Is it 3 mile island but with a fail safe reactor? Like the ones that don’t use fission (lol).
Anon questions our energy sector
Submitted 1 year ago by MataVatnik@lemmy.world to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://slrpnk.net/pictrs/image/01977d6f-8d12-4b56-b139-98d3d98d23bc.jpeg
Comments
werefreeatlast@lemmy.world 1 year ago
LordWiggle@lemmy.world 1 year ago
“are we retarded?” yes, Trump got re-elected, which is proof most of us really are retarded. I’m pro nuclear, just not the form we widely use now, and not in the hands of retarded people. And again, most of us clearly are, and one of the worst is going to be president, again.
So I think the best thing we could do is start a nuclear war which will wipe out the human race. Nature will hopefully recover in about 100.000 to 1 million years. Hopefully dolphins will develop less retarded then us dumb monkeys.
Maggoty@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The year is 2289. We know how Dyson spheres work That star is just literally free energy But we blew up a solar system and wiped out a developing race one time and we stopped using it Imagine if hunters had stopped using fire?!?
Fukushima showed us the truth, Nuclear Safety is incompatible with capitalism. I don’t care to find out what other time bombs we build into future plants.
ryathal@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
A nuclear accident with 1 attributed death and studies showing no discernable increase in cancer rates for residents in the surrounding regions that happened alongside a tidal wave with thousands of deaths is clearly evidence nuclear is bad.
Maggoty@lemmy.world 1 year ago
There’s been a few more disasters. Fukushima is notable because if they had built for flooding they would have been fine. But that cost money.
Antiproton@programming.dev 1 year ago
If you listen to the people on Lemmy, everything is incompatible with capitalism. So do we cower in the corner and hope the problems away?
The amount of death and destruction attributable to all nuclear accidents since we figured out fission is barely statistically significant when compared to fossil fuel consumption.
Regulatory agencies can and do keep accidents from happening. Not always, because people are both stupid and corrupt. But mostly.
Capitalism isn’t going away any time soon. Maybe in a post fusion world, we’ll cross the threshold of post-scarcity too. Until that happens, we do the best we can with the tools at our disposal.
You could make the same argument about literally anything. Capitalism caused the 737Max disasters. You want to give up planes?
Maggoty@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I mean, I’m good with giving up Boeing…
But honestly, the original motive doesn’t fit everywhere. It can certainly fit in places like retail, with good safety nets. (Like basic government food available at cost or less for people who need it)
In infrastructure where cost cutting costs more maintenance money, at best? It really doesn’t belong.
Zementid@feddit.nl 1 year ago
That’s the main Issue! It can’t be calculated. It’s an enormous debt for the future
000@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
Okay but why use a slur to make a point
DaPorkchop_@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
this is 4chan
leadore@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Just because burning fossil fuels is bad doesn’t magically make nuclear good, or somehow no big deal. The chance for a catastrophic accident mentioned in the meme is only one drawback (which is bad enough–get real, denial is not a strategy here). Just a few other issues:
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the problem of what to do with the waste: no permanent solutions have yet been implemented and we’ve been using costly-to-maintain “temporary” methods for decades. Not to mention the thermal water pollution to aquatic ecosystems
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the enormously out of proportion up front costs to construct the plants, and higher ongoing operation and maintenance costs due to safety risks
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the fact that uranium is also a limited resource that has to be mined like other ores, with all the environmental negatives of that, which then has to go through a lot of processing involving various mechanics and chemicals just to make it usable as fuel.
Anyway I’m not going to try and spell it all out on a forum post–this topic is something you have to put in some effort to learn about, but all this advocacy for a very problematic method of producing power as if it’s a simple solution to our problems is kind of irritating. We should be focusing on developing renewable and sustainable energy.
dax@feddit.org 1 year ago
I don’t get this advocacy either, makes me wonder why? Constructing a nuclear power plant usually takes decades, they are not a solution for the more immediate problem climate change. They also introduce lots of new problems, and it’s not sustainable either.
ryathal@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
What takes decades is the bureaucracy, it can take as little as 3-5 years without the constant attempts to slow it down. We know the plant can then run for the next 50+ years. It needs to be part of the solution because power demand is constantly growing and we need to phase out other sources. Solar and wind aren’t enough and can’t get built fast enough alone.
The alternative option is to just force China, India, and every African nation to stop developing. That would reduce power needs enough that solar and wind would be sufficient.
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finitebanjo@lemmy.world 1 year ago
OUR Energy Sector…?
someacnt_@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Do I sit out on the nuclear ralley, hmmm
Zerush@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 1 year ago
TBF a nuclear incident is not like burning just one house down. It’s burning down the whole city and making it unusable for a decade or ten.
Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Why not build it in a remote location then?
Dams can also produce a lot of hydroelectric power, and a catastrophic failure could also destroy an entire town or more. We just don’t build dams upstream of a large town.
lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 1 year ago
The Chernobyl reactor’s explosion had impacts all the way in West Europe.
I don’t think you can be remote enough with this.
jaschen@lemm.ee 1 year ago
While 100% true for nuclear, the current state of burning fossil fuels is much MUCH worse.
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yes. Over the long term it will render the planet uninhabitable, or at least close enough to it.
OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
I think a town burning down would be fatal for most the inhabitants 3000 BC
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yes, maybe… but the point being they could, and often did, rebuild right where they’d been before. Radiation prevents that.
mastod0n@lemmy.world 1 year ago
What if fire burned down everything in a 10 km radius when there’s not enough water around the specific area the fire was ignited at?
Mubelotix@jlai.lu 1 year ago
Yeah, that’s what fire does
Blazingtransfem98@discuss.online 1 year ago
He should, reason they ditched them for coal and gas was because big daddy Exxon and BP are pushing for it so they don’t go out of bussiness. FUCK BP AND EXXON!
phoenixz@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
That is an extreme over simplification of a very complicated subject, it’s never that simple.
Having said that: yeah. It was stupid to stop using nuclear energy
reksas@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
there are millions being poured into propaganda against using anything but fossil fuels, it all stems from there. But i wonder if its better this way or the alternative way where we would use more nuclear energy but since there would be so much money to be made, the rich would use their money to make all safety regulations null. I wish we could just get rid of the source problem.
ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org 1 year ago
Europe’s regulations are strict and robust. However, the German Greens convinced lots of people that they aren’t enough.
whome@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
That’s a crazy oversimplification almost all German party’s had a part in the phase out and shut down of German nuclear energy. To point at the Greens and say it was them, is a right wing talking point pushed by Springer media.
If there was a way to make good money with nuclear we would have it all around to say a grass roots movement was able to push this through is laughable, if we look how everything else works in this world. While surely way better to handle securely it’s simply not easy to build and operate. Just look at all the plants currently under construction in Europe they all struggle to get finished take years to decades longer then planned and are way more expensive to build then initially estimated. Why is France struggling so hard when they have a population that is definitely way more open minded towards nuclear?
reksas@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
is that party in the pockets of oil companies or are they just insane?
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
Gotta be on 4chan to equate a nuclear meltdown with a person’s hut catching on fire.
Bacano@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I mean in terms of effect on population (which is kind of the point), the analogy still holds.
Isthisreddit@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I feel this is all moot. When we run out of fossil fuels and go off the energy cliff, the nuclear facilities will basically build themselves, assuming there will be anyone around that will even know how to build a nuclear reactor
cynar@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The problem is that nuclear reactors can’t be built fast. We’ve also lost a lot of the expertise to age and retirement.
Nuclear should have been a major factor in dealing with climate change. Unfortunately, we no longer have time for it to take up the slack. It will need to catch up with other renewable energy sources, we can’t wait for it.
AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee 1 year ago
It’s sad that the coal lobby has convinced so many people that the most reliable clean energy source we’ve ever discovered is somehow bad.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It’s sad that the coal lobby has convinced so many people that the most reliable clean energy source we’ve ever discovered is somehow bad.
Its bad in the sense that is a crazy expensive way to generate electricity. Its not theoretical. Ask the customers of the most recent nuclear reactors to go online in the USA in Georgia. source
"The report shows average Georgia Power rates are up between $34 and $35 since before the plant’s Unit 3 went online. " (there were bonds and fees on customer electric bills to pay for the nuclear plant construction before it was even delivering power.
…and…
“The month following Unit 4 achieving commercial operation, average retail rates were adjusted by approximately 5%. With the Nuclear Construction Cost Recovery (NCCR) tariff removed from bills, a typical resident customer using 1,000 kWh per month saw an estimated monthly increase of $8.95 per month. This follows the previous rate impact in 2023 following Unit 3 COD of $5.42 (3.2%).”
So another $5.42/month for the first reactor built on top of the $35/month, then another $8.95/month on top of all that for a rough total of $49.37/month more just to buy electricity that is generated from nuclear.
Maybe the power company is greedy? Nope, they’re even eating more costs and not passing them on to customers:
“Georgia Power says they’re losing about $2.6 billion in total projected costs to shield customers from the responsibility of paying it. Unit 4 added about $8.95 to the average customer’s bill, John Kraft, a spokesman for the company said.”
So that $49.37/month premium for electricity from nuclear power would be even higher if the power company passed on all the costs. Nuclear power for electricty is just too inefficient just on the cost basis, this is completely ignoring the problems with waste management.
The next biggest problem with nuclear power is where the fuel comes from:
“Russia also dominates nuclear fuel supply chains. Its state-owned Rosatom controls 36 percent of the global uranium enrichment market and supplies nuclear fuel to 78 reactors in 15 countries. In 2020, Russia owned 40 percent of the total uranium conversion infrastructure worldwide. Russia is also the third-largest supplier of the imported uranium that fuels U.S. power plants, accounting for 16 percent of total imported uranium. The Russian state could weaponize its dominance in the nuclear energy supply chain to advance its geostrategic interests. During the 2014 Russia-Ukraine crisis, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin threatened to embargo nuclear fuel supplies to Ukraine.” source
So relying on nuclear power for electricity means handing the keys of our power supply over to outside countries that are openly hostile to us.
dustyData@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yes, of course. Because oil has never depended on outside countries that are openly hostile. No sire, no war has ever been fought because of gas and oil, ever in history.
/s
cynar@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Particularly since coal power stations emit FAR more radioactive material, routinely, than most nuclear “leaks”.
Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
drake@lemmy.sdf.org 1 year ago
There is a huge lobby of pro-nuclear think tanks who try to astroturf pro-nuclear shit onto social media. We, scientifically literate, rational people, need to counteract these harmful narratives with some facts.
FACT: Renewable sources of energy are as cheap or cheaper per kwh than nuclear.
FACT: Renewables are faster to provision than nuclear.
FACT: Renewables are as clean, or cleaner, than nuclear.
FACT: Renewables are much more flexible and responsive to energy fluctuations than nuclear.
FACT: Renewables will only get cheaper. Nuclear will only get more expensive, because uranium mining will get harder and harder as we deplete easily accessible sources.
areyouevenreal@lemm.ee 1 year ago
You don’t actually need to mine more uranium though. You can run certain nuclear designs on Thorium, Plutonium from weapon stocks, or even waste from other reactors. Current generation nuclear designs are laughably inefficient at using the nuclear fuels we have available, and I fully understand why people don’t support them.
Realistically though I don’t ever expect nuclear fission to be as cheap as renewables in most areas. In some places nuclear or another power source is always going to be needed though just because renewables are not practical in certain conditions.
In the long term the answer is almost certainly going to be nuclear fusion or another future power source like neutrino voltaic. Solar and wind power are ultimately just offshoots of fusion, and so is fission if you think about where uranium, thorium and so on come from. In fact all power we know of seems to come from either gravity or some kind of nuclear reaction (inc. geothermal and fossil fuels).
drake@lemmy.sdf.org 1 year ago
Notice how pro-nuclear people always point towards a bunch of fictional technology as the solution? Oh, we just need fusion, or breeder reactors, or a bunch of other shit that doesn’t exist. No, bro, we just need to build renewables and proper energy grids. It’s really not that complicated. If it’s not sunny where you live, then you just get electricity from where it is sunny. It’s really really simple
Nuclear energy is a solution looking for a problem. Total tech bro bullshit. Like crypto.
daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
Fact: renewables take more land, that could be used for other purposes.
Fact: renewables by themselves cannot, and I mean CANNOT, be used alone. Unless you are willing to have a ridiculous over-provision. They depend on weather and have massive seasonal divergences. You need a base line power production to have a rational generation scheme.
Fact: nuclear have a higher cap for total production than renewables. As humanity needs more and more and more energy renewables (even destroying all our usable land) won’t be enough.
Fact: no everyone that doesn’t share your opinion is an “astrosuftist lobby” some of us can also think by ourselves. And some of us can ever think above the dogma of our political school of choice.
Lemmchen@feddit.org 1 year ago
As humanity needs more and more and more energy renewables (even destroying all our usable land) won’t be enough.
I’m pretty sure the ICCC disagrees with that
drake@lemmy.sdf.org 1 year ago
if 15% of the land used for parking spaces in the USA was instead used for renewables, that would generate enough electricity to power the whole country.
a report from the IEA showed that renewables CAN, and I mean CAN fully power the entire world. So take that one up with the experts. thanks!
nice brainwashing though!
Doom@ttrpg.network 1 year ago
I hate this thread.
Lemmchen@feddit.org 1 year ago
It ha some interesting discussion, although it also shows US centric Lemmy is. Much of the EU has understood why nuclear energy is inherently incompatible with renewable energy had therefore rightfullly dismissed it.
Mubelotix@jlai.lu 1 year ago
“Most of the EU”
actually talking about Germans, as everybody else disagrees
Blazingtransfem98@discuss.online 1 year ago
I bet you’re working for BP and Exxon, shill.
Doom@ttrpg.network 1 year ago
Lol yeah I get paid $30 an hour by Exxon to comments on Lemmy
uis@lemm.ee 1 year ago
In Soviet Lemmy this thread hates you
MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
But if the magic rocks cost more than creating energy from the water the magic rocks need for cooling…
uis@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Do both then
Draedron@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
Anon is dumb. Anon forgets the nuclear waste. Anon also forgets that the plants for the magical rocks are extremely expensive. So much that energy won by these rocks is more expensive than wind energy and any other renewable.
CancerMancer@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
The costs used for wind/solar energy never included the cost of the required buffer storage, and even the rare few people who include that never factor in frequency stability which to this day is maintained by the giant steam turbines everyone wants to get rid of. It will not be trivial to solve the frequency stability problem; it will likely require massive investment in pumped water storage, flywheel storage, or nuclear energy, and these costs once finally included in the real cost of wind/solar will hurt its value prospect considerably.
As for nuclear waste: the overwhelming majority of nuclear waste generated over the lifetime of a reactor is stored onsite. Only the smallest amount of material is what will actually remain dangerous for a long time, and many countries have already solved this problem. It’s a seriously overstated problem repeated by renewable-purists who usually haven’t even considered how much frequency stability and grid-level storage have and will add to the cost of renewables, meaning they have not given a full accounting of the situation.
quoll@lemmy.sdf.org 1 year ago
The costs used for wind/solar energy never included the cost of the required buffer storage
Jolteon@lemmy.zip 1 year ago
And even if we just buried all of it, all nuclear waste ever produced could easily be buried in one square mile.
Draedron@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
We need a fitting location to safely bury it in. Otherwise it can pollute the ground and water. In Germany for example we dont have such a location. That and the issue of cost, no one wanting to build it, no one wanting to insure it, no state wanting to offer the space and no energy company wanting this energy led to us making the correct decision in moving away from it
uis@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Anon forgets the nuclear waste.
Nuclear waste is pretty tame. Compare gloves that were used once to turn valve on pipe in reactor room to shit from coal in your lungs. Even most active kind of waste everyone thinks of - spent fuel - consists from about 90% of useful material.
Anon also forgets that the plants for the magical rocks are extremely expensive.
Actually not. Especially cost of energy compared to one of coal.
Asetru@feddit.org 1 year ago
What nonsense is this?
Compare gloves that were used once to turn valve on pipe in reactor room to shit from coal in your lungs.
No shit, Sherlock… The reactor room is shielded by the water. Something you had in there once shouldn’t be overly radioactive and the fact that it isn’t doesn’t say anything about the dangers of radioactive waste.
Even most active kind of waste everyone thinks of - spent fuel - consists from about 90% of useful material.
What does that even mean? How is that saying anything about the dangers of radioactive waste?
Actually not.
new nuclear power costs about 5 times more than onshore wind power per kWh […]. Nuclear takes 5 to 17 years longer between planning and operation and produces on average 23 times the emissions per unit electricity generated […].
InputZero@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Anon isn’t dumb, just simple. Nuclear energy can be the best solution for certain situations. While renewables are the better choice in every way, they’re effectiveness isn’t equally distributed. There are places where there just isn’t enough available renewable energy sources year round to supply the people living there. When energy storage and transmission methods are also not up to the task, nuclear becomes the best answer. It shouldn’t be the first answer people look to but it is an answer. An expensive answer but sometimes the best one.
Also nuclear waste doesn’t have to be a problem. If anyone was willing to cover the cost of burning it in a breeder reactor for power or burry it forever. It just is because it’s expensive.
Aufgehtsabgehts@feddit.org 1 year ago
Also nuclear waste doesn’t have to be a problem. If anyone was willing to cover the cost of burning it in a breeder reactor for power or burry it forever. It just is because it’s expensive.
But it is a problem. Finding a place that can contain radioactive waste for millions of years is incredible difficult. If you read up on it, you get disillusioned pretty fast.
drake@lemmy.sdf.org 1 year ago
When energy storage and transmission methods are also not up to the task, nuclear becomes the best answer.
Obviously, the best answer is to improve energy storage and transmission infrastructure. Why would we waste hundreds of millions on a stupid toy power plant when we could spend 10% of that money on just running decent underground cables.
Teppichbrand@feddit.org 1 year ago
1000005010. Don’t feed the troll 💩
iii@mander.xyz 1 year ago
As long as you don’t care when the electricity is produced
Teppichbrand@feddit.org 1 year ago
marx2k@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Nuclear: As long as you don’t care about the magic rocks once the magic has decayed to a level where they’re not boiling water anymore
uniquethrowagay@feddit.org 1 year ago
Storage is a solvable problem. Whereas we don’t have the resources to power the world with nuclear plants.
SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 1 year ago
No it’s about nuclear waste and where to store it, it’s about how expensive it is to build a nuclear power plant (bc of regulations so they don’t goo boom) and it’s about how much you have to subsidize it to make the electricity it produces affordable at all. Economically it’s just not worth it. Renewables are just WAY cheaper.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 year ago
No it’s about nuclear waste and where to store it,
Is this video inaccurate? This isn’t meant as a gotcha comment. youtu.be/4aUODXeAM-k
bouh@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Renewable are so cheap, especially when we don’t need as much energy! Fortunately we won’t need as much energy in winter now. :-)
el_abuelo@programming.dev 1 year ago
Funny how people think waste is why we don’t use nuclear power.
You noticed how we’re all fine breathing in poison and carcinogens? Still haven’t banned burning fossil fuels.
It’s a money problem and a PR problem
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
You noticed how we’re all fine breathing in poison and carcinogens? Still haven’t banned burning fossil fuels.
Do you think that’s awesome too?
Hoimo@ani.social 1 year ago
And much of the PR problem is related to waste. The main push towards alternative energy sources comes from people worried about the long term consequences of burning fossil fuels. These same people worry about the long term consequences of nuclear waste production, so nuclear sabotages itself on this front.
beeng@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
Fire’s waste is just all particulates in the air which we all share.
prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Yeah but we got lungs to filter that all out … or smth idk how this works
Takumidesh@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Funny how nuclear power plants are taboo, but building thousands of nuclear warheads all over the globe is no issue.
rational_lib@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It’s because there’s no opposing corporate interest to building nuclear weapons. The way the world works is: profitable shit happens, no matter what the hippies think about it. See: every other environmental issue.
Iheartcheese@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I’m in Missouri so apparently I’m surrounded by silos
iii@mander.xyz 1 year ago
How many fingers do you have?
OprahsedCreature@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
The problem isn’t that they exploded one time. The problem is that that one explosion is still happening and likely will be for quite a while.
On the other hand, modern rock exploding plant designs are so much better that it’s very unlikely to repeat itself, so there’s that.
Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Paraphrased but this is right.
And the people were taught to talk about the horrible nuclear accidents that killed a few but completely glance over the unimaginable millions perished in the name of oil, mustn’t even mention the mass extinction events we launched with oil.
We even spread exaggerated bullshit about radiation mutation (wtf? thats superhero comic books fiction!!) and cancer rates (only one really), ignoring how much overwhelmingly more of the both we get from fossil fuel products.
yournamehere@lemm.ee 1 year ago
arent we out of uranium by 2040 anyway? op can have our “nucular” waste anytime. why even waste time on a resource that we cant use in 15 yrs from now? super stupid.
Mora@pawb.social 1 year ago
For huge countries as like the US: Maybe. You have enough space to also store the trash somewhere for thousands of years.
For small countries, like most of Europe, where the population density is way higher: hard pass.
undergroundoverground@lemmy.world 1 year ago
You’re right to reject the logic behind that because it’s nonsense. Its not making sense to them because they still presume some kind of good faith when it come to these sorts of things.
The reason we haven’t built more nuclear power stations is because oil, gas and coal companies will make less money, if we build more nuclear power stations.
They have the means, the motive and they have a well recorded history of being that cartoonishly villainous. Nothing else makes sense.
hex@programming.dev 1 year ago
Also see: asbestos.
We never tried to figure out a way to safely regulate & use it. It’s a magic workable material that can’t burn and is durable af. That’s amazing!?