• Kinglink@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    “Nuclear power scares me”

    Welcome to the result. It’s sad, because nuclear power was the way, but instead we propegandized against it and continued to use it as a boogie man.

    Ignoring the fact that coal and natural gas still hurt and kill people daily, ignoring there’s over 400 nuclear power reactors that are still active, 93 in America… But no… “Chernobyl” and the discussion ends.

    Also Chernobyl was a 50 year old design, and happened 40 years ago, involved multiple human errors … nah can’t consider things have changed since then.

    Now we have people using another nuclear plant in Ukraine as an example, and again the fear rises. They’re trying to weaponize the plant, but somehow it’s “Nuclear power” and not the fact some fuckheads are planning to destroy it in a destructive fashion that’s the problem.

    Somehow dams that would be devistating to destroy are given a pass, but hey Nuclear power, so scary.

    • mierdabird@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      Chernobyl was a 50 year old design, and happened 40 years ago, involved multiple human errors … nah can’t consider things have changed since then.

      Things have indeed changed, now construction regulations are far tighter. This is good because the risk of a Chernobyl event is far lower, but at the price of extreme cost overruns and project delays

      Ignoring the fact that coal and natural gas still hurt and kill people daily

      So is it better to start a nuclear project and hope it can start reducing coal & NG emissions 10 years from now? Or is it better to add solar and wind capacity constantly and at a fraction of the price per MWh?

      There was a time when nuclear was the right choice, but now it is just not cost effective nor can it be brought online fast enough to make a dent in our problems

      Somehow Dams that would be devistating to destroy are given a pass, but hey Nuclear power, so scary.

      I think you’re forgetting that once the waters from a dam break dry up you can rebuild…a nuclear accident has the potential to poison the land for generations

      • Kinglink@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        There was a time when nuclear was the right choice, but now it is just not cost effective nor can it be brought online fast enough to make a dent in our problems

        And in ten years… it’ll be too long to add nuclear … And in ten years it’ll.

        Solar and wind works in some places, it doesn’t work in all places, and the goal is to start moving away from Coal and Natural gas, it’s a long process no matter which way you go, but starting to add more nuclear capactiy so in 10 years we can use it, isn’t a bad thing.

        “It’s too late” has also been a refrain about Nuclear, but hey, in 2010 if people started to go nuclear, we’d have that capacity today, instead it was too late then, and we can only go solar and Wind… and we’re still lacking.

      • matlag@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        So is it better to start a nuclear project and hope it can start reducing coal & NG emissions 10 years from now? Or is it better to add solar and wind capacity constantly and at a fraction of the price per MWh?

        It’s better to do both!!

        Nuclear is not more expensive than solar and wind. And today’s paradox is solar and wind are cheap because oil is cheap…

        Besides, comparing the 2 is totally misleading. One is a controllable source of electricity, the other is by nature an unstable source, therefore you need a backup source. Most of the time, that backup is a gas plant (more fossil fuel…), and some other time it’s mega-batteries projects that need tons of lithium… that we also wanted for our phones, cars, trucks etc. Right now, every sector is accounting lithium resources as if they were the only sector that will use it…

        And then you have Germany, that shut down all its nuclear reactor, in favor of burning coal, with a “plan” to replace the coal with gas, but “one day”, they’ll replace that gas with “clean hydrogen” and suddenly have clean energy.

        There was a time when nuclear was the right choice, but now it is just not cost effective nor can it be brought online fast enough to make a dent in our problems

        So we’ll have very very exactly the same conversation 10 years from now, when we’ll be 100% renewable but we’ll have very frequent power outages. People will say “we don’t have time to build nuclear power plan, we need to do «clean gas/hydrogen/other wishful thing to burn»”. And at that time, someone will mention that we will never produce enough of these clean fuel but … How many times do we want to shoot ourselves in the foot??

        I think you’re forgetting that once the waters from a dam break dry up you can rebuild…a nuclear accident has the potential to poison the land for generations

        In the years to come, we’re going to lose much more land just because it won’t be suitable for human survival, and that will be on a longer scale than a nuclear disaster. Eliminating fossil fuel should be the sole absolute priority, and nuclear is one tool to achieve it.

        • mierdabird@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          Budgets are a real thing. If you tie up $28.5 billion constructing say, the Vogtle #3 and #4 reactors, you are taking away significant amounts of money that could have already produced working wind and solar installations that would produce far more power. Stating that reality doesn’t make me “evil,” get a grip.

          Additionally, with upgrades in high voltage transmission lines and grid-level storage systems the need for nuclear or fossil fuel baseload in the future is going to be far less than you expect

    • burningquestion@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, but the only way you could weaponize a solar panel is to drop it on someone. You can’t just misconfigure a solar array and render the entire area unlivable.

      Like, what part about “if this power plant falls into the wrong hands it could be turned into a weapon of mass destruction” sounds even remotely acceptable as a trade-off when cheaper and vastly safer alternative techs are available?

      I think we need to accept that we don’t have the technology to sustainably deliver as much energy as the capitalist economic system now demands and will demand in the future. We are, in fact, going to have to figure out an economic system that can meet our needs without ever-spiraling energy requirements.

      There are other issues, too. France is dealing with issues with their nuclear plants because they designed them around the idea that river water would always be cheap and abundant. They’ve had to start shutting down nuclear reactors in summer when water levels get too low, and they expect this issue to get worse over time. They are planning new reactors around the new environment, but I just don’t see how we can effectively plan nuclear infrastructure in an environment of global climate change and reduced security. Conflicts like in Ukraine aren’t going to become less common over time.

      • matlag@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Theyve had to start shutting down nuclear reactors in summer when water levels get too low,

        This is a fake news. Period.

        Some reactors had to REDUCE THEIR OUTPUT because otherwise they would exceed the temperature increase they’re allowed to cause in the river, this to preserve life in the river. No reactor was shutdown because of a low water stream.

        What happened last year is a systematic defect was found in an external protection layer, and the decision was made to fix all the reactors having the same potential defect at once. The work took longer than expected, and that caused France having very limited capacity for months, causing worries about power outage.

        Not to say it could never happen in the future, but it didn’t yet.

        • burningquestion@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Thanks for clarifying, but I mean, that hardly seems any better. Why does it matter if the temps “only” got too hot for life in the river and they reduced output to avoid environmental damage? Do you mean to imply stripping that environmental regulation and letting them kill off life in the river with overheated wastewater would be an acceptable tradeoff if temperatures got too hot for too long?

          • matlag@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            No, I don’t mean to destroy life in the river. I mean to highlight the difference of impact between going from 90% of your capacity to 0% in one information to reducing from 90% to 80% or even 70%. Shutting down a nuclear reactor is quite a big deal in terms of operations. Restarting it is not like turning back on a switch either. Claiming a reactor was shut down makes it sound like a much bigger deal than what it was.

      • partizan@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Actually we can make nuclear molten salt reactors (working small scale stuff exist for long decades). Since the medium is liquid, it has much better utilization of the fuel, there is no pressurized radioactive water reservoirs (which is the actual issue with current reactors), to stop the reaction, you drain the fuel circulation into a container and you are done, no need to supply water to prevent criticality.

        But since those molten salt reactors could not be used to create plutonium for weapons, the current reactor design was chosen during cold war era.

        They have some drawbacks, like slow startup times, but the cons it provide are incredible.

        • schroedingershat@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          MSRs and LFRs are horribly unreliable and don’t last. There hasn’t even been a successful demo reactor and the technical issues for running one safely at full power long term don’t even have proposed half-solutions.

        • burningquestion@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Yeah, but we don’t just need technological solutions that can crank out the requisite energy, we need technological solutions that aren’t going to facilitate nuclear proliferation even more than has already occurred. The United States right now is in an insane position vis a vis Pakistan because even though Pakistan shelters the US’s enemies and is effectively a passive-aggressively hostile power, it would be worse for the US (and the world) if the current Pakistani state just collapsed. It’s a nuclear power, after all. What happens if, in the chaos, ISIS affiliates get their hands on Pakistani nukes? Or, I dunno, the Taliban? Or they disappear onto the international market and two years later the Sinaloa cartel proudly announces it’s the world’s latest nuclear power? That’s the calculus with nuclear proliferation.

          This is such a drastic risk the US can’t bring itself to do anything about the people who sheltered Bin Laden and the Taliban during the Afghanistan War because that’s a lesser evil than running the risk of losing control of the nukes. Nuclear proliferation is a big deal.

      • Kinglink@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        cheaper and vastly safer alternative techs are available?

        That’s the problem “cheaper and vastly safer” alternatives AREN’T always available. People continue to talk up Solar, and Wind, but they’re not viable for a majority of users of coal and natural gas plants. To produce the power that Nuclear does in square mile of land, you need 50 square miles of solar at least, and over 360 square miles for Wind. And that’s also saying you need viable places, because Wind turbines can’t just be thrown up anywhere, nor can solar.

        Coal and Natural gas is more efficient by a factor of at least 10 in land space.

        If you’re in the middle of nowhere, that’s viable, if you live in a big city, that’s going to become a problem quickly.

        • CantSt0pPoppin@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          The statement that “cheaper and vastly safer alternative techs are NOT always available” is not accurate. Solar and wind energy are becoming more viable as technology improves, and the land requirements for these technologies are not as significant as they once were. In addition, coal and natural gas are not as safe as they are often made out to be. Coal mining is a dangerous occupation, and coal-fired power plants can release harmful pollutants into the air. Natural gas is also a fossil fuel, and its combustion releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

          The cost of coal and natural gas is likely to increase in the future, as the world’s reserves of these resources dwindle. The environmental impacts of coal and natural gas are also becoming increasingly well-known, and public pressure is growing for a transition to cleaner energy sources. The development of new technologies, such as battery storage and smart grids, is making it easier to integrate renewable energy sources into the electricity grid.

          In conclusion, there are a number of reasons to believe that cheaper and vastly safer alternative technologies to coal and natural gas are becoming more available. These technologies offer a number of advantages over traditional fossil fuels, and they are likely to play an increasingly important role in the global energy mix in the years to come.

        • schroedingershat@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Inkai uranium mine produces about 40W/m^2 in fuel for the actively leeched land where everything is killed by the sulfuric acid and vehicle movement.

          If you include the 15km buffer where you can’t live or eat anything it’s about 20W/m^2

          Solar averages 20-50W/m^2 with current tech.

          Rooftop solar uses no land. Agrivoltaics can have negative land use (adding the solar reduces the amount of land needed for the crops under it). Roughly 30m^2 of roof + 30m^s of facade or wall is sufficient for the average high income country european’s final energy use.

          Solar uses a strict subset of the materials needed for a nuclear plant, so land use from the uranium mining is in addition to construction.

          Like every pro-nuke lie, your land use pearl clutching is the oppksite of the truth.

        • burningquestion@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Yeah, but since there are no moving parts and no emissions, you can site solar panels in places you could never site a nuclear power plant. You can even put them on farms, which is actually of interest to farmers now since climate change means many farms are dealing with excess heat stress and water retention issues in their soil. Revenue-generating shade devices that protect their yields are of interest to farmers. There are a million ways you can creatively use wind and solar technologies because they’re not just inherently extremely harmful and dangerous.

          Cf. agrisolar.

          Go ahead and put a nuclear power plant anywhere and continue to use that land for anything else. Or cover a city’s rooftops in nuclear reactors. Go right ahead, I’m sure nobody will have anything to say about that.

          Your argument sounds great as long as we forget literally all of the specific characteristics of all of these technologies that differentiate them other than power output. Only thinking about power output is why we’re dealing with a 10-dimensional stack of environmental problems only the largest of which is climate change.

          EDIT Made some tweaks after posting sorry if you were replying.