this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023
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Asklemmy
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People who are strongly against nuclear power are ignorant of the actual safety statistics and are harming our ability to sustainably transition off fossil fuels and into renewables.
I feel this would have been spot on, in the nineties.
Right now the problems plaguing nuclear are economic. There is no guarantee you can build and exploit a plant and get to break even before either it becomes irrelevant, or you fall victim to regulatory jostling.
Nuclear was a missed opportunity, but the window is closing fast and it will probably remain a missed opportunity forever.
That's the main opinion on reddit. This is pretty mainstream.
I don't really go on Reddit, but Idk where you live, but in my experience talking to folks, most people are pretty put off by this view
Word
Not all Nuclear Power is equal. RBMK reactors are dangerous as fuck. Others not so much.
If you take all operational nuclear reactors safety records into account from all countries in the world, including all meltdowns and near meltdown disasters, it's still by far safer and has resulted in less deaths and long term illness than any fossil fuel, on every single metric.
True that newer style reactors are far safer, but that's the point. If we had started to transition in the 70's into nuclear power, we would have made a massive dent in climate change and set the stage to transition into full clean renewable energy sources and along the way improved regulations and engineering standards for existing nuclear plants.
Yes, BUT the risk isn't distributed like the rest. One Reactor could displace tens of millions of people, disrupt infrastructure, and cause devastating impact to the US economy. That's a lot of risk based on it's proximity. If they could build them in the middle of nowhere out west that could all be mitigated.
Right. Most don't understand that risk is not just measured by frequency alone, but also by severity.
Nuclear is off the charts once you consider the full magnitude of a failure.
I generally agree with you, but I think a lot of people are concerned about the nuclear waste and not the power plants but don't realize that.
Nuclear power plants generate waste very slowlyโslowly enough that we won't be using fission any more by the time it becomes a serious problem. Fusion ignition was achieved recently, so it's only a matter of time.
However, nuclear power plants are also extremely expensive to build, which seriously limits their practical usefulness.