While I appreciate the effort, the map is misleading as the scoring/coloring is purely focused on Carbon emissions.
This means things like Nuclear power, ecologically disastrous in the long term, get a nice thumbs up (see France e.g.) because of their short term 'benefits'.
Because that's what this map is about: Live CO2 emissions. Not perceived dangers of nuclear power.
Nuclear power is a highly ideologised subject. In recent years in this area decisions have been made entirely based on fear and political opinion rather than scientific facts (like the relative safety of alternative reactor designs). 'nuclear' has become a hot-button word. Everything connected to it is perceived as negative. Probably some people nowadays would even argue against nuclear fusion because it's 'nuclear'.
In combating climate change by drastically reducing carbon emissions we're facing a huge task, which likely is an uphill battle we can't even really win in the short term. The best we can hope for is mitigating the consequences as much as possible.
Nuclear power is a stopgap measure that can help with that until better alternatives are available. We've been using nuclear fission for power generation for more than 50 years now. The waste generated during that time is there already, if we want it or not. It has to be dealt with anyway. Adding 20 or so more years of nuclear power generation on top of that doesn't exacerbate that problem all that much.
Trying to get rid of coal, oil, gas and nuclear power all at the same time seems like a pretty foolish endeavour.
It's not ecologically disastrous, nuclear energy is safe and the best technology we have right now.
> their short term 'benefits'.
Global warming is 1000x worse than a few radioactive waste we can store and no technology can match the CO2/Khw ratio of nuclear. Short term benefits is exactly what we need now.
Nuclear is safe, but I'm not convinced it is cost effective vs renewables and energy storage - based on the UK's next gen nuclear plants anyway. 30 years is hardly short term either.
Right now it's still much more expensive than nuclear (based on the massive amount EDF spent in France to increase the share of renewables). But I'm sure this will change in the future since prices of renewables are droping quickly.
Right now we know how to power entire countries only with nuclear power. We don't know how to do that with just renewables, which is why e.g. Germany runs coal plants whenever the wind isn't blowing like crazy. It would be much better for our carbon footprint if we replaced the coal plants with nuclear. We can always turn them off once we figured out the whole renewable+storage thing.
What is the problem with nuclear energy? It is very safe and very clean and provides near limitless power. Our technology has been much advanced in the last decades. Now we would only need to build next generation (Thorium) reactors. At least that's what the hivemind here told me.
French here. Besides the advantages you mentioned, the downsides the opposants talk about are:
- aging power plants, we haven't build any in a long time and many are now passed the initial lifetime expetency, but can't be shutdown as they should since there is no replacement ready
- price not taking plants destruction into account. None have been fully destructed yet, so we don't know how much it coat exactly but it's far from cheap since you have tons of midly radioactive material to treat
- still no proper way to dispose of the waste. There research etc, but right bow we're basically storing lots of materials that will be radioactive for millennias
- new generation plants project (EPR) is many years late and many times over budget because of critical defects in components.
- probably other arguments I forgot
I am personally undecided on the matter, but what is certain is that nuclear might be the best solution we have, but it certainly isn't without downsides.
Neither are the alternatives. Governments, and civilians alike, should carefully weight the advantages and disadvantages. What I mainly know about it is from memory from elementary school. Because this is precisely what we did. Each group was tasked to use pictures/photos from magazines, papers, etc to make a collage and a list of the + and - of each of these sources.
That said, can someone ELI5 why Thorium is the future for nuclear energy? What are the advantages and disadvantages?
That would contaminate the ocean. It's easier to "dump" it (carefully and deliberately) into crystalline bedrock or salt deposits where it will remain for millions of years, well beyond the time that it is dangerous. People spreading fear about storing nuclear waste in repositories are generally lying to you or repeating lies someone else told them. It's a fairly solved problem from the technical side.
> It is very safe and very clean and provides near limitless power.
Very much true. Nukes produce 60% of the carbon-free energy in the USA!
> Now we would only need to build next generation (Thorium) reactors.
There are lots of advanced next gen reactor designs with passive safety, advanced process heat, renewable fuel (replenished from erosion into seawater), etc. Only a handful of which use Thorium. The whole Thorium thing was a rebranding attempt by a guy named Kirk Sorensen who wanted to have a advanced nuclear rebirth. I don't like it because I want to see advanced nuclear of all fuels, not just Thorium! But that's a minor point.
The S. Koreans and Russians have standardized their reactor designs and built a bunch of them, and in doing so they learned how to fabricate the parts and put them together very cost effectively. The rest of the nuclear industry needs to learn from this to keep construction costs down. Options for this include:
1. Build nuclear reactors in shipyards. This is a controlled environment with high replicability. Then deliver the nukes on barges or even operate them a few km offshore with subsea cables.
2. Pick a design and stick to it. The entire industry goes around saying they have the latest and greatest design but none of them are great unless someone works the kinks out of constructing it. The best solution here in my mind is to develop national open source reactor designs.
I think you make failure to quantify error here and can't see the difference in magnitude between risks.
If we had Fukushima every few years and nuclear storage accidents happen frequently, it's unlikely that it would be worse than delayed retreat from hydrocarbons caused by aversion to nuclear power.
The map does not claim to conclude on anything else than Carbon emissions. Many other things need to be taken into account when considering decisions, and this is merely one decision (albeit a very important one!)
It is beneficial because it gets rid of us.
The presence of humans is worse that almost any cataclismic effect, even a nuclear explosion and lingering radiation.
The radiation itself isn't beneficial in the long term, if that's what you're asking.
Exactly the opposite. Nuclear is only beneficial short term.
The long term consequences are very long term, hundreds thousands of years. The problem of storing nuclear waste material is still unsolved and extremely expensive. Radiation poisoning is ecologically extremely disastrous.
E.g. the shield in Chernobyl has to be rebuilt every few decades because the radiation weakens every shielding material over time.
I completely disagree. Using waste repositories like the one Finland is opening soon [1] keep the radiation out of the biosphere for well beyond the time it is dangerous. One soda can of nuclear fuel can provide a lifetime supply of carbon-free energy to a human at US consumption levels and make one soda can of gnarly radioactive waste. That waste is so small that it's feasible to safely dispose of it. The land, carbon, material, mining, etc. footprints of nuclear are tiny and that's what affect the environment. Nuclear is extremely clean.
> Exactly the opposite. Nuclear is only beneficial short term.
> The long term consequences are very long term, hundreds thousands of years.
That differs per isotope AFAIK.
Also, you could regard it as temporary solution between coal, less efficient/safe/fill_in nuclear power plants, and solar/wind/biomass. Because global warming is here right now, and we gotta deal with it right now.
This means things like Nuclear power, ecologically disastrous in the long term, get a nice thumbs up (see France e.g.) because of their short term 'benefits'.