5 ms·

Finally. Opposition to nuclear is beyond unreasonable. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

legulere 4y ago
That statistic is only about deaths. You still have to deal with nuclear accidents leading to evacuation of huge areas happening once around every 30 years (unknown unknowns and what not). Germany has a high population density. Such a catastrophe happening in Germany would lead to millions getting evacuated. Another issue is the safe disposal of nuclear waste. It might seem like a low risk, but over the huge timespan nuclear waste needs to be safeguarded that risk adds up. Of course there's also other sources of nuclear waste, but it's best to keep the amounts low. Last, nuclear currently in the west runs into economic problems. New reactors are plagued by enormous cost overruns and struggle to compete with renewables. But also old reactors are starting to become prohibitively expensive to keep running.
- Manuel_D 4y ago
  Nuclear waste is disposed of by being buried underground in a region with impermeable bedrock. Short of deliberate excavation, or a direct meteor impact, there is no scenario in which this waste gets brought back to the surface.
- Cwizard 4y ago
  I'd much rather be evacuated (and live) than die from air pollution.
- asdff 4y ago
  That's a good point, maybe we should also be evacuating huge areas around dirty power plants considering we are aware of the harm they cause to the nearby population? Nuclear waste is a non issue. If you want to make it perfectly safe and untouchable to most bad actors, you can always dump it into a trench in the ocean. The radioactivity will not penetrate far through ocean water and will be less than other sources of radiation in the ocean today. The only reason why we do things like keep it stored on site, is because its still useful material that can be used in future reaction designs, and throwing it into the sea would be a waste of resources we worked hard to extract from the earth in the first place. I also have not seen any examples in history of people taking waste from a powerplant and turning that into a weapon against other people. So far in history, the only time nuclear weaponry has been used against humans was when it was built by an American arms factory, which is pretty remarkable considering the inherent violence that many of the elite of our species rely upon to maintain their power.
  - legulere 4y ago
    Particulate emissions are a solved problem nowadays For coal plants at least in Germany (see the purple bar in this graphic https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/384/bilder/dateien/2_abb_staub-pm2-5-emi-quellkat_2022.pdf https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/38...). Traffic, wood burning and dry goods like gravel are the biggest sources currently. The bigger issue is the CO2-emissions. You’re not thinking far ahead enough for nuclear waste. Bad actors aren’t the only issue. It’s entirely possible that people don’t know what they have in front of them, as can be seen with the Goiânia accident. Places for storage can turn out to be unsafe, for instance in Asse, an old salt mine in Germany there was a water breach leading to the creation of a radioactive salt slurry. We have to safeguard nuclear waste for thousands to millions of years. So far states have only existed for hundreds of years in a consistent form. 30000 years ago Neanthertals still roamed the earth. It’s not impossible that societal collapse somewhere hinders safekeeping leading to containment of large landscapes.
  - raxxorraxor 4y ago
    > you can always dump it into a trench in the ocean. It took a long time to ban dumping barrels of nuclear waste, sadly that isn't true for waste water yet. And yes, this will all go into the food chain and will have repercussions. For virtually forever. Of course the waste is a problem, we have 1 or 2 permanent storages in the world and there is a reason for that.
- lm28469 4y ago
  > Another issue is the safe disposal of nuclear waste. And coal waste isn't an issue because it's filtered by our own lungs, right ?
pantalaimon 4y ago
It's only extended till April
Kon5ole 4y ago
Here are three arguments that I personally find both reasonable and convincing. 1) Nuclear fuel and waste are clearly dangerous. Your linked article makes a logical fallacy in that it claims a dangerous activity is safe because few people have died from it. But we know things are dangerous even when nobody dies from it. The level of security surrounding nuclear is beyond anything else, and it's required to keep it safe. These security measures are expensive to maintain but are dwarfed by the expenses when they fail. 2) Nuclear is much more expensive than we are led to believe. This is quite clearly deduced from official writings from nuclear agencies, international treaties controlling who will actually pay if things go south, and also demonstrated in the market where nuclear operators are deeply in debt after selling nuclear power for unrealistic prices for decades. (See France). Nuclear energy is most likely many times more expensive than any numbers presented to date from anyone operating nuclear power plants. This cost is covered "in blanco" by governments, meaning taxpayers now and in generations to come. I am convinced that the energy we consume from nuclear today will be paid for by our great-great-great-grandchildren and theirs too. 3) Renewables are better long-term so all efforts should be spent on inventing and implementing systems to make renewables the source of all energy. (Storage implied). Money spent on nuclear is not available for renewables so it's reasonable to be opposed to nuclear for that reason too. All that being said, it is of course very reasonable to keep plants running for a while longer given the current circumstances. :)
- purplerabbit 4y ago
  These are all valid. However, if only nuclear can get us past "bottleneck events" (e.g., oil supply chains falling apart due to deglobalization or the world's oil running out, either of which would (or possibly will) cause catastrophic effects), then that supersedes #2 and #3, and probably #1 as well in most analyses. I'm not well-versed enough in hard evidence to assert that we absolutely need nuclear to make it through bottleneck events. But it's plausible that we do. And so we shouldn't rule it out unless there is high-certainty evidence we don't need it. In other words: I think the burden of proving that nuclear is unnecessary is on the anti-nuclear crowd. I've heard plenty of arguments that wind/solar will be enough, but haven't seen an analysis that seems to prove it based on numbers. (If you know of any such analysis, please share!)
raxxorraxor 4y ago
This is the typical self-faked statistic.
systemvoltage 4y ago
How do we make sure we don’t do this again? What are current things that are unpopular today but will be regrettable in 10-20 years? We need to eradicate the root cause, because we will make costly mistakes like this over and over. That means taking an extremely rational approach towards problems regardless of their popularity and allow opposition to emotion-driven zeitgeists that thrive through oppression and curbing speech. We need to take a stern look at what went wrong with a few things like this 1) Deindustrialization of the west and rampant globalization with not much thought given to national security 2) Manufacturing loss 3) Rise of China through subsidies and unchecked betting by companies like Nike and Apple. 4) No one in Silicon Valley wants to work on defense and military ventures. The machinery that enables immunity is allowing unpopular but rational opinions in the society. Newspapers wouldn’t print uncomfortable truths.
- legulere 4y ago
  > What are current things that are unpopular today but will be regrettable in 10-20 years? Wind turbines and power lines in my backyard. It's already regrettable today.
  - llampx 4y ago
    Hi Markus Söder

legulere 4y ago

That statistic is only about deaths. You still have to deal with nuclear accidents leading to evacuation of huge areas happening once around every 30 years (unknown unknowns and what not). Germany has a high population density. Such a catastrophe happening in Germany would lead to millions getting evacuated. Another issue is the safe disposal of nuclear waste. It might seem like a low risk, but over the huge timespan nuclear waste needs to be safeguarded that risk adds up. Of course there's also other sources of nuclear waste, but it's best to keep the amounts low. Last, nuclear currently in the west runs into economic problems. New reactors are plagued by enormous cost overruns and struggle to compete with renewables. But also old reactors are starting to become prohibitively expensive to keep running.

Manuel_D 4y ago
Nuclear waste is disposed of by being buried underground in a region with impermeable bedrock. Short of deliberate excavation, or a direct meteor impact, there is no scenario in which this waste gets brought back to the surface.
Cwizard 4y ago
I'd much rather be evacuated (and live) than die from air pollution.
asdff 4y ago
That's a good point, maybe we should also be evacuating huge areas around dirty power plants considering we are aware of the harm they cause to the nearby population? Nuclear waste is a non issue. If you want to make it perfectly safe and untouchable to most bad actors, you can always dump it into a trench in the ocean. The radioactivity will not penetrate far through ocean water and will be less than other sources of radiation in the ocean today. The only reason why we do things like keep it stored on site, is because its still useful material that can be used in future reaction designs, and throwing it into the sea would be a waste of resources we worked hard to extract from the earth in the first place. I also have not seen any examples in history of people taking waste from a powerplant and turning that into a weapon against other people. So far in history, the only time nuclear weaponry has been used against humans was when it was built by an American arms factory, which is pretty remarkable considering the inherent violence that many of the elite of our species rely upon to maintain their power.
- legulere 4y ago
  Particulate emissions are a solved problem nowadays For coal plants at least in Germany (see the purple bar in this graphic https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/384/bilder/dateien/2_abb_staub-pm2-5-emi-quellkat_2022.pdf https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/38...). Traffic, wood burning and dry goods like gravel are the biggest sources currently. The bigger issue is the CO2-emissions. You’re not thinking far ahead enough for nuclear waste. Bad actors aren’t the only issue. It’s entirely possible that people don’t know what they have in front of them, as can be seen with the Goiânia accident. Places for storage can turn out to be unsafe, for instance in Asse, an old salt mine in Germany there was a water breach leading to the creation of a radioactive salt slurry. We have to safeguard nuclear waste for thousands to millions of years. So far states have only existed for hundreds of years in a consistent form. 30000 years ago Neanthertals still roamed the earth. It’s not impossible that societal collapse somewhere hinders safekeeping leading to containment of large landscapes.
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  > you can always dump it into a trench in the ocean. It took a long time to ban dumping barrels of nuclear waste, sadly that isn't true for waste water yet. And yes, this will all go into the food chain and will have repercussions. For virtually forever. Of course the waste is a problem, we have 1 or 2 permanent storages in the world and there is a reason for that.
lm28469 4y ago
> Another issue is the safe disposal of nuclear waste. And coal waste isn't an issue because it's filtered by our own lungs, right ?

pantalaimon 4y ago

It's only extended till April

Kon5ole 4y ago

Here are three arguments that I personally find both reasonable and convincing. 1) Nuclear fuel and waste are clearly dangerous. Your linked article makes a logical fallacy in that it claims a dangerous activity is safe because few people have died from it. But we know things are dangerous even when nobody dies from it. The level of security surrounding nuclear is beyond anything else, and it's required to keep it safe. These security measures are expensive to maintain but are dwarfed by the expenses when they fail. 2) Nuclear is much more expensive than we are led to believe. This is quite clearly deduced from official writings from nuclear agencies, international treaties controlling who will actually pay if things go south, and also demonstrated in the market where nuclear operators are deeply in debt after selling nuclear power for unrealistic prices for decades. (See France). Nuclear energy is most likely many times more expensive than any numbers presented to date from anyone operating nuclear power plants. This cost is covered "in blanco" by governments, meaning taxpayers now and in generations to come. I am convinced that the energy we consume from nuclear today will be paid for by our great-great-great-grandchildren and theirs too. 3) Renewables are better long-term so all efforts should be spent on inventing and implementing systems to make renewables the source of all energy. (Storage implied). Money spent on nuclear is not available for renewables so it's reasonable to be opposed to nuclear for that reason too. All that being said, it is of course very reasonable to keep plants running for a while longer given the current circumstances. :)

purplerabbit 4y ago
These are all valid. However, if only nuclear can get us past "bottleneck events" (e.g., oil supply chains falling apart due to deglobalization or the world's oil running out, either of which would (or possibly will) cause catastrophic effects), then that supersedes #2 and #3, and probably #1 as well in most analyses. I'm not well-versed enough in hard evidence to assert that we absolutely need nuclear to make it through bottleneck events. But it's plausible that we do. And so we shouldn't rule it out unless there is high-certainty evidence we don't need it. In other words: I think the burden of proving that nuclear is unnecessary is on the anti-nuclear crowd. I've heard plenty of arguments that wind/solar will be enough, but haven't seen an analysis that seems to prove it based on numbers. (If you know of any such analysis, please share!)

raxxorraxor 4y ago

This is the typical self-faked statistic.

systemvoltage 4y ago

How do we make sure we don’t do this again? What are current things that are unpopular today but will be regrettable in 10-20 years? We need to eradicate the root cause, because we will make costly mistakes like this over and over. That means taking an extremely rational approach towards problems regardless of their popularity and allow opposition to emotion-driven zeitgeists that thrive through oppression and curbing speech. We need to take a stern look at what went wrong with a few things like this 1) Deindustrialization of the west and rampant globalization with not much thought given to national security 2) Manufacturing loss 3) Rise of China through subsidies and unchecked betting by companies like Nike and Apple. 4) No one in Silicon Valley wants to work on defense and military ventures. The machinery that enables immunity is allowing unpopular but rational opinions in the society. Newspapers wouldn’t print uncomfortable truths.

legulere 4y ago
> What are current things that are unpopular today but will be regrettable in 10-20 years? Wind turbines and power lines in my backyard. It's already regrettable today.
- llampx 4y ago
  Hi Markus Söder