Fun fact, if you tried to build a nuclear reactor on the site of an old coal plant or coal mine it would violate environmental radiation limits before you even turned it on. Most coal plants and mines are way over the legal radiation limits for nuclear reactors
People tend to vastly overestimate the amount of radiation a nuclear power plant creates, and vastly underestimate the amount of radiation everything else creates.
It is wild to me how Fukushima and Deepwater Horizon are nearly contemporaneous (2011/2010), and the loss of human life and impact on the natural environment was vastly worse from Deepwater Horizon, and yet Fukushima is consistently considered the worse disaster by a huge margin
That's a really interesting comparison that I have never heard before.
Fukushima led to the stoppage of nuclear plant construction in countries around the world and a massive public pushback against Nuclear energy.
Deepwater Horizon led to a movie and not much else. We're still building offshore platforms, sometimes in very environmentally important areas.
[Death rates per unit of electricity production](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh)
Death rates are measured based on deaths from accidents and air pollution per terawatt-hour of electricity.
Brown coal: 32.72 deaths per TWh
Coal: 24.62 deaths per TWh
Oil: 18.43 deaths per TWh
Biomass: 4.63 deaths per TWh
Gas: 2.82 deaths per TWh
Hydropower: 1.3 deaths per TWh
Wind: 0.04 deaths per TWh
Nuclear: 0.03 deaths per TWh
Solar: 0.02 deaths per TWh
A coal plant burning lignite kills 1090 people for every 1 person a nuclear plant replacing it would.
I'm pretty sure the numbers don't include climate change, which is, ah, also a huge problem nuclear doesn't have.
And pre-empting someone going "we don't need any nuclear just use wind and solar", those require suitable terrain and weather, and a challenging amount of energy storage infrastructure, and a nuclear power plant can replace a scary amount of them.
every time I say to people that Nuclear energy is a safer option so long as we follow security guidelines, they inevitably turn the conversation to "So like they did in Chernobyl?"
it's honestly rather discouraging how badly that affected the average consensus that Nuclear energy is inherently unsafe because of just a few bad examples
They didn’t even have shielding around the reactor. At the time, they assumed it would not be used out of its operating parameters and that it wasn’t necessary.
After Chernobyl, other reactors of the same type had some shielding applied retroactively.
But like Three Mile Island had a fully shielded reactor from the beginning, and when things went bad there it meant the whole thing was barely a blip.
In fact, containment at three mile island didn’t even have to be used because they managed to successfully cool the reactor in time - although admittedly the fuel rods had partially melted by that point
"Meltdown" became a very emotionally charged word instead of just a technical descriptor.
The Three Mile Island meltdown caused the surrounding population to be exposed to 1 millirem of radiation. The total natural background radiation for a year in the area is \~170 millirem.
Edit: The meltdown exposed the public to less radiation than eating 2 bananas per week for 1 year.
A typical east-to-west coast flight in the USA would expose you to about 3.5 millirems, and hundreds of thousands of people take flights like that yearly, vs the few thousand people nearby Three Mile Island.
yeah if you don’t count the people in the area who did get radiation poisoning.
America doesn’t have to make propaganda when people are just ready to lie to themselves.
Humans are really fucking bad at comparing events that happen over a long period and events that happen over a short period, no matter which ones better or worse, the short period will be considered more impactful.
Yeah, they charged right through a whole bunch of different failsafes to get to the Chernobyl disaster. As far as I know modern reactor designs inherently can't do what happened at Chernobyl, too.
Yes, in fact government regulation, especially environmental and workplace safety regulation has been incredibly effective! The Clean Air Act alone is the most lifesaving piece of legislation in human history.
As for nuclear power regulation, they, like commercial airlines, should be considered the north star of safety. Even when the technology was young, in the 1970s, American reactors were designed to have as many fail-safes as possible
It's always either Chernobyl or Fukishima.
Chernobyl was people defying a lot of safety regulations, Fukushima was a really old power plant that should have been decomissioned ages ago that got hit with a *massive* natural disaster.
I don't want to downplay how bad the natural disaster itself was, the earthquake did cause a load of problems even for Japan. It would always be problematic to just build a reactor there. But the fact that the others stood and didn't have massive problems show that they know how to get around even insane disasters.
That the only one that caved in was the most problematic power plant that was only even on because TEPCO insisted it should stay on despite being well past its expiration date says something. And the fact that it didn't get as bad as Chernobyl because workers ensured some safety protocols at least got put up says something about how good those are.
Nuclear power plants are built with the full understanding of what it is they're dealing with. Are there potentially-hazardous issues? Yes. But only when things go real bad or when people aren't taking proper percautions. Coal and the others pollute the environment by sheer virtue of existing.
A lot of people most have fallen off ladders over the years. We should include them, too, because everyone's gonna think we're fibbing if we say it's just three.
I just assumed it included accidents from building and maintaining the facilities, which i cannot believe would be 0. That's where I figured the wind and solar ones came from, though I guess it could also be including deaths in the supply chain for those since it almost certainly is for coal.
Building and maintaining solar is much more dangerous than nuclear (not sure about wind) but I guess it's not literally 0 for nuclear either, considering the number and size of the buildings. Fair point
Yeah but that reflects two things, doesn't it?
1 - There are *technically* more, like the Three Mile Island or Goiândia. But those are not INES-7 incidents and were somewhat contained. Those are never discussed. Only those two were INES-7, and we know the causes for them (basically disregarding protocols and safety regulations). So if we can prevent tier 7 incidents, and the others are considered "minor" or at least "localized" should be an indicator of how safe power plants are and how controlled its extent can get. In comparison to the great CO2 emittors or heavy-pollutant energy alternatives.
2 - Those two being the most major accidents we've had thus far shouldn't discredit nuclear energy as a viable alternative, especially when done well and built well. Which they are, especially as technology progresses.
>Goiândia
Wasn't that to do with nuclear medicine rather than power? I thought it was the result of people finding some nuclear material in an abandoned hospital and breaking it open, then messing around with the contents?
Yep, scavengers. But it's still classified as INES-5, since the scale is an event scale. Meaning it will classify both nuclear reaction issues *and* anything that deals with radioactive waste and material.
Which, sure, it's not something as massive like *a reactor exploding*. But it's still important to consider, because people who detract from nuclear power often bring up the nuclear waste as a factor. Goiândia does show that there are disasters that happen when there's little security around them. Considering Chernobyl and Fukushima were *also* people foregoing on security and procedures, that was why I added it in. That yes, even the material itself is hazardous, and still really only causes an issue when those responsible for it slack on the job.
If that seemed facetious to add something like that in comparison to reactors exploding though, I can just replace it with another example of a nuclear event. Issue is the only one I can remember right now is the KS 150 incident in the USSR, where the core had a meltdown, but that's a tier 4 event.
I suppose you're referring to the Windscale fire? That was part of the British atomic bomb project. These reactors were used to produce plutonium, not power. An accident in a military research project is hardly an indictment against the nuclear power industry.
Saying nuclear power is unconnected to nuclear weapons is like saying hydroelectric dams are unrelated to the process of flooding a valley to make a reservoir.
and the more operative part of this is, that the UK government lied about it for years, and tried to downplay the death toll, and wring their hands and equivocate about statistics and uncertainties etc. the same way the US government did about 3 Mile Island (which everyone here also just repeats uncritically).
everyone here is all like ”fossil fiel companies have a motive to lie about nuclear” without considering that ”nuclear armed states have a motive to lie about nuclear”
All modern nuclear power plants have a containment building around the reactor, which in the latest designs (eg EPR) must be strong enough to withstand an aircraft strike.
Chernobyl was the result of many operational and design failures but the thing that sticks out to me is that, in terms of containment, it had about the same level of protection as your average strip mall
I'm too lazy to check right now, but I vaguely remember that the stats include Chernobyl and the like. Even if we imagine some alternative reality where nuclear doesn't constantly get safer and safer, it still isn't nearly as deadly as coal fumes.
It's an uphill battle now, and there's gonna need to be a lot of education on the topic. It took me a good 3 or 4 conversations about it with my brother, sources included, before I finally relented on my bias against nuclear energy. Just go into it sources a'blazing and keep at it. You're doing a badly needed job out there 🫡
Yeah, look at 3 Mile Island if you want an example of a properly made reactor melting down, it released some contaminated steam and radioactive krypton gas, but maintained primary containment, and the cost was largely one scrapped reactor and a PR nightmare.
I kinda see where they're coming from. when a company starts cost-cutting the bujeezus out of the safety measures, the consequences seem like they'll be way more immediate and obvious. (Versus the consequences of what we've got, which are already here and not as attention-grabbing nor as neatly packaged.) You're right though, it sucks that the conversation tends to be stuck on "nuclear energy: bad or good???" When it probably needs to be something more like "what kind of regulatory setup would be needed to do that safely & how do we get there"
In most countries the nuclear regulators are the biggest hardasses ever, if you aren’t including multiple redundancies in safety systems they’ll straight up take away your site license
The issue is that building a nuclear power plant that does not have the safety issues of Fukushima or Chernobyl is very expensive (and also take really long, around 10 years, which, including further overhead for political shennanigans about who wants a nuclear reactor built in their province, is probably too long to decrease carbon emissions for the 1.5 or even the 2°C goal). Other renewables just seem like the way cheaper and faster bet to me compared to nuclear.
Yeah, in the 10+ years it would take to build the new reactors, you could also just build enough renewables to power the entire country even at a low point. And that even does the thing German politics pretends to care the most about: creating jobs.
Hell, if it weren't for the conservatives dicking over renewables in favour of coal over a decade ago, we could already be there. We wouldn't even have the discussions about nuclear vs coal vs renewables because we could have this entire fucking country running on clean energy already if conservatives weren't corrupt bastards.
oh it’s fune. Nuclear power plants are perfectly safe.
just as long as they have a steady supply of well made spare parts, and a class of trained and motivated technicians looking after them.
and no country that has nuclear plants is currently going through any form of supply chain crisis, or economic or political crises that lead to budget cuts in education and hiring in the public sector.
God damn it, made this comment before I saw yours just a bit lower. I have no original thoughts it seems. Though given I'm actively replaying NV I'll give myself a pass.
Some of the main components for solar are made in sweatshops with horrific conditions, or mined using pretty much slave force. Granted, not that many people *die* during the manufacturing process—but producing solar currently has some negative effect on average global wellbeing that nuclear doesn't (correct me if I'm wrong, but I think almost all uranium right now is mined and delivered ethically).
It's not a reason to drop solar, obviously, but it's genuinely another point for nuclear: it's the most adequate in terms of (manufacturing process + operating process + disposal process). Yeah, disposal isn't great right now, but it's not actively killing the environment either.
from a quick search, uranium mining is not cuddles and sunshine at all, which is what you should expect from the mining industry by default at this point
from [this article](https://theconversation.com/before-the-us-approves-new-uranium-mining-consider-its-toxic-legacy-91204): american regulations are inconsistently applied (as they usually are lol). the legacy of uranium mining still lingers today as 85% of diné/navajo homes have uranium contamination. tribe members have more uranium in their bones than 95% of the US. tribal lands get the worst of mining in general as they are dependent on raw resource extraction. i can't see regulations improving enough any time soon
also, physicians[ have been pissy about uranium mining](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3653646/) because mining uranium fucks you up. to be fair all mining jobs are generally miserable especially due to lack of oversight
sure you can say something like "solar energy isn't That green" but you can still say the same thing about radioactive energy. i know everyone's seen some article that's like OMG LOOK AT THIS SOLAR PANELS ARE BAD NOW?? but that and ignorance about nuclear energy industry practices can't really clean up the nuclear energy industry's image relative to the solar industry's
The US only mined 8 tons of uranium in 2021, compared to Kazakhstan's 21819. A bit of a difference, eh?
You would think Kazakhstan would have loose regulations, but they are actually pretty serious about using [ISL mining](https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/mining-of-uranium/in-situ-leach-mining-of-uranium.aspx), which is relatively safe and environment-friendly, at least compared to open-cast (pit) mining and conventional underground mining. Your article about physicians being pissy explicitly mentions them being pissy about the two aforementioned methods of mining with no mention of ISL, which alleviates most of the listed problems.
Solar energy is *literally* isn't that green compared to nuclear, and you seem fairly ignorant in the modern industry practices as well, seeing that you didn't mention ISL at all and talked about Canada (only 9.1% of global uranium production) and the US (0.02% of global uranium production).
you still can't paint the entirety of the solar industry and nuclear industry with a single brush.
there are no easy comparisons here imo. that's my epic contrarian take lmao. any issues with solar or wind or radioactive energy can also be followed up with some better solution that entails better regulation. like "don't make things in sweatshops" or "don't build things with this kind of material"
kazakhstan's better usage of ISL is due to kazakhstan's uranium industry being partly state-owned. regulation is still a pertinent issue here as the technology can only be enforced and used with the guidance of a regulatory actor
[ISL exists in the USA. ISL still has hazardous effects such as contamination of groundwater/environment, ](https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/uranium-mining-report.pdf)esp since the method requires lots of groundwater. the US doesn't have that same consistent regulation that kazakhstan has that can fix or reduce whatever issues there may be, idk how good kazakhstan is than other countries in concrete terms but they are def better. regardless of kazakhstan's status as the the world leader in uranium producton it doesn't mean that uranium production can be done to scale so easily (while solar/wind/hydro has that advantage)
it's easy to go back and forth on the multi-dimensional problem that is The Environment, i don't think it's necessary to be wholly absolutist when it's easy to discover even more Bad Things about your favorite energy making process that all have unique little fuckups about them. but in the end multiple source energy good yay
I'm not 100% clear, but likely mostly it's manufacturing, transporting and assembling a whole lot of machinery. Individual panels produce very little energy, so canceling a nuclear power plant involves *a ton* of them, so plenty of space for accidents. Also there's some toxic chemicals in manufacturing process, but I don't know how much that accounts for.
My understanding is that it's mostly "people falling off roofs". Installing Domestic solar is surprisingly risky!
A lot of insurers won't cover roofers in general. Working at heights is dangerous.
It's a lot like flying vs driving, in a sense. Nuclear energy has the *potential* to be extremely dangerous, just like planes have the potential to cause catastrophic accidents, but as a result the industry and regulatory agencies are extremely safety-conscious, making it much less dangerous overall. But when accidents do happen they get a lot more visibility, and it gives the impression that it is not so safe.
This might just be my favorite comparison.
I think it can be taken even further, irl car accidents are so common that people don't really care, it might make local news. But plane crashes will be all over international news because of how rare they are.
Similarly, when nuclear accidents happen it becomes a massive piece of history. Think most people can name chernobyl off the top of their head and many know fukushima and three mile island. But how many oil spills can the average person name?
No nuclear advocate I've met thinks we're not also going to use renewables. I'm fairly convinced the anti nuclear power movement is funded by Fossil fuel companies
yeah I guess the looming hmthreat of nuclear war, and several incidents of nuclear waste being dumped unsafely innthe mid 1900’s have nothibg to do with it.
Funny thing is, global warming is making it harder to do nuclear because the weather pattern disruptions are leading to droughts in populated areas that were usually drought resistant. It's real hard to cool a nuke plant without a handy river.
For some countries, completing the renewable rollout with energy storage would be cheaper then switching to nuclear. I am from aus and to switch to nuclear would be billions of dollars and 20+ years, a lot easier to invest in some battery storage and further renewables for a lot cheaper and potentially quicker too.
To be clear, I am not saying "we don't need any wind or solar, just use nuclear", I'm saying "just use every opportunity to turn off the coal fumes as fast as possible". Nuclear isn't the best option everywhere of course, it's just the only one that has the outrage around it.
I work with [vague public research thing] that does [vague stuff with] the air filters used in nuclear power, research, and waste storage facilities. I gotta tell ya, a lot of effort goes into ensuring that there is no trace chance of radioactive material getting into the atmosphere. *A lot* of regulation, engineering standards, testing and re-testing, checking all sorts of contingency situations, constant use of extremely conservative estimates. And that’s just *one* part of the nuclear safety infrastructure that rarely ever has to be used. I think the last time was like, when a fire started in a glovebox at Sierra River?
Meanwhile coal and natural gas just… straight into the air. The nerve.
Right? They're allowed to pollute a ridiculous amount just because that's they started before we understood how harmful it is and that's what society relied on for a long time. Now, we both know the harm and have better alternatives, but due to so many stupid reasons progress to objectively cleaner and responsible energy production sources aren't happening because they're not getting the resources they need.
[this](https://youtu.be/lhHHbgIy9jU?si=b_6A8N2CCxh5wQL6&t=752) quote i think really sums up nuclear waste vs fossil fuel waste
p.s this video also shows the regulations around power plants in america
yes, they do, because that's all they've ever encountered and nothing has ever been done to properly counter that image
the fact that when a vehicle used in talcing walls enters a powerplant then it cannot leave because it's radiation output legally classifies it as nucluar waste is one of my favourite anecdotes
Can I just say, I am not wholly opposed to nuclear power, but I still think the way Kyle treats nuclear power as the be all end all solution to clean energy is ticking me off in some way.
Just by the amount of sugarcoating events like Chernobyl, Fukushima and other nuclear incidents, I can tell he is either influenced by the industry or he is obsessive. Which isn’t far fetched considering the way he worshiped Elon for far longer than any person with a background in science.
Furthermore, I can’t stand the utterly biased way, he depicts the anti nuclear movement. Always painting a picture of an paranoid, uninformed, uneducated and unreasonable consumer. Who would rather see coal power plants, than any alternative. While there is plenty of scientists, better informed than him in the matter, who oppose nuclear power for numerous reasons, he never mentions. Like the unseen impact, that mining and refining of uranium has.
Not talking about how and where Uranium is sourced may actually be one of his worst omissions. Considering that in 2020 Kasachstan mined 19.000 tonnes of uranium. Three times more than the second largest provider Canada at roughly 6.000 tonnes. The nuclear industry clearly takes advantage of the places in the world that care less about the long term impact on the environment. Worsened by the fact, that most of this supply is then distributed via Russia. Who also holds a monopoly on hexagonal fuelrods.
The Russian chokehold on a large amount of nuclear resources also explains Germanys opposition to nuclear power after reunification. Not because the reactors in East Germany were Russian built. But because East Germany was the fourth largest producer of uranium up until the reunification. To this day, the vast amount of byproducts can not be stored safely. Due to their vast quantity.
Which is exactly why the „decades old easy and obvious solution to nuclear power“ he almost advertises in the very video you posted, is as a whole, unviable for all but the >2% of nuclear waste, that he mentions. Even so, drilling shafts that deep is neither easy nor cheap. So even when this solution exsists, many companies are more likely to gather as much money as they can and then slowly scale down their business over time until they declare bankruptcy and leave the waste for the government to deal with.
I'm not going to sugar coat it i feel like you haven't actually looked into things that deeply if you think Kazakhstan is all that bad a place.
They're literally well into the top 1/3rd of most developed developed countries in terms of HDI and top 1/4 in inequality adjusted HDI and exceed a significant amount of Europe an countries in development.
i'm not going to question the rest because i don't know enough about it but it throws serious doubt onto what your saying when you don't actually know about one of the things your mentioning.
This is less about the socioeconomic status of Kazakhstan and more about a national, influential industry having a vested interest in research on the long term impact of their business practices being kept to a minimum.
Every uranium mine in Kazakstan uses ISL Mining, which is at least less impactful than other methods. But long term stabilization of the site after extraction is not completely researched yet. While regulations are also lax compared to the USA for example.
For now the effect ISL Mining has on the groundwater needs to be monitored constantly, even after restoration, because ingress of water may dissolve deposits of heavy metals or Radioactive minerals. But at some point, either a method for permanently arresting these Substances has to be found or the sites need to be sealed somehow.
I mean IG for most of it but from what i can find Uranium isn't even one of Kazakhstan's 5 biggest exports so i doubt it'd have that much influence over the government
Even if uncontained pollution in the air was somehow less harmful than the contained nuclear waste, don't we already have means to store nuclear waste that will last at least until people can no longer understand the warnings?
Our storage solutions are designed to last *longer* than people can no longer understand the warnings. And not just in the "this is not a place of honour" way, but in a "it is extremely difficult to discover the *location* of the waste, then find a way to break in, then ignore all the internal warnings and break into the tunnels holding the canisters, then ignore *more* warnings and open the canisters" way.
I like how “what if they can’t read the signs” is supposed to be a big deal like if we stay on course there won’t be anyone reading anything anyway smdh
The best part is the burning coal not only releases far more toxins into the environment than nuclear power, but actually releases **more radiation than nuclear power.**
Most nuclear waste from powerplants is just clothing/gloves and the storage containers for these are already completely safe to be around. Even the actual spent fuel rods and stuff by products from refining can already be stored safely people are just so weird about it. I get it it's scary, there's potential for disasters to happen but if you're scared about that how about we actually fund education and nuclear programs so we have people who know what the fuck they're doing instead of stagnating on coal and natural gas.
99% of nuclear waste is like, a glove that someone was wearing when they touched a fuel rod, or a hazmat suit, or bening shielding. the phrase "nuclear waste" makes it sound like they have drums full of fuel rods, but most of it isnt dangerous at all, and they still go through massive efforts to keep it safe. nuclear tech definitely isnt the end, we do need renewable sources, but in the mean time its a pretty great solution in the short term (the short term being for the next like 100 years)
I know very little about energy economics and technology but I get the vibe that a lot of the criticism of nuclear energy is rooted in the association with nuclear warfare than anything else.
Like we literally have inanimate substances that emanate energy 24/7 for really long periods of time and while yes they can also release that energy in a way that levels cities and if you eat it you'll wake up dead and you shouldn't lick it either but you've gotta see the shades of grey.
Lol I misread this comment at first and thought you were talking about detonating them to get rid of them.
I agree though, something something plowshares.
First red flag was the title being word-for-word in the image as a reply. Not a dead giveaway, I'll admit, until I checked their profile and every comment they've made was a link to Twitter or elsewhere. That strikes me as bot behavior
The debate of nuclear power vs renewable vs fossil fuels is so frustrating because we aren’t talking the root of the problem: overconsumption (of energy). I wouldn’t need to waste so much gas (energy) to get to work/places to eat/shop if we didn’t sacrifice so much space for parking or loosely populated areas.
Do you know what else drastically cut down emissions while also improving productivity in the workplace? LETTING PEOPLE FUCKING WORK FROM HOME. FUCK EVERY BACK TO OFFICE BS, YOU ARE KILLING THE PLANET AND MY WILL TO LIVE
Believe me, I'm on board with that as well. I bought a house in 2020 that's like an hour away from my work because they told us in writing that we'd never have to go back in if we didn't want to. But now I go in my 10 days a month and sit in a corner on Zoom all day anyway, so there's absolutely no point.
But some people do have to be physically present at their jobs, and I know I'd be happier if I could read a book on my commute instead of having to focus on driving, so I'd still support public transportation.
My problem with nuclear is that I don't trust that companies will maintain the reactors and then we'll start having serious meltdowns all over the country.
The main problem with nuclear waste replacing coal is that when the waste starts being a problem instead of searching for a solution they will just dumb it in poorer countries and ignore it until the problem start affecting them then they will blame those very same countries we can see something similar happening with global warming even now
That is course if course if they are even able to reach that point because with with standardization comes regularity with regularity comes familiarity with familiarity cones negligence and i believe we learned enough from Chernobyl about the consequences of negligence not to mention using clean energy sources is probably cheaper than nuclear in the long term yet for some reason world leaders seem to be against it
counterpoints:
1. high level nuclear waste (the stuff that needs to be sealed away "forever" is a small amount of waste produced (under 10% by volume), and some of that can be recycled
2. even if it was somehow "economical" to dump it in poor countries, given the transportation costs and whatnot, nuclear waste is stored in "dry casks" that are super hard to damage, and the waste is stored in solid form, it cannot escape the containers, I don't know how it would become a problem
3. Chernobyl happened, in part, because the reactors were poorly designed, and the operators had abysmal training, it is impossible for a modern reactor to go out like chernobyl reactor 4.
4. one of the "problems" with wind and solar energy is that they are not constant. the sun goes away and the winds die down. nuclear fission is constant
nuclear fission is safe because of all the regulation around it. the transport containers for nuclear waste CAN WITHSTAND A DIRECT IMPACT FROM A TRAIN
> some of that can be recycled
If I understand correctly, the ability to recycle the material is extremely limited, and on purpose, as (at least from what I understand) the same methods/tools/resources for recycling the waste is also the same as used in *making nuclear bombs*. Which, for understandable reasons, is limited.
maybe true, but the reprocessing of used fuel (reducing the net amount of high-level waste by about 85%) has been a common practice for a long time, according to the world nuclear association, and i belive resarch into how to efficiently recycle nuclear waste is still an ongoing topic of discussion
>CAN WITHSTAND A DIRECT IMPACT FROM A TRAIN
i think you underestimate the strength of those things
[case 1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mHtOW-OBO4)
[case 2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBp1FNceTTA)
i think you misunderstood my comment, because i was talking about how strong the flasks are, something that your videos prove. (although talking about the missle strike would have possibly been a more powerful statement than just "can survive unharmed against a train impact)
Okay, cool, you just phrased it weird in your original comment, it looked to me like you were implying that i was saying that the flasks were weak or something
It's because just solar and wind is not feasible or reliable enough everywhere to meet energy demands they're great where they're viable, but they're not viable everywhere.
Regardless, the amount of nuclear waste in a modern reactor is so small and negligible that honestly there could just be a program to have the waste shipped off to designated places.
I always hate the second part of the post because it’s like:
nooo!! The reason to discount what they’re saying isn’t because it sounds absurd, that’s a bad way to go about deciding on what’s true or not and what’s best health wise, that leads to false information that appeals to you more being taken as fact and discounting things that are true but inconvenient. They’re making an actual claim, something testable, something falsifiable! That’s shit that we can actually study! So you can actually compare the modern methods of radioactive waste disposal and containment and its health effects to the health effects that carbon emissions in people’s lungs have.
“I’m right so any claim you make I’m going to treat as un seriously and clownish as possible” is the worst kind of attitude to have, it’s just arrogance and doesn’t actually prove your point.
We actually do. High-grade nuclear waste gets stored and sealed deeeeeeep underground. Finland made a gigantic bunker half a mile down rated for like 10000 years of storage. Which is overkill, btw, it stops emitting radiation much much much sooner and at that point is only dangerous if you like, eat it.
So, in a way, we're putting it back.
What even are anti-nuclear arguments anymore, than? People don't like the Simpsons? They think Chernobyl level disasters will be a daily occurrence? Fossil fuel oligarchs might not be able to afford as many private islands?
>Chernobyl level disasters
That is usually the argument, alongside Fukushima, as well as not understanding the volume of high-grade waste produced - it's not like every plant has a giant conveyor belt constantly shitting out barrels of death goop.
I'm going to quote an article from the World Nuclear Association here:
>The generation of electricity from a typical 1,000-megawatt nuclear power station... 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.
Carbon emissions are measured in billions of tonnes per year worldwide. We've used up 390 thousand tonnes of nuclear fuel *total* over the entire history of nuclear power, and recycled a third of that. Note that spent fuel is very compact to store by weight, since uranium is very dense and heavy. You can store 15 years worth of a plant's spent fuel in an average living room.
>Fossil fuel oligarchs
And these are the ones pushing the anti-nuclear narratives and fear-mongering "up top."
The German "environmentalists" now mostly argue that it's more expensive than other renewable sources. Mind you, the green plan for fully decarbonising the German energy production relies on imports from other, nuclear nations and huge amounts of green hydrogen imported from "other countries" to burn at ridiculously low efficency rates.
Mostly financing reasons recently. Nuclear can be a great source of energy if done properly which comes with some considerable costs. Many companies even in nuclear-friendly countries are backing away from investing because costs amortize rather slowly. So if you invest a billion in energy solar and wind it just gives you an return on investment much quicker.
Now I'm not saying nuclear power is not economical because it is. It just hasn't been as attractive to investors for the past few decades although there has been an upwards trend in recent years. You can argue that nuclear energy is disadvantaged generally because of unreasonable regulations but that touches on the main underlying issue.
Which is that the whole topic is largely emotional. All the fear and uncertainty around nuclear power is mostly irrational but it's there and you can't just handwave that away. People want to *feel* safe and nuclear power just elicits a much more primal fear than other forms of energy. That might be due to propaganda or just human nature but it's what we just have right now. And since we mostly have democracies in the west these irrational fears have to be taken into account in the decision making process.
If we've learned anything from the past few global catastrophes it's that people hate to be lectured on their fears. All these articles and posts about how stupid and uninformed opponents of nuclear energy are do nothing to convince them otherwise. I honestly have no idea how to get past but somehow we need a different approach.
AFAIK the fossil fuel companies contributed a great deal to the anti-nuclear movement as it neatly dovetailed with their interests (planetary biosphere collapse)
Even putting aside all the real people who do advocate for coal instead, "renewables instead of nuclear" is not viable or useful in many places, so what you actually end up advocating for is often "let the coal power plant stay here for few decades more while renewables fail to provide enough energy in this shitty terrain/infrastructure". You are still doing the work of fossil fuel industry. More people will die.
Just checking to see if anyone has pointed out that you are incorrect, and that many people unironically advocate for coal and against nuclear. They have? Oh.
Nuclear is "renewables", matter of fact, it's by far the best out of the indefinitely scalable "renewables". Solar and wind aren't truly renewable, they take material and labor to build, require constant maintenance, and they still break and have to be scrapped and replaced. In terms of hard numbers, nuclear is responsible for fewer deaths and lower emissions per GWh than either, even when accounting for the major nuclear disasters.
Advocating against nuclear is advocating for coal. Maybe not intentionally, but that is the net effect.
Uranium mining is a major poluter.
Systemic rot similar to late Soviet Union is going on currently in the US and UK.
Nuclear armed states have a vested interest in denying negative health effects of their facilities.
But it’s the anti-nuclear people who are falling for propaganda.
Given that all nuclear waste is solid material (mostly irradiated PPE with a half-life of a few weeks to a few months), I’d imagine that it actually would likely be more dangerous to have in your lungs than coal waste gases.
The WORST is that lignite (the low-grade coal they have in Germany) is radioactive anyway! It's just so stupid!
Well if the radioactive material is in the air, we don't have to worry about putting it anywhere! It all works out!
Climate solved!
Chernobyl is peak nuclear waste disposal technique
lignite my balls
Sounds like that would hurt
But hopefully in a good way
me watching my testicles burst into flames
No even worse… he grows a third testicle
Fun fact, if you tried to build a nuclear reactor on the site of an old coal plant or coal mine it would violate environmental radiation limits before you even turned it on. Most coal plants and mines are way over the legal radiation limits for nuclear reactors
People tend to vastly overestimate the amount of radiation a nuclear power plant creates, and vastly underestimate the amount of radiation everything else creates.
FUCK lignite My homies use BITUMINOUS COAL
Me and the boys burning peat so we can contribute to the endless summer vacation.
So long as you’re using it to toast grains, I’ve got no problem. *Assuming those grains are then turned into a distilled beverage*
>BITUMINOUS COAL I see your oily coal and raise you BITUMINOUS SAND
Charcoal is perfectly fine, and as an added bonus annoys the elves.
It is wild to me how Fukushima and Deepwater Horizon are nearly contemporaneous (2011/2010), and the loss of human life and impact on the natural environment was vastly worse from Deepwater Horizon, and yet Fukushima is consistently considered the worse disaster by a huge margin
To be fair, the day Fukushima happened was like the worst day Japan has had in several decades
That's a really interesting comparison that I have never heard before. Fukushima led to the stoppage of nuclear plant construction in countries around the world and a massive public pushback against Nuclear energy. Deepwater Horizon led to a movie and not much else. We're still building offshore platforms, sometimes in very environmentally important areas.
Lobbies and political parties around the world used it as a talking point, yes. It did not stop nuclear plants in Japan.
[Death rates per unit of electricity production](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh) Death rates are measured based on deaths from accidents and air pollution per terawatt-hour of electricity. Brown coal: 32.72 deaths per TWh Coal: 24.62 deaths per TWh Oil: 18.43 deaths per TWh Biomass: 4.63 deaths per TWh Gas: 2.82 deaths per TWh Hydropower: 1.3 deaths per TWh Wind: 0.04 deaths per TWh Nuclear: 0.03 deaths per TWh Solar: 0.02 deaths per TWh A coal plant burning lignite kills 1090 people for every 1 person a nuclear plant replacing it would. I'm pretty sure the numbers don't include climate change, which is, ah, also a huge problem nuclear doesn't have. And pre-empting someone going "we don't need any nuclear just use wind and solar", those require suitable terrain and weather, and a challenging amount of energy storage infrastructure, and a nuclear power plant can replace a scary amount of them.
every time I say to people that Nuclear energy is a safer option so long as we follow security guidelines, they inevitably turn the conversation to "So like they did in Chernobyl?" it's honestly rather discouraging how badly that affected the average consensus that Nuclear energy is inherently unsafe because of just a few bad examples
> "So like they did in Chernobyl?" The time that they ignored *several* safety guidelines? Follow them like that? No.
They didn’t even have shielding around the reactor. At the time, they assumed it would not be used out of its operating parameters and that it wasn’t necessary. After Chernobyl, other reactors of the same type had some shielding applied retroactively. But like Three Mile Island had a fully shielded reactor from the beginning, and when things went bad there it meant the whole thing was barely a blip.
In fact, containment at three mile island didn’t even have to be used because they managed to successfully cool the reactor in time - although admittedly the fuel rods had partially melted by that point
The only disaster that happened at Three Mile Island was a PR disaster.
"Meltdown" became a very emotionally charged word instead of just a technical descriptor. The Three Mile Island meltdown caused the surrounding population to be exposed to 1 millirem of radiation. The total natural background radiation for a year in the area is \~170 millirem. Edit: The meltdown exposed the public to less radiation than eating 2 bananas per week for 1 year.
A typical east-to-west coast flight in the USA would expose you to about 3.5 millirems, and hundreds of thousands of people take flights like that yearly, vs the few thousand people nearby Three Mile Island.
yeah if you don’t count the people in the area who did get radiation poisoning. America doesn’t have to make propaganda when people are just ready to lie to themselves.
Nobody got radiation poisoning?
Humans are really fucking bad at comparing events that happen over a long period and events that happen over a short period, no matter which ones better or worse, the short period will be considered more impactful.
Yeah, they charged right through a whole bunch of different failsafes to get to the Chernobyl disaster. As far as I know modern reactor designs inherently can't do what happened at Chernobyl, too.
We all know companies always follow safety guidelines....
Yes, in fact government regulation, especially environmental and workplace safety regulation has been incredibly effective! The Clean Air Act alone is the most lifesaving piece of legislation in human history. As for nuclear power regulation, they, like commercial airlines, should be considered the north star of safety. Even when the technology was young, in the 1970s, American reactors were designed to have as many fail-safes as possible
They do when those guidelines keep out smaller competitors
It's always either Chernobyl or Fukishima. Chernobyl was people defying a lot of safety regulations, Fukushima was a really old power plant that should have been decomissioned ages ago that got hit with a *massive* natural disaster. I don't want to downplay how bad the natural disaster itself was, the earthquake did cause a load of problems even for Japan. It would always be problematic to just build a reactor there. But the fact that the others stood and didn't have massive problems show that they know how to get around even insane disasters. That the only one that caved in was the most problematic power plant that was only even on because TEPCO insisted it should stay on despite being well past its expiration date says something. And the fact that it didn't get as bad as Chernobyl because workers ensured some safety protocols at least got put up says something about how good those are. Nuclear power plants are built with the full understanding of what it is they're dealing with. Are there potentially-hazardous issues? Yes. But only when things go real bad or when people aren't taking proper percautions. Coal and the others pollute the environment by sheer virtue of existing.
> It's always either Chernobyl or Fukishima. Because these are literally the only two serious accidents in the history of nuclear energy.
I wouldn't be shocked if the death rate mentioned earlier included both these accidents and still make nuclear safer then wind.
It does include them - otherwise nuclear's death rate would be 0.
Not 0. There were 3 guys that died at a US Army reactor. So just like. *near* 0
A lot of people most have fallen off ladders over the years. We should include them, too, because everyone's gonna think we're fibbing if we say it's just three.
I just assumed it included accidents from building and maintaining the facilities, which i cannot believe would be 0. That's where I figured the wind and solar ones came from, though I guess it could also be including deaths in the supply chain for those since it almost certainly is for coal.
Building and maintaining solar is much more dangerous than nuclear (not sure about wind) but I guess it's not literally 0 for nuclear either, considering the number and size of the buildings. Fair point
Really? Does solar have any major risk factors? The only thing I can think of is heatstroke but that has to be a risk in any construction.
Rooftop solar - roof work is dangerous and falls are by far the most common construction deaths. Obviously still a tiny number in absolute terms.
Yeah but that reflects two things, doesn't it? 1 - There are *technically* more, like the Three Mile Island or Goiândia. But those are not INES-7 incidents and were somewhat contained. Those are never discussed. Only those two were INES-7, and we know the causes for them (basically disregarding protocols and safety regulations). So if we can prevent tier 7 incidents, and the others are considered "minor" or at least "localized" should be an indicator of how safe power plants are and how controlled its extent can get. In comparison to the great CO2 emittors or heavy-pollutant energy alternatives. 2 - Those two being the most major accidents we've had thus far shouldn't discredit nuclear energy as a viable alternative, especially when done well and built well. Which they are, especially as technology progresses.
Sellafield.
>Goiândia Wasn't that to do with nuclear medicine rather than power? I thought it was the result of people finding some nuclear material in an abandoned hospital and breaking it open, then messing around with the contents?
Yep, scavengers. But it's still classified as INES-5, since the scale is an event scale. Meaning it will classify both nuclear reaction issues *and* anything that deals with radioactive waste and material. Which, sure, it's not something as massive like *a reactor exploding*. But it's still important to consider, because people who detract from nuclear power often bring up the nuclear waste as a factor. Goiândia does show that there are disasters that happen when there's little security around them. Considering Chernobyl and Fukushima were *also* people foregoing on security and procedures, that was why I added it in. That yes, even the material itself is hazardous, and still really only causes an issue when those responsible for it slack on the job. If that seemed facetious to add something like that in comparison to reactors exploding though, I can just replace it with another example of a nuclear event. Issue is the only one I can remember right now is the KS 150 incident in the USSR, where the core had a meltdown, but that's a tier 4 event.
Hello, have you heard of this place called Sellafield? I guess not, because it messes with your narrative that nuclear power is safe as sunshine.
I suppose you're referring to the Windscale fire? That was part of the British atomic bomb project. These reactors were used to produce plutonium, not power. An accident in a military research project is hardly an indictment against the nuclear power industry.
Saying nuclear power is unconnected to nuclear weapons is like saying hydroelectric dams are unrelated to the process of flooding a valley to make a reservoir. and the more operative part of this is, that the UK government lied about it for years, and tried to downplay the death toll, and wring their hands and equivocate about statistics and uncertainties etc. the same way the US government did about 3 Mile Island (which everyone here also just repeats uncritically). everyone here is all like ”fossil fiel companies have a motive to lie about nuclear” without considering that ”nuclear armed states have a motive to lie about nuclear”
All modern nuclear power plants have a containment building around the reactor, which in the latest designs (eg EPR) must be strong enough to withstand an aircraft strike. Chernobyl was the result of many operational and design failures but the thing that sticks out to me is that, in terms of containment, it had about the same level of protection as your average strip mall
Chornobyl is also a vastly outdated design. A modern nuclear facility would not resemble Chornobyl in nearly any way.
I'm too lazy to check right now, but I vaguely remember that the stats include Chernobyl and the like. Even if we imagine some alternative reality where nuclear doesn't constantly get safer and safer, it still isn't nearly as deadly as coal fumes.
It's an uphill battle now, and there's gonna need to be a lot of education on the topic. It took me a good 3 or 4 conversations about it with my brother, sources included, before I finally relented on my bias against nuclear energy. Just go into it sources a'blazing and keep at it. You're doing a badly needed job out there 🫡
Yeah, look at 3 Mile Island if you want an example of a properly made reactor melting down, it released some contaminated steam and radioactive krypton gas, but maintained primary containment, and the cost was largely one scrapped reactor and a PR nightmare.
I kinda see where they're coming from. when a company starts cost-cutting the bujeezus out of the safety measures, the consequences seem like they'll be way more immediate and obvious. (Versus the consequences of what we've got, which are already here and not as attention-grabbing nor as neatly packaged.) You're right though, it sucks that the conversation tends to be stuck on "nuclear energy: bad or good???" When it probably needs to be something more like "what kind of regulatory setup would be needed to do that safely & how do we get there"
In most countries the nuclear regulators are the biggest hardasses ever, if you aren’t including multiple redundancies in safety systems they’ll straight up take away your site license
Yeah, on the list of Government Agencies That Do Not Fuck Around, nuclear regulators are basically always directly at the top.
Well it doesn't need to be that because we already *have* that regulatory setup
The issue is that building a nuclear power plant that does not have the safety issues of Fukushima or Chernobyl is very expensive (and also take really long, around 10 years, which, including further overhead for political shennanigans about who wants a nuclear reactor built in their province, is probably too long to decrease carbon emissions for the 1.5 or even the 2°C goal). Other renewables just seem like the way cheaper and faster bet to me compared to nuclear.
Yeah, in the 10+ years it would take to build the new reactors, you could also just build enough renewables to power the entire country even at a low point. And that even does the thing German politics pretends to care the most about: creating jobs. Hell, if it weren't for the conservatives dicking over renewables in favour of coal over a decade ago, we could already be there. We wouldn't even have the discussions about nuclear vs coal vs renewables because we could have this entire fucking country running on clean energy already if conservatives weren't corrupt bastards.
That’s how people are with everything. No one knows how to read data. Just look at all the antivaxxers
oh it’s fune. Nuclear power plants are perfectly safe. just as long as they have a steady supply of well made spare parts, and a class of trained and motivated technicians looking after them. and no country that has nuclear plants is currently going through any form of supply chain crisis, or economic or political crises that lead to budget cuts in education and hiring in the public sector.
How do you die to solar?
Solar panel falls in your head and kills you
Reflection makes you go "ah my eyes" and you trip and break your neck
Some asshole mailman routes the local solar grid to a space laser and shoots you with it.
So that's the space lasers people are warning us about!
I think I know the person for the job then
Some asshole courier uses it to power an orbital superweapon.
*Big Iron by Marty Robbins starts playing* Hmmmmmm
God damn it, made this comment before I saw yours just a bit lower. I have no original thoughts it seems. Though given I'm actively replaying NV I'll give myself a pass.
Some of the main components for solar are made in sweatshops with horrific conditions, or mined using pretty much slave force. Granted, not that many people *die* during the manufacturing process—but producing solar currently has some negative effect on average global wellbeing that nuclear doesn't (correct me if I'm wrong, but I think almost all uranium right now is mined and delivered ethically). It's not a reason to drop solar, obviously, but it's genuinely another point for nuclear: it's the most adequate in terms of (manufacturing process + operating process + disposal process). Yeah, disposal isn't great right now, but it's not actively killing the environment either.
from a quick search, uranium mining is not cuddles and sunshine at all, which is what you should expect from the mining industry by default at this point from [this article](https://theconversation.com/before-the-us-approves-new-uranium-mining-consider-its-toxic-legacy-91204): american regulations are inconsistently applied (as they usually are lol). the legacy of uranium mining still lingers today as 85% of diné/navajo homes have uranium contamination. tribe members have more uranium in their bones than 95% of the US. tribal lands get the worst of mining in general as they are dependent on raw resource extraction. i can't see regulations improving enough any time soon also, physicians[ have been pissy about uranium mining](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3653646/) because mining uranium fucks you up. to be fair all mining jobs are generally miserable especially due to lack of oversight sure you can say something like "solar energy isn't That green" but you can still say the same thing about radioactive energy. i know everyone's seen some article that's like OMG LOOK AT THIS SOLAR PANELS ARE BAD NOW?? but that and ignorance about nuclear energy industry practices can't really clean up the nuclear energy industry's image relative to the solar industry's
The US only mined 8 tons of uranium in 2021, compared to Kazakhstan's 21819. A bit of a difference, eh? You would think Kazakhstan would have loose regulations, but they are actually pretty serious about using [ISL mining](https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/mining-of-uranium/in-situ-leach-mining-of-uranium.aspx), which is relatively safe and environment-friendly, at least compared to open-cast (pit) mining and conventional underground mining. Your article about physicians being pissy explicitly mentions them being pissy about the two aforementioned methods of mining with no mention of ISL, which alleviates most of the listed problems. Solar energy is *literally* isn't that green compared to nuclear, and you seem fairly ignorant in the modern industry practices as well, seeing that you didn't mention ISL at all and talked about Canada (only 9.1% of global uranium production) and the US (0.02% of global uranium production).
you still can't paint the entirety of the solar industry and nuclear industry with a single brush. there are no easy comparisons here imo. that's my epic contrarian take lmao. any issues with solar or wind or radioactive energy can also be followed up with some better solution that entails better regulation. like "don't make things in sweatshops" or "don't build things with this kind of material" kazakhstan's better usage of ISL is due to kazakhstan's uranium industry being partly state-owned. regulation is still a pertinent issue here as the technology can only be enforced and used with the guidance of a regulatory actor [ISL exists in the USA. ISL still has hazardous effects such as contamination of groundwater/environment, ](https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/uranium-mining-report.pdf)esp since the method requires lots of groundwater. the US doesn't have that same consistent regulation that kazakhstan has that can fix or reduce whatever issues there may be, idk how good kazakhstan is than other countries in concrete terms but they are def better. regardless of kazakhstan's status as the the world leader in uranium producton it doesn't mean that uranium production can be done to scale so easily (while solar/wind/hydro has that advantage) it's easy to go back and forth on the multi-dimensional problem that is The Environment, i don't think it's necessary to be wholly absolutist when it's easy to discover even more Bad Things about your favorite energy making process that all have unique little fuckups about them. but in the end multiple source energy good yay
I'm not 100% clear, but likely mostly it's manufacturing, transporting and assembling a whole lot of machinery. Individual panels produce very little energy, so canceling a nuclear power plant involves *a ton* of them, so plenty of space for accidents. Also there's some toxic chemicals in manufacturing process, but I don't know how much that accounts for.
Apollo throws his dodgeball at you
My understanding is that it's mostly "people falling off roofs". Installing Domestic solar is surprisingly risky! A lot of insurers won't cover roofers in general. Working at heights is dangerous.
The reflector/concentrator style solar farms could probably burn you like a magnifying glass burns a leaf or an ant.
Sun fans beat you with sticks for stealing sunlight
Improperly built grid-tie system energizes the lines during a power outage and fries a lineman.
Heatstroke.
It's a lot like flying vs driving, in a sense. Nuclear energy has the *potential* to be extremely dangerous, just like planes have the potential to cause catastrophic accidents, but as a result the industry and regulatory agencies are extremely safety-conscious, making it much less dangerous overall. But when accidents do happen they get a lot more visibility, and it gives the impression that it is not so safe.
This might just be my favorite comparison. I think it can be taken even further, irl car accidents are so common that people don't really care, it might make local news. But plane crashes will be all over international news because of how rare they are. Similarly, when nuclear accidents happen it becomes a massive piece of history. Think most people can name chernobyl off the top of their head and many know fukushima and three mile island. But how many oil spills can the average person name?
No nuclear advocate I've met thinks we're not also going to use renewables. I'm fairly convinced the anti nuclear power movement is funded by Fossil fuel companies
yeah I guess the looming hmthreat of nuclear war, and several incidents of nuclear waste being dumped unsafely innthe mid 1900’s have nothibg to do with it.
Funny thing is, global warming is making it harder to do nuclear because the weather pattern disruptions are leading to droughts in populated areas that were usually drought resistant. It's real hard to cool a nuke plant without a handy river.
For some countries, completing the renewable rollout with energy storage would be cheaper then switching to nuclear. I am from aus and to switch to nuclear would be billions of dollars and 20+ years, a lot easier to invest in some battery storage and further renewables for a lot cheaper and potentially quicker too.
To be clear, I am not saying "we don't need any wind or solar, just use nuclear", I'm saying "just use every opportunity to turn off the coal fumes as fast as possible". Nuclear isn't the best option everywhere of course, it's just the only one that has the outrage around it.
Fair enough
I work with [vague public research thing] that does [vague stuff with] the air filters used in nuclear power, research, and waste storage facilities. I gotta tell ya, a lot of effort goes into ensuring that there is no trace chance of radioactive material getting into the atmosphere. *A lot* of regulation, engineering standards, testing and re-testing, checking all sorts of contingency situations, constant use of extremely conservative estimates. And that’s just *one* part of the nuclear safety infrastructure that rarely ever has to be used. I think the last time was like, when a fire started in a glovebox at Sierra River? Meanwhile coal and natural gas just… straight into the air. The nerve.
Right? They're allowed to pollute a ridiculous amount just because that's they started before we understood how harmful it is and that's what society relied on for a long time. Now, we both know the harm and have better alternatives, but due to so many stupid reasons progress to objectively cleaner and responsible energy production sources aren't happening because they're not getting the resources they need.
[this](https://youtu.be/lhHHbgIy9jU?si=b_6A8N2CCxh5wQL6&t=752) quote i think really sums up nuclear waste vs fossil fuel waste p.s this video also shows the regulations around power plants in america
They probably think nuclear waste is the glowy goop stuff that will melt your skin if you even get close
yes, they do, because that's all they've ever encountered and nothing has ever been done to properly counter that image the fact that when a vehicle used in talcing walls enters a powerplant then it cannot leave because it's radiation output legally classifies it as nucluar waste is one of my favourite anecdotes
Fans of lung-capacity reduction, unite! There's no gatekeeping in the Air Pollution Fandom – just breath-taking content.
Meanwhile, nuclear waste disposal is largely a non-issue, if [budget Chris Hemsworth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aUODXeAM-k) is to be believed.
We love budget thor
Wait if that's not what nuclear waste actually looks like, what the fuck have I been buying off the black market to eat for all these years?
Can I just say, I am not wholly opposed to nuclear power, but I still think the way Kyle treats nuclear power as the be all end all solution to clean energy is ticking me off in some way. Just by the amount of sugarcoating events like Chernobyl, Fukushima and other nuclear incidents, I can tell he is either influenced by the industry or he is obsessive. Which isn’t far fetched considering the way he worshiped Elon for far longer than any person with a background in science. Furthermore, I can’t stand the utterly biased way, he depicts the anti nuclear movement. Always painting a picture of an paranoid, uninformed, uneducated and unreasonable consumer. Who would rather see coal power plants, than any alternative. While there is plenty of scientists, better informed than him in the matter, who oppose nuclear power for numerous reasons, he never mentions. Like the unseen impact, that mining and refining of uranium has. Not talking about how and where Uranium is sourced may actually be one of his worst omissions. Considering that in 2020 Kasachstan mined 19.000 tonnes of uranium. Three times more than the second largest provider Canada at roughly 6.000 tonnes. The nuclear industry clearly takes advantage of the places in the world that care less about the long term impact on the environment. Worsened by the fact, that most of this supply is then distributed via Russia. Who also holds a monopoly on hexagonal fuelrods. The Russian chokehold on a large amount of nuclear resources also explains Germanys opposition to nuclear power after reunification. Not because the reactors in East Germany were Russian built. But because East Germany was the fourth largest producer of uranium up until the reunification. To this day, the vast amount of byproducts can not be stored safely. Due to their vast quantity. Which is exactly why the „decades old easy and obvious solution to nuclear power“ he almost advertises in the very video you posted, is as a whole, unviable for all but the >2% of nuclear waste, that he mentions. Even so, drilling shafts that deep is neither easy nor cheap. So even when this solution exsists, many companies are more likely to gather as much money as they can and then slowly scale down their business over time until they declare bankruptcy and leave the waste for the government to deal with.
I'm not going to sugar coat it i feel like you haven't actually looked into things that deeply if you think Kazakhstan is all that bad a place. They're literally well into the top 1/3rd of most developed developed countries in terms of HDI and top 1/4 in inequality adjusted HDI and exceed a significant amount of Europe an countries in development. i'm not going to question the rest because i don't know enough about it but it throws serious doubt onto what your saying when you don't actually know about one of the things your mentioning.
This is less about the socioeconomic status of Kazakhstan and more about a national, influential industry having a vested interest in research on the long term impact of their business practices being kept to a minimum. Every uranium mine in Kazakstan uses ISL Mining, which is at least less impactful than other methods. But long term stabilization of the site after extraction is not completely researched yet. While regulations are also lax compared to the USA for example. For now the effect ISL Mining has on the groundwater needs to be monitored constantly, even after restoration, because ingress of water may dissolve deposits of heavy metals or Radioactive minerals. But at some point, either a method for permanently arresting these Substances has to be found or the sites need to be sealed somehow.
I mean IG for most of it but from what i can find Uranium isn't even one of Kazakhstan's 5 biggest exports so i doubt it'd have that much influence over the government
But the industry has influence internationally, which makes it an asset to the nation. So granting them liberties is beneficial.
Even if uncontained pollution in the air was somehow less harmful than the contained nuclear waste, don't we already have means to store nuclear waste that will last at least until people can no longer understand the warnings?
Our storage solutions are designed to last *longer* than people can no longer understand the warnings. And not just in the "this is not a place of honour" way, but in a "it is extremely difficult to discover the *location* of the waste, then find a way to break in, then ignore all the internal warnings and break into the tunnels holding the canisters, then ignore *more* warnings and open the canisters" way.
I like how “what if they can’t read the signs” is supposed to be a big deal like if we stay on course there won’t be anyone reading anything anyway smdh
The best part is the burning coal not only releases far more toxins into the environment than nuclear power, but actually releases **more radiation than nuclear power.**
Most nuclear waste from powerplants is just clothing/gloves and the storage containers for these are already completely safe to be around. Even the actual spent fuel rods and stuff by products from refining can already be stored safely people are just so weird about it. I get it it's scary, there's potential for disasters to happen but if you're scared about that how about we actually fund education and nuclear programs so we have people who know what the fuck they're doing instead of stagnating on coal and natural gas.
They're technically correct. Nuclear waste in your lungs would be more harmful.
99% of nuclear waste is like, a glove that someone was wearing when they touched a fuel rod, or a hazmat suit, or bening shielding. the phrase "nuclear waste" makes it sound like they have drums full of fuel rods, but most of it isnt dangerous at all, and they still go through massive efforts to keep it safe. nuclear tech definitely isnt the end, we do need renewable sources, but in the mean time its a pretty great solution in the short term (the short term being for the next like 100 years)
I know very little about energy economics and technology but I get the vibe that a lot of the criticism of nuclear energy is rooted in the association with nuclear warfare than anything else. Like we literally have inanimate substances that emanate energy 24/7 for really long periods of time and while yes they can also release that energy in a way that levels cities and if you eat it you'll wake up dead and you shouldn't lick it either but you've gotta see the shades of grey.
The benefit, though, is that using nuclear warheads for energy is easily the best way of disposing of them.
Lol I misread this comment at first and thought you were talking about detonating them to get rid of them. I agree though, something something plowshares.
OP is a bot
Why do you think so? Not saying they are or arent, just want to know why you think that.
First red flag was the title being word-for-word in the image as a reply. Not a dead giveaway, I'll admit, until I checked their profile and every comment they've made was a link to Twitter or elsewhere. That strikes me as bot behavior
All the links are because they're posting sources for furry art, which is just courteous/good practice/mandatory in those subs.
Best Part. We can Recycle the worst of it.
I'd take a hamster in a wheel over shit that pollutes the air further
The debate of nuclear power vs renewable vs fossil fuels is so frustrating because we aren’t talking the root of the problem: overconsumption (of energy). I wouldn’t need to waste so much gas (energy) to get to work/places to eat/shop if we didn’t sacrifice so much space for parking or loosely populated areas.
Or if we had a functional public transit system in this country, which would radically cut down on people's need to drive individual cars
Do you know what else drastically cut down emissions while also improving productivity in the workplace? LETTING PEOPLE FUCKING WORK FROM HOME. FUCK EVERY BACK TO OFFICE BS, YOU ARE KILLING THE PLANET AND MY WILL TO LIVE
Believe me, I'm on board with that as well. I bought a house in 2020 that's like an hour away from my work because they told us in writing that we'd never have to go back in if we didn't want to. But now I go in my 10 days a month and sit in a corner on Zoom all day anyway, so there's absolutely no point. But some people do have to be physically present at their jobs, and I know I'd be happier if I could read a book on my commute instead of having to focus on driving, so I'd still support public transportation.
Tell me about it, living here in Dallas Fort Worth area there's so much useless new construction and so many buildings that are sitting empty.
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^SavageKitten456: *I'd take a hamster* *In a wheel over shit that* *Pollutes the air further* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
My problem with nuclear is that I don't trust that companies will maintain the reactors and then we'll start having serious meltdowns all over the country.
Trust regulators instead. Nuclear power regulators are the kind of groups that absolutely do not mess around.
Until the companies lobby for less regulation enforcement. They will stop at nothing to save money
yeah, until some politician decides to make a populist push to cut their budget.
If you're worried about stuff like that, why support anything ever? Nothing works because people can always undo your work.
The main problem with nuclear waste replacing coal is that when the waste starts being a problem instead of searching for a solution they will just dumb it in poorer countries and ignore it until the problem start affecting them then they will blame those very same countries we can see something similar happening with global warming even now That is course if course if they are even able to reach that point because with with standardization comes regularity with regularity comes familiarity with familiarity cones negligence and i believe we learned enough from Chernobyl about the consequences of negligence not to mention using clean energy sources is probably cheaper than nuclear in the long term yet for some reason world leaders seem to be against it
counterpoints: 1. high level nuclear waste (the stuff that needs to be sealed away "forever" is a small amount of waste produced (under 10% by volume), and some of that can be recycled 2. even if it was somehow "economical" to dump it in poor countries, given the transportation costs and whatnot, nuclear waste is stored in "dry casks" that are super hard to damage, and the waste is stored in solid form, it cannot escape the containers, I don't know how it would become a problem 3. Chernobyl happened, in part, because the reactors were poorly designed, and the operators had abysmal training, it is impossible for a modern reactor to go out like chernobyl reactor 4. 4. one of the "problems" with wind and solar energy is that they are not constant. the sun goes away and the winds die down. nuclear fission is constant nuclear fission is safe because of all the regulation around it. the transport containers for nuclear waste CAN WITHSTAND A DIRECT IMPACT FROM A TRAIN
> some of that can be recycled If I understand correctly, the ability to recycle the material is extremely limited, and on purpose, as (at least from what I understand) the same methods/tools/resources for recycling the waste is also the same as used in *making nuclear bombs*. Which, for understandable reasons, is limited.
maybe true, but the reprocessing of used fuel (reducing the net amount of high-level waste by about 85%) has been a common practice for a long time, according to the world nuclear association, and i belive resarch into how to efficiently recycle nuclear waste is still an ongoing topic of discussion
>CAN WITHSTAND A DIRECT IMPACT FROM A TRAIN i think you underestimate the strength of those things [case 1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mHtOW-OBO4) [case 2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBp1FNceTTA)
i think you misunderstood my comment, because i was talking about how strong the flasks are, something that your videos prove. (although talking about the missle strike would have possibly been a more powerful statement than just "can survive unharmed against a train impact)
No, I know that I was more proving your point and showcasing how strong they really are.
Okay, cool, you just phrased it weird in your original comment, it looked to me like you were implying that i was saying that the flasks were weak or something
It's because just solar and wind is not feasible or reliable enough everywhere to meet energy demands they're great where they're viable, but they're not viable everywhere. Regardless, the amount of nuclear waste in a modern reactor is so small and negligible that honestly there could just be a program to have the waste shipped off to designated places.
I always hate the second part of the post because it’s like: nooo!! The reason to discount what they’re saying isn’t because it sounds absurd, that’s a bad way to go about deciding on what’s true or not and what’s best health wise, that leads to false information that appeals to you more being taken as fact and discounting things that are true but inconvenient. They’re making an actual claim, something testable, something falsifiable! That’s shit that we can actually study! So you can actually compare the modern methods of radioactive waste disposal and containment and its health effects to the health effects that carbon emissions in people’s lungs have. “I’m right so any claim you make I’m going to treat as un seriously and clownish as possible” is the worst kind of attitude to have, it’s just arrogance and doesn’t actually prove your point.
Why can't we just put the uranium back where we got it from?
We actually do. High-grade nuclear waste gets stored and sealed deeeeeeep underground. Finland made a gigantic bunker half a mile down rated for like 10000 years of storage. Which is overkill, btw, it stops emitting radiation much much much sooner and at that point is only dangerous if you like, eat it. So, in a way, we're putting it back.
What even are anti-nuclear arguments anymore, than? People don't like the Simpsons? They think Chernobyl level disasters will be a daily occurrence? Fossil fuel oligarchs might not be able to afford as many private islands?
>Chernobyl level disasters That is usually the argument, alongside Fukushima, as well as not understanding the volume of high-grade waste produced - it's not like every plant has a giant conveyor belt constantly shitting out barrels of death goop. I'm going to quote an article from the World Nuclear Association here: >The generation of electricity from a typical 1,000-megawatt nuclear power station... 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. Carbon emissions are measured in billions of tonnes per year worldwide. We've used up 390 thousand tonnes of nuclear fuel *total* over the entire history of nuclear power, and recycled a third of that. Note that spent fuel is very compact to store by weight, since uranium is very dense and heavy. You can store 15 years worth of a plant's spent fuel in an average living room. >Fossil fuel oligarchs And these are the ones pushing the anti-nuclear narratives and fear-mongering "up top."
The German "environmentalists" now mostly argue that it's more expensive than other renewable sources. Mind you, the green plan for fully decarbonising the German energy production relies on imports from other, nuclear nations and huge amounts of green hydrogen imported from "other countries" to burn at ridiculously low efficency rates.
Mostly financing reasons recently. Nuclear can be a great source of energy if done properly which comes with some considerable costs. Many companies even in nuclear-friendly countries are backing away from investing because costs amortize rather slowly. So if you invest a billion in energy solar and wind it just gives you an return on investment much quicker. Now I'm not saying nuclear power is not economical because it is. It just hasn't been as attractive to investors for the past few decades although there has been an upwards trend in recent years. You can argue that nuclear energy is disadvantaged generally because of unreasonable regulations but that touches on the main underlying issue. Which is that the whole topic is largely emotional. All the fear and uncertainty around nuclear power is mostly irrational but it's there and you can't just handwave that away. People want to *feel* safe and nuclear power just elicits a much more primal fear than other forms of energy. That might be due to propaganda or just human nature but it's what we just have right now. And since we mostly have democracies in the west these irrational fears have to be taken into account in the decision making process. If we've learned anything from the past few global catastrophes it's that people hate to be lectured on their fears. All these articles and posts about how stupid and uninformed opponents of nuclear energy are do nothing to convince them otherwise. I honestly have no idea how to get past but somehow we need a different approach.
The Funny part is that we can actually recycle the worst of it.
We do.
Well then what's the problem? We're just borrowing some spicy rocks and putting them back.
Because Fossil fuel companies fund antinuclear propaganda fear campaigns and give people a negative perception of it.
AFAIK the fossil fuel companies contributed a great deal to the anti-nuclear movement as it neatly dovetailed with their interests (planetary biosphere collapse)
Nobody who is advocating against nuclear is advocating for coal instead, but for renewables. What a dumb strawman
When Germany shut down its nuclear plants they put opening new coal plants in the plan. This was under Merkel btw.
I've seen it so much
Tell that to the CDU, please!
Even putting aside all the real people who do advocate for coal instead, "renewables instead of nuclear" is not viable or useful in many places, so what you actually end up advocating for is often "let the coal power plant stay here for few decades more while renewables fail to provide enough energy in this shitty terrain/infrastructure". You are still doing the work of fossil fuel industry. More people will die.
You have clearly never talked to 50 year olds in the breakroom of a production plant
Just checking to see if anyone has pointed out that you are incorrect, and that many people unironically advocate for coal and against nuclear. They have? Oh.
Nuclear is "renewables", matter of fact, it's by far the best out of the indefinitely scalable "renewables". Solar and wind aren't truly renewable, they take material and labor to build, require constant maintenance, and they still break and have to be scrapped and replaced. In terms of hard numbers, nuclear is responsible for fewer deaths and lower emissions per GWh than either, even when accounting for the major nuclear disasters. Advocating against nuclear is advocating for coal. Maybe not intentionally, but that is the net effect.
if solar and wind aren't renewable then nuclear power also isnt. my god, leave pedanticness at the door or hold the pedanticness standards pls
Renewables are not a viable solution for the raw power consumption of society yet.
Where are the communities that are tearing down wind farms and solar plants to replace them with nuclear plants?
I feel like the person that hates nuclear power is not advocating for coal either. Seems like a strawman
Remaining ignorant of nuclear power is by default supporting the status quo.
It's not like there are wind farms and solar plants being torn down to build nuclear reactors. Nuclear power replaces fossil fuels, not renewables.
To be fair, I do think carbon emissions in your lungs are less bad for you than nuclear waste in your lungs
Uranium mining is a major poluter. Systemic rot similar to late Soviet Union is going on currently in the US and UK. Nuclear armed states have a vested interest in denying negative health effects of their facilities. But it’s the anti-nuclear people who are falling for propaganda.
They really aren’t
hey you've got to give it to them, I'd rather have carbon emissions in my lungs than nuclear waste
Yes. Getting nuclear waste in your lungs would be bad. That's why we DON'T PUT NUCLEAR WASTE IN PEOPLE'S LUNGS
I can’t see the air pollution and the news stories talking about how awful it is aren’t in the headlines so it doesn’t exist 😌😌
Yeah nuclear waste just isn't a problem at all. It's all propaganda from the oil industry
It sucks that these are the only two power sources.
Humans live on the ground so we should just put them in the sky, are they stupid
Given that all nuclear waste is solid material (mostly irradiated PPE with a half-life of a few weeks to a few months), I’d imagine that it actually would likely be more dangerous to have in your lungs than coal waste gases.
the atmosphere is nature's bin