4 ms·

Two things to keep in mind when thinking about nuclear 1) Has the lowest deaths/TWH: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-

Two things to keep in mind when thinking about nuclear 1) Has the lowest deaths/TWH: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p... 2) Any country that is not US absolutely needs to invest in nuclear technology. This is for your own security. In addition to providing energy security, it also provides physical security (with a bit more work). Without nuclear, your country will remain vulnerable to: 1) Direct attacks 2) Sanctions which destroy your economy and quality of life of your citizens 3) Fossil fuel disruptions, either intentional or malicious With nuclear + solar, you have an unbeatable combination of all forms of security. Every country wastes lots and lots of money on many useless initiatives. Nuclear might seem costly, but security is somewhat important. The rest of the world on clean energy will ultimately help people in US, because there will be less foreign adventures and oil will be a lot cheaper when all that demand is destroyed, supply chains are not disrupted by these wars.

matheusmoreira 4mo ago
This. Any country without nuclear weapons is at the mercy of those that do. It's just strategic. Might as well get some clean energy out of it.
- boguscoder 4mo ago
  You made it sound like any country that wants nuclear weapons can get them.. just look at Iran. I think existing nuclear weapons club is very interested in keeping membership pretty tight
- rogerrogerr 4mo ago
  This seems clearly not very true; Iran didn’t seem very at the mercy of the US this year. There is a ton of resistance to actually using nuclear weapons, seemingly making them practically irrelevant.
  - slow_typist 4mo ago
    Also, for a single Country getting the capabilities might be a plus but if some 100+ countries have nuclear weapons, all countries are in a worse position than today. This is a sub zero sum game.
  - matheusmoreira 4mo ago
    Venezuela was. North Korea doesn't seem to be. Nukes are one of the differences between the two nations. Iran was literally attacked and bombed. Seriously doubt that would have happened if they had nukes.
    - Tade0 4mo ago
      North Korea has China, Venezuela has no one. Meanwhile the other day Moscow was struck by a significant number of drones and most likely it's not the last of such strikes. Either Russia doesn't actually have nuclear weapons or they don't mean much in the grand scheme of things.
- Moldoteck 4mo ago
  you can get weapons for much cheaper without power plants
muth02446 4mo ago
Without nuclear, your country will remain vulnerable to: 4) renewable energy disruptions, e.g. supervolcano eruption, large meteor strike
- Moldoteck 4mo ago
  5) gas dependency for firming
dgrin91 4mo ago
I'm pretty nuclear, but I don't understand how having nuclear power prevents vulnerability to direct attack? If anything it would concentrate your risks - your energy now comes from fewer, more centralized and more fragile sources
- kubanczyk 4mo ago
  > I'm pretty nuclear I'm atomic, FWIW. > how having nuclear power prevents vulnerability to direct attack? OP alluded to a well-known bonus capability of nuclear power plants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium-239#Production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium-239#Production
  - Moldoteck 4mo ago
    it's very hard to create plutonium for weapons this way due to parasitic isotopes. Much easier to have distributed enrichment or uranium.
- Moldoteck 4mo ago
  risks are concentrated with ren too. Where do you think most EU offshore is built? Where are most productive solar units? What you do with gas firming plants. You always have centralization problem at different levels. Prime example - most of Ukraine's ren capacity is either destroyed or conquered because it was in south where weather is better
YetAnotherNick 4mo ago
I tracked down the source once and almost all of the fossil fuel deaths boiled down to deaths due to particulate matter in developing countries. It is highly preventible and only occurs because of no oversight or corruption. If we scale nuclear and have profit maximisation as objective and have no standards in factory, it will have significantly worse fate.
- Moldoteck 4mo ago
  Didn't know Germany is a developing country https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10640-025-01002-z https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10640-025-01002-z
  - YetAnotherNick 4mo ago
    Germany gets pollution from all around due to bad coal, just like they got deaths due to Chernobyl.
fsh 4mo ago
With nuclear energy, you are dependent on whoever has uranium. This is not a theoretical risk, and already has political and economic consequences for the few countries with a large nuclear energy share [1]. It would be much worse if a significant amount of global energy was produced with nuclear energy. [1] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decodeurs/article/2023/08/04/how-dependent-is-france-on-niger-s-uranium_6080772_8.html https://www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decodeurs/article/2023/08/04/h...
- adrianwaj 4mo ago
  It's a salient point. I think solar panels in space (where it's always sunny and the panels can be paper thin and orders of magnitude more efficient) with wireless transmission to Earth would be ideal. But I'm sure there are technologies out there that are either secret, dangerous-to-know or just suppressed that never get the attention they deserve due to vested interests. I also like the idea of speeding up radioactive decay with lasers or (safely??) shooting radioactive waste into space. "Nuclear power is a hell of a way to boil water." But good luck finding a better alternative. Solar panels require very high heat to manufacture and are difficult/costly to recycle. Channeling or capturing energy from a different dimension would be best. I wonder how the ancients did it... or investigate downed UFOs... or take a trip into the future. But then stay quiet because it's more than just a crisis of energy, it's a crisis of conscience!
- Moldoteck 4mo ago
  nuclear requires least amount of mining and materials per kwh. France already reoriented ore buying from other sources and the price is still dirt cheap. Canada has literally several stalled mines because market prices are too low
Kon5ole 4mo ago
>Has the lowest deaths/TWH One should also keep in mind that it has the highest potential deaths per TWh.
- Moldoteck 4mo ago
  still no. Highest is from coal. Entire chernobyl deaths are expected to be about 4k per old UN estimations or much less per recent UNSCEAR reports. That's for decades span. And Chernobyl was a design that the west wouldn't even allow back then... Now check coal...
  - Kon5ole 4mo ago
    Actual Chernobyl deaths is not a measure of potential deaths. It's the same flawed argument in different clothing. It assumes that what has happened is the worst that could happen, but it's not. Chernobyl was not a worst case scenario.
    - Moldoteck 4mo ago
      It pretty much was compared to modern plants. What happened there can't physically happen in western gen2 plants and even more so in gen3 units. Chernobyl is de facto the worst thing that could have happened unless we start using some wild imagination. Fukushima is a proof that a better design (albeit far from stellar) will result in orders of magnitude less damage/danger despite extreme tsunami and earthquakes
      - Kon5ole 4mo ago
        > Chernobyl is de facto the worst thing that could have happened unless we start using some wild imagination A scenario where the fire continued for 4 weeks instead of 10 days takes very little imagination and would be much much worse than what actually happened. >Fukushima is a proof that a better design (albeit far from stellar) will result in orders of magnitude less damage Fukushima would not have had a graphite fire, but we were lucky to not get a fuel rod fire which would have been very bad as well, although likely more limited geographically than Chernobyl. As it is, Fukushima will perhaps "only" cost an estimated 500-600 billion dollars for the Japanese taxpayers over the next 100 or so years. Unless another earthquake hits and breaks the ice wall of course, which also requires very litte imagination, it being Japan. Seriously, why are we doing things like this when we have cheaper, faster and safer options? Why are we not instead going for the options? "It will require so much batteries" Yes. So let's get started, we can build as many batteries as we need 10 times over. "Synth fuels are inefficient", yes, but that doesn't matter when the electricity is close to free. What else is the problem? Why does it HAVE to be nuclear?

matheusmoreira 4mo ago

This. Any country without nuclear weapons is at the mercy of those that do. It's just strategic. Might as well get some clean energy out of it.

boguscoder 4mo ago
You made it sound like any country that wants nuclear weapons can get them.. just look at Iran. I think existing nuclear weapons club is very interested in keeping membership pretty tight
rogerrogerr 4mo ago
This seems clearly not very true; Iran didn’t seem very at the mercy of the US this year. There is a ton of resistance to actually using nuclear weapons, seemingly making them practically irrelevant.
- slow_typist 4mo ago
  Also, for a single Country getting the capabilities might be a plus but if some 100+ countries have nuclear weapons, all countries are in a worse position than today. This is a sub zero sum game.
- matheusmoreira 4mo ago
  Venezuela was. North Korea doesn't seem to be. Nukes are one of the differences between the two nations. Iran was literally attacked and bombed. Seriously doubt that would have happened if they had nukes.
  - Tade0 4mo ago
    North Korea has China, Venezuela has no one. Meanwhile the other day Moscow was struck by a significant number of drones and most likely it's not the last of such strikes. Either Russia doesn't actually have nuclear weapons or they don't mean much in the grand scheme of things.
Moldoteck 4mo ago
you can get weapons for much cheaper without power plants

muth02446 4mo ago

Without nuclear, your country will remain vulnerable to: 4) renewable energy disruptions, e.g. supervolcano eruption, large meteor strike

Moldoteck 4mo ago
5) gas dependency for firming

dgrin91 4mo ago

I'm pretty nuclear, but I don't understand how having nuclear power prevents vulnerability to direct attack? If anything it would concentrate your risks - your energy now comes from fewer, more centralized and more fragile sources

kubanczyk 4mo ago
> I'm pretty nuclear I'm atomic, FWIW. > how having nuclear power prevents vulnerability to direct attack? OP alluded to a well-known bonus capability of nuclear power plants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium-239#Production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium-239#Production
- Moldoteck 4mo ago
  it's very hard to create plutonium for weapons this way due to parasitic isotopes. Much easier to have distributed enrichment or uranium.
Moldoteck 4mo ago
risks are concentrated with ren too. Where do you think most EU offshore is built? Where are most productive solar units? What you do with gas firming plants. You always have centralization problem at different levels. Prime example - most of Ukraine's ren capacity is either destroyed or conquered because it was in south where weather is better

YetAnotherNick 4mo ago

I tracked down the source once and almost all of the fossil fuel deaths boiled down to deaths due to particulate matter in developing countries. It is highly preventible and only occurs because of no oversight or corruption. If we scale nuclear and have profit maximisation as objective and have no standards in factory, it will have significantly worse fate.

Moldoteck 4mo ago
Didn't know Germany is a developing country https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10640-025-01002-z https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10640-025-01002-z
- YetAnotherNick 4mo ago
  Germany gets pollution from all around due to bad coal, just like they got deaths due to Chernobyl.

fsh 4mo ago

With nuclear energy, you are dependent on whoever has uranium. This is not a theoretical risk, and already has political and economic consequences for the few countries with a large nuclear energy share [1]. It would be much worse if a significant amount of global energy was produced with nuclear energy. [1] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decodeurs/article/2023/08/04/how-dependent-is-france-on-niger-s-uranium_6080772_8.html https://www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decodeurs/article/2023/08/04/h...

adrianwaj 4mo ago
It's a salient point. I think solar panels in space (where it's always sunny and the panels can be paper thin and orders of magnitude more efficient) with wireless transmission to Earth would be ideal. But I'm sure there are technologies out there that are either secret, dangerous-to-know or just suppressed that never get the attention they deserve due to vested interests. I also like the idea of speeding up radioactive decay with lasers or (safely??) shooting radioactive waste into space. "Nuclear power is a hell of a way to boil water." But good luck finding a better alternative. Solar panels require very high heat to manufacture and are difficult/costly to recycle. Channeling or capturing energy from a different dimension would be best. I wonder how the ancients did it... or investigate downed UFOs... or take a trip into the future. But then stay quiet because it's more than just a crisis of energy, it's a crisis of conscience!
Moldoteck 4mo ago
nuclear requires least amount of mining and materials per kwh. France already reoriented ore buying from other sources and the price is still dirt cheap. Canada has literally several stalled mines because market prices are too low

Kon5ole 4mo ago

>Has the lowest deaths/TWH One should also keep in mind that it has the highest potential deaths per TWh.

Moldoteck 4mo ago
still no. Highest is from coal. Entire chernobyl deaths are expected to be about 4k per old UN estimations or much less per recent UNSCEAR reports. That's for decades span. And Chernobyl was a design that the west wouldn't even allow back then... Now check coal...
- Kon5ole 4mo ago
  Actual Chernobyl deaths is not a measure of potential deaths. It's the same flawed argument in different clothing. It assumes that what has happened is the worst that could happen, but it's not. Chernobyl was not a worst case scenario.
  - Moldoteck 4mo ago
    It pretty much was compared to modern plants. What happened there can't physically happen in western gen2 plants and even more so in gen3 units. Chernobyl is de facto the worst thing that could have happened unless we start using some wild imagination. Fukushima is a proof that a better design (albeit far from stellar) will result in orders of magnitude less damage/danger despite extreme tsunami and earthquakes
    - Kon5ole 4mo ago
      > Chernobyl is de facto the worst thing that could have happened unless we start using some wild imagination A scenario where the fire continued for 4 weeks instead of 10 days takes very little imagination and would be much much worse than what actually happened. >Fukushima is a proof that a better design (albeit far from stellar) will result in orders of magnitude less damage Fukushima would not have had a graphite fire, but we were lucky to not get a fuel rod fire which would have been very bad as well, although likely more limited geographically than Chernobyl. As it is, Fukushima will perhaps "only" cost an estimated 500-600 billion dollars for the Japanese taxpayers over the next 100 or so years. Unless another earthquake hits and breaks the ice wall of course, which also requires very litte imagination, it being Japan. Seriously, why are we doing things like this when we have cheaper, faster and safer options? Why are we not instead going for the options? "It will require so much batteries" Yes. So let's get started, we can build as many batteries as we need 10 times over. "Synth fuels are inefficient", yes, but that doesn't matter when the electricity is close to free. What else is the problem? Why does it HAVE to be nuclear?