this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2023
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Nobody wants to maintain anything.
When you fail to maintain coal, gas, wind, or solar, it just stops working for the time being.
When you fail to maintain nuclear systems (be that poor understanding, lack of training, negligence, whatever), things go very bad very quickly.
This is before you get into wider issue's like waste management and environmental concerns.
Oh boy, another hot take from a well educated and informed source, I’m sure.
80% of what you think about nuclear is fossil fuel propaganda, 10% is because the soviets are dipshits, and the last 10% are reasonable concerns that redundant safety system upon redundant safety systems address.
While we're criticizing sources, do you have a source on those percentages?
This is the internet, where 90% of percentages are made up. Including this one.
Every safety system makes it more expensive to run and they're already not profitable, do you really think they'll just keep throwing money into it without cutting corners? One little economic downturn and we start getting problems...
Why even risk it when we could have far better systems from the start? Nuclear is nice in science fiction but when you actually have to plug the numbers into the real world it doesn't look good at all, especially not compared to wind, solar and tidal
Insulting people you disagree with is a rather poor way to win them over and/or create productive discourse.
Let me tell you about the "Asse" in Lower Saxony, Germany...
There is no way to safely store nuclear waste. It makes entire landscapes unusable, it lasts nearly forever and... the waste management is done by the state, not the company!
Nuclear power is some capitalist bullshit that outsources the waste and risks to the state. Only in that case its profitable in any way.
Solar and Wind are so much easier, solar extremely. If we could change out loads, focus everything on the day and simply not use that much at night, we wouldnt even need that much wind. Decentralized, local networks of Solar Power are the future.
sigh I posted this elsewhere in the thread, but it sounds like you might need to hear this too:
We would have had [the storage of nuclear waste] solved a long time ago if it weren't for a few factors.
The first is that a significant amount of radioactive waste is short-term. Like, literally inert after a couple years. The reason for that is because the vast majority of radioactive waste isn't actually inherently radioactive. Most of it has become radioactive as a result of coming into extended contact with highly radioactive sources. However my understanding is that despite being short-lived, you must dispose of it the same way you'd dispose of nuclear fuel rods. This is an issue that could be resolved by separating the short-lived stuff from the fuel rods and returning the short-lived stuff to a landfill once radioactivity drops to background radiation levels.
Factor 2: paranoia. We had a potential permanent waste site in the middle of nowhere, in an extremely geologically stable area in the US that has virtually no chance of flooding, however people thought that radioactive waste buried beneath a literal mountain would somehow still poison them. So Yucca Mountain was never fully completed. Afaik it's technically still on the table but it's been completely defunded thanks to NIMBYs, so instead nuclear waste is being stored across the US at various nuclear plants which are less geologically stable, have a higher chance for flooding, etc. This also hampers state and national efforts to clean up decommissioned plants and nuclear accidents. The waste has to go somewhere; if you have no where to safely store it, you can't clean it up.
Factor 3: if I understand correctly, we could hypothetically design nuclear plants with reactor chains that produce dead fuel rods (fuel rods that are completely spent). However, a lot of weapons-grade material would be produced during the intermediate stages. For sooome reason everyone freaks out when they hear you're making weapons-grade radioactive material, even if you promise you're just using it to generate power. I can't imagine why /s
The problems with nuclear storage are actually pretty easily solved, it's just that no one wants to because they'd rather pretend nuclear doesn't exist to begin with. I swear, we could have a one-time pill that makes you fully immune to every radiation-induced disease and people would still freak out about nuclear. Hell, there was an article I saw a month or two about how a bunch of researches discovered that turning used graphite control rods into diamonds resulted in low-power batteries that could be used for things that require a small amount of power over long durations (like SSDs or RAM). Iirc something about the diamond's structure meant it contained its own radiation as well, meaning it didn't need any radiation shielding either despite generating energy via radioactivity.
Also,
Maybe in Germany, but afaik in the US it's done by the company until it's time to move it to a permanent storage facility. Because permanent storage facilities don't exist in the US, that means the company has to take care of it indefinitely. I don't know about you, but I'd much rather have it in the indefinite care of the US government than in the indefinite care of a company.
You're partially right imo. Those would be great, but you're offloading cost on the individual, who are already being squeezed by capitalism. Additionally, iirc centralized wind and solar can cause a significant disruption to the local ecosystems. Are they preferable to coal and gas? Hell yeah! But you cannot convince me that miles of turbines and solar panels are less disruptive than a properly maintained nuclear plant.
Ideally we'd be building fusion plants at this point, but I feel like I haven't heard any major fusion-related news lately which makes me worried that funding might be falling off.
Really interesting things. Nuclear power is still non regenerative though. And I have no clear opinion on if its safe or not, just that its not really necessary.
No, costs for decentralized Solar would not be on the Individuals. Individuals are a Product of Capitalism, if you want to phrase it like this. They are consumers of electrical power and also now Producers. There should simply be an amount of solar power everyone can have, per capita for example. And for every person this power is then produced, on their roof or elswhere if its not fitting.
I have no clear plan, as consumers need to pay the consume. But for example having a tax-free lending (non native no idea how its called) would help
"Nuclear power is capitalist bullshit" is not the hot take I was expecting. And it's utter horseshit.
I can see nuclear power plants being a capitalists dream though. It's not like renewable energy sources, that can be owned by smaller groups of people. A nuclear power plant is owned by a corporation.
It's also quite capitalist in nature when you consider that it mostly burdens future generations for gains and profits now. And it exploits a non-renewable natural source for resources.
Yeah all those corporations in in the USSR owning all those nuclear plants...
The power generation isn't inherently biased to one economic system.
There are other ways of organising.
You just seem short sighted.
Ah yes, all those capitalist nuke plants they built in the Warsaw Pact countries...
Except there are ways to use the waste as fuel. So no, not some "capitalist bullshit". Just a problem with a solution.
Only the fuel can be reused up to a certain percentage. Most of the waste is just waste that you have to store somewhere.
Okay, so what is the waste mitigation for solar panels and windwill blades?
Currently they just get land filled. Or burnt.
Windmill blades are afaik way worse than solar panels. And again, as its capitalist, focussing on efficiency, price or even (who would expect?) planned obsolescence, these products may not be as repairable as possible.
For example, give up 2% efficiency but have the solar panel parts easily seperateable. Have every part modular, they may be bigger and heavier, but allow a circular economy.
It's bad there is not better recycling for some parts as of now, but there are plenty of companies actively working on new techniques regarding that. Short article on it here.
It's also not nuclear trash, so you can dispose of it way easier and cheaper.
We tend to forget the negligence humans are capable of.
But to be fair, abolishing nuclear was a trick to expand oil, gas and coal afaik. At least the funding came from there iirc.
True, but there were also concerns about the proliferation of nuclear technology and the risks of nuclear war.
If we could power the earth without nuclear or fossil fuels, that would be objectively better. But it just doesn't seem possible.
And trying to achieve an impossible goal while simultaneously burning even more carbon is irresponsible.
So we need to quickly build out the required nuclear capacity.
Yes, I agree that there are risks involved.
I think the risks with Fossil fuels are a lot higher:
So, the question between fossil and nuclear was never there. It was always nuclear and people that lobbied against it should go to jail for the rest of their lives for murder.
Now, I have no clue how far along we are. This (site)[https://wisevoter.com/country-rankings/renewable-energy-by-country/] says we‘re at 17% global coverage and some people argue that rn we should invest every dollar/euro in renewables instead of nuclear.
I can understand that argument. Not sure which makes more sence though.
Waste management and environmental concerns are already bad with coal power (even worse than nuclear power, in the sense that nuclear doesn’t launch waste into the air as far as I know, feel free to correct me if I’m wrong)
Although, yes, security has to be higher for nuclear power, but nuclear is not as bad as most people think
There is no solution for nuclear waste. It's buried underground it takes millennia to disperse the radiation. Don't think there is anything worse environmentally.
Can’t think of anything worse than radiactive material that has been solidified and shielded and buried far away from any living creatures, in the same way that tons of naturally-occurring radioactive material has for millennia?
I mean… It could be dispersed into the atmosphere… like what happens when we burn coal, which inevitably has some radioactive materials in it cuz we dug it up from deep underground.
Yeah, cos that radiation dispersal from fossil fuels, which is failing to turn us all into mutants since it is so low in concentration compared to nuclear waste, great comparison.
Best check your nuclear storage. It hasn't been doing well of late. B109 Hanford Nuclear Reservation leaking 1300 gallons a year. 200000 gallons already leaked from 67 tanks leaking.
75% of US nuclear sites have leaks.
Plenty more examples of your "safe" waste storage around.
yeah, so let's continue as we do until we can't !
Suppose I should clarify:
I like and support Nuclear power, I'm just listing one of the biggest reasons it's not hugely prevalent in our societies over other sources: The large risk involved.
In theory it's a fantastic energy source, but in practice I don't really trust those that manage it. Stuck between a rock and a hard place really.
New nuclear reactors are fully or nearly fully automated I think. If humans disapeared overnight, they can fully shut down by themselves. Also newer reactors are made so that you need to actively monitor the reaction to even keep it going unlike old reactors (that are not in use anymore I think) that had you monitoring it to prevent it blowing up.
Playing devils advocate here:
Automated systems are not maintenance or error free and the costs of mistakes are vast. It may have been designed to detect problems and shut itself down; but has it been maintained well enough to successfully do so? Maybe, maybe not.
Given how well maintained most public infrastructure is, I'm not very confident.
A shut down nuclear power plant is a problem though. Especially when you consider that many people here advocate for a massive increase in the number of nuclear power plants. A river going dry, a shore line that moves, future wars or pandemics that we can't even foresee now. All these are huge risks for nuclear energy. For really no reason since there are renewable energy sources that do not share these risks.
The overhype of nuclear power seems completely surreal to me.
Seriously. A finicky system which requires constant monitoring is a bad idea. People have problems maintaining their cars.
Simple, robust, and capable of absorbing neglect is better.
I wouldn't say that's true for gas. Without the right maintenance and/or shutdown procedures, refinery systems can reach dangerous pressures and literally explode.
Even shutting down a refinery is a very calculated process. If the refinery teams decided to walk away doing nothing, people would be in danger. The sheer amount of toxins released could kill quite a few, let alone explosions or fire.
I'm not a big fan of gas power, but it's surely deadly in the wrong hands.
My ~~first~~ second... paragraph was a bit of a simplification.
While that is true, a refinery explosion is far less impactful than a nuclear meltdown.
Don't get me wrong, both are really bad; but a refinery gone wrong doesn't leave huge amounts of land entirely unusable for decades.
Honestly I'd rather avoid both and go for energy sources like wind, solar, hydro, even geothermal. I think we could go a long way if the majority of homes had panels on the roof and some local storage for night time use.
I've said elsewhere; I like the concept of Nuclear energy, I just struggle to trust those that run it, particularly given how neglected much of our existing infrastructure is already.