3 ms·

the exclusion zone of fukushima hasn't changed since the beginning even after 10+ years. same for pripyat and chernobyl, those already close to 40 years. UK had

the exclusion zone of fukushima hasn't changed since the beginning even after 10+ years. same for pripyat and chernobyl, those already close to 40 years. UK had to test sheep for radioactivity in certain domestic areas up until 2012. nuclear damages aren't just dead humans. they come in the forms of lost lands and untrustable food source.

elsonrodriguez 3y ago
I’d wager the amount of livable and arable land we’ll lose due to continued fossil fuel usage would be greater than having a Fukushima every year.
- Zigurd 3y ago
  This is an interesting argument and let's stipulate it is correct. In that case, take all the oil capex and spend it on power sources that are least costly, least risky, and come on line fastest. Who thinks nuclear is least costly, least risky, and arrives soonest? Anyone? Bueller?
  - yawaramin 3y ago
    The problem with those power sources–and this has been pointed out many, many times–is they don't make reliable base load power. The sun doesn't shine at night–no solar power. Winds don't blow on calm days–no wind power. You are forced to build massive battery farms. Batteries require mining chemicals. For the scale we are talking about, you would be strip-mining the earth. You are forced to make incredibly costly upgrades to electric grids–some of which are nearly a century old. Because the current grids can't handle the unreliable, wax-and-wane nature of solar and wind power. You are forced to build gigantic solar panel and wind farms, destroying vast swathes of natural ecology and displacing and destroying many species. You are forced to deal with solar panels and wind turbines at the end of life problem, especially solar panels which contain toxic chemicals which are at risk of leaching into the environment (think 'water table') unless they are properly disposed of. No one has a viable plan for proper disposal of solar panels at the scale we would have to be talking about. And finally–the elephant in the room. The giant energy corporations just won't transition to renewable energy if they don't get a high-enough return on their investments. They want something like 12% ROI. This is extremely unlikely. They've left all their commitments to go renewable conditional so they can weasel out by saying it's not cost-effective for them. Just look at what's happening in reality: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/23/siemens-energy-scraps-profit-outlook-as-wind-turbine-troubles-deepen.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/23/siemens-energy-scraps-profit...
    - Zigurd 3y ago
      Nothing about renewables is speculative. Renewables build-out is the largest share of energy capex. If renewables were "destroying many species" it would be all over the news. The 1980s called and wants their "solar will never..." argument back.
      - yawaramin 3y ago
        If that's your only response to all my points, then I think we're done here.
    - pfdietz 3y ago
      The intermittency of renewables adds costs, but these costs are finite and declining. At this point it's likely that going with renewables will be cheaper than going with nuclear, especially as one projects these declines into the next couple of decades (when any nuclear plant started now will have to compete with improved renewable and storage technologies.) A quote: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910 "On the History and Future of 100% Renewable Energy Systems Research" "With every iteration in the research and with every technological breakthrough in these areas, 100% RE systems become increasingly viable. Even former critics must admit that adding e-fuels through PtX makes 100% RE possible at costs similar to fossil fuels."
      - yawaramin 3y ago
        Theoretical price decreases are not, in fact, convincing fossil fuel companies to get into renewables when they are making record-breaking profits from FF: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/16/big-oil-climate-pledges-extreme-heat-fossil-fuel https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/16/big-oil-clim... The plan by RE people is 'Let's hope that a hundred different unlikely events all line up exactly right, and we'll be able to go fully RE'. This is not a realistic plan. If you did software engineering like this, you would be laughed out of the room (and then fired).
        pfdietz 3y ago
krupan 3y ago
How big are the areas that solar farms cover compared to that exclusion zone? How big will the exclusion zones of Climate Change be if we keep burning fossil fuels?
- yellowapple 3y ago
  Out of curiosity, I decided to do some napkin math on this. The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant produced 4.7GWe when it was operational, and its current exclusion zone covers an area of 230 square miles - or 0.0204 GW/mi^2. The US has (according to https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/how-much-land-power-us-solar/ https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/how-much-land-power-us...) 102.9GWe of solar capacity covering an area of 965 square miles - or 0.1GW/mi^2. Judging by that, a nuclear disaster's exclusion zone is worse than that of a "solar disaster" (so to speak). However, the Fukushima plant itself occupies 1.34375 square miles - putting its normal-operation figure at 3.498 GW/mi^2. That's considerably better than the land area occupied by a Fukushima-equivalent solar installation. The question, therefore, is whether a better worst-case figure for land destruction justifies a substantially-worse best-case figure; I don't think it does, but I understand that not everyone would agree.
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    If you look at the value delivered per acre by a solar field, it's massively (orders of magnitude) higher than the value delivered by a farm. If land cost rules out solar, it also rules out agriculture. I never see the nuke bros saying we shouldn't grow things because it uses too much land, or that we need to go vegan to reduce land use.
    - krupan 3y ago
      What are you talking about? It’s not all dollar cost. You can’t eat what a solar farm produces. A solar farm does not replaced the carbon sequestration of a forest. Endangered species displaced by solar farms (desert tortoises, for example), do not benefit from the “value” produced by a solar farm, quite the opposite! This is what the “nuke bros” are talking about!

elsonrodriguez 3y ago

I’d wager the amount of livable and arable land we’ll lose due to continued fossil fuel usage would be greater than having a Fukushima every year.

Zigurd 3y ago
This is an interesting argument and let's stipulate it is correct. In that case, take all the oil capex and spend it on power sources that are least costly, least risky, and come on line fastest. Who thinks nuclear is least costly, least risky, and arrives soonest? Anyone? Bueller?
- yawaramin 3y ago
  The problem with those power sources–and this has been pointed out many, many times–is they don't make reliable base load power. The sun doesn't shine at night–no solar power. Winds don't blow on calm days–no wind power. You are forced to build massive battery farms. Batteries require mining chemicals. For the scale we are talking about, you would be strip-mining the earth. You are forced to make incredibly costly upgrades to electric grids–some of which are nearly a century old. Because the current grids can't handle the unreliable, wax-and-wane nature of solar and wind power. You are forced to build gigantic solar panel and wind farms, destroying vast swathes of natural ecology and displacing and destroying many species. You are forced to deal with solar panels and wind turbines at the end of life problem, especially solar panels which contain toxic chemicals which are at risk of leaching into the environment (think 'water table') unless they are properly disposed of. No one has a viable plan for proper disposal of solar panels at the scale we would have to be talking about. And finally–the elephant in the room. The giant energy corporations just won't transition to renewable energy if they don't get a high-enough return on their investments. They want something like 12% ROI. This is extremely unlikely. They've left all their commitments to go renewable conditional so they can weasel out by saying it's not cost-effective for them. Just look at what's happening in reality: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/23/siemens-energy-scraps-profit-outlook-as-wind-turbine-troubles-deepen.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/23/siemens-energy-scraps-profit...
  - Zigurd 3y ago
    Nothing about renewables is speculative. Renewables build-out is the largest share of energy capex. If renewables were "destroying many species" it would be all over the news. The 1980s called and wants their "solar will never..." argument back.
    - yawaramin 3y ago
      If that's your only response to all my points, then I think we're done here.
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    The intermittency of renewables adds costs, but these costs are finite and declining. At this point it's likely that going with renewables will be cheaper than going with nuclear, especially as one projects these declines into the next couple of decades (when any nuclear plant started now will have to compete with improved renewable and storage technologies.) A quote: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910 "On the History and Future of 100% Renewable Energy Systems Research" "With every iteration in the research and with every technological breakthrough in these areas, 100% RE systems become increasingly viable. Even former critics must admit that adding e-fuels through PtX makes 100% RE possible at costs similar to fossil fuels."
    - yawaramin 3y ago
      Theoretical price decreases are not, in fact, convincing fossil fuel companies to get into renewables when they are making record-breaking profits from FF: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/16/big-oil-climate-pledges-extreme-heat-fossil-fuel https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/16/big-oil-clim... The plan by RE people is 'Let's hope that a hundred different unlikely events all line up exactly right, and we'll be able to go fully RE'. This is not a realistic plan. If you did software engineering like this, you would be laughed out of the room (and then fired).
      - pfdietz 3y ago

krupan 3y ago

How big are the areas that solar farms cover compared to that exclusion zone? How big will the exclusion zones of Climate Change be if we keep burning fossil fuels?

yellowapple 3y ago
Out of curiosity, I decided to do some napkin math on this. The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant produced 4.7GWe when it was operational, and its current exclusion zone covers an area of 230 square miles - or 0.0204 GW/mi^2. The US has (according to https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/how-much-land-power-us-solar/ https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/how-much-land-power-us...) 102.9GWe of solar capacity covering an area of 965 square miles - or 0.1GW/mi^2. Judging by that, a nuclear disaster's exclusion zone is worse than that of a "solar disaster" (so to speak). However, the Fukushima plant itself occupies 1.34375 square miles - putting its normal-operation figure at 3.498 GW/mi^2. That's considerably better than the land area occupied by a Fukushima-equivalent solar installation. The question, therefore, is whether a better worst-case figure for land destruction justifies a substantially-worse best-case figure; I don't think it does, but I understand that not everyone would agree.
- pfdietz 3y ago
  If you look at the value delivered per acre by a solar field, it's massively (orders of magnitude) higher than the value delivered by a farm. If land cost rules out solar, it also rules out agriculture. I never see the nuke bros saying we shouldn't grow things because it uses too much land, or that we need to go vegan to reduce land use.
  - krupan 3y ago
    What are you talking about? It’s not all dollar cost. You can’t eat what a solar farm produces. A solar farm does not replaced the carbon sequestration of a forest. Endangered species displaced by solar farms (desert tortoises, for example), do not benefit from the “value” produced by a solar farm, quite the opposite! This is what the “nuke bros” are talking about!