Technology

Being pro-nuclear was a very valid position up until a few years ago. Now solar has gotten so cheap that there is practically no reason to do it except to protect yourself against US imperialism.

While I consider myself pro nuclear, there is something that gets forgotten everytime this conversation comes up.

The problem with nuclear isn’t that the waste is impossible to handle, it’s that humans are too short sighted to follow through with it.

Thats not even the biggest problem with nuclear power as the waste angle, at scale, will hit us decades in the future. The more urgent problem hitting us now on even on existing deployed nuclear plants is cooling water.

The byproduct of nuclear power generation is lots AND LOTS of waste heat. You have to get rid of this every second to continue to produce electricity. This is why nuclear power plants are typically built next to a large body of water. However, with reduced water supplies in reseviors theres less water to use for cooling nuclear plants. A double whammy is with climate change increasing temperatures, the water that remains is already hotter than it was, meaning it can carry away even less heat.

If a plant can't get rid of its heat it needs to curtail (reduce) electricity production. This isn't just theoretical. Its happening now in 2026 to existing power plants:

• Hungary - Aug 2026 Hungary plans to shut down only nuclear power plant amid drought

• Romania - Aug 2026 Nuclear power plants are being shut down as Europe’s drought becomes an energy crisis

• France & Switzerland - Aug 2026 Droughts cause nuclear power plants in Europe to reduce output

At the time when Europe was experiencing its worst heatwave is recorded history, many European reactors had to be turned down or off. 2026 isn't the first time this has happened either, you can go back in the last 5 years or so and see many reports of nuclear plant curtailment because of lack of cooling capacity (cool water).

When we know global temperature are rising, it looks like this will just get worse. How can we say nuclear is the future when the conditions for it working well are already declining?

To the disposal argument i like to ask; are we handling our waste from burning fossil fuels well?

Is run away climate change "doing it well"?

Would you rather your waste be buried in the ground or pumped into the atmosphere?

Containing the waste and burying it in the ground is the default for nuclear, meanwhile doing the same for CO2 is very challenging and it may never be viable.

The fact is that humans are just not well equipt to deal with problems beyond human scales.

We're not good at accurately assessing risks beyond human time scales and we're not good correctly prioritizing action when the benefit is beyond human time scales.

fire it into space futurama style

We also have limited potential stores of uranium. When Chinese reactors all get on line, maybe 40 years left.

IMHO another big issue with nuclear is concentration of power. nuclear is quite stable, but not always and when it fails you suddenly loose a huge bunch of production that becomes hard to replace. (and Im not even getting into safety here)

France had to deal with a lot of issues just this year, with around 20% of their nuclear plants unoperative, which increased prices dramatically.

Solar is mostly distributed by design (and need) and failures are smaller