this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2024
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If you hate nuclear energy because you think it's dangerous or polluting, that is as dumb as choosing to drive instead of taking the train for the same reasons.
Nuclear energy is one of the methods of generating electricity with the smallest environmental impact and also much, much safer than the alternatives. The number of nuclear accidents can be counted on one hand, while the number of people who have died from cancer from coal power plants is conservatively estimated to be in the millions.
We are installing gobs of distributed, cheap, safe solar and batteries to smooth load and nuclear proponents will still be running around advocating for expensive centralized nuclear reactors that generate either long-lasting radioactive waste or nuclear bombs.
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A good chunk of the world is still stuck where the options are coal vs nuclear for base load coverage. Of course people are going to push for the safest option for large load needs.
We're generations away from worldwide energy needs being met entirely by green renewables and battery banks. I'll never be against expansion of those technologies, but nuclear is an important middle step that is far less dangerous than the most widely used technologies for meeting base load (coal).
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Why should any underdeveloped nation want to build more expensive nuclear plants that come with tons of issues when they can now install solar, wind and batteries for less?
The value proposition is absent for developing countries. When you have a lot more money, then nuclear starts to become a serious option.
You can build nuclear plants in almost any climate. That is not true for solar and wind. Nuclear plants are also "one and done". You don't need accompanying battery infrastructure to accompany them to get reliable output. As long as you have water, uranium rods, and nuclear scientists to run the plant, you will have reliable electricity output.
On top of that, one nuclear plant can produce as much power in two hectares of land as a wind farm could in a hundred hectares.
If any of that were actually true, we wouldn't be net negative on nuclear reactors onlined over the past couple decades.
Starting to think the nuclear lobby has been pushed by the fossil fuels industry to delay renewables adoption.
No, in fact. The nuclear lobby has been historically raw dogged by the malding fossil fuel and coal plant industries for decades. Up until recently, traditional power lobbies haven't seen renewables as legitimate competition due to issues of scaling to meet demand, issues of location restricting where they can be built, etc.
We've had reactor designs ready to use the spent fuel you're so damn concerned about for years now. Turns it into even less dangerous more spent fuel as more energy is pulled out of it (if you'll excuse the incredibly simple summation). Incredibly efficient.
Fully researched. Risks, benefits, construction costs mapped out, maintenance costs mapped out, decomissioning costs mapped out, how long they'd be safe to run mapped out.
Every single time construction of a new plant comes up, there is a massive fucking push from the older "burn dangerous shit to pollute the air and generate power" industry to drum up fear again until the local community "not in my back yard"s hard enough to stop it.
Let me make it as explicit as possible: People like you, freaking out about hypotheticals surrounding nuclear power that they have never taken the time to understamd themselves, are a huge part of the reason why greener energy production is so slow to take off.
If green energy is so ready to take the fuck over and make nuclear obsolete, how in the absolute fuck do you explain what's going on in Germany right now? Are they just too stupid to do things the right, safe, sustainable way that has no drawbacks at all? Or maybe, just maybe, there are still issues preventing reasonable widespread adoption of renewables, and the smog belchers want us at each other's throats instead of at theirs?
Fucking hell. Let me know when you start accusing people of being bots or paid shills so I can just fucking block you already.
You seem to think that the politics behind choosing energy sources is based on rational reasoning. It is not. It is fear and emotion that drives the decision to not build nuclear plants. If humans were all rational, there would be more nuclear reactors coming online every year.
But yes, you are correct, the fossil fuel industry has a hand in this... in fear-mongering nuclear power to discourage its adoption, that is. Because when countries take nuclear power offline, they are usually replaced with fossil fuel plants. This has happened all over Germany, who are replacing decommissioned nuclear plants with new coal plants. And it has happened in my city as well. Portland General Electric decommissioned their Trojan Nuclear Plant, which at one point produced an eighth of all the electricity in Oregon, and its capacity has been replaced with mostly natural gas plants.
Quite the opposite, starting in the 1970s. We'd have a lot more nuclear power and less red tape had the petroleum industry and politics not put a scare into the public about the nuclear boogeyman. Your comment above about nuclear bombs is precisely the angle they took, using the tension with Russia as a prop for inaccurate science claims.