When compared to solar, wind, and fossil fuels, is nuclear energy the cleanest source of energy?

[Christian Sonic Fan]

I hear claim from others that nuclear energy is the cleanest and it does the least amount of damage to the environment. Is this true? I'm not one to believe that there is a prexisitisting notion that human activity leads to supposed "climate change" as the planet does this natural process anyways, but assuming if there was, wouldn't nuclear energy be the most efficient in order to slow down climate change?

Moreover, why do people go on about wind and solar? They aren't very reliable as you can't store them and to make the machines required to capture wind and sun, that requires millions of dollars in supplies. Given, millions of dollars would be required to build a nuclear reactor, but at least this power source is constant. Wind isn't constant and the sun doesn't always shine and coal power is required to fill in the gaps where the sun isn't shining and where the wind isn't blowing such as the case with Germany. Wind and solar look good on paper but they are just too expensive and unreliable.

Videos to back up my claim:

Your thoughts?

Edit: I completely forgot hydroelectric. That could be also a great alternative!

 

[Carl Emerson]

why do people go on about wind and solar? They aren't very reliable as you can't store them

In my country we have about 75% renewable energy.

Wind and solar power, is back fed into the national grid off-setting the hydro lake levels which act as a big battery for the whole country. So yes - we are storing the wind and solar power at little cost.

There are plenty of good reasons for solar and wind power. The solar panels typically return the power taken to make them over a two year period. Commercial wind turbines pay for themselves may times over. Being an Island nation near the Southern Ocean we have a high wind resource.

Hydro remains our main source but solar and wind can be very profitable.

Nuclear power often uses sea water for cooling - the nuclear power stations around the Swedish coast have raised sea temperatures considerably.

 

[Christian Sonic Fan]

In my country we have about 75% renewable energy.

Wind and solar power, is back fed into the national grid off-setting the hydro lake levels which act as a big battery for the whole country. So yes - we are storing the wind and solar power at little cost.

There are plenty of good reasons for solar and wind power. The solar panels typically return the power taken to make them over a two year period. Commercial wind turbines pay for themselves may times over. Being an Island nation near the Southern Ocean we have a high wind resource.

Hydro remains our main source but solar and wind can be very profitable.

I actually forgot about hydro. I know hydro is very helpful and it is constant.

 

[chevyontheriver]

Your thoughts?

If you have established hydro power that's a keeper. But building new hydro is pretty much impossible due to environmental concerns. Hydro can supply base load or peaking power.

Nuclear has lots of problems in the mining and purification of fuel. With that considered, it's not that environmentally friendly or cost effective. Then there's Three Mile Island and Chernoble and that Japan thing to contend with. And then there is what to do with the spent fuel - for thousands of years. In the USA it is essentially cost prohibitive to build a new nuclear plant. No utility is going to do that. But what would be worth looking as is Thorium reactors. Less risk, plentiful.

Solar prices have come way down as efficiency has gone up. It does have a future.

Wind has been reliable in conjunction with power storage for a long time. Marcellus Jacobs built a windmill in about 1955 that was sent to Antartica and it powered the US South Pole facility for decades in the most hostile environment possible. It's reliable - if the wind blows. Teamed with hydro power it's essentially perfect.

The best thing to do with nuclear power would be to finish out the fuel cycle and decommission them one by one. Use the spent fuel to generate heat for desalinization. That would use up the fuel relatively fast and provide fresh water to lots of places that really need it.

The very best thing is increased efficiency. Converting incandescent bulbs to LEDs, more efficient electric motors, better thermodynamic efficiency, better insulation, plugging leaks. All of this means less power needing to be generated. It's been the smartest move for over 50 years. It's why utility companies subsidize all manner of efficiency improvement. It costs them less than to have to produce the power needed for inefficiency.

 

[Christian Sonic Fan]

If you have established hydro power that's a keeper. But building new hydro is pretty much impossible due to environmental concerns. Hydro can supply base load or peaking power.

Nuclear has lots of problems in the mining and purification of fuel. With that considered, it's not that environmentally friendly or cost effective. Then there's Three Mile Island and Chernoble and that Japan thing to contend with. And then there is what to do with the spent fuel - for thousands of years. In the USA it is essentially cost prohibitive to build a new nuclear plant. No utility is going to do that. But what would be worth looking as is Thorium reactors. Less risk, plentiful.

Solar prices have come way down as efficiency has gone up. It does have a future.

Wind has been reliable in conjunction with power storage for a long time. Marcellus Jacobs built a windmill in about 1955 that was sent to Antartica and it powered the US South Pole facility for decades in the most hostile environment possible. It's reliable - if the wind blows. Teamed with hydro power it's essentially perfect.

The best thing to do with nuclear power would be to finish out the fuel cycle and decommission them one by one. Use the spent fuel to generate heat for desalinization. That would use up the fuel relatively fast and provide fresh water to lots of places that really need it.

The very best thing is increased efficiency. Converting incandescent bulbs to LEDs, more efficient electric motors, better thermodynamic efficiency, better insulation, plugging leaks. All of this means less power needing to be generated. It's been the smartest move for over 50 years. It's why utility companies subsidize all manner of efficiency improvement. It costs them less than to have to produce the power needed for inefficiency.

Interesting! Ok!

Could one combine LED technology and hydroelectric to make for even greater light and less energy production? If a dam turns a set of wheels which generates power then would this be useful?

 

[Basil the Great]

It is not the cleanest, due to the terrible waste that it leaves behind and thanks to Harry Reid killing the Yucca Mountain project, we are still in a mess regarding what to do with the waste.

 

[Aussie Pete]

I hear claim from others that nuclear energy is the cleanest and it does the least amount of damage to the environment. Is this true? I'm not one to believe that there is a prexisitisting notion that human activity leads to supposed "climate change" as the planet does this natural process anyways, but assuming if there was, wouldn't nuclear energy be the most efficient in order to slow down climate change?

Moreover, why do people go on about wind and solar? They aren't very reliable as you can't store them and to make the machines required to capture wind and sun, that requires millions of dollars in supplies. Given, millions of dollars would be required to build a nuclear reactor, but at least this power source is constant. Wind isn't constant and the sun doesn't always shine and coal power is required to fill in the gaps where the sun isn't shining and where the wind isn't blowing such as the case with Germany. Wind and solar look good on paper but they are just too expensive and unreliable.

Videos to back up my claim:

Your thoughts?

Nuclear power is a good base load option. It is horribly expensive to build and maintain. It's reasonably safe, but if it does go wrong it can be catastrophic. Wind and solar can be useful alternatives if used with batteries, as is happening in South Australia. Without batteries, they create a lot of problems for the grid.

Every solution has advantages and disadvantages. The ultimate solution is fusion power. It's been the future of energy production since Einstein' s theory was developed. When/if we get fusion power, it may solve all the world's energy problems. I'm not holding my breath.

 

[Aussie Pete]

Interesting! Ok!

Could one combine LED technology and hydroelectric to make for even greater light and less energy production? If a dam turns a set of wheels which generates power then would this be useful?

Most dams have associated power generation unless they are just ponds for irrigation or similar. One way of producing power is to pump water into a high level dam when plenty of power is available, such as daylight solar, and let gravity drive turbines from water released at peak demand or at night. It's a costly but low maintenance solution.

 

[chevyontheriver]

Interesting! Ok!

Could one combine LED technology and hydroelectric to make for even greater light and less energy production? If a dam turns a set of wheels which generates power then would this be useful?

Yes. Reduce the demand rationally through greater efficiency and then figure out a storage system. Efficiency is the absolutely greenest solution. Hydro power is good for that but you can't just build dams anymore. The trend is actually to reduce dams to restore habitat. My opinion is that dams should be retained for use with rare exceptions because they are already built, the habitat damage is already done, and keeping them as part of the energy balance represents the greener choice. Others will disagree.

Nuclear has problems of mining and refining the fuel (seldom addressed), of risk of a blowout (three BIG ones now), of plain old security, of decommissioning the plant when it's useful life is over, and of what to do with the spent fuel for literally hundreds of thousands of years. That is currently an unsolvable problem, and when you consider civilization itself is only about 6000 years old, it is naive to think we can plan for spent nuclear fuel to be safe for hundreds of thosands of years. Nuclear power is crazy.

 

[Radagast]

Edit: I completely forgot hydroelectric. That could be also a great alternative!

With hydroelectric, you can use wind and solar to pump the water uphill again, so that a hydroelectric dam also works like a giant battery.

 

[Radagast]

In my country we have about 75% renewable energy.

With heavy use of hydro (that's the only renewable baseload power):

Wind and solar power, is back fed into the national grid off-setting the hydro lake levels which act as a big battery for the whole country. So yes - we are storing the wind and solar power at little cost.

Oh, I hadn't realised you had mentioned that already.

 

[Radagast]

Wind and solar can be useful alternatives if used with batteries, as is happening in South Australia. Without batteries, they create a lot of problems for the grid.

Since the batteries in South Australia can only store a few minutes worth of power, wind and solar in that state are already creating a lot of problems for the grid.

An additional problem is that grid synchronisation suffers (potentially causing total grid failure) if you have less than about 50% of power coming from traditional generators (coal, oil, nuclear, hydro). There are solutions, but they are expensive.

 

[chevyontheriver]

Since the batteries in South Australia can only store a few minutes worth of power, wind and solar in that state are already creating a lot of problems for the grid.

An additional problem is that grid synchronisation suffers (potentially causing total grid failure) if you have less than about 50% of power coming from traditional generators (coal, oil, nuclear, hydro). There are solutions, but they are expensive.

One can compress air, or use batteries, but hydro is the best for evening out the solar/wind irregularities. Hard in a country with so much desert.

 

[Sophrosyne]

The problem with batteries is the current battery technology is inadequate and too expensive to be a good solution as when the batteries age they have to be constantly replaced often enough that the cost adds up. There are nuclear plant designs that are a lot better and safer than ever that even can use spent fuel from older plants to generate power essentially "eating" them up but the cost of the plants along with distrust from those in power and the safety concerns (terrorism) make for a big hill to climb to get them started in the US. Wind power is good but I think that it is overrated and may not stand on its own well if not subsidized by government. Water power is one of the best but drought and floods can interfere with plants a severe drought could even shut down a hydroelectric dam perhaps. Currently the most popular power plant is natural gas. Coal is a good choice for cheap power but pollution and global warming activists have hampered its use greatly in many countries.
Solar that isn't subsidized struggles to be profitable and I think I heard that the process of making the cells produce considerable pollution maybe countering somewhat its "carbon footprint".
I think the solar engine type generating plants that focus light intensely to generate high volumes of steam to drive a steam engine to generate power and other steam related power like geothermal are good solutions but are limited due to location requirements and weather etc.
What would be great is a way to store energy in a liquid or solid format that can be used as "fuel" later and done in real time by using electrical power input we could build a generating plant on the moon and ship "power" back to the earth and power plants in large deserts remote locations and ship power from them.
I think for now water is the best power storage system (along with gravity) even though it may not be the most efficient.

 

[JackRT]

There are solutions to the safe storage of nuclear waste but the problem is NIMBY ---- Not In My Back Yard. In addition highly efficient industrial scale batteries are in development.

 

[chevyontheriver]

There are solutions to the safe storage of nuclear waste but the problem is NIMBY ---- Not In My Back Yard. In addition highly efficient industrial scale batteries are in development.

I think we buy a skyscraper in NYC, harden the walls a bit, and fill it up with waste. NYC is a failure of a city with Covid-19 anyhow.

 

[Kalevalatar]

Uranium mining is not clean and environmentally friendly and the spent nuclear fuel waste is a nightmare.

I dig geothermal ground source heat wells. It's clean, on-site so no need for fuel and infrastructure heavy transportation, reliable and and not dependent on weather conditions, and you get good thermal efficiency rates.

 

[Radagast]

NYC is a failure of a city with Covid-19 anyhow.

We know the future of NYC.

 

[Kalevalatar]

There are solutions to the safe storage of nuclear waste but the problem is NIMBY ---- Not In My Back Yard. In addition highly efficient industrial scale batteries are in development.

ONKALO, IMBY, is the one and only one in the world so far. Its construction is a HUGE project, meaning it takes massive amounts of energy and resources to make a safe storage cave for "clean" nuclear energy.

As to NIMBY, I have supported domestic nuclear energy for the very reason that it would be hypocritical to oppose nuclear reactors in my back yard while waiting for those better future energy sources when the alternative today is to buy nuclear energy far away from Russia, from lord knows what kind of aging ticking time bomb reactors. At least here in Finland, in our own backyard, we have strong incentive to do it right and make sure our reactor is as clean and safe as possible.

 

[Kalevalatar]

We know the future of NYC.

What happens in New York doesn't stay in New York.