Is your point supposed to be “it would be a relatively small pile of radioactive waste”? There aren’t all that many nuclear power plants in the world because it never has been economically viable.
Comment on Spicy Air ☢️
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
I would love to ask everyone who opposes nuclear power one question. It’s a really simple question, you can Google it. I’ve never had an opponent of nuclear power answer the question, because it brings everything into perspective.
How much spent nuclear fuel is there in the entire world? What is the total amount of long term waste that the entire history of nuclear power generation has created? If you piled it up, how big of a pile would it form?
uniquethrowagay@feddit.org 6 days ago
Wrufieotnak@feddit.org 6 days ago
As you said: easy to answer, so not worth it to engage with seriously.
So let me counter ask you a very similar question: how much radioactive material (weight or volume, your choice) do you think was spread in Chernobyl, that made it still a closed off region today and resulted in ongoing increased radioactive levels in mushrooms and wild boar meat in multiple regions over central Europe, that it is still not considered safe for human consumption?
A_Chilean_Cyborg@feddit.cl 6 days ago
Renewables have killed more people than all nuclear accidents combined tough, mostly hidro failures, but also a fair share of industrial accidents with the usual ones.
kugel7c@feddit.org 6 days ago
So why are we arguing for nuclear when nuclear and hydro both have that same problem of being necessarily megaprojects with huge risks if anything is mismanaged, incorrectly planned, or getting attacked in some way.
When we could instead argue for solar plus storage which is cheaper, much less vulnerable to attacks/ disaster, often good for the microclimate where it’s deployed, without any need for permanent staffing, has a much more resonable path to resource recovery at eol. …
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
Some 60 tons of reactor fuel were expelled “locally”. That wasn’t easy to Google, but easily to convert back from the radiation released. I might be a bit high due to iodine being released which isn’t part of the fuel.
Thanks for once again proving my point. As soon as I point out how nuclear waste isn’t actually a real problem, opponents of nuclear power tend to immediately move the goalposts, without actually answering the question too.
But the preemptively adress your moved goalpost:
That might be flippant, but does this matter at all? You might as well say solar panels are deadly because some idiot didn’t tie his safety line while installing rooftop solar panels. Or some DIYer wired the electrics wrong and burned their house down. People have died from solar panels, so using your logic, solar panels might at any moment strike and kill someone!
It doesn’t work like that. Solar panels are entirely safe when used properly. Nuclear is entirely safe when you don’t intentionally build a gigantic bombs and then intentionally push it past all limits and override all safeties. No electricity reactor before or after Chernobyl has been capable of failing this way, it was literally uniquely terrible.
Wrufieotnak@feddit.org 5 days ago
First, props for actually engaging with my question and finding out.
Now to the rest of your comment:
Yes? As I said: here in central Europe (and Chernobyl is not central europe, I meant parts of Germany, Czech Republic, Poland and Austria, so not really close) we still have areas, 40 years after the event, with too high radioactive levels in e.g. mushrooms for safe human consumption. I personally don’t really find that cool. Same is happening in Fukushima, but in a more local event due to the wind pushing most into the sea.
So we just have those nuclear meltdown events and then move around outside the areas where the failures happened? That is your preferred mode of living in the future? I envision a much more positive future for mankind.
Yes? That’s how it works? Those kind of things have to be considered to properly judge a technology. And thank you for proving my point. What happens if a solar cell\battery\transformator fails catastrophically? A house burns down and the people inside might die. Tragic, but nothing that stops humanity from using the local area for the next hundreds or thousands of years, depending on how bad it is. And still fucking up food resources in a wider area outside the local area depending on how lucky the non-locals are with the weather conditions.
We sadly don’t live in a perfect world where everything goes right, so failure rates and failure modes have to be considered. In fact, those two things are kind of the main things you have to think about. At least if you want to engage seriously with a topic as engineer. And even the oh so perfect and advanced Japan was not safe. And why? Because of human error.
In addition I would like to point your view to the current Ukraine war where Russia (and Ukraine afterwards) attacked right next to a nuclear plant, which isn’t exactly filling me with confidence. Furthermore I would like to point out the shitstained Florida Orange and his administration in the USA, which has shown time and time again their disregard for science and any and all safety measures. Do you seriously want to tell me, that you think those kind of people will never come into power again and threaten our and humanities safety because they have the ego of a planet but the brains of a mosquito? They fired the people responsible for nuclear weapons in the DoE and only afterwards realised it and tried to reverse it after the media reported their epic failure. Did you forget about those parts already?
Do you seriously want to tell me that you engage with your life only considering the best case scenario? That is not how reality works, sadly.
And just to add to your answer regarding the fuel: not being able to stack radioactive fuel together is exactly one of the problems, as you should know.