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It’s sad that the coal lobby has convinced so many people that the most reliable clean energy source we’ve ever discovered is somehow bad.
Particularly since coal power stations emit FAR more radioactive material, routinely, than most nuclear “leaks”.
It’s sad that the coal lobby has convinced so many people that the most reliable clean energy source we’ve ever discovered is somehow bad.
Its bad in the sense that is a crazy expensive way to generate electricity. Its not theoretical. Ask the customers of the most recent nuclear reactors to go online in the USA in Georgia. source
"The report shows average Georgia Power rates are up between $34 and $35 since before the plant’s Unit 3 went online. " (there were bonds and fees on customer electric bills to pay for the nuclear plant construction before it was even delivering power.
…and…
“The month following Unit 4 achieving commercial operation, average retail rates were adjusted by approximately 5%. With the Nuclear Construction Cost Recovery (NCCR) tariff removed from bills, a typical resident customer using 1,000 kWh per month saw an estimated monthly increase of $8.95 per month. This follows the previous rate impact in 2023 following Unit 3 COD of $5.42 (3.2%).”
So another $5.42/month for the first reactor built on top of the $35/month, then another $8.95/month on top of all that for a rough total of $49.37/month more just to buy electricity that is generated from nuclear.
Maybe the power company is greedy? Nope, they’re even eating more costs and not passing them on to customers:
“Georgia Power says they’re losing about $2.6 billion in total projected costs to shield customers from the responsibility of paying it. Unit 4 added about $8.95 to the average customer’s bill, John Kraft, a spokesman for the company said.”
So that $49.37/month premium for electricity from nuclear power would be even higher if the power company passed on all the costs. Nuclear power for electricty is just too inefficient just on the cost basis, this is completely ignoring the problems with waste management.
The next biggest problem with nuclear power is where the fuel comes from:
“Russia also dominates nuclear fuel supply chains. Its state-owned Rosatom controls 36 percent of the global uranium enrichment market and supplies nuclear fuel to 78 reactors in 15 countries. In 2020, Russia owned 40 percent of the total uranium conversion infrastructure worldwide. Russia is also the third-largest supplier of the imported uranium that fuels U.S. power plants, accounting for 16 percent of total imported uranium. The Russian state could weaponize its dominance in the nuclear energy supply chain to advance its geostrategic interests. During the 2014 Russia-Ukraine crisis, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin threatened to embargo nuclear fuel supplies to Ukraine.” source
So relying on nuclear power for electricity means handing the keys of our power supply over to outside countries that are openly hostile to us.
Yes, of course. Because oil has never depended on outside countries that are openly hostile. No sire, thank goodness we rely on a power source that no war has ever been fought for, ever in history.
/s
Because oil has never depended on outside countries that are openly hostile.
That argument is so weak to me. No one is advocating “oil is the future! We need to build more oil consuming power plants!”. If people were, sure you’d have a great counter. Since that’s not reality though, its a Strawman response at best. Its Whataboutism at its worse.
The argument I’m replying to is a classic “not perfect, thus not worth it”. Its disingenuous and it calls for disingenuous reply. We are also pursuing renewables in despite of their political and technical flaws. The point is that all the flaws that OP exposes about nuclear power also applied to renewables (at one point in history solar power was 10x more expensive than nuclear) and also to oil. They are status quo defending arguments designed to halt thought, paralyze action and scoff change. Just because it isn’t perfect doesn’t mean it isn’t better.
The argument I’m replying to is a classic “not perfect, thus not worth it”. Its disingenuous and it calls for disingenuous reply.
I wrote nearly a page of text all of factual and relevant points. If your threshold for bad faith replies is that every facet of every argument must be explored before you’ll allow a genuine reply, you’re in the wrong place.
We are also pursuing renewables in despite of their political and technical flaws.
Agreed! We are seeing their benefits over their shortcomings. Additionally, its not an all-or-nothing decision. A blend of solutions is the best likely path forward. Some nuclear (currently built) should be part of that. However, putting all the efforts into scaling nuclear would be extremely expensive. If we do that, we should understand that cost will be much larger than most people understand.
The point is that all the flaws that OP exposes about nuclear power also applied to renewables (at one point in history solar power was 10x more expensive than nuclear) and also to oil.
Thats a bad argument to support your pro-nuclear position. Other renewables are expensive when they are first developed and get cheaper over time. Nuclear has gone the other direction. Nuclear power is more expensive now than it was when it began, and is only getting more expensive.
They are status quo defending arguments designed to halt thought, paralyze action and scoff change. Just because it isn’t perfect doesn’t mean it isn’t better.
My dollar cost argument against nuclear is not that.
The exceptionally high dollar cost of nuclear was not part of the conversation before I introduced it. It is an important consideration if we’re talking about scaling out any particular solution. If one solution is more expensive than others that produces the same result that is important to consider.
Nuclear has gone the other direction. Nuclear power is more expensive now than it was when it began, and is only getting more expensive.
Ask why? don’t just stay with oil companies PR talk points. Nuclear is expensive because innovation has been artificially stifled. A huge part of this, is the insistence to forbid newer designs and more modern improvements, and instead force new plants to use old technologies and models that rely on on-site bespoke construction, as well as arcane and arbitrary administrative processes. Nuclear power is expensive (in the US), because it was made expensive by refusing it all the factors that typically reduce costs of technologies. Nuclear power never got to take advantage of the things that made solar and wind power cheaper, because oil companies lobbied with a shit ton of money to prevent it.
It doesn’t matter though. Nuclear power could’ve help us survive climate change…40 years ago. It’s too late now anyways. Even if we covered the whole planet with solar power and stopped every single combustion engine in existence, we are already on the way to living in a hellscape. We must focus on survival of the species now.
Ask why? don’t just stay with oil companies PR talk points.
I do. I’m not using anyone’s talking points. I couldn’t even tell you what they would be. I have 2 smaller nuclear power plants in my state. I liked the idea of nuclear power, but looked into it myself. It seems like it should be great. Reality shows it isn’t great. I does one thing well (24/7 carbon free electricity), but thats it. Everything else is negatives I found.
Nuclear is expensive because innovation has been artificially stifled.
I read your article. It doesn’t say what you’re saying it does. That article says “nuclear is expensive” because projects are building old designs retrofitting existing plants.
A huge part of this, is the insistence to forbid newer designs and more modern improvements,
See you say that, but facts don’t align with that: “NRC Certifies First U.S. Small Modular Reactor Design” Jan 2023 source
Do ALL new reactor designs get approved? No. Do no new reactor designs get approved? Also no.
Nuclear power is expensive (in the US), because it was made expensive by refusing it all the factors that typically reduce costs of technologies.
I read your article there. Its argument is that the theoretical arguments for pricing nuclear power are faulty. We don’t have to work with theoreticals. The customers of the most recently brought online reactors at Vogle nuclear power plant in Georgia are paying significantly more for their electricity as the result of their new nuclear reactors, and will, for decades to come. I pointed this out and cited sources in my OP on this.
It doesn’t matter though. Nuclear power could’ve help us survive climate change…40 years ago. It’s too late now anyways. Even if we covered the whole planet with solar power and stopped every single combustion engine in existence, we are already on the way to living in a hellscape. We must focus on survival of the species now.
Agreed, so its irrelevant to bring up what could have been done in the past. We have what we have today.
That is an extreme over simplification of a very complicated subject, it’s never that simple.
Having said that: yeah. It was stupid to stop using nuclear energy
Just because burning fossil fuels is bad doesn’t magically make nuclear good, or somehow no big deal. The chance for a catastrophic accident mentioned in the meme is only one drawback (which is bad enough–get real, denial is not a strategy here). Just a few other issues:
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the problem of what to do with the waste: no permanent solutions have yet been implemented and we’ve been using costly-to-maintain “temporary” methods for decades. Not to mention the thermal water pollution to aquatic ecosystems
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the enormously out of proportion up front costs to construct the plants, and higher ongoing operation and maintenance costs due to safety risks in proportion to amount of power generated
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the fact that uranium is also a limited resource that has to be mined like other ores, with all the environmental negatives of that, which then has to go through a lot of processing involving various mechanics and chemicals just to make it usable as fuel.
Anyway I’m not going to try and go into more detail on a forum post, but all this advocacy for a very problematic method of producing power as if it’s a simple solution to our problems is kind of irritating. At least I hope the above shows we should stop pretending it’s “clean energy”. We should be focusing on developing renewable and sustainable energy systems.
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Funny how nuclear power plants are taboo, but building thousands of nuclear warheads all over the globe is no issue.
Funny how building nuclear power plants that can only (if you have dipshits running them) kill a nearby city is taboo, but climate change that will kill everyone is acceptable to the moralists.
Funny how whataboutism makes your audience defensive.
Funny how being polite didn’t convince you so now you’re trying to sell that being mean is going to stop you. You were always useless.
Hey, I hear you, life is stressful and there’s a lot going on. It’s okay to be upset, I hope whatever you’re going through gets easier.
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Is there a particular reason you think everyone, here specifically, believes those things?
Edit: I absolutely share your passion about climate change, as a preface. Calling someone, who agrees with you or not, “useless” makes them dismiss your opinion. It just means we can’t engage in any meaningful discussion and others are less likely to take action.
A nuclear power plant cannot destroy a city.
I guess destroy != Make unlivable
People don’t put reactors next to cities for a reason. Meaning this scenario wouldn’t happen. Nuclear is also one of the safest energy sources overall in terms of deaths caused. It’s safer than some renewables even, and that’s not factoring in advances in the technology that have happened over the decades making it safer. This kind of misinformation is dangerous. It’s also not a good reason not to do nuclear. The reason why renewables are used more (and probably have a somewhat larger role to play in general) is because they a cheaper and quicker to manufacture. Nuclear energy’s primary problem isn’t safety but rather cost. It’s biggest strength is reliability and availability. You can build a nuclear plant basically anywhere where there is water.
I know nuclear is super safe but we have actual examples of accidents happening and making cities unlivable, you can’t deny that.
Which cities? I haven’t heard of any cities being made unlivable, only towns and villages.
🙄 I’m sorry, I was unaware of the population requirement
Depends on where you live, Germany that gets the beating for phasing out nuclear, is so densely populated that these remote areas hardly exist!
That’s actually an interesting point. Maybe we shouldn’t put nuclear reactors in Germany.
And that cannot happen. It’s a fear people have because they equate a nuclear power plant with a nuclear bomb. That is as wrong as considering the earth flat.
Chernobyl
But that was a really old tech, the plants built after 1990s shouldn’t allow this scale of pollution even if all the stops are pulled and everything breaks in the worst way possible
Chernobyl yes, let’s talk about it : after the catastrophy, 2 reactors were used until very recently (like until 10 or 20 years ago).
After the catastrophy, Chernobyl was made into an exclusion zone where people wouldn’t be allowed to live. But people came back 10 years after and it’s a small village now.
BTW even Hiroshima and Nagazaki that were annihilated with atomic bombs, that is weapons meant to destroy whole cities, were quickly inhabited again.
So much for the permanent destruction and millions of years of contamination. CO2 is a far more deadly compound for mankind than any radioactive material. Anti-nuke militants are merely ignorant fanatics.
Fukushima?
Fukushima, in 2024,is a city of 272569 inhabitants. If that’s unlivable, I’m fine with it. Hiroshima, Nagazaki and Chernobyl are all inhabited too.
Saying that nuclear stuff makes places unlivable is plain wrong, it’s anti-science. It’s comics level of bullshit science. Travel in time is a more serious theory than nuclear stuff destroying the planet.
Funny how solar, wind, and batteries are way cheaper and faster to build yet people are still talking about nuclear.
Stopping nuclear from being built is the problem.
We would have had a lot more clean energy than we do by now if we let the nuclear power plants that “would take too long to build!” be built back then, because they’d be up and running by now.
More letting perfect be the enemy of good.
Nuclear may have been good 10 years ago, but it isn’t really good anymore. This is like saying “if I had bought a PS2 in 2002 then I would have had fun playing Final Fantasy XI Online. Therefore, I should buy a PS2 and FFXI Online so I can have fun in 2024”. That ship has sailed
If only people weren’t fearmongering about nuclear 50 years ago we’d have clean energy today.
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, second best is now”
That saying works for trees. We didn’t make trees obsolete with better technology.
Reliable clean energy isn’t a solved issue today either. Until we have grid-level storage we need something that can provide a reliable base and had enough mass/momentum to handle grid fluctuations.
Solar and wind are cheaper yes. Batteries, no. If batteries were that cheap and easy to place we’d have solved energy a long time ago. Currently batteries don’t hold a candle to live production, the closest you can get is hydro storage, which not everyone has, and can’t realistically be built everywhere.
Look at the stats. The second largest battery storage in the US (and the world) is located near the Moss Landing Power Plant. It provides a capacity of 3000 MWh with 6000 MWh planned (Which would make it the largest). That sounds like a lot, but it’s located next to San Jose and San Fransisco, so lets pick just one of those counties to compare. The average energy usage in the county of San Clara, which contains San Jose (You might need to VPN from the US to see the source) is 17101 GWh per year, which is about 46.8 GWh per day, or 46800 MWh. So you’d need 8 more of those at 6000 MWh to even be able to store a day’s worth of electricity from that county alone, which has a population of about 2 million people. And that’s not even talking about all the realities that come with electricity like peak loads.
For reference, the largest hydro plant has a storage capacity of 40 GWh, 6.6x more (at 6000 MWh above).
Relative to how much space wind and solar use, nuclear is the clear winner. If a country doesn’t have massive amounts of empty area nuclear is unmissable. People also really hate seeing solar and wind farm. That’s not something I personally mind too much, but even in the best of countries people oppose renewables simply because it ruins their surroundings to them. Creating the infrastructure for such distributed energy networks to sustain large solar and wind farms is also quite hard and requires personnel that the entire world has shortages of, while a nuclear reactor is centralized and much easier to set up since it’s similar to current power plants. But a company that can build a nuclear plant isn’t going to be able to build a solar farm, or a wind farm, and in a similar way if every company that can make solar farms or wind farms is busy, their price will go up too. By balancing the load between nuclear, solar, and wind, we ensure the transition can happen as fast and affordable as possible.
There’s also the fact that it always works and can be scaled up or down on demand, and as such is the least polluting source (on the same level as renewables) that can reliably replace coal, natural gas, biomass, and any other always available source. You don’t want to fall back on those when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow. If batteries were available to store that energy it’d be a different story. But unless you have large natural batteries like hydro plants with storage basins that you can pump water up to with excess electricity, it’s not sustainable. I’d wish it was, but it’s not. As it stands now, the world needs both renewables and nuclear to go fully neutral. Until something even better like nuclear fusion becomes viable.
You know why people who live near wind power hate wind power?
It’s because their neighbour got paid to host a turbine, and they did not. It is envy.
I’m sure such cases exist, but where I’m from people don’t really get paid to host turbines, maybe companies at times. They dislike them because it affects the view in the area, and especially if you live very close to them the blades can cause noticeable flickering shadows. That latter point has a lot more weight to it in my eyes, but people do really care about the former as well, and it’s kind of hard to push on people when they live there and not you.
I’m taking from the Australian context where someone always owns the land and it’s cheaper to buy rights to place and service a turbine then to buy land
I suppose you live somewhere the land can be leased from government
Ok let’s compare real data then. Vogtle 3&4 are the latest nuclear plants to be completed in the US. They cost over 30 billion dollars for a capacity of 2.106GW. That’s >14.2 dollars/watt. Let’s be generous and assume nuclear has a 100% capacity factor (it doesn’t).
I can’t find real numbers for Moss Landing specifically, but NREL has data on BESS costs up to 10 hr storage at $4.2/watt. Let’s ignore that no grid in the country actually needs 10hr storage yet.
Utility scale solar has well known costs of ~1 dollar/watt. Let’s assume a capacity factor of 25%, so for equivalent total energy generation we are looking at $4.
$4 for solar, $4.2 for BESS, and since you’ll complain about not having 24hr baseline let’s add another equivalent 10hr storage system at $4.2. that’s a total of $12.4, compared to Vogtle’s $14.2.
Add in that the solar plus BESS would be built in 1-2 years, while Vogtle took well over a decade.
Also consider that BESS systems have additional value in providing peaking ability and frequency regulation, among other benefits.
Also consider that PV and batteries have always gotten cheaper over time, while nuclear has always gotten more expensive.
2.160 GW is it’s rated capacity. I’m not sure how you got from there to 14.2 dollars per watt, but it completely ignores the lifetime of the power plant.
Vogtle 3&4 are really a bad example because unit 4 only entered commercial activity this year. But fine, we can look at what it produces just recently.. About 3335000 MWh per month, or about 107 GWh per day. We can then subtract the baseline from Reactor 1 & 2 from before Reactor 3 was opened, removing about 1700000 MWh per month. Which gives us about 53 GWh per day. The lifetime of them is expected to be around 60 to 80 year, but lets take 60. That’s about 1177200 GWh over it’s lifetime, divided by the 36 billion that it cost to built… Gives you about 0.03 dollars per kWh. Which is pretty much as good as renewables get as well. But of course, this ignores maintenance, but that’s hard to calculate for solar panels as well. As such it will be somewhat larger than 0.03, I will admit.
Solar panels on the other hand, often have a lifetime of 30 years, so even though it costs less per watt, MW, or GW, it also produces less over time. For solar, and wind, that’s about the same.. So this doesn’t really say much.
But that wasn’t even the point of my message. As I said, I agree that Nuclear is slightly more expensive than renewables. But there are other costs associated with renewables that aren’t expressed well in monetary value for their units alone. Infrastructure, space, approval, experts to maintain it.
Let’s ignore that no grid in the country actually needs 10hr storage yet.
Because they cannot. They can’t do it because there’s not enough capacity. If the sun is cloudy for a day, and the wind doesn’t run. Who’s going to power the grid for a day? That’s right. Mostly coal and gas. That’s the point. Nuclear is there to ensure we don’t go back to fossils when we want to be carbon neutral, which means no output. If you are carbon neutral only when the weather is perfect for renewables, then you’re not really carbon neutral and still would have to produce a ton of pollution at times.
I’m glad batteries and all are getting cheaper. They are definitely needed, also for nuclear. But you must also be aware of just how damn dirty they are to produce. The minerals required produce them are rare, and expensive. Wind power also kills people that need to maintain it. Things aren’t so black and white.
Also consider that PV and batteries have always gotten cheaper over time, while nuclear has always gotten more expensive.
This is not true, and it should be obvious when you think about it. Since this data fluctuates all the time. Nuclear has been more expensive in the past, before getting cheaper, and now getting more expensive again. Solar and wind have had peaks of being far more expensive than before. These numbers are just a representation of aggregate data, and they often leave out nuance like renewables being favored by regulations and subsidies. They are in part a manifestation of the resistance to nuclear. Unlike renewables, there are many more steps to be made for efficiency in nuclear. Most development has (justifiably) been focused on safety so far, as with solar and wind and batteries we can look away from the slave labor on the other side of the world to produce the rare earth metals needed for it. There is no free lunch in this world.
For what it’s purpose should be, which is to provide a baseline production of electricity when renewables are not as effective. A higher price can be justified. It’s not meant to replace renewables altogether. Because if renewables can’t produce clean energy, their price might as well be infinitely high in that moment, which leaves our only options to be fossil fuels, hydro, batteries, or nuclear. Fossil fuels should be obvious, not everyone has hydro (let alone enough), batteries don’t have the capacity or numbers at the scale required (for the foreseeable future), and nuclear is here right now.
Would battery companies allow the price to go down? They are quite greedy as well.
There is competition in battery production. Pretty much all of society would be better off with better batteries, so price gauging in an industry like that is quite hard. And if it was, it would not go unnoticed.
The problem is simply the technology. There’s advancements like molten salt batteries, but it’s practically in it’s infancy. The moment a technology like that would become a big improvement over the norm, it would pretty much immediately cause a paradigm shift in energy production and every company would want a piece of the pie. So you’ll know it when you see it. But it might also just start off very underwhelmingly like nuclear fusion and very gradually improve with the hope it can scale beyond the current best technologies for batteries.
All we can do is wait and hope for breakthrough, I guess. Because cheap and abundant batteries could really help massively with reducing our carbon output.
It’s because there’s no opposing corporate interest to building nuclear weapons. The way the world works is: profitable shit happens, no matter what the hippies think about it. See: every other environmental issue.
I’m in Missouri so apparently I’m surrounded by silos
How many fingers do you have?
Well, you see, the “Anti Magic Rock” Lobby has immense amount of power because of the money of the still lucrative “burning stuff and pollute everything” business.
It’s the “Burning other magic rocks” party.
Nuclear isn’t in competition with fossil fuels, it’s in competition with renewables. Renewables are better than nuclear by pretty much every conceivable metric. So fuck nuclear power, it’s a waste of money and time.
Fact: that is a fake statement.
Nuclear is not renewables competition.
Nuclear provides a base line energy production.
Both renewables and fossils produce a variable production line.
So within a rational production scheme the choice is nuclear+renewables or fossils+renewables. As renewables by themselves cannot work. Because there is months over the year when it’s not sunny, not rainy and not windy enough, what do we do for those months? We close humanity during those months because some political dogma says so?
Since we are talking hypotheticals, an ideal scenario would be a nearly completely renewables approach where each household is its own self contained energy production center equippef with solar arrays, wind turbines, thermoelectric generators. Various means of production. And have either propane or diesel generator as a backup. You know your average overall watt-hour usage for the household and try to have enough battery capacity to satisfy it for a week or two of bad weather.
Most household electrical wiring is redone for DC transmission and all consumer appliances possible are run straight on DC for optimal efficency. Energy efficent heat pumps for cooling and heating. energy efficent cooking appliances like induction heaters. Electric cars that act as backup battery banks would be awesome.
Industrial zones would be much harder as you need huge solar panel or wind turbine arrays to get the megawatt and gigawatts needed to run a factory. Most factories are decades old running on the most energy ineffient assembly lines you can think of. A energy mandate that calculated and taxed total energy efficency compared to national average for factory size and the would be a start.
Humanity simply does not “stop” because we go through an energy crisis. We did fine enough before the industrial revoltion and renewables + energy efficent consumer devices have improved a bunch. The economy would tank and what renewable energy made would be a premium commodity and the system would adapt to use it best as possible. But things would go on.
That, and the green parties (at least in EU).
The “green” parties 💵💵
Yeah, oil oiled the “green” anti-nuclear protests.
You can tell that’s how it was because the cops didn’t beat them as much (or in some big cases at all) as they do even the most insignificant anti-oil protesters.
TBF a nuclear incident is not like burning just one house down. It’s burning down the whole city and making it unusable for a decade or ten.
While 100% true for nuclear, the current state of burning fossil fuels is much MUCH worse.
Yes. Over the long term it will render the planet uninhabitable, or at least close enough to it.
Some experts would argue it’s already starting to be uninhabitable.
I think a town burning down would be fatal for most the inhabitants 3000 BC
Yes, maybe… but the point being they could, and often did, rebuild right where they’d been before. Radiation prevents that.
Why not build it in a remote location then?
Dams can also produce a lot of hydroelectric power, and a catastrophic failure could also destroy an entire town or more. We just don’t build dams upstream of a large town.
The Chernobyl reactor’s explosion had impacts all the way in West Europe.
I don’t think you can be remote enough with this.
I hate this thread.
In Soviet Lemmy this thread hates you
I bet you’re working for BP and Exxon, shill.
Lol yeah I get paid $30 an hour by Exxon to comments on Lemmy
Burning down your house doesn’t poison people thousands of years later, so it’s not a perfect analogy.
Plus we have magic mirrors and magic fans that do the same thing as the magic rocks just way cheaper.
We’ve upgraded from burning our houses down to burning our atmosphere down which will absolutely poison humans for centuries to come. And since we now burn larger fires with black rocks, those release far more magic rock dust that poisons people than the magic rock water heaters do. Not to mention that fire has both killed more of us cave dwellers than magic rocks ever have (including the flying weaponry runes made from them) and have caused more ecological disasters, so fire is much worse.
Then we talk magic mirrors, they have evil rocks in them that get in our rivers and we don’t contain well. That aside, we show tradition to our ancestors by making much of them with slavery.
And the magic fans? The design is very human. They’d be a gift from the gods if only the spirit of the wind were always with us.
Summary: Magic rock still good, black rocks and black water make bad fire and hairless monkey make sick more.
Then we talk magic mirrors, they have evil rocks in them that get in our rivers and we don’t contain well. That aside, we show tradition to our ancestors by making much of them with slavery.
Sure, because mining uranium is total helaty and no problem at all.
https://genesenvironment.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s41021-015-0019-3
One must be very careful when digging for magic hot rocks or else you expose the evil spirit vapors. Our ancestors knew that where there is magic, some evil lurks. As they did then, we do now when we accept a better evil in return for the magic we believe may do more good than before.
This is exactly, factually right, and eloquently put using the same meme terminology people here understand.
I love the wording in here
Awesomeness Matey… A great paraphrasing correcto.
We had magic mirrors and magic fans for centuries tho.
Yet we decided to release way more poison and even way more radiation by mining and burning fossil fuels. We just poison larger areas than any nuclear disasters. And with fossil fuels people actually get cancer, and with toxic byproducts, mutations and birth defects.
People in polluted areas die sooner. Except around nuclear disasters sights - the air gets cleaner once all the people are thrown out.
We had magic mirrors and magic fans for centuries tho.
We’ve had solar and wind electricity generation for centuries?
Eccentricity generators were invented before mass oil or coal use (1830s by Faraday).
We’ve had windmills, hydro, and even animal/human powered devices that could result in turning cranks for the generator to produce electricity - all for centuries at even that point. I would have to look up about when we first used solar to boil water, but I’m guessing there about.
Biomass and windmills perhaps
You say thousands of years, but it hasn’t been even 70 years since Chernobyl and the surrounding area is a thriving forest with tons of animals, unbothered by humans.
You’re right to reject the logic behind that because it’s nonsense. Its not making sense to them because they still presume some kind of good faith when it come to these sorts of things.
The reason we haven’t built more nuclear power stations is because oil, gas and coal companies will make less money, if we build more nuclear power stations.
They have the means, the motive and they have a well recorded history of being that cartoonishly villainous. Nothing else makes sense.
Three Mile Island and Chernobyl really did change things. Prior to those incidents there were plans to build over 50 more nuclear plants in place which got canceled as a result. Currently oil and gas industries will do all they can to keep nuclear from making a come back, but for a long time they didn’t have to do shit thanks to those catastrophes.
Don’t forget Fukushima bring an excellent reminder
They didn’t have to but they did anyway.
It’s crazy that Mr. Burns from the Simpsons was in nuclear and not coal or oil. Probably a product of the propaganda at the time.
Anon is dumb. Anon forgets the nuclear waste. Anon also forgets that the plants for the magical rocks are extremely expensive. So much that energy won by these rocks is more expensive than wind energy and any other renewable.
Anon isn’t dumb, just simple. Nuclear energy can be the best solution for certain situations. While renewables are the better choice in every way, they’re effectiveness isn’t equally distributed. There are places where there just isn’t enough available renewable energy sources year round to supply the people living there. When energy storage and transmission methods are also not up to the task, nuclear becomes the best answer. It shouldn’t be the first answer people look to but it is an answer. An expensive answer but sometimes the best one.
Also nuclear waste doesn’t have to be a problem. If anyone was willing to cover the cost of burning it in a breeder reactor for power or burry it forever. It just is because it’s expensive.
When energy storage and transmission methods are also not up to the task, nuclear becomes the best answer.
Obviously, the best answer is to improve energy storage and transmission infrastructure. Why would we waste hundreds of millions on a stupid toy power plant when we could spend 10% of that money on just running decent underground cables.
You do realize that all that is also expensive, and limited? We haven’t invented room temperature superconductors yet, and battery technology is far from perfect. There is only so much lithium and cobalt in the entire world. Yes we can now use things like sodium, but that’s a technology that’s still young and needs more research before it’s full potential is realized. There is also a reason we have overground cables and not underground. Digging up all that earth is hella expensive.
You really don’t understand how expensive underground cables are. You know those big, huge steel transmission towers that you see lined up, hundreds in a row?
Those towers costs hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars each. And the reason they’re used is because that’s way cheaper than underground.
Shit - just the cable is a couple million per mile per cable.
Are you fucking serious? Nuclear power plants cost way fucking more than some cables. You people are fundamentally so unserious. Pull your head out of a reactor for ten seconds and take reality as it exists
Yes. They cost more than some cables. But we aren’t talking about wiring a stereo.
A new nuclear unit (4 billion-ish) costs about as much as 2,000 miles of transmission-grade cable (about 2 million per mile). Considering that there’s about 30 cables on a tower run, you’re looking at around 65 miles’ worth of cable for the cost of a nuclear unit.
And that’s just the cost of the wire. No towers, no conduit, no substations, no land acquisition (aerial easement and underground are very different things), no labor.
A new nuclear unit (4 billion-ish)
In the USA the most recent two reactors (2 added to a plant that already had 2 existing) cost $34 billion just for the two new ones. source
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Removed by mod
Maybe take a break from the doomscolling/doomposting and try to relax.
I think you need to touch grass. You sound very angry about some cables.
Because superconductors are even more expensive than breeder reactors.
and breeder reactors are more expensive than faerie magic, I prefer to use technologies that are actually real rather than things I wish were real
I prefer to use technologies that are actually real rather than things I wish were real
Wake up, 80-ies were 40 years ago!
USSR figured it out long time ago: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-600_reactor
Anon forgets the nuclear waste.
Nuclear waste is pretty tame. Compare gloves that were used once to turn valve on pipe in reactor room to shit from coal in your lungs. Even most active kind of waste everyone thinks of - spent fuel - consists from about 90% of useful material.
EDIT: 95-98% of useful material.
Anon also forgets that the plants for the magical rocks are extremely expensive.
Actually not. Especially cost of energy compared to one of coal.
The costs used for wind/solar energy never included the cost of the required buffer storage, and even the rare few people who include that never factor in frequency stability which to this day is maintained by the giant steam turbines everyone wants to get rid of. It will not be trivial to solve the frequency stability problem; it will likely require massive investment in pumped water storage, flywheel storage, or nuclear energy, and these costs once finally included in the real cost of wind/solar will hurt its value prospect considerably.
As for nuclear waste: the overwhelming majority of nuclear waste generated over the lifetime of a reactor is stored onsite. Only the smallest amount of material is what will actually remain dangerous for a long time, and many countries have already solved this problem. It’s a seriously overstated problem repeated by renewable-purists who usually haven’t even considered how much frequency stability and grid-level storage have and will add to the cost of renewables, meaning they have not given a full accounting of the situation.
The costs used for wind/solar energy never included the cost of the required buffer storage
https://www.csiro.au/en/research/technology-space/energy/GenCost
And even if we just buried all of it, all nuclear waste ever produced could easily be buried in one square mile.
We need a fitting location to safely bury it in. Otherwise it can pollute the ground and water. In Germany for example we dont have such a location. That and the issue of cost, no one wanting to build it, no one wanting to insure it, no state wanting to offer the space and no energy company wanting this energy led to us making the correct decision in moving away from it
We don’t add that level of scrutiny to coal ash which there is much more of and equally dangerous forever. Nuclear is the the only power source expected to address 100% of problems at any point in the future before it can even start construction.
We are phasing out coal. I am not arguing against further researching nuclear energy. Current plants are not worth it to build though.
“are we retarded?” yes, Trump got re-elected, which is proof most of us really are retarded. I’m pro nuclear, just not the form we widely use now, and not in the hands of retarded people. And again, most of us clearly are, and one of the worst is going to be president, again.
So I think the best thing we could do is start a nuclear war which will wipe out the human race. Nature will hopefully recover in about 100.000 to 1 million years. Hopefully dolphins will develop less retarded then us dumb monkeys.
Paraphrased but this is right.
And the people were taught to talk about the horrible nuclear accidents that killed a few but completely glance over the unimaginable millions perished in the name of oil, mustn’t even mention the mass extinction events we launched with oil.
We even spread exaggerated bullshit about radiation mutation (wtf? thats superhero comic books fiction!!) and cancer rates (only one really), ignoring how much overwhelmingly more of the both we get from fossil fuel products.
We are like prehistoric people going extinct bcs of the tales how generations ago someone burned down their house so fire bad. Well, actually not like that - we are taking with us a lot of species & entire ecosystems too.
It’s more like “Bob and Jim died in a fire a while ago, so everyone decided to put up with heaps of people dying to hypothermia and uncooked meat”
The local undertaker family tells the story about Bob and Jim once a week to the whole village (attendance is mandatory).
We’re all stories in the end.
“Ted Kennedy killed more people than Three Mile Island” - Bumper sticker.
That’s said, I facepalm at Fukushima. And desperately want more modern systems
An argument against fossil fuels is not an argument for nuclear.
The problem isn’t that they exploded one time. The problem is that that one explosion is still happening and likely will be for quite a while.
On the other hand, modern rock exploding plant designs are so much better that it’s very unlikely to repeat itself, so there’s that.
I’m sure the other rock/liquid/gas burning plants have had no issues along their lifetime and had no hand in demonizing the “new” slowly exploding rock technology after extreme negligence let the one big one happen. /s
I’d take the band aid of nuclear in my backyard vs what we rely on now after learning all of the insider knowledge of someone who personally worked in energy generation that did all of this plus renewables almost their entire professional life.
A hydro damn breaking has killed more people than Chernobyl before, and probably will again. Renewables are not perfect either unfortunately. Though some are slightly safer than nuclear.
Most are safer than nuclear, but until the environmental cost of manufacturing them is outweighed by the benefit of their use then nuclear is the least intolerable stopgap.
Wait are you saying that renewables have too much environmental cost to make?
Some do. Hydro is a net positive, not sure about wind but probably, but last I heard solar not so much. That may have changed since.
Nobody wants dams. It’s not just dangerous, It’s also ecocide.
Since when? There are dams all over the place.
Step 1: Get magic rocks.
Step 2: Now design the rest of the nuclear reactor.
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Profit.
yes
there are millions being poured into propaganda against using anything but fossil fuels, much of it stems from there. But i wonder if its better this way or the alternative way where we would use more nuclear energy but since there would be so much money to be made, the rich would use their money to make all safety regulations null. I wish we could just get rid of the source problem.
