301–310 of 437 posts
And we needed them 20 years ago.
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That seems like a little bit of a non sequitur to the topic in this particular thread chain. Anyway, yes of course they happen. They happen in every power producing industry. It's hard to find good numbers of course as there's going to be some amount of error, but here's one [1]. The point isn't that in that report nuclear has fewer deaths than wind and solar as I'm sure that will cause an emotional reaction. The poi…
To boot, almost every time a nuclear reactor is decommissioned, it is replaced by more fossil fuel plants, not by renewable energy. You can’t be seriously opposed to climate change and nuclear energy at the same time.
These people are not going to solve the problem of climate change. That’s not really what they are in it for. And so the much smaller first group of people, who aren’t focused on changing behaviors of other people (social control) are the only hope. They, the first group, are hampered at every turn by the second group. The second group indeed are the cause of “climate denialism.”
It’s good to learn to spot these people and simply not engage. When they make inane claims about nuclear being unsafe, just correct the record and move on.
As long as nuclear energy is treated as PICK_ANY(obsolete, uneconomical, systemically dangerous) it leaves me with zero hope for humanity. Nuclear is way more than technology, it's Prometheus' fire. It may burn the unprepared but it is incomparable to anything else we possess. That factor million more energy per gram than chemical reactions should be enough for us to treat it as literally unlocking the next level of…
If it is Prometheus' fire, we are not ready to handle that fire yet. When one of the core concerns of using a technology is to prevent it being used to create weapons capable of obliterating entire cities, we are not as a species mature enough to use it on a wider scale. This is only one example of why we are not ready yet. Nuclear (fission) technology is not the problem, we are the problem. Looking at the recent his…
2) The alternative for lots of the world is coal. Between letting the Germans have access to refined Uranium (not highly refined) and letting the Germans continue to burn coal, I’d take the former.
3) This argument falls apart once you realize how little we’ve invested in Thorium reactors, which don’t post a nuclear proliferation risk.
I think that the ugly reality is that fossil fuel companies have cynically co-opted legitimate fears about nuclear power (and there are legitimate concerns) in order to shut them down or push them off into “we can use them once has been met” specifically because nuclear power is the only serious threat to their continued profits.
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But the bar will always be set higher and higher. Oh, it's safer than all other reactors ever designed? Yeah, but it isn't PERFECT, is it? What if I ? Then it might be dangerous! Oh, it has 1/10th the nuclear waste of all other reactors ever? But it STILL MAKES NUCLEAR WASTE. Oh, it can be built at half the cost of previous reactors for twice the energy? THAT'S STILL WAY TOO MUCH. And to be clear, I think renewables…
The bar hasn't really moved: * be cheaper than other reliable sources (never met) * no waste that takes >100y to decay (never met) * don't disturb the neighbours (not met reliably)
I don't see this as a requirement. The cheaper options that provide the large base load needed are all fossil fuel based. They are "cheap", but only if you don't charge for the CO2 cost to the environment.
Ontario has a 60% base energy load provided by nuclear. Smog is rare, except when it blows up from the south. The CO2 production is very low.
> no waste that takes >100y to decay
The waste from alternatives are huge amounts of CO2, which is causing far more harm to the world than the small amount of nuclear waste that would be produced.
> don't disturb the neighbours
NIMBYism is not a valid argument.
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I understand the anxiety, and I suppose you've already weighted the pro / cons argument ; however, I'm curious about the psychology - and please don't read that as whataboutism. So, how do you feel about the present problems with our current carbon heavy energy productions ? Are you less anxious about deaths from coal and every catastrophe related to climate change (heat waves, floods, mass exiles, civil wars, etc...…
It's more long term thinking from me: I know that we can reach 100% renewables in 20 or so years, but I'd rather that it's wind/solar/hydro than something like nuclear, that is more volatile in nature and requires continuous maintenance from a capable overseer. For example, what if a negligent person is promoted to maintenance overseer at a power plant that's several cities across? I have no control over that at all.…
> I have to trust that a handful of people in charge of that plant are exceptional at their job, otherwise we all have a really bad day, and there are no safeguards or precautions that any of us can put in place that will protect us from a meltdown.
It's not that bad; you can design systems with safeguards in place to prevent Chernobyl-like idiocy from happening, and modern reactors will just shutdown instead of meltdown on cooling problems. Also remember that both the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents actually had very low casualties and injuries, comparatively speaking.
Loss of control is always scary; that is why airplanes are more "scary" than cars, even though cars are far more dangerous. This is something education can help with. I appreciate it can feel scary but if it's not actually then, well... I don't think we can make such important decisions on the basis of feelings, even though I don't want to dismiss them.
Hate to conclude but climate change has evolved into a self-serving political agenda for our elites and this is yet more evidence of that. Nuclear is obviously renewable and proven. Flourocarbons - CFCs - HCFCs - HFCs - and other related are extremely aggressive GHGs yet all of those are not phased out (or in case of CFCs there's plenty of evidence (see Nature) that emission continues in non Western nations) but maki…
Nuclear is obviously not renewable; the fuel it consumes was created before the formation of the Earth, and there's a limited amount of it.
(And this shows that being renewable is not the most important factor if what you're worried about is global warming. Nuclear is not renewable, but other than the huge amount of concrete needed during the construction of a nuclear power plant, it emits a very low amount of global warming gases.)
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I didn’t say it’s wrong. I said it villianizes those fuels. We needed fuels as a society for those 3000 mile flights over the pacific that ships your iPhone here. Energy “subsidies” are a strategic investment in securing your lifestyle. Just look at Europe right now as they head into winter with sky high natural gas prices. They’d go ahead an strike any deal that secures their supplies so they do t freeze half to dea…
I think you've somehow missed the vital part: our lifestyle is not sustainable. We shouldn't aim to sustain something that simply cannot continue.
Everything we consider advanced tech today is built on an economy made possible by vast, cheap and accessible energy sources such as the ones we're dissing.
I agree that we need to stop using energy sources in a way that threatens our existence. But i assert that there are massive benefits we have to be thankful for as well.
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If it is Prometheus' fire, we are not ready to handle that fire yet. When one of the core concerns of using a technology is to prevent it being used to create weapons capable of obliterating entire cities, we are not as a species mature enough to use it on a wider scale. This is only one example of why we are not ready yet. Nuclear (fission) technology is not the problem, we are the problem. Looking at the recent his…
If we hadn't stopped building nuclear power in the 80s and had merely kept up the pace, our electric grid would be 100% decarbonized by now. Instead, we do have nukes and don't have a carbon free grid. Ditto everyone else. Naïve, immature, and short sighted, indeed.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...