this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2024
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There's a great distinction that Norwegian philosopher and deep ecologist Anre Naess makes between long-range and short-range movements which I think helps explain the disagreement a little.
In the short term, we need to reduce CO2 for our own survival. Nuclear helps this, so from this angle it seems counterproductive for anyone who claims concern over the environment to object to its development.
In the long term, humans need to transition away from a society based on resource extraction, and long term damage. It's a lot harder to see how nuclear helps with this- mining and enriching uranium are destructive processes, and nuclear waste needs containment for thousands of years.
Our current situation is pretty critical, so I think it's pretty legitimate to think that we might need to make some compromises between the long and short term. But I think the distinction makes it a lot clearer about why people seem to be shouting passed each other sometimes.
The electrical grid, from production, distribution, and delivery, to the outlets in your home/business, is a very complex and distinctly unique system filled with challenges at all points.
I know just enough about all of it to get myself into trouble, or, more frequently, keep myself out of trouble. IMO, nuclear, whether in the form of SMR or something else, should be built to handle the base loads, aka, the power that is always needed, and not necessarily any more than that.
The volatile loads that fluctuate throughout the day, that's what I'm not sure the best method to address. Is it wind/hydro, which are fairly consistent (the latter more than the former, in terms of consistency), or solar + energy storage, which may be batteries, or some other method of storing the power?
I dunno, I'm no expert. But given the reliability of nuclear, building more or less static systems with it that will supply base loads, seems like a no brainer. We will always need at least that much power, let's get it from somewhere that can push it out 24/7/365 for years with little to no maintenance. Obviously, all nuclear production needs to be monitored, regardless of the reactor type.... For safety. But if the system is basically always doing the same thing, with the same output, constantly, it shouldn't require a lot of variance.
I think those are pros of nuclear. The alternative to a static system like that would be a very diverse flexible one with lots of different energy types and markets to encourage users to flex usage up or down.
I'm not trying to make a case either way though, just explaining what perspectives might lead people to be concerned about climate change and still anti-nuclear.
I appreciate that. It didn't come across as anything other than informative, and fostering discussion.
I'm personally a fan of nuclear. I know the long lead times of creating the facilities, largely because of the safety and protection systems that need to be built, tested and validated before the plant can export a single watt of power. All of which I understand.
My background is in IT, and the most stable systems, which are almost always preferred over alternatives, are distributed. What I want to see is that the majority of generation is done by homes in the neighborhood they serve. So the power needed, is the power inside that area; this wouldn't eliminate the need for a larger grid to interconnect all of those cells of production together, which would allow any single production location to go down and the power would still be delivered to the people in that area, borrowing excess from neighboring areas.
This would, however, make the grid power a lot more communal of a resource. I'm sure that works inspire a lot of "communist" type arguments...
However, the benefits of such a system would be clear and fairly robust compared to the more centralized systems we're using now.
I don't know if that's really viable, either with SMR (or other nuclear), or using solar/wind/whatever.