I see nuclear as a transitory source of energy. It doesn’t emit any greenhouse gases and FAR better than fossil fuels. We could easily transition to it faster and more cheaply than solar, wind, etc currently. Deaths associated with fossil fuel energy greatly exceed those associate with nuclear energy.
Burning fossil fuels needs to stop and we need to bring down carbon levels to what they were 20+ years ago. Ideally, transitioning to nuclear would be cheap/fast while we build out solar and wind infrastructure, and research how to make these sources of energy more effective.
However, I’m not a policy nor energy expert by any means. I’m just some random person on the internet.
NIMBY is also another factor that delays new nuclear plants. That said, safety is another big concern here. Although not at an nuclear energy facility, there was that incident recently at Los Alamos National Laboratory researching nuclear weapons where they placed 8 rods of plutonium next to each other that could have triggered a disaster. Very high safety standards are required, and humans are known for making stupid decisions.
Well there is a very good reason why modern nuclear reactors have a negative void coefficient (you just turn off the neutron source and the reactor naturally turns itself off
Or if really paranoid have a supply of Xenon-135 handy and that reactor will be shutdown in microseconds (which by the way is naturally produced by the reactor itself and why early prototype rectors kept turning themself off after running for a bit)
I see nuclear as a transitory source of energy. It doesn’t emit any greenhouse gases and FAR better than fossil fuels. We could easily transition to it faster and more cheaply than solar, wind, etc currently. Deaths associated with fossil fuel energy greatly exceed those associate with nuclear energy.
Burning fossil fuels needs to stop and we need to bring down carbon levels to what they were 20+ years ago. Ideally, transitioning to nuclear would be cheap/fast while we build out solar and wind infrastructure, and research how to make these sources of energy more effective.
However, I’m not a policy nor energy expert by any means. I’m just some random person on the internet.
Practical experience shows that nuclear is neither cheap or fast, with ongoing constructions being massively delayed and way over budget.
I would have agreed with you 20 years ago, but now we have way better alternatives and nuclear is too slow to make a difference.
NIMBY is also another factor that delays new nuclear plants. That said, safety is another big concern here. Although not at an nuclear energy facility, there was that incident recently at Los Alamos National Laboratory researching nuclear weapons where they placed 8 rods of plutonium next to each other that could have triggered a disaster. Very high safety standards are required, and humans are known for making stupid decisions.
Well there is a very good reason why modern nuclear reactors have a negative void coefficient (you just turn off the neutron source and the reactor naturally turns itself off
Or if really paranoid have a supply of Xenon-135 handy and that reactor will be shutdown in microseconds (which by the way is naturally produced by the reactor itself and why early prototype rectors kept turning themself off after running for a bit)