Interesting that the spill hasn't dampened long term prospects for offshore drilling (besides the brief push against it around 2016) whereas Chernobyl basically nerfed American nuclear power gen.
Interesting that the spill hasn't dampened long term prospects for offshore drilling (besides the brief push against it around 2016) whereas Chernobyl basically nerfed American nuclear power gen.
If you listen to utility executives talk (and they have to talk a lot to wall street), they have been very clear for about 30 years that the number one reason they built everything other than nuclear was cost.
Consistently 2-3x the cost of wind or gas on an LCOE basis. And new build cost is about 7x as high, which has to be amortized over an extremely long period, which rates regulators do not like utilities doing.
Oil drilling helps oil companies.
Nuclear power threatens oil companies.
We used to talk about replacing transportation fuels and low-carbon shipping (global energy). Now we talk about personal responsibility and rooftop solar (residential electricity). You can find oil company PR slide decks explaining why and how. Greenwashing worked, pushing the renewable ‘debate’ worked. We missed the windows on critical infrastructure change, and seemingly enjoy an unstable chunk of desert dictating global energy, inflation & food prices. <shrug>
We're replacing ICE cars with EVs. Sales are rising every year.
For long distance heavy transport, alternative fuels or battery-electric is not feasible yet.
The transition will take decades.
Well, the damage to the ecosystem from the BP oil spill will likely last a few hundred years. The damage from Chernobyl will likely last for a few tens of thousands of years.
And yet even including Chernobyl nuclear is far safer than oil and gas per kw
Sure. In the same way that flying is far safer than driving. There are massive amounts of safeguards in place to keep it as safe as possible. The problem is that when something goes wrong, it goes very, very wrong. This is why some people fear flying and nuclear power.
Way more people will die from climate change because we were forced to rely on oil instead of building out nuclear.
Its not when something goes wrong, its if. And it still is much safer and a lot better for the environment than oil
I mean every single major nuclear plant accident is from reactors built in the 1960s. I think we are simply better at building them and it is no longer a question of “when”
I'd argue that Three Mile Island was more impactful to American hesitation towards nuclear energy than Chernobyl ever was. By the time Chernobyl happened American nuclear industry was already in a massive panic over TMI
TMI hadn't even entered my mind while typing out that comment which just goes to show how political the historiography of this stuff is.
Well TMI didn't kill anyone and the environmental contamination was minimal. It was just a scary few days because of the theoretical worst case outcome.
There are so many open wells left behind from the 50's on. The federal gov't pays to fix them, but they can't do anywhere what they need to do. They should charge the fees upfront with drilling permits
The American economy didn't yet rely on nuclear power, we're long deep into oil brain.