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It is mind boggling that the "support science", "eliminate greenhouse gasses" crowd is the same crowd as the "no nukes" crowd.
Lets face it, we're not talking about the sharpest tools in the shed. CA leads the nation in brownouts, is pushing EVs non-stop...and is eliminating 10% of their generating capacity. Not just capacity, but reliable, base load capacity. Most backwards, ignorant state in the country. The real problem, the power outages will drive even more people to leave and infest sensible areas.
The most abundant, efficient, greenest, cleanest and most available source of power is nuclear. Every other power source comes with a long list of downsides that make nuclear's downsides look irrelevant. Nuclear is precisely the power source we need to meet the rapidly growing demand for more electricity. If we ever want to stop burning coal and fossil fuels, nuclear by far the best option. But apparently, nutty blue states like California love them some power outages.
Near where I live, there is an old nuclear plant. Because this is Illinois, naturally the crazy mobs of Lefties have prevented the plant from being upgraded or improved. The plant will be shutting down soon and everyone's electrical bill will skyrocket as a result. We'll just go back to coal-fire plants again I expect.
There is still that pesky problem of what to do with the spent fuel.
All the proponents ignore that part of nuclear power plants.
IIRC, LA is sitting on a time bomb.
Coal-fire plants generate many, many, many times more radioactive toxic waste than nuclear.
Solar plants are filled with solar panels that are full of highly toxic chemicals that we apparently don't know how to recycle and reuse. So every 10-20 years, we will need to dump all the worn out solar panels somewhere, thereby creating a toxic waste dump thousands of times larger than nuclear waste dumps locations. Also, animals getting too close to solar power plants end up getting burned alive.
The more we continue using it, wind power is going to kill of a long list of endangered species of birds and has the same problems as solar: A whole bunch of toxic materials that are going to wear out and need to be dumped somewhere. In addition, we don't currently know what we're going to do with the windmills themselves as they wear out, break down, and need to be replaced. That's a whole lot of scrap that needs to be dumped somewhere.
Both solar and wind require the destruction of vast swaths of natural habitat and/or consume huge tracts of farmable land.
Natural gas pollutes less than coal, but it still pollutes way more than nuclear.
Hydroelectric, where it's even possible, severely interferes with the life-cycles of fish and other species.
Every power source comes with it's downsides. Modern nuclear just happens to come with the fewest of them. But since you mentioned it, we've come up with a better solution for spent fuel rods: https://www.newscientist.com/article...nuclear-waste/
I don't why this is posted in the Politics forum, closing Diablo Canyon was an economic decision, not political.
The plant is over 30 years old, it's outdated, and bringing up to current safety standards is not worth the cost.
No doubt, this is very similar to the nuclear plant near where I live. A bunch of screeching activists show up and demand that the plant not be updated or upgraded. So the old plant reaches it's end of life and has to be shut down. There were better outcomes available, but the Lefty activists prevented them.
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Speaking of politics, the Democratic Party now accepts nuclear power as an option. From their current platform: they support energy from "all zero-carbon technologies, including hydroelectric power, geothermal, existing and advanced nuclear, and carbon capture and storage.”
Even with political support from both parties, new nukes may be rare. The problem with nuclear plants is the large capital investment up front and they must be operated for years just to break even. Utilities are hesitant to risk that capital because if there's a breakthrough in cheap utility-scale storage, then solar power with storage will render big nukes uneconomical.
That may be the official stance of the Democratic Party, but I seriously doubt that the average rank-and-file Democrat has changed their opinion. Nuclear = pure evil in their minds and they're undoubtedly cheering like mad as that plant in Cali is being shut down forever.
One of the biggest reasons that companies don't want to invest the money up front to build a nuclear plant is simple: They've seen past investments get screwed over by the screeching mob. They see no reason to believe that the screeching mob will stop. Nuclear plants that could have run for hundreds of years with regular upgrades and modernization were instead left to die. Power companies could still make a lot of money off of nuclear, but their confidence in being allowed to is pretty much zero. They all know perfectly well that just announcing the mere possibility of building a nuclear plant will result in a bunch of shrieking zombies demanding that they don't build it.
Short version: Almost all of the obstacles to nuclear energy come down to misinformed political activism.
The first thing I want to know, is anybody who reads or posts in this thread pronouncing it "new-cue-lar" or "nuclear" energy?
For the record, Mia Farrow, Dubya Bush, Bill Clinton, Eisenhower, and Homer Simpson are all on video saying "Noo-Cue-Lar".
I think nuclear energy will be a viable option in 50 or 100 years, as science improves. But not in 2021. Solar, geothermal, windmills and burning natural gas and coal are safer options in the short run.
As long as I can point to a Chernobyl, a Fukushima, a Three Mile Island - humans want to call them "accidents" but they are not. They are inevitablies.
With the threat of earthquakes ever present, Nuclear doesn't make sense in CA....in places like TX or the South or the midwest I think it does make more sense.
The first thing I want to know, is anybody who reads or posts in this thread pronouncing it "new-cue-lar" or "nuclear" energy?
For the record, Mia Farrow, Dubya Bush, Bill Clinton, Eisenhower, and Homer Simpson are all on video saying "Noo-Cue-Lar".
It's a common parlance. I remember being told, "Don't say 'ain't' because 'ain't' ain't a word." The evidence for this was simple. "Ain't" is not found in any dictionary, therefore it's not a real word. Well ... it is now. Why? Common parlance.
The same thing happened to the word nucular/nuclear.
Merriam Webster even included a subtext about the controversy you're citing:
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How do you pronounce nuclear?: Usage Guide
Though disapproved of by many, pronunciations ending in \-kyə-lər\ have been found in widespread use among educated speakers including scientists, lawyers, professors, congressmen, U.S. cabinet members, and at least two U.S. presidents and one vice president. While most common in the U.S., these pronunciations have also been heard from British and Canadian speakers.
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Solar, geothermal, windmills and burning natural gas and coal are safer options in the short run.
Well according to actual science, no they're not. They're much less safe and pollute much much more.
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As long as I can point to a Chernobyl, a Fukushima, a Three Mile Island - humans want to call them "accidents" but they are not. They are inevitablies.
Power plant disasters of every other category get zero press, but they're all vastly more common and the pollution they generate adds to their death tolls. Everybody freaks out when something goes wrong at a nuclear plant. Not so with a wind, solar, coal or natural gas power plant. It's because the word "nuclear" is in there and we all kinda know that.
Since the wind isn't always blowing and the sun isn't always shining and not ever location has access to a large river with suitably tall canyon walls, you have to have some power source that is always on and can be setup anywhere. That leaves one choosing between burning fossil fuels or nuclear energy.
What the USA needs is an energy policy. The clowns in the US Congress can't even address the critical storage issues at currently operating and closed nuclear power plants. The USA was supposed to begin removing the spent fuel rods to a storage location at Yucca Mountain, Nevada in 1999 but they still sit at the plants in concrete casks. Ideally, the rods should be reprocessed, which will yield much more energy than they had when they were new. But wacko president Jimmah Cawder nixed reprocessing. I believe that Carter's action is reversible but so far no president has seen fit to do so.
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