Don’t import Reddit’s extremely ignorant takes on nuclear power here, please. Nuclear power is a huge waste of money.

If you’re about to angrily downvote me (or you already did), or write an angry reply, please read the rest of my comment before you do. This is not my individual opinion, this is the scientific consensus on the issue.

When it comes to generating electricity, nuclear is hugely more expensive than renewables. Every 1000Wh of nuclear power could be 2000-3000 Wh solar or wind.

If you’re about to lecture about “it’s not possible to have all power from renewable sources”, save your keystrokes - the majority of studies show that a global transition to 100% renewable energy across all sectors – power, heat, transport and industry – is feasible and economically viable. Again, this isn’t my opinion, you can look it up and find a dozen sources to back up what I am writing here.

This is all with current, modern day technology, not with some far-off dream of thorium fusion breeding or whatever other potential future tech someone will probably comment about without reading this paragraph.

Nuclear power has promise as a future technology. It is 100% worth researching for future breakthroughs. But at present it is a massive waste of money, resources, effort and political capital.

Nuclear energy should be funded only to conduct new research into potential future improvements and to construct experimental power stations. Any money that would be spent on nuclear power should be spent on renewables instead.

Okay, now factor in environmental costs.

…which is hugely worse for nuclear? What is your point?

Nuclear power plants require eye watering amounts of concrete.

They require continuous (and ever-increasing) extraction of fissile matter such as uranium ore (a limited resource, by the way - if we used nuclear power instead of fossil fuels we would run out pretty quickly, too, all things considered).

Nuclear power also consumes (and irradiates) vast quantities of water.

They are huge nightmares for biodiversity as they are massive projects usually flattening large swathes of land.

They produce waste which is not only irradiated and hazardous but also a major security risk, so it has to be safeguarded… and/or sealed into a hole in the ground where it will remain a risk for years to come.

The building projects themselves are astronomical in scale and require huge quantities of materials to be shipped by fleets and fleets of trucks followed by a lot of industrial work. Then in a couple of decades the site has to be decommissioned which is even more work.

Estimates for the lifetime emissions (extraction, commission, operation, etc.) CO2EQ of nuclear power are commonly thought to be between 60-100g per kWh. Solar power is somewhere in the region of 20-40g per kWh, and wind is somewhere around 10-20g per kWh.

So again, no, nuclear energy is not what we want. Support ONLY renewables. Nuclear power is wasteful.

What do you know that countries with state funded labs full of scientists haven’t figured out?

Nothing? That’s my point. They HAVE figured this out. Get your head out of your ass and take an opportunity to actually learn something instead of just being aggressively wrong on the internet. The only people in the industry who think we should provision nuclear power plants are those who would financially benefit from continued investment in nuclear. Just look it up.

If renewables are the answer, why does germany still rely on lignite? If it was figured out, wouldn’t they be exporters of carbon free energy to Europe? (France is!) Instead of resisting nuclear, renewable advocates ought to go after fossil fuel subsidies. Fighting nuclear gives lignite “the green light.”