this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Just because burning fossil fuels is bad doesn't magically make nuclear good, or somehow no big deal. The chance for a catastrophic accident mentioned in the meme is only one drawback (which is bad enough--get real, denial is not a strategy here). Just a few other issues:

  • the problem of what to do with the waste: no permanent solutions have yet been implemented and we've been using costly-to-maintain "temporary" methods for decades. Not to mention the thermal water pollution to aquatic ecosystems

  • the enormously out of proportion up front costs to construct the plants, and higher ongoing operation and maintenance costs due to safety risks in proportion to amount of power generated

  • the fact that uranium is also a limited resource that has to be mined like other ores, with all the environmental negatives of that, which then has to go through a lot of processing involving various mechanics and chemicals just to make it usable as fuel.

Anyway I'm not going to try and go into more detail on a forum post, but all this advocacy for a very problematic method of producing power as if it's a simple solution to our problems is kind of irritating. At least I hope the above shows we should stop pretending it's "clean energy". We should be focusing on developing renewable and sustainable energy systems.

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[–] [email protected] 89 points 4 days ago (37 children)

1000005010. Don't feed the troll πŸ’©

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 3 days ago (2 children)

It's sad that the coal lobby has convinced so many people that the most reliable clean energy source we've ever discovered is somehow bad.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 3 days ago

Particularly since coal power stations emit FAR more radioactive material, routinely, than most nuclear "leaks".

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago (6 children)

It’s sad that the coal lobby has convinced so many people that the most reliable clean energy source we’ve ever discovered is somehow bad.

Its bad in the sense that is a crazy expensive way to generate electricity. Its not theoretical. Ask the customers of the most recent nuclear reactors to go online in the USA in Georgia. source

"The report shows average Georgia Power rates are up between $34 and $35 since before the plant's Unit 3 went online. " (there were bonds and fees on customer electric bills to pay for the nuclear plant construction before it was even delivering power.

...and...

"The month following Unit 4 achieving commercial operation, average retail rates were adjusted by approximately 5%. With the Nuclear Construction Cost Recovery (NCCR) tariff removed from bills, a typical resident customer using 1,000 kWh per month saw an estimated monthly increase of $8.95 per month. This follows the previous rate impact in 2023 following Unit 3 COD of $5.42 (3.2%)."

So another $5.42/month for the first reactor built on top of the $35/month, then another $8.95/month on top of all that for a rough total of $49.37/month more just to buy electricity that is generated from nuclear.

Maybe the power company is greedy? Nope, they're even eating more costs and not passing them on to customers:

"Georgia Power says they're losing about $2.6 billion in total projected costs to shield customers from the responsibility of paying it. Unit 4 added about $8.95 to the average customer's bill, John Kraft, a spokesman for the company said."

So that $49.37/month premium for electricity from nuclear power would be even higher if the power company passed on all the costs. Nuclear power for electricty is just too inefficient just on the cost basis, this is completely ignoring the problems with waste management.

The next biggest problem with nuclear power is where the fuel comes from:

"Russia also dominates nuclear fuel supply chains. Its state-owned Rosatom controls 36 percent of the global uranium enrichment market and supplies nuclear fuel to 78 reactors in 15 countries. In 2020, Russia owned 40 percent of the total uranium conversion infrastructure worldwide. Russia is also the third-largest supplier of the imported uranium that fuels U.S. power plants, accounting for 16 percent of total imported uranium. The Russian state could weaponize its dominance in the nuclear energy supply chain to advance its geostrategic interests. During the 2014 Russia-Ukraine crisis, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin threatened to embargo nuclear fuel supplies to Ukraine." source

So relying on nuclear power for electricity means handing the keys of our power supply over to outside countries that are openly hostile to us.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 days ago (4 children)

TBF a nuclear incident is not like burning just one house down. It’s burning down the whole city and making it unusable for a decade or ten.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 days ago (2 children)

While 100% true for nuclear, the current state of burning fossil fuels is much MUCH worse.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Why not build it in a remote location then?

Dams can also produce a lot of hydroelectric power, and a catastrophic failure could also destroy an entire town or more. We just don't build dams upstream of a large town.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

The Chernobyl reactor's explosion had impacts all the way in West Europe.

I don't think you can be remote enough with this.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 3 days ago

That is an extreme over simplification of a very complicated subject, it's never that simple.

Having said that: yeah. It was stupid to stop using nuclear energy

[–] [email protected] 40 points 4 days ago (5 children)
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[–] [email protected] 46 points 4 days ago (11 children)

Anon is dumb. Anon forgets the nuclear waste. Anon also forgets that the plants for the magical rocks are extremely expensive. So much that energy won by these rocks is more expensive than wind energy and any other renewable.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 days ago (14 children)

Anon isn't dumb, just simple. Nuclear energy can be the best solution for certain situations. While renewables are the better choice in every way, they're effectiveness isn't equally distributed. There are places where there just isn't enough available renewable energy sources year round to supply the people living there. When energy storage and transmission methods are also not up to the task, nuclear becomes the best answer. It shouldn't be the first answer people look to but it is an answer. An expensive answer but sometimes the best one.

Also nuclear waste doesn't have to be a problem. If anyone was willing to cover the cost of burning it in a breeder reactor for power or burry it forever. It just is because it's expensive.

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[–] [email protected] 84 points 4 days ago (4 children)

Funny how nuclear power plants are taboo, but building thousands of nuclear warheads all over the globe is no issue.

[–] fsxylo 37 points 4 days ago (36 children)

Funny how building nuclear power plants that can only (if you have dipshits running them) kill a nearby city is taboo, but climate change that will kill everyone is acceptable to the moralists.

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[–] [email protected] 142 points 4 days ago (12 children)

Well, you see, the "Anti Magic Rock" Lobby has immense amount of power because of the money of the still lucrative "burning stuff and pollute everything" business.

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[–] [email protected] 119 points 4 days ago (6 children)

Burning down your house doesn't poison people thousands of years later, so it's not a perfect analogy.

Plus we have magic mirrors and magic fans that do the same thing as the magic rocks just way cheaper.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 4 days ago (5 children)

We’ve upgraded from burning our houses down to burning our atmosphere down which will absolutely poison humans for centuries to come. And since we now burn larger fires with black rocks, those release far more magic rock dust that poisons people than the magic rock water heaters do. Not to mention that fire has both killed more of us cave dwellers than magic rocks ever have (including the flying weaponry runes made from them) and have caused more ecological disasters, so fire is much worse.

Then we talk magic mirrors, they have evil rocks in them that get in our rivers and we don’t contain well. That aside, we show tradition to our ancestors by making much of them with slavery.

And the magic fans? The design is very human. They’d be a gift from the gods if only the spirit of the wind were always with us.

Summary: Magic rock still good, black rocks and black water make bad fire and hairless monkey make sick more.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago

"are we retarded?" yes, Trump got re-elected, which is proof most of us really are retarded. I'm pro nuclear, just not the form we widely use now, and not in the hands of retarded people. And again, most of us clearly are, and one of the worst is going to be president, again.

So I think the best thing we could do is start a nuclear war which will wipe out the human race. Nature will hopefully recover in about 100.000 to 1 million years. Hopefully dolphins will develop less retarded then us dumb monkeys.

[–] [email protected] 53 points 4 days ago (4 children)

You're right to reject the logic behind that because it's nonsense. Its not making sense to them because they still presume some kind of good faith when it come to these sorts of things.

The reason we haven't built more nuclear power stations is because oil, gas and coal companies will make less money, if we build more nuclear power stations.

They have the means, the motive and they have a well recorded history of being that cartoonishly villainous. Nothing else makes sense.

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (5 children)

Paraphrased but this is right.

And the people were taught to talk about the horrible nuclear accidents that killed a few but completely glance over the unimaginable millions perished in the name of oil, mustn't even mention the mass extinction events we launched with oil.

We even spread exaggerated bullshit about radiation mutation (wtf? thats superhero comic books fiction!!) and cancer rates (only one really), ignoring how much overwhelmingly more of the both we get from fossil fuel products.

We are like prehistoric people going extinct bcs of the tales how generations ago someone burned down their house so fire bad. Well, actually not like that - we are taking with us a lot of species & entire ecosystems too.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 4 days ago (8 children)

The problem isn't that they exploded one time. The problem is that that one explosion is still happening and likely will be for quite a while.

On the other hand, modern rock exploding plant designs are so much better that it's very unlikely to repeat itself, so there's that.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (6 children)

there are millions being poured into propaganda against using anything but fossil fuels, much of it stems from there. But i wonder if its better this way or the alternative way where we would use more nuclear energy but since there would be so much money to be made, the rich would use their money to make all safety regulations null. I wish we could just get rid of the source problem.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 days ago (6 children)

No it's about nuclear waste and where to store it, it's about how expensive it is to build a nuclear power plant (bc of regulations so they don't goo boom) and it's about how much you have to subsidize it to make the electricity it produces affordable at all. Economically it's just not worth it. Renewables are just WAY cheaper.

[–] [email protected] 59 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Funny how people think waste is why we don't use nuclear power.

You noticed how we're all fine breathing in poison and carcinogens? Still haven't banned burning fossil fuels.

It's a money problem and a PR problem

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Step 1: Get magic rocks.

Step 2: Now design the rest of the nuclear reactor.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago

He should, reason they ditched them for coal and gas was because big daddy Exxon and BP are pushing for it so they don't go out of bussiness. FUCK BP AND EXXON!

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