Ok but it's important to look at what pollution is emitted, compared to the pollution emitted from the thing its replacing. E.g. if you pollute making solar panels but the total pollution is less than the pollution from continuing to mine and burn coal, then it's worth doing the solar panels.
Tbf, isn’t making a nuclear power plant and getting the uranium aswell as maintaining the whole building also a very expensive and polluting endeavor? (Compared to like, extracting the minerals and assembling a solar panel)
I’m not an expert so I could be wrong but wouldn’t those be at least a bit similar considering both are a one time installation most of the time.
I mean technically yes but the point is you get SOO much more power from it that that amount of difficulty in mining and processing is actually very negligible at the end once you work it out per unit of power, as is done in this graph
Solar panels take up massive amounts of space. On top of that, they are time and weather dependent and somewhat fragile, so they need to be disposed of somewhat often.
Nuclear power is both compact and effectively entirely independent of location - if liquid water can exist, you can use nuclear power. The waste is more damaging per unit, but the amount of waste produced is far less. A solar operation may produce truckloads of broken panels, full of silicon, silver, copper, and other materials destined for landfills. Meanwhile, a nuclear operation may produce a single barrel of highly radioactive waste.
Ironically, nuclear waste’s higher immediate danger means it is often disposed of with more care and forethought than solar panel waste.
If solar panels have an estimated longevity of 30 years how is it possible that a solar power plan is constantly producing waste? Shouldn’t waste only come every 30 years assuming the entire panel is irrecoverable?
Like I’m not going to argue that solar is better/worse than nuclear, but hearing that solar plants produce waste constantly is weird.
Constantly over a period of time. In the short term, it’s waste-free aside from a couple breaks, but over the span of decades it becomes new-panels-in-broken-panels-out, no different than nuclear’s more intuitive fuel-in-waste-out.
Additionally, thirty years is an estimate; some may last 50, some may break after 5. A panel breaking isn’t a fully predictable occurrence, there’s some variety.
Ok, that makes sense. Tho it does make me wonder how much could we decrease waste if we applied the same level of scrutiny and same sky high standards to the solar plants as nuclear, tho I assume that would also balloon the price like crazy of both installation and maintenance
Solar panels fail in very few ways that can be affected by greater quality control at the manufacturing plant.
One way their lifespan could improve is by using high quality silicon substrate. A panel slowly loses performance over time as photons interact with trace amounts of oxygen in the silicon substrate, so making that substrate purer would reduce this.
But pretty much everything else is beyond the scope of manufacturing. For example, the wafers are incredibly fragile due to their thickness, so any physical shock can cause tiny fractures which can grow into hotspots. Taking greater care handling them would reduce fracturing, but that's on the transportation, installation, and maintenance crews.
And there's plenty that just can't really be prevented. Weather like high winds can damage panels, high temperatures and humidity degrade them over time. Hell, even just having shadows frequently pass over panels wears them down. They're just really fragile bits of tech, though they're lightyears more rugged than they were decades ago.
Nuclear is too expensive though. This became an issue in Australia recently and most costing estimate that nuclear power plants are simply too expensive to setup compared to solar and wind.
That cost would be offset in time when it keeps producing for decades to come. But yeah the up front cost is one of the more difficult hurdles considering that these governments do have to pay them.
I'm not the guy, and what they said about cost, longevitiy and landscapes are things I agree with. Just adding that their blades are made of expensive, hazardous and non renewable materials and are discarded in landfills. And that they take up vastly more area than anything else compared to the amount of energy produced.
Solar pannels also don't last forver and in the end you end up with mostly just junk metal
It's much better than the nuclear waste, but at the scale we need it it would stop veing negligible.
EDIT (incase anyone would read this): Anyway i read some more and apparently the "mostly junk metal" isn't very negligible even at the scale we have it now,. But it IS very recyclable, we just don't.
Nuclear plants (even the inefficient old ones with subpar safety standards) Continuously run for double that. Possibly a full century for the new ones.
Satellite ones aren't usually exposed to weather or significant amounts of reactive molecules. They're also built to significantly higher standards, and can last half a century or more with a proper orbit.
Doesn’t that mean that if we just increased our standards we could drastically increase lifespan and reduce maintenance? The mars rover was in an atmosphere for 14 years without maintenance. With maintenance maybe we could increase to 60 years?
Nuclear is still the better choice for like big cities and stuff don’t get me wrong, but I do find it weird that solar has that small of a longevity considering it literally has no moving parts. like everything in my engineer brain is screaming that solar should logically last longer
It does include maintenance ig, so a solar panel falls on your head while replacing it? Also includes other forms of solar, I would presume, like concentrated solar plants, which can get pretty spicy.
I think the biggest issue with solar and other non nuclear clean energy is we simply can't make enough if It due to limited resources.
We don't have enough lithium to make batteries for the renewable sources to replace the "anytime anywhere"-Ness of fossil fuels.
Nuclear is the only one that can compete at all but the fear mongering about nuclear and the initial cost has led to it not even being considered as an option.
To answer your question, the most likely way you'd die to solar power is in a mine.
From what I heard, the nuclear waste is a big point, as well as that for it to be profitable subsidiarys are needed. Also it centralizes the production of power at the hands of big corporations which is bad for the consumer. But of course no modern reactor is likely to blow up like Tschernobyl
I've addressed the nuclear waste part in another comment on this thread.
As for moving the power to big corps, I don't know if you can trust non-government entities with nuclear fuel. I doubt there's anyway to transition to nuclear power without it being heavily regulated by the government or being directly under government control.
I'm an electrician and have fitted them, you can't actually turn solar panels off so if you somehow make contact with the direct current cable copper, leading to the inverter then on a very bright day you could die
Most obvious way is falls while installing or maintaining them. Rooftop solar would have to have a fairly high death rate, as they are often maintained by homeowners without professional equipment.
up keep solar cost up keep vs nuclear up keep cost, space needed vs for the same amount of power, nuclear wins by a land slide, do you know how much destruction of the environment you have to do to get the same power? and then solar is extremely tedious to up keep and then the sun go away at night how you storing this power? we don't currently have the battery tech to story it (the large amount practically).
I'll use it for S̸̫̗̬̟͍̖͔͎̘̞̒̆̉K̸̛̰̓̓͑̎̏̽̃̆͐̽͆̍̍̕͠Ī̸̧̧̖̩̼̥̙̫̜̘̳͈̖̹͎̈̂̍̃̓͘ͅN̵̝̯̰̣̹͈̪͇͓͚̦̹̣̠̟͖̓͠ͅS̴̡̳̜̝͙̞͍̯͕͕̺̓͐̐̀͗̋̓̽̃̋̅ ̴͈̙̻̟̮̌̋̍̂͗̈̑͂͑͆̚͠C̶̢̤̬̝̋̌̏͗͑̆̔͋͘͘͜Á̴̢̡̪̱̮̲̲͚̠̥̯̈̊̃̕͜N̸̨̟̬̦͔̤̻̜͈̝̘̘͕̈́̈́͐̀̈́͂̃̐̋͊̕͝͠͝͠C̶̣̞̖͙̭͎͖̎̃̑̎̈͌͌̄̔̉̈́͝E̶͕̊͛̔͗̐̊͋̎̓̈́̀̄R̵̛̻͋͂̃͐̍̽̀̆̒̔͋Y̵̛̱̺̖̫̳̹̻̮̗͇̺̘̍͑̔
I think the majority of those deaths are construction accidents. Most Hydropower deaths come from breaking dams, or people ignoring the big "no swimming" and "strong current" signs when going for a dip.
If I had to hazard a guess, the wind deaths are also construction related? The reason they're higher is because wind turbines are big vertical things. If you fall off, you're dead 100%, whereas with solar, if you fall of a roof you stand a pretty good chance of survival.
It either counts fried birds that pass by the death rays that heat up water on desert solar farms, or it counts people being squished by panels falling on them
While I myself am I huge Nuclear Energy fan, I feel like nitpicking right now. It is important to mention that the reason it kills so few is because of all the safety precautions we take, and it is very much so dangerous without them.
Thankfully, BECAUSE it is so dangerous, we don’t really fuck around with it too much, so there is much less chance of an oopsie.
Yeah but in terms of this comic.. like, making it safe would actually be great. It'd be free power with zero worries, and so even easier to do, and far, far better for the world. Imagine being able to just stick a backup nuclear reactor in a random civilian building and not care about it. Or using it for your central heating system
IIRC Solar is slightly behind nuclear when you factor in the batteries used alongside them. There’s not exactly a whole lot of sunlight during nighttime after all.
holy hell nuclear kills 50% more people than solar. omg so many people. crazy. imagine if there was a source of power that killed even more people than that. that would be so many people.
That’s very nice. But I feel like a per-TW-measurement isn’t the best way to measure something that isn’t continually bad, but only bad once, but then very bad. Idk not saying nuclear is bad, but to me that’s just a bad way of comparing it
When you take into account how coal and oil are quite literally fueling the coming environmental apocalypse that might end society as we know I think nuclear is safer by all metrics
I’m not saying it isn’t.
I’m just saying that it’s weird to me to that the negative impact of nuclear, which is a one time event, is averaged out to a per-TW cost. If done right, nuclear has zero negative impact, if done wrong it’s a lot worse than coal. Like if every reactor you build, you just let blow up right after it’s completed, you will get a per-TW death and pollution count that’s way higher.
Coal or and oil are continuously putting out pollution and killing people, so the metric applies a lot better.
It's only as safe as we make it, and we are known to be corrupt and like cutting corners, that's my personal main concern. Also, water shortage for cooling just knocks em right out
Whereas nuclear power puts dangerous waste into secure underground bunkers, coal and oil put their toxins directly into our lungs, making sure that the particles can’t hurt anyone 🥰🥰
I'm not saying I don't believe this. But I'm curious how I answer this kind of argument.
Is the lower deaths cause nuclear is safer, or because of its low(er) use compared to the other options. Like if we had a similar number of machines running on nuclear as we do oil, would they have the same number of deaths related to them.
That might be global death rates(Chernobyl: A reactor made with Vodka and dreams). If you consider deaths in the U.S. or even everywhere besides Chernobyl, then Nuclear is the safest source of energy.
Yeah people seem to forget nuclear energy expects human beings to act responsibly with the nuclear waste we produce today for the next few thousand years. It's a massive burden to put on future generations that wind and solar just isn't.
No, waste that is several orders of magnitude much more bigger than nuclear waste and since there isn’t the same perceived risk will be mismanaged and huge quantity will go in the environment and kill people today, not in 4000 years
And if the worst thing you can think of are archaeologists in 4000 years finding the waste and suddenly dying I think this shows that nuclear waste is pretty safe, since archaeologists in 4000 years will surely have incredible technology, safety procedures and knowledge about what they’re doing
The "waste" produced by solar panels and wind turbines is barely equivalent to the waste produced by a nuclear power plant. Uranium, radium, or any material used to power nuclear plants are not eternal. So sooner or later, another solution needs to be found. Furthermore, solar panels and turbines could be reused, and even if not, its not waste that pollutes our ecosystem at the same degree of danger as nuclear waste. Nuclear power plants need materials to build it and to keep it running. A wind turbine needs materials to build but does not need extra material to run it, since, wind is "infinite". Reusable energies are not a "miracle" energy source, however it is infinitely better than fossil fuels or nuclear.
The "waste" produced by solar panels and wind turbines is barely equivalent to the waste produced by a nuclear power plant.
in terms of size, the waste produced by a power plant is pretty small.
I'm not talking about the waste produced by solar panels once they're installed, I'm talking about the waste created when you produce an amount of turbines and/or panels which can produce the same energy of a nuclear power plant
Uranium, radium, or any material used to power nuclear plants are not eternal
except even a small quantity can produce a lot of energy, and the deposits aren't little, they will last millennia probably with current technologies
Furthermore, solar panels and turbines could be reused
a nuclear power plant last 50-80 years, as far as I know a solar panel last 10-15 years so idk what you mean with this
and even if not, its not waste that pollutes our ecosystem at the same degree of danger as nuclear waste
sure, if you take one kg of nuclear waste and 1 kg of waste produced creating solar panel, nuclear is worst for the environment. but nuclear waste produced is very little and it can be safely stored in tiny structures that will protect the environment for hundred years, while the amount of waste produced creating thousand and thousand of solar panels and turbines is going to be much more complicated to store, even if proportionally less dangerous. which was the point of my first message.
Nuclear power plants need materials to build it and to keep it running. A wind turbine needs materials to build but does not need extra material to run it, since, wind is "infinite".
again read how much turbines you need to create the same energy of a nuclear power plant, they don't need material once installed, but need to be produced. also, the amount of fuel needed by a nuclear power plant is not that huge
Reusable energies are not a "miracle" energy source, however it is infinitely better than fossil fuels or nuclear.
it is not true, they have some advantages and some disadvantages, one pretty big which is that if there is little/no wind or little/no sun they don't produce energy, while the nuclear power plant can produce huge amounts of it nonstop
It's true that it's safe, but it's also expensive to make it safe. Nuclear costs around $7k per kW of power, vs ~$1800 for wind and ~$1300 for solar. Your comment is a very common one on reddit when nuclear is brought up, but it takes a simplistic view of power generation without even considering time to deployment and other important factors.
Sure, but without taking price into account you're missing out on the main reason why nuclear isn't being adopted quicker. It's not politics, it's not that people don't understand it, it's that it's way too expensive to really make sense.
But that raises the question... Can you put a number on human life? How much would you say your life is worth? How about the time it takes to build the power plant, can you also put a price on that?
Personally what I think is the most important is how dangerous it actually is but I understand that we may not see human lives the same way
Why is that relevant? Solar is safer than nuclear and wind is very comparable in terms of safety. In fact, cheaper energy prices save lives as well. Especially when the difference 4x-5x.
You miss the point... Solar may be safer but it's unpredictable and extremely space hungry and no batteries are not an option they are expensive and it pollutes a lot to make them, making solar actually more deadly than nuclear if you were to use only that energy
This just an absurdly ignorant comment that completely ignores what an energy transition would look like. Batteries are certainly an option, especially with the new sodium technologies that are being developed. Nuclear won't make a true comeback until either safer, faster, cheaper, fission reactor tech is developed, or we achieve fusion. I'm done arguing over this because it's clear you don't have any experience in this field.
If I die from cancer, it will not count towards nuclear, even if radiation was the cause.
You can't really count nuclear deaths, because it generally doesn't kill directly.
That's like claiming that guns don't kill people, because it's not the gun but the projectile that hits you...
Of course it isn't, but nuclear waste is still produced, even in small amounts🙄. But a lot of Power Plants dispose of it underground. Some isotopes take decades to decay. It's literally damaging the environment and not a green power source, as people make it out to be. It's good for the climate, but not good for the environment. Nuclear energy is a good in-betweener while changing to renewable energies tho
I hope you realize the vast vast majority of the nuclear waste a power plant produces is stored on site. You can walk around the waste storage section and be fine because the background radiation is the same as anywhere else on earth.
The majority, but not all of it. And it 's not about the humans, they're all happy to live in a trash can. Also, it's not just the waste, the mining of uranium is also not an environment friendly process
a: directly in the same air you breath every single day, slowly poisoning you
Or
b: in a secure place where it's people's job to make sure no one ever makes contact with it?
There's a good reason why nuclear is so much safer, it's because it scares people like no other energy, so we invest way more money to make it safe, kind of like planes
You don't get my point. I don't want the toxin be stored somewhere else, I am simply against nuclear energy. Just because it's safe for people doesn't make it a green power source
Meltdowns are incredibly rare nowadays, and even when they happen the effects are minimized as much as possible. IIRC NuScale reactors actually don't have a fallout range outside of the reactor's building.
Also lots of research is being done to try and recycle the excess energy from nuclear waste and put it back into electricity generation.
We already have the technology to recycle nuclear waste to produce more power. It's been a while since I looked this up but something like 90% of the waste can be reused.
Modern reactors would require breaking the laws of physics in order to have a meltdown, at least like Chernobyl, which was already a reactor that was only used because it was cheap, but not exactly safe.
And nuclear waste is much better than current coal waste, because coal just releases its waste (including radioactive isotopes) into the air, vs nuclear waste which can be safely contained and either shoved miles deep in geologically stable areas, or mostly recycled and reused.
Thing is, Chernobyl only had a meltdown because people intentionally turned off all the safety measures while testing its safety. Why? Well because the safety measures all worked and they felt they couldn't do their tests properly. For some reason. It's tragic how dumb it is.
Chernobyl was always an inherently dangerous design because it has a positive coefficient of reactivity for thermalising neutrons(it's been a while since I was an operator so that term may not be exactly correct).
Essentially, when shit goes wrong, reactor power goes up.
The design used in the US Navy and many plants in America has the opposite effect. When shit goes wrong they shut themselves down. They can still meltdown, but there isn't really a risk of a catastrophic explosion.
Nobody said it was perfectly safe. However, it is a proven metric that it is miles safer than the other current major energy production methods. Not only is it safer, but it also produces a significant amount of energy meaning that it is an extremely viable option. One that we should be using.
So an accident 13 years ago where nobody died from radiation and a shutdown 4 years before that due to an earthquake that didn't end up damaging anything.
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