461–470 of 676 posts
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Modern rockets, such as the Falcon 9, have an extremely low failure rate. Falcon 9 itself has had over 160 launches, with only 1 complete failure.
Would you bet that there's not a second failure which distributes nuclear waste in our atmosphere?
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This was exactly the idea in 1973 Murcia, Spain, yup. BWR model. Same design as Fukushima plant at 30km of Lorca. Until a couple of dumb guys and a famous actor from the area see what was obvious, pick up some banners and saved the day. The action payback generously when in 2011 Lorca was hit by an 5.1 earthquake and no central nuclear was here to be hit. None of the tomato companies that sell vegetables to half Euro…
A 5.1 earthquake is rather weak. This would likely not have damaged an NPP near there.
Would you buy tomatoes cultured near a central nuclear that "may not have been damaged" by an earthquake?. Would you pass your holidays dining fish and swimming a place that "probably is not leaking radioactivity to the sea"?. Most people would answer negatively.
Nuclear benefits don't matter when you have a better plan for the place. If the other activity brings you ten times more money without the risks, and without excluding the rest of the economic activities in that place, the decision is easy.
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It kind of depends on what you consider a fact. I support nuclear scientifically. I don’t think it has a chance politically. Scientifically, nuclear waste disposal is very much solvable problem. Politically, expect to spend billions upon billions and then have things like Yucca Mountain canned after lots of construction. Both are true and which ones you consider lead to very different conclusions.
> Scientifically, nuclear waste disposal is very much solvable problem. No it is not. There is no place on Earth that we know is geologically stable for the time periods required We have no way of knowing what society will be like ten thousand years from now, let alone 100,000 years. How do we communicate with those people bout the danger of what we left behind? Greed. Hubris.
And not to mention, how does ground vibration bring sometimes buried under 500 meters of solid rock back onto the surface? Earthquakes shake the ground, they don't dig deep boreholes.
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> It's just sad to see how little actual science is respected in Germany. What part of this entire discussion has anything do to with science? Is anyone actually contesting the science? Is it a discussion about the number of orbitals of uranium atoms? Or is it a discussion on which entities handle the long-term financials obligations, whether we favor or not decentralized grids, whether we favor short term or longer…
It has nothing to do with science. OP is just parroting a meme circulating in a certain group of people who didn't realise that nuclear is gone and has been replaced by renewables years ago. It goes with the meme that you glorify France while ignoring it's failures which are quite prominent these days just the same way he ignores the fact that the chancellor for the last 16 years was an actual physicist. This is the…
This only works because Germany is still burning ungodly amount of coal, to fill the gaps when there is no wind or sun (about 60% of the time)
Is this the meme you're talking about?
Maybe sources are memes too? What happens if you take coal away from here:
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A lot of the anti-nuclear opinion is passionately opposed to scientific analysis. They're convinced Chernobyl can happen again, and that scientists are arrogantly playing god when they explain what can and can't happen
Let's talk Fukushima ?
Hopefully those incident will have taught those countries to respect the enormous destructive forces involved, create a work culture where safety concerns do not get ignored, and to build power plants with consideration of very rare natural disaster.
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It's such a pain how certain groups are so hung up on specific energy sources. German greens will never consider nuclear energy, Albertans will never consider anything that didn't come out of the ground either as oil or oil derived. It's like belonging to a sports team, it's silly. I used to be very much against nuclear energy because of the unsolved issue around dealing with it's waste. Two decades later after learn…
So, what changed in regards to dealing with its waste in the two decades? Or do you simply not care enough anymore?
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It is stuff like people religiously dissmising you when you tell them that nuclear is nearly the safest power source in terms of deaths per TWh [1]. They don't base their opinion regarding safety on data, they base it on the feeling that they get from seeing large disasters and not seeing the countless deaths caused in silence, and they refuse to update their view even in the face of contradicting data. [1] https://o…
I don't think "deaths per TWh" is the only measure we should be looking at, though. The Chernobyl exclusion zone is around 1000 square miles. It's certainly arguable if that is the correct size, or how long it will need to be in place. If you shut down a coal plant, the pollution dissipates in a fairly short amount of time. (Unfortunately the same is not true of the carbon that has accumulated in the atmosphere over…
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Nuclear power was ended in Germany for political reasons. The public has an incorrect idea of how dangerous nuclear power is and how dangerous nuclear waste is and it was easier for the politicians to go along with it for points than stand it's ground. If you're making policy based on scientifically inaccurate ideas then you aren't respecting the science.
In Germany the maximum insurance liability for nuclear disasters is $2.5 billion. In the US it's $0.35 billion. Fukushima cost $800 billion. This happened essentially because without a liability cap the entire insurance industry considers nuclear power to be ridiculously risky. So the government, who wanted to protect investors, stepped in. I feel like a lot of people who dont know this want to educate me about how s…
Note, this is a figure cited by opposition politicians. Nowhere near this much money has actually been spent.
The estimate from the government is a bit under $200 billion, and that includes not just cleanup but also resettling people and continued monitoring of the reactor: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup#:....
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I understand that, but really you have the option of either going all-in on nuclear and potentially making patches of several km² uninhabitable, or going all-in on fossil fuels and making gigantic regions of the earth uninhabitable due to climate change. It is a choice between a very local problem or a global one. There is no free lunch.
No, we also have the option to go all-in on solar and wind power, and avoid both of those bad outcomes. Of course, solar and wind aren't perfect either, and have other problems that need solving (energy storage for nighttime and dark/calm days, for one thing), but "nuclear or fossil fuels" is the falsest of false dichotomies.
As long the choice is between nuclear vs wind + fossil fuel, the discussion will be focused about fossil fuel.
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It is a definition, which is needed when you need to make plans and decisions, as in any other case. It does not mean that reality changes because of an agreement, of course, even if mixing the two might be tempting when trying to discredit politicians as a whole. That is an evergreen :)
Thing is, the plans and decisions have already been made, under a more stringent definition. By changing the definition, they have effectively undermined those earlier plans and decisions. That's dishonesty.