931–940 of 1001 posts
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Nuclear waste is a problem caused by activists preventing disposal sites like yucca mountain from being built
Yep, the "nuclear waste problem" is 90% political, not technical
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> I think a good exercise for the reader is to reflect on why they were ever against nuclear power in the first place. The context is a long string of nuclear incidents throughout the Cold War through to the ‘90s. Not just Chernobyl, not just Fukushima, but the string of disasters at Windscale / Sellafield and many others across the globe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accident... https://en.wik…
And yet if you look at the "Fatalities" column, you see a stream of zeroes with a handful of non-zeroes, the worst being Chernobyl at 50 direct fatalities. Rooftop solar accounts for more deaths. Nuke plants are scary when they fail, but the actual threat is way lower than we play it out to be.
Counting deaths does not do the actual damage justice.
I think a good exercise for the reader is to reflect on why they were ever against nuclear power in the first place. Nuclear power was always the greenest, most climate friendly, safest, cheapest (save for what we do to ourselves), most energy dense, most long lasting, option.
Of course this stuff is not up to me but the parties I vote for are in part because they're anti nuclear.
It's so funny to see the shifts of peace or war with eastasia. So obviously propagandistic and so obviously supported by all the psychophants...
Today we're on the right side until it's inconvenient again and then we'll burn the witch of anyone who dares go against the narrative.
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The main problem of course is that coal is killing much more people than any nuclear disaster ever did (per unit of energy delivered). But because it’s so spread and so normalised and not so bombastic, we don’t even consider it. The number of lives saved by using nuclear energy is easily in the tens of thousands even with disasters like Chernobyl. Although of course it has to be stated that the USSR moved to heaven a…
And brown bears are less dangerous than cars because fewer people are killed by them. If you see a car, RUN. They are dangerous. Brown bears, not so much. Go ahead, pat their fur, statistically this is safe.
"Average deaths per TWh produced" is a good yardstick to me.
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The main problem of course is that coal is killing much more people than any nuclear disaster ever did (per unit of energy delivered). But because it’s so spread and so normalised and not so bombastic, we don’t even consider it. The number of lives saved by using nuclear energy is easily in the tens of thousands even with disasters like Chernobyl. Although of course it has to be stated that the USSR moved to heaven a…
And brown bears are less dangerous than cars because fewer people are killed by them. If you see a car, RUN. They are dangerous. Brown bears, not so much. Go ahead, pat their fur, statistically this is safe.
Just being near a potentially aggressive bear is a bad situation.
Being near a car or a nuclear power plant is not a bad siuation.
Of course you should run in the other direction if you're close to a potentially aggressive bear.
Same thing if you're in the path of an out of control car, or near a nuclear power plant accident.
But you've got to separate the "probability of bad situation occurring" from the "severity of the bad situation when it does occur".
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Could you expand more on your car point? I thought BMW and Benz were doing great at the moment. I dunno much about Audi or VW, but Mini also seems to be doing well (which I thought was British, but one of their models has literally the same engine as my last bimmer, so I guess they were sold at some point?).
The German car companies are struggling intensely against Chinese competition, everywhere outside of the US, and especially in China. The Chinese electric cars sell for 3 times less than the German ones in EU. The Chinese also invested heavily in e tech. The Germans? Not so much.
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How is it not economically viable given it is actively used since multiple decades in France? I also disagree with saying it is the cheapest, in practice it is actually pretty expensive compared to solar and wind, but economically nuclear makes a lot of sense, it fits a really good role in the grid
Just that it is used does not mean it is economically viable if the government is deeply involved - which is the case in France.
Government involvement doesn’t negate viability, it enables it, just like with roads, ports, or any other infrastructure requiring long-term capital deployment.
0: https://www.enerdata.net/publications/daily-energy-news/fran...
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From a technical point of view, nuclear waste is a solved problem. The issue is political. Ibidem for the fuel: yes, you can depends on wild countries; You can also depends on Australia, Canada and India, which seems like not-so-bad countries (in my opinion);
Solved problem? Have you ever waited 10000 years to see if the waste really decomposes and the area where it was stored is safe for kids to play?
(there is still very low amount of waste that have a long half-life, really not a big deal)
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I'm a nuclear supporter. I think we might be able to satisfy our energy needs with renewables. I am not entirely sure, because I'm not in the field. But, if it's true that renewables are so much cheaper, then self-interested individuals will invest in them. There is no need to be anti-nuclear. People like me, who are pro-nuclear, do it because they believe that nuclear technology, like all technologies, could become…
Solar and wind are extremely simple machines and are thus much more amenable to manufacturing economies of scale than fundamentally complicated nuke plants. I very much doubt we’d get to 10x , 100x seems impossible.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Pla...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karachi_Nuclear_Power_Complex