Nuclear energy enjoyers vindicated again after the rise in oil and gas prices.

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• PokerChips@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Start building the next nuclear plant now and by the time it’s finished, solar will be king and most economical and safest with no worries about what might happen

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• thedeadwalking4242@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Nuclear is the lesser evil. But I think we should be clear that nuclear can Have a catastrophic effect on the environment if manged incorrectly. Like render entire swaths of earth inhabitable. Like beyond high temperature. Places that mean immediate silent death

  But properly managed nuclear is like the greatest thing to ever happen to humanity.

  But I will say in light of recent… Events, my faith that humanity could properly manage our waste if nuclear were to become more prolific has wained dramatically.

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  • Tartas1995@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I have 3 issues with nuclear power plants.

    1. Centralised power generation is and will always be a focus of military conflict
    2. Nuclear power plants are not fully covered by insurance because such an insurance is too expensive. So the risk calculation of insurance agencies tells them to not risk it.
    3. No one wants nuclear plants in their area, or at least the storage sites.

    And yet, people will tell me how nuclear is the way to go. They ignore all these reasons, while insisting that nuclear plants are safe.

    This feels like when people tell you that we need to help the poor but they get mad when our taxes go up, and most of us don’t do shit for them on their own. It is so cheap to speak.

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  • RamenJunkie@midwest.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I mean, we COULD manage itnproperly, but we also NEED tonslowly chip away at that safety budget each quarter to please shareholders.

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  • waitmarks@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Immediate silent death is grossly over exaggerating. Even in Chernobyl which was absolute worst case scenario that can’t happen with modern designs, the “immediate death” area was directly around the plant.

    The concern is cancer in 30 years, not immediate death. Not that trying to downplay cancer, but it really only makes it uninhabitable for humans who live much longer than 30 years. A lot of wildlife basically doesn’t notice since their lives are shorter. It doesn’t mean we should be cavalier about irradiating the environment, but there is no need to go around calling it immediate death.

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• humanspiral@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Nuclear energy is not economic. Only military and bribery purposes by lying it is economic. Incumbent energy advocates for nuclear competition because completion can be dragged out to 15+ years, and its energy will forever be undercuttable on price.

  The US has absurd 100% tariffs on energy, but even with those, Chinese solar imports are cheapest energy option in the US.

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• booly@sh.itjust.works ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Last week, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission just approved a new construction of a reactor for the first time in 10 years, to the Bill Gates backed Terra Power. Cool, except it’s projected to cost $4 billion and the government is expected to cover half the cost, to build a reactor with 345 MW of capacity.

  In contrast, solar panels cost about $1 million per MW, so an equivalent amount of peak capacity from solar would cost about $345 million, or about 1/12 the price. Solar won’t run all day, but the nuclear plants will also continue to cost money to run after construction is complete.

  Looking at the different LCOE estimates of each type of power generation shows that advanced nuclear is around $80/MWhr and solar+battery for all day demand tracking is about $53/MWhr.

  Basically nuclear is only economically viable with government support at this point, and we should be asking whether we’d rather have the government support towards other forms of energy.

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  • cows_are_underrated@feddit.org ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    The 4b are The estimations for now. As far as i know, every single new nuclear plant that we tried to built in the last years overshot its budget by quite a significant amount.

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    • booly@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Oh, I agree.

      I was a big, big nuclear proponent 20 years ago. But seeing how Vogtle and VC Summer played out, and how that “cheaper” and more “scalable” AP1000 design put Westinghouse into bankruptcy, basically turned me off from the economics of nuclear power.

      Oh, and because of how utility generation is paid for, ratepayers in Georgia will be paying for the Vogtle construction and cost overruns in their electric bills for the next 75 years, as the nuclear plant is shielded from competition by price regulators (state Public Utilities Commissions and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission), so even if newer and better technology comes online, customers in 2080 will still be paying for 2020 technology.

      The technology is still neat but I don’t believe there’s an economic future for civilian nuclear power generation. Not anymore.

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  • PugJesus@piefed.social ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Yeah, unfortunately, nuclear power should have been heavily invested in about… 50 years ago. The “The best time was yesterday, the second-best time is now” line doesn’t apply with advancements in other energy sources and the sheer time it takes to build and get a nuclear plant operational. The best time was yesterday - now is perhaps the worst time.

    Still, it is always good to push back on anti-nuclear sentiment. Every nuclear plant kept running is a massive amount of fossil fuels removed from power generation. I remember when Merkel closed a ton of nuclear plants in Germany for dogshit PR reasons, handing power back to fossil fuel suppliers.

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    • Draconic_NEO@mander.xyz ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Also there’s a specific type of reactor that is optimal because it allows for more easily recycling the spent fuel to use it again, and unfortunately these have not been built as much as the other type of reactor.

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  • Deceptichum@quokk.au ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Also how long until a Trump (or future) administration cuts those pesky nuclear regulations.

    Humans are the ultimate risk with nuclear an humans fucking suck.

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    • tomenzgg@midwest.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Frankly, this is why I’m still antinuclear; everyone is always, “It’s so easy to store!” but, like, that’s a reliance in a world that loves cutting corners (usually because of corporate pressure…).

      I’d rather invest in the energy source that doesn’t have devastating consequences if we don’t do it right or someone decides to drill into it despite all the warnings we put up.

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    • Redacted@lemmy.zip ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Im pretty sure i read that already happened

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  • quediuspayu@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    What is the bottom bar on that graph?

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    • booly@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Which graph? I linked to a PDF with a ton of graphs.

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• zloubida@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Image

  How they actually actually do.

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  • Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Mining for the rare earth elements used in solar panels is pretty ugly, too. But once they’re taken out they can be reused, it’s not like coal or oil where you use it over and it’s gone forever.

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    • brachiosaurus@mander.xyz ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      You can make a solar panel out of recycled materials or without destroying the planet

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    • zloubida@sh.itjust.works ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      That’s why the actual solution is degrowth, not a technology of any kind. Nuclear is better that coal, renewables are better than nuclear, but none are good.

      Uranium and rare earth elements mining are cause of massive biodiversity reductions, political destabilisations, wars, and they have to be transformed, transported and disposed (and we use a lot of fossil energies for that). So no it’s not green, it’s just less brown (and the direct effect are mostly sensible in third world countries, so nobody cares in the first world).

      Moreover, nuclear and renewables never caused a reduction of coal in a global perspective. They just added themselves to the mix.

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• ekZepp@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Just because Coal waaayyyy worse, it doesn’t mean that nuclear scores are a joke to deal with.

  But sure, Coal is WAAAAAAAAY WORSE.

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• Thrydwulf@lemmy.today ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Look all I’m saying is we shouldn’t mix big lizards and nuclear power. Trust me bro, there’s a documentary.

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• Oliver@mander.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  The recent surge in oil and gas prices has indeed sparked a “told-you-so” moment for nuclear energy advocates. As of March 2026, geopolitical instability in the Middle East—specifically involving the closure of the Strait of Hormuz—has driven Brent crude to peaks near $120 per barrel, exposing the inherent volatility of fossil fuel dependence.

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• wuffah@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Does “how they actually do” include whitewashing the energy industry with Fox News?

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• Kolanaki@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Do we really want to flood the world with crocodiles, tho?

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  • Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Florida would be the first to fall.

    ~so~ ~yes~

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  • StrongHorseWeakNeigh@piefed.social ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    The time of archosaurs, however, is now.

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    • Draconic_NEO@mander.xyz ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I thought they peaked during the Triassic.

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    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Dinosaurs are archosaurs

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• Not_mikey@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I guess that’s a positive spin on heat waste, I’m sure there are a lot of negative consequences from hot waste water going into streams…

  Not like nuclear is the only thing that does this though, this is a problem with data centers too.

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• starlinguk@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I have solar panels and my backup power company runs three hydroelectric dams in the area, which have replaced the nuclear power station.

  How much do they pay you to spout bullshit?

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  • m532@lemmy.ml ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    “Fuck you, got mine”

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• apftwb@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  “FOR THE LAST TIME KEVIN, THE COOLING TOWERS ARE RELEASING STEAM. THEY ARE NOT ‘BURNING’ URANIUM”

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• EpicFailGuy@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Hey! That’s my town.

  For anyone curious, here’s what the cooling channels look like. I always thought they looked like a car’s radiator from above.

  maps.app.goo.gl/RLmFRwpDkX2Ffw3i8

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• TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Nuclear is the lesser evil. Even my former boss who is an environmental scientist agree we should still maintain nuclear power plants, but only as stop gap before renewable energy becomes more ubiquitous.

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• knatschus@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-69285-4

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  • fossilesque@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    pubpeer.com/…/AEA87585FB0365719098E2C0D06B31

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    • Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Excellent breakdown of flaws, this one is the most damning to me:

      Cancer sites are not considered. Exposure to radionuclide pollution from Uranium fission products is known to be associated with specific tumors (thyroid cancer, lung cancer, leukemia) due to the chemical nature of the products of its decay chain (radioactive isotopes of Iodine, Radon, Cesium). Stratifying by tumor site would have provided evidence to support the assumption that tumors are caused by radiation exposure.

      Who cares if you find more bladder cancer if this radiation isn’t associated with bladder tumors? This makes the study absolutely stink of a conclusion looking for evidence, especially in combination with the failure to use the actual radiation data readily available from nuclear sites.

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