Shuttering of New York facility raises awkward climate crisis questions as gas – not renewables – fills gap in power generation
When New York’s deteriorating and unloved Indian Point nuclear plant finally shuttered in 2021, its demise was met with delight from environmentalists who had long demanded it be scrapped.
But there has been a sting in the tail – since the closure, New York’s greenhouse gas emissions have gone up.
Castigated for its impact upon the surrounding environment and feared for its potential to unleash disaster close to the heart of New York City, Indian Point nevertheless supplied a large chunk of the state’s carbon-free electricity.
Since the plant’s closure, it has been gas, rather then clean energy such as solar and wind, that has filled the void, leaving New York City in the embarrassing situation of seeing its planet-heating emissions jump in recent years to the point its power grid is now dirtier than Texas’s, as well as the US average.
Environmentalists wanted it gone because it was old, ill maintained, harmed wildlife by raising river temperature, and had leaks…
It faced a constant barrage of criticism over safety concerns, however, particularly around the leaking of radioactive material into groundwater and for harm caused to fish when the river’s water was used for cooling. Pressure from Andrew Cuomo, New York’s then governor, and Bernie Sanders – the senator called Indian Point a “catastrophe waiting to happen” – led to a phased closure announced in 2017, with the two remaining reactors shutting in 2020 and 2021.
A leaky nuclear reactor upstream from a major metro area isn’t a good thing…
The reason it was closed wasn’t carbon emissions, that would be ridiculous.
It was closed because it was unsafe
Oh good info. I am Pro Nuclear and Pro renewable. I think modern reactors have a real place in our future grid, but yeah old leaky reactors we should get rid of.
I trust nuclear can be built safely, problem is I don’t trust the humans building, maintaining, and running it to not cut corners. I flat out didn’t trust nuclear that’s run for profit as shareholders will demand cost cutting to maximize profits, and I didn’t know if I’d trust publication funded nuclear to stay properly funded.
It doesn’t have to be capitalistic.
Having our energy grid be for profit is a ridiculous idea anyways.
And the Navy has been training nuclear engineers for decades, without any major accidents despite almost all of their reactors being shoved into ships and submarines and training takes 18-24 months and being offered to kids literally right out of highschool.
Nationalize the energy grid and require government certification/contracts fornuclear plant operators.
Hell, most Navy nuclear engineers would literally jump ship to that just to be off a ship. But loads more would sign if the pay/bonuses was in anyway comparable to what Navy gets.
Just because capitalism makes something impossible doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Just that it’s incompatible with capitalism.
I’m aware, but, if we push for nuclear in the US right now, it will be for profit, and that’s why I’m apprehensive. If we can keep it public and ensure proper funding, then I’m for it.
how was it leaking radioactive material into the water? It’s a PWR plant, that’s not coming from the reactor itself.
Oh, seems like the spent fuel pool was leaking. Cool, not even the plant itself, literally just the waste storage. Fascinating.
With that logic they should be ripping out every hydroelectric dam as well.
If ones cracked and keeps springing leaks, yeah, that shit needs fixed.
But you don’t exactly “rip out” a dam…
I think you’re just one of many people who think one bad nuke pant makes them all bad.
One flawed anything doesn’t make all of anything bad, especially when the bad one is one of the first made in the world and there have been ridiculous amounts of advancement in the field.
Hell, it was 20 years after we really figured out nuclear physics when this was built, and 3x that long till it was decommissioned. It just wasn’t good anymore.
You all treat energy policy like it was highschool sports rivals.
I’ve always been pro nuclear. But what I’ve come to understand is that nuclear accidents are traumatizing. Anybody alive in Europe at the time was psychologically damaged by Chernobyl. Don’t forget also that the elder Xers and older worldwide lived under the specter of nuclear annihilation.
So you’ve got rational arguments vs. visceral fear. Rationality isn’t up to it. At the end of the day, the pronuclear side is arguing to trust the authorities. Being skeptical of that is the most rational thing in the world. IDK how to fix this, I’m just trying to describe the challenge pronuclear is up against.
I’m pro nuclear based on the science, but I’m anti nuclear based on humanity. Nuclear absolutely can be run safely, but as soon as there’s a for profit motive, corporations will try to maximize profits by cutting corners. As long as there’s that conflict I don’t blame people for being afraid.
Oh absolutely the corporations are going to want to maximize profit. There are just a lot of things they can’t get out of, especially when it comes to safety.
The nuclear industry (in the US) since TMI has had a heavy amount of oversight from its regulatory body. That the plants pay for, too, which is good.
the solution is never build an RBMK plant ever again. And invest in gen IV designs, which are inherently safe, and have basically no active safety features, because they dont need them.
Don’t forget also that the elder Xers and older worldwide lived under the specter of nuclear annihilation.
This movie didn’t help.
(Good movie by the way; Jack Lemmon’s “I can feel it” line at the end of the movie really scares the crap out of you.)
I use to be very pro nuclear. I’d write letters to papers and such explaining how the waste, which is the main concern most people have, is not as big of a problem as people think - and that certain manufacturing processes produce other waste products that are very bad and people just don’t think about those…
Anyway, I changed my mind some time back. There are three main things that have turned me against nuclear.
- The first thing was that I read a detailed analysis of the ‘payback time’ of different forms of energy generation. i.e. the amount of time it takes for the machine to produce more energy (in dollar terms) than it cost to build and run it. Nuclear fairs very poorly. It takes a long time to pay itself back; but wind was outstandingly fast; and solar was surprisingly competitive too (this was back when solar technology wasn’t so advanced. That’s why it was surprising). So then, I got thinking that although nuclear’s main advantage over coal is its cleanliness, wind is even cleaner, and easier to build, and safer, and pays itself off much much faster. And Australia has a lot of space suitable for wind power… so I became less excited by nuclear energy.
- The second thing is that as I grew older, I saw more and more examples of the corrupting influence of money. Safely running a nuclear power-plant and managing waste is not so hard that it cannot be done, but is a long-term commitment… and there are a lot of opportunities for unwise cost-cutting. My trust in government is not as high as it use to be; and so I no longer have complete faith that the government would stay committed to the technical requirements of long-term safe waste management. And a bad change of government could turn a good nuclear power project into a disaster. It’s a risk that is far higher with nuclear than with any other kind of power.
- The third and most recent thing is that mining companies have started turning up the rhetoric in support of nuclear power. They were not in favour of it in the past, but they smell the winds of change, and they trying to manipulate the narrative and muddy the waters by putting nuclear into the mix. They say nuclear is a requirement for a clean future, and stuff like that. But that’s not true. It’s an option, but not a requirement. By framing it as a requirement, they trigger a fight between people for and against nuclear, and it’s just a massive distraction form what we are actually trying to achieve. If the fight just stalls, the mining companies win with the status-quo. And if nuclear gets up, they win again with a new thing to mine… It’s not nice
So yeah, I’m not so into nuclear now. It’s not a bad technology, but the idea of it is a bit radioactive, just like the waste product.
Being skeptical of trusting “authorities” is only rational if you’re still living with boomer information. There are plenty of designs now that would have made Fukushima a non-issue. Until fusion comes along, nuclear is easily our best option alongside renewables.
Well there are plenty of rational arguments against nuclear. Its very expensive and time consuming to build, so its better to build renewables that can start generating power in a couple of months vs at least a decade for nuclear.
Then they are actually pretty significantly more polluting than renewables due to the amount of concrete they use. And decommissioning them is a costly and expensive process that also releases a lot of carbon. And theres only one permanent storage facility in the world for nuclear waste. And theres the fact that due to needing a constant and highly skilled workforce, they need to be near population centres but far enough away that people feel safe, which makes it hard to plan.
And also specifically for the reactors mentioned in the article, they were built in the 60s, they are not nearly as safe as modern reactors.
I am sympathetic to the don’t trust the powers that be viewpoint. For example I just assume everything an economist says is the exact opposite of what we should do.
What I look for is multiple independent groups able to present the same data showing the same results. For example I trusted the first Covid vaccine because Universities and multiple government agencies of different countries agreed. If it was just the Orange White House administration lawyers claiming this shit is the bomb yeah I am not getting it.
Guess we need to basically just keep saying “look you don’t trust the government, and that’s fine. Here is the science for all these other places”
You got it. I’ve had this discussion and the anti nuclear boils down to “somewhat, somehow, something, someone, maybe, possibly, perhaps may go wrong. Anything built by man could fail”. There’s no logic, just fear.
At this point, you can be economically anti-nuclear. The plants take decades to build with a power cost well above wind/solar. You can build solar/wind in high availability areas and connect them to the grid across the states with high power transmission lines, leading to less time that renewables aren’t providing a base line load. One such line is going in right now from the high winds great plains to Illinois, which will connect it to the eastern coastal grid illinois is part of.
We also have a hilarious amountof tech coming online for power storage, from the expected lithium to nasa inspire gas battery designs, to stranger tech like making and reducing rust on iron.
There is also innovation in “geothermal anywhere” technology that uses oil and gas precision drilling to dig deep into the earth anywhere to tap geothermal as a base load. Roof wind for industrial parks is also gaining steam, as new designs using the wind funneling current shape of the buildings are being piloted, rivaling local solar with a simplier implementation.
While speculative, many of these techs are online and working at a small scale. At least some of them will pay off much faster, much cheaper and much more consistently before any new nuclear plants can be opened.
Nuclear’s time was 50 years ago. Now? It’s a waste to do without a viable small scale design. Those have yet to happen, mainly facing setbacks, but i’m rooting for them.
there is one cool thing about nuclear though, if you know what you’re doing they’re ripe for government subsidy investment. One and done, they’ll run for like 30-50 years. No questions asked. It’s really just the upfront build cost that’s the problem.
The georgia plant just opened 7 years late and 17 billion over cost. It is already running residents $4+/month in fees, with up to $13+/month being discussed, and that outside of the cost of electricity. It far, far over ran even huge government subsidies, with the feds putting up 12 billion.
There are much better places to put those billions now than in incredibly late and overly expensive “modern” nuclear.
To be completely fair to them, a ton of the delay was over lawsuits. I mean, you’d definitely end up dealing with those regardless of where you put upa NPP, but just giving them that small benefit f doubt there.
I’m a customer of theirs, paying the stupid fee. They got all celebratory about getting to the end and now the bill has to be paid and oh look, it’s the customers paying. Joy.
I work nuclear industry adjacent, so I guess it’s job security. And with that disclaimer I’ll add this:
Building new plants is definitely going to take too long. If we get small modular reactors that will help. Same way if we get better batteries for solar and wind storage or new tech in geothermal. The simple point is that we are 50+ years behind. We gotta try anything and everything. It’s our only hope at this point. And no matter what, it’s going to cost. Money, land, your view from your backyard. People aren’t willing to sacrifice anything to get it done, and that’s how it’s going to end for us if we don’t change. And that’s true for literally every problem we have. Nimby-ism will be the death of us.
Also the nuclear waste is a big problem, it will be around for thousands of years. We have a nuclear plant near us and none of the waste has ever left the site, it just keeps getting added to big casks on a concrete slab outdoors and is a big potential vulnerability.
Most radioactive waste is just mildly contaminated and has a relatively short danger period in the realm of a century or less. The truly dangerous stuff represents the smallest amount of waste and that’s the crap people have been trying to put very deep underground for decades. For whatever reason the political will just hasn’t been there. For now it rests on-site in casks designed to keep it safely stored for a very long time, but it will eventually need a permanent home.
Coal waste is a bigger problem
There is a simple answer that nobody will implement. Thorium reactors, very veyy low chances of meltdowns
But the governments won’t do it because you can’t convert thorium to bombs
I beg you Lemmy, dont be like a redditor that just reads the purposefully inflammatory headlines and gets mad over it. Always assume a headline is supposed to get a specific emotional response from you and read the article.
For this one the environmental concerns people had were not about carbon emissions, they were about groundwater contamination
It faced a constant barrage of criticism over safety concerns, however, particularly around the leaking of radioactive material into groundwater and for harm caused to fish when the river’s water was used for cooling.
The plant as well as NYs other plants that face a lot of criticism were built in the 60s long before much of the modern saftey measures and building techniques that make Modern reactors so safe. And thats why they were decommissioned, they were almost 60 years old and way past their initial life span. Not because of “Dumb environmental activists think taking nuclear power offline will decrease carbon emissions” like whoever wrote this headline is trying to get you to assume.
You are not immune to propaganda.
Modern is a misnomer. Most of our plants are 30+ years old. After 3 Mile Island, nuclear development ground to a halt in the US. No new nuclear power began development after 1979 except 2 new reactors at the existing Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Georgia that were approved in 2009.
And only one reactor at Indian Point came online in the 60s. Units 2 and 3 came online 12 and 14 years after unit one. And unit 1 was decommissioned in 1974 as it is, shortly after unit 2 came online.
In any case, why not fix the issue rather than just shutting the plant?
And that does not make the headline “inflammatory.” It is accurate. People just assume that nuclear will be magically replaced by renewables. But you can’t just do that. You can draw a direct line from the closure of Indian Point to the construction of 3 natural gas turbine plants.
Three natural gas-fired power plants have been introduced over the past three years to help support the electric supply needed by New York City that Indian Point had been providing: Bayonne Energy Center II (120 MW), CPV Valley Energy Center (678 MW), and Cricket Valley Energy Center (1,020 MW).
In any case, why not fix the issue rather than just shutting the plant?
Because just patching up an old faulty nuclear power plant thats past its expected service life is a recipe for disaster. Hence why we have service lifetimes for these things in the first place?
And that does not make the headline “inflammatory.” It is accurate
It absolutely is inflammatory. Its specifically trying to conflate environmental concerns of polluted groundwater with carbon emissions, to make it seem like the people who voiced those concerns are idiots.
thats past its expected service life
Citation needed. It received a 40-year permit to start because that was the max permit issued.
Lots of things last well past their “expected service life.” That is why there is the word EXPECTED. The problem was in the spent fuel pools. They could build brand new ones.
Tell me, what was the expected service life of the Brooklyn Bridge? Should people avoid it because continuing to use it is “a recipe for disaster?”
The fact is, intensive inspections would have been required for another permit to continue operating.
Listen, if you think we should build newer and better nuclear power plants, I am right with you. But until that happens, we cannot just flush what we have down the toilet.
Should we build wind and solar? Absolutely. But we also need green power that works when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing, and that is what Indian Point gave the state of NY for decades.
It absolutely is inflammatory. Its specifically trying to conflate environmental concerns of polluted groundwater with carbon emissions, to make it seem like the people who voiced those concerns are idiots.
It cites a “green win.” The groundwater issue is absolutely a green issue.
But even then, those pushing to close it down claimed it would be replaced by green energy. The National Resourced Defence Council claimed that “Indian Point Is Closing, but Clean Energy Is Here to Stay.” The claimed that “because of New York’s landmark 2019 climate legislation and years of clean energy planning and investments by the state, New York is better positioned today than ever to achieve its ambitious climate and clean energy goals without this risky plant.”
So, yes, it was absolutely advertised as a climate win that the NY would easily replace it with renewable energy, even when those 3 gas turbine plants were being bought online.
In any case, why not fix the issue rather than just shutting the plant?
Because the bean counters counted the beans and found that it wouldn’t be profitable.
Besides the text of the article, there is the issue that environmentalist fear-mongering about nuclear energy caused extreme hesitance to build a new plant and that has lead directly to greenhouse gas emissions increases.
Indeed, we are not immune to propaganda.
Well when you consider that reactors at the time werent as safe as they are now, and that we had several high profile nuclear reactor failures at around the same time, that were all pretty narrowly stopped from becoming even worse disasters and all those reactors were “Perfectly safe” until they werent and also just how deeply awful the effects of radiation is. Do you think its actually “fear mongering” or reasonable concern? I suppose the difference depends mostly on which side of the argument you are on.
Environmentalists can’t stop oil and gas companies from drilling and fracking and spilling and polluting. If nuclear was profitable environmentalists wouldn’t be able to stop it either.
The only reason we have so many nuclear plants is because the government subsidized them because they produce material that can be used in weapons. Just the reactor on its own isn’t profitable for decades, which is too long for a company to wait for a return even in the good old days before profits needed to grow every quarter.
Well, nuclear can be profitable. It’s just that fossil fuels are more profitable.
But this is also where the government needs to step in. There should be a carbon tax to account for the climate change externality. Also, clean sources of power including nuclear should be subsidized.
Keep in mind that while environmentalists maybe can’t stop it, some of them happily join a coalition with NIMBYs and indeed, fossil fuel companies to stop nuclear.
Even if the government did start heavily subsidizing nuclear, it will take a decade for new plants to come online. In the meantime, hundreds of gigawatts of renewables will come online, and storage and efficiency technologies will improve immensely. Like I said in another comment, if renewable power lowers the price of electricity, the nuclear plant will take even longer to be profitable.
We can keep the existing plants we have going. And even in the future, I believe there is space for nuclear. It is still far more consistent at generating power.
And I doubt renewables will make power cheaper.
Listen, the companies building gas turbine generators are not stupid. They know they will run for decades. Renewable energy, while good, just cannot meet increasing demands for power on its own.
And I doubt renewables will make power cheaper.
Except it already has. It’s cheaper (hence a lower electricity price) to build new wind or solar than it is to continue operating a coal power plant. And because they’re renewable the only real costs are the initial construction and some fairly easy maintenance. Without the fuel costs the real price of electricity will go down over time. A rooftop solar system will pay for itself after 7-10 years and from then on the electricity is essentially free.
Meanwhile, when Vogtle 3 came online last year electricity prices in Georgia went up 3% because they passed along the cost of construction to customers.
Plus, building a nuclear power plant takes decades. Vogtle 3 started planning in 2006, and took a decade to build and didn’t come online until last year. In the meantime the price of solar dropped by 75%, and we’ve added 38 GW of solar capacity. Wind went down in price about 25% and added 130 GW of capacity.
So I’d rather wait a decade to tear down the gas turbine generators - or power them with biofuel somehow - than wait for a nuclear plant to come online.
I’ve checked and rechecked my power bill. Definitely not cheaper.
I live in the Great Lakes, where essentially it is cloudy 90% of the time from October-April. My home has a relative roof that faces east and west, not south. Rooftop solar does not pay for itself here so easily. And that is besides the regulations the power companies have placed on it, essentially eliminating even net metering and only giving you pennies for excess power production.
The planet can’t wait a decade while we build out renewables. We have to keep what nuclear we have going at least.
Canada’s CANDU reactors were built in the 60’s and are providing Ontario 60-80% of its power.
Shitty design and build are the main problem. Not the age
I don’t know if heavy water plants leaking tritium in their wastewater should be used as a good standard for the longevity of old reactor designs.
You’re worried about a bit of tritium being pumped into Lake Ontario?
The actual leak never got out, the only time there was a leak was some dumbass filled the wrong silo and had to dump it.
The plant should have been closed for updating and modernization, not just closed permanently.
Nuclear is the only way we will get to carbon neutral emissions anytime soon.
You cant really just keep “modernising” ancient reactor designs forever. Eventually you’ll need to close them down and build something else.
And realistically it makes way way more sense to build Wind power than nuclear to get us to carbon neutral. We can build a 50mw wind farm in 6 months.
For comparison Hinkley Point C in the UK was announces in 2010 and is currently expected to be commissioned by 2029.
That means if we built wind instead we would have built 1900MW of capacity in the time it would have taken to build the NPP and by the time the reactors would generate power for the first time the wind farms would already have generated 17 GW/years of power. If we stopped building more wind farms when the NPP completed it would take the reactor 14 more years just to catch up to the wind farms. And if we continue to build wind farms nuclear literally never catches up as total wind capacity would overtake the capacity of the NPP by year 13.
Yes you can make arguments about the uptime of wind, but I think ive made my point. And thats not even factoring in the cost/MW of capacity.
This is a great point about renewables: A partially finished solar or wind power installation can produce some power and start recouping costs. A nuclear plant doesn’t start bringing in income until it’s completely finished, so all those billions tied up in design and construction are a liability for a lot longer.
You didn’t factor in that nuclear only takes forever because we haven’t done it in a long time and have lost all of the knowledge and skilled builders that know how to do it. If we properly pursued new nuclear plants in the US on a federal and state level it would absolutely be the best option.
I know you touched on it but the battery storage needed to make wind reliable would be enormous.
I’m a firm believer nuclear and renewables are what we need to be spending our time and money, not one or the other but both.
You didn’t factor in that nuclear only takes forever because we haven’t done it in a long time and have lost all of the knowledge and skilled builders that know how to do it.
I didn’t, because its not true.
France has been building new reactors consistently since they started in the 50s and yet their latest reactor Flamamville 3 has been under construction since 2007.
The only people that can do Nuclear quickly are China through a combination of lesser safety standards, their totalitarian government, and the massive scale at which they are building them.
know you touched on it but the battery storage needed to make wind reliable would be enormous.
You don’t need batteries to make windows viable, there are lots of solutions, the most obvious being to just overbuild it.
I’m a firm believer nuclear and renewables are what we need to be spending our time and money, not one or the other but both
I’m not, nuclear just doesn’t make sense to build right now, nuclesr is a medium tern solution to a long term problem that needs immediate solutions.
You get way way more MWs per $ with wind. Wind farms can be built in 6 months and start generating power immediately. Even the fastest NPPs can’t compete. Wind farms can be built anywhere because they take no workers to operate and requite much less lightly skilled workers to maintain and no water to oeprate (so arent affected by droughts). They are less hindered by planning regulations, nimbys and protest groups, can be built onshore or offshore and also don’t have the chance to make an area uninhabitable for generations.
The only advantages nuclear has is a smaller footprint which is mitigated by wind being dispersed and stable output. Which is something that can be compensated for in wind.
THANK YOU ffs
Hard to imagine how anyone who’s concerned about climate change could see shutting down a carbon-free energy source as a “green win”.
There’s a legitimate argument that we can’t grow our way out of climate change, and the real solution to our emissions problem is degrowth and descaling of our obscene rates of consumption. In that sense, had they been closing the plant with the expectation of drastically reducing energy demand, it might have made sense.
Its not as though nuclear energy produces no waste, just extremely low levels of CO2 waste. But if you’re just going to replace energy demand (and continue to grow energy supply) with new coal/gas consumption, who are you fooling except yourselves?
In that sense, had they been closing the plant with the expectation of drastically reducing energy demand, it might have made sense.
I really hate this kind of reasoning. Even if we do manage to reduce our energy consumption, closing the nuclear plant would still be more harmful to the environment because we could have closed fossil fuel plants instead. Unless, of course, we’d manage to reduce energy consumption so much that we wouldn’t need any non-renewable energy sources - which I don’t think is very realistic assumption. Certainly not realistic enough to make such a gamble on.
The only way closing the nuclear plant would have been beneficial to the environment would be if the act of closing it would have caused a reduction in our energy consumption that is greater than the energy the plant itself was producing (minus some extra energy from fossil fuel plants that take up its “emission budget” to increase their own energy production). Which is also quite unrealistic. I actually think it makes more sense that it achieved the opposite effect, since closing the plant took up activists’ effort and environmental publicity, which could have been used to push for reducing consumption instead.
Even if we do manage to reduce our energy consumption, closing the nuclear plant would still be more harmful to the environment because we could have closed fossil fuel plants instead
At some point you have to acknowledge nuclear power (particularly from planes dating back to the 60s/70s) as their own waste problem.
And you can try to address this waste with more modern clean up techniques. Or you can decommission these old plants. But just waiting for derelict facilities to crumble, on the ground that “Nuclear Good / FF Bad” means another generation of Fukushima like events that drive people further from nuclear as a long term solution.
That’s not a legitimate argument because the West combined emits less CO2 than just China. The economy of the West is growing, but emitting less carbon because of more green power sources, one of which being nuclear
the West combined emits less CO2 than just China.
Not even remotely true, per capita.
Because a lot of Chinese people still do sustenance farming. They don’t add to carbon, they actually might be carbon negative since they grow crops
Because a lot of Chinese people still do sustenance farming.
That hasn’t been true in decades.
I’ve met them in Yunnan last year, lmao, you have no idea, you’ve never been to China so shut the fuck the up
you’ve never been to China
It’s funny to hear folks call you a Wumao “never even been to China” in such short order.
It takes a lot of time and money to travel the world. But I’m sure you have an abundance of both, right? I certainly don’t, which is why I post Chinese Propaganda for a living.
A lot of that is still the Wests carbon, just because our products and materials are now coming from China doesn’t mean we are absolved from the responsibility of those emissions. This is why reduce was meant to be the biggest part of reduce, reuse, recycle, and this means degrowth.
You can’t claim to be an environmentalist and be anti-nuclear energy at the same time.
Depends on where you’re talking about. In Australia the right wing are using nuclear as a diversion to slow down the transition to renewables, so they can stay on gas and coal longer.
There’s no nuclear power in Australia, and the time needed to create the industry, train or poach workers, create a plant and get it up and running makes no environmental or economical sense compared to what they are already set to achieve with wind, solar and storage.
If you’ve already got nuclear up and running, use it, but each new plant needs to be compared to the alternatives for that specific location, and the track record of the nuclear industry and government in that location.
Amazing how the argument works both ways, almost as if it’s all bullshit and a post-hoc rationalization instead of an evidence based approach to policy.
There is no pre-existing system = great! No golden handcuffs and no entrenched powers. Start with a clean slate with tech developed by other nations
There is a pre-existing system = great! So everything is built up, all we have to do is run things a bit harder. When you have a hundred plants it isn’t that much more difficult to build one more.
I get it. Jane Fonda was cute back in the day and she made a movie about nuclear being scary. Arguments are crafted to fit the scary instead of the emotion instead questioned. And I do get it because I was raised to believe in god.
Yes you can
You sure can indeed. But running with one leg isn’t as efficient as two.
Nor with a stick up your ass
Are you saying that building nuclear power plants is analogous to having a stick in one’s ass?
No, I just thought that was as glib response to a complex issue as the one you provided (and along with the original post)
Hey man, thanks for the insightful and intelligent response then.
Nuclear is is the most stable and carbon neutral form of energy production to date. Not to mention the safest. And that’s not even considering EOL disposal and recycling figures that always get brought up with Nuclear but no one ever seems to talk about for Solar and Wind when their components reach end of their service life and have basically no plan for how to recycle or dispose of them in any way that isn’t a landfill.
https://www.greentechrenewables.com/article/can-solar-panels-be-recycled https://orsted.com/en/insights/the-fact-file/can-wind-turbines-be-recycled As volumes increase, the economics of recyling will increase as well, as will the developed techniques for recycling.
“the market will solve this problem” but woke?
The claim was that renewables don’t have a recycling story. I gave references showing that’s not true and the comments that these efforts are early days and ought to improve with scale. Your glib response adds nothing
Nuclear is in no way carbon neutral?
Nuclear power plants produce no greenhouse gas emissions during operation, and over the course of its life-cycle, nuclear produces about the same amount of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions per unit of electricity as wind, and one-third of the emissions per unit of electricity when compared with solar.
https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-essentials/how-can-nuclear-combat-climate-change.aspx
Per kilowatt produced, wind power is the only thing that competes and that assumes operating in areas ideal for wind turbines to function. If you’re trying to make land use efficient (because the less land we need to use, the more can be converted back to wilderness to sustain fragile ecosystems) and able to serve high density population areas, nuclear is the only viable option as a solid baseline.
Of course. The problem with waste is still there and you can also replace Nuclear with renewables, like Germany did. Nuclear shut down, coal also 20 % down, renewables on record heights.
Nuclear waste is no where near the problem propagandist make it out to be. And Germany shutting down nuclear plants is not the benefit you think it is. They might be using less coal (all the 2023 stats I’ve seen do not reflect that) but they are still using oil and gas and their energy imports of fossil fuels went up in '23. Shutting down nuclear plants has caused them to become less energy green, not more.
Like I’ve said, most of the people who support nuclear energy are ANTI-environmentlists. They don’t support it for the world. They just support it to rub their dicks in environmentalism’s face.
Absolute horseshit take.
Sounds like environmentalists need to support nuclear, a carbon-free power source. Then complaints like yours vanish.
Yes you have repeated your mind reading claims multiple times and attacked people instead of ideas.
I don’t understand where you think the most environmentally friendly power production option is anti environmental. It produces the least amounts of greenhouse and uses the least amount of land per kW produced. A properly run plant has no contamination of its environment, high level waste can be run through reactors again and again until fully expended and becomes low level waste that can be stored at the facility indefinitely. Where in the world are you getting the idea that nuclear power is bad for the environment?
Fucking anti nuclear dipshits.
Their 40 year license with the nuclear regulatory commission ran out and they felt that getting it relicensed was too expensive. Yeah a bunch of folks were hyperbolic about it, but holding a 40 year old reactor to modern standards isn’t bad either. It’s still economics that is holding nuclear back.
Their 40 year license with the nuclear regulatory commission ran out and they felt that getting it relicensed was too expensive.
No, they applied for a 20-year renewal but faced pushback from the state of New York and were forced to close in a legal settlement.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=47776
Indian Point’s owner-operator, Entergy, retired Units 2 and 3 before their operating licenses expired as part of a settlement agreement with New York State. Entergy had been seeking a 20-year license renewal for both reactor units since 2007. However, New York challenged the renewals, citing environmental and safety concerns resulting from the plant’s nearness to New York City.
why the fuck do people still think nulcear energy is bad for the environment? it scales easily enough to displace coal and gas and petrol.
I took a tour of this plant, having lived about 20mi south of it, little city called NYC. One issue this particular plant kept getting called out on, but couldn’t remediate (???) was low amounts of tritium leaking into the groundwater.
Even after installing a large network of sensors around the plant, they still could not identify the source, after several years… As an engineer, that’s the kind of ‘small’ detail which tickles the Spidey senses, indicating something more serious is afoot, organizationally.
Jane Fonda was easy on the eyes, made a movie about how bad nuclear power is.
looks like shit to me
Well, considering the ones clammoring for it, specifically, are ANTI-environmentalists, forgive me if I have a hard time trusting a source of energy that’s proven to be catastrophic for most life in the past. I get it: people are talking about how totally safe it is now, but again. It’s specifically ANTI-environmentalists saying this and pushing for nuclear. I’ll wait for people with genuine compassion for the environment and not contrarians to accept it before I do.
considering the ones clammoring for it, specifically, are ANTI-environmentalists
forgive me if I have a hard time trusting a source of energy that’s proven to be catastrophic for most life in the past.
Nuclear power, EVEN COUNTING CHERNOBYL, 3 MILE ISLAND, AND FUKUSHIMA, is safer than coal, oil, natural gas, and even wind and hydropower.
https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(07)61253-7/abstract
The people who wanted it shut down talked about local safety issues like groundwater contamination. Green advocates generally understand that nuclear is better for CO2 and it’s dumb to shut them down. Feel like the article is muddying the issue by using ‘green’ to mean multiple things.
YOU understands it is dumb to shut them down. You are not necessarily the average green advocate. The average anything advocate / activists these days are usually much dumber than the general concerned citizens.
I’d argue that impressions like that are given by somewhat misleading articles like this.
I see this as a failure to build renewables. Wind and solar and batteries are and were able to solve this, but changing infrastructure costs time, money and skill. The closing of the NPP was foreseeable, so is the climate change.
New York just completed the building of a 130MW wind farm off the coast of Long Island. The largest one in the country.
That doesn’t replace the 2 GW (peak) Indian point reactor, but it’s a step in the right direction.
lets take bets. Was it scheduled decommissioning? i.e. EOL shutdown If so this entire article is kind of redundant. (it still serves a point in bringing awareness but it’s still funny)
Was it scheduled decommissioning? i.e. EOL shutdown If so this entire article is kind of redundant.
The operators of the plant applied for a 20-year license renewal. New York challenged that renewal due to “environmental and safety concerns.” As such, the plant was forced to shut down.
So, no this was not an EOL shutdown.
I may not like nuclear, but if we want to decarbonise we need some more of it. Maybe before phasing out older and unsafe plants, we can start to build a new one in its place? I don’t know this is not my field
I don’t think anyone in NY expected anything except natural gas plants to replace Indian Point at least for the short term. Its a lot simpler to build a few combined cycle and peaker units in the short term than to find property in the NYC metro that can meet peak load using renewables and battery storage. Longer term, several gigawatts of off-shore wind, enough transmission build out for upstate/Canadian hydro, some battery storage (although im not convinced we’ll build out nearly enough), and very rarely used peaker plants will get us close enough to zero carbon emissions.
honestly, gas turbine plants are wild. GE literally makes a set that’ll run on highly pure oil straight from the middle east. Shit’s wild.
I don’t think anyone in NY expected anything except natural gas plants to replace Indian Point at least for the short term.
Odd the protestors anti-science types that I talked to at the time seemed to think we were going to get renewables to replace it. They must have all been from outside of NY state. All of them. Over months.
Headline and quoted blurb do seem to omit the fact that NY will be tapping into Canadian hydro in 2027 as well as some wind projects.
Are there any plans to modernize the plant? It will probably take billions to meet modern standards, but I’d imagine that it would be cheaper than building a new plant
For now, the state seems more interested in building out other green renewables like wind and solar. I haven’t seen any plans to refurbish or replace Indian Point.
New York State did just launch a new solar wind farm that will produce 130 MW of power. It’s the biggest one in the country.
