Comment on nuclear
theonlytruescotsman@sh.itjust.works 5 days agoSo do you still believe in bloodletting to cure colds or the earth being 10,000 years old?
Sure, nuclear energy is valid and all, but you sound like an absolute spanner…
If you want to argue that nuclear energy has its place, maybe don’t ridicule people who remember how much of an issue the last major nuclear meltdown was (and partially is).
Let’s compare it to oil, gas, coal…
The body count and environmental damage doesn’t even compare. The bad examples are just more spectacular and singularly horrifying in the moment. It’s a perception issue.
Fukushima has barely any fall out though, does it. And the nuclear energy sector is moving towards even safer methods with SMRs that are self contained and just can’t have a runaway reaction AFAIK
Can’t have a runaways reaction like the Titanic was unsinkable.
Well there is a difference between marketing and physics
Flippant “it sounds truisms” are not useful for discussion and can even spread misinformation.
So please: explain your comment or stop repeating it
i mean, the titanic was also definitionally, not unsinkable, they just called it that.
But Fukushima did render a fairly large area uninhabitable, and the ongoing cleanup is still costing billions every year.
Also, there’s still no solution to nuclear waste beyond burying it and hoping that no one digs it up.
Renewables exist, and, combined with upgrading the grid and adding sufficient storage facilities, can provide for 100% of electricity demand at all times. Without any of the risks associated with nuclear power (low as they may be, they exist), and without kicking a radioactive can down the road for hundreds of generations.
100% minus the energy requirements of AI 🫠
Uninhabitable? Most of the evacuations were unnecessary, and there would have been less loss-of-life if most people sheltered in-place. In the year following the event, nearby residents received less than 20% of lifetime natural background radiation, about 2 chest CT scans, or a bit more than an airline crew, and less than a heavy smoker.
As for waste, dry casks are plenty good. The material is glassified, so it can’t leach into ground water, and the concrete casing means you get less radiation by sitting next to one, as even natural background radiation is partially blocked. Casks are also dense enough for on-site storage, needing only a small lot to store the lifetime fuel use of any plant. A pro and a con of this method is that the fuel is difficult to retrieve from the glass, which is bad for fuel reprocessing, but good for preventing easy weapons manufacturing.
Meanwhile, coal pollution kills some 8 million people annually, and because the grid is already set up for it, when nuclear plants close they are replaced with coal or oil plants.
Upgrading the grid is expensive, and large-scale storage is difficult, and often untested. Pumped hydro is great for those places that can manage it, but the needed storage is far greater, and in locations without damable areas. Not only would unprecidented storage be necessary, but also a grid that’s capable of moving energy between multiple focus points, instead of simply out of a plant. These aren’t impossible challenges, but the solutions aren’t here yet, and nuclear can fill the gap between decommissioning fossil fuels and effective baseline storage.
Solar and Wind don’t have the best disposal record either, with more efficient PV cells needing more exotic resources, and the simple bulk of wind turbines making them difficult to dispose of. And batteries are famously toxic and/or explosive. Once again, these challenges have solutions, but they aren’t mature and countries will stick with proven methods untill they are. That means more fossil fuels killing more people unnecessary. Nuclear can save those people today, and then allow renewable grids to be built when they are ready.
Also, there’s still no solution to nuclear waste beyond burying it and hoping that no one digs it up.
what about shit like lead? Or arsenic? That shit doesn’t go away, yet we still use it all over the place, maybe not arsenic, but still lead is huge.
But Fukushima did render a fairly large area uninhabitable, and the ongoing cleanup is still costing billions every year.
ironically, there has been research to determine that a lot of the initial evacuation actually exposed people to MORE radiation, than had they not evacuated, interestingly, they did see an increase in cancer rates, and what not, down the road. However, it wasn’t statistically significant compared to other stats from other places.
So even if it did matter, it seems in terms of healthcare, it was a statistical anomaly, more than a concern.
Plus now we have some really cool radiation detecting networks that are volunteer(?) led, it’s been a while since i’ve read into this, but these systems give us a MUCH better idea of what’s happening now with radiation, than when it happened. So if it did happen again, the results would be even better.
or the earth being 10,000 years old?
Humanity, or at least written scripture, is roughly 10,000 years old. So if you take humanity = earth, then yes it’s approximately true. But also, it’s an incredibly egoistic viewpoint because earth is not just humanity.
so basically, if you define a leaf as a caterpillar, it’s basically the same thing, got it.
yeah, you got it!
sick
My parents have witnessed not one but two nuclear catastrophes in their lifetime. Wtf are you talking about?
how many cancers have the witnessed from the likes of coal power? Or things like asbestos? Shit like arsenic, or worse, lead. They probably have a significant IQ drop from leaded fuel, assuming they’re american.
loaExMachina@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
Nuclear plant accidents have happened tho. Remember Fukushima? It was 13 years ago, not that long. It didn’t strait up explode like a nuclear bomb, and neither did Chernobyl, but still; contamination is a pretty big deal. You can argue that the risk isn’t that bad or that fossil energy plants also have risks; but you can’t just dismiss it as a superstition.
kameecoding@lemmy.world 5 days ago
You get much more radiation and excess deaths from Coal and Natural gas plants than Fukushima and Chernobyl, it’s just that it’s not as obvious as it happens slowly over time.
In fact there are more deaths caused by wind energy sources than nuclear energy sources.
wewbull@feddit.uk 4 days ago
There was still 164,000 people who needed to evacuate 230 square miles. The land is contaminated and cleanup is proving difficult. Japan will be dealing with the environmental impact for a century I’d wager.
LandedGentry@lemmy.zip 4 days ago
Put them in more appropriate places (not like everything has to be nuclear) and don’t act like the USSR.
Nuclear is a very valuable component of a mixed energy structure. There are absolutely use cases for it and we should not avoid it.
kameecoding@lemmy.world 4 days ago
This one says, now it’s only 27 square kilometers ( fuck your stupid ass miles) edition.cnn.com/2022/06/14/asia/…/index.html
GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
Look up fly ash storage ponds. That’s just normal coal usage. Then look up fly ash spills. Then look up how much radioactive material is released into the atmosphere each year from burning coal. Compare that to the estimated amounts of radioactive material released into the environment from all the nuclear plant accidents, and tell me we still wouldn’t be better off switching all coal off and using nuclear.
Now, we don’t really have to do that, because we have other options now. But we definitely should have used more nuclear 50 years ago, just for the reduced cost of human lives.
theonlytruescotsman@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
Modern reactor designs have no such problem, hence the reference to ancient science.
Cethin@lemmy.zip 5 days ago
The idea of an explosion is. That’s what this thread is about. It’s not just about meltdowns, which, like you said, is very low risk, and lower than ever from what we’ve learned in the past.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
fukushima was a BWR design, put on the coast of a place known for having tsunamis, and wasn’t properly equipped with emergency generators (they flooded, oopsies) which they couldn’t get to, in order to service the reactor, due to the roads being fucking yeeted.
Literally any other plant on earth is going to have a better outcome.