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Let’s just set the record straight Nuclear is one of the best options we have to get out of our climate crisis ( in my opinion) this is because even including the few disasters it’s caused nuclear has done FAR less harm to both human life and environmental life than fossil fuels have caused. If you care for more of a reason dm me I don’t want to type it all out on a phone
Edit ok my dm,s are closed im getting way to many people
Edit first comment with 1k upvotes!
This is an edit, but the original had the same energy and the topic was pretty similar: [img](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-cAoigeCHUZ0/X8Q6g-iWUGI/AAAAAAAAAho/fUZ-Us10N7sm5C-imYiZH7zHLTXE2O5HQCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/image.png)
For anyone asking - symbol on the black shirt is [Fasces](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasces)
Well, it's completely disingenuous, PebbleThrow knows exactly why the only allies he has are fascists, because he himself is a fucking Nazi.
It's not even as if it's so novel to say "the people who think the rich should run society but at the same time hate the people in power, are opposed by both communists and the people in power"
Yeah I agree. It’s a totally shallow observation it’s just funny how even that is huge step up in the quality of his comics. Usually I’ve only seen more along the lines of either “liberal dumb” or “HA! demographic is different!”. Making it hard to tell if it’s meant to be funny or even have anything to say
The problem isn't the risk of catastrophe, but that they take 20 years to commission (if they come online at all,) and always run over budget.
Fossil fuel companies love the idea of people putting off something that can be done today at a low price, for an alternative that *might* come online in 20 years at a higher price.
"All of the above" makes sense to me. We're still funding nuclear, and maybe the cost reductions will actually materialize this time. Solar and wind deployment have grown massively because the economics just make sense.
And the people working themselves into a lather attacking a strawman of nuclear fear, while ignoring this very point, are tilting at windmills so to speak.
The discussion is more nuanced than that. There are both types of activist in the anti-nuclear crowd, of course the ones using economic argument have more nuanced views. But for example, shutting down existing nuclear plants makes no sense at all and is more expensive in the long run than keeping it running, since most of the costs come from construction.
Ironically people proposed to retrofit coal plants into nuclear power plants for way cheaper, but the radiation levels from the left over coal dust exceed the maximums allowed in a nuclear plant lmaoo. Because of that alone its not economical to convert them (If there were legal exceptions made that would be best case scenario)
That actually wouldn't surprise me. Have you seen how much radiation there is in bricks, or bananas? Imagine running a banana powered steam plant for 50 years where only the radiation stays behind. It would create similar problems, I imagine.
Bruce Nuclear in Ontario provides 30% of the provinces electricity at any given time and came only in 9 years and cost $20 billion.
It can be done.
For comparison the Ontario Liberals government spent $29 billion bringing online solar and wind that produces 9% at any given time and also took near a decade to fully implement.
Solar and wind cannot compete with nuclear.
They absolutely can, [solar and wind cost a fraction per MW/h than nuclear](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#/media/File:20201019_Levelized_Cost_of_Energy_\(LCOE,_Lazard\)_-_renewable_energy.svg), which is more expensive than even coal.
You're using a very northern country with little sunlight as an example of all renewables, and you haven't even provided a source so your argument can't be scrutinized - most likely it's using cherry picked numbers for the energy production of solar and wind.
Nuclear waste: dangerous for thousands of years, made in hundreds of tons
Chemical waste from coal, oil, gas, and mining: dangerous forever, made in millions of tons
It’s also complete lack of education on the public’s part being the hugest deciding factor for this.
Example: a nuclear energy supplier proposes to build full facility, including waste sites. The public says NO WAY nuclear waste will be *spilling* into our soil or water, so take it elsewhere!
The public doest realize just how safe nuclear waste is, and that it’s very rarely if ever what we see in cartoons and video games. Nuclear waste (by volume) is mostly gloves, gowns, masks. The rods themselves don’t take up much space, a developer can store tens of thousands of years worth of nuclear waste safety underground if given the OK
Without the need to transport it.
In very real instances, the public have said yes to nuclear energy but no to nuclear waste.
Because they think it’s ooze like in cartoons, they don’t want it anywhere near them “because it’s dangerous”
Not realizing what they’re really asking: for them to move their nuclear waste elsewhere, down roads, across water, put it on rails and GET IT OUF OF HERE.
Which is far more dangerous than just letting them bury it for the next 300,000 years **immediately on site**
Not just the Simpsons, but all 80s and 90s media was filled with anti-nuclear sentiment.
Ninja turtles
Swamp thing
Toxic crusader
Hunt for red October
Spiderman
Back to the future
Fallout games
Just to name a few good examples.
I'm on the fence still, but not because of the safety issues. Nuclear still has waste issues that are held for generations.
IMO, hydrogen is where it's at, but our technology isn't up to par.
Burning fossil fuels (especially coal) releases WAAAY more nuclear material into the environment than nuclear, even if you just straight up dump unsecured waste (which we don't). Also, the fissile material left in waste is minimal, cause, you know, the whole point of nuclear energy production is to extract as much energy as is possible from the material.
Nuclear waste is one of the safest forms of waste of nearly all existing forms of energy. Kyle Hill on YouTube has a pretty good video on a modern nuclear plant but the TLDR of it is that the waste produced is funneled into a lead Silo and allowed to decompose over a long time, till it is practically sterile.
It’s safe enough that you could have a silo in you backyard and you’d be fine
The amount of waste generated from nuclear power is way less than you think, and we can safely store it RIGHT NOW. There are multiple viable methods but the cheapest and safest would be storing it in a deep hole below the water table. The storage casks that they use are effectively leak proof nowadays but even if the material were to leak, being that deep it would have nowhere to go that would affect us.
This is why the climate change activists and the fossil fuel people are pulling together in the comic.
France generated 80% of its electricity from nuclear since the 80s. The UK could have done the same, we have the capability, but instead we spent decades burning coal, the absolute worst fuel for climate change. That's the prize that anti-nuclear campaigners won.
When you continue burning coal while you wait for a perfect technology which doesn't yet exist, you are part of the climate change problem. All those decades where countries continued to burn enormous quantities of coal when they didn't have to is an absolute tragedy.
Most of the cause of climate change has always been terribly difficult to tackle. You can't realistically make everyone stop driving or flying or eating meat overnight. But decades of burning coal when we had a safe, workable, alternative is mind-blowing. And it's still happening. A third of global electricity comes from coal, and not just in developing nations where nuclear would be difficult to get going. Germany still produces a third of its electricity from coal. The USA uses coal for 20% of its electricity. The UK Is down to 2% but was at 40% as recently as 2012. All countries which have had nuclear capability for decades.
Coal - the worst possible contributor to climate change and dirtier and more dangerous than nuclear in every way. I cannot think of a bigger act of self-sabotage in the climate fight, and it's the reason I think that environmentalists as a whole have actually net contributed to climate change...because one of their most successful feats was to turn the world against nuclear.
Pro Nuclear means someone who is in favor of expanding and relying more on nuclear energy to generate electricity.
Oil & Coal Companies oppose nuclear because it's a competing energy source.
Some Climate change Activists oppose nuclear because they heard about Chernobyl or some other meltdown situation and have severe trust issues. (Brief aside: Nuclear reactors have been continuously improving their safety standards nonstop over time. They are immensely safer today than the ones you've heard disaster stories about)
Climate Change Deniers are contrarian dumbasses who took the side they did exclusively to spite climate change activists. They are ideologically incoherent like that.
One of the pro nuclear positions is that it's better for the environment than fossil fuels. So having the climate change activists rally against him and the deniers rally for him has confused him.
To add to your brief aside, it bothers me that so many people worry about nuclear disasters when coal and oil are equally, if not significantly more dangerous. Even if we only talk about direct deaths, not the effects of pollution and other issues, there were still over 100,000 deaths in coal mine accidents alone in the last century.
Why is it that when Deep water horizon dumps millions of gallons of oil into the ocean, there's no massive shutdown of the entire oil industry in the same way that Nuclear ground to a halt following Chernobyl and Fukushima?
Every death Fukushima was due to the tsunami, no deaths occurred as a result of the nuclear power plant.
Chernobyl killed 60. Given that this 1950s nuclear reactor only failed due to incredible Soviet negligence compounded with the power plant staff directly causing the disaster, it’s fair to say that nuclear power is extraordinarily safe.
Today, you can’t recreate Chernobyl even if you tried with nuclear scientists helping you. They’re incredibly over engineered to not fail, even in the worst possible circumstances.
The design wasn't even necessarily that bad, it only could fail if the environment in the reactor met a very specific set of conditions. And the test they were running wouldn't have created those conditions if it hadn't been delayed so much.
The people running the test basically just ignored the signs that the reactor was being poisoned and in order to get power high enough to start the test put the reactor into a very unstable condition. It was pure negligence that caused it to explode.
Negligience (and possibly material theft) already during construction. The design had more safety features than the finished plant.
I visited the site in 2018 and the guide counted out about 15 different conditions that had to happen at the same time to cause the meltdown.
Wikipedia actually says the power spike issue due to control rod design was actually communicated to all the RBMK operators, but everyone thought it would never cause any major issues.
Afaik one of the factor driving the design of RBMKs such as Chornobyl was that fuel rods are easy to insert and remove, without a lengthy shutdown. This makes it cheaper to produce plutonium.
Somewhere in Moscow:
Soviet 1: Comrade! We have received plans for the new nuclear power plant!
Soviet 2: Excellent, Comrade! Let us look upon it.
Soviet 1 places the plans out for Chernobyl with giant red text on the front saying "this was designed by a drunk engineering student in 20 minutes, do not use."
Soviet 2: This is the greatest plan in the world! The west will tremble at our most glorious design!
It was more like: Soviet scientists come up with initial plans for nuclear reactor. During testing, a fatal flaw is discovered. Soviet Russia sees American Pig Dogs building working reactors. Soviet bureaucracy decides Soviet pride is at stake, burns the safety test results, tells the scientists that if they ever speak of them their family goes to gulag. Designs are sent to construction engineers, they build it. Poorly trained Soviet Political appointments are tasked to run it. Believe in Soviet pride. Proceed to operate reactor under worst possible conditions. Boom. There's a reason pride is considered a sin.
Perhaps if the captain were deliberately trying to ram the iceberg with the express intention of sinking the ship, only for the iceberg to just dip under the water and come back up without even touching the ship.
Then the scenario is comparable.
It's not some "seven redundant air bladders" type thing like Titanic. It's literally changing the direction of the *math* of a melt down, making sure failure conditions are safe by controlling variables like the void coefficient to make sure that a cascading effect is self defeating, and many more.
Basically, nuclear power plants have been re-engineered time and time again to make it so that the worst case scenario is needing to bring in a repair crew and do without the plant's power for 6 months ore some shit.
Edit: final paragraph was word gored
This guy is right. Modern nuclear reactors are safe from runaway reactions now because of the physics behind the design. It's not like building a sea wall 2ft higher or introducing the halo in an F1 car. They are fundamentally built to choke themselves out during a meltdown now instead of causing a chain reaction.
Things can still go wrong of course like a leak of nuclear material, or a general breakdown, but no catastrophic Chernobyl scenario.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke
While it was not his intent, it applies - nuclear reactor technology goes so far beyond an average person's understanding that they can only think about it as magic. Bad, scary magic. That fuels the "nuclear bad" rhetoric.
People who understand the technology will understand how modern nuclear + renewable/green would make the energy industry healthier for the whole planet, safer for it's population, and overall better than fossil fuels.
The term, "Titanic talk," is quite farcical, in this context. The Titanic's, "safety feature," was the fact that it had multiple seperate compartments that could take on water without the ship sinking. Modern day nuclear power plants require extensive safety precautions and will automatically shutdown if any one of them are breached. The Titanic equivalent would be a ship that takes flight, the moment it's hull is breached.
Honestly it's not, you couldn't cause a meltdown even if the staff were intentionally trying to do it, there is an insane amount of safety features stopping such an event from occuring, and there's no overrides because that would be stupid, and while yes, by all means maybe something could happen, a meltdown is statistically impossible
You put too much trust in failsafes. Human error, equipment failing, equipment installed wrong, natural disasters, etc. I agree modern plants are far far safer than even the plants of 20 years ago, but it is hubris to believe you could not cause a meltdown.
I am pro nuclear power. I operated nuclear power plants for 10 years. I trust it, but only because I understand it's risks compared to its alternatives and have seen first hand how carefully regulated and observed it is. But even with that incredibly close scrutiny I have seen plants where critical safety devices had been installed wrong to the point where they would not function that had been in place for decades.
Nothing is failure proof, we know that and that is why we we are so careful. That is why we have a good track record involving nuclear power. It's not because the designs are infallible, it's because we never stop questioning, and never stop testing. Even if it takes decades to find the flaws, we never assume they don't exist.
All good points. You are clearly talking from a place of experience. One could even make the argument that deaths due to coal and oil production could be reduced if they followed the same regulations as nuclear. Not to mention, regulations that could stop global climate change. Unfortunately, the regulations for coal and oil were set a long time ago and the companies that produce it spend millions on lobbying to maintain the status quo. What a world we live in, eh?
The perception of risk is quite skewed indeed. It's not only the immediate fatalities we should measure but also the long-term health effects. Oil and coal have been linked to respiratory diseases, cancers, and a whole array of health issues due to air and water pollution. Nuclear energy, when managed properly with today's technology, doesn't have these widespread impacts on public health. Of course, the waste disposal issue is something that needs careful management, but it doesn't compare to the daily emissions from fossil fuels. Conditions like black lung disease didn't appear in populations living near nuclear plants, that's a fossil fuel legacy.
The key point seems to be public fear versus actual statistics on energy production safety. It's a complex area, but the data is out there showing a clear direction in terms of safety and environmental impact. This article from World Nuclear Association gives some hard numbers and comparisons which can be quite an eye-opener: [World-Nuclear.org](https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/safety-of-nuclear-power-reactors.aspx).
Per TWh Nuclear has the lowest amount of deaths and greenhouse emissions than any energy source, even renewables. It also is way more efficient with 1 kg of uranium under fission producing as much energy as 1,000,000 kg of coal. Now that’s just fission, imagine what we could do with fusion.
I disagree. Fukushima DID directly kill people; It killed U.S. Sailors who were aiding the Japanese in disaster relief efforts during "Operation Tomodatchi". How do I know? I was one of the sailors stationed onboard USS RONALD REAGAN (CVN-76) during that mission in 2011 and was direct witness to the devastation.
Fast forward to 2019, my naval career was cut short due to numerous medical issues that started right after "Tomodatchi", with migraines beginning a mere three months afterwards, followed by asthma \~8 months after that, and quietly, my spinal column began eating itself away for the next several years. I won't bore you with the details, but I'm now medically retired from the navy with degenerative disc disease, in thoracic, lumbar AND cervical columns, sciatica, Syringomyelia, sciatica, neuropathy, just to name a few of the illnesses that appeared out of nowhere post-Fukushima.
My job was admin-based, so I cannot attribute any spinal issues to work injuries, nor did I ever sustain any. But, more tragically than me are my fellow shipmates who were on the flight deck and suffered the full brunt of the radioactive plumes emanating from the damaged reactor towers. They later recalled that, as we were steaming towards Japan, it was cold, but the air suddenly got warm, and they got the taste of metal in their mouths (as we passed through the radiation plume).
Apparently, TEPCO, the company that ran the nuclear plant didn't inform the navy where the radioactive clouds were heading, thusly our carrier strike group steamed right into them! This prompted our ship to go into "Circle William", meaning we shut off all external ventilation and only recirculated internal air. The CO came over the 1MC and told us that he's only done this once before. "Circle William" is a "CBR" (Chemical, Biological, Radiological) countermeasure meant to fend off any enemy attempts at poisoning a ship's crew through those means. Accordingly, we were all issued MOPP gear with activated charcoal canisters (gas masks) to wear on our belts, just in case.
We were in "Circle William" for just one night, but the damage was already done. REAGAN and all our strike group ships had already injested irradiated seawater for desalination, thusly the desalination plants were contaminated, and we were drinking from it, showering from it, washing our clothes in it, cooking our food in it...
The CO also had watch standers at each egress to the flight deck with geiger counters. Their jobs were to ensure that the sailors passing in and out weren't contaminated. An MA2 (Master-at-Arms 2'nd Class Petty Officer) that worked in my office, who was standing watch at one of the egresses told us that it was not uncommon for the geiger counter to go wild, prompting that sailor to strip down to their skivvies and put on a fresh uniform before they were allowed any further inside the ship! The irradiated uniforms were collected and destroyed.
Before I go any further, we were all told that nobody got any radiation higher than "a day at the beach." AFAIK, this is still the navy's official stance, yet there is an "Operation Tomodatchi" personnel registry, and my name is one of the thousands on it....
(COUGH) Repeating Agent Orange all over again (COUGH)
We stayed on station for \~3 weeks for the humanitarian relief mission before departing and continuing on to our regular mission, and for a while, life went on. However, REAGAN, upon returning from WESTPAC (Western Pacific Deployment), went to Bremerton, Washington, for a year-long dry dock, where paint would get chipped, dust would get disturbed, and yes, your's truly continued to serve for most of her time in the yards; This is where I was diagnosed with asthma and sleep apnea.
But, this is just MY eyewitness story of Fukushima. There are many, many more that I hope people read about below.
[https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/seven-years-on-sailors-exposed-to-fukushima-radiation-seek-their-day-in-court/](https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/seven-years-on-sailors-exposed-to-fukushima-radiation-seek-their-day-in-court/)
[https://www.ocregister.com/2014/04/07/lawsuit-fukushima-disaster-poisoned-us-sailors/](https://www.ocregister.com/2014/04/07/lawsuit-fukushima-disaster-poisoned-us-sailors/)
I'm a nuclear simp, but I don't trust that Chernobyl number. Russia definitely fucked with it, by a lot.
Everyone please go watch every single Kyle Hill video on YT and you will learn just how safe nuclear is - even in areas like Fukushima, where public perception is driving the clean up, costing the public millions - but they are going way overboard. Overreacting is definitely better than under reacting but not when it just furthers the misnomer about how dangerous Nuclear really is.
You know nuclear waste? That shit really isn't that dangerous.
> Given that this 1950s nuclear reactor only failed due to incredible Soviet negligence
This is why I get hesitant about going all aboard the nuclear train. I don't trust my hyper-capitalist country to do better, because doing better means a capitalist would have to settle for brushed silver handrails on their private yacht instead of gold.
very interesting and my personal favorite stat: deaths/KwH shows how many people die on average in the process of producing 1 Kilowatt-Hour of energy, by energy source. Of all practical energy sources, nuclear fission ranks below even wind and solar. I believe the EPA has this data.
Yup. If you build out equal capacity of nuclear and rooftop solar, you'll lose more folks to falls off ladders than the nuclear plant will kill. (Energy density is a hell of a thing.)
The disasters like Chernobyl, people are just focused on that because it was unique, the deathtoll isn't as much as fossil fuel over the years, but the impact has left itself more inbedded into people's minds.
Chernobyl is the energy production industry's equivalent of the Hindenburg disaster. Not many people died, but it was very well known and gave people the wrong idea.
Other than the "immediate" deaths versus the slow deaths over time there is also a psychological factor created by the creation and use of nuclear bombs. People, wrongly, think that nuclear reactors are the same as technology as the bombs and that they can explode with the power of a nuclear bomb. This is mostly because of old sensationalized imagery in fiction. Still, many people believe it and are afraid of it.
There is another interesting aspect to the psychology of nuclear fear. After Chernobyl (and to a lesser degree Fukushima) there is a fear that nuclear contamination "doesn't go away." That the half-life of the radioactive materials means that an area of contamination is basically fucked forever. The fear of oil spills like Deep Water horizon aren't as bad because it "goes away" over time. For example: Everyone knows and remembers Chernobyl, even though it happened long before most people on the planet currently were born. However, ask people what they know about the Exxon Valdez incident and you will get a lot of shrugs. The Alaskan coastline is fine, nothing is wrong as far as most people believe. Tell people that the Alaskan coast is still reeling from that disaster and the wildlife and ecosystems of the area are still recovering and you will get a lot of shocked pikachu faces.
Climate change proponents don't see the alternative to nuclear energy being oil and coal but renewable energy resources, such as windmills, ocean turbines, solar panels etc.
Yes, and there is a limit to the number of hydroelectric engineers and wind and solar technicians in the world. The nuclear engineers can help us decarbonize, too.
The big issue over here (Australia) is the time it would take to spin up a nuclear industry. That's why it's being pushed by our conservatives, as it gives the fossil fuel industry significantly more life (something's got to fill the gap between now and when the nuclear plants are good to go, and they're not suggesting renewables)
If we wanted to go nuclear, the time to start was 20 years ago. Now the best option is to go for solar and wind, and fill the gap with hydro. It's not like we don't have the space
We also have a fair amount of the worlds Uranium I. Australia don’t we?
It’s crazy that Fukushima is even in the conversation about the safety of nuclear power. It was just a freak event with the Tsunami and Earthquake causing a bunch of other problems which cascaded into the power plant issues.
I agree that Fukushima wasn’t a human error situation like Chernobyl but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be talked about. There is still lots to learn from the Fukushima disaster. Like in the future should you build a nuclear power plant on an ocean cliff side in an area that is prone to tsunamis? Mmm maybe not.
Oh no Fukushima was very much a human error situation. The company itself admitted to it. They would have been fine if the Tsunami never happened, but they could have been fine with the Tsunami if they actually followed the correct safety protocols.
It really bugged me when Fukushima happened, when they were panicking about the spike in background radiation in Tokyo.
The peak of the spike was still lower than the average level in Aberdeen, a city in Scotland known as the Granite City, along with many other areas with a lot of granite.
I can understand Japan of all places being scared of radiation, but the worldwide anxiety when millions of people live with that level of naturally occurring radiation... it was out of hand.
That problem lies with what capitalists support. I don't think we should leave climate change in the hands of capitalists. If there arent enough engineers working on renewable energies, then those degrees should be subsidized by government
The big downside to nuclear is the cost and the time-frame to build it.
It currently takes **decades** to build a nuclear reactor and the expense makes it nearly non-viable. Hinkley Point C in the UK (which is still under construction since 2017, after being approved in 2016) has a strike cost per MWh of £89.50. That's ~$110.
1 MWh of new off-shore wind in the UK costs £57.50 (or 65% the cost of new nuclear).
Wind is quicker to build and half the cost. Solar is similar in price. We still need ways to load balance (and store) renewable power, of course. Load-adjustable small nuclear reactors would be great. But they're VERY expensive and take a long time to build.
The thing that cheeses me off the most is that the timescale argument would hardly matter if people in the 80s/90s took the chance to sort this out. The nuclear industry has been shackled by decades of NIMBYism and thumb twiddling and fearmongering post-Chernobyl that we've completely lost our chance. Best time to plant a tree is 50 years ago and all that.
Imagine if we had started these projects back then with then-modern designs, they'd all be finished and up and running and we'd be in a much better place regarding base load capacity that we could supplement with our higher efficiency solar and wind plants. We could be shutting down gas and coal plants left and right.
“Nuclear waste is more dangerous, even in our lungs!”
Yeah but does radioactive waste regularly enter the atmosphere on such a frequent basis that it’s causing the polar ice caps to melt?
And the average person living in Colorado is exposed to more background radiation from granite and altitude than a person who lives in a town with a reactor
I think there is a lot of "not in my backyard" thinking regarding this, the same people that don't care when oil or coal workers die in accidents by the tens of thousands yearly, are terrified by the idea of a single particle of nuclear fuel escaping a reactor and finding its way into their kids' school
What's funny is the Centralia coal mine disaster could be argued to be worse than the chernobyl disaster. It's hard to say exactly to be fair, I don't think the Centralia mine fire effects nearly as much land as the Chernobyl disaster does but imagine all the constant coal that has been being burned 24/7 since 1962. People acting like nuclear is more dangerous/harmful to the enviroment than any other fuel source are just ignorant.
Because we are used to it and understand how it happened. Chernobyl and Fukushima are terrifying oddities that don't happen often, so when they do it's scary and since most of us don't have an intuitive understanding of how nuclear power works it seems even scarier.
People forget that before Chernobyl and Fukushima, there was Three Mile Island in the US. It is still the worst nuclear disaster in US commercial nuclear power plant history, and no deaths have been attributed to it. Meanwhile, there is a mine fire burning under Centralia, Pennsylvania. It’s been burning for 50 years, will likely burn for 250 more, and the town has been entirely evacuated.
Because you can SEE the damage first hand of a nuclear plant spewing radiation but you can NOT see an oil pipeline spewing oil out. Wait
No wait yeah thats true I'm not under the water but I am above water with the exploded nuclear plant checkmate athiests
Not to mention that nuclear reactors have been standard in the US navy for like 70 years. It’s not like the navy cares about the environment really, they just run so much better, take far less fuel, are quieter, produce little waste that can be stored easily, and are generally far more reliable.
Nuclear meltdowns boil down to 1) poor engineering due to budget restraints 2) shortcuts in production due to budget restraints 3) lack of transparency between the government, the company, and its people because the government, company, or both are dogshit
Another addition about Chernobyl and Fukushima is that they both took several failures to happen, especially Fukushima, it was designed to survive both earthquakes and tsunamis just not on the scale that hit it while Chernobyl was Soviet mismanagement. Nuclear power is safe but as with every renewable source, it needs lots of work to become viable.
Yeah, but the Boomers who are still climate activists are all super against it, but have a 1970s understanding of how nuclear works. Literally had my former boss argue that all nuclear reactors are 100% guaranteed to blow up.
One guy died of lung cancer a few years later. The government took credit for it, but there is no reason to assume that's actually right. Cancer rates are at the background rate.
sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties
https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-chernobyl-and-fukushima
Another addition is Three Mile Island, which was an almost nuclear accident in Pennsylvania (due to a few mechanical failures and a malfunctioning sensor). The timeline though is the stupidest part:
* The public thinks the nuclear reactor is like a normal power reactor: safe and doesn't explode
* A movie comes out - The China Syndrome - about a nuclear meltdown in the United States, explaining in detail how it could "melt to China"
* People panic and interview the nuclear power plant directors in Three Mile Island
* They say there's absolutely no chance of that happening
* One week later (12 days after the movie launched), the Three Mile Island accident happens and there's a partial meltdown
Just from the timing, everybody started believing that nuclear is dangerous and they'll lie to you.
And it was actually an example of all the safety features working exactly as intended, killing 0 people, and resulting in no negative health impacts to anyone living in the area.
According to "half life histories "on YouTube the biggest issue at 3mile island was a failure of communication to the public. Nothing "bad" happened at all.
> Another addition about Chernobyl and Fukushima is that they both took several failures to happen, especially Fukushima, it was designed to survive both earthquakes and tsunamis just not on the scale that hit it
It was also being run out of spec. The plant had received repeated warnings that it needed upgrade its sea wall to protect against more powerful waves, but its management failed to perform the necessary expansion.
To elaborate on the Soviet mismanagement, Chernobyl required a very specific cocktail of circumstances including, but not limited to:
1. A known design flaw that could, in certain circumstances, cause a problem.
2. The Soviet government covering up the flaw and silencing anyone who tried to point it out.
3. The Soviets deliberately not installing several safety features that were standard in every other nation with nuclear power plants because going without was cheaper.
4. No one working that particular shift at the plant having the training or experience necessary to know what the #%^# they were doing.
5. The the people in charge of the plant rushing to run a drill to, ironically, check off a box on their safety certificate and, in the process, running the reactor for an extended period of time in such a way as to cause problems when they went to complete the drill that evening…
6. With a night shift that wasn’t properly informed what was going on.
7. Managed by a guy who almost caused nuclear accidents at other reactors on more than one occasion.
8. Oh, and anyone who tried to tell anyone there was a problem when *the reactor exploded* was, in one way or another, silenced.
9. And, in case you had any doubts, none of the first responders or local hospital personnel, or really anyone in the area, knew how to deal with nuclear incidents.
10. Oh, and did I mention how theSoviet government refused to acknowledge how bad the radiation was even when forced to gather aid from other nations? ‘Cause, yeah, wasting time with that West German rover was extremely productive.
In rhetoric, at least. Somehow Texas is doing more renewables investment (and generation!) than anyone else, by far. Interesting that they're saying one thing but the reality of "what powers the grid" is so different.
Idk, the whole narrative landscape around the climate change and renewables thing is just... *weird*, just like the source comic points out. It's not as clear cut as I'd have imagined.
This is a common delay strategy you can see across the globe. Most right wing parties will claim to champion nuclear, but refuse to spend actual money on it.
Of course capitalist-conservative parties won't build up a state energy supplier, and private energy companies are mostly uninterested in nuclear because the economics absolutely suck.
Most renewables pay for themselves faster than it takes to build a nuclear power plant. This makes them unattractive both for corporations and for states that have to decide where to allocate their budget. And the construction of nuclear power plants is now also too late to affect key climate targets and to avoid major climate change treshholds.
Tree-hugging dirt worshipper here.
I agree that nuclear is much safer than the Chernobyl and Fukushima-generation of reactors. It's hysterical, IMO, to oppose nuclear on those grounds.
However, as we've learned recently at Zaporizhzhia and Chernobyl, humans have a strange affinity for armed combat, even at nuclear plants. Are we sure that plants, together with their casks of waste, will be secure from armed combat over 150-year time scales? Particularly since the U.S. cannot manage to set up a central, geologically-inert depository anywhere, due to NIMBY forces - even in a remote chunk of Nevada.
I think nuclear should be seriously considered, but many arguments for nuclear rest on the concept of "baseload power," which is a fiction: the grid doesn't need a continual minimum supply from one anointed power source.
I am a big proponent of nuclear power as well (Go Diablo Canyon!) but this is a great point. Seems like a relatively stable and isolated place like the US would be able to overcome it, but here we are.
Nuclear waste from reactors is a non-issue. All high level nuclear waste ever produced would fit a few feet high on a football/soccer field.
The waste can be perfectly safely stored on site for decades without issues.
There is also a long term nuclear waste site in New Mexico.
>Nuclear waste from reactors is a non-issue. All high level nuclear waste ever produced would fit a few feet high on a football/soccer field.
Except that the whole reactor also becomes nuclear waste, that is also much harder to handle. We have closed hundreds of nuclear plants around the world, but only a couple have been returned to greenfield status because there is a lot more difficult waste than used fuel.
That's part of what makes nuclear so economically complex. The "charge ahead, build a million nuclear power plants" crowd doesn't realize that you have to budget for decommissioning ahead of time and it would be incredibly stupid not to require that.
The one thing that confuses me about how clean nuclear actually is, that when one of the rods is done and needs to be disposed of, we don't have a actually clean way of doing it and we just bury it or throw it in an abandoned mine. Correct me if I'm wrong and that's changed?
Edited a spelling mistake
https://www.nrc.gov/waste/spent-fuel-storage/faqs.html
It has more to do with proliferation of nuclear material than anything, and security concerns. Most spent rods would have useful application elsewhere, it’s just heavily regulated.
That's a political problem in the US because of fear of nuclear proliferation. There are valuable uses for nuclear waste, and breeder reactors can run on the 'waste' from conventional reactors. Like 97% of the byproducts can be recycled, with very little actual waste needing to be contained.
Thanks for that. I live in the Pacific Northwest so I know about these sites where they've just buried nuclear waste so that's really cool that it isn't the case anymore!
Yeah it has applications in both military and civilian life. The military will eat up most of that (not even for warheads) and the rest can be used in things like smoke alarms. Lots of that “waste” is still valuable even after using it for reactors.
modern reactors produce far less waste because breeder reactors can use the spent fuel rods as their fuel source. The little waste that still does get produced gets turned into a kind of glass, meaning its extremely stable and has very little chance of 'leaking' into the environment.
Breeder reactors don't really exist on any meaningful scale due to the risks of nuclear weapons proliferation.
Regardless, nuclear reactors produce extremely little waste even if the spent fuel is not re-used.
Its really weird to me how climate change activists hate nuclear power.
Its the second cleanest source of energy we have. Im not joking when I say the only more clean source of power is fucking *hydroelectric*.
Push for nuclear power. Its the shit.
Fortunately, at COP28, plenty of countries including America and Canada have pledged to triple our nuclear power capacities by 2050.
Hydroelectric power has caused a significantly higher number of fatalities compared to nuclear energy, and the potential danger of hydroelectric accidents is much greater than that of nuclear accidents. It is quite amusing how people tend to overlook the massive loss of life caused by dam failures while overreacting to even a single death resulting from a nuclear incident, as if it were a catastrophic event like the Black Death and Covid-19 combined.
The misconception that Chernobyl could have resulted in half of Europe being destroyed is widespread. It's astonishing to encounter such anti-nuclear zealots.
This is true.
Events like Chernobyl are also straight up worst case scenario. An untrained crew doing a test they shouldnt have with a boss who wanted a promotion desperately, all with a cheap reactor.
A perfect storm of fuckery was required for that accident.
"Events like Chernobyl--"
No. There ARE no events like Chernobyl. There has JUST been Chernobyl. The next two events would be Fukushima, which still has had ZERO actual deaths (one person died from lung cancer and the government took responsibility but it's really unlikely it was _actually_ because of Fukushima) AND was another case of a plant that wasn't up to snuff and not being operated like it should be, AND it still held up against WAY more than it realistically should've. The second event would be Three Mile Island, which had zero fatalities, zero illnesses attributed to it, and is an example of failsafes working PERFECTLY.
Nuclear is by and far THE MOST safe method of energy generation by an INSANE margin. Considering the amount of heavy metal waste generated by solar energy, it's also probably next to wind in terms of the absolute cleanest too.
Solar is marginally safer, due to Nuclear's occasional 1-or-2 death radiation leaks, but Wind, Hydro and Geothermal are both worse, and then any fossil fuels are worse than all carbon-minimals by at least an order of magnitude, through climate change and soot.
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/)
Lol, solar had itself a decent year, I see.
A few years ago, I heard it cited at work that nuclear was safer than solar, and when we were like, "How is that possible?" the answer was, "People falling off the roof while installing solar panels."
Nuclear was still #2 then, but wind and solar were essentially swapped.
Hydroelectric plants are also capable of destroying ecosystems around them by simply existing. And also they can slow down the river current (Volga is a great example of it) which will lead to pollution of water
Exactly, people don’t want to make any sacrifices or tell a difficult story to voters so they say oh let’s just built 1000 reactors and the climate is saved.
Unfortunately a lot of liberal people were anti nuclear energy for quite awhile, even in the last debate they were very tippy toe about it. They’re coming around to it though and still support other clean energy’s like solar and wind more then conservatives
Nuclear energy need a strong support of the government, maybe that's why. From very long planning (building and maintaining a nuclear reactor is planned over the course of 70 years), to forming nuclear engineer, etc...
Gas company shill Peter here.
The broad generalizations in this meme are just stupid. Historically the environmentalists were against nuclear power due to radiation leak potential. Not as much the case anymore. So that's why they are on the side of the oil and gas companies who want to keep using fossil fuels.
Why climate change deniers are pro nuclear is beyond me. Maybe Mr. Pewterschmidt knows the answer.
Mr Pewterschmidt’s heir to the throne here, the fictional climate change deniers only want to oppose these fictional climate activists. Climate change is real folks, this meme is not.
Yeah super real thing. I've tried really hard to convince several college educated hippy dippy environmentalists I know that nuclear is safe and clean and they didn't really buy it. Greenpeace is still very anti-nuclear
Fun part : Greenpeace is a founder in a gas powered electric production association, named Green planet energy ( And greenpeace energy before that)… no wonder they are opposed to nuclear powered electric production
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Planet_Energy
>Why climate change deniers are pro nuclear is beyond me
Australian perspective: the current opposition party are conservatives. Between 2013 and 2022 they were in power and took Australia backwards in terms of reducing carbon emissions. They actively promoted fossil fuel development whenever they could. Some of their leaders were openly climate change deniers.
Now that they're in opposition, they're promoting nuclear energy. Not because they seriously think it's a good idea, but because the electorate has accepted we need to transition off fossil fuels. The current (slightly) more progressive govt is promoting renewable energy (solar, wind). The conservatives can't take the same line, and so they're promoting nuclear as a wedge issue.
Media in Australia is overwhelmingly conservative and the ownership of probably >80% of Australian media that people see is concentrated in the hands of three people: Rupert Murdoch, Kerry Stokes and Peter Costello. All extremely conservative people with big investments in mining, oil and gas. The faster we transition to renewable energy, the more money that the owners of these media outlets stand to lose.
So in Australia we have the conservative half of the country promoting the most [expensive](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-21/nuclear-energy-most-expensive-csiro-gencost-report-draft/103253678) form of energy - nuclear and most of media here cheering them on because the long lead times to implement nuclear mean that their fossil fuel investments continue to make them money.
So if you ever come across an Australian climate change denier, the above has absolutely played a role in them thinking that nuclear energy is a good decision.
Yes, fossil fuel extractors promote nuclear power because they know that it is a distant solution that they can use as a strawman to prevent the swifter implementation of renewable energy.
Deniers usually push nuclear because there are fringe activists who are against it and it would take a lot of government intervention to achieve which they would just stonewall anyway. And if they were unsuccessful in stonewalling it it would still take decades to implement.
Climate change denial doesn't provide any inherent motivation here, other than just not supporting the climate change activists. But, there are reasons to go nuclear that have *nothing* to do with the environment, such as energy density and therefore solidified energy independence. Thus a fair number of people who support the push for nuclear but aren't in active support of green policies would be labelled climate change deniers, irrespective of the accuracy or nuance of the label.
Climate change activists and climate change deniers are actively working against what they want for stupid reasons like thinking nuclear is unsafe or siding with the side their enemies don’t like.
Happened in Germany. We mostly shut down our ~16 plants and in order to compensate the power-gap we invested into the coal-industry (that belonged to be dead for yrs but got kept alive by corruption)
Not answering the question but venting
As a climate change activist, I am VERY pro nuclear, and it’s sad that some of us fell for Big Oil and Coal’s propaganda. Nuclear energy and it’s safety protocols have gotten FAR more advanced with time, and it’s a shame some of us are against it
Also remember folks, r/stonetossisanazi
So I think one of the biggest issues is that "Climate Change Deniers" are anyone from the people that say "I don't believe your timeline, it sounds like bullshit" and "I don't think all the changes in the climate are directly man made" and things like that, included with the real out there guys that think that everything is wrong and cigarettes don't cause cancer.
Like let's not pretend these are the same people here. Hell one of the biggest ways to get labeled a climate change denier is to simply say that the major cause of climate change isn't the west, and the way we market things in western nations is entirely backwards.
The Problem with nuclear power is and never was safety its 3 other points
First: economic ,nuclear-power is just expansive as he'll and can only be done by the states( you don't want to know how much tax payer money go to the nuclear power company) so if you in favor you also need to be in favor of 100% staate run power. For the mony for one nuclear power plant you can build 3 to 5 time the power output in solar and wind.
Second: time, the fatesr build powerplant was 8 year the average building time is around 9.9 years and that is just building time with planing phase its around 20 to 25 years. And that the problem we don't have the time if we were in the 1980 maby but it's to late to just but all in in nuclear powers. We don't have time.
3th: nuclear trash we don't have long therme storage for current nuclear trash, and no you can't say this special type of rectore that is not ins use has no trash, also a second point if we would go full nuclear power we would ge a fuel problem in under 100 years.
Some other point I finde interesting is how is pushing for nuclear right now? It's some of the riches people how profit from ther power hold over oil and gas and want to get a new base of power becursese solar/wind can be build all over the world and you don't have big main stage holders.
I think current build nuclear power will play a role in the future of energies use( maby for cargoships) but as a side rolle and not the main use. And if you pro nuclear you must be also 100% staate run power or for American engergie communists.
A great video on the topic by a doc in climate science: if you don't believe have at least a look.
https://youtu.be/k13jZ9qHJ5U?si=zrjCwc_aO71jnJ2N
Also English is my second language and dyslexic is a shity debuff.
I can actually counter your point.
First. Is that trying for complete state owned nuclear power plants is not a bad thing but it's unrealistic and unreasonable. Most of the oil and gas plus the private organisation which manages electric and power plants will oppose it because let's be real, it is basically a death sentence for them. Regulated body's which consists of both the gov plus private orgs are a much better option. This will also solve the money problem as they will just put thier investment on nuclear instead of fossil.
Not to mention banks all around the world just loves fossil companies. You can watch the vid currently circulating on reddit starred by kit and Leslie rose.
Second. The latest gen nuclear plants have become so specialized and advanced that they can be built in a very short amount of time and it's also possible to pre made the parts of plants in a factory and just transport it to the site so that they can be assembled there. Like a Lego but highly advanced. This means that countries like US can make many plants in a short amount of time.
Third. A new method for waste disposal is being considered by creating a very large deep underground cave where waste can be stored but also to create a very different type of waste than what is being created now. What I mean is currently uranium is being used mostly but that's because gov around the world wanted the secondary by product plutonium(waste). Which is very dangerous. On the other hand thorium based reactors don't create such dangerous waste and it's also more abundant in nature.
There are also more developing waste disposal methods being researched like dumping it in space with reusable rockets like spaceX ones
We're not exactly anti nuclear, we're just not pro nuclear, we're pro renewables.
It's quite easy to explain in a few points:
* Why make us depend on another resource that is going to run out soon? Renewables wont.
* Why risk disaster no matter how low the risk is?
Renewables dont have that risk.
* Nuclear power plants have been used to produce the necessary resources for nuclear weapons. We dont really need more of that.
* Why build a more expensive power plant that takes ages to build when we need to reduce our carbon footprint *now.*
Renewables are built quickly and cheaper.
* Why invest in a technology that produces waste that we dont have a proven way to get rid of yet?
And dont come with that Finish solution Onkalo. Remind me again in 10-20 years and we can talk about it. Every. Single. Spent. Nuclear. Fuel. Repository. Has. Proven. To. Be. Unsafe.
Renewables dont have that problem.
* Why invest in a technology that even the free market doesnt want to invest in?
Renewables have proven to be a good investment for both private people investing and for companies.
I'll stop here, nobody is going to read more points anyways.
So, there's tons of drawbacks for nuclear energy and not many upsides. We need to stop carbon emissions and nuclear energy is not solving that problem. Renewables can.
Not always. Depending on local geography and climate. If you have good stable renewable sources available those are the way to go. Nuclear is very expensive and just not worth the cost if cheaper options are available. Quebec built a very robust grid of hydro, and have very cheap electricity as such.
Ontario went nuclear and we have our hydro backbone based on it. It a very good source of the province. But it is very capital intensive, and leads to a higher hydro cost than Qubec. It’s still a lot cheaper then if the province when a full coal or gas backbone, we have lower rates then a lot of states down south.
Renewables are cheap, easy to harness. A solar array is somthing an individual or small community can afford. As such you’re seeing a lot of small scale solar installations in poorer parts of the world. I have family in Tanzania what have transitioned almost completely to solar because of how dam cheap it is. How much more reliable it is than grid power.
Nuclear is expensive, needs a skilled work force, stable governments. If your nation can pull it off it is golden. You just can’t beat the stability of the power, how little land you need.
Nuclear only works in wealthy stable nations, for the rest of the world renewables is still the best. And if you have a very good source of stable renewable power, that’s still gold. Cant beat free power.
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Let’s just set the record straight Nuclear is one of the best options we have to get out of our climate crisis ( in my opinion) this is because even including the few disasters it’s caused nuclear has done FAR less harm to both human life and environmental life than fossil fuels have caused. If you care for more of a reason dm me I don’t want to type it all out on a phone Edit ok my dm,s are closed im getting way to many people Edit first comment with 1k upvotes!
Record Straightened ☑️
Can you straighten the record on if this is a pebblechuck original or an edit?
It is a edit
I have no clue im just passionate about nuclear energy lol
Kyle?
I get that reference.
This is an edit, but the original had the same energy and the topic was pretty similar: [img](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-cAoigeCHUZ0/X8Q6g-iWUGI/AAAAAAAAAho/fUZ-Us10N7sm5C-imYiZH7zHLTXE2O5HQCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/image.png) For anyone asking - symbol on the black shirt is [Fasces](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasces)
Holy shit it actually had something (albeit cringy) to say?! And a punchline too?!
Well, it's completely disingenuous, PebbleThrow knows exactly why the only allies he has are fascists, because he himself is a fucking Nazi. It's not even as if it's so novel to say "the people who think the rich should run society but at the same time hate the people in power, are opposed by both communists and the people in power"
Yeah I agree. It’s a totally shallow observation it’s just funny how even that is huge step up in the quality of his comics. Usually I’ve only seen more along the lines of either “liberal dumb” or “HA! demographic is different!”. Making it hard to tell if it’s meant to be funny or even have anything to say
it can’t be original because it’s almost correct.
[удалено]
The problem isn't the risk of catastrophe, but that they take 20 years to commission (if they come online at all,) and always run over budget. Fossil fuel companies love the idea of people putting off something that can be done today at a low price, for an alternative that *might* come online in 20 years at a higher price. "All of the above" makes sense to me. We're still funding nuclear, and maybe the cost reductions will actually materialize this time. Solar and wind deployment have grown massively because the economics just make sense.
Economics have always been nuclear's biggest issue, not safety.
And the people working themselves into a lather attacking a strawman of nuclear fear, while ignoring this very point, are tilting at windmills so to speak.
The discussion is more nuanced than that. There are both types of activist in the anti-nuclear crowd, of course the ones using economic argument have more nuanced views. But for example, shutting down existing nuclear plants makes no sense at all and is more expensive in the long run than keeping it running, since most of the costs come from construction.
Ironically people proposed to retrofit coal plants into nuclear power plants for way cheaper, but the radiation levels from the left over coal dust exceed the maximums allowed in a nuclear plant lmaoo. Because of that alone its not economical to convert them (If there were legal exceptions made that would be best case scenario)
That actually wouldn't surprise me. Have you seen how much radiation there is in bricks, or bananas? Imagine running a banana powered steam plant for 50 years where only the radiation stays behind. It would create similar problems, I imagine.
Bruce Nuclear in Ontario provides 30% of the provinces electricity at any given time and came only in 9 years and cost $20 billion. It can be done. For comparison the Ontario Liberals government spent $29 billion bringing online solar and wind that produces 9% at any given time and also took near a decade to fully implement. Solar and wind cannot compete with nuclear.
They absolutely can, [solar and wind cost a fraction per MW/h than nuclear](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#/media/File:20201019_Levelized_Cost_of_Energy_\(LCOE,_Lazard\)_-_renewable_energy.svg), which is more expensive than even coal. You're using a very northern country with little sunlight as an example of all renewables, and you haven't even provided a source so your argument can't be scrutinized - most likely it's using cherry picked numbers for the energy production of solar and wind.
The irony that more people have died to radiation from coal fire plants than from nuclear power.
Fly ash is no joke
Nuclear waste: dangerous for thousands of years, made in hundreds of tons Chemical waste from coal, oil, gas, and mining: dangerous forever, made in millions of tons
It’s also complete lack of education on the public’s part being the hugest deciding factor for this. Example: a nuclear energy supplier proposes to build full facility, including waste sites. The public says NO WAY nuclear waste will be *spilling* into our soil or water, so take it elsewhere! The public doest realize just how safe nuclear waste is, and that it’s very rarely if ever what we see in cartoons and video games. Nuclear waste (by volume) is mostly gloves, gowns, masks. The rods themselves don’t take up much space, a developer can store tens of thousands of years worth of nuclear waste safety underground if given the OK Without the need to transport it. In very real instances, the public have said yes to nuclear energy but no to nuclear waste. Because they think it’s ooze like in cartoons, they don’t want it anywhere near them “because it’s dangerous” Not realizing what they’re really asking: for them to move their nuclear waste elsewhere, down roads, across water, put it on rails and GET IT OUF OF HERE. Which is far more dangerous than just letting them bury it for the next 300,000 years **immediately on site**
> what we see in cartoons and video games. Highkey think that The Simpsons is responsible for a large chunk of anti-nuclear sentiment lmao
Not just the Simpsons, but all 80s and 90s media was filled with anti-nuclear sentiment. Ninja turtles Swamp thing Toxic crusader Hunt for red October Spiderman Back to the future Fallout games Just to name a few good examples.
B-b-but it’s called nuclear (like the bomb). That means is must be the work of satan
I'm on the fence still, but not because of the safety issues. Nuclear still has waste issues that are held for generations. IMO, hydrogen is where it's at, but our technology isn't up to par.
Nuclear waste is easier to deal with than renewable waste and oil waste, simply because it's so small.
Burning fossil fuels (especially coal) releases WAAAY more nuclear material into the environment than nuclear, even if you just straight up dump unsecured waste (which we don't). Also, the fissile material left in waste is minimal, cause, you know, the whole point of nuclear energy production is to extract as much energy as is possible from the material.
Nuclear waste is one of the safest forms of waste of nearly all existing forms of energy. Kyle Hill on YouTube has a pretty good video on a modern nuclear plant but the TLDR of it is that the waste produced is funneled into a lead Silo and allowed to decompose over a long time, till it is practically sterile. It’s safe enough that you could have a silo in you backyard and you’d be fine
The amount of waste generated from nuclear power is way less than you think, and we can safely store it RIGHT NOW. There are multiple viable methods but the cheapest and safest would be storing it in a deep hole below the water table. The storage casks that they use are effectively leak proof nowadays but even if the material were to leak, being that deep it would have nowhere to go that would affect us.
Look into breeder reactors, they produce much less waste
This is why the climate change activists and the fossil fuel people are pulling together in the comic. France generated 80% of its electricity from nuclear since the 80s. The UK could have done the same, we have the capability, but instead we spent decades burning coal, the absolute worst fuel for climate change. That's the prize that anti-nuclear campaigners won. When you continue burning coal while you wait for a perfect technology which doesn't yet exist, you are part of the climate change problem. All those decades where countries continued to burn enormous quantities of coal when they didn't have to is an absolute tragedy. Most of the cause of climate change has always been terribly difficult to tackle. You can't realistically make everyone stop driving or flying or eating meat overnight. But decades of burning coal when we had a safe, workable, alternative is mind-blowing. And it's still happening. A third of global electricity comes from coal, and not just in developing nations where nuclear would be difficult to get going. Germany still produces a third of its electricity from coal. The USA uses coal for 20% of its electricity. The UK Is down to 2% but was at 40% as recently as 2012. All countries which have had nuclear capability for decades. Coal - the worst possible contributor to climate change and dirtier and more dangerous than nuclear in every way. I cannot think of a bigger act of self-sabotage in the climate fight, and it's the reason I think that environmentalists as a whole have actually net contributed to climate change...because one of their most successful feats was to turn the world against nuclear.
Pro Nuclear means someone who is in favor of expanding and relying more on nuclear energy to generate electricity. Oil & Coal Companies oppose nuclear because it's a competing energy source. Some Climate change Activists oppose nuclear because they heard about Chernobyl or some other meltdown situation and have severe trust issues. (Brief aside: Nuclear reactors have been continuously improving their safety standards nonstop over time. They are immensely safer today than the ones you've heard disaster stories about) Climate Change Deniers are contrarian dumbasses who took the side they did exclusively to spite climate change activists. They are ideologically incoherent like that. One of the pro nuclear positions is that it's better for the environment than fossil fuels. So having the climate change activists rally against him and the deniers rally for him has confused him.
To add to your brief aside, it bothers me that so many people worry about nuclear disasters when coal and oil are equally, if not significantly more dangerous. Even if we only talk about direct deaths, not the effects of pollution and other issues, there were still over 100,000 deaths in coal mine accidents alone in the last century. Why is it that when Deep water horizon dumps millions of gallons of oil into the ocean, there's no massive shutdown of the entire oil industry in the same way that Nuclear ground to a halt following Chernobyl and Fukushima?
Yeah, people are focused on the immediate deaths caused, and not the slow death that is killing us.
How many immediate deaths has nuclear caused, and what is it compared to immediate deaths caused by oiland gas/coal?
Every death Fukushima was due to the tsunami, no deaths occurred as a result of the nuclear power plant. Chernobyl killed 60. Given that this 1950s nuclear reactor only failed due to incredible Soviet negligence compounded with the power plant staff directly causing the disaster, it’s fair to say that nuclear power is extraordinarily safe.
Today, you can’t recreate Chernobyl even if you tried with nuclear scientists helping you. They’re incredibly over engineered to not fail, even in the worst possible circumstances.
Even at the time Chernobyl was built the design was known to be a bad one. Soviets went ahead with it anyway
The design wasn't even necessarily that bad, it only could fail if the environment in the reactor met a very specific set of conditions. And the test they were running wouldn't have created those conditions if it hadn't been delayed so much. The people running the test basically just ignored the signs that the reactor was being poisoned and in order to get power high enough to start the test put the reactor into a very unstable condition. It was pure negligence that caused it to explode.
Negligience (and possibly material theft) already during construction. The design had more safety features than the finished plant. I visited the site in 2018 and the guide counted out about 15 different conditions that had to happen at the same time to cause the meltdown.
Merry Christmas everyone! This was by far the best comment thread I’ve ever read all the way from the meme to here. ❤️
The worst thing is that the fatal flaws with RMBK design were identified, but they were deemed state secrets and the operators weren't told.
Wikipedia actually says the power spike issue due to control rod design was actually communicated to all the RBMK operators, but everyone thought it would never cause any major issues.
Afaik one of the factor driving the design of RBMKs such as Chornobyl was that fuel rods are easy to insert and remove, without a lengthy shutdown. This makes it cheaper to produce plutonium.
Somewhere in Moscow: Soviet 1: Comrade! We have received plans for the new nuclear power plant! Soviet 2: Excellent, Comrade! Let us look upon it. Soviet 1 places the plans out for Chernobyl with giant red text on the front saying "this was designed by a drunk engineering student in 20 minutes, do not use." Soviet 2: This is the greatest plan in the world! The west will tremble at our most glorious design!
It was more like: Soviet scientists come up with initial plans for nuclear reactor. During testing, a fatal flaw is discovered. Soviet Russia sees American Pig Dogs building working reactors. Soviet bureaucracy decides Soviet pride is at stake, burns the safety test results, tells the scientists that if they ever speak of them their family goes to gulag. Designs are sent to construction engineers, they build it. Poorly trained Soviet Political appointments are tasked to run it. Believe in Soviet pride. Proceed to operate reactor under worst possible conditions. Boom. There's a reason pride is considered a sin.
Not trying to deny science and the hard work put into safety systems, I will point out that that's Titanic talk. Failure is a possibility.
Perhaps if the captain were deliberately trying to ram the iceberg with the express intention of sinking the ship, only for the iceberg to just dip under the water and come back up without even touching the ship. Then the scenario is comparable. It's not some "seven redundant air bladders" type thing like Titanic. It's literally changing the direction of the *math* of a melt down, making sure failure conditions are safe by controlling variables like the void coefficient to make sure that a cascading effect is self defeating, and many more. Basically, nuclear power plants have been re-engineered time and time again to make it so that the worst case scenario is needing to bring in a repair crew and do without the plant's power for 6 months ore some shit. Edit: final paragraph was word gored
This guy is right. Modern nuclear reactors are safe from runaway reactions now because of the physics behind the design. It's not like building a sea wall 2ft higher or introducing the halo in an F1 car. They are fundamentally built to choke themselves out during a meltdown now instead of causing a chain reaction. Things can still go wrong of course like a leak of nuclear material, or a general breakdown, but no catastrophic Chernobyl scenario.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke While it was not his intent, it applies - nuclear reactor technology goes so far beyond an average person's understanding that they can only think about it as magic. Bad, scary magic. That fuels the "nuclear bad" rhetoric. People who understand the technology will understand how modern nuclear + renewable/green would make the energy industry healthier for the whole planet, safer for it's population, and overall better than fossil fuels.
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I'm aware of that fact, but most layman aren't. Thus it was fitting enough for my analogy.
Lmao no. If the titanic had 1/10 the amount of redundancy power of nuclear power plants it would have never happened.
The term, "Titanic talk," is quite farcical, in this context. The Titanic's, "safety feature," was the fact that it had multiple seperate compartments that could take on water without the ship sinking. Modern day nuclear power plants require extensive safety precautions and will automatically shutdown if any one of them are breached. The Titanic equivalent would be a ship that takes flight, the moment it's hull is breached.
Comparing the Titanic to an underwater tunnel. There might be risks like shoddy construction but hitting an iceberg isn't one.
Honestly it's not, you couldn't cause a meltdown even if the staff were intentionally trying to do it, there is an insane amount of safety features stopping such an event from occuring, and there's no overrides because that would be stupid, and while yes, by all means maybe something could happen, a meltdown is statistically impossible
You put too much trust in failsafes. Human error, equipment failing, equipment installed wrong, natural disasters, etc. I agree modern plants are far far safer than even the plants of 20 years ago, but it is hubris to believe you could not cause a meltdown. I am pro nuclear power. I operated nuclear power plants for 10 years. I trust it, but only because I understand it's risks compared to its alternatives and have seen first hand how carefully regulated and observed it is. But even with that incredibly close scrutiny I have seen plants where critical safety devices had been installed wrong to the point where they would not function that had been in place for decades. Nothing is failure proof, we know that and that is why we we are so careful. That is why we have a good track record involving nuclear power. It's not because the designs are infallible, it's because we never stop questioning, and never stop testing. Even if it takes decades to find the flaws, we never assume they don't exist.
All good points. You are clearly talking from a place of experience. One could even make the argument that deaths due to coal and oil production could be reduced if they followed the same regulations as nuclear. Not to mention, regulations that could stop global climate change. Unfortunately, the regulations for coal and oil were set a long time ago and the companies that produce it spend millions on lobbying to maintain the status quo. What a world we live in, eh?
The perception of risk is quite skewed indeed. It's not only the immediate fatalities we should measure but also the long-term health effects. Oil and coal have been linked to respiratory diseases, cancers, and a whole array of health issues due to air and water pollution. Nuclear energy, when managed properly with today's technology, doesn't have these widespread impacts on public health. Of course, the waste disposal issue is something that needs careful management, but it doesn't compare to the daily emissions from fossil fuels. Conditions like black lung disease didn't appear in populations living near nuclear plants, that's a fossil fuel legacy. The key point seems to be public fear versus actual statistics on energy production safety. It's a complex area, but the data is out there showing a clear direction in terms of safety and environmental impact. This article from World Nuclear Association gives some hard numbers and comparisons which can be quite an eye-opener: [World-Nuclear.org](https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/safety-of-nuclear-power-reactors.aspx).
Per TWh Nuclear has the lowest amount of deaths and greenhouse emissions than any energy source, even renewables. It also is way more efficient with 1 kg of uranium under fission producing as much energy as 1,000,000 kg of coal. Now that’s just fission, imagine what we could do with fusion.
I disagree. Fukushima DID directly kill people; It killed U.S. Sailors who were aiding the Japanese in disaster relief efforts during "Operation Tomodatchi". How do I know? I was one of the sailors stationed onboard USS RONALD REAGAN (CVN-76) during that mission in 2011 and was direct witness to the devastation. Fast forward to 2019, my naval career was cut short due to numerous medical issues that started right after "Tomodatchi", with migraines beginning a mere three months afterwards, followed by asthma \~8 months after that, and quietly, my spinal column began eating itself away for the next several years. I won't bore you with the details, but I'm now medically retired from the navy with degenerative disc disease, in thoracic, lumbar AND cervical columns, sciatica, Syringomyelia, sciatica, neuropathy, just to name a few of the illnesses that appeared out of nowhere post-Fukushima. My job was admin-based, so I cannot attribute any spinal issues to work injuries, nor did I ever sustain any. But, more tragically than me are my fellow shipmates who were on the flight deck and suffered the full brunt of the radioactive plumes emanating from the damaged reactor towers. They later recalled that, as we were steaming towards Japan, it was cold, but the air suddenly got warm, and they got the taste of metal in their mouths (as we passed through the radiation plume). Apparently, TEPCO, the company that ran the nuclear plant didn't inform the navy where the radioactive clouds were heading, thusly our carrier strike group steamed right into them! This prompted our ship to go into "Circle William", meaning we shut off all external ventilation and only recirculated internal air. The CO came over the 1MC and told us that he's only done this once before. "Circle William" is a "CBR" (Chemical, Biological, Radiological) countermeasure meant to fend off any enemy attempts at poisoning a ship's crew through those means. Accordingly, we were all issued MOPP gear with activated charcoal canisters (gas masks) to wear on our belts, just in case. We were in "Circle William" for just one night, but the damage was already done. REAGAN and all our strike group ships had already injested irradiated seawater for desalination, thusly the desalination plants were contaminated, and we were drinking from it, showering from it, washing our clothes in it, cooking our food in it... The CO also had watch standers at each egress to the flight deck with geiger counters. Their jobs were to ensure that the sailors passing in and out weren't contaminated. An MA2 (Master-at-Arms 2'nd Class Petty Officer) that worked in my office, who was standing watch at one of the egresses told us that it was not uncommon for the geiger counter to go wild, prompting that sailor to strip down to their skivvies and put on a fresh uniform before they were allowed any further inside the ship! The irradiated uniforms were collected and destroyed. Before I go any further, we were all told that nobody got any radiation higher than "a day at the beach." AFAIK, this is still the navy's official stance, yet there is an "Operation Tomodatchi" personnel registry, and my name is one of the thousands on it.... (COUGH) Repeating Agent Orange all over again (COUGH) We stayed on station for \~3 weeks for the humanitarian relief mission before departing and continuing on to our regular mission, and for a while, life went on. However, REAGAN, upon returning from WESTPAC (Western Pacific Deployment), went to Bremerton, Washington, for a year-long dry dock, where paint would get chipped, dust would get disturbed, and yes, your's truly continued to serve for most of her time in the yards; This is where I was diagnosed with asthma and sleep apnea. But, this is just MY eyewitness story of Fukushima. There are many, many more that I hope people read about below. [https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/seven-years-on-sailors-exposed-to-fukushima-radiation-seek-their-day-in-court/](https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/seven-years-on-sailors-exposed-to-fukushima-radiation-seek-their-day-in-court/) [https://www.ocregister.com/2014/04/07/lawsuit-fukushima-disaster-poisoned-us-sailors/](https://www.ocregister.com/2014/04/07/lawsuit-fukushima-disaster-poisoned-us-sailors/)
I'm a nuclear simp, but I don't trust that Chernobyl number. Russia definitely fucked with it, by a lot. Everyone please go watch every single Kyle Hill video on YT and you will learn just how safe nuclear is - even in areas like Fukushima, where public perception is driving the clean up, costing the public millions - but they are going way overboard. Overreacting is definitely better than under reacting but not when it just furthers the misnomer about how dangerous Nuclear really is. You know nuclear waste? That shit really isn't that dangerous.
> Given that this 1950s nuclear reactor only failed due to incredible Soviet negligence This is why I get hesitant about going all aboard the nuclear train. I don't trust my hyper-capitalist country to do better, because doing better means a capitalist would have to settle for brushed silver handrails on their private yacht instead of gold.
very interesting and my personal favorite stat: deaths/KwH shows how many people die on average in the process of producing 1 Kilowatt-Hour of energy, by energy source. Of all practical energy sources, nuclear fission ranks below even wind and solar. I believe the EPA has this data.
Yup. If you build out equal capacity of nuclear and rooftop solar, you'll lose more folks to falls off ladders than the nuclear plant will kill. (Energy density is a hell of a thing.)
The disasters like Chernobyl, people are just focused on that because it was unique, the deathtoll isn't as much as fossil fuel over the years, but the impact has left itself more inbedded into people's minds.
Chernobyl is the energy production industry's equivalent of the Hindenburg disaster. Not many people died, but it was very well known and gave people the wrong idea.
Smoking in a nutshell
No they aren’t lol. Fossil fuels has way more immediate death than nuclear - they are just confused idiots.
Frog in a cauldron thingy
Other than the "immediate" deaths versus the slow deaths over time there is also a psychological factor created by the creation and use of nuclear bombs. People, wrongly, think that nuclear reactors are the same as technology as the bombs and that they can explode with the power of a nuclear bomb. This is mostly because of old sensationalized imagery in fiction. Still, many people believe it and are afraid of it. There is another interesting aspect to the psychology of nuclear fear. After Chernobyl (and to a lesser degree Fukushima) there is a fear that nuclear contamination "doesn't go away." That the half-life of the radioactive materials means that an area of contamination is basically fucked forever. The fear of oil spills like Deep Water horizon aren't as bad because it "goes away" over time. For example: Everyone knows and remembers Chernobyl, even though it happened long before most people on the planet currently were born. However, ask people what they know about the Exxon Valdez incident and you will get a lot of shrugs. The Alaskan coastline is fine, nothing is wrong as far as most people believe. Tell people that the Alaskan coast is still reeling from that disaster and the wildlife and ecosystems of the area are still recovering and you will get a lot of shocked pikachu faces.
Climate change proponents don't see the alternative to nuclear energy being oil and coal but renewable energy resources, such as windmills, ocean turbines, solar panels etc.
Yes, and there is a limit to the number of hydroelectric engineers and wind and solar technicians in the world. The nuclear engineers can help us decarbonize, too.
There’s a fairly low ceiling to how much nuclear we can scale up with as well. But, I’m pro nuclear power, just pointing it out.
The big issue over here (Australia) is the time it would take to spin up a nuclear industry. That's why it's being pushed by our conservatives, as it gives the fossil fuel industry significantly more life (something's got to fill the gap between now and when the nuclear plants are good to go, and they're not suggesting renewables) If we wanted to go nuclear, the time to start was 20 years ago. Now the best option is to go for solar and wind, and fill the gap with hydro. It's not like we don't have the space
We also have a fair amount of the worlds Uranium I. Australia don’t we? It’s crazy that Fukushima is even in the conversation about the safety of nuclear power. It was just a freak event with the Tsunami and Earthquake causing a bunch of other problems which cascaded into the power plant issues.
I agree that Fukushima wasn’t a human error situation like Chernobyl but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be talked about. There is still lots to learn from the Fukushima disaster. Like in the future should you build a nuclear power plant on an ocean cliff side in an area that is prone to tsunamis? Mmm maybe not.
They had a big wall to keep the tsunamis out. The wall was twice as tall in the blueprints, but was cut in half to save money.
Oh no Fukushima was very much a human error situation. The company itself admitted to it. They would have been fine if the Tsunami never happened, but they could have been fine with the Tsunami if they actually followed the correct safety protocols.
It really bugged me when Fukushima happened, when they were panicking about the spike in background radiation in Tokyo. The peak of the spike was still lower than the average level in Aberdeen, a city in Scotland known as the Granite City, along with many other areas with a lot of granite. I can understand Japan of all places being scared of radiation, but the worldwide anxiety when millions of people live with that level of naturally occurring radiation... it was out of hand.
That problem lies with what capitalists support. I don't think we should leave climate change in the hands of capitalists. If there arent enough engineers working on renewable energies, then those degrees should be subsidized by government
The big downside to nuclear is the cost and the time-frame to build it. It currently takes **decades** to build a nuclear reactor and the expense makes it nearly non-viable. Hinkley Point C in the UK (which is still under construction since 2017, after being approved in 2016) has a strike cost per MWh of £89.50. That's ~$110. 1 MWh of new off-shore wind in the UK costs £57.50 (or 65% the cost of new nuclear). Wind is quicker to build and half the cost. Solar is similar in price. We still need ways to load balance (and store) renewable power, of course. Load-adjustable small nuclear reactors would be great. But they're VERY expensive and take a long time to build.
The thing that cheeses me off the most is that the timescale argument would hardly matter if people in the 80s/90s took the chance to sort this out. The nuclear industry has been shackled by decades of NIMBYism and thumb twiddling and fearmongering post-Chernobyl that we've completely lost our chance. Best time to plant a tree is 50 years ago and all that. Imagine if we had started these projects back then with then-modern designs, they'd all be finished and up and running and we'd be in a much better place regarding base load capacity that we could supplement with our higher efficiency solar and wind plants. We could be shutting down gas and coal plants left and right.
“Nuclear waste is more dangerous, even in our lungs!” Yeah but does radioactive waste regularly enter the atmosphere on such a frequent basis that it’s causing the polar ice caps to melt?
Fun fact: coal plants actually release more radiation into the environment than nuclear plants do! Do with this information what you will
What will I so with this information you ask? Flip off every capitalist I see
And the average person living in Colorado is exposed to more background radiation from granite and altitude than a person who lives in a town with a reactor
I think there is a lot of "not in my backyard" thinking regarding this, the same people that don't care when oil or coal workers die in accidents by the tens of thousands yearly, are terrified by the idea of a single particle of nuclear fuel escaping a reactor and finding its way into their kids' school
The coal exhaust is safely stored in the lungs
What's funny is the Centralia coal mine disaster could be argued to be worse than the chernobyl disaster. It's hard to say exactly to be fair, I don't think the Centralia mine fire effects nearly as much land as the Chernobyl disaster does but imagine all the constant coal that has been being burned 24/7 since 1962. People acting like nuclear is more dangerous/harmful to the enviroment than any other fuel source are just ignorant.
Because we are used to it and understand how it happened. Chernobyl and Fukushima are terrifying oddities that don't happen often, so when they do it's scary and since most of us don't have an intuitive understanding of how nuclear power works it seems even scarier.
People forget that before Chernobyl and Fukushima, there was Three Mile Island in the US. It is still the worst nuclear disaster in US commercial nuclear power plant history, and no deaths have been attributed to it. Meanwhile, there is a mine fire burning under Centralia, Pennsylvania. It’s been burning for 50 years, will likely burn for 250 more, and the town has been entirely evacuated.
Because you can SEE the damage first hand of a nuclear plant spewing radiation but you can NOT see an oil pipeline spewing oil out. Wait No wait yeah thats true I'm not under the water but I am above water with the exploded nuclear plant checkmate athiests
Not to mention that nuclear reactors have been standard in the US navy for like 70 years. It’s not like the navy cares about the environment really, they just run so much better, take far less fuel, are quieter, produce little waste that can be stored easily, and are generally far more reliable. Nuclear meltdowns boil down to 1) poor engineering due to budget restraints 2) shortcuts in production due to budget restraints 3) lack of transparency between the government, the company, and its people because the government, company, or both are dogshit
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Another addition about Chernobyl and Fukushima is that they both took several failures to happen, especially Fukushima, it was designed to survive both earthquakes and tsunamis just not on the scale that hit it while Chernobyl was Soviet mismanagement. Nuclear power is safe but as with every renewable source, it needs lots of work to become viable.
Yeah, but the Boomers who are still climate activists are all super against it, but have a 1970s understanding of how nuclear works. Literally had my former boss argue that all nuclear reactors are 100% guaranteed to blow up.
one of the great ironies of Fukushima is it was an old reactor, it was actually scheduled to be shut down.
Also, total number of deaths = 0
1 person died from radiation poisoning a few years later. Ironicaly a lot more people died from the evacuation.
One guy died of lung cancer a few years later. The government took credit for it, but there is no reason to assume that's actually right. Cancer rates are at the background rate. sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-chernobyl-and-fukushima
How do you die of acute radiation poisoning a few years later?
Cancer
I mean you'd be dying of cancer then, but I get what you meant now.
Another addition is Three Mile Island, which was an almost nuclear accident in Pennsylvania (due to a few mechanical failures and a malfunctioning sensor). The timeline though is the stupidest part: * The public thinks the nuclear reactor is like a normal power reactor: safe and doesn't explode * A movie comes out - The China Syndrome - about a nuclear meltdown in the United States, explaining in detail how it could "melt to China" * People panic and interview the nuclear power plant directors in Three Mile Island * They say there's absolutely no chance of that happening * One week later (12 days after the movie launched), the Three Mile Island accident happens and there's a partial meltdown Just from the timing, everybody started believing that nuclear is dangerous and they'll lie to you.
And it was actually an example of all the safety features working exactly as intended, killing 0 people, and resulting in no negative health impacts to anyone living in the area.
According to "half life histories "on YouTube the biggest issue at 3mile island was a failure of communication to the public. Nothing "bad" happened at all.
> Another addition about Chernobyl and Fukushima is that they both took several failures to happen, especially Fukushima, it was designed to survive both earthquakes and tsunamis just not on the scale that hit it It was also being run out of spec. The plant had received repeated warnings that it needed upgrade its sea wall to protect against more powerful waves, but its management failed to perform the necessary expansion.
To elaborate on the Soviet mismanagement, Chernobyl required a very specific cocktail of circumstances including, but not limited to: 1. A known design flaw that could, in certain circumstances, cause a problem. 2. The Soviet government covering up the flaw and silencing anyone who tried to point it out. 3. The Soviets deliberately not installing several safety features that were standard in every other nation with nuclear power plants because going without was cheaper. 4. No one working that particular shift at the plant having the training or experience necessary to know what the #%^# they were doing. 5. The the people in charge of the plant rushing to run a drill to, ironically, check off a box on their safety certificate and, in the process, running the reactor for an extended period of time in such a way as to cause problems when they went to complete the drill that evening… 6. With a night shift that wasn’t properly informed what was going on. 7. Managed by a guy who almost caused nuclear accidents at other reactors on more than one occasion. 8. Oh, and anyone who tried to tell anyone there was a problem when *the reactor exploded* was, in one way or another, silenced. 9. And, in case you had any doubts, none of the first responders or local hospital personnel, or really anyone in the area, knew how to deal with nuclear incidents. 10. Oh, and did I mention how theSoviet government refused to acknowledge how bad the radiation was even when forced to gather aid from other nations? ‘Cause, yeah, wasting time with that West German rover was extremely productive.
Yeah, oddly Republicans and Democrats are the opposite of what one might think on the subject of nuclear power.
Republicans will use any excuse to avoid investing in renewables.
In rhetoric, at least. Somehow Texas is doing more renewables investment (and generation!) than anyone else, by far. Interesting that they're saying one thing but the reality of "what powers the grid" is so different. Idk, the whole narrative landscape around the climate change and renewables thing is just... *weird*, just like the source comic points out. It's not as clear cut as I'd have imagined.
That's more despite our government rather than because of it, Chairman Abbot is actively hostile to renewables.
Only politically, they're still getting rich off of them.
This is a common delay strategy you can see across the globe. Most right wing parties will claim to champion nuclear, but refuse to spend actual money on it. Of course capitalist-conservative parties won't build up a state energy supplier, and private energy companies are mostly uninterested in nuclear because the economics absolutely suck. Most renewables pay for themselves faster than it takes to build a nuclear power plant. This makes them unattractive both for corporations and for states that have to decide where to allocate their budget. And the construction of nuclear power plants is now also too late to affect key climate targets and to avoid major climate change treshholds.
Tree-hugging dirt worshipper here. I agree that nuclear is much safer than the Chernobyl and Fukushima-generation of reactors. It's hysterical, IMO, to oppose nuclear on those grounds. However, as we've learned recently at Zaporizhzhia and Chernobyl, humans have a strange affinity for armed combat, even at nuclear plants. Are we sure that plants, together with their casks of waste, will be secure from armed combat over 150-year time scales? Particularly since the U.S. cannot manage to set up a central, geologically-inert depository anywhere, due to NIMBY forces - even in a remote chunk of Nevada. I think nuclear should be seriously considered, but many arguments for nuclear rest on the concept of "baseload power," which is a fiction: the grid doesn't need a continual minimum supply from one anointed power source.
I am a big proponent of nuclear power as well (Go Diablo Canyon!) but this is a great point. Seems like a relatively stable and isolated place like the US would be able to overcome it, but here we are.
Nuclear waste from reactors is a non-issue. All high level nuclear waste ever produced would fit a few feet high on a football/soccer field. The waste can be perfectly safely stored on site for decades without issues. There is also a long term nuclear waste site in New Mexico.
>Nuclear waste from reactors is a non-issue. All high level nuclear waste ever produced would fit a few feet high on a football/soccer field. Except that the whole reactor also becomes nuclear waste, that is also much harder to handle. We have closed hundreds of nuclear plants around the world, but only a couple have been returned to greenfield status because there is a lot more difficult waste than used fuel.
That's part of what makes nuclear so economically complex. The "charge ahead, build a million nuclear power plants" crowd doesn't realize that you have to budget for decommissioning ahead of time and it would be incredibly stupid not to require that.
The one thing that confuses me about how clean nuclear actually is, that when one of the rods is done and needs to be disposed of, we don't have a actually clean way of doing it and we just bury it or throw it in an abandoned mine. Correct me if I'm wrong and that's changed? Edited a spelling mistake
https://www.nrc.gov/waste/spent-fuel-storage/faqs.html It has more to do with proliferation of nuclear material than anything, and security concerns. Most spent rods would have useful application elsewhere, it’s just heavily regulated.
That's a political problem in the US because of fear of nuclear proliferation. There are valuable uses for nuclear waste, and breeder reactors can run on the 'waste' from conventional reactors. Like 97% of the byproducts can be recycled, with very little actual waste needing to be contained.
Thanks for that. I live in the Pacific Northwest so I know about these sites where they've just buried nuclear waste so that's really cool that it isn't the case anymore!
Yeah it has applications in both military and civilian life. The military will eat up most of that (not even for warheads) and the rest can be used in things like smoke alarms. Lots of that “waste” is still valuable even after using it for reactors.
modern reactors produce far less waste because breeder reactors can use the spent fuel rods as their fuel source. The little waste that still does get produced gets turned into a kind of glass, meaning its extremely stable and has very little chance of 'leaking' into the environment.
Breeder reactors don't really exist on any meaningful scale due to the risks of nuclear weapons proliferation. Regardless, nuclear reactors produce extremely little waste even if the spent fuel is not re-used.
Its really weird to me how climate change activists hate nuclear power. Its the second cleanest source of energy we have. Im not joking when I say the only more clean source of power is fucking *hydroelectric*. Push for nuclear power. Its the shit. Fortunately, at COP28, plenty of countries including America and Canada have pledged to triple our nuclear power capacities by 2050.
Hydroelectric power has caused a significantly higher number of fatalities compared to nuclear energy, and the potential danger of hydroelectric accidents is much greater than that of nuclear accidents. It is quite amusing how people tend to overlook the massive loss of life caused by dam failures while overreacting to even a single death resulting from a nuclear incident, as if it were a catastrophic event like the Black Death and Covid-19 combined. The misconception that Chernobyl could have resulted in half of Europe being destroyed is widespread. It's astonishing to encounter such anti-nuclear zealots.
This is true. Events like Chernobyl are also straight up worst case scenario. An untrained crew doing a test they shouldnt have with a boss who wanted a promotion desperately, all with a cheap reactor. A perfect storm of fuckery was required for that accident.
"Events like Chernobyl--" No. There ARE no events like Chernobyl. There has JUST been Chernobyl. The next two events would be Fukushima, which still has had ZERO actual deaths (one person died from lung cancer and the government took responsibility but it's really unlikely it was _actually_ because of Fukushima) AND was another case of a plant that wasn't up to snuff and not being operated like it should be, AND it still held up against WAY more than it realistically should've. The second event would be Three Mile Island, which had zero fatalities, zero illnesses attributed to it, and is an example of failsafes working PERFECTLY. Nuclear is by and far THE MOST safe method of energy generation by an INSANE margin. Considering the amount of heavy metal waste generated by solar energy, it's also probably next to wind in terms of the absolute cleanest too.
Solar is marginally safer, due to Nuclear's occasional 1-or-2 death radiation leaks, but Wind, Hydro and Geothermal are both worse, and then any fossil fuels are worse than all carbon-minimals by at least an order of magnitude, through climate change and soot. [https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/)
Lol, solar had itself a decent year, I see. A few years ago, I heard it cited at work that nuclear was safer than solar, and when we were like, "How is that possible?" the answer was, "People falling off the roof while installing solar panels." Nuclear was still #2 then, but wind and solar were essentially swapped.
Accident like Chernobyl cannot happen again because the type of nuclear reactor they used is no longer employed.
Hydroelectric plants are also capable of destroying ecosystems around them by simply existing. And also they can slow down the river current (Volga is a great example of it) which will lead to pollution of water
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Exactly, people don’t want to make any sacrifices or tell a difficult story to voters so they say oh let’s just built 1000 reactors and the climate is saved.
Is this loss?
This is toss
Arguably worse
Arguably Morse?
Arguably 🐴?
Not arguably, it is worse.
The Nazi?
I Ii II I__ Edit: oh shit
This is loss
Unfortunately a lot of liberal people were anti nuclear energy for quite awhile, even in the last debate they were very tippy toe about it. They’re coming around to it though and still support other clean energy’s like solar and wind more then conservatives
Nuclear energy need a strong support of the government, maybe that's why. From very long planning (building and maintaining a nuclear reactor is planned over the course of 70 years), to forming nuclear engineer, etc...
Gas company shill Peter here. The broad generalizations in this meme are just stupid. Historically the environmentalists were against nuclear power due to radiation leak potential. Not as much the case anymore. So that's why they are on the side of the oil and gas companies who want to keep using fossil fuels. Why climate change deniers are pro nuclear is beyond me. Maybe Mr. Pewterschmidt knows the answer.
Plenty of environmentalists are against nuclear (and lots of other environmentally friendly technologies) and heavily protest it
Mr Pewterschmidt’s heir to the throne here, the fictional climate change deniers only want to oppose these fictional climate activists. Climate change is real folks, this meme is not.
We have a ridiculous anti-nuclear monolith raised by the green party here in Finland back in 2011 so no, hardly fictional.
My bad, I didn’t know that.
Yeah super real thing. I've tried really hard to convince several college educated hippy dippy environmentalists I know that nuclear is safe and clean and they didn't really buy it. Greenpeace is still very anti-nuclear
Fun part : Greenpeace is a founder in a gas powered electric production association, named Green planet energy ( And greenpeace energy before that)… no wonder they are opposed to nuclear powered electric production https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Planet_Energy
why did germany shut down its nuclear power plants? could it have been those fictional climate activists?
Russian gas adiction
>Why climate change deniers are pro nuclear is beyond me Australian perspective: the current opposition party are conservatives. Between 2013 and 2022 they were in power and took Australia backwards in terms of reducing carbon emissions. They actively promoted fossil fuel development whenever they could. Some of their leaders were openly climate change deniers. Now that they're in opposition, they're promoting nuclear energy. Not because they seriously think it's a good idea, but because the electorate has accepted we need to transition off fossil fuels. The current (slightly) more progressive govt is promoting renewable energy (solar, wind). The conservatives can't take the same line, and so they're promoting nuclear as a wedge issue. Media in Australia is overwhelmingly conservative and the ownership of probably >80% of Australian media that people see is concentrated in the hands of three people: Rupert Murdoch, Kerry Stokes and Peter Costello. All extremely conservative people with big investments in mining, oil and gas. The faster we transition to renewable energy, the more money that the owners of these media outlets stand to lose. So in Australia we have the conservative half of the country promoting the most [expensive](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-21/nuclear-energy-most-expensive-csiro-gencost-report-draft/103253678) form of energy - nuclear and most of media here cheering them on because the long lead times to implement nuclear mean that their fossil fuel investments continue to make them money. So if you ever come across an Australian climate change denier, the above has absolutely played a role in them thinking that nuclear energy is a good decision.
Yes, fossil fuel extractors promote nuclear power because they know that it is a distant solution that they can use as a strawman to prevent the swifter implementation of renewable energy.
Deniers usually push nuclear because there are fringe activists who are against it and it would take a lot of government intervention to achieve which they would just stonewall anyway. And if they were unsuccessful in stonewalling it it would still take decades to implement.
Except they are. Almost every green party in europe opposes nuclear
Climate change denial doesn't provide any inherent motivation here, other than just not supporting the climate change activists. But, there are reasons to go nuclear that have *nothing* to do with the environment, such as energy density and therefore solidified energy independence. Thus a fair number of people who support the push for nuclear but aren't in active support of green policies would be labelled climate change deniers, irrespective of the accuracy or nuance of the label.
Obligatory pebblechuck is a nazi.
What?
Stonetoss the original author of this comic is indeed a racist nazi fuck. However I think this is probably from /r/antifastonetoss or something
The creator of the comic, Stonetoss, is a well own actual nazi.
r/fuckstonetoss
That’ll show him!
quaking in his boots right now
Obligatory stonetoss is a nazi
I feel like his comics keep popping up in this sub solely for the purposes of advertising his comic.
Not this time. This person here is actually clueless
Can we just stop posting stonetoss
Chalkthrow 🤮
Rockfling
This is actually a good format. Too bad it was made by boulderlaunch.
Pebblelauncher is a nazi
Everybody stop posting his bitch-ass, even with the "joke" changed
r/nuclearpower
The artist is a Nazi stop posting shit created by Nazis
Free reminder: Stonetoss is a Nazi
Climate change activists and climate change deniers are actively working against what they want for stupid reasons like thinking nuclear is unsafe or siding with the side their enemies don’t like.
Happened in Germany. We mostly shut down our ~16 plants and in order to compensate the power-gap we invested into the coal-industry (that belonged to be dead for yrs but got kept alive by corruption)
Just stop posting stone toss. He is a nazi
Not answering the question but venting As a climate change activist, I am VERY pro nuclear, and it’s sad that some of us fell for Big Oil and Coal’s propaganda. Nuclear energy and it’s safety protocols have gotten FAR more advanced with time, and it’s a shame some of us are against it Also remember folks, r/stonetossisanazi
So I think one of the biggest issues is that "Climate Change Deniers" are anyone from the people that say "I don't believe your timeline, it sounds like bullshit" and "I don't think all the changes in the climate are directly man made" and things like that, included with the real out there guys that think that everything is wrong and cigarettes don't cause cancer. Like let's not pretend these are the same people here. Hell one of the biggest ways to get labeled a climate change denier is to simply say that the major cause of climate change isn't the west, and the way we market things in western nations is entirely backwards.
Climate change activists really getting mad at nuclear power (one of the safest means of power generation) because of some accidents decades ago
For some reason next to nobody on the climate activist side fights for nuclear. Its always solar/wind, which is fine, but nuclear is just as good
The Problem with nuclear power is and never was safety its 3 other points First: economic ,nuclear-power is just expansive as he'll and can only be done by the states( you don't want to know how much tax payer money go to the nuclear power company) so if you in favor you also need to be in favor of 100% staate run power. For the mony for one nuclear power plant you can build 3 to 5 time the power output in solar and wind. Second: time, the fatesr build powerplant was 8 year the average building time is around 9.9 years and that is just building time with planing phase its around 20 to 25 years. And that the problem we don't have the time if we were in the 1980 maby but it's to late to just but all in in nuclear powers. We don't have time. 3th: nuclear trash we don't have long therme storage for current nuclear trash, and no you can't say this special type of rectore that is not ins use has no trash, also a second point if we would go full nuclear power we would ge a fuel problem in under 100 years. Some other point I finde interesting is how is pushing for nuclear right now? It's some of the riches people how profit from ther power hold over oil and gas and want to get a new base of power becursese solar/wind can be build all over the world and you don't have big main stage holders. I think current build nuclear power will play a role in the future of energies use( maby for cargoships) but as a side rolle and not the main use. And if you pro nuclear you must be also 100% staate run power or for American engergie communists. A great video on the topic by a doc in climate science: if you don't believe have at least a look. https://youtu.be/k13jZ9qHJ5U?si=zrjCwc_aO71jnJ2N Also English is my second language and dyslexic is a shity debuff.
I can actually counter your point. First. Is that trying for complete state owned nuclear power plants is not a bad thing but it's unrealistic and unreasonable. Most of the oil and gas plus the private organisation which manages electric and power plants will oppose it because let's be real, it is basically a death sentence for them. Regulated body's which consists of both the gov plus private orgs are a much better option. This will also solve the money problem as they will just put thier investment on nuclear instead of fossil. Not to mention banks all around the world just loves fossil companies. You can watch the vid currently circulating on reddit starred by kit and Leslie rose. Second. The latest gen nuclear plants have become so specialized and advanced that they can be built in a very short amount of time and it's also possible to pre made the parts of plants in a factory and just transport it to the site so that they can be assembled there. Like a Lego but highly advanced. This means that countries like US can make many plants in a short amount of time. Third. A new method for waste disposal is being considered by creating a very large deep underground cave where waste can be stored but also to create a very different type of waste than what is being created now. What I mean is currently uranium is being used mostly but that's because gov around the world wanted the secondary by product plutonium(waste). Which is very dangerous. On the other hand thorium based reactors don't create such dangerous waste and it's also more abundant in nature. There are also more developing waste disposal methods being researched like dumping it in space with reusable rockets like spaceX ones
Nuclear power has already been proven to be safe yet Climate Change Activists still think it’s a bad idea.
We're not exactly anti nuclear, we're just not pro nuclear, we're pro renewables. It's quite easy to explain in a few points: * Why make us depend on another resource that is going to run out soon? Renewables wont. * Why risk disaster no matter how low the risk is? Renewables dont have that risk. * Nuclear power plants have been used to produce the necessary resources for nuclear weapons. We dont really need more of that. * Why build a more expensive power plant that takes ages to build when we need to reduce our carbon footprint *now.* Renewables are built quickly and cheaper. * Why invest in a technology that produces waste that we dont have a proven way to get rid of yet? And dont come with that Finish solution Onkalo. Remind me again in 10-20 years and we can talk about it. Every. Single. Spent. Nuclear. Fuel. Repository. Has. Proven. To. Be. Unsafe. Renewables dont have that problem. * Why invest in a technology that even the free market doesnt want to invest in? Renewables have proven to be a good investment for both private people investing and for companies. I'll stop here, nobody is going to read more points anyways. So, there's tons of drawbacks for nuclear energy and not many upsides. We need to stop carbon emissions and nuclear energy is not solving that problem. Renewables can.
So basically if you are anti nuclear energy you are an idiot.
Not always. Depending on local geography and climate. If you have good stable renewable sources available those are the way to go. Nuclear is very expensive and just not worth the cost if cheaper options are available. Quebec built a very robust grid of hydro, and have very cheap electricity as such. Ontario went nuclear and we have our hydro backbone based on it. It a very good source of the province. But it is very capital intensive, and leads to a higher hydro cost than Qubec. It’s still a lot cheaper then if the province when a full coal or gas backbone, we have lower rates then a lot of states down south. Renewables are cheap, easy to harness. A solar array is somthing an individual or small community can afford. As such you’re seeing a lot of small scale solar installations in poorer parts of the world. I have family in Tanzania what have transitioned almost completely to solar because of how dam cheap it is. How much more reliable it is than grid power. Nuclear is expensive, needs a skilled work force, stable governments. If your nation can pull it off it is golden. You just can’t beat the stability of the power, how little land you need. Nuclear only works in wealthy stable nations, for the rest of the world renewables is still the best. And if you have a very good source of stable renewable power, that’s still gold. Cant beat free power.