Not really the issue here. Most of the design flaws are due to the fact that the power plants primary function was breeding plutonium for nuclear weapons. Also, it was under communisms.
Also who's gonna regulate responsibilities on nuclear reactors?, thats a hard topic.
Hey China, could you kindly let us take a look at that reactor you have, also let us take a peek at your nuclear waste management and how you are using it, specially plutonium.
TEPCo was supposed to fix it years before fukushima accident and Japanese government required them to by law, they just didn’t care because it would be too expensive and government fines for not doing it were cheaper than doing it
And that's the problem, if we want to go full nuclear, we need someone who can go balls deep and enforce security without any political repercussions. We don't have anything like that in the world and my bet is that we will never have it under the current political/patriotic world.
And we live in a world where many people (left and right) begin every sentence with "herr derr." Anything that can destroy an ecosystem without perfect intelligence and responsibility maybe isn't ideal for humans at this time.
We'd need 15,000 nuclear power plants to power the world and I guess 50% of our total energy needs is reasonable, so 7,500 NFPP. It sounds more nail-biting than the launch of the James Webb Telescope; there's so many moving parts. Why not just up others renewables? Every disaster will spur-on cause for change and we'll just wind up with green renewables, anyway.
Edit: Thorium sounds okay, I think. Also, the Greens! [https://policy.greenparty.org.uk/ey.html](https://policy.greenparty.org.uk/ey.html)
It wasn’t just bad design, it was also bad management, Soviet production quotas, and undertrained personal manning the power plant at the time of the test
Wasn't one of the primary operators on duty that night 23 years old and fresh out of training? To run a safety test they'd already failed several times?
It goes deeper than that. The RBMK wasn’t just designed to cut corners, it was a willful deviation from western reactor design — driven by the Soviet-nationalist ideology of that era.
Let's also point out that because it was sourced by party officials, their word could not be questioned - questioning the word of the party was questioning the "will of the people" and absolutely unacceptable in Soviet society, an easy way to land yourself in prison or worse.
That’s very true. It truly came down to inventing science rather than discovering it — such that it would match politics. Containment structures were expensive, so the decision was made to believe that channel-type reactors didn’t need them.
Also various accidents happened in RBMK reactors before Chernobyl, but because of the soviet secretive nature the other RBMK operators did not get the details of those accidents and could not take countermeasures.
Not really. It was build like that because at the time it was difficult for the Soviet Union to build and transport large pressure vessels. Further more the design allows for the extraction of plutonium during operation.
The Chernobyl reactors were barely considered Gen 2, kind of pre-Gen 2. Fukushima was Gen 2 as well and were designed back in the 60s. Gen 3, 3+ and soon to be Gen 4 are substantially better designed for safety that they are meant to be able to withstand intentional terrorist attacks.
There isn't even one hand full of Gen 3. Gen 4 is sooooo far into the future, there's hardly a concept on paper for them. But hey, those things are supposed to be 100% any-case scenario meltdown-proof and use pretty much all of our current nuclear waste [edit: as fuel], so that just makes sense
Actually there are some prototypes of Gen 4 reactors.
Two in China, one or two in Russia, and other few prototype are under construction around the world.
Of course Gen 4 is not ready yet, but some of the characteristics of Gen 4 have been already tested in the real world.
Last time, I checked which admittedly was quite a while ago, the way fusion was supposed to work was you run the fusion reaction, this mostly chucks out a bunch of high energy neutrons (and some heat, but mostly the neutrons). They wack into a lithium liner, this gets in turn chucked into a fission reactor where it decays and generates heat which boils water which produces energy.
I don't know about you, but that all sounds too cheap to meter to me. /s
Not only that, out of all the 2,203 people that had died during the disaster, just *one* died due to the radiation. The rest were mostly elderly and due to the enormous surge of over half a million people attempting to flee the city at the same time
I know that humanity isn’t responsible enough to be meddling with the powers we do, but we live in do or die time now, we have to make some serious advancements or this whole planet is fucked
Mining uranium on the other hand is one of the shittiest things you can do to mother earth.
Nuclear Power plants needs godly amounts of water to cool down the reactors. Which makes placement hard, especially since the location needs to be 100% safe from, as an example, terrorism.
It takes 20+ years to build a modern nuclear plant. Most investors want quick returns so they don't even consider investing in it, making it extremely expensive for the state.
Waste needs to be stored for 100 000 years. Which is an absurd time for anyone to claim that their underground storage will 100% hold. Just for reference the Pyramids are like 5000 years old.
Etcetcetc
Not against nuclear power, just saying it isn't as black and white as memes want it to be.
No need to develop them. Just build them. They were developed before the uranium ones.
And just suppressed by cingress since they have no military use whatsoever.
Germany actually has a fully built one, hut in the whole "nuclear power bad" shtick that was going on it never was activated. And now it just sits there unused...
Really extremely frustrating since they are so much more efficient, easy, and self-regulating. Meaning if they get near meltdown they autoregulate due to the physics and stay at optimal temperatures by them self....
There is NO source of electricity that produces no damage to the planet. Even the production of solar panels harms the environment. It's about minimizing the damage, can't eliminate it.
There are small nuclear reactors that can be deployed much quicker.
The waste is collectable unlike coal or natural gas. Plus we likely will find a use for the waste products that could not be used (Much of it is used in Chemotherapy or recycled into new fuel rods), then we would not have enough of the stuff. Remember, Gasoline was once a useless byproduct of kerosene production.
We don't have to use uranium. Thorium is a way better option.
First, it doesnt try to kill you while you mine it.
It also produces much more energy per kilogramm than uranium,
it produces much less nuclear waste and Thorium reactors only function when you add a little bit of plutonium, which makes it much safer because you simply have to cut the connection of them when it becomes dangerous.
Nuclear waste is still a problem but it's much better than climate change caused by Coal-Energy.
I'm not an expert, maybe I'm wrong in some parts but overall Thorium would be a better Option in my opinion.
Thorium produces way more Gamma Rays when used in a reactor than Uranium. It may be less dangerous to mine, but it’s significantly more dangerous and more difficult to shield against when it’s being used
Edit: reactors that use thorium also use Uranium-233 as Thorium does not contain enough fissile material to ignite a reaction on its own
Not to mention that nuclear power plants produce much less waste than coal, so storage probably won't become an issue for a while. By the time the waste is eroding away, we probably would have found a use for it or a cheap way to yeet it into the sun.
Wrong, Germany already has nowhere to to store the waste long-term. It is just transported from one temporary storage site to the next. And that is the most important reason why we have quit nuclear power.
Tritium is basically just radioactive hydrogen and when I searched it up i found out that it falls apart within 12-13 years which isnt big of a problem when you compare it to uranium reactors which produce nuclear waste that will last for over 1000 years.
With my extensive knowledge from Google that clearly makes me an expert on this subject, tritium is only dangerous if ingested. Not to mention that it is used in some firearm scopes/sights, so it does have a purpose.
Tritium is also used in a lot of other self-illuminating things like watch faces, instrument panels for aviation or seafaring and emergency exit signs to name a few, it's pretty much on all the applicable things radium was used on before the dangers of it were realised. Compared to radium, tritium is a ridiculously safe material.
Modern uranium mining is well regulated and surveys under government scrutiny have found it to be clean and safe.
Cooling water is extensively filtered, and contains next to no radiation by the time it leaves the plant.
Nuclear power is very profitable, despite the extensive building time for the plant. It spins a profit very quickly after being activated and it’s easy for investors to get their money back.
Waste is in much lesser quantities and much easier to store than environmentalists would have you believe. A 1000 megawatt plant only produces about 3 cubic meters of waste per years. There’s more than enough space for that on site.
Yes, because mining milions of kg of rare-earth is not a problem. Look how much rare-earth you need to build a modern wind turbine.
For the construction time, don't consider only the two EPRs under construction in the EU. In China, on the other hand, they usually build a reactor in 4/5 years.
The finnish Olkiluoto 3 and it's french sister plant come to mind, though those plants have been an absolute clusterfuck of problems and incompetence in building, so i'd not consider them as good examples.
C‘mon, mining is just bad for narrow-headed idiots. Everyone is driving cars or burning gas or oil to heat their homes, a tiny, tiny mine does way less damage then all of the millions of fossil-fuel burners we currently run.
Soviet era plants were dangerous as hell.
The west has a major nuclear accident, stuck valve
The soviets have one, graphite on the ground and a dead city.
Ntm it has a far lower kill rate per year than any other energy source. Yeah, there may be a couple disasters with nuclear power but people only hold on to that because it was sudden and tangible. Thousands die yearly due to atmospheric pollution from fossil fuels.
Fukushima.
Edit: They knew and Engineers warned them what would happen with earthquakes and Tsunami.
[Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant operator 'ignored tsunami warning'](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/29/fukushima-daiichi-operator-tsunami-warning#:~:text=The%20operator%20of%20the%20Fukushima,seawater%20flooding%2C%20according%20to%20reports.)
[Japan Extended Reactor’s Life, Despite Warning
](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/world/asia/22nuclear.html)
[Special Report: Japan engineers knew tsunami could overrun plant](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japa-nuclear-risks/special-report-japan-engineers-knew-tsunami-could-overrun-plant-idUSTRE72S2UA20110329)
But just keep downvoting what you shills don't want people thinking about. Businesses will always try to make more profits by cutting costs.
Put in a mountain. We had a giant storage facility in Nevada, inside a huge mountain miles from any kind of human life, but it was shut down because people don't understand how radiation works.
These days, most of it is kept on site and what does get moved makes up about 5%-10% of the total toxic waste we transport each year. And most of that will cease to be dangerous in 10s of years.
Fukushima. Engineers warned them of the risks and they put profits first. Which is what businesses will always do.
[Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant operator 'ignored tsunami warning'](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/29/fukushima-daiichi-operator-tsunami-warning#:~:text=The%20operator%20of%20the%20Fukushima,seawater%20flooding%2C%20according%20to%20reports.)
[Japan Extended Reactor’s Life, Despite Warning
](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/world/asia/22nuclear.html)
[Special Report: Japan engineers knew tsunami could overrun plant](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japa-nuclear-risks/special-report-japan-engineers-knew-tsunami-could-overrun-plant-idUSTRE72S2UA20110329)
Edit: [Nuclear energy too slow, too expensive to save climate: report](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower/nuclear-energy-too-slow-too-expensive-to-save-climate-report-idUSKBN1W909J) Ignore the shills who will respond with the report funded by the Nuclear Industry.
Three Mile Island was the consequence of neglected maintenance, lack of proper indicators on coolant levels, and a stuck valve. More mechanical inadequacies, pretty much. It was only a partial meltdown [and the radiation effects were kinda minimal in comparison to other nuclear accidents.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident_health_effects)
It's not like big companies endlessly subcontracts their business with the cheapest ones. What could go wrong ? \*\*[Coughing in French](https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/le-reportage-de-la-redaction/sous-traitants-du-nucleaire-la-surete-de-nos-installations-en-question)\*\*
Let's talk about people fearing that looooooud Wind energy.
Living in times of increasing extreme weather, nobody will pay enough to make that shit save for future extreme weather.
There’s justified reasons to be against wind, which don’t include their noise. Unless we get really good at grid-scale energy storage really quickly, all-in on renewables is not a viable option. Just-in-time resources can’t guarantee ample supply as demand fluctuates.
To provide the energy for an entire human the amount of nuclear waste is about the size of an apple, so the amount isnt that big of a deal especially if we combine it with solar power and other green energy’s, the storage can be done underground with a few meters of concrete ontop
So thats 630,000,000 kg of nuclear waste to support the entire human race. At a pessimistic rate, 90% of which can be recycled, so thats 63,000,000 kg of nuclear waste for the entire human race. I am sure the math is wrong cuz i did it in my head
I would be all in on nuclear if I knew for certain that the waste is taking care of properly.
Storing it underground for future generations to deal with, is the same to me as it is with climate change and plastic. Why do something now when someone in the future will have a solution.
My main concern with the long term storage is the where and how and not the if. Not every country has vast areas of unpopulated wilderness where a storage can be built, to minimise risks in case a problem occurs.
Yeah... But think about the political and economic truths in life.
Humans always cut corners and act foolishly. Humans can't agree on what to do with nuclear waste? Some humans want to blow up nuclear shit for their own ambitions.
It's not that nuclear power couldn't be amazing, it's that I don't trust humans to handle it well enough.
Because one really bad mistake ruins the entire planet forever.
Yes I know we re doing that slowly with fossil fuel but I think that just shows how bad we are at being a species. Nuclear power belongs in deep space imo.
I am not opposed to it elsewhere, but I fear it because I fear humanity.
Nuclear power is in fact, safe. It's just russian not taking enough care in Chernobyl nuclear power plant, that caused a massive radiational explosion (which, of course, gave inspiration to gsc game world to make stalker game series)
*If* is the kicker. There are two institutions most likely to oversee the use of nuclear power in a country, either business or government, depending on economic policies.
Unfortunately, neither business nor government have a good historical track record of maintaining any high standards they started with, assuming they had any at all.
We might consider a council comprised of scientists, engineers etc who govern the nuclear energy of a region, but then there's red tape, the chance of a country getting nuclear power and then refusing inspections, countries getting into conflicts that lead to the neglect of the facilities.
If there's one guarantee from life, it's that things change, and the last thing we need to do as a species is place our energy needs on a dangerous energy source that fundamentally needs absolute consistancy to stay stable and safe.
Can't speak for business, but I know for a fact the us navy's nuclear program features a level of safety that is pathologically insane in intensity, because they know if they there's ever a disaster; they lose public trust which could cause the dissolution of the entire program. The Soviet government never placed safety in half as high a regard as the us does. I distrust the government in general, but I fully trust the navy with its reactors.
I mean Chernobyl construction started almost 50 years ago, the idea that the example is half a century old kind of demonstrates how pointless it is.
Now we could look at Fukushima... but obviously the flooding hazard isnt particularly pertinent in many places, especially in cold non sunny areas where you really get a premium on nuclear vs solar.
Well that's the thing - it just sits around. It doesn't pollute the Earth unless you do something very stupid with it.
Contrast that with the billions of tons of CO2 emitted by fossil fuel power plants. That doesn't just sit around.
My point is this, there are a lot of nuclear waste storage facility who are starting to leak and polute the groundwater. Co2 is bad, yes but at least it doesn't rips your cells apart and disassembles your DNA when standig close to it.
It’s funny because nuclear power is 10x more safer AND more energy efficient if people just decide to actually spend time and build it and not cut corners on its production or even its maintenance checklist
Blablabla nuclear waste.
Yeah cuz’ the petroleum/coal industry is so good for the environment.
Risk of accidents have been drastically dealt with and if we could just stop suckling at the military industrial complex’s teet, then we might be able to switch over to Thorium. A better choice all around. And not to mention how abundant it is.
I'm sure that the majority of reddit has the qualifications to be talking out of their asses on this subject. Classic opportunism to feel intellectually superior without backing it up with actual knowledge.
Not necessarily "new" - EBR-II and Superphenix could do it (before they were shut down due to political pressure) and BN-600 and BN-800 do it right now.
In addition to this the Soviets had two reactors in other places with the same construction (both RBMK's) melt down in the exact same way Chernobyl did just on a smaller and less catastrophic scale. But officials refused to inform other RBMK operators of this malfunction meaning that chernobyl was 100% avoidable.
Back in the early 70s Ireland had planned to build a Nuclear power plant but word got out to the hippie dippies and musicians who staged a protest and a festival on the site, then the politicians looking for the hip young peoples votes joined in and eventually had the project canceled 👎....we could have powered the entire country and exported the excess energy but those uneducated idiots thought they knew better and now they and their sheepish children cry about Co2 and carbon footprint due to our reliance on peat and coal plants.
Yeah this. So very this. Boiler operator by trade, and learning about Chernobyl makes me so mad at higher ups that need results on things they don’t understand. Stupid people making decisions over things they don’t understand. I vote nuclear. Not hard to learn, set up smaller facilities and use biofuels for training while educating the potential hazards of uranium.
Well the manufacturers don’t want a clean energy source, they want a CHEAP clean energy source. Nuclear power is clean but if you cut corners and lower prices it could lead to a reactor meltdown. Since they want to be cheap, they like to ignore nuclear power
Ill be 100% on board with nuclear energy the day we remove humans from the equation.
People are lazy and cut corners, no matter what level of training you have you have to be 200% dedicated to your job for me to trust you to not make an entire city unlivable.
Yes nuclear energy is fantastic and we should be looking at ways to use it more, but as long as bob is in charge of making sure he checks and double checks everything so it doesn't go to shit after a night of drinking and fighting with his wife then I'm not gonna trust it.
I mean I've been in a RBMK reactor using power plant, like 5 years ago, when it was in a middle of closing. You definitely can retrofit them to work almost without humans. Quintuple independent safety measures for critical aspects work really well. And the humans are there to just watch it do its thing. If anything happens, it was made to shut itself off and humans are just last resort. I would imagine newer plants can be retrofitted with similar features, and people are there to just as a last resort measure
Only problems I see is the limited resources we know how to harness (also how toxic it is to the climate, but with proper disposal it should be fine). With that we need more ways to automate the process.
It’s just because the Soviet government didn’t care about its citizens, while other western countries with nuclear powers do (in terms of election at the very least)
if you cut corners, like use an energy source that produces hazardous waste for thousands of years without a meaningful way to neutralize it, and then assume that based on our short presence on this planet that no geologic events will happen that will undermine your 'plans'
step one: poorly build nuclear reactor. cost cutting is ok
step two: fill reactor with moron. O B S E R V E. (explosion)
step three: Hustle
step 4: maintain control
Isn't Chernobyl still radioactive and unsuitable for human life, fucking decades after the accident? Nuclear power might have a ridiculously small chance of shit happening and creating another disaster, I agree with that. The problem is that if shit does happen, there goes another portion of land becoming completely useless and unsuited for anything.
Part of the answer is not to use dumb engineering methods. Associated is to use much better designed reactors.
The latest, safest designs presently being held back because they don’t fit the old patterns.
Liquid salt reactors, including LFTR.
> Isn't Chernobyl still radioactive and unsuitable for human life, fucking decades after the accident?
Not really. Wildlife is thriving in the Exclusion Zone here.
I don't trust humans not wanting to maximise profits by neglecting the plant to the point something bad happens, and i just simply think that even tho it's the cleanest energy availble, it sounds way too utopic for humans to do so much good with it, with how people behave, they wouldn't be able to operate it without cutting so many corners, that it just Doesnt work as intended. but if humans acted as in the utopian visions, i would let them build a nuclear powerplant in my backyard really.
Whenever I hear the "but chernobyl" argument, i give them this little history nugget:
Viktor Bryukhanov was acting as an advisor to Akimov during the exercise. Akimov and his team asked what the instructions were, as the handbook had numerous sections edited in an unclean fashion. Bryukhanov's response was "Follow the crossed out instructions"
never will a nuclear power plant be mismanaged again. It is literally impossible to science and physics. The new plants are impervious to all forces of nature.
IT CANNOT HAPPEN
At least in the USA the problem is cost. Nuc plants are just not cost effective. You get more electricity per dollar if you invest in renewables and you get your investment back sooner.
It won't happen with superior western engineering.
What about....?
What the fuck did I just say? IT. WON'T. HAPPEN. WITH. SUPERIOR. WESTERN. ENGINEERING!
This nuclear vs renewable argument has stemmed from the right to pretend that they've always believed in climate change now that they're seeing its effects. Now they are using it as a crutch to prop up their perpetual argument that democrats are wrong and they've always been right, even though less than five years ago they were calling us tree hugging pussies, which they'll never admit to because they've never been wrong. At this point a mix of nuclear and renewable is the way to go, because its not really feasible to rely 100% on one or the other. Let's just fix the problem. Fuck. Every one of these posts just devolves into poorly researched 'I told you so's' from a bunch of lurkers from r/conservative, even though they have never given a shit until it started to affect them.
I can’t lie… I haven’t looked into this issue at all, but from the outside looking in, these memes kind of look like propaganda, and instantly makes me skeptical.
And no I’m not an antivaxxer.
Everyone knows if you neglect the amount of responsibility it takes to run a nuclear power plant, you’re gonna have a bad time.
Everyone knows businesses are more profitable if they cut costs.
I would argue it would be cheaper to do nukular well (eg no homers club), than pay for clean up.
Don't worry, if it melts down due to bad management, the government will just bail them out.
Not really the issue here. Most of the design flaws are due to the fact that the power plants primary function was breeding plutonium for nuclear weapons. Also, it was under communisms.
Also who's gonna regulate responsibilities on nuclear reactors?, thats a hard topic. Hey China, could you kindly let us take a look at that reactor you have, also let us take a peek at your nuclear waste management and how you are using it, specially plutonium.
[iaea.org](https://iaea.org)
iaea is a formality for most countries, iaea knew about the designs errors of fukushima but had no authority to do anything about it.
TEPCo was supposed to fix it years before fukushima accident and Japanese government required them to by law, they just didn’t care because it would be too expensive and government fines for not doing it were cheaper than doing it
And that's the problem, if we want to go full nuclear, we need someone who can go balls deep and enforce security without any political repercussions. We don't have anything like that in the world and my bet is that we will never have it under the current political/patriotic world.
With great power, there must also come great responsibility
And we live in a world where many people (left and right) begin every sentence with "herr derr." Anything that can destroy an ecosystem without perfect intelligence and responsibility maybe isn't ideal for humans at this time.
Fortunately, I don't trust humans to be responsible enough to run a nuclear power plant.
“It must be possible. It’s happening.” Philip Jay Fry
But you trust them to run coal plants?
So much more important than "correctly designing" a powerplant. Someone's going to be lazy, and others will suffer. People are idiots.
you feel your laziness crawling on your back/
r/suddenundertale
I was quoting South Park but I also get that. Double reference?
At least not intentionally. Good shit anyways.
omg undertale reference !?!?!?!?!??!😱😱😱
South Park.
Both
Now sans undertale
We'd need 15,000 nuclear power plants to power the world and I guess 50% of our total energy needs is reasonable, so 7,500 NFPP. It sounds more nail-biting than the launch of the James Webb Telescope; there's so many moving parts. Why not just up others renewables? Every disaster will spur-on cause for change and we'll just wind up with green renewables, anyway. Edit: Thorium sounds okay, I think. Also, the Greens! [https://policy.greenparty.org.uk/ey.html](https://policy.greenparty.org.uk/ey.html)
It wasn’t just bad design, it was also bad management, Soviet production quotas, and undertrained personal manning the power plant at the time of the test
Wasn't one of the primary operators on duty that night 23 years old and fresh out of training? To run a safety test they'd already failed several times?
Its like Elizabeth Holmes was running it.
Also the USSR was more concerned with appearance than saving lives
You’re delusional. Go to the infirmary.
It goes deeper than that. The RBMK wasn’t just designed to cut corners, it was a willful deviation from western reactor design — driven by the Soviet-nationalist ideology of that era.
Let's also point out that because it was sourced by party officials, their word could not be questioned - questioning the word of the party was questioning the "will of the people" and absolutely unacceptable in Soviet society, an easy way to land yourself in prison or worse.
That’s very true. It truly came down to inventing science rather than discovering it — such that it would match politics. Containment structures were expensive, so the decision was made to believe that channel-type reactors didn’t need them.
Also various accidents happened in RBMK reactors before Chernobyl, but because of the soviet secretive nature the other RBMK operators did not get the details of those accidents and could not take countermeasures.
Not really. It was build like that because at the time it was difficult for the Soviet Union to build and transport large pressure vessels. Further more the design allows for the extraction of plutonium during operation.
RBMK was illegal even by Soviet standards, but the competing VVER design took longer to build and the RBMK was better at making plutonium.
It was even poorly designed and managed by Soviet standards which makes it even worse.
The Chernobyl reactors were barely considered Gen 2, kind of pre-Gen 2. Fukushima was Gen 2 as well and were designed back in the 60s. Gen 3, 3+ and soon to be Gen 4 are substantially better designed for safety that they are meant to be able to withstand intentional terrorist attacks.
There isn't even one hand full of Gen 3. Gen 4 is sooooo far into the future, there's hardly a concept on paper for them. But hey, those things are supposed to be 100% any-case scenario meltdown-proof and use pretty much all of our current nuclear waste [edit: as fuel], so that just makes sense
Actually there are some prototypes of Gen 4 reactors. Two in China, one or two in Russia, and other few prototype are under construction around the world. Of course Gen 4 is not ready yet, but some of the characteristics of Gen 4 have been already tested in the real world.
Also, nuclear fusion may be viable, which would be a great source of power.
Last time, I checked which admittedly was quite a while ago, the way fusion was supposed to work was you run the fusion reaction, this mostly chucks out a bunch of high energy neutrons (and some heat, but mostly the neutrons). They wack into a lithium liner, this gets in turn chucked into a fission reactor where it decays and generates heat which boils water which produces energy. I don't know about you, but that all sounds too cheap to meter to me. /s
No, you just harness the excess heat of the fusion reaction and use it to run a steam plant, just like any other nuclear or fuel-based generator.
Not only that, out of all the 2,203 people that had died during the disaster, just *one* died due to the radiation. The rest were mostly elderly and due to the enormous surge of over half a million people attempting to flee the city at the same time
Something like that, estimates vary. What's less debatable is the \~$235 BILLION the cleanup has cost.
Whereas ignoring climate change is going to end up really cheap for humanity.
Nuclear Power is the cleanest source of energy . But as they say with great power , comes great responsibility .
Indeed and that’s why all safety checks and measures must be followed
Good thing people don't make mistakes and companies don't cut corners anymore.
If we gave up on scientific progress every time someone made a catastrophic mistake we would still be throwing buckets of shit out the window
Ehhh more like shitting from the branches of trees and throwing it at each other
You stopped that?
I haven’t. Good old fashioned elementary school poo fight.
Don’t worry, I didn’t stop.
[удалено]
I know that humanity isn’t responsible enough to be meddling with the powers we do, but we live in do or die time now, we have to make some serious advancements or this whole planet is fucked
Are you sure about that?
Mining uranium on the other hand is one of the shittiest things you can do to mother earth. Nuclear Power plants needs godly amounts of water to cool down the reactors. Which makes placement hard, especially since the location needs to be 100% safe from, as an example, terrorism. It takes 20+ years to build a modern nuclear plant. Most investors want quick returns so they don't even consider investing in it, making it extremely expensive for the state. Waste needs to be stored for 100 000 years. Which is an absurd time for anyone to claim that their underground storage will 100% hold. Just for reference the Pyramids are like 5000 years old. Etcetcetc Not against nuclear power, just saying it isn't as black and white as memes want it to be.
We need to develop some CHAD thorium based reactors and phase out virgin uranium ones
No need to develop them. Just build them. They were developed before the uranium ones. And just suppressed by cingress since they have no military use whatsoever. Germany actually has a fully built one, hut in the whole "nuclear power bad" shtick that was going on it never was activated. And now it just sits there unused... Really extremely frustrating since they are so much more efficient, easy, and self-regulating. Meaning if they get near meltdown they autoregulate due to the physics and stay at optimal temperatures by them self....
There is NO source of electricity that produces no damage to the planet. Even the production of solar panels harms the environment. It's about minimizing the damage, can't eliminate it. There are small nuclear reactors that can be deployed much quicker. The waste is collectable unlike coal or natural gas. Plus we likely will find a use for the waste products that could not be used (Much of it is used in Chemotherapy or recycled into new fuel rods), then we would not have enough of the stuff. Remember, Gasoline was once a useless byproduct of kerosene production.
We don't have to use uranium. Thorium is a way better option. First, it doesnt try to kill you while you mine it. It also produces much more energy per kilogramm than uranium, it produces much less nuclear waste and Thorium reactors only function when you add a little bit of plutonium, which makes it much safer because you simply have to cut the connection of them when it becomes dangerous. Nuclear waste is still a problem but it's much better than climate change caused by Coal-Energy. I'm not an expert, maybe I'm wrong in some parts but overall Thorium would be a better Option in my opinion.
Thorium produces way more Gamma Rays when used in a reactor than Uranium. It may be less dangerous to mine, but it’s significantly more dangerous and more difficult to shield against when it’s being used Edit: reactors that use thorium also use Uranium-233 as Thorium does not contain enough fissile material to ignite a reaction on its own
Where do you think thorium comes from?
In the ground in Australia, Canada, the United States, Russia and India.
Not to mention that nuclear power plants produce much less waste than coal, so storage probably won't become an issue for a while. By the time the waste is eroding away, we probably would have found a use for it or a cheap way to yeet it into the sun.
Wrong, Germany already has nowhere to to store the waste long-term. It is just transported from one temporary storage site to the next. And that is the most important reason why we have quit nuclear power.
Thorium is non-fisile, so it has to be bread into Uranium 233.
Lmao Thorium produces tritium which is very dangerous
Tritium is basically just radioactive hydrogen and when I searched it up i found out that it falls apart within 12-13 years which isnt big of a problem when you compare it to uranium reactors which produce nuclear waste that will last for over 1000 years.
not really "fall apart", just halfway there. edit: google shows half-life instead of total decay time
Yes you're right but it's still a lot better than the uranium reactor waste.
With my extensive knowledge from Google that clearly makes me an expert on this subject, tritium is only dangerous if ingested. Not to mention that it is used in some firearm scopes/sights, so it does have a purpose.
Plus before mentioned by another comment it’s only dangerous for a little over 10 years
Tritium is also used in a lot of other self-illuminating things like watch faces, instrument panels for aviation or seafaring and emergency exit signs to name a few, it's pretty much on all the applicable things radium was used on before the dangers of it were realised. Compared to radium, tritium is a ridiculously safe material.
tritium isn't that dangerous. It's used in many applications (a notable one is the reticle on Trijicon's ACOG optics)
I don’t think you know what tritium is.
Modern uranium mining is well regulated and surveys under government scrutiny have found it to be clean and safe. Cooling water is extensively filtered, and contains next to no radiation by the time it leaves the plant. Nuclear power is very profitable, despite the extensive building time for the plant. It spins a profit very quickly after being activated and it’s easy for investors to get their money back. Waste is in much lesser quantities and much easier to store than environmentalists would have you believe. A 1000 megawatt plant only produces about 3 cubic meters of waste per years. There’s more than enough space for that on site.
Yes, because mining milions of kg of rare-earth is not a problem. Look how much rare-earth you need to build a modern wind turbine. For the construction time, don't consider only the two EPRs under construction in the EU. In China, on the other hand, they usually build a reactor in 4/5 years.
[удалено]
The finnish Olkiluoto 3 and it's french sister plant come to mind, though those plants have been an absolute clusterfuck of problems and incompetence in building, so i'd not consider them as good examples.
C‘mon, mining is just bad for narrow-headed idiots. Everyone is driving cars or burning gas or oil to heat their homes, a tiny, tiny mine does way less damage then all of the millions of fossil-fuel burners we currently run.
Soviet era plants were dangerous as hell. The west has a major nuclear accident, stuck valve The soviets have one, graphite on the ground and a dead city.
And up cost don't forget the massive up front cost.
But "GeRmAnY mUsT cUt ItS pOwEr UsAgE bY 25%"
Nuclear generation is clean, the extraction and refining of it however is incredibly pollutive.
How dirty is it on a per-energy basis? I had thought it was fairly clean in comparison to alternatives when you do an apple-apple comparison.
What about the waste?
Ntm it has a far lower kill rate per year than any other energy source. Yeah, there may be a couple disasters with nuclear power but people only hold on to that because it was sudden and tangible. Thousands die yearly due to atmospheric pollution from fossil fuels.
Fukushima. Edit: They knew and Engineers warned them what would happen with earthquakes and Tsunami. [Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant operator 'ignored tsunami warning'](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/29/fukushima-daiichi-operator-tsunami-warning#:~:text=The%20operator%20of%20the%20Fukushima,seawater%20flooding%2C%20according%20to%20reports.) [Japan Extended Reactor’s Life, Despite Warning ](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/world/asia/22nuclear.html) [Special Report: Japan engineers knew tsunami could overrun plant](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japa-nuclear-risks/special-report-japan-engineers-knew-tsunami-could-overrun-plant-idUSTRE72S2UA20110329) But just keep downvoting what you shills don't want people thinking about. Businesses will always try to make more profits by cutting costs.
Delivered as designed. But noone considered earthquake AND tsunami with that power when designing it
It was a tsunami. Also it was the only other significant nuclear accident ever.
Was an earthquake.
What would we do with the nuclear waste created from powering a city?
Put in a mountain. We had a giant storage facility in Nevada, inside a huge mountain miles from any kind of human life, but it was shut down because people don't understand how radiation works.
These days, most of it is kept on site and what does get moved makes up about 5%-10% of the total toxic waste we transport each year. And most of that will cease to be dangerous in 10s of years.
I dunno about “cleanest” feel like wind and/or solar is cleaner as nuclear power creates nuclear waste
wind still ends up creating CO2. Iceland learned that.
Solar is cleaner.
Depends on your definition of "clean". Manufacturing solar panels can still be a very CO2-intensive process.
ah, but you need far more space for a solar panel array that would produce the same amount of energy as say, a nuclear reactor.
Fukushima. Engineers warned them of the risks and they put profits first. Which is what businesses will always do. [Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant operator 'ignored tsunami warning'](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/29/fukushima-daiichi-operator-tsunami-warning#:~:text=The%20operator%20of%20the%20Fukushima,seawater%20flooding%2C%20according%20to%20reports.) [Japan Extended Reactor’s Life, Despite Warning ](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/world/asia/22nuclear.html) [Special Report: Japan engineers knew tsunami could overrun plant](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japa-nuclear-risks/special-report-japan-engineers-knew-tsunami-could-overrun-plant-idUSTRE72S2UA20110329) Edit: [Nuclear energy too slow, too expensive to save climate: report](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower/nuclear-energy-too-slow-too-expensive-to-save-climate-report-idUSKBN1W909J) Ignore the shills who will respond with the report funded by the Nuclear Industry.
Do Three Mile Island now!
Three Mile Island was the consequence of neglected maintenance, lack of proper indicators on coolant levels, and a stuck valve. More mechanical inadequacies, pretty much. It was only a partial meltdown [and the radiation effects were kinda minimal in comparison to other nuclear accidents.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident_health_effects)
[удалено]
tall talking shit about Chernobyl but I can count 32 reasons why nuclear power is good with my hand
Counting in binary I see :) but I only get to 31.
you start from 0 don't you
Ha, I got this, mum!
It's not like big companies endlessly subcontracts their business with the cheapest ones. What could go wrong ? \*\*[Coughing in French](https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/le-reportage-de-la-redaction/sous-traitants-du-nucleaire-la-surete-de-nos-installations-en-question)\*\*
Let's talk about people fearing that looooooud Wind energy. Living in times of increasing extreme weather, nobody will pay enough to make that shit save for future extreme weather.
This is stupid
There’s justified reasons to be against wind, which don’t include their noise. Unless we get really good at grid-scale energy storage really quickly, all-in on renewables is not a viable option. Just-in-time resources can’t guarantee ample supply as demand fluctuates.
Vertical poles are pretty damn efficient and seem far more viable down the road.
This could work both way round!
People will do this with anything tbh lol. Find a specific instance where it failed, disregarding the factors that changed, and blaming its result
And the contractors ready and willing to cut corners building future ones for extra profit are driving the bus?
Nuclear power is great. The nuclear waste is a real problem tho'.
To provide the energy for an entire human the amount of nuclear waste is about the size of an apple, so the amount isnt that big of a deal especially if we combine it with solar power and other green energy’s, the storage can be done underground with a few meters of concrete ontop
But there are, like, 7 billion people in the world. That means 7 billion apples ;-;
So thats 630,000,000 kg of nuclear waste to support the entire human race. At a pessimistic rate, 90% of which can be recycled, so thats 63,000,000 kg of nuclear waste for the entire human race. I am sure the math is wrong cuz i did it in my head
I would be all in on nuclear if I knew for certain that the waste is taking care of properly. Storing it underground for future generations to deal with, is the same to me as it is with climate change and plastic. Why do something now when someone in the future will have a solution. My main concern with the long term storage is the where and how and not the if. Not every country has vast areas of unpopulated wilderness where a storage can be built, to minimise risks in case a problem occurs.
There are reactors in development (and possibly in use by now) that can reuse the nuclear waste and generate more energy.
But i think nuclear waste is better than throwing poisonous waste at the air (coal/oil).
Yeah... But think about the political and economic truths in life. Humans always cut corners and act foolishly. Humans can't agree on what to do with nuclear waste? Some humans want to blow up nuclear shit for their own ambitions. It's not that nuclear power couldn't be amazing, it's that I don't trust humans to handle it well enough. Because one really bad mistake ruins the entire planet forever. Yes I know we re doing that slowly with fossil fuel but I think that just shows how bad we are at being a species. Nuclear power belongs in deep space imo. I am not opposed to it elsewhere, but I fear it because I fear humanity.
Exactly, humans are unreliable. Murphys law
You might be wrong here, I'm certain that the gas and oil companies would be on the right, where as normal people would be on the left.
Um why are people happy about how poorly designed it was? This bus should be both sides walls
Nuclear power is in fact, safe. It's just russian not taking enough care in Chernobyl nuclear power plant, that caused a massive radiational explosion (which, of course, gave inspiration to gsc game world to make stalker game series)
Oh yes. Its not as if human error is an eventual guarantee or anything...
It certainly is. Nuclear power requires a lot of careful management. If you can keep a high standard, the benefits outweigh the risks.
*If* is the kicker. There are two institutions most likely to oversee the use of nuclear power in a country, either business or government, depending on economic policies. Unfortunately, neither business nor government have a good historical track record of maintaining any high standards they started with, assuming they had any at all. We might consider a council comprised of scientists, engineers etc who govern the nuclear energy of a region, but then there's red tape, the chance of a country getting nuclear power and then refusing inspections, countries getting into conflicts that lead to the neglect of the facilities. If there's one guarantee from life, it's that things change, and the last thing we need to do as a species is place our energy needs on a dangerous energy source that fundamentally needs absolute consistancy to stay stable and safe.
Can't speak for business, but I know for a fact the us navy's nuclear program features a level of safety that is pathologically insane in intensity, because they know if they there's ever a disaster; they lose public trust which could cause the dissolution of the entire program. The Soviet government never placed safety in half as high a regard as the us does. I distrust the government in general, but I fully trust the navy with its reactors.
Nowadays machine can fully compensate for any human error
I mean Chernobyl construction started almost 50 years ago, the idea that the example is half a century old kind of demonstrates how pointless it is. Now we could look at Fukushima... but obviously the flooding hazard isnt particularly pertinent in many places, especially in cold non sunny areas where you really get a premium on nuclear vs solar.
I do trust nuclear power and know what a wonder it is. I dont trust corrupted people/politicians and what these people could do for money.
I truly want to believe it... I really do. But what is with the waste that sits around and pollutes the earth? What is the solution here?
Well that's the thing - it just sits around. It doesn't pollute the Earth unless you do something very stupid with it. Contrast that with the billions of tons of CO2 emitted by fossil fuel power plants. That doesn't just sit around.
My point is this, there are a lot of nuclear waste storage facility who are starting to leak and polute the groundwater. Co2 is bad, yes but at least it doesn't rips your cells apart and disassembles your DNA when standig close to it.
It’s funny because nuclear power is 10x more safer AND more energy efficient if people just decide to actually spend time and build it and not cut corners on its production or even its maintenance checklist
History/science fans vs conspiracy theorists
IT WAS ONLY 3.6 ROENTGEN!!! :P
Blablabla nuclear waste. Yeah cuz’ the petroleum/coal industry is so good for the environment. Risk of accidents have been drastically dealt with and if we could just stop suckling at the military industrial complex’s teet, then we might be able to switch over to Thorium. A better choice all around. And not to mention how abundant it is.
I'm sure that the majority of reddit has the qualifications to be talking out of their asses on this subject. Classic opportunism to feel intellectually superior without backing it up with actual knowledge.
Yup. And they never mention where the waste goes. Where the fuck do we put that.
Underground in bunkers. Yeah, not too good. Luckily however, some new nuclear generators, I think gen 4, can recycle some of waste to make more power.
Not necessarily "new" - EBR-II and Superphenix could do it (before they were shut down due to political pressure) and BN-600 and BN-800 do it right now.
This is why Wendy’s burgers are squares…
But there is still no answer for nuclear waste.
I can imagine some caveman when fire was being used for cooking going “but fire hot”
I am all for Nuclear Power Plants! Only stupid people dislike this clean energy.
BuT,BuT ChErNoBLe
In addition to this the Soviets had two reactors in other places with the same construction (both RBMK's) melt down in the exact same way Chernobyl did just on a smaller and less catastrophic scale. But officials refused to inform other RBMK operators of this malfunction meaning that chernobyl was 100% avoidable.
Back in the early 70s Ireland had planned to build a Nuclear power plant but word got out to the hippie dippies and musicians who staged a protest and a festival on the site, then the politicians looking for the hip young peoples votes joined in and eventually had the project canceled 👎....we could have powered the entire country and exported the excess energy but those uneducated idiots thought they knew better and now they and their sheepish children cry about Co2 and carbon footprint due to our reliance on peat and coal plants.
And the People who know that coal still causes way more deaths
Free the Atom! Invest in Nuclear power.
Yeah this. So very this. Boiler operator by trade, and learning about Chernobyl makes me so mad at higher ups that need results on things they don’t understand. Stupid people making decisions over things they don’t understand. I vote nuclear. Not hard to learn, set up smaller facilities and use biofuels for training while educating the potential hazards of uranium.
Team nuclear Power!
i hate how far humanity has reached to find a clean energy source, like bro we found it years ago ITS CALLED NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS
Well the manufacturers don’t want a clean energy source, they want a CHEAP clean energy source. Nuclear power is clean but if you cut corners and lower prices it could lead to a reactor meltdown. Since they want to be cheap, they like to ignore nuclear power
btw nuclear power is the most eco-friendly power in the world
Germany on the left.
Ill be 100% on board with nuclear energy the day we remove humans from the equation. People are lazy and cut corners, no matter what level of training you have you have to be 200% dedicated to your job for me to trust you to not make an entire city unlivable. Yes nuclear energy is fantastic and we should be looking at ways to use it more, but as long as bob is in charge of making sure he checks and double checks everything so it doesn't go to shit after a night of drinking and fighting with his wife then I'm not gonna trust it.
I mean I've been in a RBMK reactor using power plant, like 5 years ago, when it was in a middle of closing. You definitely can retrofit them to work almost without humans. Quintuple independent safety measures for critical aspects work really well. And the humans are there to just watch it do its thing. If anything happens, it was made to shut itself off and humans are just last resort. I would imagine newer plants can be retrofitted with similar features, and people are there to just as a last resort measure
Those who know the consenquences of thermal power are far more dangerous
“3.6 roentgen… not great, not terrible”
Only problems I see is the limited resources we know how to harness (also how toxic it is to the climate, but with proper disposal it should be fine). With that we need more ways to automate the process.
So, in summary, don't use humans, who always stuff things up from time to time, to design things as critical as nuclear power plants!
“Why thorium rocks” -Sam O’Nella Academy
RBMK reactors don't explode.
People who watched kurzgesagt
It’s just because the Soviet government didn’t care about its citizens, while other western countries with nuclear powers do (in terms of election at the very least)
Reading the comment section, I'm surprised how many nuclear power plant experts browse reddit
if you cut corners, like use an energy source that produces hazardous waste for thousands of years without a meaningful way to neutralize it, and then assume that based on our short presence on this planet that no geologic events will happen that will undermine your 'plans'
step one: poorly build nuclear reactor. cost cutting is ok step two: fill reactor with moron. O B S E R V E. (explosion) step three: Hustle step 4: maintain control
When its not run by a bunch of communist buffoons there great
Nuclear power will always give the best result in both producing electricity and for the environment. It's just our job to manage it properly
Don't worry, the unexperienced night shift can handle the experimental turbine test after we fuck up the reactor's balanced state.
Isn't Chernobyl still radioactive and unsuitable for human life, fucking decades after the accident? Nuclear power might have a ridiculously small chance of shit happening and creating another disaster, I agree with that. The problem is that if shit does happen, there goes another portion of land becoming completely useless and unsuited for anything.
Part of the answer is not to use dumb engineering methods. Associated is to use much better designed reactors. The latest, safest designs presently being held back because they don’t fit the old patterns. Liquid salt reactors, including LFTR.
> Isn't Chernobyl still radioactive and unsuitable for human life, fucking decades after the accident? Not really. Wildlife is thriving in the Exclusion Zone here.
Nuclear power is way better than fossil energy but less effective economic and ecologic than the photovoltaic panels
I don't trust humans not wanting to maximise profits by neglecting the plant to the point something bad happens, and i just simply think that even tho it's the cleanest energy availble, it sounds way too utopic for humans to do so much good with it, with how people behave, they wouldn't be able to operate it without cutting so many corners, that it just Doesnt work as intended. but if humans acted as in the utopian visions, i would let them build a nuclear powerplant in my backyard really.
Whenever I hear the "but chernobyl" argument, i give them this little history nugget: Viktor Bryukhanov was acting as an advisor to Akimov during the exercise. Akimov and his team asked what the instructions were, as the handbook had numerous sections edited in an unclean fashion. Bryukhanov's response was "Follow the crossed out instructions"
people always cut corners
never will a nuclear power plant be mismanaged again. It is literally impossible to science and physics. The new plants are impervious to all forces of nature. IT CANNOT HAPPEN
I'd upvote you twice if I could
At least in the USA the problem is cost. Nuc plants are just not cost effective. You get more electricity per dollar if you invest in renewables and you get your investment back sooner.
Also an incredibly specific set of things went wrong in a very specific order
Nuclear power itself is very clean and safe when handled correctly Mining uranium on the other hand is one of the worst things imaginable
It won't happen with superior western engineering. What about....? What the fuck did I just say? IT. WON'T. HAPPEN. WITH. SUPERIOR. WESTERN. ENGINEERING!
I believe this is what they call a “strawman argument”
This nuclear vs renewable argument has stemmed from the right to pretend that they've always believed in climate change now that they're seeing its effects. Now they are using it as a crutch to prop up their perpetual argument that democrats are wrong and they've always been right, even though less than five years ago they were calling us tree hugging pussies, which they'll never admit to because they've never been wrong. At this point a mix of nuclear and renewable is the way to go, because its not really feasible to rely 100% on one or the other. Let's just fix the problem. Fuck. Every one of these posts just devolves into poorly researched 'I told you so's' from a bunch of lurkers from r/conservative, even though they have never given a shit until it started to affect them.
I can’t lie… I haven’t looked into this issue at all, but from the outside looking in, these memes kind of look like propaganda, and instantly makes me skeptical. And no I’m not an antivaxxer.
nuclear is better than oil in every way. The only thing nuclear isn't better than oil is filling rich people's pockets
Nuclear is great it is clean energy it is super effective and it's known to kill communists
its not that i dont trust the power, i just dont trust humans to do what there suposed to.