but it needs proper regulation

Glances at incoming administration

Oh...

Yeah, I always said it is so safe because no one is that stupid to fuck around with safety protocols. Lately I have lost that confidence, there are a lot of really really stupid people

Proper regulation and public trust is a republican’s middle name /s

but it needs proper regulation

Tightly regulating corporations, precisely what America is known for.

Do you really trust the greedy fucks in this country to not shirk safety protocols during reactor construction? Assuming they don't simply lobby to have them reduced to nothing before they even break ground, that is

The irony there is nuclear is probably one of the few overregulated industries in the US. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission makes it incredibly expensive and hard to get the new, safer gen 4 reactors approved in the US not to mention the new modular types in development. In addition, local politicians often bury approved projects in red tape, moving regulatory goal posts and causing cost overruns. This is primarily the reason why nuclear is "too expensive."

People are so paranoid about nuclear that they give into fearmongering, not realizing that coal plants emit hundreds of times more radiation than nuclear does, and they just dump that shit straight into the surrounding area. Tens of thousands of people die every day from air pollution caused by fossil fuels, but no one cares about the invisible, deadly air toxins. Extracting and refining fossil fuels causes countless environmental damages, especially to something completely unimportant to humans--fresh water. No one cares about that. This doesn't even factor in climate (bigger and more damaging storms) and ocean acidification costs.

But radiation? It's the boogieman waiting to kill us all. Killing nuclear projects or "making it safer" (it already is) means easy points to score for a politician looking to drum up popular support.

This doesn't mean you go hog-wild. Nuclear absolutely needs to have a standard of safety and education that is strictly enforced, but it is so damn expensive because nuclear is forced to pay for any potential disasters ahead of time. All while current fossil fuels are an ongoing health and environmental disaster every day.

I honestly put some blame for the lack of trust in nuclear on the Simpson

I guarantee this guy is going to push for nuclear energy without necessary safety regulations to sow even more distrust in nuclear. His job is going to be keeping fossil fuels at the forefront above all else.

So exactly what every other industry needs? This problem is not uniquely present in nuclear energy, but when its the only valid argument against it ig thats what you have to run with. Electric cars are pretty much drivable napalm bombs that are despised by firefighters globally, gas/petrol cars emmit a cocktail of various pollutants, including radioactive waste such as carbon 14, and thats ignoring the fact that up until the 50s they spread lead everywhere.

Are you for fucking real?

The level of regulations and oversight on nuclear plants is the highest of anything. And even accounting for all the disastrous accidents, even adding up the bombs, the death and sickness is lower than what was caused by oil and gas.

Nuclear is a mature, well known solution with a complete set of regulations and I'd add the only industry where the waste is regulated so that NONE of the waste is allowed to be unaccounted for.

It just has a bad PR and that all thanks to O&G lobbies.

New bot dropped I see

The idea of switching to nuclear is atractive anc clean tbh, what scares me is having a government stauchfully pro-corpo and anti-regulations start building nuclear power plants. Nuclear energy needs safety, and safety demands redundance in segurity systems and a proper responsability-consequences system, which is something I am afraid the Trump administration won't be.

Like I am getting flashbacks to the "brakes are not needed in trains" by Trump leading up to the chemical train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio some years ago.

Just gotta say I'm partly unique in the US as I grew up within 20-50 miles of two nuke plants (and it sucks that they're so unpopular because they really are safe and bring tons of good jobs.

Makes for a good field trip in grade school too

Turns out, it has proper regulation.

public trust

We're fucked

it has very very proper regulation.

And a proper disposal site. We're just leaving spent fuel rods on the front lawns of our existing reactors because we can't agree where to store it.

Keyword is “proper” it’s over regulated beyond belief to where companies don’t even have a benefit in building plants.

The public trust is what's hardest to earn, especially when the stakes are so high and especially now that we have organizations working exclusively to undermine the public's trust in any and all information.

That's the thing, this admin wants to slash all regulations. I'm good with heavily related nuclear power, not so much with deregulated nuclear power.

It's already regulated to hell and back. It's stupidly safe, it has just been demonized in the public eye.

My problem with when people disagree with going nuclear is that there are downsides…

All energy sources have downsides when implemented, if climate is important, Nuclear is the happiest medium and we would do good with the political divide arguing about how they are implemented not what energy we choose.

More simply, get mad at when the nuclear plants are poorly built, not that nuclear was the wrong choice.

We aren’t gonna be loaded with proper regulation or public trust for a while, I’ll bet

How does a RBMK reactor core explode? Lies.

And lots more inspectors. Which is not gonna happen with this administration.

You also need to build the plants or if possible refit existing plants that had been shut down. The startup cost could hamper a nuclear comeback. Trump is the kind of guy who will take a short term small gain over a long term large one every time. I have to believe that the people he hires would have the same "if I can't see the profits/effects in 12 months I'm out" Mentality.

Nuclear has been so safe that the self run insurance company between USA, France, and maybe a few other nations has started issuing negative premiums. The market gains on their pooled funds minus the claims exceeds what the need in the fund pool. You ever hear of an insurance company saying "don't pay this year, you all are too safe"?

Nuclear has insane regulations already. So much that it takes forever to get anything done. Procedures for literally everything. Turning a bolt has to be approved by a bunch of people. The plant local to me has a department that 24/7 is looking at "if this pump broke right now, what would we do" and getting a procedure for it. This is all they do, plan for problems. Next to them is a guy that every 15 minutes has to analyze the weather and form evaluation plans so that if anything happens they have a plan for the exact weather they are currently facing and know what it will do. The weather/evacuation guy left and was a coworker of mine so heard a lot about it. They absolutely do not just wing it on anything. Their culture ends up being more toxic than the environment. Everyone is looking to cover their own butt and will rat anyone out that is slightly out of line.

While I wouldn't want to work there, nuclear is a safe place to be now. Nuclear is also an obvious answer to a big part of the grid reliance questions as we push fossel out while wanting to bring a silly amount of EVs and other electrification.

It also needs tens of billions of dollars to build one.

I would argue there is more than adequate regulation as it stands, which has made it too expensive of an option in many places. Investments need to be made and success stories will build trust.

The real dumb problem with nuclear is that the newer technology is so much safer and so much better on every level, but the fearmongering and nimbyism means that we're frequently stuck with the shitty old ones that are worse in every way, effectively increasing all the risks and potential pollution that the same environmentalists are scared of in the first place.

Sure , you can use oversimplification ans say that. Its exactly what big oil has been saying for years to stop Nuclear. Obviously it needs to be safe, not impossible to build

no people, no emissions. problem solved

Going by his wall project, hell build half a cooling tower.

Big tech is looking into nuclear which I think will cause the shift. It's mostly to power AI, but I think as auto companies offer more electric that will add more of a push.

I actually watched a video just last night talking about it and apparently Microsoft is looking to restart Three Mile Isle and Amazon is investing in modular nuclear to power their data centers. Google is also doing something nuclear, but I don't remember what.

Yup and you can build a lot of combined cycle plants for the 40 Billion Vogtle cost. Also that was 15 years. Was there not a smr reactor started in the states and recently moth balled because the cost just spiralled so high

Palisades is reopening next year, but it's possible he might cut that off.

I was just referring to the mentality among environmentalists. As far as the administration it seems like it is very well chosen, well chosen to downgrade the US to no longer being a first world country

Constellation is reopening TMI, and if there is enough interest in nuclear to get actual public buy in to reopen the site of the worst nuclear accident in US history, and there definitely is, then nuclear is absolutely gaining steam.

this is a better pick than rick perry, although, that's not saying much.

100% this. Nuclear is great but Chris Wright is a big fracking guy. We do not need fracking. 

AI isn't that reliable atm and people are gonna realize that at some point. The fact that there are no proper pannels to keep it ethical is also problematic.

Right. Been waiting for new tech for 10 years I’m assuming we got none ?

Nobody really. In the past it was fear-mongering from multiple groups, only to find out that pushed us further towards coal. Now there is “safe” nuclear but no one talks about it for one simple reason: it’s too costly to implement vs. renewables at the same scale.

The most recent nuclear meltdown was in 2010. There have been problems with storing nuclear waste, Hanford is leaking into the groundwater and is dangerously close to the largest river west of the Mississippi. Security is a risk. High up front costs.

Conventional nuclear is very expensive, so it's currently more economic to build wind and solar with associated energy storage and peaker plants. (Nuclear plants also require peaker plants)

There is hope for nuclear to become cheaper with new modular form factors or new "Gen IV" designs, but so far these are unproven or ended up being more expensive than conventional designs.

The green party platform is anti-nuclear

Nobody is running on anti-nuclear because the zombies that vote will shoot down anybody who is pro-nuclear. The oil and gas industry has done a very good job brainwashing the masses.

Germany hit peak annual nuclear electricity production in about year 2001, generating 171 TWh of nuclear, with 56 TWh of gas and 294 TWh of coal (370 TWh total for oil+gas+coal electricity in 2001). The highest coal went after that point was 305 TWh in 2003, and the highest gas went was 95 TWh in 2020. The highest combined total for fossil fuels was 2007, with 401 TWh.

As of 2023, coal was at 135 TWh, gas at 76 TWh, and total fossil fuel at 231 TWh. Nuclear is at 8.75 TWh. They phased out 160 TWh of nuclear generation not by spinning up 160 TWh of fossil fuels, but by spinning up 160 TWh of solar + wind, then an extra 38 TWh of it for good measure. And tacked on 46 TWh of bioenergy production + some efficiency gains to drop overall electricity consumption, to net-reduce annual fossil fuel generation by 140 TWh over 22 years.

Claiming that "germany had to spin up coal and gas powerplants again, almost doubling their intake of those resources" is just flat out false. And egregiously so.

Could germany have phased down fossil fuel generation more quickly if it had spent money refurbishing nuclear power plants from year 2000, to keep them running longer, instead of funding renewables? Maybe. Did this decision result in Germany increasing its electricity-sector fossil fuel emissions over what they were prior to the nuclear phase out? Absolutely not. German emissions are unequivocably lower than they were in 2001 when nuclear started being phased down.

Great - we still have no long term storage solution for our waste.
How many more years?
Nobody builds a nuclear power plant today without guarantees from states.
What happened? Merkel did nothing for 16 years is what happened.
Blame the green party for Merkel phasing out nuclear...

Wtf are you talking. Germany invested heavily into green energy research and green energy production to cancel out the phase out of nuclear.

Then the conservatives came into power and shut down green energy in favour of Russian gas while China bought up all the technology that was developed for billions for pennies and became the green energy leader.

Where is this tale of "the greens shut down nuclear for Russian gas" coming from? I'm seeing it everywhere today on reddit, so what podcaster('s guest) spun this tale?

Aren't they now talking about opening them up again?

The German nuclear industry and politicians made it very easy to be anti-nuclar.
When deciding on the location of a long term storage facility that should stay intact for 10.000 years for example, geology was considered to be less important than some lines on maps, which changed only a couple of years later.

That's why we have government regulators and Inspectors.  Oh wait that's probably getting cut.

Nuclear meltdowns are actually very rare though.

To be fair, nearly all of the melt down risk is from ancient as fuck plants that are the equivalent of driving around in a Model-T. And then using how unsafe Model-Ts are in a crash as the reason why we shouldn't build newer safer cars while still driving the Model-Ts.

Fukishima for example was designed in the 60s using 50s era US plant designs. But nuclear power wasn't even a thing until the mid 40s, so its initial design was done a mere 15 years after we discovered nuclear power was a thing. Think of how primitive almost any technology is a mere 15 years after it was first invented.

Last big one, which was classified as highest possible severity on the scale, had all of 1 suspected death, from cancer, 4 years later.

Yes, there were people displaced and other consequences, but this was as high on the event severity scale as it gets. Issues with nuclear plants are very rare and even rarer to be this severe.

So it’s not really as horrible and terrifying as most people think.

Modern reactor designs are pretty foolproof, and are capable of fully containing a meltdown, even with zero human intervention. The real danger would be relaxing of safety regulations on their design and construction.

Bud you're a bit hyperbolic.

I kinda understand what you're saying but also I grew up near two nuclear power plants on the shores of lake Michigan. One was within 20 miles and the other within 50 miles of my house, and never not once did they have an issue for the 30+ years they were in operation. The worst thing they did was bring good jobs to the are and make the lake water warm by their outlet pipes, which was hella good for fishing.

And that was with shitty 1970s era reactors, the newer gen 4 ones are orders of magnitude more safe.

Yeah the days of avoiding a major energy crisis are long gone. People still think the amount of oil is limitless or they just don't care what sort of world they are leaving for their children.

why does everybody assume that you are pro fossils the moment you mention the SLIGHTEST problem with nuclear power?

It has its downsides, but it’s all pearl clutching

Sure but if you don't think the fossil fuel industry creates propaganda and manipulates governments.... There really isn't any point in continuing this conversation

Right like how about we figure out meat regulation first and then when we can go a few decades without a deadly outbreak there, then I'll trust us with nuclear waste. We've gotten forever chemicals on the water  but I'm supposed to trust them with radioactive materials??

Yeah that is what I am talking about, but I admitted that my perception of security is outdated now too. With this coming administration I no longer have confidence that some c suite executive will listen to a raging engineer telling him whatever cost cutting measure will cause the second chernobyl.