558
What's some really unpopular opinion you have?
(lemmings.world)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023
558 points (94.3% liked)
Asklemmy
43366 readers
1507 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
People who are strongly against nuclear power are ignorant of the actual safety statistics and are harming our ability to sustainably transition off fossil fuels and into renewables.
I feel this would have been spot on, in the nineties.
Right now the problems plaguing nuclear are economic. There is no guarantee you can build and exploit a plant and get to break even before either it becomes irrelevant, or you fall victim to regulatory jostling.
Nuclear was a missed opportunity, but the window is closing fast and it will probably remain a missed opportunity forever.
Not all Nuclear Power is equal. RBMK reactors are dangerous as fuck. Others not so much.
If you take all operational nuclear reactors safety records into account from all countries in the world, including all meltdowns and near meltdown disasters, it's still by far safer and has resulted in less deaths and long term illness than any fossil fuel, on every single metric.
True that newer style reactors are far safer, but that's the point. If we had started to transition in the 70's into nuclear power, we would have made a massive dent in climate change and set the stage to transition into full clean renewable energy sources and along the way improved regulations and engineering standards for existing nuclear plants.
Yes, BUT the risk isn't distributed like the rest. One Reactor could displace tens of millions of people, disrupt infrastructure, and cause devastating impact to the US economy. That's a lot of risk based on it's proximity. If they could build them in the middle of nowhere out west that could all be mitigated.
Right. Most don't understand that risk is not just measured by frequency alone, but also by severity.
Nuclear is off the charts once you consider the full magnitude of a failure.
Isn't there Thorium reactors or something that should be some of the safest. And the waste can't be turned to nuclear weapons. So it probably won't be used :(
That's the main opinion on reddit. This is pretty mainstream.
I don't really go on Reddit, but Idk where you live, but in my experience talking to folks, most people are pretty put off by this view
I generally agree with you, but I think a lot of people are concerned about the nuclear waste and not the power plants but don't realize that.
Nuclear power plants generate waste very slowly—slowly enough that we won't be using fission any more by the time it becomes a serious problem. Fusion ignition was achieved recently, so it's only a matter of time.
However, nuclear power plants are also extremely expensive to build, which seriously limits their practical usefulness.
Word