this post was submitted on 20 May 2024
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Same logic applies to nuclear energy. More people fall off of hydroelectric power plants or drown or something, or fall off of wind turbines, than get poisoned by radiation from a nuclear power plant
Nuclear just isn't a good short-term value proposition so most people are dismissive of it. Plants take along time to create and are generally expensive. Not to mention the NIMBYs who would rather dump tons of chemicals into local riverways, air, and land with coal than have a clean-burning nuclear plant within 10 miles of their city.
Wind and Solar are cheaper now, and we won't have to trade a dependence on oil from foreign countries for a dependence on uranium from foreign countries. We won't in the future have to hear about how the people of Kazakhstan will greet us liberators when we invade the country to establish freedom and have to pretend it's merely a coincidence they happen to have the energy resources we're dependent on.
The danger of nuclear isn't so much on the daily stats of what actually went wrong, but in the tiny risk of having huge problems. The worst case scenario for a Chernobyl style disaster is actually losing huge parts of Europe. Even in well run plants, if enough things go wrong at the same time, it could still mean losing the nearest city. These "black swan" events are hard for humans to think clearly about, as we are not used to working with incredibly small chances (like deciding to plan for a 1000 year storm or not).
Basically every nuclear disaster has been very very preventable. And even then in incompetency, it was a small chance.
Preventable, but they still happened, even with the crazy security at plants. But what you're saying is like "we've only had small earthquakes so far, so there are likely to be no big ones". When it's really absolutely the other way around.
https://cen.acs.org/environment/pollution/nuclear-waste-pilesscientists-seek-best/98/i12
Still haven't found a good way to get rid of nuclear waste, which remains dangerous for a long time.
Coal produces more toxic waste per MWh than nuclear, and it just spews it into the atmosphere, not into nice neatly packaged barrels you can just store in a hole underground...
https://youtu.be/5EsBiC9HjyQ?t=50s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aUODXeAM-k
Where did I say coal was a good idea?
I would vote for improving the power grid. Create tons of jobs and make the system less prone to blackouts. Remember 2003
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003
Yes, fission sucks. But still better than fossils.
We know what to do with it, the same thing countries like France do, deep isolation.
The problem with America, is the same problem we have for any federal level infrastructure. The states have too much control and are prone to NIMBY campaigns.
The problem with America and some other countries like Russia is what you consider a waste is a weapon grade material to these governments. And you don't want to bury your weapons too deep.
imho "deep isolation" isn't a solution, it's kicking the can down the road.
Improving the power grid would increase the available supply without causing problems.
Why? And what would be the alternative?
Even if we don't start relying on more nuclear power, nuclear waste is still going to be produced. Even if it's just maintaining the nuclear power we have right now, or just dealing with an aging nuclear arms cache.
I don't see how kicking it down the road is really a problem in this scenario, as that's pretty much all you can do with nuclear waste, wait until it's not dangerous.
That's kinda a general statement..... Part of improving the power grid could be interpreted as including more nuclear power.
The imperative in this scenario isn't just making sure we're not "causing problems", it's moving towards a power source that minimizes our dependence on fossil fuels.
It's "kicking the can down the road" vs ecological collapse.
So, by your own words, there's no safe way to get rid of nuclear waste besides storing it and hoping things will work out.
Also, nuclear plants would take as long to build as other, safer methods.
I think you're purposely misconstruing the meaning of safe. I think deep isolation is a proven method of safely storing radioactive material until it decays.
You are claiming it's unsafe, or "kicking the can down the road", but haven't explained your reasoning. Perhaps if you had any examples of how deep isolation has failed, or ways you think it will fail, it may strengthen your argument
Again, you are claiming things are safer, but haven't explained how? All forms of energy production have their positive and negative attributes, however safety isn't really a problem usually attributed to nuclear energy.
Time is generally an actual criticism of nuclear power, but a lot of length of time isn't really inherent in the actual construction of the power plant, which can be completed in as little as 3-5 years. It's usually the same problem as your first claim, the governments inability to deal with NIMBY campaigns and private interest.
Yup. No big companies campaigning to get nuclear power. Nope, nary a one.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/investors-are-turning-bullish-nuclear-2023-11-16/
Ahh yes, because a recent increase in interest from investors over nuclear power = decades of fossil fuels companies lobbying against alternative sources for energy production is erased overnight.
I wonder what the costs would be to just literally launch it into the sun. Let it all get recompiled in the big fusion furnace and out of our hands. Of course if the rocket failed during launch you have a real big problem, but that part aside.
The Space Shuttle Challenger has entered the chat.
Not sure anyone would sign off on sending potential dirty bombs into space.
A few years back people were floating the idea of sending up orbital solar farms that would collect power and beam it to the surface.
At least not anymore.... We did a successful test of a nuclear powered ramjet in the 60's with project Neptune. But I guess that was before people were afraid of dirty bombs welded into the shape of cruise missiles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_A119
You probably know about it, but I thought I'd throw it into the mix.
tl, dr = the Air Force was planning on detonating an atom bomb on the moon because shit like that made sense in the Cold War.
There was also a plan to explode nuclear bombs on shorelines to create artificial harbors, and of course the infamous Project Orion, a manned interstellar spaceship powered by exploding hydrogen bombs. Doing unhinged shit with nukes was all the rage back then I guess
If you haven't seen it, "The Three Body Problem" is a good series with a lot of wild ideas.
They use the hydrogen bomb spaceship idea.
Be honest, if you had a lot of nukes lying around, you wouldn't at least consider nuking the moon?
Also when you think about it, nuking the Moon is way less insane than nuking the Earth over 2000 times.
https://youtu.be/fLQiihXTFZk
The video was inspired by an idea used in 'The Three Body Problem' series.
the tl, dr is that atom bombs could be used to make a spaceship.
Even if we had a magic 100% reliable rocket it still wouldn't be a good idea to send it into space. You'd have to have a stupidly powerful magic 100% reliable rocket to get into a solar intercept orbit, otherwise it would just hang around the Earth for a very long time and eventually come back down as nuclear fire dust.
It's not as if storing it underground is an unsafe strategy so it seems like a pointless exercise.
Thus the 'aside from launch failure's part. No rocket scientist here, but way I figure if we can send probes to do flyby photos of the outer planets how hard can it be to hit the biggest thing in our system?
Lift costs might be stupidly high too, but more a would it be possible thought.
Because the other planets are in orbit of the sun like the Earth is. The sun itself is stationary, so not only do you have to go all the way over there, you also have to cancel out the rotation of the Earth.
Which is much better than not kicking the can down the road, and just spewing emissions into the atmosphere like fossil fuels. Nuclear is not perfect, it's just better than fossil fuels.
Recycle it. And the bits you can't recycle are so negligibly small you can store it in a single dedicated national dump
Compared to other options, including renewables, nuclear produces close to no waste at all.
Dumping it under ground doesn't seem like a particularly sophisticated strategy but it's actually perfectly safe. It's not going to leak out or anything it's in massive blocks of concrete.
Worrying about it is pointless.
For we know in 50 years someone will come up with a way to recycle it and it'll be a complete non-issue anyway. This pretty good research on recycling you can a material already so 50 years is not an unreasonable time frame. The current containing solutions are good for thousands of years.