The hate nuclear power gets is so incredibly irrational. We’re in a middle of a climate catastrophe, and nuclear is the one practical option for replacing fossil fuels at scale that’s actually available to us.
My concern with nuclear power is that it seems to me that it is fundamentally incompatible with capitalism. You cannot cut corners when generating nuclear energy, the maintenance of facilities and proper storage of waste outweight the profit motive. The consequences of negligence seem significant. Though thats not to say oil is any different… but i fear the damage caused wont be so apparent to the layman.
Agree, the danger of cutting corners for profit gets is as high as it gets when it comes to something like nuclear power.
This is true, unfettered capitalism is likely to lead to safety standards being compromised and further accidents. I do not think that is reason to stop pursuing it as a solution. Capitalism is also a tool to improve nuclear power, making it vastly cheaper, safer and more efficient.
Indeed. Imagine the for-profit non-regulated texas nuckular authoratah
I couldn’t agree more, it pains me to see this kind of thinking run rampant even among ‘environmentalists’, ‘greens’ and such. We’re not going to cover the entire Sahara in solar panels or turbines anytime soon, so I think nuclear is a far better solution. (and let’s not even talk about all the ‘gravity batteries’ and other bullshit all the Musk fanboys and imitators are pushing now)
People also forget the environmental impact of producing things like solar panels and wind turbines. There are now whole landfills full of wind turbine blades for example.
Wind power can be done in an environmentally friendly way wrt the equipment, it just currently isn’t. Just like nuclear could be but currently isn’t. Another problem with wind that no one ever talks about is that sucking that much energy out drastically alters weather patterns (in most but not all cases). Wind is crucial to how weather works. But even bring up the topic and you’d be called a tinfoil hatter.
More importantly than finding ways to generate more energy, we need to be using less. Grid energy itself encourages wastefulness. Homes need to be insulated. Unnecessary travel (such as office work, and yes even ‘shopping’) are practices that must be ended. Those 2 things alone would reduce energy usage by 80%+.
But anyways… Like I said, even mentioning such things gets people very hateful. They don’t want to even consider change.
Wind power can be done in an environmentally friendly way wrt the equipment
How so?
Using common metals for the blades and rare-earthless turbines for the generation, doing only small-scale installations such as on homes and distributing true excess through neighborhood microgrids (no supergrids). Also storing minor excess using flywheel or gravity batter rather than chemical battery. Most of these are systemic improvements and not specific to wind but I want to make sure you’re not picturing giant wind farms. Because as I said in my other post the biggest problem is supergrid thinking.
To put a point on it, an efficient home can be powered by a single wind turbine and possibly a solar panel for heavy usage appliances such as laundry machines, which is another problem that can be mitigated with further simple engineering solutions.
Thanks. The reason for big turbines is because they are more efficient. You use less materials for more power. So you’ll never convince an engineer of all this.
I wonder if there is a maximum size of turbine that can be built with steel, given how heavy it is. Wind might become a lot more expensive.
Which would not be a bad thing because the world needs to start converting to sea-swell power asap.
That’s a misleading statement because the efficiency calculations are done with assumptions based on current load, usage patterns, and supergrid as prerequisites.
To do a proper efficiency calculation we need a page 1 rewrite of how we handle energy entirety, as I described. I can prove I’m right with maths.
Also, aluminum not steel. Because you only need 1 meter bladespan when only generating one household of energy.
As for industrial needs, they can be handled by nuclear. Trying to scale up wind or solar is just too environmentally destructive.
But again, the key here is not to keep generating more and more energy, or using existing base loads as a starting point, we need to reduce energy usage drastically. It’s so wasteful right now.
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I agree by and large, but pumped hydro storage is a tried and true technology which has already proven its worth.
Pumped hydro storage is an energy storage method, not energy generation. Its also the most common form of power grid energy storage, so I have no doubt that the countries that are still using nuclear are storing the excess there.
I’m simply responding to the comment which called “gravity batteries” bullshit.
Though the Energy Vault is very much an unproven technology with a lot of problems.
I hope in time to create a wiki giving a high level overview of why nuclear power is viable w/ sources.
Sweet!
That would be fantastic!
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The community was created to promote knowledge of nuclear power, to discuss it’s potential use and perhaps break down some misconceptions around it. It seems you are not inclined to give us the opportunity to do that.
There is not much to talk about, we had nuclear power and it did not worked out. We had disasters and the next are about to come, it is a mathematically statistic thing. You can build it as secure as you want, there will be unpredictable events and downplaying it is pure Hybris. Downplaying this is something I am not going to support and there are no convincing arguments as the waste problem will remain, even with newer thorium and thorium molten salt based reactors.
I do not like people creating communities to make a joke out of very serious topics. People already died and swiping this under the carpet hurts my and other peoples feelings. This is one of such communities which is destent to very fast will go out of control because people are sensitive to such topics, same like politics I for myself will say out of it because whatever you say can only hold against you because the next disaster will come and I do not think we should encourage or support it even further and lie that this is a good thing.
If people like to talk about okay, but without me and my passion for this, nor do I want to pretend that nuclear energy is something humanity as whole should continue to support. However, I get you point but I for myself try to stay out of it, which is why I block it, there is simply a fine line and I do not want to cross it.
What I am willing to talk about are alternatives and the pros and cons, but pretending that we should continue is simply bad, especially given the fact that we recently saw again what governments can and maybe will do, the next step to create dirty bombs out from it is not so far away and this is something that I cannot respect nor tolerate as a private person.
You are making a lot of assumptions, such as that we treat disasters as a joke and sweep them under the ruq, that we downplay issues etc. with no reason. I have not yet even made a sidebar for the community.
If you are unwilling to give us the opportunity, just say so, there is no need for wild accusations.
When do you mention any disasters and outline this. Right, there are no posts or threads mentioned. So it is quite the opposite, because you also responded in the video youtube link thread that ENTIRELY plays down all downsides of nuclear and make it look like you can drink out of the barrels. This is the first thing that should be linked and mentioned and no one except me and some other fine people here express their concerns.
Nuclear deserves zero opportunity and zero tolerance. At least not from me and I deeply shocked that people play everything down here and want to advertise nuclear energy as solution.
When do you mention any disasters and outline this. Right, there are no posts or threads mentioned.
Yes, precisely, we never downplayed disasters.
So it is quite the opposite
?? You just agreed with me.
ENTIRELY plays down all downsides of nuclear and make it look like you can drink out of the barrels.
This is a ludicrous claim. Did you even watch the video? All it does is explain we have safe ways of handling nuclear waste.
Yes, precisely, we never downplayed disasters.
Not mention something or deliberately hiding it to avoid discussions is same as downplaying.
?? You just agreed with me.
If you cannot understand context you should not talk about nuclear energy at all. I said it is the opposite to what that YT dude claims, which was the context but thanks to quoting it so we entirely lose context now.
There is no safe way of handling nuclear waste, never will be, his videos are clearly debunked by Fukushima, Chernobyl, the almost accident in Ukraine and in 61.
In March 2012, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda acknowledged that the Japanese government shared the blame for the Fukushima disaster, saying that officials had been blinded by a false belief in the country’s “technological infallibility”, and were all too steeped in a “safety myth”.
Hybris and arrogance is what this is.
Glad that dude gets shit-talked in the comment section. Clowns like him should not be allowed to upload videos on YT, especially not on sensitive topics without providing any source at all for his nonsense.
Now show me a video storing waste for 1 million years under the earth … then you can claim it is secure… there are none … which is bottom line and your lesson here.
The Fukushima I nuclear accident was caused by a “beyond design basis event,” the tsunami and associated earthquakes were more powerful than the plant was designed to accommodate, …
Ultimate truth … you cannot and never will be predict all possible outcomes and you cannot plan nor build plants to be 100 percent secure.
Not mention something or deliberately hiding it to avoid discussions is same as downplaying.
Every time I call you out, you move the goalposts. You still have nothing. I have not hidden anything. I just created the community. Not mentioning something is NOT the same as downplaying it. Are you downplaying the Rwandan genocide because you didn’t mention it? Of course not. That’s an incredibly stupid take.
If you cannot understand context you should not talk about nuclear energy at all. I said it is the opposite to what that YT dude claims, which was the context but thanks to quoting it so we entirely lose context now.
Ok, I was just confused by your grammar. But it still doesn’t work. The video does not sweep nuclear disasters under the rug. Once again, you seem to have failed to actually watched the video in question.
There is no safe way of handling nuclear waste, never will be, his videos are clearly debunked by Fukushima, Chernobyl, the almost accident in Ukraine and in 61.
You just linked a wikipedia article about handling nuclear waste that proves nothing. And none of those disasters were about nuclear waste. And seriously? “Almost accidents” are on the same level now?
Glad that dude gets shit-talked in the comment section
These are the top five comments, all in support. Forget watching the video, it seems you haven’t even followed the link lmao
And your quotes of the japanese prime minister are once again, irrelevant, as they are not about nuclear waste.
There have been accidents, disasters, and ecological damage with every single energy generation method.
Many countries are using nuclear effectively, especially France, which gets like 70% of its power from nuclear.
France is “effectifly” extracting it’s uranium from countries like Congo, Niger, provoking countless political disasters over time, ruining others countries environments etc. That’s how.
There are zero catastrophes with wind, water or earth energy because when you shut it down, it is off and possess no further potential to harm people. This is the big difference and this is when you are wrong.
Many providers using green energy, and I get my energy from a provider that is 100 percent green since over 20 years now.
France has 23 percent green energy, this is more than in some other countries and plans to push it forward until 2050, like most EU states. The point why I mention it is that those numbers are constantly increasing and that there are plans to go minimum half green by 2050 and that in a country who supports nuclear energy directly.
There are zero catastrophes with wind, water or earth energy because when you shut it down, it is off and possess no further potential to harm people.
Turn the hyperbole down a little:
Those linked disasters are not result of the technology. These are natural disasters or human based disasters, possible connected to climate change, caused … guess by what, overall carbon footprint and other things. Incidents for building structures are also not considered catastrophes or a disaster. It should also be mentioned that in your example, in lots of cases no one died the dams just broke without harming someone, of course it is annoying but a constructive or maintenance failure.
If you build something no matter what there can always be human based problems and deaths, this is not the point. The point is that nuclear based things can create disasters over long time period which is not the case with wind or water because if they are turned off they are off and that is it. It is not about controlling nature here or that nature also can destroy a construct you build, it is about that that nuclear causes - over the long run - more problems. Fukushima as example needs to be for cooled down, after 10 years and the compromised water still gets into the ocean, which causes unpredictable and unforeseen problems with the eco-system and even to us humans because we eat the fish. The government also plays this down, claiming that the compromised water here is not much of a harm, which everyone disagrees with.
The attempts here to play everything down only proves me right.
I only mean it’s a false claim to imply that wind/water/solar energy are inherently zero catastrophe risk.
That said, I think coming close to fully understanding and assessing (and mitigating) the risk of wind/water/solar power projects/economies is far more achievable than for nuclear energy projects/economies.
Especially so when considering the unavoidable context of the (un)predictability of both humans and environment over the next 10,000 - 100,000 years.
even though nuclear energy causes more deaths per unit of energy produced compared to renewable sources of energy, it is nonetheless crucial to a successful transition away from fossil fuels for power generation, bc nuclear plants’ energy output is relatively constant, independent of circumstances, and as such it provides the absolutely essential “base power capacity”, which is always consumed, and cannot be reliably provided by renewable sources of energy
in most cases, shutting down nuclear power plants causes deaths, not prevents them, because to some degree their power generation capacity is going to be replaced with fossil fuels, which are, again, orders of magnitude more deadly
