Comment on Spicy Air ☢️
Jean_le_Flambeur@discuss.tchncs.de 6 days ago
Forcing nuclear down our throats while renewables are a thing is so wild. And people actually defend nuclear.
You want mining of sparse minerals by workers in inhuman conditions? Check
You want a contamination which will exist for longer than the oldest human build structure? Check (because the barrels you made made indestructible, just dont test this pls)
You want centralized energy way more expansive than solar or wind? Check
There are literally no upsides of nuclear against renewables and a battery.
Not true. Nuclear works 24/7 without the need for battery storage and the cost and environmental damage associated with manufacturing batteries. Plus, it can be dialed up and down in response to demand.
We need to use all available tools to replace fossil fuels ASAP. Renewables and nuclear.
You got mislead my dude. Probably because there’s lot of propaganda for nuclear as it is needed to offload costs of building nuclear weapons, so especially USA, France and China are campaigning hard.
We dont need another finite fossil resource oligarchs can use to control us, we need to change societies habits so it complies with energy production. For the actually relevant parts its easy enough to store the energy. Batteries are not the only possibility, water elevation, hydrogen, pressure cells just to name a few. But even if batteries were the only ones, it’s still worth manufacturing them compared to the costs of managing nuclear waste for timescales longer than human build structures exists.
Did a medieval person know what wages today would be? No Do you know what the nuclear end storage would cost in 1000 years? No But even for the time we can for see, in the best case scenario its an economically bad decission, in the worst case we poison the whole planet to a degree where no human life can exist.
Where’s an example for an operating nuclear power-plant that can be dialed down to match demand?
Afaik they have lots of momentum (for days even), and even their propenents argue for them being critical for providing a base supply^1^. Never have I heard anyone claiming they’d be good for matching fluctuating demand. Can you back that up?
Or are you getting your anti-reneweblaes lobbying talking points mixed up? That argument is usually used for natural gas plants.
^1^ which doesn’t make sense in a renewables dominated grid.
The closer the rods are to each other, the more collisions occur per unit time, and the more heat is generated.
That’s a super basic view on the science of nuclear power. As an engineer, I need a lot more than that, because it needs a lot more to put basic principles into working projects.
So, is there a nuclear powerplant, that exists outside of some powerpoint slides, that is actually used to match fluctuating generation from other energy sources and/or fluctuating demands?
All of the ones I know are/were used to provide a base supply by running more or less 24/7 at their designated output, not least because they need to do that to be even somehow economically feasible.
A_Chilean_Cyborg@feddit.cl 6 days ago
Bruh.
Nuclear is capable of generating a ton of energy right besides where is used, renewables have to be transmitted absurdly long distances in most cases.
And mining is every day more automated, sending robots to dig down the materials, and even then, is not like renewables don’t need mining also lol.
And yes, they test it, here they’re smashing a train full speed to one of the canisters to test it’s safety
Jean_le_Flambeur@discuss.tchncs.de 6 days ago
Bruh
Mining is mostly done by people living under slave like conditions in poor countries. Even thinking having a energy source which needs to CONTINUOUSLY BURN MINED RECOURCES to keep outputting any energy at all compared is superior to a energy source which NEEDS MINED RESOURCES ONCE TO CONTINUOUSLY output energy until broken by external forces in terms of mining needed shows the absurdity of your argument
Solar panels need silicium (literally sand) and bor, apart from some plastics and structural metal and glass. Those are way easier and cleaner to mine then radioactive materials, and bor is needed in really small amounts, AND IT DOESNT GET BURNED, YOU CAN REUSE IT.
Thinking that smashing a train against something tells you anything about the properties of a material when exposed to time spans of degradation many orders of magnitude bigger than the time humans even started researching material properties…I dont even know where to start with this “argument” its bs on so many levels
A_Chilean_Cyborg@feddit.cl 6 days ago
About the point 2.
I live in a thinrd world country, and it angers me to no end when they try to take this moral stand when a lot of times they’re the ones who didn’t let us all develop in the first place lol.
My country depends on it’s mining industry, the biggest copper mining country in the world and i think the 2nd on lithium, they say it’s the wage of chile, most of the copper is extracted by the State owned CODELCO, wich money goes to schools and hospitals, and even the one who is mined privately is taxed and has to pay royalties that go to help the people.
Miners aren’t even poorly paid for Chilean standards, and they have benefits, they’re strongly unionized lol, and mines here have an extremely high tech level, making people don’t have to go to risky places, a lot of mines are totally automated, where robots extract the material and take it out, while their operators sit comfortably in a control room in the city.
So don’t come to lecture me on these “poor people in third world countries” because you know nothing, you are a firstworlder who had benefited from colonization and political meddling in our affairs, now that we’re finally advancing, and making a better country for ourselves, you come to say this thing? Bruh.
Jean_le_Flambeur@discuss.tchncs.de 6 days ago
I fully agree with you that my ancestors have chosen the path of violence and colonization, which I absolutely condemn and try to make up for in my every day live.
And you are right, I dont know about uranian mines in Chile, nice that its state owned and actually beneficial for the area.
I understand if you argue for nuclear if the mines have developed your region and is actually beneficial to the people from an emotional point of view.
You hit me with an argumentum ad hominem, which is kind of deserved by what the society I live in did to a lot of the world (even if I myself try to fight that, lots of the privileges I have stem from exactly those past oppressions, can’t change that) but its still an argumentum ad hominem, and therefore not really contributing to the matter at hand
Nuclear is bad for humanity, even if I live in Europe.
Mavvik@lemmy.ca 5 days ago
Im not a nuclear bro, but a vast majority of the planet’s Uranium is mined in Australia and Canada and both countries have pretty massive reserves. They have strict regulations and safety surrounding uranium operations. Naturally occurring uranium doesnt even pose much safety risk on its own, its the Radon that is generated by decay that causes problems for humans. Im not too familiar with how uranium mining is done but I imagine Radon risks can be mitigated pretty effectively with ventilation.
Therms45@europe.pub 6 days ago
That’s beside the point. Nuclear isn’t sustainable on the long run, period.
A_Chilean_Cyborg@feddit.cl 6 days ago
it isn’t, transmission is a complex thing to do lol, my country had a full blackout last year because a cascading failure caused by a transmission line.
Nuclear fuel will last long enough for us to both have nuclear fission and the capacity to space mine materials.
solar doesn’t work in places that don’t have land available to be turned into solar farms, here in chile they do a lot of solar, and cool melted salt solar too, but is far north in the Atacama and they have to bring it in, wich is a huge bottle neck, A nuclear power plant in Santiago would relieve a lot the strain in the grid.
Therms45@europe.pub 6 days ago
Yes, transmission is a complex thing to do, and that’s why more funds should used to improve research in that direction, rather than wasting hundreds of billions on ticking time bombs, so that mining company owners can get richer while making us sicker.
1 hour of sunlight that hits the sunlit hemisphere, contains enough energy to satisfy the needs of the whole planet for 1 year. That’s how much solar is better than nuclear.
I really can’t believe that in 2026, the idea of generating energy by boiling water, is still considered “advanced tech” just because they wanna use a different fuel. Lol
chgxvjh@hexbear.net 6 days ago
It’s a ploy to keep power in the hands of corporations and the bourgeois state. And in some cases the vision is to give the ultra rich nuclear (weapons) capabilities.
Therms45@europe.pub 5 days ago
So are you saying energy from solar panels cannot be used right from the roof of the house where it’s being generatesd? Do you even listen to yourself lol