And in “tell Us Something we Didn’t Already Know” news.

  • BigAssFan@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    Nuclear energy is the most expensive type of energy, you could have way more wind and solar energy (stored in batteries or hydrogen) for the same investment. And without waste that keeps radiating for the next millenia.

    • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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      3 hours ago

      Nuclear is expensive because we’ve made it expensive. The most expensive part is bureaucracy. Running nuclear plants is cheap. Even still, the price of nuclear around the world is competitive. If you scroll down to the regional studies, nuclear looks even better. In every place except the US that has nuclear, nuclear is the second cheapest, with large-scale PV the only one higher (which doesn’t price in solutions to provide baseline power, which nuclear has built in). The US has (purposefully) made nuclear appear expensive because laws have been paid for by dirty oil companies.

      Nuclear is also one of the safest and cleanest energy sources. If you include negative externalities into the cost (which is never done but should be) nuclear is amazing.

    • Soggy@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      Neither storage “solution” is currently adequate for fossil fuel replacement and may never be for high-density populations. Nuclear is less impactful than burning hydrocarbons or damming rivers and fearmongering about radioactive waste products isn’t helpful because, again, every nuclear accident or leak to date has been less harmful than normal exhaust from coal-burning plants and riparian habitat destruction.

      If we had kept investing in an actual energy solution we would have gen-IV reactors already and the waste concerns would be even lower.