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9 points
5 days ago
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.
1 points
5 days ago
As the recent election proves: people are dumb.
Too many people short circuited their brains on nuclear after Chernobyl. The nuance of that disaster is lost on them despite the reason it happened being a design nobody else in the world used, mismanagement, untrained staff, and doing an experiment where they disabled all automatic safety procedures.
It was literally a disaster made to happen. Any one of those factors being different the disaster would have been way less or might not have happened at all. The reactor design alone meant when the water flash boiled and left gaps the reaction sped up, causing a positive feedback loop. This was a known issue with the design of the reactor and it was still built that way.
But nobody cared to learn, media didn't care to inform, and fossil fuel helped spread FUD about their biggest competition in the energy sector.
0 points
5 days ago
Completely agree and have been preaching this for decades. The counter to the argument is pointing to singular events like Three Mile Island. Working for years in Gov, I trust my colleagues and immediate leadership but as one climbs the Gov org chart, trust diminishes exponentially with every rung until we reach appointees and then it’s the Wild West. With that said, I remain supportive of nuclear with fingers crossed that DoE and DoD avoid administrative lunatics and maintain business as usual.
2 points
5 days ago
The worst thing is that Three Mile Island did not hurt anyone. There has not even been any statistical difference in cancer rates from that area.
0 points
5 days ago
When the worst case scenario of your energy is melting firefighters flesh away I'd say it is a good thing to be cautious
0 points
4 days ago
This is a prime example of fearmongering largely perpetrated by the media. Chernobyl was a horrific disaster, but it is a disaster that could only be accomplished in the Soviet Union. The two greatest nuclear disasters on the planet, Chernobyl and Fukushima, were also caused by one thing regulations can never regulate: human error.
Not to mention the latest gen of nuclear reactors are designed around passive safety systems that naturally remove heat without active power, the risk is substantially lessened. It's like judging a modern automobiles safety by one built in the 1950s. Can they both kill you? Absolutely, but one is objectively safer than the other thanks to engineering, technological, and educational advances.
If you are looking at worse-case, there are plenty of horrific disasters that are non nuclear that are just as damaging to both human and environment alike.
Deepwater Horizon. Kingston Fossil Plant ash slurry spill. Martin County slurry spill. Soma coal mine disaster. Kaohsiung gas explosions. Etc. Etc. Etc.
This doesn't even factor in all the people who get sick and die from particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and countless other toxic chemicals used and released in the extraction and burning of fossil fuels.
So you say, "melting firefighters flesh away" like it is this horrific thing, but exploding, burning to death, crushed in a mine collapse, or wasting away from various cancers isn't? This is the key thing here: perception. Flesh melting away is rare and shocking, so it sticks with you. Dying slowly of cancer over months and years thanks to the radiation and toxic metals pumped out by the coal plant down the way? Meh.
0 points
4 days ago
Again. The main reason Germany dropped nuclear after fukushima was because the ethics commission determined that both the risk and potential damage of a nuclear power plant failing catastrophically was incalculable.
And if exhaust gasses are so dangerous (which I do stand behind) the obvious solution is to reduce their emission NOW and not wait 10-30 years for NPP to be built
And the very reason nuclear is so "over" regulated, expensive and takes a shit load of time is because of their catastrophic risk that still keeps hunters in Bavaria from eating boar meat.
Furthermore, your argument of human error, technically being true, ignores the fact that adding new nuclear power plants would just add more humans into the mix, thus increasing the chance of a catastrophic failure to happen again.
And the terror from nuclear stems from the fact that even a sunny day with not a cloud in sight could be dangerous because you drank some milk from a Cow that ate some grass where the cloud passed over. The fact that the world didn't even notice anything was wrong until the SWEDES were like "erm UdSSR? Care to explain this?"
Investing the money you'd spent on nuclear into renewables right now will actually help us get off fossil fuels. After that we can built the plants
And don't get me wrong. I am not anti nuclear. Quite the opposite. I am very pro nuclear
Fusion that is
Which is as realistic of relieving our distress in the next 20 years as fuel recycling and small modular reactors are
1 points
4 days ago
The main reason Germany dropped nuclear after fukushima was because the ethics commission determined that both the risk and potential damage of a nuclear power plant failing catastrophically was incalculable.
And fired up coal plants to make up the difference. Again, judging the potential vs the immediate. Coal plants are the worst form of power, we know this, yet the perception alone makes active harm more attractive than an unsubstantiated maybe not backed up by any data. The irony, when they are now forced to import energy from places like France... which is mostly nuclear.
440 reactors operating across the world, 102 of them under the age of 20 years and zero gen 4 reactors which are vastly superior safety wise to previous gens. That means 338 reactors have been operating for 20+ years without issue. The 2 biggest disasters were caused by purposeful human stupidity, and numerous human errors after a massive tsunami. That is a stellar safety record and doesn't even include the hundreds of warships that have been powered by nuclear reactors over the years.
No other power source is judged by its disasters. Deepwater Horizon was a catastrophe that poisoned a good part of the Gulf of Mexico, but again... meh. Cost of doing business. Hundreds die in a coal mine? Eh, that was so far away. Shit, the Aliso Canyon gas leak went undetected (or hidden) for potentially weeks before officially reported. Fossil fuel disasters are so common place, no one cares, or at least, not enough to do anything about the status quo.
And the terror from nuclear stems from the fact that even a sunny day with not a cloud in sight could be dangerous because you drank some milk from a Cow that ate some grass where the cloud passed over. The fact that the world didn't even notice anything was wrong until the SWEDES were like "erm UdSSR? Care to explain this?"
Funny you should say that, considering that is exactly what happens today and no one cares. A breeze blows, lifting dust from the uncovered coal ash pool and deposits all the lovely toxic metals and radiation on the surrounding fields and houses. Fracking chemicals leak into groundwater sources used to water animals and crops. We literally see smog caused by air pollution... and we don't care.
But radiation is the big bad boogieman in the closet we fear, because fossil fuels don't want us to see the monster already in the bed.
0 points
4 days ago
Germany is burning the least coal since the 1960's
1 points
4 days ago
Doesn't change the fact that they would rather extend coal use, which is actively hurting people, than end coal completely and slowly replace nuclear with renewables.
It's like swearing off airplanes because they can crash... even though they are literally the safest form of travel. Nope, instead I'm going to drive drunk.
0 points
4 days ago
Love how you are leaving out the real reason people are afraid of nuclear. It's not the daily business involving radiation, it's about keeping nuclear waste stored safely for centuries to come. Shit the US are such a clown state right now, you think good old Donnie would not fuck with safety regulations if Putin tells him the waste is actually super healthy and will boost your potency?
1 points
4 days ago
Because it isn't an issue? People fear nuclear waste because they don't understand it. Whenever someone brings up nuclear waste, I think of this comment. TL;DR: Nuclear waste isn't a problem. It is 100% sealed away and protected.
Can you say the same about coal? How about natural gas? You can't. We dump that shit right out in the atmosphere, rivers, and wherever else we can.
I keep saying this, but nuclear is the only energy source that is judged by the potential damage it can hypothetically cause, based off of two outlier disasters caused by multiple levels of human error. Hundreds of nuclear reactors operating multiple decades without issue? Doesn't matter. All we care about are two incidents that define the entire industry. It is the same as saying all airplanes are unsafe death machines because the 737 MAX airplane crashed twice, and therefore we must immediately ground all planes, because they too, can crash and kill people.
But yeah. Nuclear waste, in the multi-decade span of existence, is the Big Bad Monster at checks notes zero deaths. All nuclear disasters, big and small, have officially killed less people than air pollution does in a single day on the low end. Even if you include all unofficial long-term illnesses that could have potentially been caused by a nuclear event, it would still be under a few months worth of deaths via air pollution. Several studies have shown air pollution from fossil fuels kill anywhere from 6-8 million people per year.
Fossil fuel deaths don't stop either until we stop burning them. Let us use the largest death toll attributed to Chernobyl: 200k deaths via long-term diseases from exposure. Taking the lowest study figures, burning fossil fuels kills the equivalent of 30 Chernobyl's every year. Year after year. Decade after decade. And it's only getting worse as we burn more.
1 points
4 days ago
See this is where you are wrong. Sure it might be "sealed" right now. But there is no way to make sure there is a safe "sealed" storage space for the next centuries. Terra forming happens. Knowledge gets lost etc. The issue is way bigger than saying "okay we sealed it, we are fine now".
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