# Global Warming and the Necessity for Nuclear Power **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 5, 2016, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-and-the-necessity-for-nuclear-power/773910 "2016-12-05T06:17:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-and-the-necessity-for-nuclear-power/773910/41 "2016-12-05T18:31:41Z")
> [@jonesj2205](#): > > Are you suggesting turning nuclear silos into small nuclear plants? Because from a size perspective you have to be talking orders of magnitude difference. Not to mention small plants scattered around mean much more infrastructure for transmission wires needing to be built. That would happen also regardless of where the nuclear power plants are built. I’m aware that there will be a need for more construction and digging in the silos to adapt the small design nuclear plants. I do think that the issue of safety needs to be taken care of and part of what the industry should not be paying alone as when things go bad the people around the incident are the ones that pay. Also IIRC Sam is talking about very small nuclear reactors. > **[Small Nuclear Power Reactors - World Nuclear Association](https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-power-reactors/small-nuclear-power-reactors)** > > There is revival of interest in small and simpler units for generating electricity from nuclear power, and for process heat. This interest in smaller nuclear power reactors is driven both by a desire to reduce the impact of capital costs and to... > [@](#): > > Generally, modern small reactors for power generation, and especially SMRs, are expected to have greater simplicity of design, economy of series production largely in factories, short construction times, and reduced siting costs. Most are also designed for a high level of passive or inherent safety in the event of malfunctionc. **Also many are designed to be emplaced below ground level, giving a high resistance to terrorist threats.** A 2010 report by a special committee convened by the American Nuclear Society showed that many safety provisions necessary, or at least prudent, in large reactors are not necessary in the small designs forthcomingd. Since small reactors are envisaged as replacing fossil fuel plants in many situations, the emergency planning zone required is designed to be no more than about 300 m radius. ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-and-the-necessity-for-nuclear-power/773910/42 "2016-12-05T18:35:14Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > IMHO the executive should use the military and turn many of the nuclear missile silos to be converted to use medium or small nuclear plants. The government in my proposal will have the capability to act as a second layer of security, almost independent from the nuclear power industry that will have access to the site. What I think is that if the nuclear plant goes south we should be able to bury the site that is already deep underground and basically forget about it. The location of the small plants would also take care of many security issues that is an added cost to industry. Do you know how much water a nuclear plant demands? We don’t build silos on rivers or along the coast, which you need for nuclear power. Now someone will come along and brag about “next gen” plants that save water but nations all over the world have been working on these designs and they don’t work, and throwing more money at the problem doesn’t seem to help much. Throw more money at wind and solar and other renewable technologies, you do get improvements. You know, it is still called global _warming_. Where are we going to build these additional nuclear plants? They’re already warming up rivers to dangerous levels, and warming the water locally along coasts, during the part of the year the water is warmest anyway. Isn’t the point to save the environment? ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-and-the-necessity-for-nuclear-power/773910/43 "2016-12-05T18:36:15Z")
Any plan that can address GW will take trillions of dollars and decades of construction. You can’t replace terawatts of energy production built over 50 years in the short term. Arm chair prediction, I think it’s more likely none of that will happen. Fossil fuels are too easy to use given existing infrastructure and investors will use their political power to protect their interests. The West is cash strapped and can’t afford any of this and America certainly hasn’t shown any proclivity for mass infrastructure spending and will probably be mired in spiraling healthcare costs and war. Instead of constructing hundreds of nuclear plants I find it more likely nations will start supposedly easier (or so they’ll say) geo-engineering projects. They’ll treat the symptom, instead of the disease. Remember there will be plenty of other expensive problems to combat in the future, like producing fresh water, or doing something about the increasing numbers of refugees from the global south. ---
**Author:** ![Frankenstein\_Monster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ccd318/32.png) [@Frankenstein\_Monster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frankenstein_Monster)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-and-the-necessity-for-nuclear-power/773910/44 "2016-12-05T18:41:17Z")
Sorry for almost misattributing you there. 🙂 > [@XT](#): > > You do realize that, in Germany today they are also having a similar debate about coal, yes? And that there is going to be a lot of resistance to even building ‘small and flexible ones’, right? And, again, that this could ALSO be solved by, you know, not shutting down current nuclear plants and instead building newer generation plants? Agree 100% > [@XT](#): > > You are right, it’s all politics…and that the politics in Germany ARE an issue and one that is causing the problems they are having. They want to get rid of coal and nuclear at the same time without having the hooks in to replace them with a flexible and scalable alternative, and they are setting time tables based on unicorn wishes and dragon dreams. Being an engineer, as you say, should make all of this clear. Your own proposal here, while I think is viable (though I think less so than just accepting nuclear energy) is equally politically unpalatable to the German public, and basically isn’t going to happen. What I predict will happen is that the Germans will simply buy energy from their neighbors instead…energy produced by coal fired or nuclear powered plants. Hmmm… agree 75%? Disagree with characterizing Germany’s (or anybody’s aggressive renewable timetable anywhere) being “unicorn wishes and dragon dreams”. Don’t know about “politically unpalatable”. I am happy to see that the Energiewende in its current form is still very popular, moreso than anywhere else. Germany may yet set an example to all of us. My perspective is, “Decarbonize quick, cheap, no disruption by deploying solar and wind? Here’s how!”. It can be done. Somebody say, “Decarbonize quick, cheap, no disruption by deploying solar and wind? Can’t be done!”, then I say that’s wrong. But the most common criticism amounts to, “Decarbonize quick, cheap, no disruption by deploying solar and wind? But I don’t want to!”. (Same against nuclear, of course.) I wish I had a good argument against that. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-and-the-necessity-for-nuclear-power/773910/45 "2016-12-05T18:52:32Z")
> [@Translucent\_Daydream](#): > > I as the average joe schmo would be totally down, if there was a safe way to handle the waste from the reactor. Could we possibly send this to the moon or something of that nature? If we can not cause another Chernobyl and you could convince the public that would be okay to do, AND you couldn’t somehow rob the reactor to get stuff to make a dirty weapon with… > > The pro nuclear folks need to jump this hurdle I would think. Coal produces more radioactive pollution than nuclear, and dumps it directly into the atmosphere you breathe instead of a nice neat barrel you can store under a lead lined mountain somewhere. And if not coal or nuclear, what? Solar and wind just won’t cut the mustard by themselves. ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-and-the-necessity-for-nuclear-power/773910/46 "2016-12-05T19:19:35Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > This is the only non-CO2 emitting power source we know of that could feasibly replace a significant portion of our fossil fuel consumption in a period of a decade or two. The ONLY one. Wishful thinking about a sudden mass conversion to solar power is not helpful when there is a real problem to be solved. I’m all for nuclear power, but the above statement seems like exactly the kind of wishful thinking you are criticizing. There are about 100 reactors in the US, providing about 20% of the power. Ignoring the energy storage issue, we need roughly 300 more reactors to replace all fossil-fuel power plants. It’s not obvious to me that this is easier and cheaper than building an equivalent amount of solar & wind generators. For what it’s worth, [this article](http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-03-31/when-will-rooftop-solar-be-cheaper-than-the-grid) mentions a cost of $0.12/kWH as average cost of solar PV power in the US. [This article](http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/china-nuclear-power.aspx) mentions $0.07/kWH for nuclear power generation in China, which is lower, but I suspect the cost can’t get that low in the US even if we relax many of the regulations. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-and-the-necessity-for-nuclear-power/773910/47 "2016-12-05T19:26:38Z")
> [@Mnemnosyne](#): > > I’ve always thought the hazard of the waste has been played up to a ludicrous level. The idea that we need some place that will be stable and safe to store and contain it for a hundred thousand years or whatnot is utter nonsense. Our planet is full of remote locations far away from any current inhabitants. Pick a spot out in the middle of the desert, build a facility, and then keep it in good repair regularly. Who cares if the earth shifts and it might leak over the next hundred years? You FIX IT and keep it secure. If no humans are around to fix it anymore, then keeping it contained is utterly irrelevant. What is ludicrous is the belief that we can just dump nuclear waste in a ‘remote location’ and pretend it is no longer and issue. (Ditto with the “send it to the moon” talk or any other fantastically ill-conceived schemes for storing nuclear fuel cycle waste and expended fuel.) First of all, deserts are by their nature very permeable environments that tend to function as filters for aquifers. Unless you have a sealed facility–and it turns out to be difficult to assure positive sealing in most constructed structures for more than a few decades–the potential for nuclear waste to leech into and contaminate a water supply is not incidential, and once that happens to a sufficient degree the water supply is suspect if not unusable for the indefinite future, even if the leak itself is fixed. Second, you aren’t going to find a mass of qualified people who are willing to work out in a remote desert maintaining this facility. Third, you still have to deal with the costs and risks of still-hot expended fuel (usually takes a couple of decades to cool to the point where it can be put into dry cask storage and transferred) and transportation to this central storage site. The issue of nuclear waste is not a technically intractable one, but it is not the kind of trivial, “out of sight, out of mind” solution that dismissive people want it to be. There are impermeable geological structures (evaporate formations, generally exhausted salt mines) where waste could be stored for millenia. Unfortunately, these don’t tend to be in areas where the residents are amenable to hosting a repository for nuclear waste (with the [occasional exception](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/tech/solving-nuclear-waste-with-wipp/)), and it would be difficult to come up with enough space to store all of the processing and expended fuel waste produced by an order-of-magnitude increase in nuclear power production. A better method is to develop and adopt full burnup technologies to reduce the waste to short lived radionuclides which could be stored on site or in regional repositories until they are sufficiently inert. > [@Shodan](#): > > As we see in this thread, liberals would rather use global warming to bash Republicans than do anything substantive about the problem. Would it be possible for once to not polarize every single issue into a “liberals versus conservatives” dichotomy? As discussed in [POST=18795997]this thread[/POST], the supposed stance is not true on either side of the equation; there are plenty of “liberals” (e.g. progressive environmentalists, if you feel that that stance meets the criterial of liberalism) who endorse responsible nuclear fission power production, while the Republicans in Congress as a group have done little in the last two decades to actually advance the use of nuclear power or support research for better technology. As for the query of the o.p., there is both merit and substantial criticism to it. One point he notably overlooks is that in order to expand nuclear fission power production we’d have to expand uranium mining and fuel processing and enrichment by a corresponding amount. Our current infrastructure for doing so is already tapped to the limit and is often using obsolescent technologies, so concurrent to building more power plants (which would need to be sited in adequate locations where there is sufficient surface water flow for cooling) we also need to build up processing facilities and with adequate redundancy so that electrical power production doesn’t hinge on the operation of a specific nuclear fuel cycle choke point. Another is that nuclear power plants, as currently designed, have a large atmospheric carbon footprint in their construction, so just building a mass of stations quickly without some kind of mitigation may actually increase the problem. And we have to look beyond the US and to other nations, and specifically developing nations which are going to grow to be the largest polluters even if the US does reduce its CO[SUB]2[/SUB] production; we need solutions that can be exported and developed in those nations without the further risk of nuclear weapon proliferation. It is also desireable to avoid the geopolitical chokehold that being reliant upon high grade uranium that comes from a few individual sources would cause. While wind and solar are not sustainable for national or international demands (although they are getting cheaper and more accessible for areas where they are workable) they have far less carbon footprint and end-to-end costs, and can be expanded and exported without any potential for weaponization outside of a bad James Bond movie, helping to offset some of the demand for fossil fuels while the next generation technologies for nuclear fission production (obtaining complete fuel cycle burnup and using thorium or proliferation-resistant mixed oxide fuels) can be matured and developed, as well as means for synthesizing low-carbon or carbon-neutral liquid hydrocarbon fuels for transportation and mobile use. One of the biggest showstoppers in this line of development is the nuclear industry itself which continues to insist that current Generation III designs are perfectly safe (debatable), cost-effective (no), and suitable for wide export with minimal concerns about potential weapon proliferation (not without other safeguards in the fuel enrichment cycle). Generation IV concepts such as the Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor, Molten Salt Fast Reactor, and Supercritical Water Reactor that require less fuel processing and enrichment, are more efficient, can be scaled more effectively than the standard boiling water reactor design, and are inherently safer in the case of an emergency shutdown or loss of coolant accident. Until nuclear fusion power production becomes a viable method (and we can only guesstimate when that will be) nuclear fission power production is inarguably an element into reducing atmospheric carbon production and must be part of the consideration. But it is not a panacea, and ignoring the costs and potential risks do not quell legitimate criticisms, much less address the hyperbole of the stalwart anti-nuclear movement. Nor does just laying out a blank check to start producing nuclear power plants as fast as possible address either the concerns about public safety (who oversees the safety systems in the plants, where are they to be sited, what provisions are made to address short term and long term storage of fuel materials and expended waste) nor the environmental impact (carbon footprint, most of which is produced during initial construction) of building these facilities en masse. These are not trivial issues, and proposing that ‘nuclear’ as a monatomic solution instead of a substantial part of a portfolio of power production methods is beyond simplistic. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-and-the-necessity-for-nuclear-power/773910/48 "2016-12-05T19:39:23Z")
> [@levdrakon](#): > > Do you know how much water a nuclear plant demands? We don’t build silos on rivers or along the coast, which you need for nuclear power. Now someone will come along and brag about “next gen” plants that save water but nations all over the world have been working on these designs and they don’t work, and throwing more money at the problem doesn’t seem to help much. Throw more money at wind and solar and other renewable technologies, you do get improvements. Nowhere I do say that I would be against what you point here, IMHO most other nations will not be able to use nuclear power so indeed, further improvements in solar and other renewables is the way to go, but I already did point out that I’m talking about new nuclear reactors and small ones with less water needs. The point here is that we already have a very useful tool in the USA to help deal with the issue. But once again it does not mean that I’m saying that it must be the only one. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-and-the-necessity-for-nuclear-power/773910/49 "2016-12-05T19:51:30Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Nowhere I do say that I would be against what you point here, IMHO most other nations will not be able to use nuclear power so indeed, further improvements in solar and other renewables is the way to go, but I already did point out that I’m talking about new nuclear reactors and small ones with less water needs. The point here is that we already have a very useful tool in the USA to help deal with the issue. But once again it does not mean that I’m saying that it must be the only one. I actually figured you were talking about smaller reactors…sort of like those used by the US Navy for nuclear powered wessels…er, vessels. Maybe scaled up a tad. They would work with your silo concept and wouldn’t use huge amounts of water. on the downside, however, is they produce less energy, of course…but I’ve seen pros and cons to a more decentralized and distributed grid, so it might work. Still have to get over the public’s reluctance to nuclear energy, though. That’s going to be tough. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-and-the-necessity-for-nuclear-power/773910/50 "2016-12-05T21:14:52Z")
> [@XT](#): > > Unlike your’s, right? Yes. My points cite identified sources for the data, unlike **Sam** ’s flabby OP which barfs several paragraph of unattributed claims and data at us while providing **one** , count it, one, link to a 270±page PDF report that supposedly justifies **one** of his numbers (and doesn’t include a page number to tell you where to find it, either). [QUOTE=XT] It’s rather ironic that you point to the 2008 recession and fracking boom as if that somehow means the US cheated (or something) [/quote] It doesn’t mean that “the US cheated”: it means that **Sam Stone** tried to pull a rhetorical fast one by picking an arbitrarily limited time interval in which US carbon emissions reductions look uncharacteristically good compared to Germany’s. [QUOTE=XT] while ignoring (as your cites do as well) some of the similar reasons that German carbon emissions dropped [/quote] Uh, those reasons are mentioned right there in my cite quote in my first post in the thread: > [@Kimstu's cite](#): > > Germany’s emissions […] fell steeply in the early 90s in the wake of the collapse of communism and then steadily declined until the financial crisis. [QUOTE=XT] and also that they started rising again in 2015. [/quote] Because, as my cite clearly stated, the most recently available CO2 emissions figures at the time of its publication were for 2014, Einstein. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-and-the-necessity-for-nuclear-power/773910/51 "2016-12-05T22:17:10Z")
[QUOTE=Kimstu] Uh, those reasons are mentioned right there in my cite quote in my first post in the thread: [/QUOTE] Uh, no…it doesn’t. Germany ALSO had financial issues post 2008, including the Euro crisis which impacted their economy. They only mentioned what happened ’ in the early 90s in the wake of the collapse of communism and then steadily declined until the financial crisis’ as a sort of drive by while focusing on how those same things were, presumably, the cause of the downward turn in US emissions. Basically, they aren’t using the same yard stick to compare, at least not IMHO. YMMV of course, but it seems ironic to me that you’d make an issue out of this on one hand (when it’s the US) but then ignore the same dynamic on the other (when it’s Germany). Maybe that’s not what you intended or even how you wrote it but that’s how I read it. > [@](#): > > Because, as my cite clearly stated, the most recently available CO2 emissions figures at the time of its publication were for 2014, Einstein. Well, Fleischmann, I figured that you’d google up some up to date cites for your assertions. Didn’t even check to see it was that out of date. Sorry that I didn’t check the expiration date there and apologize for my assumption. > [@](#): > > It doesn’t mean that “the US cheated”: it means that Sam Stone tried to pull a rhetorical fast one by picking an arbitrarily limited time interval in which US carbon emissions reductions look uncharacteristically good compared to Germany’s. Kind of like your’s…though, I do agree that your cite was more detailed that his (though he hasn’t responded yet…his was just an OP laying out the subject for the debate). But you used it to spin a narrative much as he did with his OP. I’m more sympathetic to his narrative which is why I’m better with it and less critical…I DO think that nuclear is a better way, and I DO think that Germany made and continues to make a mistake on this. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-and-the-necessity-for-nuclear-power/773910/52 "2016-12-05T22:36:59Z")
> [@Inbred\_Mm\_domesticus](#): > > When I started to respond to this, I didn’t understand how many levels of dumb is contained in this comment. Now I have an estimate. That’ll earn you a warning, IMD. Please don’t even slantwise insult other posters. ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-and-the-necessity-for-nuclear-power/773910/53 "2016-12-05T22:53:55Z")
It says [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_United_States#Electricity_consumption) Americans consume about 9000 kWh/yr per person. Amount of sunlight we get is about equivalent to 1500 hr per year, so we need an equivalent of 6 kW solar panel per person. That’s about 400 square feet. I’m not convinced that’s more difficult than building 100 new nuclear reactors. Though obviously it doesn’t have to be all one or the other. I’m sure there’s some combination of both that would be more practical. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-and-the-necessity-for-nuclear-power/773910/54 "2016-12-05T23:08:40Z")
> [@scr4](#): > > It says [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_United_States#Electricity_consumption) Americans consume about 9000 kWh/yr per person. Amount of sunlight we get is about equivalent to 1500 hr per year, so we need an equivalent of 6 kW solar panel per person. That’s about 400 square feet. > > I’m not convinced that’s more difficult than building 100 new nuclear reactors. Though obviously it doesn’t have to be all one or the other. I’m sure there’s some combination of both that would be more practical. 400 square feet per person would be over 5000 square miles if my back of the envelop calculation is close (I’m basing this on your numbers above btw…I think a distributed system would be less per person, but just wanted to have some fun with your figures). That’s, um, a hell of a lot of solar panels so I can see an issue there. 😉 It would be much easier to build 100 new nuclear plants than thousands of square miles of solar panels…not even sure it’s possible to build that many solar panels in any sort of realistic timeframe to be honest (or where you’d put them all). Plus there is the whole issue of, you know, needing electricity when it’s dark thingy as well, which the nuclear plants do. I’m not saying solar can’t be part of an energy mix, but it’s not going to be the main component. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2016, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-and-the-necessity-for-nuclear-power/773910/55 "2016-12-06T00:07:52Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > I’d be a lot more inclined to believe your analysis if you were making a fair comparison between renewables and nuclear. Solar plants are held up for years because of legal entanglements; but if we just prevent lawsuits against nuclear plants they can be up and running lickety-split. Technical progress on renewables is slow; but we can speed up research on nuclear power by funding it with a carbon tax. I added the legal entanglement of solar as a parenthetical. It doesn’t change the main point. Replacing a significant amount of power with solar requires a HUGE infrastructure, and that takes time. A lot of time. For nuclear, however, the main roadblock is legal, not technical. China manages to build nuclear plants in about five years, and for a fraction of the cost in the U.S. The reason is because nuclear requires a lot of up-front capital, and if that capital is then tied up for decades in legal battles it drives the cost of nuclear through the roof. This ‘lawfare’ approach to nuclear power is an explicit strategy of anti-nuclear activists. They tie up nuclear projects with endless environmental lawsuits and appeals, drive the costs up, then use the high costs to claim that nuclear is non-competitive with other forms of energy. France has managed to generate 77% of its electricity through nuclear power. This is solid, reliable baseload power. And France’s electricity costs are HALF that of Germany’s, and in the bottom 7 of all the EU countries. In addition, France is the largest exporter of electricity to the EU grid. France’s nuclear waste problem is partially mitigated by reprocessing spent fuel and re-burning it. This means you also need to mine less uranium to keep the plants operating. France’s success with nuclear power hasn’t stopped the anti-nuke protestors from trying to shut down France’s nuclear plants, and the Hollande government promised to de-commission almost half of them by 2024, due to political pressure from his left-wing base. Spent fuel reprocessing was disallowed in the U.S. by executive order under President Carter. Reagan rescinded that executive order, but since then successive congresses have waffled on the issue, creating a lot of regulatory uncertainty. And in 2009 President Obama, despite his lukewarm-favoring of nuclear power, ordered an end to the regulatory review of Yucca Mountain, effectively closing it. This has added more uncertainty to the cost of nuclear power in the U.S., as the costs of spent fuel storage are still unknown. The U.S. could also employ Canadian CANDU reactors, which can directly burn the waste from the older light-water reactors. CANDU reactors have a long track record of safety. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2016, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-and-the-necessity-for-nuclear-power/773910/56 "2016-12-06T00:28:42Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > I added the legal entanglement of solar as a parenthetical. It doesn’t change the main point. It may not change the main point, but it undermines your credibility in making it. If you felt the need to include that parenthetical against solar, and to wish away the legal entanglements of nuclear, maybe the argument isn’t as strong as you thought. ---
**Author:** ![Frankenstein\_Monster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ccd318/32.png) [@Frankenstein\_Monster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frankenstein_Monster)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2016, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-and-the-necessity-for-nuclear-power/773910/57 "2016-12-06T00:35:07Z")
> [@XT](#): > > 400 square feet per person would be over 5000 square miles if my back of the envelop calculation is close (I’m basing this on your numbers above btw…I think a distributed system would be less per person, but just wanted to have some fun with your figures). That’s, um, a hell of a lot of solar panels so I can see an issue there. 😉 It would be much easier to build 100 new nuclear plants than thousands of square miles of solar panels…not even sure it’s possible to build that many solar panels in any sort of realistic timeframe to be honest (or where you’d put them all). Plus there is the whole issue of, you know, needing electricity when it’s dark thingy as well, which the nuclear plants do. > > I’m not saying solar can’t be part of an energy mix, but it’s not going to be the main component. Oh I can play that game. Rough citations: [http://www.mpoweruk.com/electricity\_demand.htm](http://www.mpoweruk.com/electricity_demand.htm) [https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/flow/css\_2015\_energy.pdf](https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/flow/css_2015_energy.pdf) Taking that number at face value, 5000 sq miles is the size of the State of Connecticut. (I didn’t check the number, but it’s rougly in line with that I’ve heard before.) Spread out over the whole Continental U.S., that is nothing. Trivial 🙂 Some of the electricity would be needed at night. Say, one quarter of the total consumption of 16TWh/day or so. That’s only the capacity of 20 million Tesla Powerpack 2.0’s. Producing Powerpacks at the same rate as cars, it would be a mere month’s worth of Powerpack production. Piece of cake! So far we’re only talking electricity. That’s only 40% of primary energy consumption. Transportation is another 30% and industry, residential and commercial is the remaining 30%. Converting all those to electricity easily saves a factor of 3 in primary energy terms. (E.g. an electric car will only use one third of the energy in electricity terms compared to a fossil fuel car in fossil fuel terms. Electric heating with a heat pump will use one third of the energy in electricity terms compared to the heat value of fossil fuel heating. etc. etc.) So multiply those solar panels and Powerpacks by only 50% to cover the full energy need of the U.S., not just the electricity! And that would be covering 100% of the energy need with solar panels. But you’re forgetting other renewables. In reality you only need, say one sixth of that number in solar panels. Add two sixths of generation with wind turbines, one sixth hydro, one sixth geothermal, and one sixth renewable biomass. Only a quarter of Connecticut worth of solar panels. Spread out over 50 states, it’s only the area of Manhattan in every state. And that’d easily reduce the need for Powerpacks by a factor of ten. See? We would produce those Powerpacks in a week. The panels, windmills, electric cars etc. would take somewhat longer. Give it a a year or so! Easy 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2016, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-and-the-necessity-for-nuclear-power/773910/58 "2016-12-06T00:39:48Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **Stranger on a Train** : > > What is ludicrous is the belief that we can just dump nuclear waste in a ‘remote location’ and pretend it is no longer and issue… Of course we can’t do that. Nuclear waste is not a completely solved problem. But the perfect is the enemy of the good, and nuclear waste is a lot closer to being completely solved (in multiple senses) than coal waste is: The solutions we have now for nuclear are a lot better than the solutions we have now for coal, and a 100% solution for nuclear would be a lot easier to achieve than a 100% solution for coal. ---
**Author:** ![Frankenstein\_Monster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ccd318/32.png) [@Frankenstein\_Monster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frankenstein_Monster)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2016, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-and-the-necessity-for-nuclear-power/773910/59 "2016-12-06T01:02:26Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > France has managed to generate 77% of its electricity through nuclear power. This is solid, reliable baseload power. And France’s electricity costs are HALF that of Germany’s, and in the bottom 7 of all the EU countries. In addition, France is the largest exporter of electricity to the EU grid. HUH?? Have you been following the news? France is having huge problems with their nuclear reactors. [‘Nuclear Industry in France in Crisis,’ 20 Reactors Shut Down](http://www.ecowatch.com/france-nuclear-power-shut-down-2086414462.html) [France’s Nuclear Power Stations ‘At Risk of Catastrophic Failure’](http://www.globalresearch.ca/frances-nuclear-power-stations-at-risk-of-catastrophic-failure/5548593) Don’t know if those are reputable links (just searched with Google now) but the news is true, you should be able to find all the info on official sites as well. It’s true France was the largest net electricity exporter at 70TWh net in 2015, but they are being overtaken by Germany with [50TWh](https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/news/news-2016/germanys-electricity-exports-surplus-brings-record-revenue-of-over-two-billion-euros) net export thanks to their large renewable generation. France wants to reduce their nuclear generation down to [50%](http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx) by 2025. They are investing big in [renewables](https://cleantechnica.com/2016/07/15/france-issues-20-gigawatt-solar-tenders/). Renewable advocates are already calculating that France could go [100% renewable electricity by 2050](https://cleantechnica.com/2015/04/14/100-renewable-electricity-2050-possible-france/). ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2016, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-and-the-necessity-for-nuclear-power/773910/60 "2016-12-06T16:47:23Z")
> [@Frankenstein\_Monster](#): > > HUH?? Have you been following the news? France is having huge problems with their nuclear reactors. > > [‘Nuclear Industry in France in Crisis,’ 20 Reactors Shut Down](http://www.ecowatch.com/france-nuclear-power-shut-down-2086414462.html) > > [France’s Nuclear Power Stations ‘At Risk of Catastrophic Failure’](http://www.globalresearch.ca/frances-nuclear-power-stations-at-risk-of-catastrophic-failure/5548593) > > Don’t know if those are reputable links (just searched with Google now) but the news is true, you should be able to find all the info on official sites as well. > > It’s true France was the largest net electricity exporter at 70TWh net in 2015, but they are being overtaken by Germany with [50TWh](https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/news/news-2016/germanys-electricity-exports-surplus-brings-record-revenue-of-over-two-billion-euros) net export thanks to their large renewable generation. > > France wants to reduce their nuclear generation down to [50%](http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx) by 2025. They are investing big in [renewables](https://cleantechnica.com/2016/07/15/france-issues-20-gigawatt-solar-tenders/). Renewable advocates are already calculating that France could go [100% renewable electricity by 2050](https://cleantechnica.com/2015/04/14/100-renewable-electricity-2050-possible-france/). It is possible they could do it in 33 years but it is definitely possible to do it in the next few years. If global warming is the threat some people are saying it is then we don’t have time to wait 30 years. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-and-the-necessity-for-nuclear-power/773910.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-and-the-necessity-for-nuclear-power/773910.md?page=4)