• Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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    27 minutes ago

    That is an extreme over simplification of a very complicated subject, it’s never that simple.

    Having said that: yeah. It was stupid to stop using nuclear energy

  • AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee
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    4 hours ago

    It’s sad that the coal lobby has convinced so many people that the most reliable clean energy source we’ve ever discovered is somehow bad.

    • cynar@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      Particularly since coal power stations emit FAR more radioactive material, routinely, than most nuclear “leaks”.

  • reksas@sopuli.xyz
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    2 hours ago

    there are millions being poured into propaganda against using anything but fossil fuels, much of it stems from there. But i wonder if its better this way or the alternative way where we would use more nuclear energy but since there would be so much money to be made, the rich would use their money to make all safety regulations null. I wish we could just get rid of the source problem.

  • Isthisreddit@lemmy.world
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    3 hours ago

    I feel this is all moot. When we run out of fossil fuels and go off the energy cliff, the nuclear facilities will basically build themselves, assuming there will be anyone around that will even know how to build a nuclear reactor

    • cynar@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      The problem is that nuclear reactors can’t be built fast. We’ve also lost a lot of the expertise to age and retirement.

      Nuclear should have been a major factor in dealing with climate change. Unfortunately, we no longer have time for it to take up the slack. It will need to catch up with other renewable energy sources, we can’t wait for it.

  • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 hours ago

    Gotta be on 4chan to equate a nuclear meltdown with a person’s hut catching on fire.

    Bonus points for the ableism. Upvoted here ofc.

    • Bacano@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      I mean in terms of effect on population (which is kind of the point), the analogy still holds.

  • Draedron@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    8 hours ago

    Anon is dumb. Anon forgets the nuclear waste. Anon also forgets that the plants for the magical rocks are extremely expensive. So much that energy won by these rocks is more expensive than wind energy and any other renewable.

    • uis@lemm.ee
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      2 hours ago

      Anon forgets the nuclear waste.

      Nuclear waste is pretty tame. Compare gloves that were used once to turn valve on pipe in reactor room to shit from coal in your lungs. Even most active kind of waste everyone thinks of - spent fuel - consists from about 90% of useful material.

      Anon also forgets that the plants for the magical rocks are extremely expensive.

      Actually not. Especially cost of energy compared to one of coal.

    • InputZero@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      Anon isn’t dumb, just simple. Nuclear energy can be the best solution for certain situations. While renewables are the better choice in every way, they’re effectiveness isn’t equally distributed. There are places where there just isn’t enough available renewable energy sources year round to supply the people living there. When energy storage and transmission methods are also not up to the task, nuclear becomes the best answer. It shouldn’t be the first answer people look to but it is an answer. An expensive answer but sometimes the best one.

      Also nuclear waste doesn’t have to be a problem. If anyone was willing to cover the cost of burning it in a breeder reactor for power or burry it forever. It just is because it’s expensive.

      • Aufgehtsabgehts@feddit.org
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        2 hours ago

        Also nuclear waste doesn’t have to be a problem. If anyone was willing to cover the cost of burning it in a breeder reactor for power or burry it forever. It just is because it’s expensive.

        But it is a problem. Finding a place that can contain radioactive waste for millions of years is incredible difficult. If you read up on it, you get disillusioned pretty fast.

      • drake@lemmy.sdf.org
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        5 hours ago

        When energy storage and transmission methods are also not up to the task, nuclear becomes the best answer.

        Obviously, the best answer is to improve energy storage and transmission infrastructure. Why would we waste hundreds of millions on a stupid toy power plant when we could spend 10% of that money on just running decent underground cables.

        • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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          4 hours ago

          You really don’t understand how expensive underground cables are. You know those big, huge steel transmission towers that you see lined up, hundreds in a row?

          Those towers costs hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars each. And the reason they’re used is because that’s way cheaper than underground.

          Shit - just the cable is a couple million per mile per cable.

          • drake@lemmy.sdf.org
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            3 hours ago

            Are you fucking serious? Nuclear power plants cost way fucking more than some cables. You people are fundamentally so unserious. Pull your head out of a reactor for ten seconds and take reality as it exists

            • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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              2 hours ago

              Yes. They cost more than some cables. But we aren’t talking about wiring a stereo.

              A new nuclear unit (4 billion-ish) costs about as much as 2,000 miles of transmission-grade cable (about 2 million per mile). Considering that there’s about 30 cables on a tower run, you’re looking at around 65 miles’ worth of cable for the cost of a nuclear unit.

              And that’s just the cost of the wire. No towers, no conduit, no substations, no land acquisition (aerial easement and underground are very different things), no labor.

        • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
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          4 hours ago

          You do realize that all that is also expensive, and limited? We haven’t invented room temperature superconductors yet, and battery technology is far from perfect. There is only so much lithium and cobalt in the entire world. Yes we can now use things like sodium, but that’s a technology that’s still young and needs more research before it’s full potential is realized. There is also a reason we have overground cables and not underground. Digging up all that earth is hella expensive.

          • drake@lemmy.sdf.org
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            3 hours ago

            and breeder reactors are more expensive than faerie magic, I prefer to use technologies that are actually real rather than things I wish were real

  • MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml
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    6 hours ago

    But if the magic rocks (facility) cost more than creating energy from the water the magic rocks need for cooling…

    • iii@mander.xyz
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      10 hours ago

      As long as you don’t care when the electricity is produced

      • marx2k@lemmy.world
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        5 hours ago

        Nuclear: As long as you don’t care about the magic rocks once the magic has decayed to a level where they’re not boiling water anymore

        • uis@lemm.ee
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          2 hours ago

          90% of magic rocks that no longer boil wsater is magic rocks that can boil water.

      • uniquethrowagay@feddit.org
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        9 hours ago

        Storage is a solvable problem. Whereas we don’t have the resources to power the world with nuclear plants.

        • TheFriar@lemm.ee
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          2 hours ago

          The second half if most important. It doesn’t produce enough electricity. Renewables are getting cheaper and cheaper and are taking up the mantle to take over majority of power production in some nations. But it is harder to monetize and can be democratized and made pretty easily. It’s like weed. It can be taken away from bigger producers and therefore there is significant push back/lobbying against it.

        • uis@lemm.ee
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          2 hours ago

          Storage is a solvable problem.

          Not in this economy. We need change in consumption too. Make loads opportunistic.

        • iii@mander.xyz
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          9 hours ago

          Storage is a solvable problem

          I’m not convinced it is. Storage technologies exist for sure, but the general public seems to grossly underestimate the scale of storage required to match grid demand and renewables only production.

          • jaemo@sh.itjust.works
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            3 hours ago

            Ok but maybe a counterpoint is we are overestimating the ability of the atmosphere and ocean to absorb CO2 and maintain a habitable planet. I’d rather store isotopes in the earth (where they came from anyway) than carbon in the air.

          • Natanox@discuss.tchncs.de
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            8 hours ago

            I think you underestimate how much storage power is currently being build and how many different technologies are available. In Germany alone there currently are 61 projects planed and in the approval phase boasting a combined 180 Gigawatts of potential power until 2030. Those of them that are meant to be build at old nuclear power plants (the grid connection is already available there) are expected to deliver 25% of the necessary storage capacity. In addition all electric vehicles that are assumed to be on the road until 2030 add another potential 100GW of power.

            Of course these numbers are theoretical as not every EV will be connected to a bidirectional charger and surely some projects will fail or delay, however given the massive development in this sector and new, innovative tech (not just batteries but f.e. a concrete ball placed 800m below sea level, expected to store energy extremely well at 5.8ct / kilowatt) there’s very much reason for optimism here.

            It’s also a funny sidenote that France, a country with a strong nuclear strategy, frequently buys power from Germany because it’s so much cheaper.

            • Ooops@feddit.org
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              8 hours ago

              Another important note about France: They are the second country alongside Germany heavily pushing for an upscaled green hydrogen market in the EU. Because -just like renewables- nuclear production doesn’t match the demand pattern at all. Thus it’s completely uneconomical without long-term storage.

              The fact that we seem to constantly discuss nuclear vs. renewables is proof that it’s mostly lobbying bullshit. Because in reality they don’t compete. It’s either renewables+short-term storage+long-term-term storage or renewables+nuclear+long-term storage. Those are the only two viable models.

              • iii@mander.xyz
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                7 hours ago

                upscaled green hydrogen market

                That’s been the talk in town for 40 years now. Green hydrogen has never gotten beyond proof-of-concept.

                The fact that we seem to constantly discuss nuclear vs. renewables is proof that it’s mostly lobbying bullshit.

                Sadly, it’s because the political green parties available to me are anti-nuclear.

                It’s either renewables+short-term storage+long-term-term storage or renewables+nuclear+long-term storage.

                Why is nuclear+short term storage not an option, according to you?

                • gnygnygny@lemm.ee
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                  4 hours ago

                  Due to the recent nuclear hype uranium price will rise and keep in mind that the resource will not exceed a century.

                • Ooops@feddit.org
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                  5 hours ago

                  Why is nuclear+short term storage not an option

                  Because cold winter days exist. Yes you can only build nuclear capacities for the average day and then short-term storage to match the demand pattern. But you would need to do so for the day(s) of the year with the highest energy demand, some cold winter work day. What do you do with those capacities the remaining year as throttling nuclear down is not really saving much costs (most lie in construction and deconstruction)?

            • iii@mander.xyz
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              6 hours ago

              It’s not just power that’s needed (MW), also stored energy (MWh).

              Germany consumes on average 1.4TWh of electricity a day (1). Imagine bridging even a short dunkelflaute of 2 days.

              Worldwide lithium ion battery production is 4TWh a year (2).

              It’s also a funny sidenote that France, a country with a strong nuclear strategy, frequently buys power from Germany because it’s so much cheaper.

              Isn’t that normal? The problems with renewables isn’t that they generate cheap power, when they are generating. Today windmills even need to be equipped with remote shutdown, to prevent overproduction.

              The problems arise when they aren’t generating.

              • Natanox@discuss.tchncs.de
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                6 hours ago

                Your estimation goes way off because you still believe lithium ion to be the only viable solution. By now Sodium-Ion batteries are already installed even in EVs and can be produced without any critical resource like lithium.

                And then of course there are all the other storage solution. Like I said, there even are storage solutions like concrete balls. Successfully tested in 2016, here an article from 2013.

                By now it wouldn’t be wise to stifle this enormous emerging market of various technologies by using expensive, problematic technology (not just because the biggest producer of fuel rods is Russia).

                • iii@mander.xyz
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                  4 hours ago

                  I don’t think lithium ion is the only storage technology. I was using it for scale.

                  The most cost effective storage is pumped storage. But even that wouldn’t reach the scale necessary.

                  6 MWh pumped storage proof-of-concept won’t l, either.

              • barsoap@lemm.ee
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                6 hours ago

                The watthours is what gas is for. Germany’s pipeline network alone, that’s not including actual gas storage sites, can store three months of total energy usage.

                …or at least that’s the original plan, devised some 20 years ago, Fraunhofer worked it all out back then. It might be the case that banks of sodium batteries or whatnot are cheaper, but yeah lithium is probably not going to be it. Lithium’s strength is energy density, both per volume and by weight, and neither is of concern for grid storage.

                Imagine bridging even a short dunkelflaute of 2 days.

                That’s physically impossible for a place the size of Germany, much less Europe.

                • iii@mander.xyz
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                  4 hours ago

                  is what gas is for

                  Wouldn’t it be better to go fossil free. Given, you know, climate change. And the fact that the gas needs to be shipped all the way from the US.

                  That’s physically impossible for a place the size of Germany, much less Europe.

                  Unless we use a different technology, that is not renewables + storage?

              • Teppichbrand@feddit.org
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                6 hours ago

                Another problem arises when you’re generation 63.688 after today and still have to keep maintaining deadly waste from nations that don’t exist anymore, because they produced “cheap” and “clean” energy for a couple of decades.
                Come on, Jesus died like 2000 years ago, this stuff will haunt us for centuries. Arguing in favor of nuclear energy is just selfish and shortsighted.

  • SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org
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    12 hours ago

    No it’s about nuclear waste and where to store it, it’s about how expensive it is to build a nuclear power plant (bc of regulations so they don’t goo boom) and it’s about how much you have to subsidize it to make the electricity it produces affordable at all. Economically it’s just not worth it. Renewables are just WAY cheaper.

    • el_abuelo@programming.dev
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      11 hours ago

      Funny how people think waste is why we don’t use nuclear power.

      You noticed how we’re all fine breathing in poison and carcinogens? Still haven’t banned burning fossil fuels.

      It’s a money problem and a PR problem

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        2 hours ago

        You noticed how we’re all fine breathing in poison and carcinogens? Still haven’t banned burning fossil fuels.

        Who is “we”? How “fine” are you with breathing poison and carcinogens?

      • Hoimo@ani.social
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        7 hours ago

        And much of the PR problem is related to waste. The main push towards alternative energy sources comes from people worried about the long term consequences of burning fossil fuels. These same people worry about the long term consequences of nuclear waste production, so nuclear sabotages itself on this front.

        • jaemo@sh.itjust.works
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          3 hours ago

          I am Jack’s Lungs. I breath in soot and particles and eventually they cause cancer and I kill Jack.

          That’s how that shit works, homes. Not a thing to “idk whatev” about.

    • bouh@lemmy.world
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      9 hours ago

      Renewable are so cheap, especially when we don’t need as much energy! Fortunately we won’t need as much energy in winter now. :-)

  • Takumidesh@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    Funny how nuclear power plants are taboo, but building thousands of nuclear warheads all over the globe is no issue.

    • fsxylo@sh.itjust.works
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      15 hours ago

      Funny how building nuclear power plants that can only (if you have dipshits running them) kill a nearby city is taboo, but climate change that will kill everyone is acceptable to the moralists.

      • oyo@lemm.ee
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        12 hours ago

        Funny how solar, wind, and batteries are way cheaper and faster to build yet people are still talking about nuclear.

        • ClamDrinker@lemmy.world
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          Solar and wind are cheaper yes. Batteries, no. If batteries were that cheap and easy to place we’d have solved energy a long time ago. Currently batteries don’t hold a candle to live production, the closest you can get is hydro storage, which not everyone has, and can’t realistically be built everywhere.

          Look at the stats. The second largest battery storage in the US (and the world) is located near the Moss Landing Power Plant. It provides a capacity of 3000 MWh with 6000 MWh planned (Which would make it the largest). That sounds like a lot, but it’s located next to San Jose and San Fransisco, so lets pick just one of those counties to compare. The average energy usage in the county of San Clara, which contains San Jose (You might need to VPN from the US to see the source) is 17101 GWh per year, which is about 46.8 GWh per day, or 46800 MWh. So you’d need 8 more of those at 6000 MWh to even be able to store a day’s worth of electricity from that county alone, which has a population of about 2 million people. And that’s not even talking about all the realities that come with electricity like peak loads.

          For reference, the largest hydro plant has a storage capacity of 40 GWh, 6.6x more (at 6000 MWh above).

          Relative to how much space wind and solar use, nuclear is the clear winner. If a country doesn’t have massive amounts of empty area nuclear is unmissable. People also really hate seeing solar and wind farm. That’s not something I personally mind too much, but even in the best of countries people oppose renewables simply because it ruins their surroundings to them. Creating the infrastructure for such distributed energy networks to sustain large solar and wind farms is also quite hard and requires personnel that the entire world has shortages of, while a nuclear reactor is centralized and much easier to set up since it’s similar to current power plants. But a company that can build a nuclear plant isn’t going to be able to build a solar farm, or a wind farm, and in a similar way if every company that can make solar farms or wind farms is busy, their price will go up too. By balancing the load between nuclear, solar, and wind, we ensure the transition can happen as fast and affordable as possible.

          There’s also the fact that it always works and can be scaled up or down on demand, and as such is the least polluting source (on the same level as renewables) that can reliably replace coal, natural gas, biomass, and any other always available source. You don’t want to fall back on those when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow. If batteries were available to store that energy it’d be a different story. But unless you have large natural batteries like hydro plants with storage basins that you can pump water up to with excess electricity, it’s not sustainable. I’d wish it was, but it’s not. As it stands now, the world needs both renewables and nuclear to go fully neutral. Until something even better like nuclear fission becomes viable.

          • oyo@lemm.ee
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            1 hour ago

            Ok let’s compare real data then. Vogtle 3&4 are the latest nuclear plants to be completed in the US. They cost over 30 billion dollars for a capacity of 2.106GW. That’s >14.2 dollars/watt. Let’s be generous and assume nuclear has a 100% capacity factor (it doesn’t).

            I can’t find real numbers for Moss Landing specifically, but NREL has data on BESS costs up to 10 hr storage at $4.2/watt. Let’s ignore that no grid in the country actually needs 10hr storage yet.

            Utility scale solar has well known costs of ~1 dollar/watt. Let’s assume a capacity factor of 25%, so for equivalent total energy generation we are looking at $4.

            $4 for solar, $4.2 for BESS, and since you’ll complain about not having 24hr baseline let’s add another equivalent 10hr storage system at $4.2. that’s a total of $12.4, compared to Vogtle’s $14.2.

            Add in that the solar plus BESS would be built in 1-2 years, while Vogtle took well over a decade.

            Also consider that BESS systems have additional value in providing peaking ability and frequency regulation, among other benefits.

            Also consider that PV and batteries have always gotten cheaper over time, while nuclear has always gotten more expensive.

        • CybranM@feddit.nu
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          9 hours ago

          If only people weren’t fearmongering about nuclear 50 years ago we’d have clean energy today.

          “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, second best is now”

          • Hoimo@ani.social
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            7 hours ago

            That saying works for trees. We didn’t make trees obsolete with better technology.

            • CybranM@feddit.nu
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              5 hours ago

              Reliable clean energy isn’t a solved issue today either. Until we have grid-level storage we need something that can provide a reliable base and had enough mass/momentum to handle grid fluctuations.

        • fsxylo@sh.itjust.works
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          12 hours ago

          Stopping nuclear from being built is the problem.

          We would have had a lot more clean energy than we do by now if we let the nuclear power plants that “would take too long to build!” be built back then, because they’d be up and running by now.

          More letting perfect be the enemy of good.

          • drake@lemmy.sdf.org
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            7 hours ago

            Nuclear may have been good 10 years ago, but it isn’t really good anymore. This is like saying “if I had bought a PS2 in 2002 then I would have had fun playing Final Fantasy XI Online. Therefore, I should buy a PS2 and FFXI Online so I can have fun in 2024”. That ship has sailed

        • fsxylo@sh.itjust.works
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          15 hours ago

          Funny how being polite didn’t convince you so now you’re trying to sell that being mean is going to stop you. You were always useless.

          • meliaesc@lemmy.world
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            14 hours ago

            Hey, I hear you, life is stressful and there’s a lot going on. It’s okay to be upset, I hope whatever you’re going through gets easier.

              • meliaesc@lemmy.world
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                13 hours ago

                Is there a particular reason you think everyone, here specifically, believes those things?

                Edit: I absolutely share your passion about climate change, as a preface. Calling someone, who agrees with you or not, “useless” makes them dismiss your opinion. It just means we can’t engage in any meaningful discussion and others are less likely to take action.

          • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
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            3 hours ago

            People don’t put reactors next to cities for a reason. Meaning this scenario wouldn’t happen. Nuclear is also one of the safest energy sources overall in terms of deaths caused. It’s safer than some renewables even, and that’s not factoring in advances in the technology that have happened over the decades making it safer. This kind of misinformation is dangerous. It’s also not a good reason not to do nuclear. The reason why renewables are used more (and probably have a somewhat larger role to play in general) is because they a cheaper and quicker to manufacture. Nuclear energy’s primary problem isn’t safety but rather cost. It’s biggest strength is reliability and availability. You can build a nuclear plant basically anywhere where there is water.

            • Batbro@sh.itjust.works
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              2 hours ago

              I know nuclear is super safe but we have actual examples of accidents happening and making cities unlivable, you can’t deny that.

          • bouh@lemmy.world
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            4 hours ago

            And that cannot happen. It’s a fear people have because they equate a nuclear power plant with a nuclear bomb. That is as wrong as considering the earth flat.

            • lad@programming.dev
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              2 hours ago

              Chernobyl

              But that was a really old tech, the plants built after 1990s shouldn’t allow this scale of pollution even if all the stops are pulled and everything breaks in the worst way possible

              • bouh@lemmy.world
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                1 hour ago

                Chernobyl yes, let’s talk about it : after the catastrophy, 2 reactors were used until very recently (like until 10 or 20 years ago).

                After the catastrophy, Chernobyl was made into an exclusion zone where people wouldn’t be allowed to live. But people came back 10 years after and it’s a small village now.

                BTW even Hiroshima and Nagazaki that were annihilated with atomic bombs, that is weapons meant to destroy whole cities, were quickly inhabited again.

                So much for the permanent destruction and millions of years of contamination. CO2 is a far more deadly compound for mankind than any radioactive material. Anti-nuke militants are merely ignorant fanatics.

              • bouh@lemmy.world
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                1 hour ago

                Fukushima, in 2024,is a city of 272569 inhabitants. If that’s unlivable, I’m fine with it. Hiroshima, Nagazaki and Chernobyl are all inhabited too.

                Saying that nuclear stuff makes places unlivable is plain wrong, it’s anti-science. It’s comics level of bullshit science. Travel in time is a more serious theory than nuclear stuff destroying the planet.

  • drake@lemmy.sdf.org
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    5 hours ago

    There is a huge lobby of pro-nuclear think tanks who try to astroturf pro-nuclear shit onto social media. We, scientifically literate, rational people, need to counteract these harmful narratives with some facts.

    FACT: Renewable sources of energy are as cheap or cheaper per kwh than nuclear.

    FACT: Renewables are faster to provision than nuclear.

    FACT: Renewables are as clean, or cleaner, than nuclear.

    FACT: Renewables are much more flexible and responsive to energy fluctuations than nuclear.

    FACT: Renewables will only get cheaper. Nuclear will only get more expensive, because uranium mining will get harder and harder as we deplete easily accessible sources.

    • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      4 hours ago

      Fact: renewables take more land, that could be used for other purposes.

      Fact: renewables by themselves cannot, and I mean CANNOT, be used alone. Unless you are willing to have a ridiculous over-provision. They depend on weather and have massive seasonal divergences. You need a base line power production to have a rational generation scheme.

      Fact: nuclear have a higher cap for total production than renewables. As humanity needs more and more and more energy renewables (even destroying all our usable land) won’t be enough.

      Fact: no everyone that doesn’t share your opinion is an “astrosuftist lobby” some of us can also think by ourselves. And some of us can ever think above the dogma of our political school of choice.

      • drake@lemmy.sdf.org
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        4 hours ago

        if 15% of the land used for parking spaces in the USA was instead used for renewables, that would generate enough electricity to power the whole country.

        a report from the IEA showed that renewables CAN, and I mean CAN fully power the entire world. So take that one up with the experts. thanks!

        nice brainwashing though!

        • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          4 hours ago

          Do you have the calculations for thar 15%? I’d love to fact check it.

          Quick search didn’t found me that report from the iae. You should probably pass me a link so I can fact check it too.

          My country is not the USA, we do not have those ridiculous parking places that you guys have. Still renewables takes a ridiculous amount of space. I shall now as the land where I grew up is totally changed due wind power installations. And we are at 50% renewable generation. I fear to think what would become of this land if it was a 100% (that would probably need to be not double the land but 3-4 or more times the land if we want to cover energy usage during not windy months)

          I really think that the sweet spot would be about 30-40 nuclear and 70-60 renewables.

          You really need to stop following political dogmas, and start thinking.

          • drake@lemmy.sdf.org
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            4 hours ago

            I can’t, sorry - I blocked him for being a pro-nuclear shill. Rather than link to a specific study, because there are dozens at this point, I’ll instead just link you to a Wikipedia article that has plenty of references for you to explore - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy

            If you want to find studies, you can find them - there are actually quite a lot of 100% renewable energy feasibility studies that all seem to come to the conclusion that 100% renewable energy economy is completely achievable and viable with current technology. Many of them consider nuclear power to be a fossil fuel.

            Ask a pro-nuclear guy to provide any source that doesn’t come from somewhere funded by the nuclear lobby and watch as they flail around ineffectually and then link you to some pro-nuclear lobby group anyways. It’s quite funny

            • Valmond@lemmy.world
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              53 minutes ago

              “Where is this study you talk about?”

              OP: Waves vaguely towards wikipedia “Educate yourself!”

            • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
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              3 hours ago

              The guy replied with reasonable arguments. You just don’t want to entertain that nuclear might have a place in some countries. Apparently wanting nuclear to make up less than half of energy generation is called being a shill.

              Nuclear power is also not a fossil fuel. That’s ridiculous. It comes from elements naturally found on earth that are the product of nuclear fusion reactions in supernova. Not the result of plant matter decaying underground.

              Do you not think there are pro-renewable lobbies too? There are lobbies for all power sources including fossil fuels, nuclear, and renewables. Can you link anything that doesn’t come from a pro-renewable lobby.

    • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
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      3 hours ago

      You don’t actually need to mine more uranium though. You can run certain nuclear designs on Thorium, Plutonium from weapon stocks, or even waste from other reactors. Current generation nuclear designs are laughably inefficient at using the nuclear fuels we have available, and I fully understand why people don’t support them.

      Realistically though I don’t ever expect nuclear fission to be as cheap as renewables in most areas. In some places nuclear or another power source is always going to be needed though just because renewables are not practical in certain conditions.

      In the long term the answer is almost certainly going to be nuclear fusion or another future power source like neutrino voltaic. Solar and wind power are ultimately just offshoots of fusion, and so is fission if you think about where uranium, thorium and so on come from. In fact all power we know of seems to come from either gravity or some kind of nuclear reaction (inc. geothermal and fossil fuels).

      • drake@lemmy.sdf.org
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        3 hours ago

        Notice how pro-nuclear people always point towards a bunch of fictional technology as the solution? Oh, we just need fusion, or breeder reactors, or a bunch of other shit that doesn’t exist. No, bro, we just need to build renewables and proper energy grids. It’s really not that complicated. If it’s not sunny where you live, then you just get electricity from where it is sunny. It’s really really simple

        Nuclear energy is a solution looking for a problem. Total tech bro bullshit. Like crypto.

        • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
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          3 hours ago

          Renewables folks are also always looking for things that don’t exist. Like magical energy storage and transmission solutions that don’t cost the earth or have huge losses. Or wave power which still hasn’t materialized after decades of research.

        • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
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          3 hours ago

          Breeder reactors already exist??? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Notable_reactors

          Moving electricity around is a hard problem. Even just moving energy from one end of Britain to the other looses us 10 or 20%, and we are a small nation. If you need to start moving energy in from somewhere actually sunny like Spain you are going to have a big problem.

          Crypto isn’t looking for a problem, fiat has plenty of problems, it’s just not an optimal solution. Probably the real answer is not using money at all.

        • NιƙƙιDιɱҽʂ@lemmy.world
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          2 hours ago

          If it’s not sunny where you live, then you just get electricity from where it is sunny. It’s really really simple

          Yeah, really, really simple. Wait, what are transmission losses?

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    18 hours ago

    The problem isn’t that they exploded one time. The problem is that that one explosion is still happening and likely will be for quite a while.

    On the other hand, modern rock exploding plant designs are so much better that it’s very unlikely to repeat itself, so there’s that.

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      3 hours ago

      A hydro damn breaking has killed more people than Chernobyl before, and probably will again. Renewables are not perfect either unfortunately. Though some are slightly safer than nuclear.

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      15 hours ago

      I’m sure the other rock/liquid/gas burning plants have had no issues along their lifetime and had no hand in demonizing the “new” slowly exploding rock technology after extreme negligence let the one big one happen. /s

      I’d take the band aid of nuclear in my backyard vs what we rely on now after learning all of the insider knowledge of someone who personally worked in energy generation that did all of this plus renewables almost their entire professional life.

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    18 hours ago

    Paraphrased but this is right.

    And the people were taught to talk about the horrible nuclear accidents that killed a few but completely glance over the unimaginable millions perished in the name of oil, mustn’t even mention the mass extinction events we launched with oil.

    We even spread exaggerated bullshit about radiation mutation (wtf? thats superhero comic books fiction!!) and cancer rates (only one really), ignoring how much overwhelmingly more of the both we get from fossil fuel products.

    We are like prehistoric people going extinct bcs of the tales how generations ago someone burned down their house so fire bad. Well, actually not like that - we are taking with us a lot of species & entire ecosystems too.

    • Mr Fish@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      It’s more like “Bob and Jim died in a fire a while ago, so everyone decided to put up with heaps of people dying to hypothermia and uncooked meat”

    • Mbourgon everywhere@lemmy.world
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      18 hours ago

      “Ted Kennedy killed more people than Three Mile Island” - Bumper sticker.

      That’s said, I facepalm at Fukushima. And desperately want more modern systems