why is there such a negative sentiment towards nuclear power? was it all oil and gas propaganda? or is there some truth
Not a single one
Submitted 6 days ago by einfach_orangensaft@sh.itjust.works to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/6897287d-4e5a-4d81-b689-be9e2bf30069.jpeg
Comments
lemonhead2@lemmy.world 6 days ago
fullsquare@awful.systems 6 days ago
the man who decided to end german nuclear power production getting a seat in gazprom doesn’t inspire confidence in reality-based discussion of this subject
Ephera@lemmy.ml 6 days ago
It was decided after Fukushima under Merkel.
CapuccinoCoretto@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Chernobyl, Fukushima, 3 Mile Island. Plus uranium is another non-renewable resource.
I’m still pro nuke as getting off fossil fuels is of the utmost urgency, but we will have to learn to live off wind and solar.
jerkface@lemmy.ca 6 days ago
So what has released more waste into the world, all the nukes including those, or the equivalent mega-wattage of all other human power generation? Dunno if you noticed but our future climate is FUCKED to the tune of hundreds of trillions of dollars, while meanwhile very few of us are suffering from the effects of nuclear power genenration.
DahGangalang@infosec.pub 6 days ago
Ideally we figure out some sweet Nuclear Fusion.
EggInDisguise@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 days ago
I’d love to see a full production chain breakdown of disasters and their costs to clean up, for both fossil fuel and nuclear.
Most people’s issue is “ooh scary radiation!” without realizing you get more exposure to ionizing radiation by living near a coal fired power plant than a nuclear one. Fuck, you can take a swim in the reactor pool and if you’re under the surface away from the nuclear material, the water above you blocks the background radiation you’d be exposed to walking around on the surface.
einfach_orangensaft@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Because it only makes sense if you also need to run nuclear Submarines with ICBMs on them.
Basically Nuclear power has always been a military project thats just “Dual use” to offset the cost by having tax payers foot the bill for civilians plants.
Doing that makes the whole supply chain cheaper for the Military usage…cuz mining it only for military usage only would be hella expensive and harder to justify towards the population.
Bashnagdul@lemmy.world 6 days ago
This is only for uranium and plutonium based nuclear power. There are others that don’t produce weapons grade byproducts. Helium 3 for instance and other versions of uranium. Also cobalt is an option.
As long as we want to pay for power, it can be profitable, in the sense that we pay what we need and people who work there are paid fairly as well.
Cris_Citrus@piefed.zip 6 days ago
Honestly I think renewables are at a place where it doesnt really matter much anymore. My perception has been that its propaganda, but I’m not really knowledgeable on the subject
danielfm123@lemmy.zip 6 days ago
There are new kinds of nuclear power plants based on safe Torum instead of uranium, Torum is more abundant, easy to manipulate and “non explosive” china has many reactors with this technology, meanwhile people in the west world is still deciding their gender.
phdepressed@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Thorium
BambiDiego@lemmy.zip 6 days ago
If you ever need firefighters make sure you ONLY go to a profitable firehouse, or you’ll be a huge hypocrite. Either that or stupid.
Also make sure you ONLY drive on profitable roads, and ONLY use private delivery services. And ONLY during the day because of streetlights.
A public service should be a public service, not profitable from the basic level.
einfach_orangensaft@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
A public service should be a net profit in standards of living of the people who make up the public. And i proclaim that nuclear power plants dont do that in the long term. They drain the public out of resources that could have been invested in better solutions that dont come with the downsides of radio active waste products.
Phil_in_here@lemmy.ca 6 days ago
I’ll admit I don’t know much about the polluting effects of nuclear, but wouldn’t it be considered a net benefit in regards to the devastatingly expensive damage of climate change compared to burning coal and gas?
Soup@lemmy.world 6 days ago
You’re in the comments trying to act like you’re more noble, but if your very first angle and the one you built your post on is about profitability then you’ve already lost. You made a strawman and are just mad that it was called out.
Yea, renewables would be better, for sure. Talk about that, then, if that’s what you really care about.
einfach_orangensaft@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
You have to get the people in somehow. And i was sick of ppl calling nuclear cheap solution to climate change when it clearly isnt, thence i choose the word profitable.
StillAlive@piefed.world 6 days ago
apftwb@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Sun isn’t profitable. We should just extinguish it.
einfach_orangensaft@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Thats fusion tho
CapuccinoCoretto@lemmy.world 6 days ago
You never specified otherwise.
EggInDisguise@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 days ago
There has never been a reactor that produced more energy than it took to construct? You sure about that?
Otherwise this is a capitalism meme, not a science meme.
einfach_orangensaft@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Economics is science too.
EggInDisguise@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 days ago
Economics is a human made concept, not a universal fact.
You would have been better off arguing it’s important because it’s math.
Legianus@programming.dev 6 days ago
Even if this were true, would that be important nowadays? If it can push out climate change and make it into a problem to solve later (in case of fission). Fusion would be great though
Natanox@discuss.tchncs.de 6 days ago
It can’t. It takes WAY too long to build, and for what it is the whole work isn’t worth it.
The volume of renewables and batteries (Incl. Sodium-Ion, great tech for the grid) we can produce outpaces nuclear by a long shot, is safer, cleaner, available quicker, easier to install, easier to regulate (once the batteries are up, it’s a combo deal) and especially more “for the people” (you can carry and install smaller units of solar and wind anywhere).
I also thought nuclear (fission) made somewhat sense a few years ago, but it really doesn’t in any way shape or form. Countries who’re dead-set on nuclear such as France are already running into SO mamy problems. They’re building a huge financial pile of shit for the current and next generation to be fucked over by.
Bashnagdul@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Why not do all of these things. Build nuclear power plants, do battery storage, do renewables, carbon capture, plant trees etc, etc, etc. if the goal is reverse, stabilize or slow climate change. There isn’t 1 silver bullet, we need to do all the things.
Legianus@programming.dev 6 days ago
I wasn’t talking about building new ones. I agree with that. But the ones that already exist shouldn’t be shut down until they are replaced by renewables.
einfach_orangensaft@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
This view on it is the exact reason why i made this meme, this shit has to stop its a tale propagated by the fissile fuel industry.
grandel@lemmy.ml 6 days ago
If it can push out climate change and make it into a problem to solve later (in case of fission).
Pushing all the problems nuclear brings to the future is the exact same mistake past generations have done with fossil fuels.
If we don’t combat climate change now, we never will.
Legianus@programming.dev 6 days ago
I wouldn’t say it is identical. Nuclear is far easier to solve. The waste is really not that impactful in comparison to climate change
jerkface@lemmy.ca 6 days ago
and we’re clearly not
Gladaed@feddit.org 6 days ago
The sentiment that people should just pay more than they have to become virtuous is hatred of the poor.
We must provide the cheapest power to the people. And cheap in this case is meant as cheapest including externalities.
LinkeSocke@feddit.org 6 days ago
First of all. I’m against nuclear power plants.
But. This right here, is a weird argument against it. I would even say, its no argument against it at all. We should not produce anything with the focus to make a profit. We should produce to meet needs. I would say that for the entire industry.
And even if you’re not for a democratic industry that is owned by the people, you should at least see that there are some services where it just makes even less sense to look for profit. For example energy production, healthcare, public transport or the food industry. These are all fundamental services that just need to work. They should never have to focus on generating a profit.
sparkyshocks@lemmy.zip 6 days ago
Public services (or even non-profit private organizations) still need to manage their resources efficiently. If the output of the service (number of meals fed to people, kilowatt hours produced, houses built, lives saved, passenger kilometers transported) is much smaller on a per dollar basis than comparable services, without good reason, then that organization is mismanaging resources.
Plenty of public services can and do break even, or bring in more than they cost.
Money is, in many ways, fake. But its accounting represents something real, in the real resources involved: land, human labor, physical materials like concrete and steel and copper that need to be turned into very complex equipment that require highly trained workers to operate and maintain.
So when a project doesn’t break even, it’s worth asking whether the project is still worthwhile, whether the external benefits outweigh the localized costs. I don’t think modern nuclear passes that test (even if I believe that already-constructed nuclear should be extended as long as possible and operated at as close to full capacity as possible, because those up-front costs are already sunk).
Dookieman12@piefed.social 6 days ago
“Doesn’t make a profit” doesn’t mean “is run inefficiently”. It doesn’t even mean “doesn’t generate excess value”. It just means excess value is reinvested into the system, like the US Post Office. It never makes money, never has made any money, has always either saved or reinvested the money left over on the balance sheet at the end of the year.
einfach_orangensaft@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
100% agree
i just used the word “profitable” cuz its shorter than “morally non justifiable nonsense” and because its a metric thats much more easy to fact check and not as subjective as moral complains.
LinkeSocke@feddit.org 6 days ago
100% agree
Huh? alright then.
i just used the word “profitable” cuz its shorter than “morally non justifiable nonsense” and because its a metric that’s much more easy to fact check and not as subjective as moral complains.
I don’t quite seem to understand what you mean or what you tried to say with this meme then. There is much more then just “subjective moral complains” or a neoliberal standing point to look for profits in everything. I mean yes. Profit Numbers are more easy to look up maybe. But… it doesn’t really help does it? Its not a metric that’s important at all, like you also agreed to.
DahGangalang@infosec.pub 6 days ago
From Wikipedia
In 2019, the US EIA revised the levelized cost of electricity from new advanced nuclear power plants going online in 2023 to be $0.0775/kWh before government subsidies, using a regulated industry 4.3% cost of capital (WACC - pre-tax 6.6%) over a 30-year cost recovery period.[63] Financial firm Lazard also updated its levelized cost of electricity report costing new nuclear at between $0.118/kWh and $0.192/kWh using a commercial 7.7% cost of capital (WACC - pre-tax 12% cost for the higher-risk 40% equity finance and 8% cost for the 60% loan finance) over a 40-year lifetime.[64]
The article discusses why that number is probably flawed and relies on cherry picked data, but it seems somewhat close to profitability. Assuming theyre above with a cost of electricity of ~$0.20/kWh (already cheaper than some of US) should be viable, yeah?
einfach_orangensaft@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
40-year lifetime
That dosent include the cost of maintaining the radioactive trash for the next few million years.
polotype@lemmy.ml 6 days ago
First of all, go fuck yourself. Now that we are reay for a nice and constructive discussion,
Maintaining trash has a negligible cost.
Nobody gaf about costs when the whole ecosystem we know is at risk
It will be much cheaper to replace fossil fuels by nuclear because one of them is putting the whole biosphere at risk while the other is benign
Now le me reiterate, take the most painful object you can find and shove it up your ass. Half of the points you made in this comment section contradict themselves, you are a capitalist shittling. ;)
sparkyshocks@lemmy.zip 6 days ago
Assuming theyre above with a cost of electricity of ~$0.20/kWh
Can we assume that, after factoring in the actual portion that the accounting says goes to the power plant itself? The economics of utility scale electricity includes both generation and transmission, so you can’t just take that retail price and assume it all goes to the power plant that produced the electricity.
Wholesale prices tend to stay below 10 cents in most parts of the country, although it sometimes spikes when grids are under strain. I think that’s probably a more fair assumption of how much the power plants themselves are paid for their production.
lath@piefed.social 6 days ago
Chernobyl. It’s so profitable, it keeps on giving even half a century later.
lvxferre@mander.xyz 6 days ago
I think this discussion already run its course, it’s generating a lot of both bad behaviour and reports, so I’m locking it.
Rothe@piefed.social 6 days ago
Neither are most roads, sewers or hospitals, we are talking basic infrastructure here, whether it is profitable seems to me to be completely irrelevant.
And again, not a huge fan of nuclear power plants, but this argument is not one I hold against them.
einfach_orangensaft@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Then you where not the target for this meme, please move along and have a good day.
DickFiasco@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Fossil fuels are only ‘profitable’ if you ignore the long-term environmental costs.
einfach_orangensaft@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Nobody is defending Fossil fuels here.
EggInDisguise@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 days ago
you’re the one who made the focus on profits, thus comparing profitability of fossil fuels is completely reasonable.
lime@feddit.nu 6 days ago
base load
einfach_orangensaft@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
thats what i gave your mom last night
lime@feddit.nu 6 days ago
well you would
Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Is this true? Because Holy shit this would be hilarious if it was.
zxqwas@lemmy.world 6 days ago
You can cherry pick the numbers to show whatever you like.
Wikipedia has an article on the economics of nuclear power. To summarize: it’s expensive upfront. If you look at it from a pure commercial enterprise it’s not really worth it. If you look at it as decarbonizing the future it’s better.
Solar and wind is cheaper, but intermittent and it’s a question if we can wait for grid scale energy storage being viable before we cook ourselves.
red_tomato@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Nuclear power plants are ridiculously expensive to build.
einfach_orangensaft@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
I am open to change my mind on this, but i never seen evidence for a single one that was profitable when you include development cost, maintenance, build back and disposal (and long term maintenance of disposal).
Gladaed@feddit.org 6 days ago
Nuclear’s costs are primarily a capital cost issue. It takes so long to build a power plant that capital, interest and (?) utility of the investment grows to outrageous amounts.
Also you tend to not estimate the cost of waste handling since who knows what that’s going to cost.
maegul@lemmy.ml 6 days ago
I feel like the deeper truth highlighted here is that being pro-nuclear, or anti-anti-nuclear, is very much a “reddit” style opinion.
Whatever the actual truth is, that is. It seems to fall neatly into the “I know something and can make a ‘well actyooally’ argument about it” category without having expertise like being on top of the historical financial performance and context of the technology, about which I personally know nothing.
thechosen2nd@piefed.social 6 days ago
Just like any military.
Nangijala@feddit.dk 6 days ago
Whomever drew this, is a master at dynamics and comedic timing. I fucking love the energy in every line and every panel.
snoons@lemmy.ca 6 days ago
Well yeah, it’s a service. Expecting profit fram necessary services is stupid and counter-praductive but it makes a few people rich so of course it happens then you get memes like this.
VibeSurgeon@piefed.social 6 days ago
Efficient use of resources still matters in a service-driven model.
The service in this case is to provide electricity - if other alternatives can provide the same system of electricity while using less resources in the process, then it is clearly preferable.
overcast5348@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Externalized costs are a thing though. For instance, a coal plant spewing smoke (and radiation) costs everyone else money. A nuclear plant OTOH is usually responsible for dealing with all of its own shit. So it’s not always an apples to apples comparison to consider just the profitability of a project.
bacon_pdp@lemmy.world 6 days ago
You do realize that they made nuclear recycling illegal in the USA right?
Which is ironic because nuclear waste is 97% pure fuel and the remaining 3% has other uses in medicine or have half-lives measured in minutes/hours or are stable (like gold)
einfach_orangensaft@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Well you could just like, put all that tax money into decentralized renewable energy sources…that would also be profitable. While not causing waste that cant be touched for the next million years. While also lessening your dependence on nuclear fuel imports from political less than optimal nations or sources where the mining of it causes radio active dust to contaminate the population (Russia/USA and Australia).
felykiosa@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Million year really , so you talk about the EXTREMELY small portion of nuclear waste ? Also why not both , why not nuclear AND solar / wind / hydro electricity? Because all those renewable energy sources are either limited (hydro electricity) or intermittent (solar / wind) And I know you dont care but Yes we can bury nuclear waste if we do it properly, there already were natural nuclear reactor on earth way before humanity and it didnt kill everything where they were.
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 6 days ago
But that would enrich the oligarchy slightly more slowly! Won’t anybody think of the poor oligarchs?
lvxferre@mander.xyz 6 days ago
What you say about decentralisation is IMO a big deal that other users here are not paying attention to. You can’t have a nuclear usine in your backyard, but you can have a few solar panels here and there. It’s better to allow people to control their means of electrical generation than to have a government (or worse, a corporation) calling the shots.
Another important detail IMO is that “renewable energy” is a mixed bag of a lot of different approaches, each with its pros and cons. This means that if you’re going for renewables you can min-max the whole thing for less environmental and human impact, cheaper prices etc.
That said I think the part concerning waste from nuclear usines is a weak argument. It’s a relatively low volume, compared with the amount of electricity generated by those usines; and mining operations will be always a mess, no matter if you’re mining uranium (for nuclear), neodymium (for wind) or gallium and iridium (for solar).
bobtimus_prime@feddit.org 6 days ago
I whole heartedly agree. And to anyone who complains about dunkelflaute, if we wouldn’t immediately burn our biogas, and instead stored it where we currently store our fossil gas, we would have a way more comfortable safety margin. Also a stronger European powergrid would be sufficient for almost all usual cases throughout the year.
mirshafie@europe.pub 6 days ago
No, you couldn’t. You need base load. Countries like Denmark and Germany freeload on the base load of France, Sweden and Finland. And the moronic EU laws that currently enable this will eventually change to charge them for that.
BaroqueInMind@piefed.social 6 days ago
This has got to be the single stupidest take I have seen so far on this website, like holy shit this is pants-on-head retarded
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 6 days ago
The things are very much run as private companies under the pretense of being profitable. The whole purpose of nukes (other than providing weapons grade material) is shoveling public money into private pockets.
gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Sounds like a political science and economics problem, don’t know why we needed to harass physics nerds about it
jerkface@lemmy.ca 6 days ago
That does not sound universal, that sounds like an artifact of how things are done in your country.
Gladaed@feddit.org 6 days ago
Spending excessively to provide a service that could have been supplied cheaper is not good a sign of good policy.
Nomad@infosec.pub 6 days ago
Maybe learn to write correctly before regurgitating propaganda mindlessly. Profitable wants to say it costs less to operate than people pay for the power it produces. If that weren’t the case, people would still pay through taxes. All these evil people working in a power plant, how dare they wanting tip earn money to feed their kids…
doleo@lemmy.one 6 days ago
Did I miss something in the edited post, or are you just violating rule 1 out of spite?
snoons@lemmy.ca 6 days ago
Stop projecting lol
Peppycito@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
In Canada nuclear power generation is more about creating jobs by rebuilding 50 year old reactors than it is about producing cheap energy.