Yet another article that tries to create the impression that there might perhaps possibly be theoretical considerations for the return to the use of nuclear power under certain circumstances...
It's unlikely.
this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
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How a nation can defend one's nuclear reactors against sabotage and assault considering we have a war boiling in Europe?
Is it different than how a country would protect other infrastructure like government buildings, hospitals, other electrical grid infrastructure, dams, etc.?
If for no other reason than defense, it should be considered. Europe can't rely on the US nuclear umbrella anymore, unfortunately. Y'all need a local source for weapons.
I’m not against nuclear power, but I don’t see it becoming a thing in Denmark. It is simply too expensive compared to solar and wind.
Also just look how hard it is to find spots for renewables
Surely there will be no NIMBYs preventing atomic power plants and storage spaces for the used material from being built...
Yeah, it's so hard to find space ... so let's not go with the most space efficent method!
The only reason your electrical grid works is because you use Norway and Sweden for balancing. As we also deploy more renewables, there won't be enough balancing power unless more is built.
Can be hydro, nuclear, huge batteries etc. And at least Sweden is capped out on hydro.
hydro and big batteries make sense as they soak up the excess solar and wind, but how does nuclear help with this?
Nuclear helps when you have a very bad drought and very little wind for a long time. Bad doldrums, or perhaps big fires changing wind patterns during a hot summer. Certain parts of the world may need to rethink certain forms of power generation as the climate begins to change at an accelerated pace. Our reservoirs and dams in western Canada and the western US are already below historic averages, and we've used hydro for decades and decades.
Nuclear is a very consistent, base load source. Expensive, but very reliable, and most importantly, cleaner and safer than coal or methane ("natural gas") generators in the event you need to meet extraordinary demand all of a sudden.
Our reservoirs and dams in western Canada and the western US are already below historic averages, and we’ve used hydro for decades and decades
It's funny you mention that because this just came up today:
Tasmania’s hydro power hits record lows as trading strategy shifts from baseload to firming
The question is if nuclear power ends up being a non-used source of energy unless in extreme situations like
very bad drought and very little wind for a long time
then is it an appropriate solution? If it's only for a short time then it sounds like gas would be better
Yeah, weather is shifting a lot. Methane is really bad to build as any leaks (and they do leak) release gas that accelerates climate change way faster than carbon. Nuclear is a reliable source for a long time. I suspect that many of the world's hydro dams will become less useful as things deteriorate. Perhaps some can be replaced by geothermal, or solar/wind/battery, but for places that are in geographically disadvantaged locations, nuclear is a great option.
Absolutely not, in no way is natural gas better. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcoN2bdACGA Please watch this. This is Why Trump is threatening Greenland.
Kyle Hill has a great video explaining this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcoN2bdACGA Please watch this. This is Why Trump is threatening Greenland.
billions to build said reactors, and then years of regulatory approval plus all the maintenance comes with it, and the safety of the area around said nuclear reactors. if they had it from the start, then it might be different.
Can someone fill me in on why this website is so insanely pro nuclear energy?
Like, I’m not even fundamentally against it but I don’t understand why we should invest billions in a tech that has essentially been leapfrogged already, would take a decade to become relevant again and is more expensive per KW/h than both renewables and fossil fuels.
Yet every comment criticizing nuclear on Lemmy always (literally every time) gets buried in downvotes. It’s super weird.
It's the go-to strategy for fossil fuel companies to stay in the market as long as possible
They know it's not possible, they don't want to build new ones but the discussion alone is slowing down renewables and makes it less likely that the current fossil power plants can be shut down soon.
Nuclear power has some nice properties (and a whole bunch of terrible ones), is technologically interesting, and has been the premier low-CO₂ energy source for a while. That gets it some brownie points although I agree that it shouldn't be sacrosanct.
I personally am mainly interested in using breeder reactors to breed high-level waste that needs to be kept safe for 100,000 years into even higher-level waste that only needs to be kept safe for 200 years. That's expensive and dangerous but it doesn't require unknown future technology in other to achieve safe storage for an order of magnitude longer than recorded history.
There's a whole bunch of very good questions you can ask about that approach (such as how to handle the proliferation risk) but the idea of turning nuclear waste disposal into a feasibly solvable problem just appeals to me.
Of course I expect an extreme amount of oversight and no tolerance for fucking up. That may be crazy expensive but we're talking about large-scale breeder deployment. It's justified.
I'm pretty sure it's a campaign or people who are influenced by it. It started years ago on reddit. All of the sudden a perceived majority was pro-nuclear. It really happened in the span of a few weeks or maybe 1-2 months.
I'm not the only person who was dismayed by winding down nuclear power worldwide after the overblown situation at Three Mile Island. Then Fukushima caused another scare that could have been prevented, and turns out was not even that severe. If we had continued working nuclear at pace, while winding down fossil fuels we would be in a better situation environmentally now.
Nuclear is less expensive and more scalable than solar, wind, hydro.
It does not boil the planet like fossil fuels.
Yes it takes time and money to set up, but that's a short term cost.
This is assumed to be widely known, so critical questions that don't take that into account are assumed to be either in bad faith or laziness.
How is it less expensive then solar??? Are you using solar panels from 1970?
It has always been highly subsidized. And there is also cost to keep it working. Fuel rods and people... And if you include "persistent waste storage costs" and force them to pay money into a fund that will be used in case of a rare catastrophy, combined with the prediction of solar getting cheaper and cheaper, no one with the intention to gain money would invest in that.
Nuclear power is slow and rigid. And it is absolutely uneconomical in the long run.
Nuclear is less expensive and more scalable than solar, wind, hydro.
It's neither.
More scalable is hilarious. They take like 10 years to build and cost 18 billion dollars to get 1GW steady state.
Meanwhile, we can whip out 1GW of solar in 2yrs for 2 billion, and do it in modular sections. You don't have steady state, but you could build solar out to compete with enough battery and high voltage transmission lines, with basically zero nuclear hurdles. It would cost, but it is viable now and much faster, and that's with current tech. Batteries and panels are just getting cheaper and better.
The LCOE for nuclear is substantially higher than wind and solar. It’s not just upfront costs.
I wonder how much wind, solar and energy storage you could build with all that money
It's not either-or. Money that aren't spend on nuclear will be mostly spent on burning fossil fuels, because that's the niche they occupy together.
Money isn't the issue.
Nimby'ism is preventing the expansion of solar and wind. Nimby'ism will also prevent the building of a large nuclear plant.
I hope the change of law will enable more research on modern nuclear power.
It's not NIMBY's it's oil. Look at The Simpsons, who's the evil billionaire polluting the planet? Mr. Burns. The Simpsons airs on FOX, once you see it, you can't unsee it. Even though nuclear power has killed less people than every other form of energy production. They've been trying to repressing and demonising this technology for the last 70 years. Coal Fire power plants release more radiation into the atmosphere in a single Day then a nuclear reactor will in its entire existence. Coal Fire power plants kill 1,000,000 people a year. We've had this technology for 70 years that's 70 million people that's more people than dies in World War II and we're not allowed to even talk about it. Traditional lightwater reactors where enriched uranium rods are water cooled were designed for nuclear submarines. They were never supposed to upscaled to this degree. But the US cut funding to the Oakridge nuclear project because of pressure from the fossil fuel industry. This subliminal messaging, showing nuclear waste as glowing green goo is in everything. Video games, comic books, movies, it's everywhere. They don't want the public to be aware of the safety and energy benefits. These new Thorium salt reactors produce less than 1/1000 the waste of lightwater reactors and they can even burn waste rods from traditional lightwater reactors. That's what the far-right is for to suppress the green revolution because that would mean the end of fossil fuels grip over the destiny of our planet. These people know global warming is real, fuck, trump just built seawalls around his golf course. This is why he's threatening Greenland because war would mobilise NATO troops, removing support from Ukraine and give them an excuse to bomb the fuck out of Copenhagen to ensure the company working to produce finish their first prototype reactor would disappear. This is why Rogan and Jordan Peterson and all those dickheads support war and push climate denial.
Sure thing. This post is about Denmark though, where the nuclear power has been banned by hippies in the 80s, and the same old idiots now decline expanding solar power because they prefer to look at fields of manure instead of solar panels.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcoN2bdACGA Please watch this. This is Why Trump is threatening Greenland. This Technology would be the END of for profit energy production. That's where all the far-right bullshit has come from, that's why Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan are all pushing climate denial. War is the only way fossi fuels remain in demand because there are no electric tanks!
Banning nuclear reactors was one of the worst environmental decisions humans have ever made.
Or* it was just a smidge too early. Things are much safer now from what I understand.
So, could we in Sweden perhaps then reopen the nuclear power plant of Barsebäck, that was closed because Denmark didn't enjoy having one right across the water from their capital?
This is good news.
how is that nasty mink farming going then? denmark has changed to the worse.
Didn't all the mink farms close?
https://www.europeancorrespondent.com/r/the-sad-return-of-the-minks
denmark is on a decline. visit any town but CPH and you see a dying country. small towns are super backwards, integration kinda failed (dont mention iranians), drinking prime minister....and mink farms.
denmark was cool like 40yrs back or so
Interesting perspective. When you say any town, do you include places like Aarhus and Odense? If yes, what are the symptoms of the country dying there?
What small towns are you talking about specifically? There are definitely struggling places out there, in curious if we're thinking of the same places.
Also what's the issue with the prime minister drinking?
What was cool about Denmark 40 years ago?
well if i go to the north sea any city is in decline. blavand,rodekro all those...and then go up to hjorring...i stayed there a week some years back...aaaauuuugh...the horrors.
went to the mall in aarhus...made me laugh and cry..they still to this day have a "how i met your mother" cafe in the mall...since 20 years...and it looks like it. but it is not only the ugly malls outside of cph it is that the cities have just become useless. i hang out in hvarde often and nothing absolutely nothing has improved there in the last 2 decades. necropole? is that what you call communities of old ppl? while decades ago denmark could have been considered progessive I am sure you wont find anyone outside of denmark say that.
have they stopped farming wild animals? no. has their policy on drungs evolved? nope.
maybe it is their brainrot, but thoses fences for the swineflu...absurd. just go say you hate brown people.
so 40yrs ago DK was cool because they were at least progressive,quite rich and laid back.
They closed down all, about 1400 small farms, in 2020.
The ban was removed in 2023. 6 larger farms have reopened since then, comparable to 15 of the previous farms.
It was a total shit show, but at least the clean up forced all the skeletons out of the closet.