Comment on A cow is more likely to kill you than a shark
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 days ago
All the nuclear stuff happens in one place, with a few people minding it. But they do have to be super careful and know what they’re doing.
And if there’s a critical flaw in the reactor design (looking at you Chernobyl) it can go very very wrong.
Renewables are all spread out, and a lot more people manage it for the power output.
That also means a lot more people have power-related jobs.
Fossil Fuels, Methane (Natural Gas) and Coal are just ugly all around. But they have really, really great lobbyists.
Forester@pawb.social 6 days ago
The RBMK design was outdated 10 years before construction… but yeah lets unironically compare a model T Ford with no automatic controls slop welded together with shit tolerences and barely any control systems to a modern car with sensors and with safety features because they are both examples of a car.
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 days ago
There’s two problems, and the Kurzgesagt two-parter on nuclear fission power discusses them both.
One is that nuclear power plants are long term projects and you’re stuck with what you built, even as improved versions are designed and flaws are discovered with what you have. Yes, sometimes we retrofit our nuclear plants to make them safer (or more efficient, or prettier).
The other is that contractor firms have had a bad habit of just designing the same simple LWRs over and over again, even as engineers have developed designs that are safer, more efficient, more elegant, etc.
But this doesn’t mean either of those can change.
Forester@pawb.social 6 days ago
China seems to be leading the way in LSRs. Using water as a modulator is very old tech.