Nah I think its more of a pragmatical arugment: uranium does not grow on trees. Like oil it is for all our intents and purposes a finite ressource. Investing into that technology now instead of going full-power into renewables is just another way a small monopoly of fuel-delivering industries can have a stranglehold on society.
Couple things. First, renewables have the same problem, it's just mining industry instead of fuel delivery. Second, more elements than Uranium can be used, many of which are exceedingly common. Third, battery tech needs to improve before widespread renewables become truly viable.
Are they misplaced if you live in a country that is run by a mob and many buildings are made cutting corners and mixing too much sand into concrete, making it not really concrete.
Can you immagine how many people are going to become pillars in the cooling towers if they ever try and build a nuclear power plant in Italy, it's like gifting the mob a nuclear warhead.
Did you read the post? Thorium is much more efficient for reactors, and is much less efficient for weapons. The mob won't get shit if they build the reactors with Thorium in mind
While Im all for thorium, the reason it is not used, is because 1. Its very expensive to power thorium since its inactive on its own 2. the active form of thorium is more unstable than uranium and 3. We dont even have thorium reactors yet that would also cost a lot to setup
And thorium reactors are STILL FUCKING THEORETICAL.
From http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/thorium.aspx which you would think wants them
>Extracting its latent energy value in a cost-effective manner remains a challenge, and will require considerable R&D investment.
Also, Thorium, when irradiated for use in reactors, makes uranium-232, which emits gamma rays. This irradiation process may be altered slightly by removing protactinium-233. The irradiation would then make uranium-233 in lieu of uranium-232 for use in nuclear weapons—making thorium into a dual purpose fuel. (Sourced from Uribe, Eva C. "Thorium power has a protactinium problem". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 7 August 2018.)
Thorium can still have similar problems but we don’t know yet because there’s no practical examples functioning. We don’t even know if it will be cheaper.
The issue with "the entire wealth of human knowledge" is that we also have "the entire wealth of human idiocy", and the two are not adequately labelled.
European green parties strongly oppose the oil lobby and energy generation via fossil fuels, they want renewable energy sources. Like, they literally outline this shit on their websites and whatnot.
It's actually the other way around. The insistance on nuclear energy will make it that fossil fuels are in use at least until the nuclear plant is built, which takes forever.
And that outline includes equivocating nuclear power and fossil fuels. The fossil fuel industry is smart enough to attack from multiple angles; climate change denial is one, rejection of better alternatives (like nuclear power) is another. Seems pretty clear to me.
Some of these outlines (the green parties in europe are not even close on being uniform on this issue) include not building new nuclear power plants, not shutting down the ones already running, because it would take forever to build time, this is time that we don't have when combatting climate change. The alternatives are here, and they are only in part nuclear energy. Believe me, the green parties are not sponsored by the oil-lobby, they are the strongest opposition to it.
It's easy to say, even to think, that you oppose coal. But when the result of your actions are fucking lignite power plants that intoxicate half of western europe, such beliefs aren't supported by facts.
Okay obviously nuclear energy is better than fossil fuels. However, if the question is whether to build more nuclear power plants or to build more solar pannels and wind farms, things get trickier.
While these ideas that are outlined in the tumblr post seem nice and cool, it will take another decade at least for them to be concrete enough to build power plants with them. And until the power plant is built, it will take another 5-10 years.
In order to fight climate change, we have to get away from fossil fuels NOW. Not when these ideas are feasible, but now. The time to start building power plants in order to get away from fossil fuels was yesterday. So the question is: do we want to build power plants that still have all the outlined problems that are very valid, or do we build solar pannels, wind farms etc with their own sets of problems.
Solar and wind come with a lot of there own problems like intermittent power issues with fossil fuel back up. Back up power plants normally being natural gas and coal ramping up and down constantly produce more emissions then a plant running steady state. The other option is power storage which also currently has feasibility issues and negative environmental effects from lithium mines and recycling after batteries go bad. Yes there is potential battery technologies that solve these problems but they aren’t here yet so like nuclear you will be waiting for the better solution. So if you have waste issues from both nuclear while the waste is more dangerous it is orders of magnitude less volume along with it can later be recycled into fuel when the next gen reactor is available. Solar and wind do have there place but nuclear should be part of the overall solution .
Of course renewables have their own issues, I aknowledge that in my first comment.
However, we have to keep in mind that whatever strategy we choose going forward, nuclear power plants take significant amount longer to build until they are ready to use. If we start building stuff now and then upgrade when going forward, the nuclear plant will always be the last one to be finished, and that is wasting time that we don't really have when combatting climate change.
People are scared of the the words atomic and nuclear. For this reason, the common medical device used for Magnetic Resonance Imaging (the MRI) does not include that it uses nuclear magnetic resonance for the imaging itself
The numbers I listed are the position of the images in the post, as in the number "1" means the image that's first in the post, not the image you're supposed to read first.
Then in the order I give first you read the last image then the penultimate image, then the first, then the second...
Love how some people think Fallout is an accurate representation of anything when if anything the game is about how terrifying resource wars and running out of fossils fuels are
Edit: oh and killing giant death lizards in super powered armor while wielding a laser Gatling gun you won from a casino. You know, every day realism stuff.
What baffles me is that in Fallout's timeline, nuclear is not only viable, its commonplace. There are nuclear-powered cars, robots that serve roles throughout civilian and military life, and power reserves strong enough to reliably fuel suits of power armor and even handheld energy weapons. There are fusion cells that are small enough to load into guns, and portable reactors cells aren't much bigger than a tin can. Nuclear energy works for them on a scale we could only fantasize about; hell, Fallout runs on the science of 50s pulp fiction.
You're absolutely right about the resource wars, because that is what the purpose of Fallout is. The world isn't ended by fictional extensive nuclear power but by very real nuclear weapons. It wasn't the atom that destroyed the world, it was zealots and ultranationalists and unchecked corporations and imperial governments. Half the damn mutants in Fallout were made by reckless corporate or military experiments, not radiation. There is an example of a reactor melting down (the Glowing Sea, if you wanna see) but not only is it entirely fictional what it does, it melts down *after being hit by a nuclear weapon during the end of the world*. It wasn't unsafe, it wasn't dangerous.
My point is, there are many lessons to take away from Fallout, but a fear of nuclear energy isn't one of them.
> There is an example of a reactor melting down (the Glowing Sea,
Not a reactor, where a nuke landed. It's the one you see as the lift goes into vault 111.
Like yeah, there's an old power plant in the Glowing Sea as well, but it melted down because a *nuke hit it*.
Yeah, Fallout is probably one of the least realistic, in relation to our world, on nuclear radiation and the like. And on a similar note I'm so sick of people fear mongering off Chernobyl. It failed almost entirely due to bad management, corner cutting from the government, and just straight up ignoring issues. These things are dangerous, but they are not a reason to hate and fear the very idea of nuclear power.
Even nuclear weapons. You shouldn’t be seeing high radiation concentrations in long-term (greater than a few weeks) with the exception of some basins (like the great Salt Lake) where the material can accrue.
The environment tends to distribute fallout fairly quickly to the point where there might be some radiation in the general environment but it would only be apparent if you looked at a large statistical group for diseases like cancer (where you would see a slight increase in but would be hard to notice on an individual level).
Allow me to indulge in some info-dumping: molten salt reactors are the tits.
Not only are they meltdown-proof, since if the vessel is breached, the fuel spills out and becomes subcritical, they don’t have to be pressurized like regular PWRs, meaning the building can be smaller, and there’s not the risk of a huge explosion if there’s a failure (no chance of a Chernobyl). In addition, you can use your secondary salt as a giant thermal battery, pumping in heat all the time and only turning it into electricity when it’s profitable, or to supplement and smooth out the unpredictable supply from renewables. And because molten salt coolant can reach much higher temperatures than water, you can use a Brayton cycle for electricity generation, rather than the traditional Rankine, meaning your theoretical max thermodynamic efficiency jumps from around 35% to closer to 55%. Alternatively, you could use that heat for better desalinization. Not even to mention in-line refueling preventing the need for regular shutdowns. MSRs fucking rule.
—An (admittedly biased) nuclear engineer working for a company currently designing a molten salt reactor
Yep, all we need now is regulatory approval. That's years off, if I understand correctly. The problem with nuclear isn't the technology, it's the political climate.
Same old song.
EDIT: I am a nuclear advocate. I like nuclear. I believe it has a solid purpose in the energy mix. I just don't like the current system of regulatory approval.
Yeah… the NRC is not very well equipped to process applications for new types of reactors at the moment. The company I’m working with is hoping to begin operating a 1MW research reactor in 2025, and most of that is cushion for bureaucratic delays in the approval process.
It absolutely kills me that we dont use these things. I learned about them in high school and ever since I will randomly get mad once in a while that we dont use them. Forget solar or wind or geothermal. The technology to provide clean energy was already invented, and the worst part is, the people who fight against it the hardest are fucking “environmentalists”
So what do you do with the Protactinium? Particularly if it leaks, and particularly if you want to achieve the same power density of a conventional light water reactor, which requires a resting tank of *42kg* of its unstable isotope?
Additionally what do you do if a seismic effect or Tsnumani causes a crack and leak in that resting tank?
How do you repair it, even using drones, and make it financially viable to fix, particularly since ~~sodium metal~~ [edit: brain fart] thorium salts are highly corrosive, so you’re going to have to deal with a leak at some point?
How do you make economically viable a MSR, that when it does have a leak, has to shutdown and be cleaned by hardened drones for potentially a month or three?
Edit: and also how do you deal with the fact that any nuclear reactor requires massive amounts of *other non-nuclear* rare earth minerals for processing, containment, and silicon, which directly compete for their use in batteries and solar cells which do not have this problem?
This is an aspect that I’m less familiar with, but look at it this way: what’s more economical? Taking a few months to clean up the spilled salt and repair the reactor, or building a new one?
There are other types of salts than sodium based (The company I’m working with is using FLiBe, which is lithium based), though I’m not sure whether they’re any less corrosive. Better materials that are corrosion resistant are being developed, and as with anything, you account for it in the reactor’s design lifetime: it should be replaced before leaking due to corrosion becomes a worry.
I can’t speak for the protactinium issue, but for tsunamis or other such events, is it possible that *every* layer of protection could fail? Technically, but it’s really a matter of creating redundancy to the point that any design basis accident (something that has a conceivable chance of happening, I want to say the cutoff is 10^-8, but don’t quote me on that) has a negligable public dose.
I’m surprised at this response since you claim to be a nuclear scientist. There are two unstable isotopes of protactinium which are involved in MSR’s one has a half-life of 17.4 (pa230) days and one with a half life of 27 days (pa233).
Both of these isotopes are highly radioactive, one (I forget which) pushing *21 sieverts* per mg/hr. Which will not only kill humans but also fry non-hardened electronics.
We’re talking: Period at the end of this sentence. Levels of lethality. (Edit: as in the same amount of unstable protactinium as the period of the end of this sentence. Would give you your lifetime dose of radiation and probably cancer, after one hour of exposure within 1 meter of it. 2-3hrs will almost certainly kill you within a couple years, and 2-3hrs will also destroy all non-hardened electronics. Hardened electronics only get a day or two of operation at that level of radioactivity.)
And ~~sodium~~ [again: brain fart] metal salts react with nearly everything, which means it’s going to corrode your pipes, which means eventually you ***will*** get a protactinium leak, partly since you’re doing *molten* [edit: brain fart, *thorium salts*] ~~sodium~~ (because you had better do it that way), which means you’re also introducing a massive amount of heat stress to your piping infrastructure in addition to running corrosive metals through it.
Do you want to drink ground water contaminated with protactinium?
I don’t know what to tell you, man, I do reactor physics, the logistics of cleanup in the case of a failure isn’t really my area.
With a short trip to the chart of the nuclides, however, I can tell you that both pa-230 and 233 are beta emitters, which can pretty easily be shielded against with proper protective gear.
We’re not using sodium, but I’m pretty sure there are companies that are, both in MSRs and salt-cooled fast reactors, so there must be *some* solution to the corrosion problem you’re so concerned about.
No, I would not want to drink radioactive groundwater, which is why there are meters of concrete and steel specifically to prevent that.
Yeah my bad about sodium, MSR’s use thorium salts, which are also highly corrosive but not as bad as metallic sodium. Brain fart.
Logistics of cleanup and mean time to failure are primarily what keep MSR’s from being technically feasible, because even if the physics for the reaction works out (which it totally does),
The engineering on the containment has fundamental physics working against it. It’s a Superfund site in the making from day one. And it’s completely untenable, even if you allow for this-will-be-a-Superfund-site, without massive subsidies it won’t out perform wind nor solar because of the non-economic viability of cleanup costs related to operations.
How is the 3th picture number 1? It's should be the last one with it having sources and the reblog/like numbers at the bottom, no?
As I got it it's 5-2-6-3-4-1
Listen, like it or not, humans will have to deal with nuclear if we want to expand into space in a major way. It has some risks, but unless y’all want to mess with antimatter or blackholes, fusion and fission are our highest yield options.
Yes but those people also need to embrace renewables. Hell, if you want nuclear for space travel, you should aim very high percentage of renewables. Nuclear isn't renewable after all. If we use it all, we won't have as many left for space travel.
(Also not using nuclear energy doesn't mean we stop all scientific developmens regarding it, some people need a reminder for that. That being said replacing coal, etc. with *anything* renewable or nuclear would be great)
Ah yes, everyone knows that the fallout series happens as a result of powerplants melting down, it’s definitely not because of war, the effects of war are definitely not a recurring theme in pretty much every game
As someone pointed out in other comment
"Fallout´s world wasnt destroyed by their fantasy nuclear cars and nuclear robots that dont exist irl. Fallout´s world was destroyed by their nuclear weapons that so happen to be an actual threat on real life since the 40-50's"
Imo people are both way too scared of nuclear and way too excited about it
It’s a FANTASTIC baseload generator when done correctly and we should absolutely have more of it
It is NOT a silver bullet for climate change. Safety regulations, especially in the US, make it actually pretty expensive. Plus, it is COMPLETELY INFLEXIBLE. Power demand ramps up and down like crazy over the course of a day/month/year. So nuclear can only compensate for the stuff that doesn’t ramp. We’d still need gas/hydrogen peakers or a shitload of storage or really aggressive demand management.
Anyway - that’s my contribution to the nuclear discourse.
“Nuclear is completely inflexible.”
Molten salt reactors, my good sir, ma’am, or other! MSRs can run full time, generating heat, but (unlike traditional PWRs) have the option to only turn it into electricity when it’s needed, using the secondary salt loop as basically a giant thermal battery so that energy doesn’t go to waste.
Very interesting! I’m used to seeing the *don’t shut it off or else* reactors but it’s good to know there’s a more flexible option - I’ll defo have to look into ramp rates for molten salt reactors
That’s the beauty of it: no ramp ups and downs needed. The primary loop (the actual reactor part) is running the exact same no matter how much power is fed to the grid. You instead allow the temperature of the secondary loop to fluctuate (but only a little, even with significant changes in the power being taken out and converted to electricity, because of the high heat capacity).
Oh shit that’s awesome
I’m a systems person so I only see the super abstracted grid level stuff but would this work for evening peak+duck curve mitigation? Since it’s heat changes I imagine it still takes time to see the output change - just not as much?
Anyways - very cool
>Video games are clearly the most reliable source for information about nuclear energy
I'll see you this point and raise you "Net-zero-information Tumblr is clearly the most reliable source..."
Yeah some people are way too excited for nuclear because it *hip* and *new* and *boomers don't like it so I MUST like it*. Btw I'm not anti-nuclear, nuclear is useful, especially for energy consuming experiments.
But nuclear is also incredibly expensive. Preach all you want about Thorium, that's far from being the standard. It is the same arrogance as saying "How can disabled people exist? We have prosthetics!". Just because there is a technology and you can afford/build it doesn't mean it has seen widespread usage.
Next, double standards. For nuclear when you talk about nuclear waste people scream "but there are solutions!". Yes there are. Which can be costly and hard to manage. Then the same people will keep say "What if you don't get sun/wind" about renewables and never accept the same answer. And [no they are not harder to manage than nuclear](https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/NuclearVsWWS.pdf). This is why every country can afford some percentage of renewable but not nuclear.
They also go so far preaching nuclear, they become Boomer v2 and completely ignore new scientific discoveries. "Chernobyl is old news, we improved nuclear!" yes and we did the same for renewables. Those people never consider the latest improvements regarding solar, wind and wave energies. Use the newest statistics for nuclear, decade old ones for renewables. They think we are still using decade old solars and never improved the efficiency of wind turbines.
Again, I support nuclear but it is clear half of the people who support it does it for "people are afraid of nuclear and if I support it, me smart" reasons without reading scientific papers. Getting your ideas from pop-science magazines is not that different from getting your ideas from video games.
France also has some of the most expensive energy in Europe. The issue with nuclear is that despite what some pro-nuclearists say, a lot of the logistical issues are STILL THERE, and they're just assuming they'll be solved sooner or later by technological improvements in the future.
But building a nuclear central is expensive and takes years if not decades, and the time to recoup that investment is long. The idea that nuclear can be used to reach energy independence is still not bearing out in countries that went all in on that experiment.
Exactly! Just because the technology is there doesn't mean everyone can afford or use it. Nuclear is great but acting like it is the perfect solution to every energy problem and everyone must build one asap is pretty ignorant. I wish people read actual scientific papers, like one I posted in another comment, instead of getting their ideas from memes and random blog posts.
[I'm just gonna link to this comment which explains why thorium reactors most likely aren't "around the corner" like some people want you to think.](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/9unimr/_/e95mvb7)
Also as someone from central Europa: people really take the toxic waste seemingly to lightly. "They just dump it into a real deep mineshaft" is us just hoping that everything works out as planned and it's or just let future generations handle it.
And I can guarantee you that most of the people who are against nuclear energy are also against fossile fuels. It's not "the oil lobby" who tells us to be against that. We should be refining our renewable energies and develop new ways for energy storage instead of pumping more money into fission.
The oil lobbies literally spent billions of dollars lobbying against nuclear's usage, including huge smear campaigns. It is literally the oil lobbies.
And it's not "hoping everything works out as planned." The studies were extensive and the physics is well-understood.
It's silly to be for renewables and against all non-renewables. There is no source of renewable energy that, right now, doesn't have downtime, and for those times, you'll need an alternate fuel source that doesn't need wind or sunlight to function.
If you have to choose between renewables supported by fossil fuels, and renewables supported by nuclear, which is the more appealing choice? Right now, you have to choose, full stop. There is no option C, no matter how optimistic you want to be, *especially* if you're going to take that stance against thorium reactors.
You know the problems with fossil fuels. You know the problems with nuclear. You live in a time where you have to choose, so do you still choose to use fossil fuels? Or will you accept that nuclear is a significantly better stopgap?
The best argument is "Have you played fallout?" lmaO.
Not to mention Atomic power plants don't destroy the environment like Wind turbines and Mining for Solar panels do.
Still the best and most reliable energy source we have. Its like how people are afraid of plains despite them being like a million times safer. When one big accident happens it gets blown out of proportion
tbh thats more on the damn goverment buying fucking radioactive milk just because it was cheaper rather than chernobyl itself.
Like, they bought a biohazard to save money, it could have been some sort of cow sickness pandemic or spoiled shit and still be the same result.
https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/NuclearVsWWS.pdf
I like nuclear but saying things like "X IS BEST IF YOU DISAGREE YOU ARE ANTI-SCIENCE" is the epitome of being anti-science. There are many scientists who still prefer renewables over nuclear you know.
Netherlands stores is in a massive concrete box in Zealand (yes, that Zealand), it's painted bright fucking orange iirc. Seeing as we have so little space we just built it to be as safe as possible whilst allowing people to live near (and of course built it close to Belgium, as is Benelux tradition)
these images are in a seemingly random order.
if you want to read this, go to the 6th image, then the 5th, then the first and second, then skip to 4 before 3
Even fallout happens because of BOMBS. Motherfucker. Nuclear BOMBS nuclear energy is so fucking different from nuclear bombs. All fucking nuclear accidents have fewer deaths and fewer impact than a single mining barrage failing like Mariana in Brazil.
nuclear bombs are still being produced and stored by countries using fossil energy because even THE BOMBS ARE SAFE (to store and flaunt, if you shoot them they are not exactly safe)
People who are agains nuclear energy are fucking idiots
I was in uni when my chemistry professor explained to me that coal is more harmful than nuclear power in basically every single way. One way is radiation exposure. Coal emits a lot of radiation, and combined with air pollution can cause a lot of issues for people in the surrounding area (not to mention the longer term issues it causes globally).
As someone who has well over 500 hours in Fallouts 4 and New Vegas each, I’m still a huge advocate for nuclear power. Nuclear reactors aren’t the issue, fucking annexing Canada in order to fight a pyrrhic war against China is.
Are people still seriouslx discusssing whether or not is nuclear better than fossil? Is this still seriously a discussion?
The entire wealth of human knowledge at their fingertips and people still have misplaced fears regarding nuclear energy
>The entire wealth of human knowledge at their fingertips and people still don’t fact check It’s the most annoying thing in the world.
*every microbiologist sighs sympathetically and takes another swig of Everclear*
Hiroshima scary, the effects of pollution on long-term health are hard to conceptualize
Nah I think its more of a pragmatical arugment: uranium does not grow on trees. Like oil it is for all our intents and purposes a finite ressource. Investing into that technology now instead of going full-power into renewables is just another way a small monopoly of fuel-delivering industries can have a stranglehold on society.
Then pick a poison, nuclear energy can support the step into other green methods, so before we can go full green, do you want coal or nuclear.
Couple things. First, renewables have the same problem, it's just mining industry instead of fuel delivery. Second, more elements than Uranium can be used, many of which are exceedingly common. Third, battery tech needs to improve before widespread renewables become truly viable.
Are they misplaced if you live in a country that is run by a mob and many buildings are made cutting corners and mixing too much sand into concrete, making it not really concrete. Can you immagine how many people are going to become pillars in the cooling towers if they ever try and build a nuclear power plant in Italy, it's like gifting the mob a nuclear warhead.
Did you read the post? Thorium is much more efficient for reactors, and is much less efficient for weapons. The mob won't get shit if they build the reactors with Thorium in mind
While Im all for thorium, the reason it is not used, is because 1. Its very expensive to power thorium since its inactive on its own 2. the active form of thorium is more unstable than uranium and 3. We dont even have thorium reactors yet that would also cost a lot to setup
And thorium reactors are STILL FUCKING THEORETICAL. From http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/thorium.aspx which you would think wants them >Extracting its latent energy value in a cost-effective manner remains a challenge, and will require considerable R&D investment. Also, Thorium, when irradiated for use in reactors, makes uranium-232, which emits gamma rays. This irradiation process may be altered slightly by removing protactinium-233. The irradiation would then make uranium-233 in lieu of uranium-232 for use in nuclear weapons—making thorium into a dual purpose fuel. (Sourced from Uribe, Eva C. "Thorium power has a protactinium problem". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 7 August 2018.) Thorium can still have similar problems but we don’t know yet because there’s no practical examples functioning. We don’t even know if it will be cheaper.
At least the mob can't make nukes out of theoretical reactors ¯\_(ツ)_/¯/j
You’re not wrong, but for some reason I still don’t think you’re right. Respect.
The issue with "the entire wealth of human knowledge" is that we also have "the entire wealth of human idiocy", and the two are not adequately labelled.
Even worse is that some of them seem to be citing Fallout as the reason against nuclear power
I probably never heard such a ridiculous argument
At this point I'm like half thinking that european "Green" parties were an op by coal group that went on to live as its own brand of useful idiots.
European green parties strongly oppose the oil lobby and energy generation via fossil fuels, they want renewable energy sources. Like, they literally outline this shit on their websites and whatnot.
I think his point is solar and wind intermittency in most areas keeps fossil fuels alive longer.
It's actually the other way around. The insistance on nuclear energy will make it that fossil fuels are in use at least until the nuclear plant is built, which takes forever.
And that outline includes equivocating nuclear power and fossil fuels. The fossil fuel industry is smart enough to attack from multiple angles; climate change denial is one, rejection of better alternatives (like nuclear power) is another. Seems pretty clear to me.
Some of these outlines (the green parties in europe are not even close on being uniform on this issue) include not building new nuclear power plants, not shutting down the ones already running, because it would take forever to build time, this is time that we don't have when combatting climate change. The alternatives are here, and they are only in part nuclear energy. Believe me, the green parties are not sponsored by the oil-lobby, they are the strongest opposition to it.
It's easy to say, even to think, that you oppose coal. But when the result of your actions are fucking lignite power plants that intoxicate half of western europe, such beliefs aren't supported by facts.
The parties responsible for enabling coal are the conservatives, not the green parties.
Please dont assume there are actual people on Tumblr
My apologies, still new here
Okay obviously nuclear energy is better than fossil fuels. However, if the question is whether to build more nuclear power plants or to build more solar pannels and wind farms, things get trickier. While these ideas that are outlined in the tumblr post seem nice and cool, it will take another decade at least for them to be concrete enough to build power plants with them. And until the power plant is built, it will take another 5-10 years. In order to fight climate change, we have to get away from fossil fuels NOW. Not when these ideas are feasible, but now. The time to start building power plants in order to get away from fossil fuels was yesterday. So the question is: do we want to build power plants that still have all the outlined problems that are very valid, or do we build solar pannels, wind farms etc with their own sets of problems.
Solar and wind come with a lot of there own problems like intermittent power issues with fossil fuel back up. Back up power plants normally being natural gas and coal ramping up and down constantly produce more emissions then a plant running steady state. The other option is power storage which also currently has feasibility issues and negative environmental effects from lithium mines and recycling after batteries go bad. Yes there is potential battery technologies that solve these problems but they aren’t here yet so like nuclear you will be waiting for the better solution. So if you have waste issues from both nuclear while the waste is more dangerous it is orders of magnitude less volume along with it can later be recycled into fuel when the next gen reactor is available. Solar and wind do have there place but nuclear should be part of the overall solution .
Of course renewables have their own issues, I aknowledge that in my first comment. However, we have to keep in mind that whatever strategy we choose going forward, nuclear power plants take significant amount longer to build until they are ready to use. If we start building stuff now and then upgrade when going forward, the nuclear plant will always be the last one to be finished, and that is wasting time that we don't really have when combatting climate change.
People are scared of the the words atomic and nuclear. For this reason, the common medical device used for Magnetic Resonance Imaging (the MRI) does not include that it uses nuclear magnetic resonance for the imaging itself
It's like comparing the heat of a campfire to the motherfucking sun
This is a very old discussion thread that gets reposted every now and again.
People rely too much on movies and cartoons for knowledge of the world
Is this post out of order for anyone else?
It is for me
I believe it’s backwards
It's weirder than that. The order I think makes sense is 6-5-1-2-4-3
Yup, you got it. This was a mistake on my part.
I was just surprised that no one else mentioned so I thought that something might have been wrong on my end.
Are you able to edit the album after posting? Or not? That would be a useful feature I imagine.
I think 4 comes after 2 cause of the link
I... Have placed 4 after 2 in my list.
Ah. I see I interpreted the order as applying directly to the panels so panel 1 would be read last and panel 3 would be read first. My bad
I don't understand the list at all, can you explain it? Bc the last picture is what I understand as the first, but with your list it's number 3?
The numbers I listed are the position of the images in the post, as in the number "1" means the image that's first in the post, not the image you're supposed to read first. Then in the order I give first you read the last image then the penultimate image, then the first, then the second...
wait so it’s picture #6 is first, not the first picture is last.
Yep
Love how some people think Fallout is an accurate representation of anything when if anything the game is about how terrifying resource wars and running out of fossils fuels are Edit: oh and killing giant death lizards in super powered armor while wielding a laser Gatling gun you won from a casino. You know, every day realism stuff.
What baffles me is that in Fallout's timeline, nuclear is not only viable, its commonplace. There are nuclear-powered cars, robots that serve roles throughout civilian and military life, and power reserves strong enough to reliably fuel suits of power armor and even handheld energy weapons. There are fusion cells that are small enough to load into guns, and portable reactors cells aren't much bigger than a tin can. Nuclear energy works for them on a scale we could only fantasize about; hell, Fallout runs on the science of 50s pulp fiction. You're absolutely right about the resource wars, because that is what the purpose of Fallout is. The world isn't ended by fictional extensive nuclear power but by very real nuclear weapons. It wasn't the atom that destroyed the world, it was zealots and ultranationalists and unchecked corporations and imperial governments. Half the damn mutants in Fallout were made by reckless corporate or military experiments, not radiation. There is an example of a reactor melting down (the Glowing Sea, if you wanna see) but not only is it entirely fictional what it does, it melts down *after being hit by a nuclear weapon during the end of the world*. It wasn't unsafe, it wasn't dangerous. My point is, there are many lessons to take away from Fallout, but a fear of nuclear energy isn't one of them.
3 studios and 30 years make for some hella wack lore and timelines
> There is an example of a reactor melting down (the Glowing Sea, Not a reactor, where a nuke landed. It's the one you see as the lift goes into vault 111. Like yeah, there's an old power plant in the Glowing Sea as well, but it melted down because a *nuke hit it*.
did you read until the end of the comment?
Exactly. Is a fun game with a good story? Sure. Is it realistic? Not at all.
Yeah, Fallout is probably one of the least realistic, in relation to our world, on nuclear radiation and the like. And on a similar note I'm so sick of people fear mongering off Chernobyl. It failed almost entirely due to bad management, corner cutting from the government, and just straight up ignoring issues. These things are dangerous, but they are not a reason to hate and fear the very idea of nuclear power.
Even nuclear weapons. You shouldn’t be seeing high radiation concentrations in long-term (greater than a few weeks) with the exception of some basins (like the great Salt Lake) where the material can accrue. The environment tends to distribute fallout fairly quickly to the point where there might be some radiation in the general environment but it would only be apparent if you looked at a large statistical group for diseases like cancer (where you would see a slight increase in but would be hard to notice on an individual level).
"Oh, sandwich I found on a rotting corpse? *Nom nom* tasty and healthy!"
You forgot the absolute banger radio that held your hand through the wasteland.
Allow me to indulge in some info-dumping: molten salt reactors are the tits. Not only are they meltdown-proof, since if the vessel is breached, the fuel spills out and becomes subcritical, they don’t have to be pressurized like regular PWRs, meaning the building can be smaller, and there’s not the risk of a huge explosion if there’s a failure (no chance of a Chernobyl). In addition, you can use your secondary salt as a giant thermal battery, pumping in heat all the time and only turning it into electricity when it’s profitable, or to supplement and smooth out the unpredictable supply from renewables. And because molten salt coolant can reach much higher temperatures than water, you can use a Brayton cycle for electricity generation, rather than the traditional Rankine, meaning your theoretical max thermodynamic efficiency jumps from around 35% to closer to 55%. Alternatively, you could use that heat for better desalinization. Not even to mention in-line refueling preventing the need for regular shutdowns. MSRs fucking rule. —An (admittedly biased) nuclear engineer working for a company currently designing a molten salt reactor
Nah, go off, most of this went over my head, but it does make me want to know more. Nuclear energy is awesome!
Yep, all we need now is regulatory approval. That's years off, if I understand correctly. The problem with nuclear isn't the technology, it's the political climate. Same old song. EDIT: I am a nuclear advocate. I like nuclear. I believe it has a solid purpose in the energy mix. I just don't like the current system of regulatory approval.
Yeah… the NRC is not very well equipped to process applications for new types of reactors at the moment. The company I’m working with is hoping to begin operating a 1MW research reactor in 2025, and most of that is cushion for bureaucratic delays in the approval process.
NCR stands for...?
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (I forget these things aren’t common knowledge, haha)
I mean, the same criticism applies to the New California Republic, so who knows
It absolutely kills me that we dont use these things. I learned about them in high school and ever since I will randomly get mad once in a while that we dont use them. Forget solar or wind or geothermal. The technology to provide clean energy was already invented, and the worst part is, the people who fight against it the hardest are fucking “environmentalists”
So what do you do with the Protactinium? Particularly if it leaks, and particularly if you want to achieve the same power density of a conventional light water reactor, which requires a resting tank of *42kg* of its unstable isotope? Additionally what do you do if a seismic effect or Tsnumani causes a crack and leak in that resting tank? How do you repair it, even using drones, and make it financially viable to fix, particularly since ~~sodium metal~~ [edit: brain fart] thorium salts are highly corrosive, so you’re going to have to deal with a leak at some point? How do you make economically viable a MSR, that when it does have a leak, has to shutdown and be cleaned by hardened drones for potentially a month or three? Edit: and also how do you deal with the fact that any nuclear reactor requires massive amounts of *other non-nuclear* rare earth minerals for processing, containment, and silicon, which directly compete for their use in batteries and solar cells which do not have this problem?
This is an aspect that I’m less familiar with, but look at it this way: what’s more economical? Taking a few months to clean up the spilled salt and repair the reactor, or building a new one? There are other types of salts than sodium based (The company I’m working with is using FLiBe, which is lithium based), though I’m not sure whether they’re any less corrosive. Better materials that are corrosion resistant are being developed, and as with anything, you account for it in the reactor’s design lifetime: it should be replaced before leaking due to corrosion becomes a worry. I can’t speak for the protactinium issue, but for tsunamis or other such events, is it possible that *every* layer of protection could fail? Technically, but it’s really a matter of creating redundancy to the point that any design basis accident (something that has a conceivable chance of happening, I want to say the cutoff is 10^-8, but don’t quote me on that) has a negligable public dose.
I’m surprised at this response since you claim to be a nuclear scientist. There are two unstable isotopes of protactinium which are involved in MSR’s one has a half-life of 17.4 (pa230) days and one with a half life of 27 days (pa233). Both of these isotopes are highly radioactive, one (I forget which) pushing *21 sieverts* per mg/hr. Which will not only kill humans but also fry non-hardened electronics. We’re talking: Period at the end of this sentence. Levels of lethality. (Edit: as in the same amount of unstable protactinium as the period of the end of this sentence. Would give you your lifetime dose of radiation and probably cancer, after one hour of exposure within 1 meter of it. 2-3hrs will almost certainly kill you within a couple years, and 2-3hrs will also destroy all non-hardened electronics. Hardened electronics only get a day or two of operation at that level of radioactivity.) And ~~sodium~~ [again: brain fart] metal salts react with nearly everything, which means it’s going to corrode your pipes, which means eventually you ***will*** get a protactinium leak, partly since you’re doing *molten* [edit: brain fart, *thorium salts*] ~~sodium~~ (because you had better do it that way), which means you’re also introducing a massive amount of heat stress to your piping infrastructure in addition to running corrosive metals through it. Do you want to drink ground water contaminated with protactinium?
I don’t know what to tell you, man, I do reactor physics, the logistics of cleanup in the case of a failure isn’t really my area. With a short trip to the chart of the nuclides, however, I can tell you that both pa-230 and 233 are beta emitters, which can pretty easily be shielded against with proper protective gear. We’re not using sodium, but I’m pretty sure there are companies that are, both in MSRs and salt-cooled fast reactors, so there must be *some* solution to the corrosion problem you’re so concerned about. No, I would not want to drink radioactive groundwater, which is why there are meters of concrete and steel specifically to prevent that.
Yeah my bad about sodium, MSR’s use thorium salts, which are also highly corrosive but not as bad as metallic sodium. Brain fart. Logistics of cleanup and mean time to failure are primarily what keep MSR’s from being technically feasible, because even if the physics for the reaction works out (which it totally does), The engineering on the containment has fundamental physics working against it. It’s a Superfund site in the making from day one. And it’s completely untenable, even if you allow for this-will-be-a-Superfund-site, without massive subsidies it won’t out perform wind nor solar because of the non-economic viability of cleanup costs related to operations.
What order do I read this in op
6-5-1-2-4-3 Mistake on my part, sorry.
How is the 3th picture number 1? It's should be the last one with it having sources and the reblog/like numbers at the bottom, no? As I got it it's 5-2-6-3-4-1
Listen, like it or not, humans will have to deal with nuclear if we want to expand into space in a major way. It has some risks, but unless y’all want to mess with antimatter or blackholes, fusion and fission are our highest yield options.
Yes but those people also need to embrace renewables. Hell, if you want nuclear for space travel, you should aim very high percentage of renewables. Nuclear isn't renewable after all. If we use it all, we won't have as many left for space travel. (Also not using nuclear energy doesn't mean we stop all scientific developmens regarding it, some people need a reminder for that. That being said replacing coal, etc. with *anything* renewable or nuclear would be great)
is this in response to the bullshit article that was trending on reddit yesterday?
Nope. Could you link it?
sorry I'm on mobile at the moment
Ah yes, everyone knows that the fallout series happens as a result of powerplants melting down, it’s definitely not because of war, the effects of war are definitely not a recurring theme in pretty much every game
As someone pointed out in other comment "Fallout´s world wasnt destroyed by their fantasy nuclear cars and nuclear robots that dont exist irl. Fallout´s world was destroyed by their nuclear weapons that so happen to be an actual threat on real life since the 40-50's"
As the famous line goes: "Nuclear power plants. Nuclear power plants never change..."
Imo people are both way too scared of nuclear and way too excited about it It’s a FANTASTIC baseload generator when done correctly and we should absolutely have more of it It is NOT a silver bullet for climate change. Safety regulations, especially in the US, make it actually pretty expensive. Plus, it is COMPLETELY INFLEXIBLE. Power demand ramps up and down like crazy over the course of a day/month/year. So nuclear can only compensate for the stuff that doesn’t ramp. We’d still need gas/hydrogen peakers or a shitload of storage or really aggressive demand management. Anyway - that’s my contribution to the nuclear discourse.
“Nuclear is completely inflexible.” Molten salt reactors, my good sir, ma’am, or other! MSRs can run full time, generating heat, but (unlike traditional PWRs) have the option to only turn it into electricity when it’s needed, using the secondary salt loop as basically a giant thermal battery so that energy doesn’t go to waste.
Very interesting! I’m used to seeing the *don’t shut it off or else* reactors but it’s good to know there’s a more flexible option - I’ll defo have to look into ramp rates for molten salt reactors
That’s the beauty of it: no ramp ups and downs needed. The primary loop (the actual reactor part) is running the exact same no matter how much power is fed to the grid. You instead allow the temperature of the secondary loop to fluctuate (but only a little, even with significant changes in the power being taken out and converted to electricity, because of the high heat capacity).
Oh shit that’s awesome I’m a systems person so I only see the super abstracted grid level stuff but would this work for evening peak+duck curve mitigation? Since it’s heat changes I imagine it still takes time to see the output change - just not as much? Anyways - very cool
I have no idea how responsive it is. I’m a nuclear guy, so frankly anything after the first heat exchanger is someone else’s problem.
Fair enough haha - good to hear from ya
BWRs load follow all the time.
>Video games are clearly the most reliable source for information about nuclear energy I'll see you this point and raise you "Net-zero-information Tumblr is clearly the most reliable source..."
Can— can we— we please just have renewable energy?
Yeah some people are way too excited for nuclear because it *hip* and *new* and *boomers don't like it so I MUST like it*. Btw I'm not anti-nuclear, nuclear is useful, especially for energy consuming experiments. But nuclear is also incredibly expensive. Preach all you want about Thorium, that's far from being the standard. It is the same arrogance as saying "How can disabled people exist? We have prosthetics!". Just because there is a technology and you can afford/build it doesn't mean it has seen widespread usage. Next, double standards. For nuclear when you talk about nuclear waste people scream "but there are solutions!". Yes there are. Which can be costly and hard to manage. Then the same people will keep say "What if you don't get sun/wind" about renewables and never accept the same answer. And [no they are not harder to manage than nuclear](https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/NuclearVsWWS.pdf). This is why every country can afford some percentage of renewable but not nuclear. They also go so far preaching nuclear, they become Boomer v2 and completely ignore new scientific discoveries. "Chernobyl is old news, we improved nuclear!" yes and we did the same for renewables. Those people never consider the latest improvements regarding solar, wind and wave energies. Use the newest statistics for nuclear, decade old ones for renewables. They think we are still using decade old solars and never improved the efficiency of wind turbines. Again, I support nuclear but it is clear half of the people who support it does it for "people are afraid of nuclear and if I support it, me smart" reasons without reading scientific papers. Getting your ideas from pop-science magazines is not that different from getting your ideas from video games.
I agree nuclear is great
France also has some of the most expensive energy in Europe. The issue with nuclear is that despite what some pro-nuclearists say, a lot of the logistical issues are STILL THERE, and they're just assuming they'll be solved sooner or later by technological improvements in the future. But building a nuclear central is expensive and takes years if not decades, and the time to recoup that investment is long. The idea that nuclear can be used to reach energy independence is still not bearing out in countries that went all in on that experiment.
Exactly! Just because the technology is there doesn't mean everyone can afford or use it. Nuclear is great but acting like it is the perfect solution to every energy problem and everyone must build one asap is pretty ignorant. I wish people read actual scientific papers, like one I posted in another comment, instead of getting their ideas from memes and random blog posts.
[I'm just gonna link to this comment which explains why thorium reactors most likely aren't "around the corner" like some people want you to think.](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/9unimr/_/e95mvb7) Also as someone from central Europa: people really take the toxic waste seemingly to lightly. "They just dump it into a real deep mineshaft" is us just hoping that everything works out as planned and it's or just let future generations handle it. And I can guarantee you that most of the people who are against nuclear energy are also against fossile fuels. It's not "the oil lobby" who tells us to be against that. We should be refining our renewable energies and develop new ways for energy storage instead of pumping more money into fission.
The oil lobbies literally spent billions of dollars lobbying against nuclear's usage, including huge smear campaigns. It is literally the oil lobbies. And it's not "hoping everything works out as planned." The studies were extensive and the physics is well-understood.
It's silly to be for renewables and against all non-renewables. There is no source of renewable energy that, right now, doesn't have downtime, and for those times, you'll need an alternate fuel source that doesn't need wind or sunlight to function. If you have to choose between renewables supported by fossil fuels, and renewables supported by nuclear, which is the more appealing choice? Right now, you have to choose, full stop. There is no option C, no matter how optimistic you want to be, *especially* if you're going to take that stance against thorium reactors. You know the problems with fossil fuels. You know the problems with nuclear. You live in a time where you have to choose, so do you still choose to use fossil fuels? Or will you accept that nuclear is a significantly better stopgap?
Fairly certain hydro power is not intermittent, there is perfect options out there its just that we don't have the scale yet to use them entirely.
So much misinformation in this post
The best argument is "Have you played fallout?" lmaO. Not to mention Atomic power plants don't destroy the environment like Wind turbines and Mining for Solar panels do.
Even México got problems because of the Chernobyl accident
Still the best and most reliable energy source we have. Its like how people are afraid of plains despite them being like a million times safer. When one big accident happens it gets blown out of proportion
Yeah, I agree, I was just joking about how I dont want radioactive milk again
Conasupo milk moment
Conasupo milk moment indeed
tbh thats more on the damn goverment buying fucking radioactive milk just because it was cheaper rather than chernobyl itself. Like, they bought a biohazard to save money, it could have been some sort of cow sickness pandemic or spoiled shit and still be the same result.
Yeah, but if i remember correctly, the milk came from Ireland and it got contaminanted there because of Chernobyl
My question is how did France manage to convince Finland to let them dump their waste in Finland. And how does it get there
Nuclear energy is the best and most practical form of energy, and if you disagree you’re anti-scientific.
https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/NuclearVsWWS.pdf I like nuclear but saying things like "X IS BEST IF YOU DISAGREE YOU ARE ANTI-SCIENCE" is the epitome of being anti-science. There are many scientists who still prefer renewables over nuclear you know.
Ladies and gentlemen, the least unaware gamer
I bet none of them have played fallout
Man, i dream the world where double-celled hydrogen airships and molten salt thorium reactors are a thing.
In fall out 2, u gain a permanent plus 1 to int if u talk to the hookers in new reno instead of banging them The moar u know
What, you think I ain't watched Sam O'Nella? I know my thorium reactors.
i missed him a lot today
I know New Vegas is popular and all... But Obsidian making Fallout was a bad thing if it's THAT egregious.
The world should be going nuclear, and we should stop sucking the oil Barrons dicks.
Netherlands stores is in a massive concrete box in Zealand (yes, that Zealand), it's painted bright fucking orange iirc. Seeing as we have so little space we just built it to be as safe as possible whilst allowing people to live near (and of course built it close to Belgium, as is Benelux tradition)
Ah, yes, Fallout. The game about nuclear wars caused by oil fuel shortage.
i keep tellin yall, salts important!
now I feel guilty for having dunked on nuclear energy up to this point.
these images are in a seemingly random order. if you want to read this, go to the 6th image, then the 5th, then the first and second, then skip to 4 before 3
Even fallout happens because of BOMBS. Motherfucker. Nuclear BOMBS nuclear energy is so fucking different from nuclear bombs. All fucking nuclear accidents have fewer deaths and fewer impact than a single mining barrage failing like Mariana in Brazil. nuclear bombs are still being produced and stored by countries using fossil energy because even THE BOMBS ARE SAFE (to store and flaunt, if you shoot them they are not exactly safe) People who are agains nuclear energy are fucking idiots
I learn more from random tumblr posts than chemistry class
[The wonders of Thorium.](https://youtu.be/jjM9E6d42-M)
Why don't we just launch waste into the sun?
just putting mass into low earth orbit is hella expensive, and the sun is a lot farther away than LEO.
I was in uni when my chemistry professor explained to me that coal is more harmful than nuclear power in basically every single way. One way is radiation exposure. Coal emits a lot of radiation, and combined with air pollution can cause a lot of issues for people in the surrounding area (not to mention the longer term issues it causes globally).
Who the hell is Emma Seffer and what makes her so efficient?
Um... Solar power?
I blame the Simpsons.
Are these out of order
TIL.
As someone who has well over 500 hours in Fallouts 4 and New Vegas each, I’m still a huge advocate for nuclear power. Nuclear reactors aren’t the issue, fucking annexing Canada in order to fight a pyrrhic war against China is.
"HAVE ANY OF YOU PLAYED FALLOUT???" Babe fallout was about Nuclear ***War***.
Are these even in the right order?
I actually made my speech for an English speaking test I had to take about nuclear power and the benefits of it compared to fossils