- cross-posted to:
- science_memes@mander.xyz
- cross-posted to:
- science_memes@mander.xyz
Nuclear is the best btw.
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People when they hear nuclear industry propaganda.
People when they hear fossil fuel industry propaganda.
Dont touch my propaganda 😡
Mom says it’s my turn on the propaganda.
Nuclear industry propaganda? Lol, lmao even
Outside a few specialized company, nuclear industry doesn’t even exist
Where else does the utterly false idea that nuclear waste is a solved problem come from, then?
Exactly. As if a poison that last longer than humans can plan for - or even realistically imagine - could ever be a solved problem.
https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/nuclear-energy-market-40848
As per Market Research Future analysis, the Nuclear Energy Market Size was estimated at 234.09 USD Billion in 2024. The Nuclear Energy industry is projected to grow from 245.38 USD Billion in 2025 to 392.9 USD Billion by 2035, exhibiting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.8% during the forecast period 2025 - 2035
-“But solar panels destroy the environment!!1!”
indestructible
Yeah, I think I’ve heard that claim before. It seems like every time that claim was made something came along to prove it wrong.
Indestructible cask underground is for cowards. In the US we don’t have a long term storage site, so we just ship it around to different temporary sites.
There is nothing more permanent than a temporary solution
As far as I am aware there is no final storage for atomic waste anywhere. France wants to build one in 2030 but we’ll see then I guess.
2 just from tom scott
https://youtu.be/aoy_WJ3mE50
https://youtu.be/PB7HT3BZLzMAccording to Wikipedia the first site goes live somewhen this year running for 70 years and the second one was a major groundwater breach that has been cleaned up and is being monitored.
I’d hardly call these success stories. I love nuclear but it’s hard to sugarcoat the long standing issues.
Yeah, but at least everyone else has long term storage solutions even if it’s not permanent. The US just has short term storage where you can only keep it for a number of years before having to shuffle it to a different short term storage facility via train or semi truck.
Huh. We don’t either in Germany, but I assumed, it was largely because the whole place is inhabitated. Is there not some desert or Alaska or something in the US, where no one minds?
We actually have a perfect place for it in the yucca mountains that was designated in the 1980s, but the actual construction of it has been held up since then thanks to nimby shit.
I would love to see the US head towards nuclear power, but I’m not hopeful it’s ever going to happen. By design the federal government just doesn’t have the power to mandate a state to do anything it doesn’t want too, and a functional electric grid powered by nuclear would require more federal control than what is possible in the foreseeable future.
Our government was designed to grant corporations and the aristocratic class to be able to exert a huge amount of influence over the government. They have decided that it’s a lot more profitable to not progress past fossil fuels.
Well, nuclear power, at least for now, is quite expensive. As long as no new technological breakthrough comes along, it’s simply cheaper to use wind and solar as main power producers. Of course, this has its own problem in the form of power storage, but at least we already have the technology for this.
Power storage is only half of it. Most grids transmit AC power, and in order for that you need SOMETHING in the grid that provides a stable frequency aka a stable prime moves whose speed is unaffected by changes in load. That can be provided by fossil fuel plants, nuclear plants, or hydropower (as long as shifting climate patterns continue to keep reservoirs full).
Wind turbines don’t have a consistent enough prime mover (the wind, so unreliable that it’s a metaphor for constant, rapid change). Solar panels supply DC power, so another option is figuring out long range DC power transmission, which is what China is doing I believe. It’s an incredibly costly and resources intensive solution though.
Power generation is more complicated than just making something spin. You have to consider loading, reactive load, what to do with excess power during off peak hours, balancing load between multiple power sources. Unfortunately, solving the climate crisis is going to take more than “just build renewable sources”.
It also doesn’t help that our infrastructure is out of date due to refusing upgrades because they included green sources (Trump preventing off hore wind farms, for example, also prevents infrastructure upgrades) and/or NIMBYism.
Source: I work in nuclear power.
I didn’t want to trivialize the problems with switching to greener alternatives; I just wanted to say that we don’t need some ‘future tech’ to get it done. All we need is what is already known and implemented somewhere in the world.
Also building more nuclear facilities - without any groundbreaking new improvements - is more expensive than the alternative.
Hey I agree with you, but,
The last nuke plant we built in the US was designed in the 1980’s thought, so those ground breaking improvements are here.
Still better than coal
At least we can trust the fossil fuel industries storage place.
A warehouse in the Ohio River valley’s flood zone?
Well, it’s actually worse… They store it in the air we breathe.
It’s both actually.
As a Geologist the idea that there are seismically inactive magic rocks that will sit there and not change shape or be affected by anything for eternity and that we can assume placing radioactive waste in them will be fine for an indefinite amount of time is honestly hilarious.
I understand your point. But also, not really the point. I’d rather have barrels of waste that I can point to, then to pump it into the air for everyone to breath.
The barrels are very much in our face, we need to pay attention to them. The air… well that’s someone else’s problem…
Rocks being stored underground sounds like they belong there.
You don’t need it for an eternity, though. Just the half-life of the waste product. Also, you can just dig a hole away from any major fault lines and you’ll be reasonably safe for an indefinite period. The plan to put nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain was about as good as anything we’ve come up with, give or take the need to win Senate races and Presidential ECs in a pivotal swing state.
You don’t need it for an eternity, though. Just the half-life of the waste product.
???
You don’t know what half life means, lol.
Just the half-life of the waste product.
half-life
half
Bruh
You don’t need it for an eternity, though. Just the half-life of the waste product
More like 10 half lives before its safe
A big cement hole under a geologically stable rock formation provides that time.
Also, you can just dig a hole away from any major fault lines and you’ll be reasonably safe for an indefinite period.
Are you a geologist? How can you say that confidently?
How can you say that confidently?
I’m taking the word of the Department of Energy, which employs an abundance of geologists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository#Earthquakes
Look at it from a risk assessment standpoint.
The barrels will be made.
You can put them in the deep ocean in the Marianas trench, they will degrade immediately and leak quickly. they will be diluted enough to make the leakage relatively safe. most of the upper foot chain doesn’t get to eat those creatures down there. But bad optics and enivonmentally unreasonable.
You can surface warehouse them. They can be regulary check for leaks, but can be struck by terrorists, meteors, airplanes, capitalism. Still bad optics.
You can bury them outright. can’t check for leaks, they might make it into the water table. bad for animals which might enter the food chain.
You can put them inside a tunnel/vault. You can, until there is an event (and maybe afterward) check for them for leaks. move them to somewhere else, maybe even use them for other things if you find ways to do that.
Nothing is indefinite. But of all the places we can put them, a maintainable underground vault is less likely to get fucked then we as human are at fucking them up.
The only reason the landscape is a static unchanging thing to you is because you haven’t been taught that nothing could be further from the truth by a healthy culture, there is no easy place to put these barrels, most people who aren’t Geologists prescribe most of the Earth’s surface to being a passive background that things happen to and in not a character itself that acts sometimes over great lengths of time and sometimes over shockingly small lengths of time.
That is what people who aren’t Geologists really have a hard time understanding who aren’t leftists or haven’t been raised with Indigenous culture, the landscape is a verb not a noun and this idea there are caverns underground that will be forgotten by the movement above and rest safe for eternity is a fantastical way of thinking of the Earth System. It is a devastatingly incomplete way of seeing the world that sets up future generations to be screwed over by our hubris and lack of understanding of the dynamics we live within.
I am not entirely against Nuclear Power, but I refuse to have people explain to me Geologic lengths of times and contexts who have spent no amount of practical time actually learning how landscapes even far from active fault lines can change radically over time.
As a geologist myself, it doesnt sound like you are well informed. There are plenty of regions on the globe that haven’t exhibited any real geological activity for billions of years. The places that deep geological repositories are proposed are very deep as in far below the water table and in impermeable rock. Erosion is neglible in these areas, and there are very few geological processes that could conceivably change that. The waste itself is to be stored in multiple layers of protection, right down to the material the waste is composed of, which has a low water solubility.
Is it possible that a mid contental rift will open up near one of these and result in processes that ruin the storage site? Sure, but thats so unlikely that we might as well start talking about a big meteor crashing into the site and spraying nuclear fallout across the planet (which would kind of happen anyways with a meteor that large). Point is, the risk of that happening even on geological timescale is pretty low. There are larger risks associated with natural uranium deposits or even regions with large amounts of granite.
The biggest risks of DGRs is that some time in the future, humans forget about where they are or cant understand the warnings placed on them and accidentally dig them up before they decay enough.
The point is the idea that we assume we can gurantee something we absolutely cannot, it is hubris.
Thats extremely reductive and not an all a fair characterization of DGRs. Everything comes with some risks, the risks associated with DGRs are extremely small. As an educated geologist who claims to be familiar with this topic, maybe you could share what risks you are concerned about rather than broadly claiming that it is impossible to guarantee against any risks on the timescale required for neutralization of radiation hazard.
The only reason the landscape is a static unchanging thing to you
Try again boss. I didn’t say that.
I mean, it depends. If you’re storing cesium, it’s a fine assumption. Iodine though…
Well you certainly aren’t lmao.
Yes I am?
My condolences for your advanced case of retrograde amnesia.
It always amazes me how many people lack basic reading comprehension.
I’m kind of concerned that somebody who calls himself a geologist doesn’t understand radiation. The time scales involved are just not compatible. The rock is geologically inactive over the time scales that you need to store radioactive material which is at most maybe a few thousand years.
Indestructible is a keyword in Magic the Gathering. I do not see it working the same way in engineering.
In Australia, all the people who were vehemently against solar and were calling for building of more coal fired power plants have lately shifted to saying, that Australia needs multiple nuclear power plants.
Whilst I don’t doubt it probably wasn’t a good thing to have around 20 years ago, solar and wind are so much cheaper and I know a good percentage of homes have made the switch to solar in recent years.
The only politicians I’m seeing which are calling out for nuclear seem to be very closely aligned with resources companies.
Mining shills who want to spend $10b on concrete manufacturing and uranium mines.
What makes me laugh is that we could still invest that into mining, get the resources to make solar panels and batteries, then stop because battery recycling is a thing. They can still get rich off it. They just have a set period the mining is necessary while we get the amount required. But by then they could buy the solar farms and generate infinite income from the power generation… Are they all just bad at capitalism or something?
Dunno if we should be making any broad conclusions about solar based off Australia
Nuclear is only safe under the constant management of a stable global society. We don’t live in a stable society so I don’t support nuclear.
Nuclear is only safe under the constant management of a stable global society.
Fossil fuels aren’t safe even with constant management and a stable global society.
It’s very hard to kill millions with solar panels
But not impossible, if we try.
Actually, solar does kill more than nuclear. Installation, mining, and refinement do have hazards. Nuclear is safer than those, including nuclear disasters, which are more unlikely every time one happens.
Actually, solar does kill more than nuclear.
In raw numbers, sure. But that’s because solar installations are far, far more common than nuclear installations.
Instead of looking at raw totals, you need to look at deaths/injuries per gigawatt-hour produced. Looking at it that way, I don’t think solar would come out as the more dangerous of the two.
(Deer kill more people than bears. But that’s only because people meet and interact with deer much more often. I’d rather be locked in a cage with a deer than locked in a cage with a bear.)
Also, if you’re going to include mining and refinement in solar panels, you’d better be including mining and refinement for nuclear plants as well. Not just for the nuclear fuel, but also for all the metals, concrete, and other materials that are necessary to build a plant and deal with its eventual waste products.
To be fair, though, that would be extremely difficult to calculate. Suppose a miner working in a copper mine gets run over by a mine truck on the job. Most of the copper from that mine goes toward making copper wires. A tiny portion of those wires were used in the construction of a nuclear power plant. Another tiny portion of those wires were used to connect solar panels. And the vast majority of those wires were used for different purposes entirely, not related to power generation of any kind. Which energy source gets counted for that worker’s death?
That’s what I meant, in raw energy numbers. Solar just barely squeeks ahead now it seems, but nuclear was ahead for a while. Nuclear would be if the scale were larger, but we’ve done everything possible to make it expensive and hard to build. They’re actually relatively cheap in raw construction, but we’ve built laws and systems to increase the price so it doesn’t out compete dirty energy (they’re the ones with the money, so they write the laws).
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh
Also, if you’re going to include mining and refinement in solar panels, you’d better be including mining and refinement for nuclear plants as well.
It does. It’s just a much smaller amount required.
@naught101@lemmy.world @OwOarchist@pawb.social @Memes@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Sadly, solar panels do kill thousands of birds/avians.
[…] the largest solar power plant in the world, Ivanpah Solar Plant, located in the Mojave Desert in California, is believed to be responsible for at least 6,000 bird deaths each year, as the birds can suffer severe burns or become incinerated if they fly too close to the 40-foot towers that concentrate sunlight from five square miles of solar panels. These numbers are likely an underestimation, as the sight of birds and insects rapidly immolated as they soar too close to the towers, which can reach temperatures of 1000 degrees Fahrenheit
(Source)
Even when birds don’t get burnt alive, the reflection of the sunlight from the surface of solar panels is akin to pointing lasers at airplanes and ending up blinding the pilots.
And as I’ve been an owl-biased person lately, I’d say owls are likely going to be the most affected because their breathtakingly beautiful deep eyes are larger than most avians, therefore having more surface area for the reflected sunlight to blind them, and because they’re so reliant on their accurate vision to hunt, blindness will definitely mean death…
I don’t know why solar panels have to be this reflective, (yeah, I know, there’s a glass protecting the semiconductor from the elements, still) it even seems counterintuitive because you’re losing lots of energy in form of reflected light. Ideally, solar panels should be akin to a vantablack, totally dark and, therefore, as fully light-absorbing as possible, practically a human-made optical black hole.
Still, solar energy seems gazillion times better than both nuclear and fossil fuels, because some things that were buried by Mother Nature should stay buried, and both nuclear and fossil fuels digs things that Mother Nature have been burying for ages. Should nuclear power facilities need more nuclear fuel, there are currently 12,187 (as of 2025, maybe an outdated number from Federation of American Scientists) potential sources for the carcinogenic hot stone eager to be dismantled by way more sane scientists instead of being used by “M.A.D.” (iykwim) hominids in green garments and boots.
I don’t know why solar panels have to be this reflective
Because those types of solar plants don’t use photovoltaic cells, they use mirrors to focus sunlight to a point where the resulting heat is used to generate electricity. So, same basic effect as using a magnifying glass to start a fire to anything that passes through that.
They’re also mostly falling out of favour, losing out to photovoltaic panels. Which are simpler to make, operate, and are vastly cheaper to boot, while also not being reflective (They are protected by a layer of glass, so there’s a minimum amount of reflection simply because they’re smooth, but they’re not mirrors).
@The_Decryptor@aussie.zone @Memes@lemmy.dbzer0.com
By “I don’t know why solar panels have to be this reflective”, I meant PV panels as well. Yes, the article I linked, regarding Ivanpah, refers to a solar thermal, which is worse give the way its designed as a panopticon conjuring a death ray out of sunlight. But solar panels aren’t less unsafe for beings high in the skies:
They’re also mostly falling out of favour, losing out to photovoltaic panels. Which are simpler to make, operate, and are vastly cheaper to boot, while also not being reflective (They are protected by a layer of glass, so there’s a minimum amount of reflection simply because they’re smooth, but they’re not mirrors).
I tend to disagree. The glass coating is still a flat smooth glass, practically similar to that of a mirror. Should the glass coating be rough, it would reduce the specular reflection, but this would likely affect the absorption of sunlight by the PV semiconductors.
On top of that, we’re talking about a pair of eyes seeing the reflection from height, which won’t be the same as if you stare at it standing in ground level. In fact, pilots can get temporarily blinded by solar panels and this can pose dangers to aviation (as per IATA).
If trained humans are affected, you betcha birds are even more affected by having eyes more sensitive than ours. Hence my comment on this regard, because we humans have this annoying bias of worrying more about other humans (because, after all, we’re humans) than worrying about the countless other species who have been inhabiting Earth way before an hominin descended from the tree to play with fire and having a “cogito ergo sum” delusional moment. I’m not saying we shouldn’t worry about other humans, I’m saying we are far from being the only tenant species temporarily inhabiting this Pale Blue Dot.
That 6000 figure is from a solar thermal plant, not solar PV. Solar panel reflections are nothing like lasers. And owls would not be affected because they fly at night…
@naught101@lemmy.world @Memes@lemmy.dbzer0.com
That 6000 figure is from a solar thermal plant, not solar PV.
Yes, but PV has a highly reflective coating, which reflects sunlight almost like a mirror. It won’t burn the birds, but then we get to another part of your reply:
Solar panel reflections are nothing like lasers.
Which is correct to a certain extent… but looking at a mirror which is reflecting the sunlight doesn’t seem that nice to the eyes, especially sensitive eyes of a bird looking at it from height (where the sunlight reflection may or may not converge from multiple panels positioned together, hence my analogy to lasers) and possibly mistaking it for a lake (glass panels aren’t something naturally occurring, it’s something we hominids built, something unbeknownst to other species, so the chances are the reflective surface will seem like the surface of a water body, especially in deserts where the bird will be thirsty). This “Siren call from the light” is similar to how moths end up colliding with lamps: they don’t know the concept of “light emitter” so their instincts mistake it for the Full Moon which means mating.
Notice: birds being killed by solar panels doesn’t necessarily mean the panels are directly killing them; rather, it’s the specular reflection from their glass coating rendering the birds disoriented (because, again, the thing looks like a lake but isn’t a lake), which in turn will expose them to unnecessary risks, such as being temporarily blinded (akin to how drivers can get blinded from getting headlights unwittingly blasting at their eyes) and/or colliding mid-flight due to misguided spatial notion and unseen obstacles. Because it’s an avian death indirectly (and not directly) caused by the panels, it’s unlikely to become statistics, it’ll likely look like the bird died of “natural causes”. In fact, many human activities indirectly kill birds, especially when we talk about climate change, and I guess/hope you know how this lack of direct harm doesn’t mean climate change isn’t doing harms to wildlife.
And owls would not be affected because they fly at night…
Seems like you don’t know some of the amazing diurnal and crepuscular owls yet, so here it goes:
- Surnia ulula (Northern Hawk Owl, primarily diurnal):
https://birdsoftheworld.org/bow/species/nohowl/cur/introduction
- Asio flammeus (Short-eared Owl, active day and night):
https://birdsoftheworld.org/bow/species/sheowl/cur/introduction
- Athene cunicularia (Burrowing Owl, one of my favorites, active day and night): https://birdsoftheworld.org/bow/species/burowl/cur/introduction
- Bubo virginianus (Great Horned Owl, can be active during twilight): https://birdsoftheworld.org/bow/species/grhowl/cur/behaviorThere are others, and as I said in another reply in this thread, there’s the possibility that a nocturnal owl will be disturbed by something (corvids harassing her, or human activity) which will force her to wake up and flee to a safer place.
This has been debunked again and again. What a stupid take.
@Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com @Memes@lemmy.dbzer0.com
What exactly are you referring to? My comment is lengthy and mentions a lot of things.
Solar panels kills birds.
We already debunked wind turbines kill birds.
The thing is, that yes, even windows kills birds.
You know what kills birds 1.000 times more than all three combined?
Cats.
It’s an invented “discussion” to blame renewables. You don’t think oil&gas kills way way way way more?
Also fossil fuel plants kill a lot more than wind
https://thinc.blog/2013/05/20/why-coal-and-nuclear-plants-kill-far-more-birds-than-wind-power/
@Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com @Memes@lemmy.dbzer0.com
See my other replies in this sub thread, where I’m explaining the nuances behind this matter.
The thing is, that yes, even windows kills birds.
I agree with you in this regard. Window panes are as reflective as solar panels. But then we humans tend to place solar farms where it used to be the habitat for wildlife because we humans can’t be bothered to have football fields worth of blue mirrors potentially reflecting sunlight towards apartments during specific moments of the day.
Again, I’m not against PV, much to the contrary, it’s the best we have (after all, every type of energy source stems from solar energy under the hood, so why not siphon directly from the source?), but I’m the kind of person who tries to ponder about both sides of the coin, hence why (if you noticed) my initial comment wasn’t without ideas to solve this issue (making the panels vantablack, for example).
You know what kills birds 1.000 times more than all three combined? Cats.
Just like owls kills mice and small mammals with such an amazingly ruthless impetus, and…? Were talking about natural hunters doing instinctive hunting, a situation very different from our artificial apparata doing artificial harms to the environment, an environment of which predates our existence as the Homo sapiens species we are. Solar panels as we crafted these don’t naturally occur in Nature.
It’s an invented “discussion” to blame renewables. You don’t think oil&gas kills way way way way more?
Did you know two things can be true at once? I’m not saying oil and gas are harmless, much to the contrary. Perhaps you didn’t even read my whole comment where I said “some things buried by Mother Nature should stay buried”. I don’t mean to be rude but I suggest you read my initial comment again in all of its entirety.
birds/avians
lol, why specify both here? Tell me more about these non-bird avians and/or these non-avian birds…
I’d say owls are likely going to be the most affected
Aren’t they only active at night, though? The solar farm should pose no hazard at all during the night. Can’t be blinded or immolated by reflected sunlight when the sun’s not out.
@OwOarchist@pawb.social @Memes@lemmy.dbzer0.com
lol, why specify both here? Tell me more about these non-bird avians and/or these non-avian birds…
At least to me, an ESL (English as a second language) person, both words carry different meanings:
Birds = Passeriformes, such as corvids, mockingbirds, parakeets, etc…
Avians = everyone else from Aves clade, especially the “larger” ones, such as owls, falcons, eagles and swans, but also hawks and chickens.In Portuguese (I’m Brazilian) we have “pássaros” and “aves”, which are definitely going to refer to different winged beings, and owls aren’t passerines, therefore they’d be more of an “ave” than a “pássaro”.
Both of these categories, however, have species that are equally going to be affected by solar panels, hence my distinction and inclusiveness.
Aren’t they only active at night, though?
That’s the beauty of Strigiformes: there are lots of misconceptions about owls in what our common sense believes. There are diurnal and crepuscular owls, such as the northern hawk-owl (Surnia ulula) and the burrowing owl (Athene cunicularia, although she isn’t used to fly as higher as her cousins because, and here’s another common sense belief to be broken, she doesn’t nest on trees and other higher places, she nests underground).
Many owls are crepuscular, active during dawn/dusk when the sun has a lower apparent angle. Depending on the solar panels’ position and arrangement (e.g. solar panels facing slightly north/south), this means a sunlight reflected towards the far horizon instead of reflecting upwards. Given how the sunlight during dawn/dusk is fainter, yeah, it’s not gonna burn the avians/birds, however it’ll definitely blind them if they’re flying towards the solar panels, because they’ll be looking directly at a focused and magnified sunglare.
And even the so-defined “nocturnal owls” may meet the sunlight, either by being faced by danger/annoyance during sleep/roosting (such as corvids harassing owls or evil hominids attacking owls, among other situations requiring the owl to wake up and flee) or (a guess of mine) by getting active earlier during summer (when sunset happens later than usual), then they’ll face the same problem as their crepuscular/diurnal cousins.
Yes but historically speaking, an oil fire doesn’t render the area immediately uninhabitable for thousands of years.
As long as we don’t light oil on fire constantly all over the planet and let it burn for decades, we’re gonna be fine.
Historically speaking, the cumulative effect of lighting oil on fire is set to make the entire planet uninhabitable, permanently.
It won’t be permanent, it’ll just be noticeable in evolutionary time. Think K-T or End Permian events not the collapse of the magnetosphere. Mind you that’s really bad. Like, I’m comparing this to the death of the non-avian dinosaurs and an event called the great dying, with our best case scenario being an extinction event more reminiscent of those demarking minor change in evolutionary era, it’s really fucking bad. But there’s reasonable hope that a small spattering of species of various types (except megafauna, we’re fucked) will survive and adapt.
Nuclear doesn’t either. It’s just that we’re much safer (and made more scared) or radiation. We’re overly cautious. It’s actually been shown that a little bit more radiation than background may actually be good for you.
(Edit: Watch this before you downvote: https://youtu.be/gzdLdNRaPKc)
Three mile island, Fukushima, and Chernobyl are pretty much safe. (Chernobyl is slightly more dangerous, because there’s the potential for hot debris, but that’s unlikely at this point. If you’re careful, it’s safe. If people were to live there, it’d be safe wherever they are, as they’d ensure there’s no hot objects.) The last reactor at Chernobyl shut down in 2000, meaning they were working there and operating it for decades safely after the disaster. Three mile Island was operating until 2019 safely, and since there have been plans made to bring it back online.
It’s actually been shown that a little bit more radiation than background may actually be good for you.
Doubt
Watch this video before you doubt it without looking into it. The sources he uses are listed in the description.
an oil fire doesn’t render the area immediately uninhabitable for thousands of years
But the production and burning of it releases just as much radiation and causes just as much cancer. (Actually more.)
That feels kind of all-or-nothing. Environmental issues are part of the problem destabilizing societies. Overall, the poisoning of the environment is much worse and much less contained with fossil fuels than with nuclear power. Distant future societies might have no knowledge of nuclear storage sites and a few people might even die before they realize they need to stop breaking into the underground barrels. But a lot more people will die from the environmental havoc that we’re causing with fossil fuels. And they can’t just stay away from the barrels to avoid that one.
Just to be clear, I think wind and solar (and geothermal where appropriate) are the best ways to get off of fossil fuels. They’ve gotten a lot cheaper than nuclear so it doesn’t make much sense to build new reactors. But it also doesn’t make much sense to shut them down if nuclear waste is the only issue.
I agree but also think that we should build both nuclear and renewables. Because we dont have much time left.
Just like a financial portfolio, our energy ecosystem is only safe if it’s well and proper distributed. Excess energy can be stored, or simply routed to ground, programs that incentivise energy use during unexpected peak periods already exist, there’s absolutely no reason not to over-plan and engineer it just to avoid shit like what goes down in Texas almost every year…
I like your thoughtful take and that you didn’t leap to the assumption that I support fossil fuels. Renewables are the way, and we had renewables (windmills and such) before we had electricity.
…O …K … nothing is going to destabilize global society as badly as the collapse of crop growing cycles due to fossil-fuel-induced climate change.
Anything we can do to reduce burning fossil fuels is going to improve global stability.
Yes, but why waste time and effort with a stopgap like Nuclear when we can just go to wind and solar that we already have the tech for?
Bonus, the more its used, the more we learn, the better it gets for efficiency and ability to manufacture.
I think you have it backwards, wind and solar are the stopgap.
Wind and solar require heavy mining of non-renewable, relatively rare resources that will likely run out in a couple generations. Solar panels and wind turbines have a short lifespan of a few decades, and we aren’t good at recycling.
Look at the world leader in clean energy- China - and their long term plans. They are heavily invested in solar, for now, as a stopgap measure as they develop thorium reactor power and other related technologies.
I addressed this in another comment, but basically wind and solar both require large amounts of open land to generate significant amounts of electricity. They aren’t a complete solution, they simply can’t fit everywhere.
Most places that can’t fit in fields of solar arrays or wind turbines are reliant on fossil fuels for electricity, and those circumstances aren’t going to change anytime soon. The best solution right now would be to replace the coal and gas plants with nuclear.
Solar can be put on already used spaces like building roofs and parking lots that would be otherwise unproductive.
True, but this doesn’t really work for densely populated areas. There isn’t enough roof space on top of a 20-story apartment or office building to place enough solar panels to serve the building’s needs.
For places like Barcelona:
New York:
Seoul:
etc. there’s a lot of energy demand, but all of the nearby ground space is already occupied. Even if you put solar panels on top of all the buildings, each rooftop wouldn’t be enough to power its own building, so collectively you would only get a fraction of the city’s energy needs. The cost of doing each install and the wiring infrastructure would outweigh the benefit, it would never be practical.
*Edit: just to ballpark this, New York City used 15-16 billion kWh in Jan 2026, so ~15 million MWh/month, 180 million MWh/year. The Mojave Solar Project is one of the largest solar installations in the world. It generates ~580 GWh/year (580,000 MWh/year). So, to serve New York City we need only 310 equivalent MSP installations. The MSP installation takes up ~1765 acres, so we only need about 540,000 acres (2100 sq km), or a little over 1/10 of the state of New Jersey.
Just for New York City. Not the whole state.
And that’s assuming reliable output, with no transmission losses.
And that estimate is probably too low, because any solar installation in that area wouldn’t get the same amount of regular sunlight as the Mojave Desert.
Not really, no. It is safe pretty much regardless. On-site caskets are bomb proof and contain waste safe enough that it wouldn’t make sense for a dirty bomb. Though if you really care then we can just stop considering mountains sacred and instead starting burying the waste as we have planned and fully considered all pros and cons towards 70 years ago.
fossil fuels aren’t safe no matter the state of global society
Why have all safety measures when half do and we save money for shareholders!
“I want change but it should be immediate with no transition”.
The biggest issue is that people don’t understand that the shit that will kill you Chornobyl dead burns itself out relatively fast. Sushi grade polonium is only spicy for a couple of weeks.
The “it’s radioactive for zillions of years” stuff is typically a heavy metal hazard far more than a radiation hazard.
If it’s decaying for a zillion years a gram might be popping off a few sextillion gamma rays a second, insignificant.
Jimmy Carter, by shutting down the reprocessing industry, fucked the whole thing sideways.
You’re right, and it’s even less dangerous than you’re saying.
If each gram was emitting a few sextillion gamma rays per second you’d be able to harness it as a power source, it would be producing megawatts per gram (I did do the math!). The rate of decay is years /decades per atom. One gram of Plutonium 239 would only give off a few hundred thousand gamma particles per second near the start of its decay.
Sorry if this comes off as me correcting you, I just read your comment and got curious so I did some calculations and wanted to share. If anything, I’m extra-agreeing with you.🤗 check me, love it
Thanks🤗.
I don’t usually get the chance to do interesting maths anymore. As soon as you’re done with uni it’s just Excel innit.
I’d argue that the rate of decay per atom is actually random, except that the probability per unit time is scaled according to how long the half life is.
You need a shitton of atoms so that you can average out all that randomness and find the emergent property that is half life.
Fortunately, any amount of radioactive material large enough for us to do anything with it does indeed have a shitton of atoms! Avogadro’s number is one of my favorite scientific constants because it reveals the crazy scale of the atoms we take for granted.
Like with U238 and its 4 billion year half life, one mole of just that atom would weigh 238 grams and have 6.022x10^23 atoms. A half-pound or quarter-kilo chunk of very heavy metal that fits in the palm of your hand contains over 602,200,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms.
Some of those atoms are going to decay today, and some of them will still be radioactive in 100 billion years.
Yep, once you know the half life, you can use that figure to work out the mean lifetime: the average time you’d expect to be looking at once nucleus before it decays. It works out to be 1.4x the half life of the material. You’re right though, it is random, and you could be waiting three nanoseconds or three million years.
Nuclear isn’t the best anymore. Batteries, solar and wind are cheaper and take way less time to build
Don’t forget, that they produce immediately useable energy. No heat loss, due to steam turbines.
And then there is the timespan that nuclear waste stays harmful. OPs “indestructable” container have to stay indestructable for millions of years.
If we assume 40 years as a generation, that will be 50,000 generations. The whole history of mankind is only 400 generations.
Edit: Added sources for everyone unable to use the Internet for its intended use.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#cite_note-3
Half lifes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_plutonium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_uranium
Estimating a generation of 40 years was generous: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_time
History and pre history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recorded_history
And then there is the timespan that nuclear waste stays harmful. OPs “indestructable” container have to stay indestructable for millions of years.
More like between 30 and 1000 years. Still a long time but you’re being pretty hyperbolic suggesting millions.
The time radioactive waste must be stored depends on the type of waste and radioactivity.
The back-end of the nuclear fuel cycle, mostly spent fuel rods, contains fission products that emit beta and gamma radiation, and actinides that emit alpha particles, such as uranium-234 (half-life 245 thousand years), neptunium-237 (2.144 million years), plutonium-238 (87.7 years) and americium-241 (432 years), and even sometimes some neutron emitters such as californium (half-life of 898 years for californium-251). These isotopes are formed in nuclear reactors.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#cite_note-3
have to stay indestructable for millions of years.
If we assume 40 years as a generation, that will be 50,000 generations. The whole history of mankind is only 400 generations.
Talk about pulling numbers out of your ass…
Half-life refers to the time it takes for a radioactive isotope to decay to half its original quantity. This process is not linear but exponential, 10 half lifes are necessary to reach only 0,1% of radioactivity.
Plutonium-239, a highly toxic isotope with a half-life of 24,100 years. Plutonium-239 would still retain 12.5% of its radioactivity after 72,300 years.
Uranium-235: has a half life of 703.8 million years.
All these isotopes are byproducts of nuclear energy production.
These timespans are geologically relevant. There cannot be an estimation about the changes that occur in these.
Sources: Half lifes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_plutonium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_uranium
Estimating a generation of 40 years was generous: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_time
History and pre history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recorded_history
q. e. d.
Nuclear isn’t the best anymore.
By $/kwh, green energy is some of the most efficient on the plant. By $/sqft, nothing tops nuclear. That’s why we’re not throwing sails and solar panels up on aircraft carriers.
Transitioning from bunker fuel to nuclear batteries on commercial ships would be a huge improvement to the global fleet. That’s something we can’t expect solar/wind to match.
That’s why we’re not throwing sails and solar panels up on aircraft carriers.
Ok, but these are things that we don’t need, that are literally murdering people and destroying the planet.
There must be a better example.
these are things that we don’t need
These are big boats that need large amounts of power to cross vast oceans. You could say the same about any number of merchant vessels, which primarily consume bunker fuel. If you could operate an oversized sailboat to manage bulk shipping cheaper than the current models, people would do it in a heartbeat.
There must be a better example.
Take your pick.
That’s true, aircraft carriers and stealth submarines use nuclear power, but still prohibitively expensive for the shipping industry. Commercial shipping is picking up on wind with flettner rotor systems, sails and kites, it’s still only modestly decreasing fuel use but future ships could take more advantage of wind.
Not sure what the future will look like but it could be that some type of redux flow battery and electricity could be used to power commercial ships. I’m pretty sure at some scale the redux flow system could save costs after energy prices drop.
Nuclear waste sounds scary because you can point to it. Fossil fuel waste is just everywhere, quietly speedrunning the atmosphere.
Just the lead in gasoline kills around 5 million people a year. That is just scratching the surface of the problems oil and gas cause.
Plus the millions of people that coal plant’s smoke kill…with radiation. Coal has killed more people by radiation in the US alone than nuclear accidents all over the world, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings combined.
Wow, that sounds so wild to think that exposure to coal related radiation has killed way more people than every man made radiation exposure ever (if your not counting fallout from nuclear arms testing).
deleted by creator
Hasn’t gasoline been leadfree for quite a while now?
It was supposed to be phased out of regular gasoline in 2021. It will still be used in airplane fuel. It will take decades before it isn’t present in large quantities though. That much lead in the environment doesn’t just disappear.
A poisonous and heavy metal just spewing everywhere in the sky. And the conspiracy theorists ignore that and fall for fake bullshit.
For sure, not that I doubt things like global warming. The reality is oil and gas kill many millions every year. So much focus only on global warming is almost a red hearing when it already causes so much death.
I think the problem is, or at least one I see a lot, is that climate change is already happening, but because it’s gradual and there’s already so much unpredictability you can rarely just point at something specific and say “that’s because of climate change.” And the constant naming of it as “global warming” has done so much damage too, because now when the new weather is cold you still have skeptical conservatives saying things like “global warming my ass!”
I agree, that is why we should just point out that it kills millions every year. Even without global warming we should have moved to phase out oil and gas wherever possible several decades ago. Now is the next best time I suppose.
I’m quite pro nuclear, I think the mass decomissioning of nuclear plants that’s been happening in Europe is the wrong move. But this is an incredibly reductive and dishonest meme.
I’m not pro nuclear but I agree that decommissioning existing nuclear plants to replace them with coal+gas is ridiculous. Totally backwards.
Solar+storage>nuclear>hydrocarbons
First replace the hydrocarbons, then you can think about replacing nuclear.
I thought that it was just a Germany thing. Where else does this happen?
Stop framing it as a dichotomy.
Solar/wind are best. Nuclear has serious practical issues (slow to spin up and down, thus requiring either fossil fuels or batteries) and financial issues (the return on investment just doesn’t beat renewables and the batteries they need anymore). It’s also extremely slow to build nuclear so by the time you’re splitting atoms renewables and batteries will be even better.
Nuclear has one major benefit though, it’s a peaceful means to maintain the capacity for nuclear second strikes. Countries like France can’t completely abandon it without leaving themselves vulnerable in a way that Ukraine has learned isn’t wise.
But nuclear compared to fossil fuel? Yeah split those atoms.
Countries like France can’t completely abandon it without leaving themselves vulnerable in a way that Ukraine has learned isn’t wise.
The “Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons” line always neglects to include how the weapons were under the authority of the military of the USSR. Not the Ukrainian local militia.
It’s akin to saying “Fidel Castro shouldn’t have surrendered nukes for Cuba”. They weren’t his to surrender. They were Khrushchev’s. And he traded the missiles in Cuba to get American missiles out of Turkiye, which moved us away from nuclear war over the long run and benefited civilization universally.
France’s nuclear program is owned and operated by the national government. This is comparatively not true of the UK and Germany, whose nukes are owned and operated by the US. And given the history of France, Germany, and Russia, I would argue that Germany posses the bigger historical military threat than Russia every did. With the rising popularity of the AfD in Germany, this threat may become existential far sooner than anyone in Europe wants to admit.
But nuclear compared to fossil fuel? Yeah split those atoms.
What’s crazy about nuclear power relative to coal power is how much we’ve invested in optimizing the latter since the 1980s relative to the former. Fourth and fifth generation nuclear reactors don’t exist outside of France and China in the modern day. Meanwhile, the juice coal plants can squeeze out of tree-fossils and tree-fossil farts is truly remarkable.
Nuclear should be the obvious alternative, but we’ve let the science atrophy for decades. That’s why countries across the Pacific continue to build new coal plants at a rapid clip, while nuclear new-start construction languishes.
I’ve always wandered that instead of trying to spin down or spin up reactors based on demand, if we could scale the demand instead.
Like when power Usage is low dump all that energy into massive desalination plant or CO2 reclamation machine or something
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runit_Island
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site#Cleanup_under_Superfund
what marvel / dc universe do you think that the refuse of nuclear fission lives in ?
More people have died from radiation poisoning due to Coal mining and coal plants than the entirety of all nuclear incidents and weapon uses world wide.
No one here is advocating for fossil fuels
Well if you’re advocating against the cheapest and safest fuel source, one does assume you’re advocating for fossil fuels; especially when you are explicitly repeating their propaganda.
Just a reminder, Green Peace, the primary reason many ‘environmentalists’ are against Nuclear power and are so misinformed on the subject, was paid tens of millions of dollars by the oil and coal lobbies to spread said propaganda.
You’re the one buying the propaganda “cheapest and safest”
Ah yes the ‘nuclear lobby’ that spends hundreds of billions of dollars a year in propaganda. You sure are very smart for recognizing them.
The total number of people that have died in relation to anything nuclear, not just nuclear power, but research, weapons testing, and weapons use, is less than the number of people that died due to fossil fuels last year. It’s also lower than the number of people that have died producing and installing solar panels.
The total cost per kWh for nuclear is also still lower than any other method of baseline power generation. This includes Solar + Battery configurations, regardless of the battery technology.
Ah yes the ‘nuclear lobby’
aka the military industrial complex
so whats your idea? Should we close all nuclear reactors because its too dangerous?
Please and thank you.
It’s spelled BREATHE
Breath is what you TAKE Breathe is what you DO
Breath is what you TAKE
If you’re The Police.
Another tor’s cabinet of curiosities watcher, I see!
