4 ms·

I hear you, but the real argument against nuclear fission is not the economic one, it's the safety one. The safety during the (peace time) use of nuclear plant

I hear you, but the real argument against nuclear fission is not the economic one, it's the safety one. The safety during the (peace time) use of nuclear plants has been hugely improved, so I agree that's not anymore the main concern. But nuclear fission facilities are very cumbersome to dismantle, and they are liabilities during and after their commissioning. You can see that in Ukraine for example, Zaporizhia plant has been taken into hostage. Chernobyl was too, briefly. This kind of liability is especially concerning in our era of crisis (triggered by the global warming), that we could even suspect to be the beginning of a civilization collapse, which is a big word to say simply that situations of conflict, including internal conflict (civil wars and guerrillas) will multiply everywhere. Imagine the 6th January folks marching to a nuclear plant... There is still also the problem of the nuclear fuel: now West Africa and Sahel are providing a sizable part of it. But what will happen when they do not want to cooperate anymore with the Western world? (Russia is working very hard to push to this situation)

mcv 4y ago
This is an important point. Nuclear can be very safe in theory. Under the right circumstances, all risks can be accounted for (except long term waste storage, apparently). Problem is, in the hands of profit-seeking companies and aggressive and/or corrupt governments, those circumstances will not be right. Remember that both Fukushima and Deep Water Horizon were caused by companies cutting costs in the face of warnings of the risks.
- origin_path 4y ago
  Why can't the waste just be ejected into space. SpaceX has made launches a lot cheaper than it once was and once you push it into the solar system it'll never cause problems again.
  - mcv 4y ago
    Launching large amounts of nuclear material comes with its own risks, and if it orbits the sun in an earth-crossing orbit, we will eventually encounter it again. Launching into the sun would be nice, but that's way more expensive.
  - 988747 4y ago
    Putting few tons of radioactive material on top of dozens of tons of highly explosive rocket fuel... what could possibly go wrong?
    - origin_path 4y ago
      Compared to keeping it on earth, or putting it in the ocean, where there are also many things that can go wrong? Yes, launches can explode, but it's very rare, getting rarer and presumably these rockets could be launched from small islands where if there's an explosion the fallout would mostly be over the ocean.
      - mcv 4y ago
        I once read that 1 kg of plutonium burning up in the higher atmosphere would be enough to kill the entire population of the earth. I'm not enough of an expert to know if that's really true, but I suspect there's a good reason why experts don't consider this a good option. Or at least not yet.
PoignardAzur 4y ago
I assume you mean nuclear fission.
- henearkr 4y ago
  Big oops! Yes, thank you!! I fixed it in the comment.
jpgvm 4y ago
Nuclear safety in war time is unproven sure but I would argue that a nuclear power plant is much less dangerous than a hydro dam. Imagine a strike on Three Gorges Dam, at minimum millions would die, without needing to use a nuclear weapon. Sure it's a tough pile of concrete, but that is exactly what a nuclear power plant is too. Nuclear fuel is a non-issue if it was profitable to mine it. Australia has vast supplies of very high quality Uranium deposits and a substantial portion of the worlds supply of Thorium so the "West" will have ample supply to fissile material for the next several millennia. Spent fuel is also really a non-issue. It gets talked about a lot but even if we were to supply 100% of the worlds energy on nuclear (which we never would, solar and hydro are too good for that) we could still store all of it in probably a single facility in a desert in Australia far from where anyone could give a shit about it. Australia is -extremely- large and -extremely- sparsely populated, especially the interior. I get why people don't like the sound of nuclear but the arguments just don't stack up against the facts, cost really is it's only downside and I'm certain that can be fixed with mass production of reactors and designs that don't need active cooling in failure scenarios.
- chrsw 4y ago
  Nuclear definitely has a PR problem and I don't have enough background in the science to claim how unfounded the problem actually is. But what I do have are memories of how people react to anything nuclear related. All it takes is one high profile incident and all the political capital spent on selling nuclear as an attractive option to the public vanishes instantly. I don't know why other energy sources don't seem to have this problem. Not to the degree nuclear has, at least.
  - jpgvm 4y ago
    For the same reason why people turn a blind eye to oil, coal, guns, alcohol and cigarettes yet have a problem with cannabis, abortions, nuclear power, gun control and until recently electric cars. PR/marketing trumps all because people aren't sufficiently educated in science and statistics to understand what represents risk vs what is feasible, etc. Because they can't interpret the data themselves they defer to media and public figures and unfortunately in our world those people aren't incentivised to present things honestly - even in the rare cases they are educated enough to do so.

mcv 4y ago

This is an important point. Nuclear can be very safe in theory. Under the right circumstances, all risks can be accounted for (except long term waste storage, apparently). Problem is, in the hands of profit-seeking companies and aggressive and/or corrupt governments, those circumstances will not be right. Remember that both Fukushima and Deep Water Horizon were caused by companies cutting costs in the face of warnings of the risks.

origin_path 4y ago
Why can't the waste just be ejected into space. SpaceX has made launches a lot cheaper than it once was and once you push it into the solar system it'll never cause problems again.
- mcv 4y ago
  Launching large amounts of nuclear material comes with its own risks, and if it orbits the sun in an earth-crossing orbit, we will eventually encounter it again. Launching into the sun would be nice, but that's way more expensive.
- 988747 4y ago
  Putting few tons of radioactive material on top of dozens of tons of highly explosive rocket fuel... what could possibly go wrong?
  - origin_path 4y ago
    Compared to keeping it on earth, or putting it in the ocean, where there are also many things that can go wrong? Yes, launches can explode, but it's very rare, getting rarer and presumably these rockets could be launched from small islands where if there's an explosion the fallout would mostly be over the ocean.
    - mcv 4y ago
      I once read that 1 kg of plutonium burning up in the higher atmosphere would be enough to kill the entire population of the earth. I'm not enough of an expert to know if that's really true, but I suspect there's a good reason why experts don't consider this a good option. Or at least not yet.

PoignardAzur 4y ago

I assume you mean nuclear fission.

henearkr 4y ago
Big oops! Yes, thank you!! I fixed it in the comment.

jpgvm 4y ago

Nuclear safety in war time is unproven sure but I would argue that a nuclear power plant is much less dangerous than a hydro dam. Imagine a strike on Three Gorges Dam, at minimum millions would die, without needing to use a nuclear weapon. Sure it's a tough pile of concrete, but that is exactly what a nuclear power plant is too. Nuclear fuel is a non-issue if it was profitable to mine it. Australia has vast supplies of very high quality Uranium deposits and a substantial portion of the worlds supply of Thorium so the "West" will have ample supply to fissile material for the next several millennia. Spent fuel is also really a non-issue. It gets talked about a lot but even if we were to supply 100% of the worlds energy on nuclear (which we never would, solar and hydro are too good for that) we could still store all of it in probably a single facility in a desert in Australia far from where anyone could give a shit about it. Australia is -extremely- large and -extremely- sparsely populated, especially the interior. I get why people don't like the sound of nuclear but the arguments just don't stack up against the facts, cost really is it's only downside and I'm certain that can be fixed with mass production of reactors and designs that don't need active cooling in failure scenarios.

chrsw 4y ago
Nuclear definitely has a PR problem and I don't have enough background in the science to claim how unfounded the problem actually is. But what I do have are memories of how people react to anything nuclear related. All it takes is one high profile incident and all the political capital spent on selling nuclear as an attractive option to the public vanishes instantly. I don't know why other energy sources don't seem to have this problem. Not to the degree nuclear has, at least.
- jpgvm 4y ago
  For the same reason why people turn a blind eye to oil, coal, guns, alcohol and cigarettes yet have a problem with cannabis, abortions, nuclear power, gun control and until recently electric cars. PR/marketing trumps all because people aren't sufficiently educated in science and statistics to understand what represents risk vs what is feasible, etc. Because they can't interpret the data themselves they defer to media and public figures and unfortunately in our world those people aren't incentivised to present things honestly - even in the rare cases they are educated enough to do so.