly, 90 percent of all materials from a nuclear power plant can be recycled—compared to old wind and solar platforms, which generate millions of tons of waste

[haweemwho]

Again measuring with different standards. Depending on the design of a typical wind turbine, you can recycle 90-95% of those as well. And that's without a prime design criterion of maximizing recyclability, which could be mandated by law and then you'd achieve close to 100%.

The sentence is just as disingenuous as the initial sentence that I criticized.

[croutonwagon]

My biggest issue with these proposals is one that is at the heart of the documentary here and put pretty succinctly:

https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/documentaries/containmen...

How can we contain or dispose of some of the deadliest, most long-lasting substances ever produced? How to we ensure it lasts well beyond the possibility of our civilization currently and mark it in such a way that its clear to others its dangerous. Without those answers I am not sure how we can argue its better/safer.

[the_mungler]

The story gets better here when you consider that most "waste" can actually be reused (93% of uranium fuel rods used in LWRs could be recycled). Also consider, more radioactive materials (the parts we can't currently recycle, outside of some exotic hypothetical reactor designs) have shorter half lives, and so aren't a problem for as long.

The best containment proposal I've seen is deep geological disposal.

Also consider, making fuel rods removes some radioactivity from the environment, so if you change the requirements from "keep all byproducts contained forever" to "keep all byproducts contained until radiation levels are no worse than where we got it from" the problem becomes more tractable.

[Gwypaas]

In mythical breeder reactors that, which all the built ones have been even less economical than regular PWRs.

[the_mungler]

No, I'm talking about recycling fuel rods for use in our current nuclear reactors. I'm fuzzy on the details, but a fuel rod becomes unusable way before all the uranium is used up because of a build up of "nuclear poisons" which interfere with fission in the reactor. You can also get some plutonium when recycling, which can also be used in a LWR.

I'm not talking about exotic breeder reactor designs, or molten salt reactors. France has been recycling fuel rods for some time now. The U.S. just prohibits this due to proliferation concerns.

Edit: breeder reactors are usually more about being able to use other less rare elements for fuel, like thorium, or being able to use more common isotopes of uranium. Yes, they often propose using recycled waste to "kick start" the breeding process, but they're not needed to recycle fuel rods.

[joshjob42]

Actually you can reprocess fuel rods. Typical rods are ~5% U235 at start with the rest U238, and over time most of the U235 gets burned up and turned into fission products. But you still often end up with ~1% U235 and some other stuff like plutonium or other actinides that could get burned up if it weren't for the fission products poisoning the reactor.

Japan and France reprocess the fuel, stripping out all the fission products but keeping the actinides (U235 and U238 and other fertile/fissile isotopes) then adding back in U235 and U238 to fill it out to ~5% fissile and 95% fertile material again. Then you put the rod back in a reactor.

This isn't as efficient a use of natural uranium as a breeder but it does make it the case that the only actual radioactive material you have to deal with waste-wise is the fission products. Everything else keeps going back into a reactor until it's burned up, or is U238 which is harmless (it's 99.3% of what we pull out of the ground and so could just get put back into the ground).

The fission products are nasty but that also means they decay very fast and become totally harmless (ie less radioactive than the original uranium ore) in ~300 years. We can embed them in a glass block, which renders them inert chemically and pretty impervious to leaching if exposed to water, etc. It's then easy to manage them until they're harmless (you can do whatever you want with them; the volume of material is not very high, and it's quite easy to shield against it).

France, for instance, can store the fission products from 1 tonne of spent fuel in 110L of glass, (see https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/...) which corresponds in modern reactors (45GWd/tonne of spent fuel) to ~10GWh of thermal energy produced per liter of vitrified glass. By comparison, gasoline has an energy density of ~8.5kWh/L, so ~1.2 million times higher for the glass waste than unburned gasoline (coal etc is similar).

If the US ran 100% on nuclear for all energy (needing maybe 3TWe, 10TWh-th) and reprocessed our spent fuel, we'd produce around 24m^3 of vitrified glass per day, and its maximal volume would be ~2.7e6 m^3, or roughly 1 square mile one meter deep, to run the entirety of the US forever with nuclear power (that's 300 years of production, by the end of which the fission products are less radioactive than the original ore, so we can just dump any 300-year-old glass in the ocean or something and it's totally fine, can't harm anything).

Is that a lot of waste? I guess. But we burn that much gasoline in the US every 2 days, and the products of that just get dumped straight into the air. This stuff is solid and just sits there not doing much of anything except make some heat, then becomes harmless glass we can dump wherever. Pretty good deal imo.

[godelski]

While I agree about your conclusion (propaganda) I disagree about your metrics.

First, there are no sources of energy that are carbon free, only those who's energy production does not result in carbon emissions. This is why we say zero "net" emissions and why so many are working on sequestration methods (reforestation, soil management, natural sequestration, artificial sequestration). All your arguments are universal and not unique to nuclear, renewables, nor fossil fuels.

Second, the "and" in the thesis is important. The line did not make the claim that renewables are not carbon-free, but rather that of zero-emission generators, renewables are insufficient to power the grid alone.

Reading the article, it isn't too bad. There's a clear bias and ignores some aspects, it isn't too different from any other opinion piece. It at least isn't making the absurd argument that nuclear should be even the dominant producer of energy. I think the author would agree that renewables play an important role in our future of energy but they are making the argument to not take nuclear off the table and trying to convince others (aka propaganda) with an exaggerated and incomplete argument.

I agree that the article is deserving of criticism but I think we need to be a bit more specific. I also agree that the article is propaganda, but I do not agree that just because something is propaganda that it can be trivially dismissed. The word is too vague and encompasses all discussions where politics is part of the discussion. The word is like "conspiracy", common usage does not reflect the actual definition and is often used to dismiss a claim rather than address it.

Propaganda:

> information, ̶e̶s̶p̶e̶c̶i̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶a̶ ̶b̶i̶a̶s̶e̶d̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶m̶i̶s̶l̶e̶a̶d̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶n̶a̶t̶u̶r̶e̶, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.

[zackees]

The same thing can be said of solar panels and wind turbines.

The truth is that the once the power plant is built it generates clean power for decades. That power can then be used to power things like building new power plants.

[haweemwho]

> The truth is that the once the power plant is built it generates clean power for decades.

That is not the truth. The typical fuel cycle in fission plants is 3-6 years.

[UncleEntity]

> The whole process is definitely not "carbon-free".

How do you think those windmill parts and solar panels get from the manufacturers to the end users?

I personally don’t see solar and wind able to provide enough energy to electrify an entire nation’s fleet of freight haulers. Nuclear, maybe — assuming they build a bunch of little plants so a truck can “refuel” in the middle Wyoming away from large populations.

Maybe Wyoming isn’t the best example as it’s always windy there but the point stands.

[haweemwho]

I did address your first remark in the end of my comment:

> All those factors are usually brought up in detail for things like solar and wind plants. It's just disingenuous not to count them for nuclear power.

I did not talk about how much energy is provided or what to do about freight haulers.

[UncleEntity]

I honestly believe that most of the carbon calculations come from the pro-renewable folks to promote whatever pet project they’re on about. Nobody seriously considering building a nuclear power plant is going to care about some “externalities” amortized over its 50-75 year lifetime.

[haweemwho]

> I honestly believe that most of the carbon calculations come from the pro-renewable folks to promote whatever pet project they’re on about.

Sounds like reflection to me, if anything.

[runarberg]

Google the author, who he works for, and some of the stuff he has written in the past, I think describing this a propaganda is actually giving this an easy way out.

[colordrops]

Right, conflict of interest is more like it.

[nazgulnarsil]

Uranium extraction can be electrified. You're the one spreading an obviously mistaken view.

[korroziya]

Most pro-renewables news articles are disingenuous at best, or propaganda.

[haweemwho]

Even if that's true, it's hard to criticize while doing the same thing.