A lot of comments here are displaying their ignorance of nuclear technology.
Keep eating up the oil company talking points, I guess. “hey guys remember those nuclear meltdowns from outdated reactors that had all kinds of things going wrong because of poor design and decision making, most of which is no longer an issue? Yeah things blow up so better keep chugging away at those fossil fuels while we sabotage any investments into renewables”
I mean goddamn, the “worst” disaster in the USA was a big nothing burger that was sensationalized by newspapers that knew how to sell a headline, and oil companies that knew how to leverage any sort of negative press to their advantage.
When the fallout from nuclear disasters doesn’t come close to the amount of radiation out off by burning and refining fossil fuels, there is no argument.
the “worst” disaster in the USA
The 3-Mile Island incident hit two weeks after The China Syndrome hit theaters. (A movie about a runaway nuclear meltdown.)
Otherwise the story would have been, "A tiny poof of radioactive steam got loose, everything was handled quickly and perfectly, no big deal, and back to you Tom (Brokaw).
Yeah things blow up
I would stop them right there and ask when the last oil spill was.
It was last month. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oil_spills
Even without oil spills. The fossil fuel method of dealing with waste is to vent it into the atmosphere. Nuclear only does that when something goes very wrong, and even then it causes significantly fewer fatalities.
You could have a Chernobyl every single day and still kill fewer people than coal and oil.
The safety aspects alone SHOULD be enough to convince people, yet here we are.
The difference between nuclear-power- related disasters and fossil fuel related disasters is astronomical.
And honestly the amount of radioactive isotopes that get spewed out from burning coal day in day out for decades on end absolutely dwarfs the amount of radioactivity released from nuclear disasters.
one dangerous thing being less unsafe than another doesn’t make it safe.
And nobody suggested it did.
But the argument of “it’s more unsafe” doesn’t apply, that was my whole point.
If one thing is less unsafe than another, why the fuck WOULDN’T you want to switch the the DEMONSTRABLY LESS UNSAFE THING
yeah, decentralised photovoltaic- & -thermic cells, wind and river turbines, biomass.
Solar’s a little bit less killy than nuclear (people die when mining raw materials and from falling off rooftops when installing panels) and wind turbines are a little more dangerous than nuclear (mining raw materials, falls during installation/maintenance and people burning to death during maintenance), but hydroelectric power is much more dangerous than nuclear (mainly from drownings after dams burst). Until very recently, nuclear was the safest means of power generation by a wide margin, so if safety is the main concern, there should be a lot more of it.
A big reason for this is that a single nuclear power plant can power a city despite having the same footprint as a small village worth of wind turbines or solar panels and running for decades off a wheelbarrow of fuel, so there’s much less for construction workers and miners to do and fewer opportunities for them to die. It only kills when there’s an accident bad enough to make international news and remain in the public consciousness for decades, and accidents that bad have only happened a handful of times.
Biomass is not sustainable. You’ll cut your forests down to sate demand.
it was an intendendly brief answer. and of course the biomass that is a product of other processes is being used. we don’t have woods left in europe and forests are needed for wood production.
Why do you think that those against nuclear energy are for fossil fuels? My building has solar panels, and backup power comes from either wind turbines or the hydraulic dam down the river.
The overwhelming resistance to nuclear is pushed by people who want us to stay on fossil fuels, and the number of people suggesting renewables usally state their preferences in the comments alongside their criticism (whether the criticism is valid or not).
Yep. So much of this shit from “environmental activists” that have no fucking clue how any of this works. It’s been shown time and time again that nuclear is the answer for base load energy requirements with minimal environmental impact.
When and where? Nuclear is very very expensive. Nuclear doesn’t work well as baseload since while you can turn it off rather quickly you can’t turn it back on fast when it’s needed again
Baseload means the consistent day to day requirements a grid always has while up, aka people running their lights, tvs and appliances at regular times throughout the day.
Flex loads are unusual peaks on the grid such as unexpectedly hot days where people run air conditioners or electric heat in the winter time. These are the points where things like wind power is invaluable to the grid.
The idea that Nuclear can’t flex though is absurd, it’s not as fast as wind, but raising or lowering control rods takes seconds to minutes depending on reactor type, not hours like people seem to think. It just makes more sense to run them at schedule outputs because you need to shut them down entirely to refuel them. But if a nuclear plant was built up enough to handle capacity of a given region, it could realistically move between 50% load and 80% load and back in under ten minutes.
Ecologically, Nuclear is by the far safest route, having the among lowest carbon outputs of all power production AND using less land per kw produced. The only thing that even gets close is rooftop solar, and even if you covered every external surface of every building in a city with solar you’d still not meet base loads.
The price point of nuclear is a two part problem, both of which stem from propaganda leveraged against nuclear. We don’t have economies of scale because NIMBY and fear mongering how “dangerous” nuclear is (despite being the safest form of power in human history) preventing new constructions, combined with the second front of overzealous and unrealistic safety standards forced upon the nuclear industry that make it difficult for them to be profitable, it’s like requiring people to wear full body kevlar pads while driving or biking. Keeps them safe, maybe, but is that level of protection required? Not even remotely. No other form of power production could survive if strangled the same way nuclear has been for the last 80 years, which speaks volumes to how effective it is where even being kneecapped and held back at every turn it still persists to this day. Because it’s that damn effective and energy dense.
Edit: It goes without saying the best possible future we can have is wind and nuclear powered with solar being added where it can be done efficiently, such as rooftop or land which has no other use including ecological reclamation. Wind is better in rural setting such as agriculture, where nuclear is better for denser populations like cities and industrial centers. Solar is best used as rooftop or addition to existing structures where it can generate power without inhibiting other functions. (You can’t put solar on a green house, for example.)
It’s not the safest, solar is. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
Talk about a cherry picked survey. They only include EU deaths but still opted to add Chernobyl and Fukashima deaths to make solar look better.
Isn’t that the point of baseload? To cover the non-highs, but provide the stable base?
There is no stable base for renewables.
At noon in summer, renewables can produce >100% of energy consumption. The nuclear reactors would need to be shut off and turned back on a couple hours later, for the months from June to September.
But nuclear cannot reactivate quick enough as solar production is winding down in the evening, nor can it shut down quick enough in the morning.
It’s much, much cheaper to massively increase battery storage in order to store excess energy produced by renewables.
In winter as of right now, there is not enough energy from renewables but this is hopefully subject to change over the next decade or so. If energy costs are high enough at night, companies will start building private battery storage to fill them during winter days. That way a large part of energy consumption can adapt to production.
In case of energy droughts, gas power plants can be kept because they can turn on and shut down within minutes, making them the best at providing a varying base load.
No, you want the baseload to take over when there isn’t enough much cheaper renewable energy.
That’s what they just said? Just in different words
…that’s why it would be used as a baseload. I.E. something that you never really turn off because that amount is always required.
That works against renewable resources, which should provide 100% or more during normal days. Which would mean you have to take off wind turbines from the net to keep nuclear going, that makes investing in wind less attractive.
Then you reduce the output of the nuclear plants. I’m not sure where you are getting that it takes them forever to start up nuclear power. You just raise and lower control rods to increase or decrease the heat they are releasing, which lowers the steam produced, which starts/stops some turbines. It’s not like the fastest system out there, but afaik it’s easily doable in the span of an hour or two.
Investing in wind doesn’t need to be attractive, it needs to be part of a government-owned national energy infrastructure plan that gets it where it needs to be and where it’ll serve the needs of the people the best
Nuclear doesn’t work well as baseload since while you can turn it off rather quickly you can’t turn it back on fast when it’s needed again
Nuclear is best used for baseload, since while you can turn it off rather quickly you can’t turn it back on fast when it’s needed again
You want to turn of your baseload when there is enough cheap wind and solar energy… Like that’s the whole point of baseload
Power plants that do not change their power output quickly, such as some large coal or nuclear plants, are generally called baseload power plants.
These are two excellent videos by Kyle Hill, explaining where we are with nuclear power. They’re Invidious Links, because I block all trackers from Google, which means youtube doesn’t work for me. I put the titles beside the links in-case people want to search them up themselves. The War in Ukraine, The Far-right, the intolerance and the propaganda on social media. It’s because they want to push us to war. Electric cars, plus modern nuclear power means the end to the artificial energy crisis. Means the end to Petrostates like Russia, Saudi Arabia and what the US is fast turning into. The fossil fuel industry has suppressed this technology for the last 70 years. That is why they need us at war, because there are no electric tanks. Anyone who is skeptical about nuclear power, I urge you to watch these. I promise you, threatening Denmark over Greenland will make a lot more sense with this context.
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=BcoN2bdACGA Why Isn’t Thorium Changing the World?
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=4aUODXeAM-k We Solved Nuclear Waste Decades Ago
Thank you for the videos. The links didn’t work for me, though, so for anyone else for whom it doesn’t work, here are the links:
https://youtu.be/4aUODXeAM-k
https://youtu.be/BcoN2bdACGAThe fossil fuel industry has been suppressing all alternatives to fossil fuels. They have entire research departments that work on inventing green energy solutions and then they patent them and shelve them.
You lost me at this:
For this transmutation Transmutex proposes using a particle accelerator, probably because the promoter of the idea is a former engineer at CERN,
Yeah it’s definitely not that the only reliable method we have of knocking protons off of atoms involves either a nuclear reactor or particle accelerator, dude is just bringing his old job with him cause he doesn’t know any better. Right.
No, as non-experts, we must dismiss the knowledge of experts because their approach is not non-magical pseudoscience bullshit that consists mostly of evocative imagery.
I don’t need no boring particle accelerator! I want an atom smasher that’s been combined with cutting edge AI and the latest in superconducting magnet technology to tame matter down to the subatomic level so it can shoot a laser made of protons into radioactive materials to fundamentally alter its elemental properties so it no longer emits (as much) radiation!
Indeed, this is like the techbro approach to nuclear reactors, which seems like the worst of all possible worlds: all buzzwords and bullshit hiding barely-concealed scams about shit that can absolutely kill you.
Transmutation is not new technology. It has always been too expensive to be used on an industrial level. I dont think that has changed. also by no means does it reduce the cost of dismantling and securing npp sites. Dont be fooled :/
You seem to know stuff.
Why don’t we take “depleted” fuel and use it in a low power atomic power plant? The rest radioactivity can be burned off just like their main radioactivity right?
There should be a solution to burn them further down and generate electricity with it.
Or do they lose the properties to burn them?
Thanks
The reactors we use now can’t run on depleted fuel. It’s true that like 90% of the uranium is still present in deleted fuel but that’s not the problem. The problem is the build up of fission products. The fuel itself is essentially a ceramic pellet in a metal tube. As it gets “burned” some of the atoms in the fuel split into new smaller atoms. Specifically some that are “poisons” and some that are gases. The poisons absorb neutrons much more easily than the fuel atoms, stopping the chain reaction. And the gases create pressure inside the fuel pellet. If enough gases build up this can cause the pellet to crack, releasing them into the metal tube. Now you have one less barrier to releasing radioactive material and your pellet isn’t in the shape it’s supposed to be anymore making it harder to know how it will react.
So we can’t use them in current reactors, what about “low power” reactors? This is a problem of economics. Depleted fuel is hot, but not hot enough to quickly boil water and make steam. It’s like asking why don’t we power our house off all the free heat coming off a person all the time. The temperature difference and heat output is just too low to be useful in any but the smallest niche application.
So how do we deal with the depleted fuel? We reprocess it. Break down the fuel and dissolve it in acid so you can recover all the useful uranium to make new fuel. The leftover radioactive material can then be turned into glass and safely stored or you could feed it into a different type of reactor that “burns” the waste turning into something that only needs stored for 200 years instead of 20,000 years. All this has been well known and understood since the 80s but politics consistently gets in the way of actually doing anything.
Is there any source with any real information? This one is just bullshit.
Here’s a more measured take on it, particularly the Update section - though it’s written by the company creating the long-term waste repository in Switzerland so there’s some obvious bias.
It appears the modeling/simulation code Transmutex developed is heavily based on the open-source Geant4 toolkit.
Yeah, no thanks. Solar panels.
Hope you like lithium mines.
Water is the best battery. Hydro at night, solar and wind at day.
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Fucking gladly be blocked by someone who rambles like this.
Don’t feed this troll.
Complete bullshit. Just enough of the basic tech checks out to fool an investor. They going to knock protons off thousands of pounds of nuclear waste and irradiated material? One atom at a time? Good thing there aren’t many atoms in things, It’ll only take a few hours at most, lol.
This’ll be used by people wanting to sell expensive, dangerous nuclear reactors. That still produce nuclear waste, and sometimes melt down to create global disasters. Instead of cheap, easy wind and solar.
This is just a scam, but like most scams, there’s some real, and some made-up information.
Oh look, another armchair expert going in about how nuclear is a waste of time and effort, literally using the same argument that oil companies have been using to keep nuclear away.
“oh it’s so sooper dooper dangerous, you should invest in renewables” lobbies the shit out of nations to keep wind and solar projects from taking off
Sources. You need to back all of that up then compare it to fossil fuels and the damage to the environment they cause then shut the fuck up.
Nice try, nuclear lobby. We still dont want your dirty tech instead of 100% renewables.
It has the least amount of deaths of ANY energy source we have per amount of power generated. That is if we assume the maximum amount of deaths from the nuclear accidents etc., if we assume more reasonable numbers there is no debate at all. And that comes on top of the extremely low CO2 emissions.
I always wondered if it wasn’t the Kremlin who pushed those anti nuclear agendas (I grew up in Sweden and eventually the “greens” wanted to dismantle nit only the nuclear power plants but also the army). They are never based in facts, only fear, and they helped Russia a lot with not only gas&oil exports but a lot of soft power coming with them.
/Thank you for coming to my conspiracy talk!
It is the opposite. Nuclear shills don’t base their opinion on facts, they would rather hope for a miracle solution that is, when viewed rationally, complete nonsense. Apart from the extremely toxic waste for which we have not found geological structures stable enough to prevent it from leaking, building nuclear power plants is a really CO2-intensive process, especially with regard to all the concrete involved. The most pressing issue, however, is the fuel. What do you think nuclear reactors generate power with? Lots of air and goodwill? Entire regions have to be dug up for Uranium, of which useful isotopes then have to be enriched before they can be used economically in reactors. Furthermore, uranium is even less abundant in the Earth than oil and natural gas. If we would adopt nuclear power generation at large scale world-wide, we would deplete our scarce uranium probably in a few decades, long before oil. So we’re just substituting one problem for another with nuclear energy. It isn’t sustainable and renewable because at some point shortly after adoption, the fuel would run out.
If we would adopt nuclear power generation at large scale world-wide, we would deplete our scarce uranium probably in a few decades, long before oil
Tell me you don’t understand the energy density of nuclear fuel without telling me…
We also have centuries worth of uranium if it’s used for power generation, even if it was the main fuel.
Lol found the gas&oil shill!
What a trainwreck your post is, you’re saying CO2 costs for building a nuclear plant outweighs the CO2 fossil fuels would generate for the same amount if energy created, it’s like thinking you can bicycle to the moon.
But a couple of hundred thousand displaced people don’t count, of course. Also, there are no reliable statistics on fatalities because these are being systematically suppressed. I wonder why that is?
"There is no data to support my ideas, that’s definitely because everyone in the world is hiding and suppressing them "
Well, where are the data? Isn’t that a question that would be very much in the public interest to know about?
Well you’re the one claiming that this data has been suppressed.
We do have the data showing spikes in cancer after Chernobyl and data showing on-job deaths for pretty much every type of power plant. And that data shows that nuclear is the second safest energy per MWh generated, by far. With, apparently, solar being the first and wind at the third position. It’s not suppressed, it’s there and it’s pretty conclusive.
https://blog.ucs.org/lisbeth-gronlund/how-many-cancers-did-chernobyl-really-cause-updated/
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh
From Wikipedia
Since the 1990s—when the declassification of selected liquidator records prompted some direct participants to speak publicly—some with direct involvement in the liquidators’ cleanup efforts have asserted that several thousand liquidators died as a result of the cleanup.[23] Other organizations claim that total liquidator deaths as a result of the cleanup operation may number at least 6,000.
That’s a case specific to Chernobyl and Soviet Russia in general. We know they falsified a lot of data in many aspects, but that’s not “systemically suppressed” and definitely not something to generalise to every single nuclear power plant currently running in the world.
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Thats total and utter bs. The cost of nuclear is insanely high, especially for storing. On top comes the “not in my backyard” situation which makes the most vulnerable people be the ones most affected. We are seeing days on 100% renewables. Its not that hard to understand.
What is BS? I never said anything about monetary cost. CO2 will cost SO absurdly much more than anything nuclear combined, I find it hard to care about it.
Pushing nuclear is bs. The nuclear lobby wants to make it look like there is only coal or nuclear. Reality is renewables are the only solution. Dont believe shit like this.
You’re saying nuclear power is responsible for less deaths and sicknesses than for example… wind?
Yes. Wind turbines maintenance is a dangerous job that sometimes results in injury or death. Nuclear power is safer, per kWh.
Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/
It’s not, a person has already provided a study proving you wrong.
Edit: You’ve changed your comment completely with that edit.
I provided a source, you said “it’s not”. Forgive me if I ignore your comment unless you also provide a source.
You said “it’s much safer” in your original comment, which you removed in the edit.
The source you’ve linked shows it’s marginally safer on a death per KW/h rate, true, while being substantially more expensive and comes with the unsolved problem of dealing with toxic waste.
It’s 25% safer, which is closer to “much” safer than “marginally” safer in my mind, but yes I decided it’s better to let the data speak for itself and avoid such subjective qualifiers.
It is more expensive, which is why I prefer wind and solar to nuclear, but we were talking about safety specifically, not which tech is “better overall”.
How many cubic feet of nuclear waste do you think there is? I’m curious. Cause currently, all of the waste America has EVER created, would fill 1 football field about 30 feet high.
Right so why shouldn’t we just use power sources where we don’t have an issue with massively toxic waste products later on in the process?
Edit: And which are also a lot cheaper.
Because of reliability and lack of storage options.
Pumped hydroelectric storage exists and is easily achieved. What about the storage options for nuclear waste?
Pumped hydroelectric storage exists
Only if you have a mountain nearby, which not all places have.
What about the storage options for nuclear waste?
We have those.
Haven’t you heard of all the people that get killed by feral solar panels every year?
Nice try petroleum and coal lobby, maybe try harder with the “clean coal” next time!
Nice try hydrogen lobby! You just want to perpetuate the production scarcity model. Maybe try harder with the “carbon credits” next time!
Nice try lithium lobby! You just want to ride the current wave of the “green” trend. Maybe try harder with “made using recycled lithium” stickers on battery powered devices next time!
Are you drunk? Countries are already having 100% renewable usage days.
Yeah, tiny countries with very favourable conditions like Iceland.
Pretty sure I saw news of the UK having 100% renewable energy days, and like a dozen US states believe it’s practical enough to have a roadmap …… and those aren’t the states with the highest wind potential
Edit …. And there’s California with 100 100% renewable energy days out of 144 analyzed
We have a disinformation campaign running in here. Dont get discouraged. Something really crazy is going on in this place.
Yeah, right. And the very favorable germany. Please get help.
If you think Germany is running on 100% renewables, you need help way more than I do.
59% over the entire year is a damn good start
US is much more favorable for renewable energy than Germany, lots more wind, solar and hydro potential. How can we not be doing at least as well. There’s no technical reason. No practical reason. No economic reason. Just a bunch of gullible people manipulated by fossil fuel companies, a bunch of gullible people manipulated by outrage media, a bunch of gullible people manipulated by politicians. Idiots. All of them. Or evil
Yeah, I wasn’t trying to knock Germany. I’m German. But it’s far from 100%, we still have lot of coal (even worse, lignite) plants … and building more gas power plants. It’s just not an example if a 100% renewable country. Iceland was (but that got me downvoted, lol).
Anyway, it’s just lemmy. At least the debating about nuclear power doesn’t get you banned :S
Yeah. I’m not gonna bother discussing this with you. Please start reading at get off of telegram and 4chan. I suggest wikipedia or other “mainstream” sources of information. Good bye
You should take your own advice. It’s a pretty simple thing to look up.
That damn nuclear lobby, shipping metric tons of uranium across the world on nuclear powered ships, digging, stripping, pumping every single ounce of nuclear fuel all across the world on land and at sea, with a complete disregard towards human beings and the environment, all for billions in yearly profit.
These damn nuclear power exporters, wagging war on each other to gain control of nuclear resources to build more and more nuclear power plants, corrupting governments, killing people, polluting the air and the water all over the world. Pitting people against one another on carbon free energy generation, distracting from the real issue of completely getting rid of nuclear power generation to keep the planet livable in the future.
Yeah, that goddamn nuclear power lobby and nuclear power itself are definitely the problem in the fight against climate change.
Trying to make it funny does not change the fact that it is total moral corruption to push nuclear. There are long and detailed lists why nuclear is not the solution. Among them is that statistically, chernobil definitely will happen again, and it did btw. Long term storage is insanely expensive and we already are approaching high levels of renewables. The time we need to build nuclear reactors, next to the materials make it all just a pipe dream to mentally divest from renewables.
Its the same disinformation as immigrants taking our jobs and homes. Nuclear still requires someone with far superior technology. Otherwise you risk mass death. Renewables are easy to operate.
You realize the ultimate source of renewable energy is nuclear fusion?
Okay. Are you at school? Please ask your teacher to explain the difference between FUSION and FISSION.
Hey, you seem to be confused about their comment. Maybe ask YOUR teacher about reading comprehension.
Sure. Like from The Sun. We utilize that through photovoltaics and wind turbine generators. The wind is generated by uneven heating of the Earth by The Sun.
Of course, you’re talking about nuclear fission, not nuclear fusion. That’s what happens in a nuclear reactor.
Nincompoop.
Im talking about nuclear fusion not nuclear fission. But clearly youre here to troll and not actually have any understanding of the issues at hand
The article is talking about nuclear waste. Fusion is not yet an established and actually working energy source, despite what disinformation campaigns are trying to tell you.
“Nuclear” currently describes nuclear fission, which is the only way of actually producing energy as of today.
So YOU might mean fusion, but nobody else does.
Please go on about the morals of an inherently amoral tech.
Goof.
What?
Just as expected.
Just going to point out most of these comments, including the original, are based on Chernobyl which was a reactor not built to standard and based older tech even during its time. I’m not against renewables, but a nuclear reactor is definitely better than a coal plant or natural gas plant in terms of energy production, safety (modern tech to today, stop thinking Chernobyl) CO2 production, and sustainability.
Fukushima was supposed to be better. It wasn’t. They weren’t an abandoned Soviet reactor, they were efficient, well-trained Japanese. 3 mile island was America. It can happen anywhere.
Don’t compare nuclear to coal. Nobody’s making new coal plants, and they sure wouldn’t have been replaced by a far more expensive nuclear plant.
You are against renewables. In the time it takes to design, build, and start operation of a nuclear plant, you could have made an entire factory to produce wind turbines or photovoltaics, and have been making product for years before the nuclear plant even opens. If they open, because most nuclear reactors don’t go online due to cost overruns, time overruns, construction problems, etc… Then they just sit there, a big concrete foundation making zero energy.
Your thinking is out of the 1970’s-80’s. Completely outdated by at least 50 years.
Well I tried. Seems like I’m getting a response from. someone who is offended at the idea of nuclear energy and now using feelings to make a statement. Fukushima was hit by a massive earthquake and tsunami and it didn’t go critical like Chernobyl. Again, renewables are a great idea until you have to scale in massive countries. This is why China has started up Thorium reactors and aggressively going after fusion. They have massive solar plants too! And yes, there are plans for idiots to start up new coal plants in the US, because they’re idiots.
Fukushima shouldn’t have been built that close to a fault line and the ocean.
Yes daddy fill me with sweet coal, gas and lithium 🥵
The matrix happened because the machines used renewables thus the enemy eternally destroyed the atmosphere.
If the machines used nuclear energy they would have won.
God bless all intelligent forms
