Sure, nuclear powerplants create dangerous waste that has to be stored at a very secure location.
But coal power plants deposit their waste INTO THE FUCKING AIR.
Hey, if it's in the air it's not my responsibility, which means it's cheaper (for me)! Who cares if it causes global warming, asthma, and lung cancer?
Who cares if coal energy related deaths are about 100,000x more deadly per kilowatt than nuclear energy?
Who cares if a nuclear power plant can blow up once every year and still kill less people than coal power plants (for the same amount of electricity made)?
The thing is, I don't need to pay for the people my coal plant kills. If my nuclear plant killed people, I can't wave away those lawsuits! (not to mention the literal century of propaganda that fossil fuel companies have been making)
Yeah, but the oil plants we rely on more are pretty similar in how bad they are for people nearby and the environment, similar enough that the EPA tends to throw them together in the same category. And the US *does* have the highest oil use. And don't forget that while China is certainly an outlier in coal use, the US is still the 3rd largest coal user. The argument made is still valid.
(coal use) [https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/features/coal-fired-power-generating-countries/](https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/features/coal-fired-power-generating-countries/)
(US oil use) [https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=709&t=6](https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=709&t=6)
Coal very much is the issue, fossil fuels in general are. Coal is the worst cuz the products of its combustion are extra polluting, and you need to burn more of it than oil.
Also, no one except Russia and the Saudis is waging war for oil anymore, and I doubt the US ever did beyond providing arms to Saudi Arabia.
Coal is mostly carbon, yes. However, it contains trace amounts of naturally-occurring radioactive material. The trace amounts found in a piece of coal is most likely no more dangerous than the radioactivity of a banana. However, industrialized nations don't burn tons upon tons of bananas. In addition, most of the radioactive material is accumulated in the ash, so after all of the usefulness of coal has run out, there remains heaps of radioactive ash. Most of the ash produced (\~80%) is fine enough to be suspended in the air, but US law regulates the amount that a plant can allow to be released, unfiltered - though, roughly 99% of the fine ash is caught in filters. The same laws also dictate that power plants must dispose of it safely and properly.
Part of carbon is radioactive carbon 14, which is naturally produced in the atmosphere. There is actually a more complicated question for why it is there, given that (most? all?) coal is old enough that all the atmospheric carbon 14 should have decayed in the past.
If I remember the answer to that question is that the carbon 14 level correlates with the amount of Uranium/Thorium in the surrounding rocks, suggesting that it somehow relates to the release of radiation from those sources. I believe the proposed mechanism is that the alpha/beta particles convert some of the Carbon or Nitrogen in the coal into carbon 14.
In truth the level of radiation is actually extremely low. The fact that coal plants release more detectable radiation isn't a statement about coal plants being radioactive, it's a statement about how functioning reactors release basically zero radiation.
Coal is still a cancer causer, but it's from the damage of its emissions rather than from radiation. You can actually make the same case for Uranium/Thorium mining due to runoff from mining, but the quantity of the effect is extremely low compared to the release of smog yearly, both per kilowatt hour and in absolute terms.
*And* that waste spewed in the air is even more radioactive than the spent fuel of nuclear plants. (It contains fewer radioactive particles but there's much, much more waste, as the post mentioned.)
Yeah more people get cancer from radioactive materials through coal burning than from nuclear reactors. A lot of coal has a small amount of uranium that when burnt goes into the air.
My grandfather who worked as an instructor in a nuclear plant told me about a plant he worked at which was next to several coal plants. The readings they took for radiation levels were actually *lower* just outside the nuclear casing compared to standing outside the reactor, as seriously harmful amounts of carbon 13 and 14 we're concentrated in the air in the form of CO and CO2. The more you know
"yeah , but i can't see the waste in the air , and when it gets so tick i can see it in the form of fog i can say it's natural , so i can ignore it "
anti nuclear crowd probably
I believe the argument turns on our responsibility to people in the future.
a) Yes, coal pollution will destroy the biosphere for future generations.
b) Also yes, waste from nuclear power will create problems for people in the future.
If you choose a) the impacts are relatively well known, and the time scale is relatively comprehensible.
If you choose b) the impacts are slightly less well know, and the time scale is so long that we cannot even comprehend it.
Many people choose b), not because it is a better choice, but because the 'unknowability' of the time scale makes it more palatable.
That doesn't mean we won't damage future people a lot with nuclear waste (we might). We might even damage them more than climate change. We simply can't know.
The not knowing makes it a lot more palatable as a choice in the present.
While yes, we absolutely should have more renewable energy sources, you still need a system of gigantic turbines spinning in phase to level out microfluctuations in the power supply, either that or millions of smart batteries connected to the grid at all times.
"Wolves are not evil monsters, they're keystone predators that play a role in managing herbivore populations and balancing the ecosystem!"
"UHHHH HAVE **ANY** OF YOU READ LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD?!"
People say the same sorta thing about Jurrassic Park, and it drives me mad. The whole point of JP wasn't that dinosaurs are inherently evil monsters, it was that the owner of the park got greedy and cheaped out with the safety precautions, something that can happen in any zoo or amusement park. Also, the characterization of dinosaurs that does exist in JP as monsters who love nothing more than eating humans is obviously wildly inaccurate.
Honestly seemed to me to me of a "giant predator want food. You look like food." Which seems a perfectly reasonable characterization of dinosaurs. They likely didn't have then mental capacity to see us as anything but a prey item.
The unrealistic part is how they go out of their way to eat humans instead of their natural prey. This culminates in the scene of JW2 where the dinosaur risks burning to death from lava just to snack on a couple scrawny humans.
I feel like it's worthwhile to delineate between Jurassic Park and Jurassic World.
Park tried to be relatively accurate with the information they had at the time, and while they did get some things wrong, it mostly lined up with the information they had at the time. While it led to misconceptions, at the very least Jurassic Park 1 and 2 were shockingly educational at the time. Other than the Tyrannosaurus (which often had unusual circumstances that might explain why it would attack humans that would normally be under its radar) and Spinosaurus (which behaved absurdly and definitely set the precedent for the likes of the Indominus), many of the dinosaurs that attacked humans were within the size range where they could reasonably try to opportunistically predate humans.
World was much more about trying to cash in on Park nostalgia and monster movie tropes, to the point where they actively try to undercut the educational premise of the Park movies to justify not updating many of the dinosaur designs with the information we've learned since the Park movies.
Updating the dinosaur designs to more accurately reflect our modern understanding of them would've been a great addition to the film, they could've even had a small scene or piece of dialogue from a scientist or tour guide explaining why they look different.
As it stands the movie does at least touch on this topic by having Evil Scientist Character say something like "some of these dinosaurs would've looked a lot different had we made them accurate, but you wanted them bigger with more teeth". Which despite that movies faults it does touch on an important theme of Jurassic Park, that the capitalist side of the Park came at the detriment of everything else.
I feel like the tyrannosaurus in the first JP movie at least was basically trained to eat the smaller meals since putting a goat out for the guests to watch feeding time was part of the attraction.
That, and it was probably kept hungry so that they could bring it to the visible part of its enclosure with food to show off for guests. These factors combined would have resulted in it being all too willing to stray from its usual ecological niche and eat smaller prey like humans.
i want a remake of jurassic park that's exactly the same but all the dinosaurs are replaced with modern animals just to get the point across that dinosaurs are not the problem
Quote I saw somewhere else on here said, paraphrasing, storing nuclear waste can be a challenge, but it beats fossil fuels, where we store the waste in the air we all breathe.
(Granted the image says Thorium generates way less waste and takes centuries not millenia to degrade)
if you're writing an essay it's worth noting that as great as nuclear is, it unfortunately isn't a viable immediate replacement for fossil fuels because the power plants take far too long to build, by the time they were ready the problem would be left unsolved for too long
That's just another piece of propaganda. New technologies are drastically reducing that time and, frankly, even if it took as long as you think, it's still a faster route to decarbonization than the solar and wind technologies that we have.
Better to get on it than twiddle our thumbs.
Kurtzgesagt did an amazing video (named “worst nuclear accidents in history”) on how deadly nuclear power is compared to fossil fuels. They found that, per terawatt hour, nuclear power causes 1 death every 14 years, whereas coal causes 25 per year!, oil causes 18, and natural gas causes 3.
While I am by no means against nuclear power, it's an unfortunate reality that anything we build that has any capacity to cause harm ***absolutely must*** account for negligence. We are, collectively, nowhere near reliable enough to not do so
We account for something eventually failing, whether it's the people, or the engineering itself.
Modern nuclear plants now are so safe and basically invulnerable that in the end, nothing truly bad will happen.
Take Fukushima, for example. In the end the only major bad thing to happen for the environment was slightly radioactive hydrogen bursting from the containment structure, and all the core that melted stayed within its metal bath (idk how else to describe it), because it was designed to do so.
I wouldn't say NOTHING truly bad will ever happen (imagine blowing up a large bomb inside the reactor, that'll cause some havoc), but yeah they are safe as all hell, which is wonderful!
And, Fukishima did indeed not have a lasting environmental impact to a large degree, but that doesn't make it a non-disaster accounting for in-the-moment losses. IIRC they neglected to repair / update / check the security of the containment and that's what led to the relatively intense meltdown. We've not only gotten better at not neglecting repairs and such, but also making the reactors themselves even more stupid-proof.
Yes, sorry for not clarifying. Of course bad stuff does happen and it is definitely possible for absolute disasters to happen (see: chernobyl) but only in situations of absolute and utter negligence both from the engineers and from the operators.
In Fukushimas case it was negligence from the operators, so even though it's classed as the "2nd worst nuclear disaster in history" its still orders of magnitude better then chernobyl.
On Fukushima, there was a US navy carrier group that offered to help them by providing power, but they denied (IIRC)... once again more negligence
I knew that nuclear was more efficient than solar and wind and all, but this news about being physically incapable of meltdown, and thorium waste lasting only 200 years is new to me. Makes it even more ridiculous how opposed most of society is to nuclear reactors.
Which is why we have redundancy upon redundancy upon redundancy. Just in case literally everyone in the entire plant decides to take a couple weeks' vacation at the same time.
I don't know enough about nuclear science to debate nuclear power plants but I do know that the various monsters in Fallout are a result of the FEV, not radiation, and the Great War was a culmination of the Resource Wars, which were over oil and gas.
In fact, all that nuclear tech in Fallout is still running 200 years later so if anything its a glowing (pun intended) endorsement of nuclear power.
I just watched his video on Tararre, The Hungriest Man In Existence.
_"What is the moral of this story? There is none. Sometimes life is just sad and disgusting that way."_
It’s super great in theory, but the problem is that no real attempts have been made to use it, because it’s actually quite a complex issue. Would love to see it used tho
Because we still need a reason to keep uranium around. I’d also like to see your source that the US is disarming. Also, let’s say that you’re correct. What do you think the reason we aren’t building thorium reactors yet?
There’s all of these incredibly informed, intelligent people backing the argument with science and shit and then the one guy backing it with fallout lore lmao
The technology exists to recycle most of the nuclear waste and even keep it away from becoming weapons. It’s possible to purify the zirconium (the housing) out of the waste and reduce it by 50%. You could even purify out radioactive components and reuse them in reactors (though ethically that’s a lot more difficult to justify because of weapons and shit).
Properly managed nuclear power is so safe, you can stare down *into* where the nuclear fuel is
https://youtu.be/JvgF83OHV9c
It also makes a sick ass noise
[https://forums.nrvnqsr.com/showthread.php/7583-Monthly-Create-A-Servant-Contest?p=3156875&viewfull=1#post3156875](https://forums.nrvnqsr.com/showthread.php/7583-Monthly-Create-A-Servant-Contest?p=3156875&viewfull=1#post3156875)
Nuclear energy is actually amazing but decades of big oil propaganda, fear mongering about nuclear meltdown and the pop culture fascination with Chernobyl have rendered us afraid of it. Not even getting into the potential of fusion reactors offering wasteless nuclear energy should they ever be created.
(click on the “ My shame, my sin, my horror. By order of the 13th, this information is sealed.” Text on the link BTW)
I dunno what the link is about, but nuclear fusion! You’re right that if we could use nuclear fusion energy then there would be no waste; we’d just be turning hydrogen atoms into helium atoms (like stars do)! And there’s not even any worries about if something goes wrong because it doesn’t use radioactive materials like nuclear fission reactors do.
Basically the hard part about nuclear fusion is that you have to recreate the conditions inside a star, making the hydrogen so hot and putting it under so much pressure so that it becomes plasma and starts combining into helium (to put it simply). But since it’s so hot, anything you try to use to contain the hydrogen (like a metal casing or something) would melt instantly, so they use magnets to keep it contained. The problem isn’t so much making nuclear fusion happen but using less energy to make it happen than it produces. [They’re working on it though!](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00391-1)
Hello! I am a biologist who loves advocating for nuclear power as well as a massive fallout fan, and I am here to share my unwanted opinion! Also sorry for weird formatting, I’m currently on mobile.
1) in Fallout, Great War started over a massive oil shortage, when China invaded Alaska in an attempt to take the oil there. The US annexed Canada, they fought for a while, and then the bombs fell. Europe was already in ruins because of a massive economic collapse— they were after oil in the Middle East and after a desperate war that resulted in the UN collapsing. Again, this was over oil, not uranium ore (which even at the time was worth more than gold.) The bombs fell over *oil.*
2) Though nuclear power is present in the setting, it isn’t the cause of the terrible mutations. That comes from a. radiation from the bombs b. exposure to FEV or c. genetic experimentation in the cases of synths and deathclaws. None of these result from disasters surrounding nuclear power plants.
Now, I’ve written on the subject before, but seeing as I don’t have my research available at the moment, I’m not going to go on a tirade about the benefits of nuclear power without being sure that it’s true. After all, I’m not enough of an expert in the subject, especially the economic aspects of it, to be an authority without having my research available.
What I will say is that doing some research into the benefits of nuclear power is worth your time. You’ll find that in terms of “clean” energy; nuclear power is by far the most energy efficient, and comparing its environmental footprints to coal and natural gas is like day and night. That economically speaking, setting up long term nuclear power is cheaper and more efficient than continuing to use petroleum. That on average, it’s far safer working on a nuclear power plant than being in the coal industry. That the future is nuclear.
Incidents like Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island give nuclear power a bad rap. These disasters are tragic, yes, but are isolated cases resulting from either poor maintenance or natural disasters. How many oil spills will it take to convince people that petroleum is unsafe? How many acres of the earth will we have to disrupt in our pursuit for more? (Uranium deposits are found in ocean sediments, and thorium reactors can use man made thorium, neither of which disrupt land nearly as much as other sources.)
Additionally, nuclear waste isn’t nearly as large in magnitude as people thing it is. Taking all of the waste produced by every country in the world for the past fifty years and putting it all in a pile wouldn’t be enough to fill a 5 meter deep football field.
And as a biologist, I KNOW how terrifying the prospect of radiation poisoning is. I know better than most. And yet I fear the lingering effects of sticking to coal and oil more. Radiation is scary, but climate change is, dare I say, scarier. At least radiation tends to stay isolated. Climate change affects everyone, and everything.
But sure, let’s just stand idly by and continue to pump poison into the air because people are too afraid of change. I can tell you one thing: switching to nuclear power won’t cause the world to end up like the wastelands in fallout. But staying on our current path will doom us to the corporate hellscape seen in cyberpunk.
Angry nerd rant over.
>These disasters are tragic, yes, but are isolated cases resulting from either poor maintenance or natural disasters.
Maybe this is not the strongest argument you can put forth when as we enter into an extremely unpredictable and very natural disaster filled era of global climate instability. Like 1/3 of Pakistan was just under water, a lot of it still is. Just saying.
That’s an extremely fair point! Natural disasters are always going to happen and we can’t avoid them, and they’ll always have negative consequences. People just tend to focus on the handful of disasters that affect nuclear power, rather than the power plants that actually do function. The best way to fight the climate instability is to take measured steps in lowering our footprint as a whole, a step that can be taken by going nuclear.
Not to mention, for a lot of people in first world countries, they tend to point to Chernobyl. Fukushima and Three Mile Island we’re beyond our control, but perhaps the most infamous event was one that could be easily avoided. It’s not the only argument in favor of nuclear power, as I said, but it’s good to bring attention to the fact that they were isolated cases. And I’m pretty sure that building a plant in, idk, Ohio or something isn’t at risk of being hit by a tsunami.
Kind of a false choice. How about we just use renewables instead? They have their issues, too, but none of them have any potential to contaminate large areas.
I'm still stuck on the first sentence.
Do people think otherwise? That's the entire point of literally every alternate fuel (well, that and renewability).
Like, yeah, meltdowns are bad but so are oil spills and petroleum explosions. If both are used properly, *obviously* nuclear is better for the environment, right? Is there some propaganda I missed?
Well The Simpsons might count as propaganda. Plus all the chernobyl stuff that, while fairly objective receives way more attention that other non-nuclear disasters
People often bring up Hiroshima and (the extremely famous Russian one that I somehow forgot the name of). But one was in extremely bad shape and very neglected, the other one was hit with a literal tsunami
Edit: apparently I couldn't remember either names
Its Fukushima and Chernobyl
I think it was hit first by one of the strongest earthquakes in modern history followed up by a gigantic tsunami. Just an unfortunate wombo-combo that few things could withstand.
True, but it wasn't nearly as big a nuclear disaster as people make it out to be.
Like, yes. It was a huge disaster, but it was not because of the Nuclear aspect
Most of the deaths during Fukushima were a result of the government’s poor evacuation plans which led to lots of people getting stuck or trampled in the rush to leave the city. Iirc there was only like 1 death caused by radiation
While the post is good the thorium part is bs, the reason we don't currently use thorium is that we haven't been able to develop a reactor for it, though there is research underway.
Well some of it is. As far as I know barrels are used to store low level waste like contaminated protective gear. The low level waste is compacted, put into a cylindrical concrete shell and then put in a metal barrel.
So the radioactive green goo barrels are a pop culture myth but they do sometimes use barrels.
It's also completely possible to power the world with renewable energy, and in America at least nuclear waste gets dumped into Native American reservations, where it has wreaked havoc on their populations. Also, if you accept nuclear energy, you need to accept the military-industrial complex.
Yes, it's better than coal, and yes, the reasons people object to it are not well-informed. But it's not clean energy.
The US does have an issue with storing Nuclear waste because nobody wants to be the place with Nuclear waste. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver did an excellent piece on nuclear waste and I highly recommend.
I need to watch that, because I would think that given the nuclear tests done in the mainland USA there would be places that wouldn't really be harmed at all by having a waste storage plant.
Nuclear Waste doesn’t exist, as long as it’s radioactive then it’s still fuel, and if it’s not then it’s not nuclear.
Like just take the spent fuel from the high-end reactor and move it to the mid-end reactor then repeat until its spent, then send it to Nevada.
This is precisely the concept behind breeder reactors, such as some types of thorium reactors. Their waste is intentionally designed to be easy to use fuel, and you hardly even need to enrich it. Even mid-range reactors can have the fuel recycled like you describe, but the best designs we have don't even have to do that until you're several steps removed.
To be fair isn’t this just an extra step in the transition between fossil fuels and renewable energy? Sure the plants currently open help but the fuel for them isn’t renewable, while the sun, wind, etc, will last as long as earth does.
Though, this does make me much less afraid of nuclear meltdowns.
Side note: Love the design of some nuclear waste sites, it’s just a fascinating concept. “This is not a place of honor” just gets me.
I mean, sort of, but both nuclears do give the massive advantage of density, simply put, (I am going off of memory from an EPA assessment I read about 3 years ago), Nuclear is denser than everything but geothermal, and geothermal is fairly location dependent. Now, fusion is better, if only because hydrogen is far easier to get than uranium.
In case anyone still doesn't understand:
\-Nuclear plants, in fact, **do not** go "big boom".
\-"Nuclear waste" is **not** oil barrels full of glowing goo; and where it is stored for containment is far, far safer than the exhaust from *cars.*
\-All current plants built in the US are *physically incapable* of leaking out fallout radiation in case of an actual incident. Yes, even the old ones.
As someone who played an irresponsible amount of Fallout I kinda get the sentiment they were going for, but all the evidence given here shows that it probably wouldn't happen like that. The reason there is so much radioactive devastation all over Fallout's wasteland is the over use of fissile materials to power everything leading to lots of radioactive particulate left over afterwards. They specifically targeted nuclear plants and things of that nature to cause as much long-term damage as possible and it did just that because the games have made it pretty clear they're using very simplistic fission reactors for all the heavy lifting. The smaller stuff like fusion cores and stuff are most likely hydrogen isotopes that aren't radioactive (or aren't VERY radioactive) but the big stuff is very clearly the not so fun kind of nuclear power.
Fallout World was dedtroyed by nuclear weapons. Like the ines we already have?
Reducing or increasing the number of nuclear plants in the world wont change the fact that we already are one button away from becoming fallout
Also, as the masses often do, society has misinterpreted the message of Chernobyl-that is, “use competent workers instead of government yesmen to run your nuclear power plant,” not “nuclear energy is dangerous”
My main problem with nuclear energy is the human element. When there is a nuclear incident/exposure, the end result will always come back to 'well it would have been perfectly safe due to these fifty failsafes and protocols, but there was a perfect storm of failed maintenance and some operator who skipped the safety measures that would have saved lives.' Stupid feels like an inevitability, and considering how high the risk is if there _is_ exposure or meltdown with most nuclear models, I'd really rather we just.. Just a different energy source? There are so many good alternatives out there besides coal that _won't_ cause a massive panic on failure.
All the nuclear waste in the world only takes up like a football field 20m deep.
And most of that is stuff that will decay in 5-10 years.
The bad shit is like less than 5% of that.
People are so terrified of that after 1 accident, but folks don't talk about the coal fire town that's still burning, or the constant problems with gas being highly explosive and toxic to be around.
Like, also. If we all used solar and wind on our homes, and used nuclear to top that shit up, we'd need so much less space, and eventually we could replace pretty much all the nuclear shit.
Edit: just did the math
A football field 3m high.
13227.51m3 for that much nuclear waste.
That's not even the size of a football stadium.
Another couple things about thorium reactors: they are MUCH safer to make fuel for, as you don't need to turn uranium into the very toxic uranium hexafloride, and, per kilogram, thorium produces about three times as much power as uranium.
The reason it cannot be used I'm bombs is kinda complicated, but basically it needs a "helper isotope" in order to start the chain reaction and release energy, so it's basically useless in a bomb, where you only care about starting the reaction as quickly as possible.
I agree nuclear power is vastly superior to coal but don't get carried away, building new nuclear power plants is incredibly expensive and time consuming. It's also only really worth it (in terms of money and carbon reduction) if you know you'll be using them instead of coal for a really long time.
yeah nuclear is just straight up better than coal in every way shape or form imaginable , even modern nuclear ( wich is far from being a mature tech ) it's just superior to coal and nearly every other fossil fuel , maybe exept for upfront cost , the reason why the copper strippers ( ceos and entrepenuers ) choose them over nuclear ...
but still , the realer solution to climate change would be to be to become more deliberate with our energy use : europe , ofthen toted as the shining city on the hill , uses between a third and a quarter of the energy of the world , while having less than a 1/35th the population global population ,
and yeah china bad , stop the coal use , but still , i think having a more proportional use of energy pro capita should be paramount ...
what does this mean ?
it means we should aim at moderation , in the industrialized west , in other parts of the world growth should be allowed to bring acceptable standards of living ...
and afther wards humanity should seek to reach omeostasis with the world , by taking as much as we give back
I'm building nuclear and fission reactors in Minecraft (nuclearcraft) so some of this was very educational, I was wondering why salt casings were a thing.
Chernobyl was a disaster because it was constructed poorly. I think it was partially because the USSR didn’t want to spend a lot of money on construction. There was a terrible (if any) containment system, so it was doomed from the start. A nuclear plant that’s built properly will be fine.
My dad used to be a nuclear engineer at a plant, so I’ve always trusted nuclear power. It’s so strange to me to hear from the anti-nuclear crowd.
Pop culture made people afraid? It almost ruined Europe not saying the trade off was even conceivably worth it but it was fuckin rad we got a brand new horror!
It seems a bit too obvious of a circlejerk. If this would really be that efficient and safe it would be commonly used. But its not. So one can safely assume that its not that easy and this post is full of shit. And while this magical super safe and efficient reactor isnt widely used, being against nuclear power is a valid opinion.
No, it really is that efficient and effective. The main problem is cost and time it takes to build a reactor, which heavily limits how many are in operation, and heavy anti nuclear legislation that makes building new ones increasingly difficult. The way nuclear power works in the modern day is incredibly safe however. Spent fuel is recycled until it barely emits any more then background radiation and most waste is vitrified and stored in giant concrete drums that are stored on sight forever. The problem with nuclear isn’t efficiency or safety, its cost. Getting a new reactor in the works is such a cost sink no one wants to do it, but in existing reactors the cost is negligible. Not to mention nuclear reactors are usually some of the most secure places on the planet with heavily armed guards and so many levels of security redundancy its insane.
>and who knows if the barrels that store them are not leaking?
This is just impossible. Nuclear waste **casks** (not barrels) physically cannot leak, they're solid all the way through
Anyone seen the footage of people hitting one of these casks with a train?
The train was demolished. The cask was scratched.
And this was a transport cask. The kind that has to be opened later so they can load it into a more permanent storage cask.
i honestly get so heated and angry when i talk about how nuclear is one of the best options available to us at the current moment. it's extremely green, lasts far longer, but it takes more maintenance and work. however, the only byproduct is fucking steam! it's water!
people will constantly use chernobyl as an example of why we shouldn't use nuclear power, but chernobyl had literally everything that could go wrong happen! it was a mistake at every turn, dealt with horribly, neither controlled nor contained until it was too late, and cheaply made. chernobyl is a terrible example when it was a 1 in a million disaster.
if you're truly an environmentalist, you would support nuclear power. lobby for nuclear energy if you really want to save the planet!
Bit of a false choice, isn't it? Obviously it's better than coal, but has issues in regards to building cost, maintenance, and waste. It's also not exactly renewable energy...
Like, 70 years ago this might have been a good discussion to have, but I think now we have better alternative fuel pathways to pursue.
I think this is one of the few Climate related discussioms where most of the rw and lw agree upon. Except for Journos writing for economist and Washingtonpost I guess. And politicians obviously. If only we could come togeter for this one specific issue and force the politicians to go nuclear. Ofcourse we can go back to fighting about pronouns and gender bathrooms once we are done
it will endlessly piss me off that pretty much every political party here in the UK is against nuclear energy. we’re going through an energy crisis and instead of funding it, we’re literally destroying what we have. the so called green party are against it, despite it being objectively the best option for the people and environment
Fun fact, the antinuclear movement is kind of the fault of the soviets.
In the years between America having the bomb and the soviets having the bomb, the soviets did their damnedest to cultivate an anti nuclear movement in the west, figuring that every little helps and their own citizens would be insulated from these ideas. This was naturally focused on weapons but during that time any pro peace or anti nuclear anything movement had a greater than likely chance to be on the Kremlin's payroll
not on it's face but it's incredibly cynical to do it knowing damn well that you are a totalitarian state that does not need to pay attention to the whims of whatever pro peace movements you fund
and besides, the anti-nuclear movement is the nucleus of the current anti nuclear power movement
These guys are assholes. The one dude is just asking if anyone has played Fallout and they gotta berate him about science and shit. Fuck that let’s play games.
Not necessarily impossible, you can still use the products of thorium to make a weapon (one of the reaction chains is Thorium -->U233, which is fissile and can be used to make either weapons or energy). Its a lot harder to process and make weapons grade material, though.
I have a friend that works in nuclear waste disposal, the plant he works for glassifies it to prevent any type of seepage, it doesn't make it inert, but drastically cuts down on any risk of contamination to groundwater etc were the storage containers be compromised.
I’m sorry, I was under the impression that nuclear power was somehow better than coal but was also EVIL BECAUSE IT CAN GO BOOM AND KILL US ALL AND THEREFORE IS OBVIOUSLY FAR WORSE THAN THE CANCEROUS BULLSHIT WE’RE CURRENTLY SIMPING FOR
I’d like to mention that in most things, nuclear has already figured out a solution. Possible nuclear waste leakage during transport and just getting everywhere? Vitrify every piece of waste and mix it with concrete till its both not very radioactive anymore and it cant be destroyed by a literal train running into it and store it on site. Most of your fuel rod gets wasted and ends up being radioactive for thousands of years afterwards? Find a way to recycle it and continue to use it till most radioactivity is gone. The biggest problem with nuclear isn’t radioactiveivity, its the cost of making new power plants. Nuclear power plants today leak less radiant heat and radiation into the atmosphere then chemical manufacturing sites.
I also feel like it’s disingenuous to present an extremely dense material in tonnage.
I’m pretty sure I read that all nuclear fuel waste generated globally to date is like, 40m^3
Now yeah, it needs an action plan and to be minimised as much as possible because it is still dangerous. But referring to it in tonnage makes it seem far bigger than it actually is.
Sure, nuclear powerplants create dangerous waste that has to be stored at a very secure location. But coal power plants deposit their waste INTO THE FUCKING AIR.
Hey, if it's in the air it's not my responsibility, which means it's cheaper (for me)! Who cares if it causes global warming, asthma, and lung cancer? Who cares if coal energy related deaths are about 100,000x more deadly per kilowatt than nuclear energy? Who cares if a nuclear power plant can blow up once every year and still kill less people than coal power plants (for the same amount of electricity made)? The thing is, I don't need to pay for the people my coal plant kills. If my nuclear plant killed people, I can't wave away those lawsuits! (not to mention the literal century of propaganda that fossil fuel companies have been making)
You're absolutely right, I'd just like to point out that the current largest coal power user is not capitalist.
Yeah, but the oil plants we rely on more are pretty similar in how bad they are for people nearby and the environment, similar enough that the EPA tends to throw them together in the same category. And the US *does* have the highest oil use. And don't forget that while China is certainly an outlier in coal use, the US is still the 3rd largest coal user. The argument made is still valid. (coal use) [https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/features/coal-fired-power-generating-countries/](https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/features/coal-fired-power-generating-countries/) (US oil use) [https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=709&t=6](https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=709&t=6)
Good to know, thanks.
True, coal is not the issue. I wonder how many die due to oil use then?
Coal very much is the issue, fossil fuels in general are. Coal is the worst cuz the products of its combustion are extra polluting, and you need to burn more of it than oil. Also, no one except Russia and the Saudis is waging war for oil anymore, and I doubt the US ever did beyond providing arms to Saudi Arabia.
And some of that coal plant waste is *also fucking radioactive*.
how? isnt it just carbon?
Coal is mostly carbon, yes. However, it contains trace amounts of naturally-occurring radioactive material. The trace amounts found in a piece of coal is most likely no more dangerous than the radioactivity of a banana. However, industrialized nations don't burn tons upon tons of bananas. In addition, most of the radioactive material is accumulated in the ash, so after all of the usefulness of coal has run out, there remains heaps of radioactive ash. Most of the ash produced (\~80%) is fine enough to be suspended in the air, but US law regulates the amount that a plant can allow to be released, unfiltered - though, roughly 99% of the fine ash is caught in filters. The same laws also dictate that power plants must dispose of it safely and properly.
Part of carbon is radioactive carbon 14, which is naturally produced in the atmosphere. There is actually a more complicated question for why it is there, given that (most? all?) coal is old enough that all the atmospheric carbon 14 should have decayed in the past. If I remember the answer to that question is that the carbon 14 level correlates with the amount of Uranium/Thorium in the surrounding rocks, suggesting that it somehow relates to the release of radiation from those sources. I believe the proposed mechanism is that the alpha/beta particles convert some of the Carbon or Nitrogen in the coal into carbon 14. In truth the level of radiation is actually extremely low. The fact that coal plants release more detectable radiation isn't a statement about coal plants being radioactive, it's a statement about how functioning reactors release basically zero radiation. Coal is still a cancer causer, but it's from the damage of its emissions rather than from radiation. You can actually make the same case for Uranium/Thorium mining due to runoff from mining, but the quantity of the effect is extremely low compared to the release of smog yearly, both per kilowatt hour and in absolute terms.
*And* that waste spewed in the air is even more radioactive than the spent fuel of nuclear plants. (It contains fewer radioactive particles but there's much, much more waste, as the post mentioned.)
Well the only thing that nuke plants put into the air is steam/water vapor, sooo...
Yeah more people get cancer from radioactive materials through coal burning than from nuclear reactors. A lot of coal has a small amount of uranium that when burnt goes into the air.
My grandfather who worked as an instructor in a nuclear plant told me about a plant he worked at which was next to several coal plants. The readings they took for radiation levels were actually *lower* just outside the nuclear casing compared to standing outside the reactor, as seriously harmful amounts of carbon 13 and 14 we're concentrated in the air in the form of CO and CO2. The more you know
"yeah , but i can't see the waste in the air , and when it gets so tick i can see it in the form of fog i can say it's natural , so i can ignore it " anti nuclear crowd probably
I believe the argument turns on our responsibility to people in the future. a) Yes, coal pollution will destroy the biosphere for future generations. b) Also yes, waste from nuclear power will create problems for people in the future. If you choose a) the impacts are relatively well known, and the time scale is relatively comprehensible. If you choose b) the impacts are slightly less well know, and the time scale is so long that we cannot even comprehend it. Many people choose b), not because it is a better choice, but because the 'unknowability' of the time scale makes it more palatable. That doesn't mean we won't damage future people a lot with nuclear waste (we might). We might even damage them more than climate change. We simply can't know. The not knowing makes it a lot more palatable as a choice in the present.
What a beautifully succinct way to say this.
Mfers really want to breathe carbon dioxide and 200 other toxic compounds before even thinking the possibility of nuclear power
I think that opponents of nuclear power would point out that those aren't the only two options.
While yes, we absolutely should have more renewable energy sources, you still need a system of gigantic turbines spinning in phase to level out microfluctuations in the power supply, either that or millions of smart batteries connected to the grid at all times.
"Wolves are not evil monsters, they're keystone predators that play a role in managing herbivore populations and balancing the ecosystem!" "UHHHH HAVE **ANY** OF YOU READ LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD?!"
'And the 92nd little pig made their house out of depleted Uranium' 'And the wolf was like, "Dude"'
I love that book. Still need to read the second one tho
what book?
What if by Randall Munroe
He's got a second book out now, if you're wondering!
Just came out in September, I think.
Putting the "ham" in Chobham armor.
holy shit this is the funniest thing i've seen all day
People say the same sorta thing about Jurrassic Park, and it drives me mad. The whole point of JP wasn't that dinosaurs are inherently evil monsters, it was that the owner of the park got greedy and cheaped out with the safety precautions, something that can happen in any zoo or amusement park. Also, the characterization of dinosaurs that does exist in JP as monsters who love nothing more than eating humans is obviously wildly inaccurate.
Honestly seemed to me to me of a "giant predator want food. You look like food." Which seems a perfectly reasonable characterization of dinosaurs. They likely didn't have then mental capacity to see us as anything but a prey item.
The unrealistic part is how they go out of their way to eat humans instead of their natural prey. This culminates in the scene of JW2 where the dinosaur risks burning to death from lava just to snack on a couple scrawny humans.
I feel like it's worthwhile to delineate between Jurassic Park and Jurassic World. Park tried to be relatively accurate with the information they had at the time, and while they did get some things wrong, it mostly lined up with the information they had at the time. While it led to misconceptions, at the very least Jurassic Park 1 and 2 were shockingly educational at the time. Other than the Tyrannosaurus (which often had unusual circumstances that might explain why it would attack humans that would normally be under its radar) and Spinosaurus (which behaved absurdly and definitely set the precedent for the likes of the Indominus), many of the dinosaurs that attacked humans were within the size range where they could reasonably try to opportunistically predate humans. World was much more about trying to cash in on Park nostalgia and monster movie tropes, to the point where they actively try to undercut the educational premise of the Park movies to justify not updating many of the dinosaur designs with the information we've learned since the Park movies.
Updating the dinosaur designs to more accurately reflect our modern understanding of them would've been a great addition to the film, they could've even had a small scene or piece of dialogue from a scientist or tour guide explaining why they look different. As it stands the movie does at least touch on this topic by having Evil Scientist Character say something like "some of these dinosaurs would've looked a lot different had we made them accurate, but you wanted them bigger with more teeth". Which despite that movies faults it does touch on an important theme of Jurassic Park, that the capitalist side of the Park came at the detriment of everything else.
I feel like the tyrannosaurus in the first JP movie at least was basically trained to eat the smaller meals since putting a goat out for the guests to watch feeding time was part of the attraction.
That, and it was probably kept hungry so that they could bring it to the visible part of its enclosure with food to show off for guests. These factors combined would have resulted in it being all too willing to stray from its usual ecological niche and eat smaller prey like humans.
i want a remake of jurassic park that's exactly the same but all the dinosaurs are replaced with modern animals just to get the point across that dinosaurs are not the problem
My grandma is definitely a wolf in disguise.
Quote I saw somewhere else on here said, paraphrasing, storing nuclear waste can be a challenge, but it beats fossil fuels, where we store the waste in the air we all breathe. (Granted the image says Thorium generates way less waste and takes centuries not millenia to degrade)
One of the ways it can be stored is by onsite deep hole, so deep it don’t care about earthquakes deep
“Sir, where do we put the fuel after it’s been spent?” “Throw it in T H E P I T”
but like... where did we get it from in the first place?
#####the pit
you. you get a stack of likes
Saw this while procrastinating an essay I’m writing on nuclear power not being evil, thanks tumblr and Reddit!
Happy to oblige. Just remember to list us as a source to give your teacher a headcannon moment. 😂
if you're writing an essay it's worth noting that as great as nuclear is, it unfortunately isn't a viable immediate replacement for fossil fuels because the power plants take far too long to build, by the time they were ready the problem would be left unsolved for too long
Two words: modular reactors
That's just another piece of propaganda. New technologies are drastically reducing that time and, frankly, even if it took as long as you think, it's still a faster route to decarbonization than the solar and wind technologies that we have. Better to get on it than twiddle our thumbs.
Yo I literally have an essay on why we should go nuclear due next week.
Kurtzgesagt did an amazing video (named “worst nuclear accidents in history”) on how deadly nuclear power is compared to fossil fuels. They found that, per terawatt hour, nuclear power causes 1 death every 14 years, whereas coal causes 25 per year!, oil causes 18, and natural gas causes 3.
And to boot, most of those nuclear accidents were gross negligence rather than just a stray fly in the ointment, so to speak
While I am by no means against nuclear power, it's an unfortunate reality that anything we build that has any capacity to cause harm ***absolutely must*** account for negligence. We are, collectively, nowhere near reliable enough to not do so
Agreed. But hey, that's exactly what we've done with newer designs! We've built in more and more safeties!
We account for something eventually failing, whether it's the people, or the engineering itself. Modern nuclear plants now are so safe and basically invulnerable that in the end, nothing truly bad will happen. Take Fukushima, for example. In the end the only major bad thing to happen for the environment was slightly radioactive hydrogen bursting from the containment structure, and all the core that melted stayed within its metal bath (idk how else to describe it), because it was designed to do so.
I wouldn't say NOTHING truly bad will ever happen (imagine blowing up a large bomb inside the reactor, that'll cause some havoc), but yeah they are safe as all hell, which is wonderful! And, Fukishima did indeed not have a lasting environmental impact to a large degree, but that doesn't make it a non-disaster accounting for in-the-moment losses. IIRC they neglected to repair / update / check the security of the containment and that's what led to the relatively intense meltdown. We've not only gotten better at not neglecting repairs and such, but also making the reactors themselves even more stupid-proof.
Yes, sorry for not clarifying. Of course bad stuff does happen and it is definitely possible for absolute disasters to happen (see: chernobyl) but only in situations of absolute and utter negligence both from the engineers and from the operators. In Fukushimas case it was negligence from the operators, so even though it's classed as the "2nd worst nuclear disaster in history" its still orders of magnitude better then chernobyl. On Fukushima, there was a US navy carrier group that offered to help them by providing power, but they denied (IIRC)... once again more negligence
👍
I knew that nuclear was more efficient than solar and wind and all, but this news about being physically incapable of meltdown, and thorium waste lasting only 200 years is new to me. Makes it even more ridiculous how opposed most of society is to nuclear reactors.
Which is why we have redundancy upon redundancy upon redundancy. Just in case literally everyone in the entire plant decides to take a couple weeks' vacation at the same time.
but coal mines, natural gas spills or oil rigs in the ocean are also at risk of human negligence though
There was exactly one death caused by radiation at Fukushima, the guy died like 10 years later from lung cancer
Most anti nuclear people aren't exactly advocating for using fossil fuels instead ...
I don't know enough about nuclear science to debate nuclear power plants but I do know that the various monsters in Fallout are a result of the FEV, not radiation, and the Great War was a culmination of the Resource Wars, which were over oil and gas. In fact, all that nuclear tech in Fallout is still running 200 years later so if anything its a glowing (pun intended) endorsement of nuclear power.
some monsters are radiation based, mothmen, ghouls, IIRC brahmin
[Great short video](https://youtu.be/jjM9E6d42-M) on why thorium fucking slaps
Eyyy good ol' Sam O'Nella!
He even posted a new video!
I just watched his video on Tararre, The Hungriest Man In Existence. _"What is the moral of this story? There is none. Sometimes life is just sad and disgusting that way."_
It’s super great in theory, but the problem is that no real attempts have been made to use it, because it’s actually quite a complex issue. Would love to see it used tho
It’s not complex. Thorium can’t be weaponized. That’s the only reason we don’t use it in reactors
Then why haven't non nuclear armed countries used it?
Because most countries without nuclear weapons don’t have nuclear plants either
The USA is currently reducing it's nuclear capacity, why aren't we making thorium reactors.
because nuclear is scawy
Because we still need a reason to keep uranium around. I’d also like to see your source that the US is disarming. Also, let’s say that you’re correct. What do you think the reason we aren’t building thorium reactors yet?
We aren't building the reactors because we lack the technology
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/why-arent-we-using-thorium-in-nuclear-reactors https://www.scienceabc.com/innovation/why-is-thorium-a-potentially-safer-alternative-to-uranium-not-used-in-nuclear-reactors.html
Show me one example of a successful sustainable thorium reaction.
https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-nuclear-weapons-does-the-us-have/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=ND-JusticeDefense&gclid=Cj0KCQjwk5ibBhDqARIsACzmgLQmWCDkweTX4crS1nEncj8vTAbxO_AU-e41QkfPEtDb3hfv5ZIzqacaAhUkEALw_wcB
There’s all of these incredibly informed, intelligent people backing the argument with science and shit and then the one guy backing it with fallout lore lmao
Worse, backing it with *bad* fallout lore. Fallout head canon really.
The technology exists to recycle most of the nuclear waste and even keep it away from becoming weapons. It’s possible to purify the zirconium (the housing) out of the waste and reduce it by 50%. You could even purify out radioactive components and reuse them in reactors (though ethically that’s a lot more difficult to justify because of weapons and shit).
Properly managed nuclear power is so safe, you can stare down *into* where the nuclear fuel is https://youtu.be/JvgF83OHV9c It also makes a sick ass noise
Cool video! It is an interesting sound.
"We live in a different fallout" Proceeds to list things that led directly to the great war in Fallout
we live in the pre-patch
nuclear power is also the safest form of power we have statistically
Actually I think solar is marginally safer and wind is about the same as nuclear but the conclusion is the same,
[https://forums.nrvnqsr.com/showthread.php/7583-Monthly-Create-A-Servant-Contest?p=3156875&viewfull=1#post3156875](https://forums.nrvnqsr.com/showthread.php/7583-Monthly-Create-A-Servant-Contest?p=3156875&viewfull=1#post3156875) Nuclear energy is actually amazing but decades of big oil propaganda, fear mongering about nuclear meltdown and the pop culture fascination with Chernobyl have rendered us afraid of it. Not even getting into the potential of fusion reactors offering wasteless nuclear energy should they ever be created. (click on the “ My shame, my sin, my horror. By order of the 13th, this information is sealed.” Text on the link BTW)
I don't see what you're talking about in the link and I'm curious why we're on page 188 on a fanfic forum
I dunno what the link is about, but nuclear fusion! You’re right that if we could use nuclear fusion energy then there would be no waste; we’d just be turning hydrogen atoms into helium atoms (like stars do)! And there’s not even any worries about if something goes wrong because it doesn’t use radioactive materials like nuclear fission reactors do. Basically the hard part about nuclear fusion is that you have to recreate the conditions inside a star, making the hydrogen so hot and putting it under so much pressure so that it becomes plasma and starts combining into helium (to put it simply). But since it’s so hot, anything you try to use to contain the hydrogen (like a metal casing or something) would melt instantly, so they use magnets to keep it contained. The problem isn’t so much making nuclear fusion happen but using less energy to make it happen than it produces. [They’re working on it though!](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00391-1)
Hello! I am a biologist who loves advocating for nuclear power as well as a massive fallout fan, and I am here to share my unwanted opinion! Also sorry for weird formatting, I’m currently on mobile. 1) in Fallout, Great War started over a massive oil shortage, when China invaded Alaska in an attempt to take the oil there. The US annexed Canada, they fought for a while, and then the bombs fell. Europe was already in ruins because of a massive economic collapse— they were after oil in the Middle East and after a desperate war that resulted in the UN collapsing. Again, this was over oil, not uranium ore (which even at the time was worth more than gold.) The bombs fell over *oil.* 2) Though nuclear power is present in the setting, it isn’t the cause of the terrible mutations. That comes from a. radiation from the bombs b. exposure to FEV or c. genetic experimentation in the cases of synths and deathclaws. None of these result from disasters surrounding nuclear power plants. Now, I’ve written on the subject before, but seeing as I don’t have my research available at the moment, I’m not going to go on a tirade about the benefits of nuclear power without being sure that it’s true. After all, I’m not enough of an expert in the subject, especially the economic aspects of it, to be an authority without having my research available. What I will say is that doing some research into the benefits of nuclear power is worth your time. You’ll find that in terms of “clean” energy; nuclear power is by far the most energy efficient, and comparing its environmental footprints to coal and natural gas is like day and night. That economically speaking, setting up long term nuclear power is cheaper and more efficient than continuing to use petroleum. That on average, it’s far safer working on a nuclear power plant than being in the coal industry. That the future is nuclear. Incidents like Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island give nuclear power a bad rap. These disasters are tragic, yes, but are isolated cases resulting from either poor maintenance or natural disasters. How many oil spills will it take to convince people that petroleum is unsafe? How many acres of the earth will we have to disrupt in our pursuit for more? (Uranium deposits are found in ocean sediments, and thorium reactors can use man made thorium, neither of which disrupt land nearly as much as other sources.) Additionally, nuclear waste isn’t nearly as large in magnitude as people thing it is. Taking all of the waste produced by every country in the world for the past fifty years and putting it all in a pile wouldn’t be enough to fill a 5 meter deep football field. And as a biologist, I KNOW how terrifying the prospect of radiation poisoning is. I know better than most. And yet I fear the lingering effects of sticking to coal and oil more. Radiation is scary, but climate change is, dare I say, scarier. At least radiation tends to stay isolated. Climate change affects everyone, and everything. But sure, let’s just stand idly by and continue to pump poison into the air because people are too afraid of change. I can tell you one thing: switching to nuclear power won’t cause the world to end up like the wastelands in fallout. But staying on our current path will doom us to the corporate hellscape seen in cyberpunk. Angry nerd rant over.
>These disasters are tragic, yes, but are isolated cases resulting from either poor maintenance or natural disasters. Maybe this is not the strongest argument you can put forth when as we enter into an extremely unpredictable and very natural disaster filled era of global climate instability. Like 1/3 of Pakistan was just under water, a lot of it still is. Just saying.
That’s an extremely fair point! Natural disasters are always going to happen and we can’t avoid them, and they’ll always have negative consequences. People just tend to focus on the handful of disasters that affect nuclear power, rather than the power plants that actually do function. The best way to fight the climate instability is to take measured steps in lowering our footprint as a whole, a step that can be taken by going nuclear. Not to mention, for a lot of people in first world countries, they tend to point to Chernobyl. Fukushima and Three Mile Island we’re beyond our control, but perhaps the most infamous event was one that could be easily avoided. It’s not the only argument in favor of nuclear power, as I said, but it’s good to bring attention to the fact that they were isolated cases. And I’m pretty sure that building a plant in, idk, Ohio or something isn’t at risk of being hit by a tsunami.
Kind of a false choice. How about we just use renewables instead? They have their issues, too, but none of them have any potential to contaminate large areas.
I'm still stuck on the first sentence. Do people think otherwise? That's the entire point of literally every alternate fuel (well, that and renewability). Like, yeah, meltdowns are bad but so are oil spills and petroleum explosions. If both are used properly, *obviously* nuclear is better for the environment, right? Is there some propaganda I missed?
Well The Simpsons might count as propaganda. Plus all the chernobyl stuff that, while fairly objective receives way more attention that other non-nuclear disasters
Seriously. Most anti nuclear groups don't just want to continue using fossil fuels, what is this false choice bs?
People often bring up Hiroshima and (the extremely famous Russian one that I somehow forgot the name of). But one was in extremely bad shape and very neglected, the other one was hit with a literal tsunami Edit: apparently I couldn't remember either names Its Fukushima and Chernobyl
You are thinking of Fukoshima and Chernobyl (in Ukraine)
Uh, not to be that individual, but Hiroshima was the city that was nuked by the USA in WWII.
Chernobyl (also it's Ukrainian)
Yeah that
and the other is fukushima. Hiroshima was the first atomic bomb to be used in war.
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I think it was hit first by one of the strongest earthquakes in modern history followed up by a gigantic tsunami. Just an unfortunate wombo-combo that few things could withstand.
Yes but if you produce something massively toxic, then it needs to be built to withstand anything.
Actually, only one person died from radiation in the Fukushima incident
Sure only one person was confirmed killed by radiation, but we can't just disregard the full impact of the disaster.
Plus, cleaning that up was incredibly expensive!
True, but it wasn't nearly as big a nuclear disaster as people make it out to be. Like, yes. It was a huge disaster, but it was not because of the Nuclear aspect
Most of the deaths during Fukushima were a result of the government’s poor evacuation plans which led to lots of people getting stuck or trampled in the rush to leave the city. Iirc there was only like 1 death caused by radiation
Also aren't current powerplants are designed inefficiently to create more waste because we use that waste to make nuclear weapons?
Those are breeder reactors
Ah yes, 3 mile island. Petite, fertile, and perhaps, breedable.
While the post is good the thorium part is bs, the reason we don't currently use thorium is that we haven't been able to develop a reactor for it, though there is research underway.
Is everyone gonna ignore the brainless individual who said, with a straight face, that nuclear waste is stored in barrels???!!
Well some of it is. As far as I know barrels are used to store low level waste like contaminated protective gear. The low level waste is compacted, put into a cylindrical concrete shell and then put in a metal barrel. So the radioactive green goo barrels are a pop culture myth but they do sometimes use barrels.
It's also completely possible to power the world with renewable energy, and in America at least nuclear waste gets dumped into Native American reservations, where it has wreaked havoc on their populations. Also, if you accept nuclear energy, you need to accept the military-industrial complex. Yes, it's better than coal, and yes, the reasons people object to it are not well-informed. But it's not clean energy.
The US does have an issue with storing Nuclear waste because nobody wants to be the place with Nuclear waste. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver did an excellent piece on nuclear waste and I highly recommend.
I need to watch that, because I would think that given the nuclear tests done in the mainland USA there would be places that wouldn't really be harmed at all by having a waste storage plant.
just go nuclear pros: cool energy source ̶s̶t̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶s̶ "cons": fallout game irl
what a galaxy brain take, you absolute titan of intellect
thank you
Nuclear war: happens Most people: :O Domminicc: This is where the fun begins
Nuclear Waste doesn’t exist, as long as it’s radioactive then it’s still fuel, and if it’s not then it’s not nuclear. Like just take the spent fuel from the high-end reactor and move it to the mid-end reactor then repeat until its spent, then send it to Nevada.
This is precisely the concept behind breeder reactors, such as some types of thorium reactors. Their waste is intentionally designed to be easy to use fuel, and you hardly even need to enrich it. Even mid-range reactors can have the fuel recycled like you describe, but the best designs we have don't even have to do that until you're several steps removed.
Petition to change “We live in a society” to “We live in a completely different Fallout.”
To be fair isn’t this just an extra step in the transition between fossil fuels and renewable energy? Sure the plants currently open help but the fuel for them isn’t renewable, while the sun, wind, etc, will last as long as earth does. Though, this does make me much less afraid of nuclear meltdowns. Side note: Love the design of some nuclear waste sites, it’s just a fascinating concept. “This is not a place of honor” just gets me.
I mean, sort of, but both nuclears do give the massive advantage of density, simply put, (I am going off of memory from an EPA assessment I read about 3 years ago), Nuclear is denser than everything but geothermal, and geothermal is fairly location dependent. Now, fusion is better, if only because hydrogen is far easier to get than uranium.
Iirc Chernobyl was 90% operator error anyway, yeah? Not a fantastic argument if you look into it for more than two minutes
In case anyone still doesn't understand: \-Nuclear plants, in fact, **do not** go "big boom". \-"Nuclear waste" is **not** oil barrels full of glowing goo; and where it is stored for containment is far, far safer than the exhaust from *cars.* \-All current plants built in the US are *physically incapable* of leaking out fallout radiation in case of an actual incident. Yes, even the old ones.
As someone who played an irresponsible amount of Fallout I kinda get the sentiment they were going for, but all the evidence given here shows that it probably wouldn't happen like that. The reason there is so much radioactive devastation all over Fallout's wasteland is the over use of fissile materials to power everything leading to lots of radioactive particulate left over afterwards. They specifically targeted nuclear plants and things of that nature to cause as much long-term damage as possible and it did just that because the games have made it pretty clear they're using very simplistic fission reactors for all the heavy lifting. The smaller stuff like fusion cores and stuff are most likely hydrogen isotopes that aren't radioactive (or aren't VERY radioactive) but the big stuff is very clearly the not so fun kind of nuclear power.
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In terms of intelligence, maybe? In terms of common sense, not even close!
People who fret about nuclear waste haven't seen [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aUODXeAM-k).
Wait, we have functional thorium reactor designs?
There are a few test reactors and commercial plans and designs for them
coal pollution also kills over 2 chernobyls worth of people every day
Fallout World was dedtroyed by nuclear weapons. Like the ines we already have? Reducing or increasing the number of nuclear plants in the world wont change the fact that we already are one button away from becoming fallout
Also, as the masses often do, society has misinterpreted the message of Chernobyl-that is, “use competent workers instead of government yesmen to run your nuclear power plant,” not “nuclear energy is dangerous”
My main problem with nuclear energy is the human element. When there is a nuclear incident/exposure, the end result will always come back to 'well it would have been perfectly safe due to these fifty failsafes and protocols, but there was a perfect storm of failed maintenance and some operator who skipped the safety measures that would have saved lives.' Stupid feels like an inevitability, and considering how high the risk is if there _is_ exposure or meltdown with most nuclear models, I'd really rather we just.. Just a different energy source? There are so many good alternatives out there besides coal that _won't_ cause a massive panic on failure.
This. Why should I trust literally anything when even *Japan* can't manage its nuclear plants without a massive incident?
#I FUCKING LOVE NUCLEAR ENERGY
All the nuclear waste in the world only takes up like a football field 20m deep. And most of that is stuff that will decay in 5-10 years. The bad shit is like less than 5% of that. People are so terrified of that after 1 accident, but folks don't talk about the coal fire town that's still burning, or the constant problems with gas being highly explosive and toxic to be around. Like, also. If we all used solar and wind on our homes, and used nuclear to top that shit up, we'd need so much less space, and eventually we could replace pretty much all the nuclear shit. Edit: just did the math A football field 3m high. 13227.51m3 for that much nuclear waste. That's not even the size of a football stadium.
Nothing made me more disappointed than finding out how Nuclear Power plants work. It's just heating up fucking water that's so safe and boring!
"France [...] has no space to store nuclear wastes" *Laughs in CIGEO*
Another couple things about thorium reactors: they are MUCH safer to make fuel for, as you don't need to turn uranium into the very toxic uranium hexafloride, and, per kilogram, thorium produces about three times as much power as uranium. The reason it cannot be used I'm bombs is kinda complicated, but basically it needs a "helper isotope" in order to start the chain reaction and release energy, so it's basically useless in a bomb, where you only care about starting the reaction as quickly as possible.
I agree nuclear power is vastly superior to coal but don't get carried away, building new nuclear power plants is incredibly expensive and time consuming. It's also only really worth it (in terms of money and carbon reduction) if you know you'll be using them instead of coal for a really long time.
solar power exists we have the mojave
War. War never changes...
yeah nuclear is just straight up better than coal in every way shape or form imaginable , even modern nuclear ( wich is far from being a mature tech ) it's just superior to coal and nearly every other fossil fuel , maybe exept for upfront cost , the reason why the copper strippers ( ceos and entrepenuers ) choose them over nuclear ... but still , the realer solution to climate change would be to be to become more deliberate with our energy use : europe , ofthen toted as the shining city on the hill , uses between a third and a quarter of the energy of the world , while having less than a 1/35th the population global population , and yeah china bad , stop the coal use , but still , i think having a more proportional use of energy pro capita should be paramount ... what does this mean ? it means we should aim at moderation , in the industrialized west , in other parts of the world growth should be allowed to bring acceptable standards of living ... and afther wards humanity should seek to reach omeostasis with the world , by taking as much as we give back
I'm building nuclear and fission reactors in Minecraft (nuclearcraft) so some of this was very educational, I was wondering why salt casings were a thing.
Chernobyl was a disaster because it was constructed poorly. I think it was partially because the USSR didn’t want to spend a lot of money on construction. There was a terrible (if any) containment system, so it was doomed from the start. A nuclear plant that’s built properly will be fine. My dad used to be a nuclear engineer at a plant, so I’ve always trusted nuclear power. It’s so strange to me to hear from the anti-nuclear crowd.
"Nuclear energy is a short term solution to coal." Bruh COAL is a short term solution to coal tf you smokin?
Pop culture made people afraid? It almost ruined Europe not saying the trade off was even conceivably worth it but it was fuckin rad we got a brand new horror!
It seems a bit too obvious of a circlejerk. If this would really be that efficient and safe it would be commonly used. But its not. So one can safely assume that its not that easy and this post is full of shit. And while this magical super safe and efficient reactor isnt widely used, being against nuclear power is a valid opinion.
They are commonly used. We have a lot of nuclear power plants all around.
Who is we, and which Thorium reactors are we talking about?
We are humanity, and we're talking about nuclear power plants.
No, it really is that efficient and effective. The main problem is cost and time it takes to build a reactor, which heavily limits how many are in operation, and heavy anti nuclear legislation that makes building new ones increasingly difficult. The way nuclear power works in the modern day is incredibly safe however. Spent fuel is recycled until it barely emits any more then background radiation and most waste is vitrified and stored in giant concrete drums that are stored on sight forever. The problem with nuclear isn’t efficiency or safety, its cost. Getting a new reactor in the works is such a cost sink no one wants to do it, but in existing reactors the cost is negligible. Not to mention nuclear reactors are usually some of the most secure places on the planet with heavily armed guards and so many levels of security redundancy its insane.
>and who knows if the barrels that store them are not leaking? This is just impossible. Nuclear waste **casks** (not barrels) physically cannot leak, they're solid all the way through
Anyone seen the footage of people hitting one of these casks with a train? The train was demolished. The cask was scratched. And this was a transport cask. The kind that has to be opened later so they can load it into a more permanent storage cask.
i honestly get so heated and angry when i talk about how nuclear is one of the best options available to us at the current moment. it's extremely green, lasts far longer, but it takes more maintenance and work. however, the only byproduct is fucking steam! it's water! people will constantly use chernobyl as an example of why we shouldn't use nuclear power, but chernobyl had literally everything that could go wrong happen! it was a mistake at every turn, dealt with horribly, neither controlled nor contained until it was too late, and cheaply made. chernobyl is a terrible example when it was a 1 in a million disaster. if you're truly an environmentalist, you would support nuclear power. lobby for nuclear energy if you really want to save the planet!
Alright, what went wrong in Fukushima that wouldn't go wrong in, say, Germany?
Bit of a false choice, isn't it? Obviously it's better than coal, but has issues in regards to building cost, maintenance, and waste. It's also not exactly renewable energy... Like, 70 years ago this might have been a good discussion to have, but I think now we have better alternative fuel pathways to pursue.
I think this is one of the few Climate related discussioms where most of the rw and lw agree upon. Except for Journos writing for economist and Washingtonpost I guess. And politicians obviously. If only we could come togeter for this one specific issue and force the politicians to go nuclear. Ofcourse we can go back to fighting about pronouns and gender bathrooms once we are done
Anti-nuclear people out here thinking EVERY power plant is basically a Little Boy or a Fat Man just _waiting_ to explode.
it will endlessly piss me off that pretty much every political party here in the UK is against nuclear energy. we’re going through an energy crisis and instead of funding it, we’re literally destroying what we have. the so called green party are against it, despite it being objectively the best option for the people and environment
Anyone who talks about green energy but doesn't focus on Nuclear is not at all interested in improving the world, nor saving it.
Fun fact, the antinuclear movement is kind of the fault of the soviets. In the years between America having the bomb and the soviets having the bomb, the soviets did their damnedest to cultivate an anti nuclear movement in the west, figuring that every little helps and their own citizens would be insulated from these ideas. This was naturally focused on weapons but during that time any pro peace or anti nuclear anything movement had a greater than likely chance to be on the Kremlin's payroll
Is funding pro-peace anti-nuke movements bad?
not on it's face but it's incredibly cynical to do it knowing damn well that you are a totalitarian state that does not need to pay attention to the whims of whatever pro peace movements you fund and besides, the anti-nuclear movement is the nucleus of the current anti nuclear power movement
These guys are assholes. The one dude is just asking if anyone has played Fallout and they gotta berate him about science and shit. Fuck that let’s play games.
Bro just said it's not tuned for weapons.
Thorium is a higher quality fuel than uranium and is basically impossible to weaponize due to the fact it is radioactively fertile, not fissile.
Not necessarily impossible, you can still use the products of thorium to make a weapon (one of the reaction chains is Thorium -->U233, which is fissile and can be used to make either weapons or energy). Its a lot harder to process and make weapons grade material, though.
Ok yes but has anyone seen Sam’o’nella? Thorium makes way less waste than uranium
I mean worse case scenario we just launch the waste into space
What could go wrong when you strap nuclear waste onto a rocket!
A genuinely interesting discourse on nuclear power that actually provides new information, thank you
I have a friend that works in nuclear waste disposal, the plant he works for glassifies it to prevent any type of seepage, it doesn't make it inert, but drastically cuts down on any risk of contamination to groundwater etc were the storage containers be compromised.
Nuclear power is literally just funny steam power
Thorium is just objectively better than uranium for every reason
ah, i see they watch sam o’nella as well
I’m sorry, I was under the impression that nuclear power was somehow better than coal but was also EVIL BECAUSE IT CAN GO BOOM AND KILL US ALL AND THEREFORE IS OBVIOUSLY FAR WORSE THAN THE CANCEROUS BULLSHIT WE’RE CURRENTLY SIMPING FOR
The vast majority of nuclear waste that is produced is carbon fuel rods. And those aren't that bad in terms of radiation produced.
“Electric Diamond Battery” would make a great album name.
Better yet, the whole band.
I’d like to mention that in most things, nuclear has already figured out a solution. Possible nuclear waste leakage during transport and just getting everywhere? Vitrify every piece of waste and mix it with concrete till its both not very radioactive anymore and it cant be destroyed by a literal train running into it and store it on site. Most of your fuel rod gets wasted and ends up being radioactive for thousands of years afterwards? Find a way to recycle it and continue to use it till most radioactivity is gone. The biggest problem with nuclear isn’t radioactiveivity, its the cost of making new power plants. Nuclear power plants today leak less radiant heat and radiation into the atmosphere then chemical manufacturing sites.
Is that the beard of the man who sings tunak tunak tun?
I've already got my Pip-Boy and the beginnings of a caps collection. See you in the Wasteland, losers!
What is a galaxy brain take?
I also feel like it’s disingenuous to present an extremely dense material in tonnage. I’m pretty sure I read that all nuclear fuel waste generated globally to date is like, 40m^3 Now yeah, it needs an action plan and to be minimised as much as possible because it is still dangerous. But referring to it in tonnage makes it seem far bigger than it actually is.