this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2023
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[–] [email protected] 168 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Better than coal or oil, it might even result in more R&D into reactor designs.

[–] [email protected] 83 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, I don't understand why building a relatively clean energy source is a bad thing. Reactors are now like 3+ generations past the versions that were super dangerous. Hell, they even have reactors that can use spent fuel from other reactors.

[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Oil lobby and other interests. Follow the money. Plus it's easy to play on people's fears about radioactive waste.

Oh well, countries that know what's what just quietly build and use their reactors and go about their business. Finland for example is set for a while now.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Environmental groups are the biggest opposition to new nuclear builds.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Which is ironic because they like electric vehicles, and spent car batteries will soon become just as big of a problem as nuclear waste.

It's a bit of "not seeing the forest for the trees" situation, we have an immediate climate problem we're trying to stave off, if these are the things that will wean us off fossil energy than that's what we have to do for now and we'll cross that other bridge when we come to it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The fallacy here is that any reactor that you initiate for planning even immediately at this very moment will come years or decades too late to affect our power composition and keep us under 1.5°C, which means that such projects distract society from the importance of green/renewable energy solutions like wind or solar, which we CAN expand very quickly and which WILL have a measurable effect on mitigating the effects of climate change. Solar and wind are the only things that can replace fossil in time.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

True, but let's not forget that there are lots of perfectly good reactors sitting around unused, who could be brought back online within a practical time frame. Existing reactors is really what the debate is about, not those that don't exist.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

You can recycle lithium batteries.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Someone on here made an interesting argument showing how conservative politicians are actually pushing nuclear hard. They do this to steer interest away from other renewables, but also because they know nuclear will go nowhere. It’s politically unviable with voters and regulatory bodies. The point is that the bottommost issue is public perception and bias against it. If we could overcome that, we’d at least have a fighting chance.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

There’s no shortage of modern reactor designs. We have amazing stuff designed and even prototyped and proven - low waste, safely-failing reactors that basically can’t melt down. All we really lack is funding and regulatory clearance to build more.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Cortana, can you design a nuclear reactor to train you better?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Searching “Design a nuclear reactor to train you better” on Bing…

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is part of their plan to reduce carbon emissions.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is what corporations mean when they say "reduce carbon emissions"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You say that like it's a bad thing

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

It is, because corporate greenwashing will tell you that they reduced their emissions when all they did was scale up production using green energy. Their actual emissions didn't go down they just went down relative to their growth.

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

I thought this was a generic nuclear bad response, but in that case I definitely agree.