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deleted by creator
Well yeah, it’s a service. Expecting profit from necessary services is stupid and counter-productive but it makes a few people rich so of course it happens then you get memes like this.
Efficient use of resources still matters in a service-driven model.
The service in this case is to provide electricity - if other alternatives can provide the same system of electricity while using less resources in the process, then it is clearly preferable.
Externalized costs are a thing though. For instance, a coal plant spewing smoke (and radiation) costs everyone else money. A nuclear plant OTOH is usually responsible for dealing with all of its own shit. So it’s not always an apples to apples comparison to consider just the profitability of a project.
Absolutely. I don’t know that anyone is arguing for coal, except for Trump, but he’s also completely deranged.
Wind and solar have very little externalities, however. I’d even call their externalities trivial.
You do realize that they made nuclear recycling illegal in the USA right?
Which is ironic because nuclear waste is 97% pure fuel and the remaining 3% has other uses in medicine or have half-lives measured in minutes/hours or are stable (like gold)
I don’t know what this has to do with my post at all to be honest
It’s relevant because the less-resource-efficient oil industry has lobbied to make nuclear power artificially inefficient so that their industry can continue to exist.
I don’t think anyone is arguing for the oil industry.
Even if nuclear power plant byproducts were re-used at 100%, this would still decidedly not make nuclear energy more resource efficient than solar and wind.
this would still decidedly not make nuclear energy more resource efficient than solar and wind.
Maybe true only at small scale.
Solar and wind are nuclear powered. It is just very inefficiently being collected from the massive inefficient fusion reactor in the sky.
The things are very much run as private companies under the pretense of being profitable. The whole purpose of nukes (other than providing weapons grade material) is shoveling public money into private pockets.
Sounds like a political science and economics problem, don’t know why we needed to harass physics nerds about it
That does not sound universal, that sounds like an artifact of how things are done in your country.
Well you could just like, put all that tax money into decentralized renewable energy sources…that would also be profitable.
While not causing waste that cant be touched for the next million years.
While also lessening your dependence on nuclear fuel imports from political less than optimal nations or sources where the mining of it causes radio active dust to contaminate the population (Russia/USA and Australia).
Million year really , so you talk about the EXTREMELY small portion of nuclear waste ? Also why not both , why not nuclear AND solar / wind / hydro electricity? Because all those renewable energy sources are either limited (hydro electricity) or intermittent (solar / wind) And I know you dont care but Yes we can bury nuclear waste if we do it properly, there already were natural nuclear reactor on earth way before humanity and it didnt kill everything where they were.
here already were natural nuclear reactor on earth way before humanity and it didnt kill everything where they were.
Uhm, a river flowing thru low grade non enriched uranium deposit isnt a reactor in the way we build em today, like not even close.
“it’s not exactly the same, so the waste and radiation it produced naturally is irrelevant to this
cherry pickeddiscussion”
But that would enrich the oligarchy slightly more slowly! Won’t anybody think of the poor oligarchs?
deleted by creator
That said I think the part concerning waste from nuclear usines is a weak argument. It’s a relatively low volume, compared with the amount of electricity generated by those usines; and mining operations will be always a mess, no matter if you’re mining uranium (for nuclear), neodymium (for wind) or gallium and iridium (for solar).
Yes, but i would argue that when you mine neodymium or gallium once you then can recycle them for ever, while the same cant be said for uranium, in the long term that does make a big difference.
deleted by creator
Yeah you can reprocess nuclear fuel, but latest information i have on that is that its nowhere close making sense cost wise and mostly theoretical, i may be wrong on that tho.
When i yeet a solar cell or electric motor into a furnace its possible to refine basically everything, sure here and there a motor in a hair dryer will hit the landfill, but for industrial Motors/Generators is very very low.
This has got to be the single silliest take I have seen so far on this website, like holy shit this is pants-on-head silly
No, you couldn’t. You need base load. Countries like Denmark and Germany freeload on the base load of France, Sweden and Finland. And the moronic EU laws that currently enable this will eventually change to charge them for that.
Baseload has always been bullshit, see e.g. https://www.ceem.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/migration_files/ceem/publication-documents/MarkBaseloadFallacyANZSEE.pdf
It’s even more irrelevant now that battery storage can level out multi-day variability.
Great. Fucking build it then. Go ahead and build your non-hydro non-nuclear baseload, and I’ll shut the fuck up. Until then, I’ll call you out every time you say that nuclear and hydro is too expensive.
I’m in Australia, it’s already happening… https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/green-energy-is-shielding-australia-from-a-global-power-price-shock-20260608-p604sc.html
The article is paywalled, but just from the first snippet I don’t see how it’s relevant. If you’re replacing oil or coal based power generation with wind, then that’s awesome. But my assertion is that you do actually need to supplement that with something that can be tuned on the fly to keep a stable frequency in the grid. So far the experimental designs to do so with massive “batteries” have not looked very promising to me.
A rule of thumb is that you need a minimum of 20% of your grid to be tunable. That’s a hard minimum.
We’re literally about to turn on snowy hydro 2.0 for base load AND storage
Tell me, how are the french nuclear plants dealt with the last heat wave?
You’re deflecting because you don’t have a real argument to come up with. It’s true that global warming is having a negative impact on nuclear power in France, Switzerland and other places, but it doesn’t change the fact that you need some way to keep a stable voltage and frequency over your grid.
Removed by mod
Maybe learn to write correctly
Profitable wants to say it costs less to operate
how dare they wanting tip earn money
Did I miss something in the edited post, or are you just violating rule 1 out of spite?
Stop projecting lol
In Canada nuclear power generation is more about creating jobs by rebuilding 50 year old reactors than it is about producing cheap energy.
those people could also build and maintain windmills tho
And where there’s no wind?
Not many places where there’s no wind AND no solar within a reasonable distance of a large population…
Probably the same solution they used to make cars work without power cords.
why is there such a negative sentiment towards nuclear power? was it all oil and gas propaganda? or is there some truth
the man who decided to end german nuclear power production getting a seat in gazprom doesn’t inspire confidence in reality-based discussion of this subject
It was decided after Fukushima under Merkel.
Chernobyl, Fukushima, 3 Mile Island. Plus uranium is another non-renewable resource.
I’m still pro nuke as getting off fossil fuels is of the utmost urgency, but we will have to learn to live off wind and solar.
Ideally we figure out some sweet Nuclear Fusion.
Ah yes, the Fusion Reactors that are coming soon ™ (promised decades ago).
We need energy now, not at some unknown point in the future. Of course, resaeching this technology may make sense. But it does not help today and also not the next 20 years.
Yeah, putting your hopes / goals on a fusion powered future is foolish at this point.
But I def support (lots of) research into it.
Cold fusion has been 10 years away since early 1960s.
It will come right after the year of Desktop Linux (I wish)
Deskto pLinux is here, and it’s fine. I wish it was more popular but that doesn’t stop me from doing all my development, video editing, music , gaming on Linux.
So what has released more uncontrolled waste into the world, all the nukes including those, or the equivalent mega-wattage of all other human power generation? Our entire global community is FUCKED to the tune of hundreds of trillions of dollars from consequences of petro, while meanwhile very few of us are suffering from the effects of nuclear power generation. Nukes don’t replace solar and wind, they complement them.
The question was “why is public sentiment so against nuclear?” and they answered, with a note that they personally support it over fossil fuels.
I’d love to see a full production chain breakdown of disasters and their costs to clean up, for both fossil fuel and nuclear.
Most people’s issue is “ooh scary radiation!” without realizing you get more exposure to ionizing radiation by living near a coal fired power plant than a nuclear one. Fuck, you can take a swim in the reactor pool and if you’re under the surface away from the nuclear material, the water above you blocks the background radiation you’d be exposed to walking around on the surface.
Honestly I think renewables are at a place where it doesnt really matter much anymore. My perception has been that its propaganda, but I’m not really knowledgeable on the subject
There are new kinds of nuclear power plants based on safe Torum instead of uranium, Torum is more abundant, easy to manipulate and “non explosive” china has many reactors with this technology, meanwhile people in the west world is still deciding their gender.
Thorium
Because it only makes sense if you also need to run nuclear Submarines with ICBMs on them.
Basically Nuclear power has always been a military project thats just “Dual use” to offset the cost by having tax payers foot the bill for civilians plants.
Doing that makes the whole supply chain cheaper for the Military usage…cuz mining it only for military usage only would be hella expensive and harder to justify towards the population.
This is only for uranium and plutonium based nuclear power. There are others that don’t produce weapons grade byproducts. Helium 3 for instance and other versions of uranium. Also cobalt is an option.
As long as we want to pay for power, it can be profitable, in the sense that we pay what we need and people who work there are paid fairly as well.
If you ever need firefighters make sure you ONLY go to a profitable firehouse, or you’ll be a huge hypocrite. Either that or stupid.
Also make sure you ONLY drive on profitable roads, and ONLY use private delivery services. And ONLY during the day because of streetlights.
A public service should be a public service, not profitable from the basic level.
A public service should be a net profit in standards of living of the people who make up the public. And i proclaim that nuclear power plants dont do that in the long term. They drain the public out of resources that could have been invested in better solutions that dont come with the downsides of radio active waste products.
I’ll admit I don’t know much about the polluting effects of nuclear, but wouldn’t it be considered a net benefit in regards to the devastatingly expensive damage of climate change compared to burning coal and gas?
Nobody is comparing them to coal or gas for better alternatives already exist.
Sun isn’t profitable. We should just extinguish it.
Thats fusion tho
You never specified otherwise.
True
You’re in the comments trying to act like you’re more noble, but if your very first angle and the one you built your post on is about profitability then you’ve already lost. You made a strawman and are just mad that it was called out.
Yea, renewables would be better, for sure. Talk about that, then, if that’s what you really care about.
You have to get the people in somehow. And i was sick of ppl calling nuclear cheap solution to climate change when it clearly isnt, thence i choose the word profitable.
Even if this were true, would that be important nowadays? If it can push out climate change and make it into a problem to solve later (in case of fission). Fusion would be great though
It can’t. It takes WAY too long to build, and for what it is the whole work isn’t worth it.
The volume of renewables and batteries (Incl. Sodium-Ion, great tech for the grid) we can produce outpaces nuclear by a long shot, is safer, cleaner, available quicker, easier to install, easier to regulate (once the batteries are up, it’s a combo deal) and especially more “for the people” (you can carry and install smaller units of solar and wind anywhere).
I also thought nuclear (fission) made somewhat sense a few years ago, but it really doesn’t in any way shape or form. Countries who’re dead-set on nuclear such as France are already running into SO mamy problems. They’re building a huge financial pile of shit for the current and next generation to be fucked over by.
Why not do all of these things. Build nuclear power plants, do battery storage, do renewables, carbon capture, plant trees etc, etc, etc. if the goal is reverse, stabilize or slow climate change. There isn’t 1 silver bullet, we need to do all the things.
Because money is finite. There’s a good rationale for diversity of renewables, but at some point you have to look at the cost benefit analysis and let some ideas go. We could maybe harvest some energy from dropping gold bars into the Mariana trench, but it would take away money from better ideas.
In a cash based capitalists society yes. Time to take the step towards a non scarcity world!
Then resources and labour would be finite. You can’t just escape scarcity.
And anyone who confuses the problems with capitalism and currency is an idiot and their economic arguments should not be taken seriously.
I wasn’t talking about building new ones. I agree with that. But the ones that already exist shouldn’t be shut down until they are replaced by renewables.
If it can push out climate change and make it into a problem to solve later (in case of fission).
Pushing all the problems nuclear brings to the future is the exact same mistake past generations have done with fossil fuels.
If we don’t combat climate change now, we never will.
I wouldn’t say it is identical. Nuclear is far easier to solve. The waste is really not that impactful in comparison to climate change
This view on it is the exact reason why i made this meme, this shit has to stop its a tale propagated by the fissile fuel industry.
There has never been a reactor that produced more energy than it took to construct? You sure about that?
Otherwise this is a capitalism meme, not a science meme.
Economics is science too.
Economics is a human made concept, not a universal fact.
You would have been better off arguing it’s important because it’s math.
Science, language and logic are human made concepts too. It is not like science is uncovering universal truth that was already there, it is also mediated through human symbols just like economics. Even maths cannot be equated to universal facts. It only makes sense within our human symbology.
I do agree economics is the least worthwhile of all sciences. But the meme is about nuclear reactors too and they are sciency?
Economics is a human made concept, not a universal fact.
So are numbers and math.
To stay real here tho, i made this meme because i noticed the number of people in this sublemmy, who are thinking that nuclear power plants are a solution to climate change, is to damn high.
And i keep seeing them echoing tales that where seeded by the fissile fuel industry.
I get that from a physics nerds standpoint nuclear energy is “cool” but that dosent make it a good overall solution to the problems we facing.
Fossil fuels are only ‘profitable’ if you ignore the long-term environmental costs.
Nobody is defending Fossil fuels here.
you’re the one who made the focus on profits, thus comparing profitability of fossil fuels is completely reasonable.
Nobody is defending fossil fuels here.
Neither are most roads, sewers or hospitals, we are talking basic infrastructure here, whether it is profitable seems to me to be completely irrelevant.
And again, not a huge fan of nuclear power plants, but this argument is not one I hold against them.
Then you where not the target for this meme, please move along and have a good day.
Is this true? Because Holy shit this would be hilarious if it was.
You can cherry pick the numbers to show whatever you like.
Wikipedia has an article on the economics of nuclear power. To summarize: it’s expensive upfront. If you look at it from a pure commercial enterprise it’s not really worth it. If you look at it as decarbonizing the future it’s better.
Solar and wind is cheaper, but intermittent and it’s a question if we can wait for grid scale energy storage being viable before we cook ourselves.
it’s a question if we can wait for grid scale energy storage being viable before we cook ourselves.
Given the average time to build one single nuclear power plant, you should consider whether we have time to finish construction of one before we cook ourselves.
I would not put all my money on just one solution. I don’t know how many years away grid scale storage is. I hope it’s 1 year, I expect it’s a decade or more.
Besides, we had 6 consecutive weeks country wide harsh winter this year. Storing it over night, or over a few days of mild winds is feasible. 6 weeks of little to no sun, mild winds and high demand is eyepopping.
Nuclear power plants are ridiculously expensive to build.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_buildings
they also last decades and are cheap to run with extremely low carbon emissions
Any source for this significant claim?
The German ministry for Safety of nuclear energy (BASE) published an official statement that nuclear energy is not only unsafe, but also way too expensive:
There are studies by the Deutsches Insitut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW, German Institute of Economic Research) that show significant higher costs per kWh than other power sources:
At my company, we work together with the Gesellschaft für Endlagerung (BGE). These guys are responsible to find safe long time storage for nuclear waste. Spoiler: as of now, there is no such thing as safe long time storage.
The German energy provider Enbw claims costs per kWh to be as high as 0.49€ for nuclear energy, which is ridiculous high. And they did not even factor in the high costs of safe long time storage!
These guys are responsible to find safe long time storage for nuclear waste. Spoiler: as of now, there is no such thing as safe long time storage.
What do they say about Onkalo ?
Nothing, because they have only space for 6500 t high-level nuclear waste which is already reserved for Finnish nuclear waste, whereas Germany has like 17.000 t.
But with regards to the “no such thing as safe long term storage” comment?
Now I get what you mean. I should have phrased this better. I meant “no such thing as safe long term storage [could be determined in Germany yet]”. Which means, as of today, they could not find a safe location in Germany to build such a storage facility like Finland did.
Germany is densely populated and the ground/earth is mostly unsuited for long time storage.
I feel like the deeper truth highlighted here is that being pro-nuclear, or anti-anti-nuclear, is very much a “reddit” style opinion.
Whatever the actual truth is, that is. It seems to fall neatly into the “I know something and can make a ‘well actyooally’ argument about it” category without having expertise like being on top of the historical financial performance and context of the technology, about which I personally know nothing.
I am open to change my mind on this, but i never seen evidence for a single one that was profitable when you include development cost, maintenance, build back and disposal (and long term maintenance of disposal).
most of costs are costs of construction. french and koreans don’t seem discouraged and some plants in japan and china were built under budget. finland energy supply has large fraction of nuclear and they have extremely cheap electricity
The costs of construction and deconstruction are significant. You cannot just ignore them. That is useless cherry picking.
open to change my mind on this
OK, here’s a starting point https://youtu.be/cbeJIwF1pVY
Ok i gave this the benefit of the doubt and watched the whole video.
Things there where not included in the calculation:
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Cost of compensating for environmental destruction from uran mines (and health care costs for thost impacted by the radio active dust from them)
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Political cost of importing fissile fuel from other nations (importing from russia/usa gives russia/usa leverage over you wich then can get expensive in other parts of the economy)
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Cost at end of plant life cycle, aka building it back once the structure has aged beyond what maintenance can fix
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Cost of storing and maintaining radio active waste for the next few million years
The video also only compares those selective picked numbers to fossil fuels and not things like solar or wind.
This video did not change my opinion, but thanks for suggesting it.
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Just like any military.
From Wikipedia
In 2019, the US EIA revised the levelized cost of electricity from new advanced nuclear power plants going online in 2023 to be $0.0775/kWh before government subsidies, using a regulated industry 4.3% cost of capital (WACC - pre-tax 6.6%) over a 30-year cost recovery period.[63] Financial firm Lazard also updated its levelized cost of electricity report costing new nuclear at between $0.118/kWh and $0.192/kWh using a commercial 7.7% cost of capital (WACC - pre-tax 12% cost for the higher-risk 40% equity finance and 8% cost for the 60% loan finance) over a 40-year lifetime.[64]
The article discusses why that number is probably flawed and relies on cherry picked data, but it seems somewhat close to profitability. Assuming theyre above with a cost of electricity of ~$0.20/kWh (already cheaper than some of US) should be viable, yeah?
40-year lifetime
That dosent include the cost of maintaining the radioactive trash for the next few million years.
First of all, go fuck yourself. Now that we are reay for a nice and constructive discussion,
Maintaining trash has a negligible cost.
Nobody gaf about costs when the whole ecosystem we know is at risk
It will be much cheaper to replace fossil fuels by nuclear because one of them is putting the whole biosphere at risk while the other is benign
Now le me reiterate, take the most painful object you can find and shove it up your ass. Half of the points you made in this comment section contradict themselves, you are a capitalist shittling. ;)
Assuming theyre above with a cost of electricity of ~$0.20/kWh
Can we assume that, after factoring in the actual portion that the accounting says goes to the power plant itself? The economics of utility scale electricity includes both generation and transmission, so you can’t just take that retail price and assume it all goes to the power plant that produced the electricity.
Wholesale prices tend to stay below 10 cents in most parts of the country, although it sometimes spikes when grids are under strain. I think that’s probably a more fair assumption of how much the power plants themselves are paid for their production.
Chernobyl. It’s so profitable, it keeps on giving even half a century later.
Whomever drew this, is a master at dynamics and comedic timing. I fucking love the energy in every line and every panel.
