Obligatory fuck stonetoss
this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
6 points (71.4% liked)
Nuclear
326 readers
2 users here now
Focus on peaceful use of nuclear energy tech, economics, news, and climate change.
From r/nuclear
Looking for moderators
Useful links:
IAEA PRIS - The Database on Nuclear Power Reactors: https://pris.iaea.org/pris/home.aspx
NRC US reactor status: https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/reactor-status/index.html
US Nuclear Plant Outage Status: https://www.eia.gov/nuclear/outages/
Milestones in Advanced Nuclear: https://www.airtable.com/universe/expnrIMohdf6dIvZl/milestones-in-advanced-nuclear
What about the waste? http://whataboutthewaste.com/
What about the cost? https://zionlights.substack.com/p/what-is-the-true-cost-of-energy
How long will nuclear fuel last? https://whatisnuclear.com/blog/2020-10-28-nuclear-energy-is-longterm-sustainable.html
Global Energy Footprint https://energy.glex.no/footprint/
Low Carbon Power Nuclear page: https://lowcarbonpower.org/type/nuclear
IAEA PRIS - Under Construction Reactors: https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/WorldStatistics/UnderConstructionReactorsByCountry.aspx
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Damn, I was unaware of the artist. Indeed, fuck Stonetoss!
It's okay. There are a lot of comics with weird poorly drawn duck people, so it makes sense to not realize.
The more I read at the above, the worse it got. Wow.
The Rock Heave link? It's awful. It's better to not know about it.
That's the one... and for me, I'd always rather know so I can avoid.
There was a time I was exposed to this often on reeedit (mainly subs decrying it) and I'm thankful I haven't seen it much in a couple years.
Fuck stonetoß
Nuclear is easily the best path forward and even when you consider events like Chernoble, the harm on humanity is vastly dwarfed by what coal has done to us.
Johnny Harris and Big If True have a great video discussing fear and actual nuclear impacts. The only factor it lacks mentioning is how much land fossil fuels takes up. Each year, fossil fuels infrastructure distroys more land than Chernobyl and fukushima combined.
I doubt nuclear alone would suffice to power our civilization. Of course, you didn't say that.
Oil has been quite easy energy source enabling complex supply chains and I don't think we can change them to electric or nuclear powered ones.
We've had a horrible track record on waste disposal. Climate change is the result of our failure to dispose of CO2 from burning fossil fuels and that's also why I'm wary of us dealing with nuclear waste.
It's been mathematically proven that it could power our entire planet multiple times over for centuries. The waste created from nuclear power is much easier to keep from entering the environment than coal/oil.
It's factually safer and more efficient. You're just spewing corporate fear mongering designed to keep oil barons in control.
and instead of building plants with learnings from those events we continue to do nothing with nuclear, relying on ever aging tech and facilities. id love to see small nuclear reactors or some of the other designs being put into use. we also need to spread renewables around as well. if every house was its own powersource and onl relied on the grid for backup things would be cleaner.
Kurzegesagt had a good video about this too. Talks about the pros and cons of nuclear along with other alternative energy sources.
Me, i'm just wondering why no one is calling China out for its claims of creating a star fusion reactor yet we see nothing for it.
Gross nazi comic
Here's my problem:
-
I've been lied to by capitalists so many damn times about 'the next big thing' thats going to solve climate change, at this point they all look like they are full of shit.
-
I know the nuclear industry says its clean now, and it certainly SEEMS true, but natural gas and coal and oil companies are also claiming to be clean now so WHAT THE FUCK? We know some of them are lying.
-
Endless energy from the sun sounds damn good on paper and its clearly a threat to capitalists 'centralize everything' plan which locks us all into their electrical grid systems
-
The REAL problems aren't even discussed which is that we (the USA) can't expect to keep living this way, our consumption is off the charts. It's wild that in 2023 we still have a car & airplane-based transportation systems that barely utilizes high speed trains or buses, and results in paving half our land with asphalt which traps heat and makes absolutely everything worse in a cycle.
The problem is that the nuclear evangelists refuse to engage in real debate about the downsides of the technology. Every valid criticism or suggestion that other alternatives are a better investment is brushed aside, often with a side of name calling.
The reality is that renewables are much more scalable and cost effective in the long term than these massive infrastructure projects. Nuclear is fine. We should have been building it for the past 50 years. The reasons we didn't build it are dumb. But it's simply an outdated paradigm now. Investing a billion dollars and ten years in building a power station now just doesn't make sense when you could invest that money in better future proof tech like microgrid solar.
The problem is always evangelists of some stripe who have arrived at a solution without any at scale testing, and want to implement their solution 100% without any system feedback. Terrible way to design anything meant to function in reality.
On your third point, it can be argued that solar panels still allow capitalists to centralize everything. Solar panels use a similar production process to microchips which is something they can just make as expensive as they can, it's not like people can rebel and make homebrew solar panels. Remember when there was a "chip shortage" for no reason so they made all the chips and graphics cards really expensive?
Made up alliances?
Basing on the US since that is where my MS studies in environment policy were focused. Conservative republicanans poll highest in believing climate change is fake or not caused by human activity
From the same article, you can see that support for expanding nuclear energy is stronger among liberal republicans and strongest with conservative republicans.
*Pew research is not a scholarly source on its own, but scores center for media bias making it optimal for readers without academic library access
Oil and gas companies being in an 'alliance' with climate change activists is a pretty made up notion, even in the context of constraining the entire scope to just a stance on nuclear energy.
There may be opposition to nuclear but to make the bridge over to being an ally of oil and coal would be... well, stonetoss level of improper framing of an issue.
Hell, anecdotally speaking for my own experiences on the topic: nuclear energy has been the most consistent common ground between climate change activists and deniers that I've seen. Far more than the precise zero climate change activists ive seen actively supporting oil, gas, or coal interests. There is support renewables, not obliquely opposing nuclear.
view more: next ›