Solar power + battery? Or hydropower? That way there won’t be, well, nuclear waste at the end? You know, the kind of waste that’s highly radioactive? The waste that doesn’t have a plan to be safely stored away for tens of thousands of years?
I can see why people have been scared by the waste, but it’s really not a concern. There are long term storage solutions, but they just haven’t been implemented in many places. Kyle Hill actually just did a video on one the other day.
The waste just isn’t a big enough concern to have put the resources into long term storage yet. The radiation level around the casks is so low that you can be around them and hug them without concern. Flying in a plane is more concerning. This argument is mostly fear mongering so we don’t phase out dirty energy. We could have thousands of reactors running, but they’ve made us scared of the solution so we don’t replace them.
It’s not even the waste, that we still need to learn how to recycle. Or the apparent incapacity of any operator to reliably follow the theoretical safety guidelines…
If we put all our effort into a nuclear boom today, the plants will only arrive a decade or two after the planet has been cooked, it won’t be enough to replace anything, and we will have to learn entire new ways to mine the fuel in a few decades before the stuff we can get easily is gone.
Meanwhile we are about half-way done with renewables, and the nuclear fans keep denying that…
I’m a fan of both, but fully accept that fission is now too late to be useful. We also have fusion right on the tipping point of viability. That could likely fill the use cases of fusion quite well, with far less issues.
FYI, nuclear produces 3 sorts of nuclear waste. High activity is nasty, but short lived. Put it in a pool for a few years and it decays away. Low grade is the stuff like lab waste and contaminated pipes. You don’t really want it going in normal landfill, but it’s not going to kill anyone with radiation (heavy metal toxicity is another matter). It’s only the last type, medium activity that is problematic. It lasts a long time, while still putting out enough radiation to cause potential problems. Unfortunately, older “power” plants, were actually bomb factories. They were intended to make plutonium, and so produce a lot more of the medium activity waste than they could.
Forget it, i tried that argument a bunch of times. Also, you are depended on other countries, big plants are an easy target for a drone with some explosives, cost of nuclear is rising while all others are down, etc. People want to believe in a magic, water heating rock
Yes, but you need something with turbines to regulate power flow during off-peak. Hydropower can do that in some places, but not everywhere. That’s the gap that nuclear should be aiming for (replace coal plants as minimum power regulator)
Coal and nuclear re very bad for regulating power spikes because they are inflexible and can’t be turned on or off very fast. That’s why most country’s build gas as an intermediary power source right now
That’s why it’s for baseline power. No one is claiming it handles spikes. We have solutions for that though. Solar and wind also obviously don’t handle spikes. Many types of batteries do, and they don’t care where the power came from.
Rotational energy is actually a pretty good battery, which has no conversion cost with nuclear, since rotational energy is what it produces with the turbine. You spin your flywheel up, and you drain power from it as you need it. Chemical batteries also work, with the conversation cost that all sources pay equally.
Germany opened a new battery storage just this week. It has so much capacity that it can power a city like Leipzig over a night completely. And there are plans to upgrade it from 500 megawatthours to 800 megawatthours before 2026 ends. That’s not just remote cabin scale to me.
Hydro, although great in many ways, causes immense ecological devastation and is not suitable for all places.
Okay, here i gotta agree with you.
Nuclear also has issues but a mix of wind+solar on a base of hydro+nuclear is probably the ideal.
“Issues”. Yeah. The deadly waste nuclear plants produce is just a minor “issue”. And I’m not even talking about safety in general (Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island).
I’m not even necessarily against nuclear, but this is a weird argument. How many times have solar panels blown up and made entire cities uninhabitable for decades, and how many are there total in use ever?
The percentage of failures of nuclear power plants may be low, but the fallout (literally) is incredibly devastating.
I’m sure batteries will play an important role in the future, but it’s not significant today and I don’t see any indication of this changing rapidly in a meaningful way. I’d love to be wrong though.
Regarding the issues with nuclear power, the ecological impact is far better than hydro and health impact/deaths is also significantly better. I’m not trying to badmouth hydro here, but I think it’s important to be fair and acknowledge that on those two issues (ecological impact, human health) nuclear has a better track record.
For context, that’s growth, not total capacity. And after covid one would suspect ppl would understand exponential growth and to understand what that means for a business Modell $$$
Also we don’t need capacity for the whole output of a year.
That doesn’t change the fact that battery storage is a business case with exponential growth and is just taking off while nuclear power is expensive, takes long time to plan and build and all the new fancy stuff is still hypothetical and it’s not certain it will ever take off in regard of recent bankruptcy’s in the smr field
Yes, like those. Your three examples show how benign nuclear power is, factoting in the absolute worst of circumstances and most ridiculous levels of incompetence.
Maybe you should do your own homework before linking Wikipedia at me. Nuclear is safer than hydro in terms of human casualties per energy produced as well as per land mass destroyed, and if you want to make a counter-argument or add any other variable the burden of proof is on you.
Solar power + battery? Or hydropower? That way there won’t be, well, nuclear waste at the end? You know, the kind of waste that’s highly radioactive? The waste that doesn’t have a plan to be safely stored away for tens of thousands of years?
I can see why people have been scared by the waste, but it’s really not a concern. There are long term storage solutions, but they just haven’t been implemented in many places. Kyle Hill actually just did a video on one the other day.
The waste just isn’t a big enough concern to have put the resources into long term storage yet. The radiation level around the casks is so low that you can be around them and hug them without concern. Flying in a plane is more concerning. This argument is mostly fear mongering so we don’t phase out dirty energy. We could have thousands of reactors running, but they’ve made us scared of the solution so we don’t replace them.
It’s not even the waste, that we still need to learn how to recycle. Or the apparent incapacity of any operator to reliably follow the theoretical safety guidelines…
If we put all our effort into a nuclear boom today, the plants will only arrive a decade or two after the planet has been cooked, it won’t be enough to replace anything, and we will have to learn entire new ways to mine the fuel in a few decades before the stuff we can get easily is gone.
Meanwhile we are about half-way done with renewables, and the nuclear fans keep denying that…
I’m a fan of both, but fully accept that fission is now too late to be useful. We also have fusion right on the tipping point of viability. That could likely fill the use cases of fusion quite well, with far less issues.
FYI, nuclear produces 3 sorts of nuclear waste. High activity is nasty, but short lived. Put it in a pool for a few years and it decays away. Low grade is the stuff like lab waste and contaminated pipes. You don’t really want it going in normal landfill, but it’s not going to kill anyone with radiation (heavy metal toxicity is another matter). It’s only the last type, medium activity that is problematic. It lasts a long time, while still putting out enough radiation to cause potential problems. Unfortunately, older “power” plants, were actually bomb factories. They were intended to make plutonium, and so produce a lot more of the medium activity waste than they could.
Forget it, i tried that argument a bunch of times. Also, you are depended on other countries, big plants are an easy target for a drone with some explosives, cost of nuclear is rising while all others are down, etc. People want to believe in a magic, water heating rock
Yes, but you need something with turbines to regulate power flow during off-peak. Hydropower can do that in some places, but not everywhere. That’s the gap that nuclear should be aiming for (replace coal plants as minimum power regulator)
Coal and nuclear re very bad for regulating power spikes because they are inflexible and can’t be turned on or off very fast. That’s why most country’s build gas as an intermediary power source right now
That’s why it’s for baseline power. No one is claiming it handles spikes. We have solutions for that though. Solar and wind also obviously don’t handle spikes. Many types of batteries do, and they don’t care where the power came from.
Rotational energy is actually a pretty good battery, which has no conversion cost with nuclear, since rotational energy is what it produces with the turbine. You spin your flywheel up, and you drain power from it as you need it. Chemical batteries also work, with the conversation cost that all sources pay equally.
Doesn’t Sweden or someplace have a giant abandoned salt mine to store a thousand years of nuclear waste somewhere?
Not that I’m in favor of building nuclear anymore, we should’ve done that in the sixties.
Finland., although many places have looked at old mines for this purpose. It’s a fairly obvious solution.
Crazy idea but what if we launch waste into space
Sure, until you oopsie a nuclear waste filled rocket and spread it over half a continent.
Solar+battery is not an actual thing. We’re talking society scale here, not remote cabin.
Hydro, although great in many ways, causes immense ecological devastation and is not suitable for all places.
Nuclear also has issues but a mix of wind+solar on a base of hydro+nuclear is probably the ideal.
https://www.pv-magazine.de/2026/08/13/batteriespeicher-mit-rund-500-megawattstunden-kapazitaet-in-sachsen-anhalt-eingeweiht/
Germany opened a new battery storage just this week. It has so much capacity that it can power a city like Leipzig over a night completely. And there are plans to upgrade it from 500 megawatthours to 800 megawatthours before 2026 ends. That’s not just remote cabin scale to me.
Okay, here i gotta agree with you.
“Issues”. Yeah. The deadly waste nuclear plants produce is just a minor “issue”. And I’m not even talking about safety in general (Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island).
You named 3 incidents. Now name all nuclear power plants ever. Compare the numbers.
I’m not even necessarily against nuclear, but this is a weird argument. How many times have solar panels blown up and made entire cities uninhabitable for decades, and how many are there total in use ever?
The percentage of failures of nuclear power plants may be low, but the fallout (literally) is incredibly devastating.
I’m sure batteries will play an important role in the future, but it’s not significant today and I don’t see any indication of this changing rapidly in a meaningful way. I’d love to be wrong though.
Regarding the issues with nuclear power, the ecological impact is far better than hydro and health impact/deaths is also significantly better. I’m not trying to badmouth hydro here, but I think it’s important to be fair and acknowledge that on those two issues (ecological impact, human health) nuclear has a better track record.
https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/global-battery-storage-capacity-additions-2010-2023
Well fortunately you are wrong
For context, global energy output is 30k TWh/year. That’s T for tera.
For context, that’s growth, not total capacity. And after covid one would suspect ppl would understand exponential growth and to understand what that means for a business Modell $$$
Also we don’t need capacity for the whole output of a year.
For even more context, the annual growth in electricity output is about 5x the addition of battery capacity.
That doesn’t change the fact that battery storage is a business case with exponential growth and is just taking off while nuclear power is expensive, takes long time to plan and build and all the new fancy stuff is still hypothetical and it’s not certain it will ever take off in regard of recent bankruptcy’s in the smr field
Like Fukushima, three miles island or Tschernobyl?
Yes, like those. Your three examples show how benign nuclear power is, factoting in the absolute worst of circumstances and most ridiculous levels of incompetence.
Oh, there are so many more incidents.
Maybe you should do your own homework before linking Wikipedia at me. Nuclear is safer than hydro in terms of human casualties per energy produced as well as per land mass destroyed, and if you want to make a counter-argument or add any other variable the burden of proof is on you.
Sure it is, buddy
Grid battery storage is booming right now, one of the biggest scaling technologies right now. No cabins involved.
This guy has no idea what he’s talking about.