The US National Ignition Facility has achieved even higher energy yields since breaking even for the first time in 2022, but a practical fusion reactor is still a long way off
Maybe one day we will produce a civilization capable of using technology as it comes out instead of one that decided to call it quits decades ago. Oh sure we got cellphones but we are still burning coal. Because nuclear is scary.
If companies can’t be trusted to dispose of coal waste properly, what’s the likelihood they’ll dispose of nuclear waste properly? And reactors that don’t produce dangerous waste, don’t produce enough energy to be worth the cost unless you add the cost of proper disposal of the waste. And since they don’t have to do that, they just store it in temporary storage pools indefinitely, the cost is much cheaper to stick with current tech. So fission will never be safe.
I don’t think companies can do that actually. It is very regulated area. Also I think there is a lot of nuclear scare going on. Nuclear is not at all dangerous as it most people think, it just sounds scary.
At present we have oil and coal companies that are responsible for a lot of deaths and burning the planet. Nuclear is in no way near ammount of damage coal and oil are making right now. So even with nuclear accidents(sounds scary yea) it’s better than coal and oil.
If you think companies care, you haven’t been paying attention. Nuclear waste will continue to pile up and will exist until the Earth is gone. You think we’ll store it safely that long? Keep replacing the containers. Protect it from natural disasters or wars. There is not safe place to put it that won’t eventually end up in the ground water and eventually evaporate and become airborne except deep inside the earth and we don’t have the tech and even if we did it would be way more expensive than just investing in new battery tech and renewables.
I don’t think companies care, I said > I don’t think companies can do that actually. It is very regulated area.
What I’m arguing for in favor of nuclear power sources is that is cleanest source of energy we have from all and least deadly from all. But the reasons we can’t have it on the entire world scale are in short, capitalism. Politics + oil/coal lobby.
I think nuclear energy is a great idea in theory, but I have absolutely zero trust in companies handling nuclear waste responsibly. It’s not like they have a great track record.
That being said, pretty excited about this if it’s as safe as they say.
Do you trust our current governmental structures to manage something with that much potential for harm when it goes wrong? I sure don’t. Sure, it might go great for a long while, but then you get one far-right administration that wants to cut regulations.
I trust them far more than greedy corporations run by greedy billionaires, absolutely. For many reasons, not the least of which is the elimination of the profit motive.
You’re acting like we don’t already have these. This isn’t new and we have tons of prior experience to learn from.
You have every right to not trust companies, I don’t either. Good thing we have multiple government regulators and multiple non-profit engineering/standards boards also involved.
That’s why there were no incidents in Japan a decade ago. Especially not after multiple reports of potential danger 🤷♂️.
I have the same reserves as the person you commented on. “We” may have great agencies working to prevent issues, but it’s not the case everywhere in the world. And if you want to use fission as a solution for climate change, you need to have every developing country to use it too, whatever the stability of the region.
Just look at Ukraine where the safety of one their reactor is on the line because of the war, and the mines Russia put all over. Chernobyl 2.0 if things go wrong :(
That’s why there were no incidents in Japan a decade ago. Especially not after multiple reports of potential danger 🤷♂️.
Oh yes let’s do this. Thousands of plants across the world operating for multiple decades and you mention something the exposed people to less radiation than you get on a 4 hour flight. Omg something isn’t perfect! Wow we should give you an award.
have the same reserves as the person you commented on. “We” may have great agencies working to prevent issues, but it’s not the case everywhere in the world
Which is why there are international bodies.
And if you want to use fission as a solution for climate change, you need to have every developing country to use it too, whatever the stability of the region.
Citation needed. Please show me multiple peer reviewed studies that back up this claim. There are 190 countries or so please show me how it physically impossible that if each and every single one of them doesn’t have a nuclear reactor themselves climate change can’t be worked on at all, not even slightly.
Just look at Ukraine where the safety of one their reactor is on the line because of the war, and the mines Russia put all over.
Yeah maybe Russia shouldn’t have invaded.
Chernobyl 2.0 if things go wrong :(
No. Very different plant design, but you knew that. Just hoping that I didn’t.
Yeah sure, the Fukushima region is/was thriving and people were happy to live next to a nuclear disaster. The cleanup will take another decade and lots of money. It’s not just about the immediate radiation.
International bodies, like the ones that (afaik) can’t access Iran’s nuclear enrichment plants anymore ? Sure it may be more related to nuke production, and that’s a tangential problem.
Stand off your high horse and your hyperboles.
I didn’t say that it was impossible to work on climate change without 190 going nuclear.
However it’s ignoring that most pollution comes from developing countries, countries that do not want to sacrifice their development, and would need nuclear or renewable. Guess what is cheaper and safer?
For Ukraine, yeah, but did you or I have a say in this war ? Do we have a say on Russia preventing 90% of workers that know the plant to go to work ? No such risk with renewables (except maybe hydro, as shown by Russia too).
Did I say that the plant would explode exactly like Chernobyl? No. The plant can be a disaster if one or multiple missiles hit it, with the mines and explosives reported as being set everywhere.
Could the plant resist such impacts ? Probably, maybe. Do I care to find out ? No thanks.
Don’t bother to respond if you are to take this discussion in bad faith. We can discuss things like adults without being hurt by the other side having a different opinion.
the Fukushima region is/was thriving and people were happy to live next to a nuclear disaster. The cleanup will take another decade and lots of money.
I have worked on a Superfund site that is going to extend past 100 years, but your ten years is soooo impressive to me.
International bodies, like the ones that (afaik) can’t access Iran’s nuclear enrichment plants anymore ?
Yeah organized religion is shit not sure what you want from me. Maybe we can ban religion and ban your coal employers.
Sure it may be more related to nuke production, and that’s a tangential problem.
But you sure as hell brought it up.
Stand off your high horse and your hyperboles. I didn’t say that it was impossible to work on climate change without 190 going nuclear. However it’s ignoring that most pollution comes from developing countries, countries that do not want to sacrifice their development, and would need nuclear or renewable. Guess what is cheaper and safer?
Don’t lie it is unbecoming of even a lobbyist.
For Ukraine, yeah, but did you or I have a say in this war ? Do we have a say on Russia preventing 90% of workers that know the plant to go to work ? No such risk with renewables (except maybe hydro, as shown by Russia too).
Well it certainly didn’t help that thanks to Big Fossil Fuels Russia has a natural gas stranglehold on Europe. Maybe if stopped listening to coal lobby people on the internet and built nuclear Russia would have backed off.
Did I say that the plant would explode exactly like Chernobyl? No. The plant can be a disaster if one or multiple missiles hit it, with the mines and explosives reported as being set everywhere. Could the plant resist such impacts ? Probably, maybe. Do I care to find out ? No thanks.
Nuclear isn’t scary. It’s waste, on the other hand, is.
But you know, it’s not like we’ve not had multiple examples of nuclear power plants failing catastrophically and destroying things around them for miles, and for decades/centuries.
Having said that, if they did come out with new technology version of a nuclear power plant that is safe and that with a catastrophic failure does not harm the environment around itself then I would be all for it. I just don’t think the technology is there for that. I hear they’re working on it though.
The other ones don’t fail catastrophically like nuclear does.
Comparing (some) other forms of energy’s deaths to nuclear is like comparing mosquito bites to shark bites. A sharks kill a lot less people than mosquitoes, but a mosquito bite won’t make the news.
Well, we all die at some point, be it from malaria, nuclear fallout, cancer, car accidents, heart failure, stupidity, etc.
There are more mosquitoes on the planet than they are nuclear reactors, So I’m not sure what you think you’re trying to show with that graph.
The point is a nuclear reactor failing catastrophically, yeah it’s a more rare event than dying from malaria, but we seem to treat malaria treatment better than we do reactor designs and operations, especially when profits are involved.
And a person dying for malaria, doesn’t put a pox of the lands around them for centuries making it unusable to anyone else. The risk versus reward calculation is much different, it’s not strictly just a quantity of deaths issue.
And even if you want to talk just about the odds of failure/death, I’m sure all the dinosaurs scoffed at the idea of being killed by an asteroid, until one fateful day (how’s that for a non-sequitur example!). Or flying by plane is the safest form of travel, unless you’re in a 737 Max, then safety be damned.
My point is that watt for watt nuclear is actually one of the safest forms of energy.
And flying is the safest form of travel, which makes the Boeing 737 Max the Chernobyl of planes I guess.
The point is the chance of failure, even if they haven’t happened in a higher quantity so far, is very high, higher in nuclear power plants as they are currently designed or have been designed in the past, than other forms as you have described or supposedly newer ones that are on the designing boards as we speak. And when they fail, they fail too catastrophically, too horrendous for Humanity to have too many of those.
Just one more time, because I don’t want to keep the conversation up, but I’m not anti-nuclear, just anti-old and current nuclear. Get those new smaller salt based low risk of catastrophic failure easier to operate by humans and handles human errors more gracefully reactors out there and I’ll be just fine with those.
I would still argue those are less catastrophic than Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island, etc. Their destructive effects disappear a lot quicker than a nuclear catastrophe negative effect would.
Having said that, oil is second worse after nuclear. I’m not advocating for oil.
The coal industry emits magnitudes more unvetted radiation than any nuclear power plant will in it’s whole lifetime; as in, radiation is undetectable around a modern nuclear plant.
Plus coal and oil extraction has it’s own problems with radiation.
Nuclear produces stable, storable waste that if handled and buried correctly will never become an ecological issue.
They’re built to a modern standard where it’s practically foolproof.
Fukushima held up to an enormous earthquake followed by several tsunamis; that’s despite the poor operation of the plant.
The damage we would have to cause to compromise and get rid of any nuclear reliance is far more immediate and concerning.
Nuclear isn’t actually as complicated nor unpredictable as you’d think. They’ve solved ways to avoid melt downs such as the fuels being improved, the amount they process at one time, their cooling and the redundancies. The physical design of a modern station takes into account the worst situations that any given amount of fuel can give in a meltdown such as deep wells that are situated under a reactor to melt into. You won’t likely ever see in our lifetimes a station reaching critical meltdown and it not be because a government or private company cut corners.
Scientists are doing this work, they know what they know and they know what they’re doing, it’s not really for everyone to politically involve ourselves with when no one ever does any valid research or basic knowledge of science without fear mongering.
So that’s a wall of text, with all the same standard counter points that is always made, some of which I disagree with, so I’ll just say I’m not anti-nuclear, I’m just anti-nuclear in its current design form.
You give me a design that can protect the environment from catastrophic effects and with a waste product that can be safely handled, and I’ll get on board.
I had read there is some salt based designs kicking around that seem to start going in that direction, but I don’t know if they’ve been moved forward or not.
Fukushima held up to an enormous earthquake followed by several tsunamis; that’s despite the poor operation of the plant.
Actually it wasn’t so much the poor operation of the plant, but the failure of the design of the plant to not take into account that after a major earthquake the elevation of the land that the plant sits on would go down, which makes the wall they put up the protect the plant from the ocean (especially after a tsunami) shorter than it should have been.
Nuclear isn’t actually as complicated nor unpredictable as you’d think.
I’m actually quite informed on the subject.
without fear mongering.
Someone disagreeing with you is not fear-mongering.
Generally when a fact is established it does become the “standard counterpoints” people use.
You personally said “Nuclear waste is scary” - that’s why I said people fearmonger. If you’re informed you’d actually understand it’s a very safe form of waste
Also you said it wasn’t due to poor operation, but then state an example of a plane being poorly operated. If those were obvious and established problems that they already should have been able to account for, then someone dicked it up. Nuclear is only dangerous when it’s irresponsibly used. We already have accounted for the mayor pitfalls. It’s not worth saying it’s dangerous, bad for the environment, or scary in terms of waste.
Nuclear energy isn’t some half theory or some risky experiment, it’s pretty well established and understood at this point.
I also said people in general shouldn’t be so politically involved when they’re not informed, I actually said that because I shared and hoped you would be able to agree on that. I wasn’t demeaning you.
You personally said “Nuclear waste is scary” - that’s why I said people fearmonger.
The point I was trying to make was that the plants operation was one risk, while it’s waste output was a second risk.
That wasn’t fear-mongering, that was stating facts.
But to be blunt, if an area is destroyed because of nuclear waste then that is kind of scary, a land that can’t be lived in anymore (or for a very long time) it’s something right out of a fiction story (Mordor-ish).
Expressing that is not fear mongering, its a real possibility, we see that today around nuclear reactors that have catastrophically failed. We humans rarely ‘salt the Earth’ so we can’t live in a place anymore, it’s anathema to what we believe in.
Nuclear is only dangerous when it’s irresponsibly used.
Which always happens sooner or later because human beings are involved. The current designs can’t cope for humans being humans (especially for those who love profits) and their flaws are exaggerated to catastrophic proportions.
I also said people in general shouldn’t be so politically involved when they’re not informed, I actually said that because I shared and hoped you would be able to agree on that. I wasn’t demeaning you.
Well since you were replying to me directly in an argumentative tone, I could only assume that point was directed at me. And that statement is that I’m commenting uninformed, which is not correct, and hence why I pushed back.
What I do usually to avoid that misunderstanding is that I explicitly state something along the lines of “not you directly, but generally” when I’m trying to make a general comment in response to a specific individual.
I do appreciate you clarifying, and hope that was an honest clarification, and not just trying to avoid the pushback of the criticism that was initially correct.
And finally, I do agree, people should be informed when they comment, but as long as they’re not being obstructive there’s nothing wrong with also just expressing oneself to others, your fears and hopes, without knowing all the facts. This is supposed to be a conversation, and people can learn new facts while the conversation is happening, versus having to know everything before they enter the conversation.
December 1952: The Great Smog of London caused by the burning of coal, and to a lesser extent wood, killed 12,000 people within days to months due to inhalation of the smog.[18]
The Vajont Dam in Italy overflew. Filling the reservoir caused geological failure in valley wall, leading to 110 km/h landslide into the lake; water escaped in a wave over the top of dam. Valley had been incorrectly assessed as stable. Several villages were completely wiped out, with an estimated between 1,900 and 2,500 deaths.
as /u/afraid_of_zombies said:
All other energy techs are allowed to have problems and produce waste except for one.
As far as the smog goes that was before catalytic converters and improved laws to reduce smog, and as far as the dam goes yeah you build any dam in a bad place and it’s going to break, it’s kind of actually another metaphor for what I’m talking about, which is nuclear is more risky because it’s more dependent on humans being more perfect to Implement / operate it.
As far as the smog goes that was before catalytic converters and improved laws to reduce smog
Then take into account modern nuclear reactors, as other commenters said. Nuclear is the way to go for safest and cleanest energy of all energy sources we have. Things that are stopping it are coal/oil lobby, nuclear scare and capitalists and politicians scared other countries might make nuclear bomb out of it.
I’d love to have a nuclear powerplant in my country, we are choking here because of coal and coal lobby just makes things worse by supporting energy sources sold as “renewable clean sources” that need batteries to work on and as a fallback, when there is less sun or wind always go back to coal.
Then take into account modern nuclear reactors, as other commenters said.
I definitely will, when they’re in production. I haven’t had anyone tell me that they are yet, just on the drawing book. I’m all for salt based small reactors that are a lot safer to deal with.
What ? One poster in comments said they are getting power from reactor that is same model as Chernobyl one with added improvments and nothing bad happened, I don’t get what you mean by “when they’re in production” ?
Nuclear fusion does make this prospect potentially real. The only thing they emit is neutron radiation, and a mean lifetime of free neutron is 14 minutes 47 seconds.
As per current fission technology, while nuclear waste is real issue, nuclear power is historically one of the most ecological ways to produce power. Catastrophes are now less and less likely, with many lessons learned from Chernobyl and Fukushima - lessons that are now implemented in all reactors around the world.
I live in a city powered by a reactor of the same model there was in Chernobyl, but modified following the incident. I fully trust it.
Catastrophes are now less and less likely, with many lessons learned from Chernobyl and Fukushima
I swear I do not mean this as a disrespect on you, as your comment was well written/said, but I’ve been hearing that kind of phrasing from companies that run power plants that catastrophically fail for many decades now. I’m definitely in a once-bitten twice shy mode at this point.
I’ll leave it at this, I hope you’re right, but I can believe you, or my lying eyes (to quote a comedically philosophical man).
I live in a city powered by a reactor of the same model there was in Chernobyl, but modified following the incident.
I live nearby a nuclear plant (not Chernobyl design) as well, though now all three of its reactors has been decommissioned because of age.
I fully trust it.
You’re not trusting that Chernobyl style design (that’s flawed) you’re trusting it’s operators do not f up and trigger the flaw like they did last time with Chernobyl, and humans are never 100% perfect 24/7. Also, Mother Nature tends to have some input as well.
By “lessons learned” I don’t mean just operators acting differently. The very reactors are built another way, as to physically not allow what happened on either station. It’s not that my city is powered by unaltered Chernobyl reactor - it was modified as to not allow the graphite rods to be dropped so late, and made automatic on a mechanical level.
Fukushima-style disaster is simply not possible in my area, but then again, for reactors that are endangered, measures were taken.
Maybe one day we will produce a civilization capable of using technology as it comes out instead of one that decided to call it quits decades ago. Oh sure we got cellphones but we are still burning coal. Because nuclear is scary.
If companies can’t be trusted to dispose of coal waste properly, what’s the likelihood they’ll dispose of nuclear waste properly? And reactors that don’t produce dangerous waste, don’t produce enough energy to be worth the cost unless you add the cost of proper disposal of the waste. And since they don’t have to do that, they just store it in temporary storage pools indefinitely, the cost is much cheaper to stick with current tech. So fission will never be safe.
I don’t think companies can do that actually. It is very regulated area. Also I think there is a lot of nuclear scare going on. Nuclear is not at all dangerous as it most people think, it just sounds scary.
At present we have oil and coal companies that are responsible for a lot of deaths and burning the planet. Nuclear is in no way near ammount of damage coal and oil are making right now. So even with nuclear accidents(sounds scary yea) it’s better than coal and oil.
If you think companies care, you haven’t been paying attention. Nuclear waste will continue to pile up and will exist until the Earth is gone. You think we’ll store it safely that long? Keep replacing the containers. Protect it from natural disasters or wars. There is not safe place to put it that won’t eventually end up in the ground water and eventually evaporate and become airborne except deep inside the earth and we don’t have the tech and even if we did it would be way more expensive than just investing in new battery tech and renewables.
I don’t think companies care, I said > I don’t think companies can do that actually. It is very regulated area.
What I’m arguing for in favor of nuclear power sources is that is cleanest source of energy we have from all and least deadly from all. But the reasons we can’t have it on the entire world scale are in short, capitalism. Politics + oil/coal lobby.
I think nuclear energy is a great idea in theory, but I have absolutely zero trust in companies handling nuclear waste responsibly. It’s not like they have a great track record.
That being said, pretty excited about this if it’s as safe as they say.
So nationalize them. Problem solved.
Do you trust our current governmental structures to manage something with that much potential for harm when it goes wrong? I sure don’t. Sure, it might go great for a long while, but then you get one far-right administration that wants to cut regulations.
I trust them far more than greedy corporations run by greedy billionaires, absolutely. For many reasons, not the least of which is the elimination of the profit motive.
You’re acting like we don’t already have these. This isn’t new and we have tons of prior experience to learn from.
I wish I could be as optimistic as you are.
Lol if only you knew how wrong that statement was.
How many nukes does the US have?
You have every right to not trust companies, I don’t either. Good thing we have multiple government regulators and multiple non-profit engineering/standards boards also involved.
That’s why there were no incidents in Japan a decade ago. Especially not after multiple reports of potential danger 🤷♂️.
I have the same reserves as the person you commented on. “We” may have great agencies working to prevent issues, but it’s not the case everywhere in the world. And if you want to use fission as a solution for climate change, you need to have every developing country to use it too, whatever the stability of the region.
Just look at Ukraine where the safety of one their reactor is on the line because of the war, and the mines Russia put all over. Chernobyl 2.0 if things go wrong :(
Oh yes let’s do this. Thousands of plants across the world operating for multiple decades and you mention something the exposed people to less radiation than you get on a 4 hour flight. Omg something isn’t perfect! Wow we should give you an award.
Which is why there are international bodies.
Citation needed. Please show me multiple peer reviewed studies that back up this claim. There are 190 countries or so please show me how it physically impossible that if each and every single one of them doesn’t have a nuclear reactor themselves climate change can’t be worked on at all, not even slightly.
Yeah maybe Russia shouldn’t have invaded.
No. Very different plant design, but you knew that. Just hoping that I didn’t.
Yeah sure, the Fukushima region is/was thriving and people were happy to live next to a nuclear disaster. The cleanup will take another decade and lots of money. It’s not just about the immediate radiation.
International bodies, like the ones that (afaik) can’t access Iran’s nuclear enrichment plants anymore ? Sure it may be more related to nuke production, and that’s a tangential problem.
Stand off your high horse and your hyperboles. I didn’t say that it was impossible to work on climate change without 190 going nuclear. However it’s ignoring that most pollution comes from developing countries, countries that do not want to sacrifice their development, and would need nuclear or renewable. Guess what is cheaper and safer?
For Ukraine, yeah, but did you or I have a say in this war ? Do we have a say on Russia preventing 90% of workers that know the plant to go to work ? No such risk with renewables (except maybe hydro, as shown by Russia too).
Did I say that the plant would explode exactly like Chernobyl? No. The plant can be a disaster if one or multiple missiles hit it, with the mines and explosives reported as being set everywhere. Could the plant resist such impacts ? Probably, maybe. Do I care to find out ? No thanks.
Don’t bother to respond if you are to take this discussion in bad faith. We can discuss things like adults without being hurt by the other side having a different opinion.
More gish gallop from the coal lobby.
I have worked on a Superfund site that is going to extend past 100 years, but your ten years is soooo impressive to me.
Yeah organized religion is shit not sure what you want from me. Maybe we can ban religion and ban your coal employers.
But you sure as hell brought it up.
Don’t lie it is unbecoming of even a lobbyist.
Well it certainly didn’t help that thanks to Big Fossil Fuels Russia has a natural gas stranglehold on Europe. Maybe if stopped listening to coal lobby people on the internet and built nuclear Russia would have backed off.
Again with the lies from Big Coal
Top kek.
Nuclear isn’t scary. It’s waste, on the other hand, is.
But you know, it’s not like we’ve not had multiple examples of nuclear power plants failing catastrophically and destroying things around them for miles, and for decades/centuries.
Having said that, if they did come out with new technology version of a nuclear power plant that is safe and that with a catastrophic failure does not harm the environment around itself then I would be all for it. I just don’t think the technology is there for that. I hear they’re working on it though.
In other words you want special pleading. All other energy techs are allowed to have problems and produce waste except for one.
The other ones don’t fail catastrophically like nuclear does.
The other ones don’t produce waste that is the worst kind of toxicity for Humanity that lasts for hundred of years.
Solve those problems, and I’ll get on board that train.
Comparing (some) other forms of energy’s deaths to nuclear is like comparing mosquito bites to shark bites. A sharks kill a lot less people than mosquitoes, but a mosquito bite won’t make the news.
Well, we all die at some point, be it from malaria, nuclear fallout, cancer, car accidents, heart failure, stupidity, etc.
There are more mosquitoes on the planet than they are nuclear reactors, So I’m not sure what you think you’re trying to show with that graph.
The point is a nuclear reactor failing catastrophically, yeah it’s a more rare event than dying from malaria, but we seem to treat malaria treatment better than we do reactor designs and operations, especially when profits are involved.
And a person dying for malaria, doesn’t put a pox of the lands around them for centuries making it unusable to anyone else. The risk versus reward calculation is much different, it’s not strictly just a quantity of deaths issue.
And even if you want to talk just about the odds of failure/death, I’m sure all the dinosaurs scoffed at the idea of being killed by an asteroid, until one fateful day (how’s that for a non-sequitur example!). Or flying by plane is the safest form of travel, unless you’re in a 737 Max, then safety be damned.
Does climate change caused by the coal industry not fall under the “pox of the lands” category?
Eventually, yes, but a lot slower. And you can definitely put one as an S tier threat and the other one as an A tier threat.
And as I stated, if we have fusion and solar/battery then we don’t have to worry about that from either of them anymore.
The graph is per terra-watt hour. My point is that watt for watt nuclear is actually one of the safest forms of energy.
Many deaths over a period of time aren’t necessarily better than less deaths in an instant.
And flying is the safest form of travel, which makes the Boeing 737 Max the Chernobyl of planes I guess.
The point is the chance of failure, even if they haven’t happened in a higher quantity so far, is very high, higher in nuclear power plants as they are currently designed or have been designed in the past, than other forms as you have described or supposedly newer ones that are on the designing boards as we speak. And when they fail, they fail too catastrophically, too horrendous for Humanity to have too many of those.
Just one more time, because I don’t want to keep the conversation up, but I’m not anti-nuclear, just anti-old and current nuclear. Get those new smaller salt based low risk of catastrophic failure easier to operate by humans and handles human errors more gracefully reactors out there and I’ll be just fine with those.
BP gulf oil spill.
Fracking, contaminated ground water
I would still argue those are less catastrophic than Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island, etc. Their destructive effects disappear a lot quicker than a nuclear catastrophe negative effect would.
Having said that, oil is second worse after nuclear. I’m not advocating for oil.
My hopes are on fusion and solar/battery.
No form of energy generation is 100% perfect.
My hopes are that goalposts don’t keep moving in this thread.
Well, then stop moving them. /shrug
I have not.
The coal industry emits magnitudes more unvetted radiation than any nuclear power plant will in it’s whole lifetime; as in, radiation is undetectable around a modern nuclear plant.
Plus coal and oil extraction has it’s own problems with radiation. Nuclear produces stable, storable waste that if handled and buried correctly will never become an ecological issue.
They’re built to a modern standard where it’s practically foolproof. Fukushima held up to an enormous earthquake followed by several tsunamis; that’s despite the poor operation of the plant.
The damage we would have to cause to compromise and get rid of any nuclear reliance is far more immediate and concerning.
Nuclear isn’t actually as complicated nor unpredictable as you’d think. They’ve solved ways to avoid melt downs such as the fuels being improved, the amount they process at one time, their cooling and the redundancies. The physical design of a modern station takes into account the worst situations that any given amount of fuel can give in a meltdown such as deep wells that are situated under a reactor to melt into. You won’t likely ever see in our lifetimes a station reaching critical meltdown and it not be because a government or private company cut corners.
Scientists are doing this work, they know what they know and they know what they’re doing, it’s not really for everyone to politically involve ourselves with when no one ever does any valid research or basic knowledge of science without fear mongering.
So that’s a wall of text, with all the same standard counter points that is always made, some of which I disagree with, so I’ll just say I’m not anti-nuclear, I’m just anti-nuclear in its current design form.
You give me a design that can protect the environment from catastrophic effects and with a waste product that can be safely handled, and I’ll get on board.
I had read there is some salt based designs kicking around that seem to start going in that direction, but I don’t know if they’ve been moved forward or not.
Actually it wasn’t so much the poor operation of the plant, but the failure of the design of the plant to not take into account that after a major earthquake the elevation of the land that the plant sits on would go down, which makes the wall they put up the protect the plant from the ocean (especially after a tsunami) shorter than it should have been.
I’m actually quite informed on the subject.
Someone disagreeing with you is not fear-mongering.
Generally when a fact is established it does become the “standard counterpoints” people use.
You personally said “Nuclear waste is scary” - that’s why I said people fearmonger. If you’re informed you’d actually understand it’s a very safe form of waste
Also you said it wasn’t due to poor operation, but then state an example of a plane being poorly operated. If those were obvious and established problems that they already should have been able to account for, then someone dicked it up. Nuclear is only dangerous when it’s irresponsibly used. We already have accounted for the mayor pitfalls. It’s not worth saying it’s dangerous, bad for the environment, or scary in terms of waste.
Nuclear energy isn’t some half theory or some risky experiment, it’s pretty well established and understood at this point.
I also said people in general shouldn’t be so politically involved when they’re not informed, I actually said that because I shared and hoped you would be able to agree on that. I wasn’t demeaning you.
The point I was trying to make was that the plants operation was one risk, while it’s waste output was a second risk.
That wasn’t fear-mongering, that was stating facts.
But to be blunt, if an area is destroyed because of nuclear waste then that is kind of scary, a land that can’t be lived in anymore (or for a very long time) it’s something right out of a fiction story (Mordor-ish).
Expressing that is not fear mongering, its a real possibility, we see that today around nuclear reactors that have catastrophically failed. We humans rarely ‘salt the Earth’ so we can’t live in a place anymore, it’s anathema to what we believe in.
Which always happens sooner or later because human beings are involved. The current designs can’t cope for humans being humans (especially for those who love profits) and their flaws are exaggerated to catastrophic proportions.
Well since you were replying to me directly in an argumentative tone, I could only assume that point was directed at me. And that statement is that I’m commenting uninformed, which is not correct, and hence why I pushed back.
What I do usually to avoid that misunderstanding is that I explicitly state something along the lines of “not you directly, but generally” when I’m trying to make a general comment in response to a specific individual.
I do appreciate you clarifying, and hope that was an honest clarification, and not just trying to avoid the pushback of the criticism that was initially correct.
And finally, I do agree, people should be informed when they comment, but as long as they’re not being obstructive there’s nothing wrong with also just expressing oneself to others, your fears and hopes, without knowing all the facts. This is supposed to be a conversation, and people can learn new facts while the conversation is happening, versus having to know everything before they enter the conversation.
take a look some excerpts:
as /u/afraid_of_zombies said:
As far as the smog goes that was before catalytic converters and improved laws to reduce smog, and as far as the dam goes yeah you build any dam in a bad place and it’s going to break, it’s kind of actually another metaphor for what I’m talking about, which is nuclear is more risky because it’s more dependent on humans being more perfect to Implement / operate it.
Then take into account modern nuclear reactors, as other commenters said. Nuclear is the way to go for safest and cleanest energy of all energy sources we have. Things that are stopping it are coal/oil lobby, nuclear scare and capitalists and politicians scared other countries might make nuclear bomb out of it.
I’d love to have a nuclear powerplant in my country, we are choking here because of coal and coal lobby just makes things worse by supporting energy sources sold as “renewable clean sources” that need batteries to work on and as a fallback, when there is less sun or wind always go back to coal.
I definitely will, when they’re in production. I haven’t had anyone tell me that they are yet, just on the drawing book. I’m all for salt based small reactors that are a lot safer to deal with.
What ? One poster in comments said they are getting power from reactor that is same model as Chernobyl one with added improvments and nothing bad happened, I don’t get what you mean by “when they’re in production” ?
Are you arguing that coal is safer than nuclear ?
Nuclear fusion does make this prospect potentially real. The only thing they emit is neutron radiation, and a mean lifetime of free neutron is 14 minutes 47 seconds.
As per current fission technology, while nuclear waste is real issue, nuclear power is historically one of the most ecological ways to produce power. Catastrophes are now less and less likely, with many lessons learned from Chernobyl and Fukushima - lessons that are now implemented in all reactors around the world.
I live in a city powered by a reactor of the same model there was in Chernobyl, but modified following the incident. I fully trust it.
I swear I do not mean this as a disrespect on you, as your comment was well written/said, but I’ve been hearing that kind of phrasing from companies that run power plants that catastrophically fail for many decades now. I’m definitely in a once-bitten twice shy mode at this point.
I’ll leave it at this, I hope you’re right, but I can believe you, or my lying eyes (to quote a comedically philosophical man).
I live nearby a nuclear plant (not Chernobyl design) as well, though now all three of its reactors has been decommissioned because of age.
You’re not trusting that Chernobyl style design (that’s flawed) you’re trusting it’s operators do not f up and trigger the flaw like they did last time with Chernobyl, and humans are never 100% perfect 24/7. Also, Mother Nature tends to have some input as well.
By “lessons learned” I don’t mean just operators acting differently. The very reactors are built another way, as to physically not allow what happened on either station. It’s not that my city is powered by unaltered Chernobyl reactor - it was modified as to not allow the graphite rods to be dropped so late, and made automatic on a mechanical level.
Fukushima-style disaster is simply not possible in my area, but then again, for reactors that are endangered, measures were taken.