The number of people who still think nuclear is bad and solar / wind will make up for it is really depressing. We could have had an unrivaled nuclear power infrastructure but those NIMBY assholes stopped it 50 years ago and now we rely on extending existing plants past their lifetimes while running in fucking circles about how to save the planet. Has anyone who wants to “go green” without nuclear ever looked at the power output of these things?? It’s not even the same league! AaagggghHhHhhhhhhhh
The problems with nuclear power aren’t meltdowns, but the facts that it often takes decades just to construct a new plant, it creates an enormous carbon footprint before you get it running, it has an enormously resource-intensive fuel production process, it contributes to nuclear proliferation, it creates indefinitely harmful waste, and even if we get past all of that and do expand it, that’s just going to deplete remaining fuel sources faster, of which we only have so many decades left.
It’s not a good long term solution. I agree we should keep working plants running, but we can’t do that forever, and we still need renewable alternatives - wind, hydro and solar.
And it wasn’t some nebulous group of NIMBYs that worked against nuclear power, it was the fossil fuel lobby. I don’t know why people keep jumping to cultural explanations for what is clearly a structural issue. The problem isn’t some public perception issue, but political will, and that tends to be bought by the fossil fuel lobby.
While those are all fair points, it’s also important to note that Gen IV reactor technology has projected generation efficiencies of very roughly 100-300x the energy yield from an identical mass of fissile material when compared to Gen II and Gen III reactors. I dare say that would change the efficiency equation rather significantly if those numbers pan out in the implementation stage.
I don’t think nuclear power was killed by NIMBYs, at least not entirely. In the 1970s and 80s the financial world started taking a much more short-term view. Nuclear power plants have such a huge up-front cost that you aren’t going to see returns for decades. When the market wants numbers to go up every quarter they’re not going to finance something that won’t make a profit for 20 years.
I don’t understand why individuals are so set on centralized generation. We suddenly have the capabilities to decentralize generation and greatly reduce the need for the grid. I think it is worth it for the aesthetic advantages alone.
My opinion is that to be truly decentralized we should do both. Not just physically decentralize by location, but decentralized in a sense of having multiple options. We should do solar, and wind, and nuclear power. The power output of solar and wind is just not where it needs to be to replace both nuclear and fossil fuels, so I do have to argue in favor of building more nuclear power, but that doesn’t mean I am against building any other renewables as well.
The number of people who still think nuclear power is a manageable risk in any capacity is really depressing. We still have no idea what to do with all the nuclear waste we’re creating even now. And that’s not even considering the impact of having a nuclear plant when you’re in a war.
“Ukraine seems to be fine” is an odd thing to say considering what is going on there in general, but to your point, we can be glad that the fighting around Chernobyl did not do more damage. There’s also a difference in strategy when a country attacks their neighbour to annex their land. If they instead want to mess with a country further away, they can just drop some bombs on their nuclear plants and see what happens.
The vast majority of “nuclear waste” is just common items that have come into contact with radiation. The really radioactive portions can be, and are safely stored within the facilities themselves.
Sure, the barely radioactive waste components do need to be buried (or it seems like that’s the current trend), but they pose no risk to anyone as long as they’re not digging them up.
And for how long to they have to be “safely stored”? For how long do they have to be buried without anyone digging them up? And where are we burying anyway where there is no risk of anyone digging them up intentionally or accidentally, no risk of natural phenomena interfering, no risk of the barrels breaking and nuclear waste seeping into our water? There is a reason why countries have been struggling to find these safe storage spaces for decades. I’d argue that is because there aren’t any.
The architecture of the housing facilities is quite an interesting thing to look into. They’re pretty safe, other than like catastrophic tectonic activity as far as I know.
I think the more interesting part is the labelling of those sites. Well, the potential ideas to mark these areas as dangerous to dig/disturb. What I’ve seen is that it’s trying to mark them for the far future so that even if you don’t know the language, it’s (hopefully) obvious.
Reaching for an unproven concept of “drilling really deep holes” that’s barely a few years old to convince people there is no problem with long-term storage of dangerous waste we’ve been accumulating for decades, but sure, I’m just a NIMBY.
I’m glad you took the time to completely not read the article that I sent you. I know you didn’t read it because if you had read it, you would see that we have discovered several times over the past few billion years that nature had made its own deposits of nuclear material in the same manner as we are advising the waste to be deposited in. It’s not new science. We have evidence of it occurring naturally multiple times and no issues from that. No spread of radiation from that. No inundation of groundwater from that. But yes you’re correct and all the nuclear scientists are wrong clearly.
Whether it would work or not wasn’t even the main point of what I said. But that doesn’t matter to you anyway as your strategy to debate seems to be to call others stupid often enough until everyone else understands how smart you are. Good luck with that.
if someone gives you cited information and you refuse to read the cited information, then You’re not stupid. You’re willfully ignorant which is far worse. It’s not dangerous waste if it’s properly handled and treated and disposed of.
The entire French nation begs to differ. Look at that map! Power generation alllll over the country, not tucked in an unpopulated area or clustered in one spot ‘just in case’.
Then look across the border at Germany. The CND and Greens did a number on then generations ago, and Russia has kept up the fear over nuclear so they were able to keep Germany dependent on Gazprom. Until Ukraine.
I have no idea what the CND in Germany is supposed to be and neither has Google.
France had to repeatedly power down nuclear plants and buy electricity from neighbours because they couldn’t cool their plants. Because there was so much drought in Europe there wasn’t enough water. A phenomenon that will surely never happen again in Western Europe in the next couple of decades.
France has not been at war since they started building nuclear plants and has no solid plan for dealing with nuclear waste either from what I can tell.
France comes begging across the border for coal and gas electricity in hot summers when their reactors have to lower output because river water for cooling is too hot. Then they pat themselves on the back because the CO2 is not generated within their borders.
The number of people who still think nuclear is bad and solar / wind will make up for it is really depressing. We could have had an unrivaled nuclear power infrastructure but those NIMBY assholes stopped it 50 years ago and now we rely on extending existing plants past their lifetimes while running in fucking circles about how to save the planet. Has anyone who wants to “go green” without nuclear ever looked at the power output of these things?? It’s not even the same league! AaagggghHhHhhhhhhhh
The problems with nuclear power aren’t meltdowns, but the facts that it often takes decades just to construct a new plant, it creates an enormous carbon footprint before you get it running, it has an enormously resource-intensive fuel production process, it contributes to nuclear proliferation, it creates indefinitely harmful waste, and even if we get past all of that and do expand it, that’s just going to deplete remaining fuel sources faster, of which we only have so many decades left.
It’s not a good long term solution. I agree we should keep working plants running, but we can’t do that forever, and we still need renewable alternatives - wind, hydro and solar.
And it wasn’t some nebulous group of NIMBYs that worked against nuclear power, it was the fossil fuel lobby. I don’t know why people keep jumping to cultural explanations for what is clearly a structural issue. The problem isn’t some public perception issue, but political will, and that tends to be bought by the fossil fuel lobby.
Also there is good science on why we actually can switch to entirely renewables: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/23/no-miracles-needed-prof-mark-jacobson-on-how-wind-sun-and-water-can-power-the-world
While those are all fair points, it’s also important to note that Gen IV reactor technology has projected generation efficiencies of very roughly 100-300x the energy yield from an identical mass of fissile material when compared to Gen II and Gen III reactors. I dare say that would change the efficiency equation rather significantly if those numbers pan out in the implementation stage.
I don’t think nuclear power was killed by NIMBYs, at least not entirely. In the 1970s and 80s the financial world started taking a much more short-term view. Nuclear power plants have such a huge up-front cost that you aren’t going to see returns for decades. When the market wants numbers to go up every quarter they’re not going to finance something that won’t make a profit for 20 years.
That’s why we have governments though, for the long time low return infrastructure, like power grids.
Somehow we are willing to spend billions yearly on new roads but can’t be assed to build a new nuke plant once a decade to grow power production.
If only it were as exciting as the shitty startups that sell for millions a few years after being founded despite never making any profit…
Suspect a lot of those NIMBYs were led by fossil fuel producers in a NIMBY hat…
I just don’t get why they can close down nuclear power plants while still keeping coal power plants open. Coal is so much worse.
I don’t understand why individuals are so set on centralized generation. We suddenly have the capabilities to decentralize generation and greatly reduce the need for the grid. I think it is worth it for the aesthetic advantages alone.
My opinion is that to be truly decentralized we should do both. Not just physically decentralize by location, but decentralized in a sense of having multiple options. We should do solar, and wind, and nuclear power. The power output of solar and wind is just not where it needs to be to replace both nuclear and fossil fuels, so I do have to argue in favor of building more nuclear power, but that doesn’t mean I am against building any other renewables as well.
The problem with nuclear is it gives fossil fuel giants a free pass to try speedrun killing the planet before it even arrives.
If we plan for nuclear, we plan to do nothing for 50 years.
The number of people who still think nuclear power is a manageable risk in any capacity is really depressing. We still have no idea what to do with all the nuclear waste we’re creating even now. And that’s not even considering the impact of having a nuclear plant when you’re in a war.
Ukraine seems to be fine, beyond Russians digging up their own fuck up dirt from the past to dig trenches
“Ukraine seems to be fine” is an odd thing to say considering what is going on there in general, but to your point, we can be glad that the fighting around Chernobyl did not do more damage. There’s also a difference in strategy when a country attacks their neighbour to annex their land. If they instead want to mess with a country further away, they can just drop some bombs on their nuclear plants and see what happens.
The vast majority of “nuclear waste” is just common items that have come into contact with radiation. The really radioactive portions can be, and are safely stored within the facilities themselves.
Sure, the barely radioactive waste components do need to be buried (or it seems like that’s the current trend), but they pose no risk to anyone as long as they’re not digging them up.
And for how long to they have to be “safely stored”? For how long do they have to be buried without anyone digging them up? And where are we burying anyway where there is no risk of anyone digging them up intentionally or accidentally, no risk of natural phenomena interfering, no risk of the barrels breaking and nuclear waste seeping into our water? There is a reason why countries have been struggling to find these safe storage spaces for decades. I’d argue that is because there aren’t any.
The architecture of the housing facilities is quite an interesting thing to look into. They’re pretty safe, other than like catastrophic tectonic activity as far as I know.
I think the more interesting part is the labelling of those sites. Well, the potential ideas to mark these areas as dangerous to dig/disturb. What I’ve seen is that it’s trying to mark them for the far future so that even if you don’t know the language, it’s (hopefully) obvious.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_nuclear_waste_warning_messages
Just because you NIMBYs are not smart enough to figure out a solution does not mean its impossible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_drillhole_disposal
Reaching for an unproven concept of “drilling really deep holes” that’s barely a few years old to convince people there is no problem with long-term storage of dangerous waste we’ve been accumulating for decades, but sure, I’m just a NIMBY.
Drilling deep holes is a great concept for geothermal energy. One might even forego the nuclear reactor part then and just do geothermal.
I’m glad you took the time to completely not read the article that I sent you. I know you didn’t read it because if you had read it, you would see that we have discovered several times over the past few billion years that nature had made its own deposits of nuclear material in the same manner as we are advising the waste to be deposited in. It’s not new science. We have evidence of it occurring naturally multiple times and no issues from that. No spread of radiation from that. No inundation of groundwater from that. But yes you’re correct and all the nuclear scientists are wrong clearly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_drillhole_disposal
Next time you find a term you don’t understand. Try clicking on the hyperlink.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_geological_repository
Whether it would work or not wasn’t even the main point of what I said. But that doesn’t matter to you anyway as your strategy to debate seems to be to call others stupid often enough until everyone else understands how smart you are. Good luck with that.
if someone gives you cited information and you refuse to read the cited information, then You’re not stupid. You’re willfully ignorant which is far worse. It’s not dangerous waste if it’s properly handled and treated and disposed of.
The entire French nation begs to differ. Look at that map! Power generation alllll over the country, not tucked in an unpopulated area or clustered in one spot ‘just in case’.
Then look across the border at Germany. The CND and Greens did a number on then generations ago, and Russia has kept up the fear over nuclear so they were able to keep Germany dependent on Gazprom. Until Ukraine.
The article says nothing about waste.
Russia is the biggest exporter of Uranium.
I have no idea what the CND in Germany is supposed to be and neither has Google.
France had to repeatedly power down nuclear plants and buy electricity from neighbours because they couldn’t cool their plants. Because there was so much drought in Europe there wasn’t enough water. A phenomenon that will surely never happen again in Western Europe in the next couple of decades.
France has not been at war since they started building nuclear plants and has no solid plan for dealing with nuclear waste either from what I can tell.
France comes begging across the border for coal and gas electricity in hot summers when their reactors have to lower output because river water for cooling is too hot. Then they pat themselves on the back because the CO2 is not generated within their borders.
Why aren’t Hiroshima, Nagasaki or Chernobyl nuclear wastelands?
Please provide valid sources to back up your comment. Thanks.