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Actual retorts: - we don’t have the mineral supplies for other non-fossil options - nuclear has a better safety record, all in - nuclear doesn’t require we d

Actual retorts: - we don’t have the mineral supplies for other non-fossil options - nuclear has a better safety record, all in - nuclear doesn’t require we do business with cobalt slavers - nuclear can supply the base load - nuclear produces rare elements that help with advanced medicine But you can’t reason people out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into, and many people were raised in a green-washed death cult. Like most religious people, they uncritically repeat that faith and become angered if you point out the inconsistencies.

flir 4y ago
> nuclear has a better safety record, all in Better than... wind turbines? Solar panels? Hydroelectric?
- mensetmanusman 4y ago
  Due to installation deaths, PV has higher deaths per kWhr install: https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...
  - jefftk 4y ago
    Note that your source is specifically "rooftop solar", not solar overall.
- jefftk 4y ago
  The safety profile of hydro and nukes are dominated by large rare events, which makes prediction tricky. Hydro is much less safe historically because of a single event: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure Wind and solar don't have catastrophic failures, but people installing and repairing them do sometimes fall. Residential rooftop solar is especially bad here, since the deaths are divided over a relatively small amount of generation capacity. Still, overall wind and solar are safer than nukes, and data sources saying otherwise generally are using pre-Fukushima stats. More: https://ourworldindata.org/nuclear-energy#what-are-the-safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/nuclear-energy#what-are-the-safes...
  - prottog 4y ago
    > data sources saying otherwise generally are using pre-Fukushima stats. I thought only one person died as a direct result of the Fukushima meltdown? And the other deaths attributed to it were due to poor handling of the people who evacuated; basically frail people dying in temporary shelters, unrelated to the nuclear aspect.
    - moloch-hai 4y ago
      It has always been easy to lie with statistics. The "one" figure is such a lie, easy to parrot.
      - rhn_mk1 4y ago
        This is a serious accusation. Show the truth.
        Arnt 4y ago
        The "one" figure ignores deaths caused by evacuation SNAFUs. But if some event causes an evacuation and the evacuation has a normal number of mishaps, then that event causes those mishaps. Evacuations are rare and happen under unusual circumstances, they will suffer from SNAFUs. You can't cause an evacuation, expect that it'll go perfectly and deny any responsibility when it doesn't.
    - jefftk 4y ago
      That's right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa... I had thought that counting evacuation deaths was correct, since I'd thought the evacuation was to reduce the risk if far more radiation was released. But reading up on it now, it seems like the evacuation was after the risk of that was over, and was in response to the current levels of radiation? In which case it looks like a large overreaction.
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      Old stats is the answer, but not because of Nuclear. The wind and solar industries are ramping exponentially, and the death rates are usually done per TWh generated. The solar deaths are heavily weighted towards the start (mining, installation) while the energy produced lags and accumulates over decades. The stats used to show that rooftop solar was slightly more dangerous that nuclear per TWh, but the number is dropping faster for solar so it's not been true for years. The slighlty more important point is how far ahead nuclear solar and wind are, compared with fossil fuels. It's a stark difference.
- mrob 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajont_Dam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajont_Dam
- krzyk 4y ago
  Wind turbines are a bit loud, and there is a reason why they can't be placed near places where people leave. Hydroelectric - if it is a damn, then again, there is a possibility of the damn breaking and flooding. Solar is the real alternative, but not effective enough, yet.
  - lostlogin 4y ago
    I think it’s ‘dam’ in this, as opposed to ‘damn’ where something is condemned.
tpm 4y ago
"- nuclear can supply the base load" Looking over the border to France, can it? The forecasted load factor for French nuclear power generation this year is 51.5% and the energy there is probably the most expensive in whole of Europe. https://mastodon.energy/@Sustainable2050/109625562357246897 https://mastodon.energy/@Sustainable2050/109625562357246897
- snehk 4y ago
  The most recent (complete data) we have shows that electricity prices in France are below EU and Euro zone average: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Electricity_price_statistics https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
  - tpm 4y ago
    Those are household prices, pretty much irrelevant in this case as they are decided by national regulators and often subsidised. Have a look at wholesale prices. Those were around 1000e/MWh between August and November: https://mobile.twitter.com/Emericdevigan/status/1609973029932601345 https://mobile.twitter.com/Emericdevigan/status/160997302993...
- rolenthedeep 4y ago
  I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. Nuclear is an ideal base load provider because nuclear plants really like to run 100% of the time, only shutting down for refueling or maintenance. Which is exactly what you want to meet a demand that exists 100% of the time. If you have enough generation, nuclear is an ideal base load provider.
  - tpm 4y ago
    That's exactly the counterpoint I'm trying to make: a lot of French reactors were and are down "for maintenance", making it very much not the ideal base, or any, load provider. That's something we never hear from nuclear power proponents, why?
Workaccount2 4y ago
I honestly don't blame people who grew up in the shadow of Chernobyl (some literally) who are critical of nuclear. They're wrong, but I understand completely where their fear comes from.
- donny2018 4y ago
  That fear could be easily dealt with by stopping unfounded anti-nuclear fearmongering and a tiny bit of education.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    Need to keep it to a tiny bit, mind you. Lest they find out that attempts to keep attention on reactors are a diversion from the real harms.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    When you get things like "Activists have protested the arrival of [tanker LNG] acquired through fracking", during an energy crisis, it seems fair to point out that some people are just unreasonable. Environmentalism's greatest enemy has been environmentalists. Teddy Roosevelt et al. were able to get more done because they played realpolitik, and realized that getting 50% of what you want, even if you have to hold your nose at some compromises, is better than getting 100% of what you oppose. If anti-nuclear protesters were serious about ranking their worries, they'd be supporting the IAEA trying to cordon off the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station from the war ASAP.
  - megaman821 4y ago
    So every nuclear capable nation on Earth is ruled by this fear cabal? What else can this powerful cabal do, end world hunger or colonize the moon? If nuclear was everything it proponents claimed it to be, there would be at least one country on Earth going all in on them. Nuclear is useful in the power mix but it's value is way overstated. It is not an economical choice, if it was no amount of lobbying would stop them from being built. Coal usage did not decrease due to intense environment lobbying, but only when cheaper alternatives were available.
microtherion 4y ago
> nuclear doesn’t require we do business with cobalt slavers Uranium does not exactly get pooped out by sparkly unicorns either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_p...
- Gud 4y ago
  My home country Sweden has plenty of Uranium but it is forbidden to extract it. And this is the problem for the nuclear industry - due to political road blocks, everything is unnecessarily expensive and difficult.
  - geysersam 4y ago
    Uranium mining has adverse side effects to the local environment. Few want an uranium mine in their area. You could also say: uranium mining is incredibly expensive, and we're not willing to pay the cost, so we import it from countries where the cost is paid by someone else.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - Gud 4y ago
      It is not banned because it’s expensive, it’s banned because of political reasons. Sweden are great with large scale mining.
      - geysersam 4y ago
        It's expensive in terms of the external costs. That's the reason why it's banned.
        Gud 4y ago
        The external costs can be mitigated.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
Only the last is remotely related to reality in 2022, and existing reactors produce plenty.
brightball 4y ago
The tail end of your post takes away from otherwise valid points IMO.
xg15 4y ago
> nuclear has a better safety record, all in If you use the pretty tortured metric "human lives lost per KWh energy produced" then yes (as of now). You know what would have an even better safety record according to that metric? Chucking the earth into the sun. > nuclear doesn’t require we do business with cobalt slavers Indeed we don't. We just ask the russians for it. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/europe-highly-dependent-russian-uranium-nuclear-power-plants-report https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/europe-highly-dependent...

flir 4y ago

> nuclear has a better safety record, all in Better than... wind turbines? Solar panels? Hydroelectric?

mensetmanusman 4y ago
Due to installation deaths, PV has higher deaths per kWhr install: https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...
- jefftk 4y ago
  Note that your source is specifically "rooftop solar", not solar overall.
jefftk 4y ago
The safety profile of hydro and nukes are dominated by large rare events, which makes prediction tricky. Hydro is much less safe historically because of a single event: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure Wind and solar don't have catastrophic failures, but people installing and repairing them do sometimes fall. Residential rooftop solar is especially bad here, since the deaths are divided over a relatively small amount of generation capacity. Still, overall wind and solar are safer than nukes, and data sources saying otherwise generally are using pre-Fukushima stats. More: https://ourworldindata.org/nuclear-energy#what-are-the-safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/nuclear-energy#what-are-the-safes...
- prottog 4y ago
  > data sources saying otherwise generally are using pre-Fukushima stats. I thought only one person died as a direct result of the Fukushima meltdown? And the other deaths attributed to it were due to poor handling of the people who evacuated; basically frail people dying in temporary shelters, unrelated to the nuclear aspect.
  - moloch-hai 4y ago
    It has always been easy to lie with statistics. The "one" figure is such a lie, easy to parrot.
    - rhn_mk1 4y ago
      This is a serious accusation. Show the truth.
      - Arnt 4y ago
        The "one" figure ignores deaths caused by evacuation SNAFUs. But if some event causes an evacuation and the evacuation has a normal number of mishaps, then that event causes those mishaps. Evacuations are rare and happen under unusual circumstances, they will suffer from SNAFUs. You can't cause an evacuation, expect that it'll go perfectly and deny any responsibility when it doesn't.
  - jefftk 4y ago
    That's right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa... I had thought that counting evacuation deaths was correct, since I'd thought the evacuation was to reduce the risk if far more radiation was released. But reading up on it now, it seems like the evacuation was after the risk of that was over, and was in response to the current levels of radiation? In which case it looks like a large overreaction.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    Old stats is the answer, but not because of Nuclear. The wind and solar industries are ramping exponentially, and the death rates are usually done per TWh generated. The solar deaths are heavily weighted towards the start (mining, installation) while the energy produced lags and accumulates over decades. The stats used to show that rooftop solar was slightly more dangerous that nuclear per TWh, but the number is dropping faster for solar so it's not been true for years. The slighlty more important point is how far ahead nuclear solar and wind are, compared with fossil fuels. It's a stark difference.
mrob 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajont_Dam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajont_Dam
krzyk 4y ago
Wind turbines are a bit loud, and there is a reason why they can't be placed near places where people leave. Hydroelectric - if it is a damn, then again, there is a possibility of the damn breaking and flooding. Solar is the real alternative, but not effective enough, yet.
- lostlogin 4y ago
  I think it’s ‘dam’ in this, as opposed to ‘damn’ where something is condemned.

tpm 4y ago

"- nuclear can supply the base load" Looking over the border to France, can it? The forecasted load factor for French nuclear power generation this year is 51.5% and the energy there is probably the most expensive in whole of Europe. https://mastodon.energy/@Sustainable2050/109625562357246897 https://mastodon.energy/@Sustainable2050/109625562357246897

snehk 4y ago
The most recent (complete data) we have shows that electricity prices in France are below EU and Euro zone average: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Electricity_price_statistics https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
- tpm 4y ago
  Those are household prices, pretty much irrelevant in this case as they are decided by national regulators and often subsidised. Have a look at wholesale prices. Those were around 1000e/MWh between August and November: https://mobile.twitter.com/Emericdevigan/status/1609973029932601345 https://mobile.twitter.com/Emericdevigan/status/160997302993...
rolenthedeep 4y ago
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. Nuclear is an ideal base load provider because nuclear plants really like to run 100% of the time, only shutting down for refueling or maintenance. Which is exactly what you want to meet a demand that exists 100% of the time. If you have enough generation, nuclear is an ideal base load provider.
- tpm 4y ago
  That's exactly the counterpoint I'm trying to make: a lot of French reactors were and are down "for maintenance", making it very much not the ideal base, or any, load provider. That's something we never hear from nuclear power proponents, why?

Workaccount2 4y ago

I honestly don't blame people who grew up in the shadow of Chernobyl (some literally) who are critical of nuclear. They're wrong, but I understand completely where their fear comes from.

donny2018 4y ago
That fear could be easily dealt with by stopping unfounded anti-nuclear fearmongering and a tiny bit of education.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Need to keep it to a tiny bit, mind you. Lest they find out that attempts to keep attention on reactors are a diversion from the real harms.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  When you get things like "Activists have protested the arrival of [tanker LNG] acquired through fracking", during an energy crisis, it seems fair to point out that some people are just unreasonable. Environmentalism's greatest enemy has been environmentalists. Teddy Roosevelt et al. were able to get more done because they played realpolitik, and realized that getting 50% of what you want, even if you have to hold your nose at some compromises, is better than getting 100% of what you oppose. If anti-nuclear protesters were serious about ranking their worries, they'd be supporting the IAEA trying to cordon off the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station from the war ASAP.
- megaman821 4y ago
  So every nuclear capable nation on Earth is ruled by this fear cabal? What else can this powerful cabal do, end world hunger or colonize the moon? If nuclear was everything it proponents claimed it to be, there would be at least one country on Earth going all in on them. Nuclear is useful in the power mix but it's value is way overstated. It is not an economical choice, if it was no amount of lobbying would stop them from being built. Coal usage did not decrease due to intense environment lobbying, but only when cheaper alternatives were available.

microtherion 4y ago

> nuclear doesn’t require we do business with cobalt slavers Uranium does not exactly get pooped out by sparkly unicorns either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_p...

Gud 4y ago
My home country Sweden has plenty of Uranium but it is forbidden to extract it. And this is the problem for the nuclear industry - due to political road blocks, everything is unnecessarily expensive and difficult.
- geysersam 4y ago
  Uranium mining has adverse side effects to the local environment. Few want an uranium mine in their area. You could also say: uranium mining is incredibly expensive, and we're not willing to pay the cost, so we import it from countries where the cost is paid by someone else.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Gud 4y ago
    It is not banned because it’s expensive, it’s banned because of political reasons. Sweden are great with large scale mining.
    - geysersam 4y ago
      It's expensive in terms of the external costs. That's the reason why it's banned.
      - Gud 4y ago
        The external costs can be mitigated.

Schroedingersat 4y ago

Only the last is remotely related to reality in 2022, and existing reactors produce plenty.

brightball 4y ago

The tail end of your post takes away from otherwise valid points IMO.

xg15 4y ago

> nuclear has a better safety record, all in If you use the pretty tortured metric "human lives lost per KWh energy produced" then yes (as of now). You know what would have an even better safety record according to that metric? Chucking the earth into the sun. > nuclear doesn’t require we do business with cobalt slavers Indeed we don't. We just ask the russians for it. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/europe-highly-dependent-russian-uranium-nuclear-power-plants-report https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/europe-highly-dependent...