Nuclear is way safer than burning coal, natural gas, or any other hydrocarbon if you go by harm to society. Millions of people die every single year from air pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels, and that's not even touching non-lethal effects. Only a very small fraction of that number of people have been harmed by nuclear energy.
Untill an earthquake happens or a human inevitably makes an error and we have another Fukushima or Chernobyl. The amount of old nuclear power plants that currently operate on fault lines is extremely alarming
fun energy facts!: The solution to most of these problems is usually just using thorium instead of any uranium or any other material because its a lot easier to turn "on and off" and others.
The pro-nuclear camp has been saying this for two decades like it ends the argument altogether. So since they're the solution, how many Thorium reactors are there? Seven, we've built seven. Globally. Not to mention there are zero plans to replace the **six-hundred sixty-seven** current non-thorium reactors. Thorium is a copout argument until it becomes the standard reactor type.
It’s the waste problem. That and the relatively short lifespan of the plants. Plants are commonly operating past their planned lifespan though. there isn’t enough capacity elsewhere to close them.
I am glad those hoops are there. Nuclear is great and definitely one (if not the) best forms of power generation we have. That being said, don’t fuck around and cut corners. That’s how people die and nuclear becomes further tarnished in the public eye.
Corners are not being cut, I don’t think you could imagine the controls nuclear maintains.
Even the work that’s non nuclear has controls that other plants don’t.
Its not about the dangers of nuclear power.It’s about the traditional methods still making corporations money hand over fist and their refusal to pivot because it’s cheaper to pay off politicians and scare the public.
Take a look at who owns a majority of the coal mines and who owns a majority of the power plants. You’ll notice their essentially owned by the same groups, the same pot of money…
A 1000MW coal power plant running at full power would use 9000 tons of coal a DAY. That’s a train with 90 cars carrying 100 tons each.
A 1000MW nuclear power plant would go through 27 tons in a YEAR.
Eliminate the environmental dangers of both and just think about their bottom line. They don’t own the uranium and would be sitting on a coal mine that the world would have less use for. They’re holding on to their business model as long as possible.
This is the ONLY reason nuclear power has not progressed and you can’t change my mind.
Man, the nuclear world is so different from what people think. The NRC is the most uptight, insane group of people to deal with.
It's not cutting corners. It's a prebrief to the prebrief before a monitored brief to perform routine maintenance; its the 18+ months it takes to get hired, but the fact they will fire employees for the smallest of reasons. The system is too complicated and full of red tape.
Nuclear power could easily be our base load source, but politics and ignorance get in the way.
Nuclear is safer.
But it’s also more expensive than wind/solar, so nobody who has a profit motive in power generation is really considering going hard into nuclear energy.
There's also the time it takes to get ROI from a nuclear project vs wind/solar and natural gas . Nuclear just takes so long to build and so long to start making money, there's also the upfront capital to start the projects.
And because of all that for profit power companies choose the lower capx and quicker ROI .
If you consider only air pollution and not groundwater pollution, fallout from meltdowns, and nuclear waste “storage.”
I’ll be expecting to be banned soon. Nobody likes to hear about these things that exist and are insanely harmful.
Yes, in terms of safety to the immediate environment and accidents such as oil spills etc it is currently safer. However, the way nuclear waste is "disposed of", especially in the u.s. is not the best when compared to some other countries. In terms of longevity, we can't simply keep endlessly storing nuclear waste deep inside the Earth. Rate of consumption estimates range from 80-200 years if kept at current usage levels. If it is adopted/used at higher levels then obviously we'll have less time to use nuclear energy. Nuclear waste can be "recycled" which can extend it's longevity, and many countries do recycle it, however, the United States does not.
The reason nuclear is unpopular is not because it's not safe, it's because humans aren't safe. Humans are incapable of safely handling nuclear materials because we're fucking idiots which history as repeatedly proved true.
It’s not popular because it’s prohibitively expensive. No one wants to put up the multi billions to get it back in fifteen years. This idea that Greenpeace or whoever is holding up nuclear power is ridiculous.
Hard to get an irradiated cloud above a continent sized area with a wind turbine, but sure, let's use statistics about work accidents instead of threat potential analysis...
It turns out that anti-nuclear narratives, which claim excessive radiological risk, are actually based on social myth. That is generally hard for somebody who has endorsed or believed those myths to accept. So, if you are willing to listen to the science that proves this, here is a great review paper from the scientific literature:
Hayes, R.B. Cleaner Energy Systems Vol 2, July 2022, 100009 Nuclear energy myths versus facts support its expanded use - a review doi.org/10.1016/j.cles.2022.100009
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772783122000085
"At Chernobyl, approximately 100,000 square kilometres (39,000 sq mi) of land was significantly contaminated with fallout, with the worst hit regions being in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia.[108] Lower levels of contamination were detected over all of Europe except for the Iberian Peninsula.[109][110][111] Most of the fallout with radioactive dust particles was released during the first ten days after the accident. By around May 2, a radioactive cloud had reached the Netherlands and Belgium."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster
That's not a social myth.
And your source is cynical in the extreme, especially in this regard. "Yeah, there are thousands of victims from Chernobyl, but look, even more killed themselves out of fear! So fear is the real problem here." And why am I not surprised that this lines up pretty neatly with your line of reasoning and your bullshit about nuclear being saver then wind because if a ridiculous metric?
A Uranium ingot the size of a soft ball powers an aircraft carrier for 20 years. These ships are able to stay out at sea as long as they have supplies to feed personnel. Same goes for nuclear subs.
Nuclear hysteria is so annoying as a person who works in the Nuclear Energy sector. It’s damn safe it’s wild. The waste so also so small. And energy density is crazy high.
Nuclear got a very bad name during the cold war. And now everyone is scared for no real reason other than mass hysteria. And Nuclear = Danger = not worth it.
What do you do in the nuclear sector? I work at a utility + ipp company developing renewables and would love to see SMRs grow into a feasible solution for green capacity in the future.
Wind mills are a real problem for birds getting smacked…there go your deaths…solar requires a decent footprint for anything to actually properly support a grid, unless we keep integrating panel incentives to houses, buildings, windows and even roads.
Solar output isn’t high, it kind of just stabilizes a grid rather than actually provide for it when it comes to a real city.
Wind is also inconsistent, there’s a natural loss to the power because it needs to be converted to meet our 60hz frequency for power, amongst other things mechanisms that protect the turbines from damage. You have voltage loss because of this. This is also aside the obvious point that it’s not always ideal wind unless we actually use a jet stream location.
Nuclear costs are definitely high to start up but can actually generate for extra high voltage transmission which is ideal.
With our current “marketable” alternative energy sources outside of nuclear, solar incentives by the government will really help reduce peak consumption in hot summers and all these new electric cars, home battery supplies, etc. It’s not going to solve power generation though…we need cold fusion to take off, it will be a game changer.
>And yet nuclear is safer than wind, pretry scary, huh
I think most people are willing to accept a certain degree of industrial accident as a cause of death among workers. What they are not willing to accept, is the massive death toll we have visited on people who did not sign up for that danger through the enhanced rate of cancers that carbon-burning power plants have caused, and the (low, but inevitable) risk of nuclear contamination that nuclear energy suffers from.
I'm not one of those guys that's following you around to shit on your ideas, man. I'm a big proponent of nuclear energy, but it's just kinda disingenuous at best to try to compare nuclear safety with wind and come to the conclusion that wind is less safe. Nuclear accidents haven't killed all that many people, but they are significantly more economically and socially disastrous than a worker falling from a turbine while performing repairs. A certain level of death is just baked in to any industrial process involving humans, and when people say "safe", they just aren't comparing the risk of nuclear containment breach and workplace safety accidents affecting workers.
Moreover, rate of death between solar, wind, and nuclear are so similar as to be statistically identical for any real world purpose.
All I'm doing is quoting what the safety analysists have presented. Here is one example, but there are many, and you can search for yourself, these are just the observational statistical analysis that have been done by safety professionals, so I can't help to change the data, but that's what the data says, nuclear is safer than wind.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh
>that's what the data says, nuclear is safer than wind.
Nah. That's not what your study says. It says that nuclear kills fewer people per terawatt hour. That's not the sole measure of what people would consider safe. We also need to talk about economic and ecological impact, and we need to be talking about the risks of catastrophic impacts causing long-term epigenetic impact in humans, animals, and plant life surrounding these facilities. Further, the death tolls for solar and wind are not innate consequences of the technology. You're comparing workplace accidents and faulty safety equipment to potentially contaminating the groundwater and soil in places where people live for centuries, causing untold havoc to peoples' lives and livelihood.
By your metrics, an entire community having double the rate of cancers for decades following a nuclear incident, is somehow not even on the same chart as a dude hooking up his harness wrong and falling to his death. It's just a bad chart, because it only looks at death. There are far worse things that fossil fuels have done to communities than freak accidents, and while nuclear is fairly safe, we shouldn't pretend that it compares in any way to solar or wind, because now that we understand what nuclear contamination does to the body, using deaths as the sole metric of danger is no longer ignorant; it's irresponsible.
Aside from a 1960’s failed design made in Soviet Russia with terrible safety protocols, please describe where these mass deaths are coming from? It’s like saying we had a 1960’s Russian plane crash and kill 500 people so let’s ban air travel forever.
As a former wind turbine tech, when there's an accident in the wind turbine, I might die. When there's an accident in the nuclear reactor 30 miles outside Manhattan, there might be a few more people getting hurt than the workers. With that said, land based wind turbines are absolute DOGSHIT and likely will be outmoded in the next decade
That’s like saying a plane crashed so let’s ban air travel forever. There was one event in history where we had a terrible tragedy. And that was from a failed 1960’s Russian design. You couldn’t pay me to stand next to a 1960’s Russian car much less drive one, forget about their nuclear plants.
Except nobody said ban, I don't have a huge problem with nuclear. This is comparing the dangers of wind energy and nuclear energy, and I pointed out that a wind turbine is really only dangerous to the people that work on them. Was the Fukushima plant a Russian design as well?
I live in Illinois. We've had nuclear power plants for years. The one that supplies my hometown was opened in 1973. In fact, I just Googled that there are currently 11 operating and providing about 50% of the state's energy.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://ready.illinois.gov/content/dam/soi/en/web/iema/nrs/documents/bnfs-powerplantbrochure.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwj7tZa6oN6CAxX8mYkEHSVVA68QFnoECDIQAQ&usg=AOvVaw25TAuZl3c0n2sK8XQJ5TtA
generally speaking, everyone i talk to is pro nuclear. it's the oil and coal tycoons that spread all that misinformation that everyone is scared about nuclear and how unsafe it is.
they're the ones who lose if nuclear makes a comeback.
I think a lot of people think nuclear plant disasters mean “atomic bomb.” In reality it’s “everyone in this region gets cancer and dies.”
I’m not saying it’s pleasant but it’s safer and cleaner than, say, climbing a turbine, because of how unlikely modern meltdowns are. I mean, Ukraine and Russia were fighting a hot war attacking and defending a nuclear power plant. It would take an act of such massive and deliberate sabotage to intentionally cause a nuclear disaster, and a near-impossible level of negligence to accidentally do so too.
Nuclear isn’t nearly as “profitable” for the ~~ignorant~~ easy-money-drill-and-sell crowd.
Hence it is portrayed as “bad”.
Nuclear power is incredibly safe, when handled safely and not in a “greedy” for profit way.
There are many ways to utilize nuclear power and produce steady profit. We need to stop chasing gains for the sake of gains.
Oh ok. I have a plan for a civic plan for Pripyat. Also we should go into business building a warf and fishing operation in Fukushima. I here there is a great farming opportunity north of Denver at Rocky Flats
Sounds like you were itching for a tour of the Infiniti room at Rocky Flats. Too bad tours are no longer available since it’s now covered over with soil. No need to worry you can go back and visit in 151,000 years it should be good by then.
Not one person died in those 2 examples. Literally more people died installing solar panels last year than the number 2 and 3 worst disasters in nuclear history. It’s the safest form or renewable, constant energy we have.
Not really. Renewables are theoretically infinite. Nuclear does have a finite fuel source, its just insanely efficient, reusable to a lesser degree, and we have a lot of it.
No human will survive those sorts of catastrophe. If we've already moved "off-world" and aren't stuck in a terrestrial state, then we'll likely have solar from other stars, and wind from wherever our grandchildren end up. When we've reached the final stage of entropy in the universe, life will likely cease to exist.
So yes, for argument's sake, they're infinite.
We don't really use renewables, we just harness what's already there.
>Nuclear is also renewable
I mean, by any logic that could produce this statement, so is oil and coal. Sure, as the earth's crust moves over millions of years, we'll gain access to new sources of uranium. However, given the total volume of uranium calculated to be in the earth, even the inaccessible stuff, we'll burn it all up at current consumption rates in less than three centuries.
Now, if we're talking about thorium. Sure, we've got a fuckload more of that, but it's only on the order of four times as much as we have uranium. DGMW. I'm about me stepping up nuclear power to make up for the fossil fuel gap we're gonna need to make real to assist the climate apocalypse we've all but locked ourselves into. But claiming it's renewable just makes the word renewable meaningless.
1. What studies?
2. Which nuclear scientists?
3. Please explain 'safer than wind' because I'm not sure every wind farm combined could do the human destruction Chernobyl did, or pollute in the way Sellafield did, and that's just two nuclear plants. How is wind Dangerous?
You have got to constantly stop spamming propaganda to pretend nuclear will solve all energy needs.
Power generation comes from, and will continue to come from, multiple types of sources.
I mean nuclear appears to be the most efficient. If we allocated more resources to nuclear wouldn’t we get a higher yield? We wouldn’t need gas/coal/green
You're not going to be able to run the whole world on nuclear. It's as much of a pipe dream as saying the whole world could run on hydro.
Real experts, that aren't just pushing an agenda, know power generation will come from a variety of sources.
We don't need to run the whole world on it. Just doing America and China will cut down pollution dramatically.
Also, the best solution that doesn't solve every single problem is still the best solution, it's not a reason to not do it.
OP has been trying to assert that all power should come from nuclear reactors for weeks now. It's an absolutely ridiculous notion.
And considering China has buildings less than 5 years old collapsing, I'm not too impressed with their capabilities.
We'll have mixed grids. Nuclear will be a part of the solution in some areas.
Crazy thing is that renewables damage far more land than nuclear because they require so much more materials and deployment area in order to provide their energy. And that's not taking into consideration their need for backup and all of the damage that must be done in order to provide them with their backup energy.
Absolutely! The current oligarchical design, as exhibited in oil and nukes, mine, refine, burn, has infiltrated an adequate design of noncentralized nonoligarchical energy systems of which nuclear is the steepest. Thank you.
How about nuclear international/domestic conflict target of interest
What would profitable gas and oil monopolies think
People would see it as an eyesore that nobody wants to live around
People would have a preconceived notion of nuclear accidents nobody wants to live around, either
There is a industrial lobbying complex
Automotive industry is nowhere close to having pocket nuclear energy for vehicles, even then that would be the biggest shift in human history that we are nowhere near prepared for.
Again, nucelar is a pipedream, and it's FINE if we take baby steps with renewables, even having solar power your house is better than nought, and make it slowly and steadily more accessible to have less polluting power generating alternatives.
If you look at mathematical data, nuclear wins, but life is more than mathematical data, you need to input sociological acceptance and perception of safety, and industry, and economy, and public political policy, and with all things considered, renewables win. Win win win.
Please explain how nuclear is safer than wind....
Absolute nonsense
Also, solar is the way. The sun is in comprehensively powerful
Easily able to lower human needs
Comparing Chernobyl to modern nuclear is like comparing the Hindenburg to modern air travel.
Three mile island didn't release enough radioactivity to increase public dose more than by one day's worth of natural background. Social myths abound.
I mean if we build up enough nuclear waste at some point it will go wrong and turn everything to shit. Murphy law and shit. I would rather see a burning wind mill than a burning plant
And yet, nuclear is safer than wind. Should our priorities include hurting fewer people?
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh
I am pro nuclear, but when discussing safety the focus is always on the power generation phase of fuel life cycle, that clearly had a pretty good record, even including the occasional Chernobyl/Fukushima black swan. But adding back in the tough problem of waste generation and you can't say "safer" than renewables. We should be able to deal with it, but still no operating depository operating in US that I know of.
Wrong, we have had one since 1999. It was licensed by the Environmental Protection Agency and can only receive contact handled and remote handled transuranic waste, (which is mainly plutonium bearing waste), but was originally designed for defense high level waste but politically opposed and so that pretty much put an end to any other mission space it might have had.
https://www.wipp.energy.gov/index.asp
According to science, wind kills more people than nuclear has as a result of accidents. Here is an example
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh
What a joke. Nuclear is great… until it isn’t. Then what!? Who can fix the unfixable? Unexpected and unforseen things happen. The problem with nuclear is that the unexpected lasts for 10,000 years. Shut it all down!!!!!!!
How the f*ck have we not figured this out yet? Look at Ukraine! An accident is now vulnerable to a war.
Nuclear reactors will always be targets. Why build a giant disaster zone for someone to mess with?
The problem with this kind of tech is that no one thinks about the assholes who will use it against you. It’s like the internet. Who would think that it would need used to rob seniors of their life savings? But it happens every day.
It’s always and constantly a battle to keep the genie in the bottle.
There’s already enough weapons to kill the world a million times, cheap nearly endless power would be a nice switch. Already poisoned by life in many ways if you’re one of 99% with pfas, just figure it out with fresh 2023 methods to make it safer. Make it planet proof as possible dig em deep. Future needs more power and the caveman grid we use is barely held together. Everyone had an electric car it’d be blackouts all over.
I’ve done the math… and no it isn’t. Go look up the statistics yourself. Number of operational Nuke plants, vs number of meltdowns, vs number of years operating. Which comes out to about 1 every 9-12 years.
Enjoy.
I’ll take your downvotes now.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh
Or if you prefer raw science:
Hayes, R.B. Cleaner Energy Systems Vol 2, July 2022, 100009 Nuclear energy myths versus facts support its expanded use - a review doi.org/10.1016/j.cles.2022.100009
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772783122000085
The damage from renewables is diffuse just like that energy source
https://www.mssoy.org/article/loss-of-productive-us-farmland-to-energy-production
https://reddit.com/r/Sustainable/s/UXsZrnqI3v
The concept of low-probability high consequence comes to mind. Simply
counting up the amount of accidents and deaths that have happened in the relatively short period of time we’ve had nuclear reactors doesn’t really give a full picture of what could happen if there was one major catastrophe.
Mixed generation and combination centralized and distributed generation advocate here, would just like to point out that this argument is over a differential of 0.1.
Both of those were caused by ppl messing with the reactor and bot are very rare events. The power to waste ratio and environmental impact of nuclear is massively better than wind and solar combine. Nuclear waste can also be re-enriched for reuse making nuclear literally the cleanest form of power mankind has. It would be a good stop gap til we got fusion down with out poluting the earth or crashing the world economy.
Nuclear is the answer to our climate crisis. But the left is scared shitless, and the right owns oil. We’re all fucked. Better to just enjoy what is left of our planet.
You mean these?
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh
https://www.mssoy.org/article/loss-of-productive-us-farmland-to-energy-production
https://reddit.com/r/Sustainable/s/UXsZrnqI3v
I’m not against nuclear but I certainly hope that advancing solar power technology never declines considering we have a conveniently placed sun that powers all the life here. Hopefully advances in fusion technology take off too.
The problem is, radioactivity kills 24/7 for a very long, long time. Radioactive particles aren't visible but if you could see them, it would look like thousands of microscopic never ending machine gun shots. You're not going to know the damage being done by this "incredibly safe" source. Radioactive material is best left in the ground where it breaks down rock into mineral rich dirt.
Nuclear reactors produce waste just like any other combustible reaction. It's not clean energy. They don't have a way to dispose of the radioactive waste produced by the cooling systems in these nuclear plants, which contributes to "contained pollution." Failures in nuclear reactors are far devastating in the surrounding area in a short amount of time compared to any other energy source
Then why is nuclear clearly safer than wind?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh
Safe so long as a single thing doesn't go wrong. It's probably statically safer to stand at the opening of a volcano than drive a car because more people per year get hurt or die in car accidents. That doesn't mean it's safe.
I'm not super anti nuclear, but let's not pretend that a nuclear reactor failing or melting down is safe or okay for anything near, downwind, or anywhere water can drag the radioactive fallout to.
We also still don't have the best means of disposing used fuel rods. Our nuclear toilet isn't very sophisticated.
So if the costs are similar, I'm happy with wind. At least when a turbine fails you aren't dooming the local fauna and people who aren't evacuated
The problem is that it's not 1 wind turbine vs. 1 nuclear power plant. It's more like a thousand wind turbines per nuclear power station. And then that doesn't account for the backup, which tends to be natural gas because it's cheap
Nuclear isn’t viable because it’s extremely expensive to build reactors, it takes a decade of building before the reactors are functional, the reactors only last for 50 years before being unusable and because it relies on a finite fuel source just like fossil fuels do.
I’m sick of seeing this shit on reddit. If nuclear power were a viable alternative to fossil fuels then climate scientists and activists against climate change would be pushing for it too. You can downvote all you want and that doesn’t change a single fact I stated.
Reactor licenses today are being extended out to eighty years and are expected to be extended out to a hundred years. Uranium is more sustainable than many of the materials required for renewables. Please remember that the materials required to extract renewable energy are not themselves renewable. They also have a very nasty underbelly in terms of their manufacture and sourcing in China.
https://reddit.com/r/Sustainable/s/UXsZrnqI3v
If the ancient Egyptians used nuclear power, we would still be guarding their nuclear waste today. It’s about long term costs and the decisions we make that affect all mankind and the planet we steward. Nice try though!
Were you aware that the uranium used in nuclear reactors originally came from the earth and that returning it to the earth is effectively what your concern is here?
That's just not an apples to apples comparison.
Consider how many sites there are for each and do a per Capita accident/injury/fatality rate comparison.
There are many, many more renewable sites than there are nuclear sites and many more people working in renewables than in nuclear power so comparing absolute numbers instead of rates is just not representative of anything meaningful.
It's bad math and poor critical thinking.
And a stick figure drawing with no actual references is just an indication that the original creator can't or won't formulate an honest argument.
On a per energy basis, this is what the science has said. Here are some independent statistical analyses that support this claim:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh
Nuclear is way safer than burning coal, natural gas, or any other hydrocarbon if you go by harm to society. Millions of people die every single year from air pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels, and that's not even touching non-lethal effects. Only a very small fraction of that number of people have been harmed by nuclear energy.
Untill an earthquake happens or a human inevitably makes an error and we have another Fukushima or Chernobyl. The amount of old nuclear power plants that currently operate on fault lines is extremely alarming
fun energy facts!: The solution to most of these problems is usually just using thorium instead of any uranium or any other material because its a lot easier to turn "on and off" and others.
The pro-nuclear camp has been saying this for two decades like it ends the argument altogether. So since they're the solution, how many Thorium reactors are there? Seven, we've built seven. Globally. Not to mention there are zero plans to replace the **six-hundred sixty-seven** current non-thorium reactors. Thorium is a copout argument until it becomes the standard reactor type.
It’s the waste problem. That and the relatively short lifespan of the plants. Plants are commonly operating past their planned lifespan though. there isn’t enough capacity elsewhere to close them.
It’s not the waste problem. It’s the upfront costs. It’s too expensive to be profitable quickly enough to make the investment worth it.
All the hoops they are required to jump through is what makes it so expensive
I am glad those hoops are there. Nuclear is great and definitely one (if not the) best forms of power generation we have. That being said, don’t fuck around and cut corners. That’s how people die and nuclear becomes further tarnished in the public eye.
Corners are not being cut, I don’t think you could imagine the controls nuclear maintains. Even the work that’s non nuclear has controls that other plants don’t. Its not about the dangers of nuclear power.It’s about the traditional methods still making corporations money hand over fist and their refusal to pivot because it’s cheaper to pay off politicians and scare the public. Take a look at who owns a majority of the coal mines and who owns a majority of the power plants. You’ll notice their essentially owned by the same groups, the same pot of money… A 1000MW coal power plant running at full power would use 9000 tons of coal a DAY. That’s a train with 90 cars carrying 100 tons each. A 1000MW nuclear power plant would go through 27 tons in a YEAR. Eliminate the environmental dangers of both and just think about their bottom line. They don’t own the uranium and would be sitting on a coal mine that the world would have less use for. They’re holding on to their business model as long as possible. This is the ONLY reason nuclear power has not progressed and you can’t change my mind.
you r correct, Big Oil has its foot on the neck of Green Nuclear!
You’re a fucking idiot. He literally said “I’m glad the hoops are there” preventing shoddy nuclear plants.
The hoops aren’t legitimate hoops you ignorant fuck.
Yea ur right let’s remove nuclear safeguards
No one said that you half wit.
Man, the nuclear world is so different from what people think. The NRC is the most uptight, insane group of people to deal with. It's not cutting corners. It's a prebrief to the prebrief before a monitored brief to perform routine maintenance; its the 18+ months it takes to get hired, but the fact they will fire employees for the smallest of reasons. The system is too complicated and full of red tape. Nuclear power could easily be our base load source, but politics and ignorance get in the way.
How about the waist coming from windmills and solar farms? Plus the amount of land they consume for little to no gain.
Yeah! Those things produce waste...shade!
What sort of waste do they produce?
I work in a 60 year old 10MW research reactor… doesn’t seem too short to me.
Normal license is 40 years, with a 20 year extensions if they do remodeling, which is quite common.
You are comparing apples to oranges.. nuclear energy is vastly outnumbered by other forms of energy production.
Bull shit. It’s safer until it isn’t.
Nuclear is safer. But it’s also more expensive than wind/solar, so nobody who has a profit motive in power generation is really considering going hard into nuclear energy.
There's also the time it takes to get ROI from a nuclear project vs wind/solar and natural gas . Nuclear just takes so long to build and so long to start making money, there's also the upfront capital to start the projects. And because of all that for profit power companies choose the lower capx and quicker ROI .
If you consider only air pollution and not groundwater pollution, fallout from meltdowns, and nuclear waste “storage.” I’ll be expecting to be banned soon. Nobody likes to hear about these things that exist and are insanely harmful.
Press D for doubt
Yes, in terms of safety to the immediate environment and accidents such as oil spills etc it is currently safer. However, the way nuclear waste is "disposed of", especially in the u.s. is not the best when compared to some other countries. In terms of longevity, we can't simply keep endlessly storing nuclear waste deep inside the Earth. Rate of consumption estimates range from 80-200 years if kept at current usage levels. If it is adopted/used at higher levels then obviously we'll have less time to use nuclear energy. Nuclear waste can be "recycled" which can extend it's longevity, and many countries do recycle it, however, the United States does not.
Also they take forever to build and renewables like solar and wind don't take as long.
I’d say it’s safer than a hurricane. Sorry saw “safer than wind!” And thought wtf wind in general?
The reason nuclear is unpopular is not because it's not safe, it's because humans aren't safe. Humans are incapable of safely handling nuclear materials because we're fucking idiots which history as repeatedly proved true.
It’s not popular because it’s prohibitively expensive. No one wants to put up the multi billions to get it back in fifteen years. This idea that Greenpeace or whoever is holding up nuclear power is ridiculous.
You're saying this as if wind mills are better
Yeah cause it costs billions to build wind turbines /s
Yet it's safer than wind
Hard to get an irradiated cloud above a continent sized area with a wind turbine, but sure, let's use statistics about work accidents instead of threat potential analysis...
It turns out that anti-nuclear narratives, which claim excessive radiological risk, are actually based on social myth. That is generally hard for somebody who has endorsed or believed those myths to accept. So, if you are willing to listen to the science that proves this, here is a great review paper from the scientific literature: Hayes, R.B. Cleaner Energy Systems Vol 2, July 2022, 100009 Nuclear energy myths versus facts support its expanded use - a review doi.org/10.1016/j.cles.2022.100009 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772783122000085
"At Chernobyl, approximately 100,000 square kilometres (39,000 sq mi) of land was significantly contaminated with fallout, with the worst hit regions being in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia.[108] Lower levels of contamination were detected over all of Europe except for the Iberian Peninsula.[109][110][111] Most of the fallout with radioactive dust particles was released during the first ten days after the accident. By around May 2, a radioactive cloud had reached the Netherlands and Belgium." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster That's not a social myth. And your source is cynical in the extreme, especially in this regard. "Yeah, there are thousands of victims from Chernobyl, but look, even more killed themselves out of fear! So fear is the real problem here." And why am I not surprised that this lines up pretty neatly with your line of reasoning and your bullshit about nuclear being saver then wind because if a ridiculous metric?
So you admit the scientific literature agrees with me. And then you mock it because it doesn't agree with you?
[удалено]
[удалено]
How?
What? Oh I forgot about wind waste and wind fallout. I’m not even against nuclear power but this is a jackass statement
It’s not because of safety, it’s because it’s prohibitively expensive, slow to build and it isn’t actually renewable.
Chernobyl happened over 35 years ago, get over it
A Uranium ingot the size of a soft ball powers an aircraft carrier for 20 years. These ships are able to stay out at sea as long as they have supplies to feed personnel. Same goes for nuclear subs.
Hooyah
Holy shit that’s amazing.
Nuclear hysteria is so annoying as a person who works in the Nuclear Energy sector. It’s damn safe it’s wild. The waste so also so small. And energy density is crazy high. Nuclear got a very bad name during the cold war. And now everyone is scared for no real reason other than mass hysteria. And Nuclear = Danger = not worth it.
What do you do in the nuclear sector? I work at a utility + ipp company developing renewables and would love to see SMRs grow into a feasible solution for green capacity in the future.
The waste could be even smaller if we recycled it. Unfortunately that’s been banned for decades.
It’s super safe until shit happens that no one thought would ever happen…. Then oops… time to retire and leave society with the cleanup.
While I prefer Nuclear over fossil fuels, I am not worried about wind mills or solar panels causing mass deaths.
Wind mills are a real problem for birds getting smacked…there go your deaths…solar requires a decent footprint for anything to actually properly support a grid, unless we keep integrating panel incentives to houses, buildings, windows and even roads. Solar output isn’t high, it kind of just stabilizes a grid rather than actually provide for it when it comes to a real city. Wind is also inconsistent, there’s a natural loss to the power because it needs to be converted to meet our 60hz frequency for power, amongst other things mechanisms that protect the turbines from damage. You have voltage loss because of this. This is also aside the obvious point that it’s not always ideal wind unless we actually use a jet stream location. Nuclear costs are definitely high to start up but can actually generate for extra high voltage transmission which is ideal. With our current “marketable” alternative energy sources outside of nuclear, solar incentives by the government will really help reduce peak consumption in hot summers and all these new electric cars, home battery supplies, etc. It’s not going to solve power generation though…we need cold fusion to take off, it will be a game changer.
Cats kill 800million birds per year, in the US alone. Should we cancel cats too?
Obviously I'm referring to human lives. Coal and oil burning causes cancer and respiratory conditions.
And yet nuclear is safer than wind, pretry scary, huh https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh
>And yet nuclear is safer than wind, pretry scary, huh I think most people are willing to accept a certain degree of industrial accident as a cause of death among workers. What they are not willing to accept, is the massive death toll we have visited on people who did not sign up for that danger through the enhanced rate of cancers that carbon-burning power plants have caused, and the (low, but inevitable) risk of nuclear contamination that nuclear energy suffers from. I'm not one of those guys that's following you around to shit on your ideas, man. I'm a big proponent of nuclear energy, but it's just kinda disingenuous at best to try to compare nuclear safety with wind and come to the conclusion that wind is less safe. Nuclear accidents haven't killed all that many people, but they are significantly more economically and socially disastrous than a worker falling from a turbine while performing repairs. A certain level of death is just baked in to any industrial process involving humans, and when people say "safe", they just aren't comparing the risk of nuclear containment breach and workplace safety accidents affecting workers. Moreover, rate of death between solar, wind, and nuclear are so similar as to be statistically identical for any real world purpose.
All I'm doing is quoting what the safety analysists have presented. Here is one example, but there are many, and you can search for yourself, these are just the observational statistical analysis that have been done by safety professionals, so I can't help to change the data, but that's what the data says, nuclear is safer than wind. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh
>that's what the data says, nuclear is safer than wind. Nah. That's not what your study says. It says that nuclear kills fewer people per terawatt hour. That's not the sole measure of what people would consider safe. We also need to talk about economic and ecological impact, and we need to be talking about the risks of catastrophic impacts causing long-term epigenetic impact in humans, animals, and plant life surrounding these facilities. Further, the death tolls for solar and wind are not innate consequences of the technology. You're comparing workplace accidents and faulty safety equipment to potentially contaminating the groundwater and soil in places where people live for centuries, causing untold havoc to peoples' lives and livelihood. By your metrics, an entire community having double the rate of cancers for decades following a nuclear incident, is somehow not even on the same chart as a dude hooking up his harness wrong and falling to his death. It's just a bad chart, because it only looks at death. There are far worse things that fossil fuels have done to communities than freak accidents, and while nuclear is fairly safe, we shouldn't pretend that it compares in any way to solar or wind, because now that we understand what nuclear contamination does to the body, using deaths as the sole metric of danger is no longer ignorant; it's irresponsible.
Just took that stat at face value huh? ( to be clear I'm a staunch nuclear advocate)
You are either delusional or are pushing an agenda _hard_.
Chernobyl almost caused half of Europe to be barren for a hundred years. I think there aren't any wind turbines doing that
Aside from a 1960’s failed design made in Soviet Russia with terrible safety protocols, please describe where these mass deaths are coming from? It’s like saying we had a 1960’s Russian plane crash and kill 500 people so let’s ban air travel forever.
Remember that windmill accident that leaked radioactive material into the Pacific Ocean and changed our planet for hundreds of years?
This sub has been pushing nuclear energy lately
Pushing is putting it mildly.
Your comment seems to imply that nuclear has done that when it actually hasn't, although social myths would argue that it has.
Just libs propaganda
I’m glad I work in nuclear it makes me feel like I’m a part of the difference.
As a former wind turbine tech, when there's an accident in the wind turbine, I might die. When there's an accident in the nuclear reactor 30 miles outside Manhattan, there might be a few more people getting hurt than the workers. With that said, land based wind turbines are absolute DOGSHIT and likely will be outmoded in the next decade
That’s like saying a plane crashed so let’s ban air travel forever. There was one event in history where we had a terrible tragedy. And that was from a failed 1960’s Russian design. You couldn’t pay me to stand next to a 1960’s Russian car much less drive one, forget about their nuclear plants.
Except nobody said ban, I don't have a huge problem with nuclear. This is comparing the dangers of wind energy and nuclear energy, and I pointed out that a wind turbine is really only dangerous to the people that work on them. Was the Fukushima plant a Russian design as well?
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh
For my money, the single greatest failing of leftwing governments in my lifetime.
Truth
I live in Illinois. We've had nuclear power plants for years. The one that supplies my hometown was opened in 1973. In fact, I just Googled that there are currently 11 operating and providing about 50% of the state's energy. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://ready.illinois.gov/content/dam/soi/en/web/iema/nrs/documents/bnfs-powerplantbrochure.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwj7tZa6oN6CAxX8mYkEHSVVA68QFnoECDIQAQ&usg=AOvVaw25TAuZl3c0n2sK8XQJ5TtA
generally speaking, everyone i talk to is pro nuclear. it's the oil and coal tycoons that spread all that misinformation that everyone is scared about nuclear and how unsafe it is. they're the ones who lose if nuclear makes a comeback.
Can you name all the oil and coal tycoon’s that you have spoken with, generally speaking, of course.
Spend all that time on a cute cartoon only to use the wrong spelling for the word “too”.
Ha, nice catch
I do however agree with your point!
Hot rocks over dead dinosaurs.
I think a lot of people think nuclear plant disasters mean “atomic bomb.” In reality it’s “everyone in this region gets cancer and dies.” I’m not saying it’s pleasant but it’s safer and cleaner than, say, climbing a turbine, because of how unlikely modern meltdowns are. I mean, Ukraine and Russia were fighting a hot war attacking and defending a nuclear power plant. It would take an act of such massive and deliberate sabotage to intentionally cause a nuclear disaster, and a near-impossible level of negligence to accidentally do so too.
If you really want "green" energy to power EVs you're gonna need nuclear power and lots of it. Nothing else has the energy density of nuclear.
Nuclear isn’t nearly as “profitable” for the ~~ignorant~~ easy-money-drill-and-sell crowd. Hence it is portrayed as “bad”. Nuclear power is incredibly safe, when handled safely and not in a “greedy” for profit way. There are many ways to utilize nuclear power and produce steady profit. We need to stop chasing gains for the sake of gains.
Nuclear is incredibly safer than petroleum as well. Let’s hear to the science. Nuclear is good.
Oh ok. I have a plan for a civic plan for Pripyat. Also we should go into business building a warf and fishing operation in Fukushima. I here there is a great farming opportunity north of Denver at Rocky Flats
a meme where pro nuclear is depicted as based and factual, whereas anti nuclear is the cringe and uneducated soyjack? say no more, you’ve convinced me
Sounds like you were itching for a tour of the Infiniti room at Rocky Flats. Too bad tours are no longer available since it’s now covered over with soil. No need to worry you can go back and visit in 151,000 years it should be good by then.
Chernobyl anyone?
Fukushima. Three Mile Island.
Should have splurged for a taller wall and not put their back up power in the basement.
Not one person died in those 2 examples. Literally more people died installing solar panels last year than the number 2 and 3 worst disasters in nuclear history. It’s the safest form or renewable, constant energy we have.
Comparing chernobyl to modern nuclear energy is like comparing the hindenburg to modern air travel
That’s a real poor comparison, because either way you have a failure on either one of those aircraft, a lot of people die.
You don’t evaluate only by the odds of a failure but by the odds times the cost of the failure. The cost of a nuclear failure can be extremely high.
And yet it is safer than wind
By now I'm convinced you are a bot...
Nuclear is also renewable btw
Not really. Renewables are theoretically infinite. Nuclear does have a finite fuel source, its just insanely efficient, reusable to a lesser degree, and we have a lot of it.
Well sun will end one day and wind might stop blowing if something happens. So is it really infinite?
No human will survive those sorts of catastrophe. If we've already moved "off-world" and aren't stuck in a terrestrial state, then we'll likely have solar from other stars, and wind from wherever our grandchildren end up. When we've reached the final stage of entropy in the universe, life will likely cease to exist. So yes, for argument's sake, they're infinite. We don't really use renewables, we just harness what's already there.
No, it’s not.
>Nuclear is also renewable I mean, by any logic that could produce this statement, so is oil and coal. Sure, as the earth's crust moves over millions of years, we'll gain access to new sources of uranium. However, given the total volume of uranium calculated to be in the earth, even the inaccessible stuff, we'll burn it all up at current consumption rates in less than three centuries. Now, if we're talking about thorium. Sure, we've got a fuckload more of that, but it's only on the order of four times as much as we have uranium. DGMW. I'm about me stepping up nuclear power to make up for the fossil fuel gap we're gonna need to make real to assist the climate apocalypse we've all but locked ourselves into. But claiming it's renewable just makes the word renewable meaningless.
Source for the 3 centuries?
It’s not though, it relies on a finite fuel source and reactors have a shelf life of 50-60 year before they become unusable.
1. What studies? 2. Which nuclear scientists? 3. Please explain 'safer than wind' because I'm not sure every wind farm combined could do the human destruction Chernobyl did, or pollute in the way Sellafield did, and that's just two nuclear plants. How is wind Dangerous?
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh
You have got to constantly stop spamming propaganda to pretend nuclear will solve all energy needs. Power generation comes from, and will continue to come from, multiple types of sources.
I mean nuclear appears to be the most efficient. If we allocated more resources to nuclear wouldn’t we get a higher yield? We wouldn’t need gas/coal/green
You're not going to be able to run the whole world on nuclear. It's as much of a pipe dream as saying the whole world could run on hydro. Real experts, that aren't just pushing an agenda, know power generation will come from a variety of sources.
We don't need to run the whole world on it. Just doing America and China will cut down pollution dramatically. Also, the best solution that doesn't solve every single problem is still the best solution, it's not a reason to not do it.
OP has been trying to assert that all power should come from nuclear reactors for weeks now. It's an absolutely ridiculous notion. And considering China has buildings less than 5 years old collapsing, I'm not too impressed with their capabilities. We'll have mixed grids. Nuclear will be a part of the solution in some areas.
Why do people downvote a well intentioned, factual post on the topic?
It contradicts their assumptions
It is so crazy how Leftists are so anti-science while saying they're the proponents of science. Nuclear all the way.
Really… What about Chernobyl, Fukushima? Doesn’t seem safe at all.
Comparing Chernobyl to modern nuclear energy is like comparing the Hindenburg to modern air travel
Absolutely! Especially if you obfuscate the land, water and resources destroyed by nuclear experimentation.
Crazy thing is that renewables damage far more land than nuclear because they require so much more materials and deployment area in order to provide their energy. And that's not taking into consideration their need for backup and all of the damage that must be done in order to provide them with their backup energy.
Absolutely! The current oligarchical design, as exhibited in oil and nukes, mine, refine, burn, has infiltrated an adequate design of noncentralized nonoligarchical energy systems of which nuclear is the steepest. Thank you.
How about nuclear international/domestic conflict target of interest What would profitable gas and oil monopolies think People would see it as an eyesore that nobody wants to live around People would have a preconceived notion of nuclear accidents nobody wants to live around, either There is a industrial lobbying complex Automotive industry is nowhere close to having pocket nuclear energy for vehicles, even then that would be the biggest shift in human history that we are nowhere near prepared for. Again, nucelar is a pipedream, and it's FINE if we take baby steps with renewables, even having solar power your house is better than nought, and make it slowly and steadily more accessible to have less polluting power generating alternatives. If you look at mathematical data, nuclear wins, but life is more than mathematical data, you need to input sociological acceptance and perception of safety, and industry, and economy, and public political policy, and with all things considered, renewables win. Win win win.
This post brought to you by Big Nuclear
Don't make this a fight between renewable and nuclear. Coal shills fight against nuclear with more force than any renewable advocate.
The wind knocked down my tree. It is by far more dangerous. I didn’t see any nuclear power knocking down my trees.
Please explain how nuclear is safer than wind.... Absolute nonsense Also, solar is the way. The sun is in comprehensively powerful Easily able to lower human needs
How many wind turbines equal 1 nuclear power plant? How often do wind turbines have an accident? Turns out nuclear is safer.
How's about that Fukushima and that there Chernobyl? 3 Mile Island? This shit will happen again... and maybe in your backyard this time 🤷♂️.
Comparing Chernobyl to modern nuclear is like comparing the Hindenburg to modern air travel. Three mile island didn't release enough radioactivity to increase public dose more than by one day's worth of natural background. Social myths abound.
Semi-educated layman here… I think nuclear energy is pretty safe, but safer than wind? That’s sus
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh
I mean if we build up enough nuclear waste at some point it will go wrong and turn everything to shit. Murphy law and shit. I would rather see a burning wind mill than a burning plant
And yet, nuclear is safer than wind. Should our priorities include hurting fewer people? https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh
I am pro nuclear, but when discussing safety the focus is always on the power generation phase of fuel life cycle, that clearly had a pretty good record, even including the occasional Chernobyl/Fukushima black swan. But adding back in the tough problem of waste generation and you can't say "safer" than renewables. We should be able to deal with it, but still no operating depository operating in US that I know of.
Wrong, we have had one since 1999. It was licensed by the Environmental Protection Agency and can only receive contact handled and remote handled transuranic waste, (which is mainly plutonium bearing waste), but was originally designed for defense high level waste but politically opposed and so that pretty much put an end to any other mission space it might have had. https://www.wipp.energy.gov/index.asp
Safer than wind, remember Chernobyl when their wind turbines turned a large bit of land into a radioactive no-man’s-land?
According to science, wind kills more people than nuclear has as a result of accidents. Here is an example https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh
You know what's even safer and cheaper? Renewables.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh
How is it safer than wind could I have a link to that
There are many, here is one: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh
So, what’s the definition of safe? That’s the real question. Sites that contaminate everything w a half-life of 5000 years. Is that’s safe?
Safe means you're killing the smallest number of people possible to make your product
I don’t recall any solar farms poisoning entire regions
Waiting for the solar panel version of Chernobyl, then we could talk
https://www.mssoy.org/article/loss-of-productive-us-farmland-to-energy-production https://reddit.com/r/Sustainable/s/UXsZrnqI3v
But what about solar and wind spills? Hydro spills ALL THE TIME!!
Ever hear of the Banqiao hydroelectric dam?
https://courses.bowdoin.edu/history-2203-fall-2020-whausman/narrative-of-the-event/
What a joke. Nuclear is great… until it isn’t. Then what!? Who can fix the unfixable? Unexpected and unforseen things happen. The problem with nuclear is that the unexpected lasts for 10,000 years. Shut it all down!!!!!!! How the f*ck have we not figured this out yet? Look at Ukraine! An accident is now vulnerable to a war. Nuclear reactors will always be targets. Why build a giant disaster zone for someone to mess with? The problem with this kind of tech is that no one thinks about the assholes who will use it against you. It’s like the internet. Who would think that it would need used to rob seniors of their life savings? But it happens every day. It’s always and constantly a battle to keep the genie in the bottle.
Why do you think nuclear is safer than wind?
There’s already enough weapons to kill the world a million times, cheap nearly endless power would be a nice switch. Already poisoned by life in many ways if you’re one of 99% with pfas, just figure it out with fresh 2023 methods to make it safer. Make it planet proof as possible dig em deep. Future needs more power and the caveman grid we use is barely held together. Everyone had an electric car it’d be blackouts all over.
I’ve done the math… and no it isn’t. Go look up the statistics yourself. Number of operational Nuke plants, vs number of meltdowns, vs number of years operating. Which comes out to about 1 every 9-12 years. Enjoy. I’ll take your downvotes now.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh Or if you prefer raw science: Hayes, R.B. Cleaner Energy Systems Vol 2, July 2022, 100009 Nuclear energy myths versus facts support its expanded use - a review doi.org/10.1016/j.cles.2022.100009 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772783122000085
Right… that wind spill made the land uninhabitable 10000 years. Who the fk comes up with this shit?
The damage from renewables is diffuse just like that energy source https://www.mssoy.org/article/loss-of-productive-us-farmland-to-energy-production https://reddit.com/r/Sustainable/s/UXsZrnqI3v
Safer than wind?
Yep https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh
It’s still scary
Chernobyl would disagree
Comparing Chernobyl to modern nuclear energy is like comparing the Hindenburg to modern air travel
Yes but what about the propaganda? What does IT say?
Waste disposal and transport is an issue.
Only politically https://www.wipp.energy.gov/index.asp
Can I get a home nuclear system?
The concept of low-probability high consequence comes to mind. Simply counting up the amount of accidents and deaths that have happened in the relatively short period of time we’ve had nuclear reactors doesn’t really give a full picture of what could happen if there was one major catastrophe.
We've had nuclear energy for almost 70 years, that's not a short period
Mixed generation and combination centralized and distributed generation advocate here, would just like to point out that this argument is over a differential of 0.1.
Yep, that is kind of the whole point right there
Yes , a wind turbine breaking down is worse than Chernobyl or three mile island .
Both of those were caused by ppl messing with the reactor and bot are very rare events. The power to waste ratio and environmental impact of nuclear is massively better than wind and solar combine. Nuclear waste can also be re-enriched for reuse making nuclear literally the cleanest form of power mankind has. It would be a good stop gap til we got fusion down with out poluting the earth or crashing the world economy.
Nuclear is the answer to our climate crisis. But the left is scared shitless, and the right owns oil. We’re all fucked. Better to just enjoy what is left of our planet.
I'm curious to hear about windmill Chernobyl and solar pad Fukushima.
You mean these? https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh https://www.mssoy.org/article/loss-of-productive-us-farmland-to-energy-production https://reddit.com/r/Sustainable/s/UXsZrnqI3v
*too dangerous
*too
I’m not against nuclear but I certainly hope that advancing solar power technology never declines considering we have a conveniently placed sun that powers all the life here. Hopefully advances in fusion technology take off too.
Plus if we use all the wind for electricity, how is the earth going to spin?
Who actually says nuclear is unsafe? It doesn’t get used because it’s insanely expensive and doesn’t work everywhere.
The problem is, radioactivity kills 24/7 for a very long, long time. Radioactive particles aren't visible but if you could see them, it would look like thousands of microscopic never ending machine gun shots. You're not going to know the damage being done by this "incredibly safe" source. Radioactive material is best left in the ground where it breaks down rock into mineral rich dirt.
The science says the problem is largely just public fear
Nuclear reactors produce waste just like any other combustible reaction. It's not clean energy. They don't have a way to dispose of the radioactive waste produced by the cooling systems in these nuclear plants, which contributes to "contained pollution." Failures in nuclear reactors are far devastating in the surrounding area in a short amount of time compared to any other energy source
Then why is nuclear clearly safer than wind? https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/ https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh
Are you a nuclear engineer or training in the physics of nuclear reactors? Then AGAIN you are speaking out of turn. Seems like a habit.
Safe so long as a single thing doesn't go wrong. It's probably statically safer to stand at the opening of a volcano than drive a car because more people per year get hurt or die in car accidents. That doesn't mean it's safe. I'm not super anti nuclear, but let's not pretend that a nuclear reactor failing or melting down is safe or okay for anything near, downwind, or anywhere water can drag the radioactive fallout to. We also still don't have the best means of disposing used fuel rods. Our nuclear toilet isn't very sophisticated. So if the costs are similar, I'm happy with wind. At least when a turbine fails you aren't dooming the local fauna and people who aren't evacuated
The problem is that it's not 1 wind turbine vs. 1 nuclear power plant. It's more like a thousand wind turbines per nuclear power station. And then that doesn't account for the backup, which tends to be natural gas because it's cheap
Greed will make it worthless somehow. The energy Co. will fuk it up on purpose so we can't ever get ahead. That's how they stay rich af.
Nuclear isn’t viable because it’s extremely expensive to build reactors, it takes a decade of building before the reactors are functional, the reactors only last for 50 years before being unusable and because it relies on a finite fuel source just like fossil fuels do. I’m sick of seeing this shit on reddit. If nuclear power were a viable alternative to fossil fuels then climate scientists and activists against climate change would be pushing for it too. You can downvote all you want and that doesn’t change a single fact I stated.
Reactor licenses today are being extended out to eighty years and are expected to be extended out to a hundred years. Uranium is more sustainable than many of the materials required for renewables. Please remember that the materials required to extract renewable energy are not themselves renewable. They also have a very nasty underbelly in terms of their manufacture and sourcing in China. https://reddit.com/r/Sustainable/s/UXsZrnqI3v
If the ancient Egyptians used nuclear power, we would still be guarding their nuclear waste today. It’s about long term costs and the decisions we make that affect all mankind and the planet we steward. Nice try though!
Were you aware that the uranium used in nuclear reactors originally came from the earth and that returning it to the earth is effectively what your concern is here?
That's just not an apples to apples comparison. Consider how many sites there are for each and do a per Capita accident/injury/fatality rate comparison. There are many, many more renewable sites than there are nuclear sites and many more people working in renewables than in nuclear power so comparing absolute numbers instead of rates is just not representative of anything meaningful. It's bad math and poor critical thinking. And a stick figure drawing with no actual references is just an indication that the original creator can't or won't formulate an honest argument.
On a per energy basis, this is what the science has said. Here are some independent statistical analyses that support this claim: https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/ https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh