[blueferret]

While I agree that it would make a lot of sense, as another user commented, it's too much of a political football. More's the pity. Nuclear is an incredibly useful power generation method. With current tech, it would take much less time to stand up than it used to.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

There are legitimate technical/logistical issues. Nuke plants require alot of water for cooling, have to be sited at a river or lake or something, and the ambient temperature of that water determines whether or not it is sufficient for cooling needs. Even when this is the case, the plant can often raise temperatures enough with its discharge to murder native species living in it downstream of discharge. Like with hydro, there's only so many places nukes can go. Even without nimbyism and politics, nukes may not scale. Depends on how power hungry the next few generations become.

[HDgreg]

There are definite environmental concerns. Just this morning there's an article about how rising sea levels in the Marshall Islands and melting ice on Greenland will expose nuclear waste. As for heating rivers, this is absolutely true, but with this said, if the plants are small then the discharge will be small, relatively speaking. Also, to the point about location, it is as much about the efficiency of the turbines as it is the temperature of the water. Combining nuclear power with solar updraft towers might be solution.

[voisin]

Wondering why the heat isn’t harvested for something useful like district heating? Too far from cities I assume, but just discharging hot water seems like a waste of energy.

[ToucanLoucan]

Not to mention we still don't have a method for dealing with the waste they produce. Beyond the effects to the environment directly around it, then we have to find a deep hole to bury the spent fuel.

[adregan]

To add to this:

Nuclear advocates would do well to keep up to date with the Indian Point decommissioning in order to propose solutions to the knottiest problem for nuclear: the plants are owned by corporations who do bad things.

If you want nuclear to prosper, there needs to be solutions to issues like a company announcing it will discharge nuclear waste into the Hudson River with no regard as to how it might affect local economies or residents.

I think nuclear energy is quite a powerful tool in our quest to decarbonize, but I have very little trust in the stewardship of for profit companies who have very little regard for the lifetimes of the materials when they live and die by the quarter (relatedly see PFAs, micro plastics, &c.).

[nec4b]

Chernobyl was owned by the state. I don't really see how nuclear plants owned by corporations is the knottiest problem.

[adregan]

If the public doesn’t trust the organization that controls the nuclear waste, they will stand in the way of new nuclear plants.

Like I said, take a look at Indian Point. There was an uproar about releasing the nuclear waste into the river (on an accelerated timeline), an action which is now prohibited by law.

As a result, there are holding tanks full of radioactive water that no one knows what to do with and that pose a greater threat should they leak. There is public distrust for the company decommissioning the plant, and they are severely hamstrung (how _do_ they get that waste out of there when they can’t transport it anywhere?).

I should note, I’m not really looking to argue state vs non-state ownership. I’m saying that someone needs some real solutions to these types of problems before nuclear could be built at scale.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

> Nuclear advocates would do well to keep up to date with the Indian Point decommissioning in order to propose solutions to the knottiest problem for nuclear: the plants are owned by corporations who do bad things.

I may be a libertarian of sorts, but I'd have no problem with nuke plants being nationalized for other reasons, and if that would assuage worries about corporate malfeasance, so much the better.

[credit_guy]

> Indian Point decommissioning

Wait, what?

The Indian Point reactors 2 and 3 were decommissioned in 2020 and 2021 because of pure political reasons. For some reason Andrew Cuomo wanted them shut down.

> corporations who do bad things.

You know that governors can do bad things too, right?

[adregan]

There is a difference between shutting down a plant and decommissioning. I’m solely focusing on the company cleaning up the mess that politics caused.