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Removing Carbon From the Air Enters Its Awkward Teen Years
(www.bloomberg.com)
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this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
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Why aim for shutting down nuclear power plants? The carbon emissions per kwh is the lowest out of all methods we have. Even with solar/wind there's a carbon cost from the materials and maintenence and from what I remember that cost per kwh is higher than nuclear over a long enough time period.
Fine. Apart from the drama of designing, managing the plant, disposal, storage and guarding of residue, waste of mining and preparing the fuel and being a constant target for assholes (e.g. ZNPP), I have no major problem with nuclear power.
Comparing with most sources today, it's one of the cleanest and most reliable, but it's not much cheaper than wind/solar if you account for the construction/maintenance/safety/insurance/dismantlement costs (last time I checked it was 0.06-0.15 per kWh).
Still, I placed it really far down in the list, because it's perfect for baseload power and should be the last of our concerns and the last option we ditch when addressing climate change (looking at you, Merkel).
PS: on second thought, everybody also vastly underestimates the massive cost of disposing and recycling wind turbines and solar panels...yea :/
Yeah if we want power at all there's a heavy carbon cost to it regardless where it comes from. Nuclear from what I understand is more compatible with our preexisting electricity networks because like coal it has big chunks of metal spinning to store energy giving the ability to react incredibly fast to changes in the network. Battery banks may be able to do this quick response, but the longevity of rare earth mineral based solutions although fancy has me concerned. Very little can degrade with a massive flywheel and the losses from nuclear to get it up and spinning would be far lower than say spinning it with motors as an energy store.
Long term I agree though, the complexities around nuclear don't paint it as our saviour. Maybe for now, and probably the next hundred years, leaning into nuclear is at least harm reduction