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> climate actions taken in European countries like stopping nuclear energy It's not a climate action. It's an environmental action, which there's an overlap wi

> climate actions taken in European countries like stopping nuclear energy It's not a climate action. It's an environmental action, which there's an overlap with, but which is not the same thing.

jacooper 4y ago
What's the difference?
- akvadrako 4y ago
  Climate is basically long-term weather. "Nitrogen" doesn't affect the temperature or rain or clouds, so it isn't climate. FYI when they say nitrogen they don't mean it literally – it's a code-word for nitrogen oxides (NOx) and ammonia (HN3).
- snapplebobapple 4y ago
  Different set of utopian authoritarians forcing people to act against their own interests.
- more_corn 4y ago
  Nuclear energy is actually good for reducing climate change. It’s environmentally undesirable because of the failure mode, the difficulty of cleanup, the fact that the waste is basically forever and we have no real plan for storing or processing it.
  - hakfoo 4y ago
    At this point, I have to wonder how inherent those problems are to nuclear and more to the specific designs that were built over the years, in part due to various military priorities. The right time to develop a different nuclear platform was 40 years ago, but the second rightest time is today. Where is the bold, government-level messaging and big research grants saying "here's a completely new architecture, it's simply not capable of the same failure modes as Fukushima or Three Mile Island." I guess that's why people were boosting Thorium a while back, but I haven't heard much news there. Seemed like microreactors was the latest sexy thing.
    - snapplebobapple 4y ago
      It's this. If we got one of the molten salt reactor ideas functional it would be a total game changer for the economics of electrictity and the environment because they are not giant pipe bombs waiting to explode and their safety systems are extremely simple while being difficult to screw up (most spec a fan powered by the reactor blowing on a tube causing a solid plug. Reactor goes into failure mode and fan turns off, plug melts and everything flow into a second chamber designed to absorb all the neutrons and shut the reaction down. You end up with a mildly radioactive slab of rock that you can recycle in another running reactor. Also, since everything is liquid it makes continuous cycling and cleaning reaction products out much easier.
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      There have been hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars spent on various efforts at breeder reactors over the years. Most of them catch fire every month or dissolve themselves from the inside after a year. Turns out the idea probably needs materials that don't exist yet (but might soon?). The Russian BN 800 is the closest if you believe their government, and the chinese LFTR project has some promise. Even with the basic possibility issues solved there are a bunch of economic, resource and political issues to work through after that.
  - helloworld11 4y ago
    Two of these are flat wrong. First, the waste isn't basically forever. Part of it can be reprocessed and part of it does indeed decay down to very low or nearly null radioactivity sooner rather than later. Secondly, (it's such an absurd myth that keeps being repeated), there are plenty of effective, perfectly functional, usable, right-now-being-used plans for storing nuclear waste. It's not even much overall: The total amount so far produced by humanity to-date is just over 400,000 metric tons (this is very little physical volume on any industrial scale of things) and of that only about 4% is highly radioactive. The rest is low-radiation and one third of that total is suitable for reprocessing.. Bottom line, there is NO major problem with storing it if even minimal intelligent effort is applied to the task.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    > Bottom line, there is NO major problem with storing it if even minimal intelligent effort is applied to the task. There's the problem. Even if we only have the 300 year stuff, sooner or later someone is going to put a Jeffrey Immelt in charge of the process and the effort will be neither intelligent sufficient to be called minimal.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

> climate actions taken in European countries like stopping nuclear energy It's not a climate action. It's an environmental action, which there's an overlap with, but which is not the same thing.

jacooper 4y ago

What's the difference?

akvadrako 4y ago
Climate is basically long-term weather. "Nitrogen" doesn't affect the temperature or rain or clouds, so it isn't climate. FYI when they say nitrogen they don't mean it literally – it's a code-word for nitrogen oxides (NOx) and ammonia (HN3).
snapplebobapple 4y ago
Different set of utopian authoritarians forcing people to act against their own interests.
more_corn 4y ago
Nuclear energy is actually good for reducing climate change. It’s environmentally undesirable because of the failure mode, the difficulty of cleanup, the fact that the waste is basically forever and we have no real plan for storing or processing it.
- hakfoo 4y ago
  At this point, I have to wonder how inherent those problems are to nuclear and more to the specific designs that were built over the years, in part due to various military priorities. The right time to develop a different nuclear platform was 40 years ago, but the second rightest time is today. Where is the bold, government-level messaging and big research grants saying "here's a completely new architecture, it's simply not capable of the same failure modes as Fukushima or Three Mile Island." I guess that's why people were boosting Thorium a while back, but I haven't heard much news there. Seemed like microreactors was the latest sexy thing.
  - snapplebobapple 4y ago
    It's this. If we got one of the molten salt reactor ideas functional it would be a total game changer for the economics of electrictity and the environment because they are not giant pipe bombs waiting to explode and their safety systems are extremely simple while being difficult to screw up (most spec a fan powered by the reactor blowing on a tube causing a solid plug. Reactor goes into failure mode and fan turns off, plug melts and everything flow into a second chamber designed to absorb all the neutrons and shut the reaction down. You end up with a mildly radioactive slab of rock that you can recycle in another running reactor. Also, since everything is liquid it makes continuous cycling and cleaning reaction products out much easier.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    There have been hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars spent on various efforts at breeder reactors over the years. Most of them catch fire every month or dissolve themselves from the inside after a year. Turns out the idea probably needs materials that don't exist yet (but might soon?). The Russian BN 800 is the closest if you believe their government, and the chinese LFTR project has some promise. Even with the basic possibility issues solved there are a bunch of economic, resource and political issues to work through after that.
- helloworld11 4y ago
  Two of these are flat wrong. First, the waste isn't basically forever. Part of it can be reprocessed and part of it does indeed decay down to very low or nearly null radioactivity sooner rather than later. Secondly, (it's such an absurd myth that keeps being repeated), there are plenty of effective, perfectly functional, usable, right-now-being-used plans for storing nuclear waste. It's not even much overall: The total amount so far produced by humanity to-date is just over 400,000 metric tons (this is very little physical volume on any industrial scale of things) and of that only about 4% is highly radioactive. The rest is low-radiation and one third of that total is suitable for reprocessing.. Bottom line, there is NO major problem with storing it if even minimal intelligent effort is applied to the task.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  > Bottom line, there is NO major problem with storing it if even minimal intelligent effort is applied to the task. There's the problem. Even if we only have the 300 year stuff, sooner or later someone is going to put a Jeffrey Immelt in charge of the process and the effort will be neither intelligent sufficient to be called minimal.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]