3 ms·

At least, they're not reactivating a coal power plant.

by danmaz74 10mo ago

rmoriz 10mo ago
Coal would harm the nature for months until the bubble bursts, nuclear waste will last forever. And hopefully the old nuclear plants won’t fail uncontrolledly.
- sigwinch 10mo ago
  The mercury and other pollution dusted by coal doesn’t degrade. It has the same two solutions as nuclear waste: ignore or concentrate.
  - rmoriz 10mo ago
    if you operate a coal plant for 3 years until the bubble bursts, you will emit 3 years of toxins and carbon dioxide. If you operate a nuclear plant for just one minute, your highly radioactive waste will be a burden for thousands of generations.
    - SoftTalker 10mo ago
      Nuclear waste is not a burden. It's very manageable. The problem would be in any uncontained accident. The probability of that is low but not zero, especially in old reactor designs such as the ones they are talking about reactivating.
    - ponector 10mo ago
      Compare in tons please, not in minutes. Coal has heavy metals and traces of radioactive materials in it. Multiply to the thousands tons and maybe they are more harmful than nuclear.
- kouiskas 10mo ago
  [flagged]
- solarengineer 10mo ago
  The old nuclear plants should definitely be inspected and safety issues should be remediated. I have found this page on nuclear waste to be informative https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-essentials/what-is-nuclear-waste-and-what-do-we-do-with-it https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-essentials/what-is-nuclear... Some points: - The generation of electricity from a typical 1,000-megawatt nuclear power station, which would supply the needs of more than a million people, produces only three cubic metres of vitrified high-level waste per year, if the used fuel is recycled. In comparison, a 1,000-megawatt coal-fired power station produces approximately 300,000 tonnes of ash and more than 6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, every year. Important condition being "if the used fuel is recycled". To quote from the article on recycling: "Although some countries, most notably the USA, treat used nuclear fuel as waste, most of the material in used fuel can be recycled. Approximately 97% – the vast majority (~94%) being uranium – of it could be used as fuel in certain types of reactor. Recycling has, to date, mostly been focused on the extraction of plutonium and uranium, as these elements can be reused in conventional reactors. This separated plutonium and uranium can subsequently be mixed with fresh uranium and made into new fuel rods. Countries such as France, Japan, Germany, Belgium and Russia have all used plutonium recycling to generate electricity, whilst also reducing the radiological footprint of their waste. Some of the by-products (approximately 4%), mainly the fission products, will still require disposal in a repository and are immobilized by mixing them with glass, through a process called vitrification." There are various informative videos on Youtube that cover vitrification, where the remaining waste is melted with glass-forming materials at a high temperature, and the resulting matter can be safely stored in steel vats. In comparison to carbon from coal, the volume is miniscule.
- Filligree 10mo ago
  Radiation from coal goes into the air and tailings, which aren’t well controlled, and stays dangerous for centuries. Radiation from nuclear waste is constrained to steel casks in cooling ponds, and the waste can be reprocessed for use in breeder reactors instead of letting it sit.
  - rmoriz 10mo ago
    The costs of protecting nuclear waste for 100.000 years from terrorists and during wars will be impossible. It's a super easy target. Just attack the power plants and nuclear waste facilities of the opponent and you have won the war.
    - SoftTalker 10mo ago
      Well we've had them since the 1950s, where are all these terrorist attacks? The only nuclear disasters have been accidental, and those were made worse by early reactor designs that didn't account for safety to the degree necessary.
      - rmoriz 10mo ago
        The Twin Towers were attacked almost 30 years after.
- hagbard_c 10mo ago
  > nuclear waste will last forever Nuclear 'waste' is just waiting to become new nuclear 'fuel' in a fast neutron or 'breeder' reactor. Treated this way the volume of nuclear waste can be reduced by 90% while the remaining highly radioactive waste only needs to be stored for some hundreds of years instead of thousands due to its much shorter half life. It also extends the viability of nuclear fission (as opposed to fusion) by a factor of 10 by producing new fissionable material.
  - pfdietz 10mo ago
    Recycled plutonium has negative value. It costs more to fabricate fuel elements out of it than it saves in uranium mining and enrichment costs. There is no great financial windfall waiting here.
    - hagbard_c 10mo ago
      There is, however, a marked reduction in the amount of nuclear waste in need of storage as well as a marked increase in the amount of available fissionable material. Given that one of the arguments against nuclear fission is the amount of waste which needs to be stored for a very long period this in itself is worth the effort of reprocessing spent fuel pellets. Do this at a large enough scale and the price of reprocessing will come down as well. As long as nuclear fusion is still 10 to 30 years away nuclear fission is one of the few reliable day-and-night hell-or-high-water power sources which doesn't (or, let's rephrase it, shouldn't) scare those who believe in the CO₂ scare nor does it (or, also rephrased, should it) rely on resources from politically volatile regions.
      - pfdietz 10mo ago
        Waste handling is also a bad argument for reprocessing. It turns out it's cheaper to just procrastinate. If you want to reprocess to reduce waste, you spend less money (incorporating the time value of money) if you wait 10 years. And then you spend less if you wait another 10 years. And so on, indefinitely.
- m4ck_ 10mo ago
  Tell that to the people in North Carolina whose neighborhoods were built on coal ash dumps. A little undocumented whooopsie from the power company and all the sudden your kids all have eye cancer.
  - rmoriz 10mo ago
    AI is a bubble and in a few months, expensive nuclear energy will either be not needed anymore or replaced by cheaper solar and wind energy. The plant was decommissioned years ago because it was just not running profitable. And it will never be except within a bubble phase, like AI is currently in. Nuclear energy is the most stupid energy to ramp up during high demand phases.
- rmoriz 10mo ago
  Old nuclear plants are huge targets for sabotage by foreign spies and terrorists. If they can make one blow up, it will decide every conflict in their favour. It's like having a huge bomb in your garden on display for everyone to target.
cr125rider 10mo ago
I think it’s more of a “power any way we can get it” sort of strategy. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/27/ai-gives-coal-plants-a-lifeline-as-trump-makes-them-dirtier-00661839 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/27/ai-gives-coal-plant...

At least, they're not reactivating a coal power plant.

rmoriz 10mo ago

Coal would harm the nature for months until the bubble bursts, nuclear waste will last forever. And hopefully the old nuclear plants won’t fail uncontrolledly.

sigwinch 10mo ago
The mercury and other pollution dusted by coal doesn’t degrade. It has the same two solutions as nuclear waste: ignore or concentrate.
- rmoriz 10mo ago
  if you operate a coal plant for 3 years until the bubble bursts, you will emit 3 years of toxins and carbon dioxide. If you operate a nuclear plant for just one minute, your highly radioactive waste will be a burden for thousands of generations.
  - SoftTalker 10mo ago
    Nuclear waste is not a burden. It's very manageable. The problem would be in any uncontained accident. The probability of that is low but not zero, especially in old reactor designs such as the ones they are talking about reactivating.
  - ponector 10mo ago
    Compare in tons please, not in minutes. Coal has heavy metals and traces of radioactive materials in it. Multiply to the thousands tons and maybe they are more harmful than nuclear.
kouiskas 10mo ago
[flagged]
solarengineer 10mo ago
The old nuclear plants should definitely be inspected and safety issues should be remediated. I have found this page on nuclear waste to be informative https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-essentials/what-is-nuclear-waste-and-what-do-we-do-with-it https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-essentials/what-is-nuclear... Some points: - The generation of electricity from a typical 1,000-megawatt nuclear power station, which would supply the needs of more than a million people, produces only three cubic metres of vitrified high-level waste per year, if the used fuel is recycled. In comparison, a 1,000-megawatt coal-fired power station produces approximately 300,000 tonnes of ash and more than 6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, every year. Important condition being "if the used fuel is recycled". To quote from the article on recycling: "Although some countries, most notably the USA, treat used nuclear fuel as waste, most of the material in used fuel can be recycled. Approximately 97% – the vast majority (~94%) being uranium – of it could be used as fuel in certain types of reactor. Recycling has, to date, mostly been focused on the extraction of plutonium and uranium, as these elements can be reused in conventional reactors. This separated plutonium and uranium can subsequently be mixed with fresh uranium and made into new fuel rods. Countries such as France, Japan, Germany, Belgium and Russia have all used plutonium recycling to generate electricity, whilst also reducing the radiological footprint of their waste. Some of the by-products (approximately 4%), mainly the fission products, will still require disposal in a repository and are immobilized by mixing them with glass, through a process called vitrification." There are various informative videos on Youtube that cover vitrification, where the remaining waste is melted with glass-forming materials at a high temperature, and the resulting matter can be safely stored in steel vats. In comparison to carbon from coal, the volume is miniscule.
Filligree 10mo ago
Radiation from coal goes into the air and tailings, which aren’t well controlled, and stays dangerous for centuries. Radiation from nuclear waste is constrained to steel casks in cooling ponds, and the waste can be reprocessed for use in breeder reactors instead of letting it sit.
- rmoriz 10mo ago
  The costs of protecting nuclear waste for 100.000 years from terrorists and during wars will be impossible. It's a super easy target. Just attack the power plants and nuclear waste facilities of the opponent and you have won the war.
  - SoftTalker 10mo ago
    Well we've had them since the 1950s, where are all these terrorist attacks? The only nuclear disasters have been accidental, and those were made worse by early reactor designs that didn't account for safety to the degree necessary.
    - rmoriz 10mo ago
      The Twin Towers were attacked almost 30 years after.
hagbard_c 10mo ago
> nuclear waste will last forever Nuclear 'waste' is just waiting to become new nuclear 'fuel' in a fast neutron or 'breeder' reactor. Treated this way the volume of nuclear waste can be reduced by 90% while the remaining highly radioactive waste only needs to be stored for some hundreds of years instead of thousands due to its much shorter half life. It also extends the viability of nuclear fission (as opposed to fusion) by a factor of 10 by producing new fissionable material.
- pfdietz 10mo ago
  Recycled plutonium has negative value. It costs more to fabricate fuel elements out of it than it saves in uranium mining and enrichment costs. There is no great financial windfall waiting here.
  - hagbard_c 10mo ago
    There is, however, a marked reduction in the amount of nuclear waste in need of storage as well as a marked increase in the amount of available fissionable material. Given that one of the arguments against nuclear fission is the amount of waste which needs to be stored for a very long period this in itself is worth the effort of reprocessing spent fuel pellets. Do this at a large enough scale and the price of reprocessing will come down as well. As long as nuclear fusion is still 10 to 30 years away nuclear fission is one of the few reliable day-and-night hell-or-high-water power sources which doesn't (or, let's rephrase it, shouldn't) scare those who believe in the CO₂ scare nor does it (or, also rephrased, should it) rely on resources from politically volatile regions.
    - pfdietz 10mo ago
      Waste handling is also a bad argument for reprocessing. It turns out it's cheaper to just procrastinate. If you want to reprocess to reduce waste, you spend less money (incorporating the time value of money) if you wait 10 years. And then you spend less if you wait another 10 years. And so on, indefinitely.
m4ck_ 10mo ago
Tell that to the people in North Carolina whose neighborhoods were built on coal ash dumps. A little undocumented whooopsie from the power company and all the sudden your kids all have eye cancer.
- rmoriz 10mo ago
  AI is a bubble and in a few months, expensive nuclear energy will either be not needed anymore or replaced by cheaper solar and wind energy. The plant was decommissioned years ago because it was just not running profitable. And it will never be except within a bubble phase, like AI is currently in. Nuclear energy is the most stupid energy to ramp up during high demand phases.
rmoriz 10mo ago
Old nuclear plants are huge targets for sabotage by foreign spies and terrorists. If they can make one blow up, it will decide every conflict in their favour. It's like having a huge bomb in your garden on display for everyone to target.

cr125rider 10mo ago

I think it’s more of a “power any way we can get it” sort of strategy. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/27/ai-gives-coal-plants-a-lifeline-as-trump-makes-them-dirtier-00661839 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/27/ai-gives-coal-plant...