this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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[–] flossdaily@lemmy.world 395 points 1 year ago (44 children)

Good!

Anti-nuclear is like anti-GMO and anti-vax: pure ignorance, and fear of that which they don't understand.

Nuclear power is the ONLY form of clean energy that can be scaled up in time to save us from the worst of climate change.

We've had the cure for climate change all along, but fear that we'd do another Chernobyl has scared us away from it.

[–] originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 103 points 1 year ago (12 children)

imagine how much farther ahead we would be in safety and efficiency if it was made priority 50 years ago.

we still have whole swathes of people who think that because its not perfect now, it cant be perfected ever.

[–] danielbln@lemmy.world 76 points 1 year ago (22 children)

So uh, turns out the energy companies are not exactly the most moral and rule abiding entities, and they love to pay off politicians and cut corners. How does one prevent that, as in the case of fission it has rather dire consequences?

[–] Carighan@lemmy.world 46 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (13 children)

Since you can apply that logic to everything, how can you ever build anything? Because all consequences are dire on a myopic scale, that is, if your partner dies because a single electrician cheaped out with the wiring in your building and got someone to sign off, "It's not as bad as a nuclear disaster" isn't exactly going to console them much.

At some point, you need to accept that making something illegal and trying to prosecute people has to be enough. For most situations. It's not perfect. Sure. But nothing ever is. And no solution to energy is ever going to be perfect, either.

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[–] dojan@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (24 children)

I mean it's not the companies operating the facilities we put our trust in, but the outside regulators whose job it is to ensure these facilities are safe and meet a certain standard. As well as the engineers and scientists that design these systems.

Nuclear power isn't 100% safe or risk-free, but it's hella effective and leaps and bounds better than fossil fuels. We can embrace nuclear, renewables and fossil free methods, or just continue burning the world.

[–] The_v@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago (21 children)

The worst nuclear disaster has led to 1,000sq miles of land being unsafe for human inhabitants.

Using fossil fuels for power is destroying of the entire planet.

It's really not that complicated.

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[–] umad_cause_ibad@lemm.ee 14 points 1 year ago (25 children)

Don’t push nuclear power like it’s the only option though.

Where I live we entirely provide energy from hydro power plants and nuclear energy is banned. We use no fossil fuels. We have a 35 year plan for future growth and it doesn’t include any fossil fuels. Nuclear power is just one of the options and it has many hurdles to implement, maintain and decommission.

[–] Astrealix@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (26 children)

Honestly, if you can, hydro is brilliant. Not many places can though — both because of geography and politics. Nuclear is better than a lot of the alternatives and shouldn't be discounted.

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[–] BrokebackHampton@kbin.social 40 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (31 children)

That is factually false information. There are solid arguments to be made against nuclear energy.

https://isreview.org/issue/77/case-against-nuclear-power/index.html

Even if you discard everything else, this section seems particularly relevant:

The long lead times for construction that invalidate nuclear power as a way of mitigating climate change was a point recognized in 2009 by the body whose mission is to promote the use of nuclear power, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). “Nuclear power is not a near-term solution to the challenge of climate change,” writes Sharon Squassoni in the IAEA bulletin. “The need to immediately and dramatically reduce carbon emissions calls for approaches that can be implemented more quickly than building nuclear reactors.”

https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-is-nuclear-energy-good-for-the-climate/a-59853315

Wealer from Berlin's Technical University, along with numerous other energy experts, sees takes a different view.

"The contribution of nuclear energy is viewed too optimistically," he said. "In reality, [power plant] construction times are too long and the costs too high to have a noticeable effect on climate change. It takes too long for nuclear energy to become available."

Mycle Schneider, author of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report, agrees.

"Nuclear power plants are about four times as expensive as wind or solar, and take five times as long to build," he said. "When you factor it all in, you're looking at 15-to-20 years of lead time for a new nuclear plant."

He pointed out that the world needed to get greenhouse gases under control within a decade. "And in the next 10 years, nuclear power won't be able to make a significant contribution," added Schneider.

[–] NUMPTY37K@lemmy.world 43 points 1 year ago (16 children)

Long lead times against nuclear have bee raised for the last 25 years, if we had just got on with it we would have the capacity by now. Just cause the lead time is in years doesn't mean it isn't worth doing.

[–] davepleasebehave@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

when is the best time to plant a tree? 30 years ago. When is the second best time? now.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Surely the second best time would have been 29 years ago

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[–] Jumuta@sh.itjust.works 32 points 1 year ago (11 children)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashiwazaki-Kariwa_Nuclear_Power_Plant

the largest fission plant was literally working 5 years after construction started

fission plants are just more expensive now because we don't make enough of them.

I guess safety standards changed but even wind power kills more people per watt than fission so ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

Nuclear could've easily worked if people didn't go full nimby in the past few decades

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[–] oce@jlai.lu 18 points 1 year ago

There are solid arguments to be made against both nuclear and renewables (intermittence, impact of electricity storage, amount of raw material, surface area). We can't wait for perfect solutions, we have to work out compromises right now, and it seems nuclear + renewable is the most solid compromise we have for the 2050 target. See this high quality report by the public French electricity transportation company (independent of the energy producers) that studies various scenarios including 100% renewable and mixes of nuclear, renewables, hydrogen and biogas. https://assets.rte-france.com/prod/public/2022-01/Energy%20pathways%202050_Key%20results.pdf

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[–] echodot@feddit.uk 36 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The daft thing is that even if another Chernobyl happened (unlikely given superior technology and safety standards) it wouldn't be anywhere near as damaging as climate change.

The radiation would only affect a small area of the planet not the whole world, and technically radiation doesn't even cause climate damage. Chernobyl has plenty of trees and plenty of wildlife, it's just unsuitable for human habitation.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 62 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (14 children)

The daft thing is that even if another Chernobyl happened (unlikely given superior technology and safety standards) it wouldn’t be anywhere near as damaging as climate change.

Here's my favorite way to put it: because of trace radioactive elements found in coal ore, coal-fired power plants produce more radioactivity in normal operation than nuclear power plants have in their entire history, including meltdowns. And with coal, it just gets released straight into the environment without any attempt to contain it!

And that's just radioactivity, not all the other emissions of coal plants.

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[–] apollo440@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I totally agree that current nuclear power generation should be left running until we have enough green energy to pick up the slack, because it does provide clean and safe energy. However, I totally disagree on the scalability, for two main reasons:

  1. Current nuclear power generation is non-renewable. It is somewhat unclear how much Uranium is available worldwide (for strategic reasons), but even at current production, supply issues have been known to happen. And it goes without saying that waiting to scale up some novel unproven or inexistent sustainable way of nuclear power production is out of the question, for time and safety reasons. Which brings me to point 2.

  2. We need clean, sustainable energy right now if we want to have any chance of fighting climate change. From start of planning of a new nuclear power plant to first power generation can take 15 or 20 years easily. Currently, about 10% of all electricity worldwide is produced by about 400 nuclear reactors, while around 15 new ones are under construction. So, to make any sort of reasonable impact, we would have to build to the tune of 2000 new reactors, pronto. To do that within 30 years, we'd have to increase our construction capacity 5 to 10 fold. Even if that were possible, which I strongly doubt, I would wager the safety and cost impacts would be totally unjustifiable. And we don't even have 30 years anymore. That is to say nothing of regulatory checks and maintenance that would also have to be increased 5 fold.

So imho nuclear power as a solution to climate change is a non-starter, simply due to logistical and scaling reasons. And that is before we even talk about the very real dangers of nuclear power generation, which are of course not operational, but due to things like proliferation, terrorist attacks, war, and other unforseen disruptions through e.g. climate change, societal or governmental shifts, etc.

[–] CountVon@sh.itjust.works 13 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It is somewhat unclear how much Uranium is available worldwide (for strategic reasons), but even at current production, supply issues have been known to happen.

Nuclear fission using Uranium is not sustainable. If we expand current nuclear technologies to tackle climate change then we'd likely run out of Uranium by 2100. Nuclear fusion using Thorium might be sustainable, but it's not yet a proven, scalable technology. And all of this is ignoring the long lead times, high costs, regulatory hurdles and nuclear weapon proliferation concerns that nuclear typically presents. It'd be great if nuclear was the magic bullet for climate change, but it just ain't.

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[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago (9 children)

Nuclear power is the ONLY form of clean energy that can be scaled up in time to save us from the worst of climate change.

Long term nuclear is great...

But building new plants uses a shit ton of concrete. So we're paying the carbon cost up front, and it can take years or even decades to break even.

So we can't just spam build nuke plants right now to fix everything.

30 years ago that would have worked.

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[–] NoiseColor@startrek.website 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's an oversimplification to the point that it is wrong. Nuclear power is not the only form of clean energy like that at all. It can not be scaled in this situation to save us, because it takes too long to build them.

[–] DauntingFlamingo@lemmy.ml 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (12 children)

It takes 6 years on a fast paced build. If we had started when we knew of the problem, we could have avoided some of the problem. It is the only energy source we can scale up in that way, however. Every other energy source takes longer for less yield with current technology.

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[–] iterable@sh.itjust.works 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

I don't know natural disasters and war causing it to screw up also tends to worry people. Last time I checked wind and solar don't create massive damage to the environment when destroyed.

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[–] qfe0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 166 points 1 year ago (8 children)

For the love of everything, at least let's stop decommissioning serviceable nuclear plants.

[–] GiddyGap@lemm.ee 44 points 1 year ago

Looking at you, Germany...

[–] Uncaged_Jay@lemmy.world 31 points 1 year ago (2 children)

For real, God forbid we keep the actual safe, clean nuclear plants running

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[–] elouboub@kbin.social 79 points 1 year ago (27 children)

Anti-nuclear people in here arguing about disasters that killed a few k people in 50 years. Also deeply worried about nuclear waste that won't have an impact on humans for thousands of years, but ignoring climate change is having an impact and might end our way of life as we know it before 2100.

They're bike-shedding and blocking a major stepping stone to a coal, petrol and gas free future for the sake of idealism.

The biggest enemy of the left is the left

[–] legion@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

People tend to overrate the harms from potential changes, while simultaneously vastly underrating the harms that already exist that they’ve gotten used to.

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[–] eestileib@sh.itjust.works 46 points 1 year ago (2 children)

100% right.

It doesn't make any sense without reprocessing though, have to do both. Fortunately France and Finland have active programs.

The US needs to both learn how to do reprocessing again and build more plants.

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[–] chaogomu@kbin.social 46 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Greenpeace was founded to be an anti-nuclear organization. See, most of the founding members were members of the Sierra Club (another environmentalist organization) but the Sierra Club was actually pro-nuclear power. The Sierra Club was actually fighting against the installation of new dams due to the effect of wiping out large swaths of river habitat and preventing salmon runs and such.

Anyway, in 1971 there was an underground nuclear bomb test by the US government in an area that was geologically unstable. (there were a bunch of tests to see just how geologically unstable). Protesters thought that the test would cause an earthquake and a tsunami.

Anyway, the people who were unhappy with the Sierra club not actively protesting nuclear power, wanted to protest this nuclear bomb test too, so they formed an organization called the "Don't make a wave committee". They sued, the suit was decided in the US's favor, the test went off, and no earthquake happened (which is how the earlier tests said it would go).

At some point, the "Don't make a wave committee" turned into Greenpeace.

Also about this timeframe, Greenpeace started receiving yearly donations from the Rockefeller Foundation.

The Rockefeller Foundation is the charitable foundation created by the Rockefeller heirs that "uses oil money to make the world a better place" but they kind of don't. They've been anti-nuclear since the beginning, and even directly funded some radiation research in the 1950s that lied about safe exposure limits to radiation, claiming that there was no safe limit. That research went on to shape international policy, and by the time new research came out, the policy was already written and thus hard to change.

As a side note, another alumnus of the Sierra Club was approached by the then CEO of Atlantic Oil and directly paid a sum of something like $100k (in 1970 money) to found another anti-nuclear environmentalist organization called Friends of the Earth.

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[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 46 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I live less than 2 miles from the last remaining coal power station in England.

I would much rather have nuclear instead of a chimney chucking god knows what into the air (and subsequently into me) for my entire life.

[–] Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone 27 points 1 year ago (9 children)

Fun fact, coal plants produce more radiation into their environment than nuclear plants

Modern reactor designs are so damn safe it's insane

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[–] Relo@lemmy.world 31 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (30 children)

Why go nuclear when renewable is so much cheaper, safer, future proof and less centralised?

Don't get me wrong. Nuclear is better than coal and gas but it will not safe our way of life.

Just like the electric car is here to preserve the car industry not the planet, nuclear energy is still here to preserve the big energy players, not our environment.

[–] flipht@kbin.social 30 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Renewable instead of nuclear, but nuclear instead of coal.

We need a mix. Centralization isn't the biggest problem. Literally anything we can do to reduce emissions is worth doing, and we won't be going 100% on anything, so best to get started on the long term projects now so that we can stop turning on new plants based on combustion.

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[–] luckyhunter@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago (4 children)

holy crap a voice of reason, hopefully they listen. And hopefully she's free to come scream at the climate activists here in the US too.

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[–] archonet@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago (3 children)

do not let "perfect" be the enemy of "good enough"

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