4 ms·

Nuclear power is the future, modern nuclear power is very safe and emissions free.

by synergyS 5y ago

froh 5y ago
No more nuclear waste?
- isoprophlex 5y ago
  At least with nuclear you have some control over where the waste goes, as it is so highly concentrated.
  - iforgotpassword 5y ago
    Theoretically yes, in practice it has mostly been politics first when deciding where to put that stuff than anything else, at least in Germany.
    - DrBazza 5y ago
      Bury it deep. Either we survive as a species technologically, and will always know where it is, or we become cavemen again and lose the technology to dig down that deep. Win win.
isoprophlex 5y ago
Nuclear is the safest energy source. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...
- bluejekyll 5y ago
  Safer than solar, wind, and hydro?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - MerelyMortal 5y ago
    If a damn fails, I imagine the result would be pretty devestating to anything downstream.
    - DrBazza 5y ago
      Yup. More deaths in this one dam failure in China than all worldwide nuclear deaths combined: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure
    - pvaldes 5y ago
      Big intensity, short duration. Nuclear accidents will be devastating for thousands of years so very different things. This is like saying that high voltage is harmless because high amperage can kill you also. Time to move on further in this discussion and stop talking about that damn. Is a popular stance but useless to compare both
  - winkeltripel 5y ago
    Yeah. In solar and wind lots of deaths from falling off roofs or windmills.
    - polygloty 5y ago
      This is as much true as it is trolling
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  > Nuclear is the safest energy source. The cited link shows that deaths directly attributable to nuclear power thus far is the lowest based on the data used. This is not the only definition of safety, and should not be portrayed as such. The primary objections to fission nuclear power has been the many-thousand-year half-life of the waste products, not that it would kill people while being built or while running. We have no way to project what the tally will look like in 10k years time.
  - Yoric 5y ago
    That is absolutely true. However, we also risk an extinction event if we don't get carbon emissions under control, so turning a known 100 year risk into a several thousand years possible risk feels like a good bet.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      I don't know of anyone suggesting that climate change is going to be an extinction event. Changing patterns of human settlement, and the state of human civilization? Certainly. Extinction? Doesn't seem likely right now, from everything I've read.
      - isoprophlex 5y ago
        So you'd rather see -- worst case -- the CO2 concentration explode and biomes altered radically, than having some local hotspots of radiation?
      - lacerrr 5y ago
        It's certainly going to be, and is already, an extinction event for many other species. While it's true that humans probably won't go extinct as easily, billions of lives may be lost to collapsing ecosystems. We can't feed ourselves at large scale without an ecosystem to support us. At this point, that risk is looking much, much worse than the risk carried by nuclear waste in the long term.
      - ohgodplsno 5y ago
alvarlagerlof 5y ago
Not going to happen fast enough, or cost less than renewables.
sto_hristo 5y ago
Only the future is now and we already live in it. Nuclear power is already the most superior source of energy. Just keep the comrades away from it and we'll be safe and sound.
littlecranky67 5y ago
But its not cheap, given that nuclear waste disposal will take for so long and companies do not factor the true price of securing nuclear waste for thousands of years. We could see what happened in Germany after the nuclear exit was put into place: Energy companies tried to split up, moving their nuclear business into one company, and their renewables into another - a very apparent move to let the nuclear company (with all the burdens of waste disposal management) go bankrupt into a couple of decades, knowing that the government will take over the burden for free. The german government prevented this through a buy-out deal, where the companies would put a sum of roughly 50bn € into a fund, and the responsibility ownership would go over to the government once and for all. The issue is, no one can put a real price tag on nuclear waste management that will take thousands of year. It's all some made up number that is used to show that nuclear energy is cheap. But it is not, we are just boworring money from the future. Even if you think from an engineering standpoint that we can secure nuclear waste for generations to come, I don't believe we have the economic system to achive that. Companies don't exist long enough to be responsible for thousand-year long commitments - only society does.
- DennisP 5y ago
  We don't need to store nuclear waste for thousands of years. We need to store it until we have fast reactors that can use it for fuel. After that, we'll need to store the fast reactor waste for 300 years. Since the decline is exponential, most of the radioactivity will be gone from that waste after the first few decades. Melt it into glass blocks and bury it, and it'll likely be fine. Several fast reactors are in commercial operation already, and various companies are working on new designs.
  - Gwypaas 5y ago
    We've had fast reactors since the 70s. It is simply that they are even less economical than regular nuclear power plants, and those are already completely uncompetitive compared to renewables. > Breeder reactors are costly to build and operate. About $100 billion (in 2007 dollars) has been spent worldwide on breeder reactor research and development and on demonstration breeder reactor projects. Yet none of these efforts has produced a reactor that is economically competitive with a conventional light water reactor. The capital costs per kilowatt of generating capacity of demonstration liquid sodium-cooled fast reactors have typically been more than twice those of water cooled reactors of comparable capacity. Although it could be expected that once in production this cost ratio would decline, today few, if any, experts argue that breeder reactor capital costs could be less than 25 percent higher than that of similarly sized water cooled reactors.4 > The breeder reactor dream is not dead, but it has receded far into the future. In the 1970s, breeder advocates were predicting that the world would have thousands of breeder reactors operating this decade. Today, they are predicting commercialization by approximately 2050. In the meantime, the world has to deal with the hundreds of tons of separated weapons-usable plutonium that are the legacy of the breeder dream and more being separated each year by Britain, France, India, Japan, and Russia. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.2968/066003007 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.2968/066003007
trimbo 5y ago
You're right about it being very safe and emissions free. It would be a great choice if we wanted to solve CO2 emissions. But the reporting around last week's attack on Zaporizhzhia illustrates why it's not the future. The "paper of record" reporting vague experts' fears about a "cloud of radioactive isotopes over Europe"[1]. The Ukrainian President saying: "If there's an explosion, it's the end of Europe"[2] How can nuclear overcome that level of FUD? No idea what it would take, honestly. [1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/04/science/ukraine-nuclear-power-plant.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/04/science/ukraine-nuclear-p... [2] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/04/ukraine-nuclear-power-plant-fire-zaporizhzhia-russian-shelling https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/04/ukraine-nuclea...
pvaldes 5y ago
> modern nuclear power is very safe and emissions free. And then you have a war and the house of cards collapses in a week At this moment nuclear is as reliable as Putin mind will be, (and many people would say that the man is acting in a totally insane way). Nuclear will never will be more reliable than the less reliable of the people at charge of it, that are the weakest links in this chain. No matter how much technology, laws and wax seals you put on it. Still can be destroyed by the next idiot narcissist in power.

Nuclear power is the future, modern nuclear power is very safe and emissions free.

froh 5y ago

No more nuclear waste?

isoprophlex 5y ago
At least with nuclear you have some control over where the waste goes, as it is so highly concentrated.
- iforgotpassword 5y ago
  Theoretically yes, in practice it has mostly been politics first when deciding where to put that stuff than anything else, at least in Germany.
  - DrBazza 5y ago
    Bury it deep. Either we survive as a species technologically, and will always know where it is, or we become cavemen again and lose the technology to dig down that deep. Win win.

isoprophlex 5y ago

Nuclear is the safest energy source. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...

bluejekyll 5y ago
Safer than solar, wind, and hydro?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- MerelyMortal 5y ago
  If a damn fails, I imagine the result would be pretty devestating to anything downstream.
  - DrBazza 5y ago
    Yup. More deaths in this one dam failure in China than all worldwide nuclear deaths combined: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure
  - pvaldes 5y ago
    Big intensity, short duration. Nuclear accidents will be devastating for thousands of years so very different things. This is like saying that high voltage is harmless because high amperage can kill you also. Time to move on further in this discussion and stop talking about that damn. Is a popular stance but useless to compare both
- winkeltripel 5y ago
  Yeah. In solar and wind lots of deaths from falling off roofs or windmills.
  - polygloty 5y ago
    This is as much true as it is trolling
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
> Nuclear is the safest energy source. The cited link shows that deaths directly attributable to nuclear power thus far is the lowest based on the data used. This is not the only definition of safety, and should not be portrayed as such. The primary objections to fission nuclear power has been the many-thousand-year half-life of the waste products, not that it would kill people while being built or while running. We have no way to project what the tally will look like in 10k years time.
- Yoric 5y ago
  That is absolutely true. However, we also risk an extinction event if we don't get carbon emissions under control, so turning a known 100 year risk into a several thousand years possible risk feels like a good bet.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    I don't know of anyone suggesting that climate change is going to be an extinction event. Changing patterns of human settlement, and the state of human civilization? Certainly. Extinction? Doesn't seem likely right now, from everything I've read.
    - isoprophlex 5y ago
      So you'd rather see -- worst case -- the CO2 concentration explode and biomes altered radically, than having some local hotspots of radiation?
    - lacerrr 5y ago
      It's certainly going to be, and is already, an extinction event for many other species. While it's true that humans probably won't go extinct as easily, billions of lives may be lost to collapsing ecosystems. We can't feed ourselves at large scale without an ecosystem to support us. At this point, that risk is looking much, much worse than the risk carried by nuclear waste in the long term.
    - ohgodplsno 5y ago

alvarlagerlof 5y ago

Not going to happen fast enough, or cost less than renewables.

sto_hristo 5y ago

Only the future is now and we already live in it. Nuclear power is already the most superior source of energy. Just keep the comrades away from it and we'll be safe and sound.

littlecranky67 5y ago

But its not cheap, given that nuclear waste disposal will take for so long and companies do not factor the true price of securing nuclear waste for thousands of years. We could see what happened in Germany after the nuclear exit was put into place: Energy companies tried to split up, moving their nuclear business into one company, and their renewables into another - a very apparent move to let the nuclear company (with all the burdens of waste disposal management) go bankrupt into a couple of decades, knowing that the government will take over the burden for free. The german government prevented this through a buy-out deal, where the companies would put a sum of roughly 50bn € into a fund, and the responsibility ownership would go over to the government once and for all. The issue is, no one can put a real price tag on nuclear waste management that will take thousands of year. It's all some made up number that is used to show that nuclear energy is cheap. But it is not, we are just boworring money from the future. Even if you think from an engineering standpoint that we can secure nuclear waste for generations to come, I don't believe we have the economic system to achive that. Companies don't exist long enough to be responsible for thousand-year long commitments - only society does.

DennisP 5y ago
We don't need to store nuclear waste for thousands of years. We need to store it until we have fast reactors that can use it for fuel. After that, we'll need to store the fast reactor waste for 300 years. Since the decline is exponential, most of the radioactivity will be gone from that waste after the first few decades. Melt it into glass blocks and bury it, and it'll likely be fine. Several fast reactors are in commercial operation already, and various companies are working on new designs.
- Gwypaas 5y ago
  We've had fast reactors since the 70s. It is simply that they are even less economical than regular nuclear power plants, and those are already completely uncompetitive compared to renewables. > Breeder reactors are costly to build and operate. About $100 billion (in 2007 dollars) has been spent worldwide on breeder reactor research and development and on demonstration breeder reactor projects. Yet none of these efforts has produced a reactor that is economically competitive with a conventional light water reactor. The capital costs per kilowatt of generating capacity of demonstration liquid sodium-cooled fast reactors have typically been more than twice those of water cooled reactors of comparable capacity. Although it could be expected that once in production this cost ratio would decline, today few, if any, experts argue that breeder reactor capital costs could be less than 25 percent higher than that of similarly sized water cooled reactors.4 > The breeder reactor dream is not dead, but it has receded far into the future. In the 1970s, breeder advocates were predicting that the world would have thousands of breeder reactors operating this decade. Today, they are predicting commercialization by approximately 2050. In the meantime, the world has to deal with the hundreds of tons of separated weapons-usable plutonium that are the legacy of the breeder dream and more being separated each year by Britain, France, India, Japan, and Russia. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.2968/066003007 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.2968/066003007

trimbo 5y ago

You're right about it being very safe and emissions free. It would be a great choice if we wanted to solve CO2 emissions. But the reporting around last week's attack on Zaporizhzhia illustrates why it's not the future. The "paper of record" reporting vague experts' fears about a "cloud of radioactive isotopes over Europe"[1]. The Ukrainian President saying: "If there's an explosion, it's the end of Europe"[2] How can nuclear overcome that level of FUD? No idea what it would take, honestly. [1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/04/science/ukraine-nuclear-power-plant.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/04/science/ukraine-nuclear-p... [2] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/04/ukraine-nuclear-power-plant-fire-zaporizhzhia-russian-shelling https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/04/ukraine-nuclea...

pvaldes 5y ago

> modern nuclear power is very safe and emissions free. And then you have a war and the house of cards collapses in a week At this moment nuclear is as reliable as Putin mind will be, (and many people would say that the man is acting in a totally insane way). Nuclear will never will be more reliable than the less reliable of the people at charge of it, that are the weakest links in this chain. No matter how much technology, laws and wax seals you put on it. Still can be destroyed by the next idiot narcissist in power.