• NONE@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    Well, you see, the “Anti Magic Rock” Lobby has immense amount of power because of the money of the still lucrative “burning stuff and pollute everything” business.

      • Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee
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        9 days ago

        Yeah, oil oiled the “green” anti-nuclear protests.

        You can tell that’s how it was because the cops didn’t beat them as much (or in some big cases at all) as they do even the most insignificant anti-oil protesters.

    • drake@lemmy.sdf.org
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      9 days ago

      Nuclear isn’t in competition with fossil fuels, it’s in competition with renewables. Renewables are better than nuclear by pretty much every conceivable metric. So fuck nuclear power, it’s a waste of money and time.

        • iii@mander.xyz
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          9 days ago

          Storage is a solvable problem

          I’m not convinced it is. Storage technologies exist for sure, but the general public seems to grossly underestimate the scale of storage required to match grid demand and renewables only production.

          • Natanox@discuss.tchncs.de
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            9 days ago

            I think you underestimate how much storage power is currently being build and how many different technologies are available. In Germany alone there currently are 61 projects planed and in the approval phase boasting a combined 180 Gigawatts of potential power until 2030. Those of them that are meant to be build at old nuclear power plants (the grid connection is already available there) are expected to deliver 25% of the necessary storage capacity. In addition all electric vehicles that are assumed to be on the road until 2030 add another potential 100GW of power.

            Of course these numbers are theoretical as not every EV will be connected to a bidirectional charger and surely some projects will fail or delay, however given the massive development in this sector and new, innovative tech (not just batteries but f.e. a concrete ball placed 800m below sea level, expected to store energy extremely well at 5.8ct / kilowatt) there’s very much reason for optimism here.

            It’s also a funny sidenote that France, a country with a strong nuclear strategy, frequently buys power from Germany because it’s so much cheaper.

            • Ooops@feddit.org
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              9 days ago

              Another important note about France: They are the second country alongside Germany heavily pushing for an upscaled green hydrogen market in the EU. Because -just like renewables- nuclear production doesn’t match the demand pattern at all. Thus it’s completely uneconomical without long-term storage.

              The fact that we seem to constantly discuss nuclear vs. renewables is proof that it’s mostly lobbying bullshit. Because in reality they don’t compete. It’s either renewables+short-term storage+long-term-term storage or renewables+nuclear+long-term storage. Those are the only two viable models.

              • iii@mander.xyz
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                9 days ago

                upscaled green hydrogen market

                That’s been the talk in town for 40 years now. Green hydrogen has never gotten beyond proof-of-concept.

                The fact that we seem to constantly discuss nuclear vs. renewables is proof that it’s mostly lobbying bullshit.

                Sadly, it’s because the political green parties available to me are anti-nuclear.

                It’s either renewables+short-term storage+long-term-term storage or renewables+nuclear+long-term storage.

                Why is nuclear+short term storage not an option, according to you?

                • Ooops@feddit.org
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                  Why is nuclear+short term storage not an option

                  Because cold winter days exist. Yes you can only build nuclear capacities for the average day and then short-term storage to match the demand pattern. But you would need to do so for the day(s) of the year with the highest energy demand, some cold winter work day. What do you do with those capacities the remaining year as throttling nuclear down is not really saving much costs (most lie in construction and deconstruction)?

                • gnygnygny@lemm.ee
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                  9 days ago

                  Due to the recent nuclear hype uranium price will rise and keep in mind that the resource will not exceed a century.

            • iii@mander.xyz
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              9 days ago

              It’s not just power that’s needed (MW), also stored energy (MWh).

              Germany consumes on average 1.4TWh of electricity a day (1). Imagine bridging even a short dunkelflaute of 2 days.

              Worldwide lithium ion battery production is 4TWh a year (2).

              It’s also a funny sidenote that France, a country with a strong nuclear strategy, frequently buys power from Germany because it’s so much cheaper.

              Isn’t that normal? The problems with renewables isn’t that they generate cheap power, when they are generating. Today windmills even need to be equipped with remote shutdown, to prevent overproduction.

              The problems arise when they aren’t generating.

              • Teppichbrand@feddit.org
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                Another problem arises when you’re generation 63.688 after today and still have to keep maintaining deadly waste from nations that don’t exist anymore, because they produced “cheap” and “clean” energy for a couple of decades.
                Come on, Jesus died like 2000 years ago, this stuff will haunt us for centuries. Arguing in favor of something this unpredictable is just selfish, stupid and shortsighted.

              • Natanox@discuss.tchncs.de
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                9 days ago

                Your estimation goes way off because you still believe lithium ion to be the only viable solution. By now Sodium-Ion batteries are already installed even in EVs and can be produced without any critical resource like lithium.

                And then of course there are all the other storage solution. Like I said, there even are storage solutions like concrete balls. Successfully tested in 2016, here an article from 2013.

                By now it wouldn’t be wise to stifle this enormous emerging market of various technologies by using expensive, problematic technology (not just because the biggest producer of fuel rods is Russia).

                • iii@mander.xyz
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                  I don’t think lithium ion is the only storage technology. I was using it for scale.

                  The most cost effective storage is pumped storage. But even that wouldn’t reach the scale necessary.

                  6 MWh pumped storage proof-of-concept won’t l, either.

              • barsoap@lemm.ee
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                9 days ago

                The watthours is what gas is for. Germany’s pipeline network alone, that’s not including actual gas storage sites, can store three months of total energy usage.

                …or at least that’s the original plan, devised some 20 years ago, Fraunhofer worked it all out back then. It might be the case that banks of sodium batteries or whatnot are cheaper, but yeah lithium is probably not going to be it. Lithium’s strength is energy density, both per volume and by weight, and neither is of concern for grid storage.

                Imagine bridging even a short dunkelflaute of 2 days.

                That’s physically impossible for a place the size of Germany, much less Europe.

                • iii@mander.xyz
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                  9 days ago

                  is what gas is for

                  Wouldn’t it be better to go fossil free. Given, you know, climate change. And the fact that the gas needs to be shipped all the way from the US.

                  That’s physically impossible for a place the size of Germany, much less Europe.

                  Unless we use a different technology, that is not renewables + storage?

          • Teppichbrand@feddit.org
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            8 days ago

            Again: This is just the beginning! We’re like five years into at the beginning of an energy revolution and you are drumming against it because you’re “not convinced”, rooting for stuff we already discarded because it’s uncontrollable and will poison our planet for centuries. Get out of the way, boomer!

            Germany has over 400 MW of solar-plus-storage projects under development, with notable installations like a 100 MW/200 MWh battery system in Bavaria. This is way more than even the green minister of economic affairs set as a goal for 2045. California leads globally with 6,600 MW of battery storage already operational and an additional 1,900 MW expected by year-end, totaling 8,500 MW. By 2045, California aims to expand its capacity to 52,000 MW. Australia is also scaling rapidly, with around 9 GW of utility-scale battery projects underway or completed. Soon EV batteries get to feed energy back into the grid, we’re becoming one huge decentralized batterie mosaic. It’s gonna be beautiful!

            • iii@mander.xyz
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              We’re like five years into an energy revolution

              Exactly, after working on it for over 30.

              It seems like theyre not even planning on going fossil free.

              That quote, again, not mentioning stored energy. How do they not understand that storage needs to be specified in both power and energy?

              • Teppichbrand@feddit.org
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                7 days ago

                The fossil industry, which earns 1 billion dollars a day since the 1970s, won’t go down without a fight. They are very powerful, able to start wars and overthrow governments. These fossil destroyers know they are dying, but they will fight back to make money as long as possible. The best we can do is drain their business model by going renewable, and fast. Nuclear is not an option anymore, they know that as well, it’s already way too expensive. But they use it anyway to buy some time. Making more money while we are debating instead of building renewables and batteries like our lives depend on it.
                I always imagine Henry Ford after building his first cars. People would laugh at him: “And how do we fuel these?! You want to pave every road and build a web of gas stations all over or country? You are insane!”

                • iii@mander.xyz
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                  8 days ago

                  it’s already way too expensive.

                  If you don’t account for the storage problem, renewables look like a cheap solution, indeed. And you end up with renewables + huge reliance on fossil fuel.

                  This is an ideal scenario for the fossil industry.

        • TheFriar@lemm.ee
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          The second half if most important. It doesn’t produce enough electricity. Renewables are getting cheaper and cheaper and are taking up the mantle to take over majority of power production in some nations. But it is harder to monetize and can be democratized and made pretty easily. It’s like weed. It can be taken away from bigger producers and therefore there is significant push back/lobbying against it.

        • uis@lemm.ee
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          8 days ago

          Storage is a solvable problem.

          Not in this economy. We need change in consumption too. Make loads opportunistic. Have extra energy - heat more water. Or heat homes. There was video on Technology Connected about it.

      • marx2k@lemmy.world
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        9 days ago

        Nuclear: As long as you don’t care about the magic rocks once the magic has decayed to a level where they’re not boiling water anymore

        • uis@lemm.ee
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          90% of magic rocks that no longer boil wsater is magic rocks that can boil water.

            • uis@lemm.ee
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              If you’re talking breeder reactors

              I was talking about reusing uranium from “spent” fuel, not about using plutonium. Found source that says “spent” fuel is 95-98% mix of uranium isotopes that were there. Sadly, source doesn’t say how much of each isotope, I expect very low amount of U-235. Yes, you can also use plutonium in MOX fuel, but only Russia~~, France~~ and China do that, as far as I know.

              do we have any in the US?

              Dunno. Do you? If you don’t, you can buy them from mentioned above countries.

              EDIT: France no longer has working breeder reactor? How did it happen?

  • Takumidesh@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    Funny how nuclear power plants are taboo, but building thousands of nuclear warheads all over the globe is no issue.

    • rational_lib@lemmy.world
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      It’s because there’s no opposing corporate interest to building nuclear weapons. The way the world works is: profitable shit happens, no matter what the hippies think about it. See: every other environmental issue.

  • undergroundoverground@lemmy.world
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    You’re right to reject the logic behind that because it’s nonsense. Its not making sense to them because they still presume some kind of good faith when it come to these sorts of things.

    The reason we haven’t built more nuclear power stations is because oil, gas and coal companies will make less money, if we build more nuclear power stations.

    They have the means, the motive and they have a well recorded history of being that cartoonishly villainous. Nothing else makes sense.

    • Screen_Shatter@lemmy.world
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      Three Mile Island and Chernobyl really did change things. Prior to those incidents there were plans to build over 50 more nuclear plants in place which got canceled as a result. Currently oil and gas industries will do all they can to keep nuclear from making a come back, but for a long time they didn’t have to do shit thanks to those catastrophes.

  • Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee
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    9 days ago

    Paraphrased but this is right.

    And the people were taught to talk about the horrible nuclear accidents that killed a few but completely glance over the unimaginable millions perished in the name of oil, mustn’t even mention the mass extinction events we launched with oil.

    We even spread exaggerated bullshit about radiation mutation (wtf? thats superhero comic books fiction!!) and cancer rates (only one really), ignoring how much overwhelmingly more of the both we get from fossil fuel products.

    We are like prehistoric people going extinct bcs of the tales how generations ago someone burned down their house so fire bad. Well, actually not like that - we are taking with us a lot of species & entire ecosystems too.

    • Mr Fish@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      It’s more like “Bob and Jim died in a fire a while ago, so everyone decided to put up with heaps of people dying to hypothermia and uncooked meat”

    • Mbourgon everywhere@lemmy.world
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      “Ted Kennedy killed more people than Three Mile Island” - Bumper sticker.

      That’s said, I facepalm at Fukushima. And desperately want more modern systems

  • AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee
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    9 days ago

    It’s sad that the coal lobby has convinced so many people that the most reliable clean energy source we’ve ever discovered is somehow bad.

    • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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      It’s sad that the coal lobby has convinced so many people that the most reliable clean energy source we’ve ever discovered is somehow bad.

      Its bad in the sense that is a crazy expensive way to generate electricity. Its not theoretical. Ask the customers of the most recent nuclear reactors to go online in the USA in Georgia. source

      "The report shows average Georgia Power rates are up between $34 and $35 since before the plant’s Unit 3 went online. " (there were bonds and fees on customer electric bills to pay for the nuclear plant construction before it was even delivering power.

      …and…

      “The month following Unit 4 achieving commercial operation, average retail rates were adjusted by approximately 5%. With the Nuclear Construction Cost Recovery (NCCR) tariff removed from bills, a typical resident customer using 1,000 kWh per month saw an estimated monthly increase of $8.95 per month. This follows the previous rate impact in 2023 following Unit 3 COD of $5.42 (3.2%).”

      So another $5.42/month for the first reactor built on top of the $35/month, then another $8.95/month on top of all that for a rough total of $49.37/month more just to buy electricity that is generated from nuclear.

      Maybe the power company is greedy? Nope, they’re even eating more costs and not passing them on to customers:

      “Georgia Power says they’re losing about $2.6 billion in total projected costs to shield customers from the responsibility of paying it. Unit 4 added about $8.95 to the average customer’s bill, John Kraft, a spokesman for the company said.”

      So that $49.37/month premium for electricity from nuclear power would be even higher if the power company passed on all the costs. Nuclear power for electricty is just too inefficient just on the cost basis, this is completely ignoring the problems with waste management.

      The next biggest problem with nuclear power is where the fuel comes from:

      “Russia also dominates nuclear fuel supply chains. Its state-owned Rosatom controls 36 percent of the global uranium enrichment market and supplies nuclear fuel to 78 reactors in 15 countries. In 2020, Russia owned 40 percent of the total uranium conversion infrastructure worldwide. Russia is also the third-largest supplier of the imported uranium that fuels U.S. power plants, accounting for 16 percent of total imported uranium. The Russian state could weaponize its dominance in the nuclear energy supply chain to advance its geostrategic interests. During the 2014 Russia-Ukraine crisis, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin threatened to embargo nuclear fuel supplies to Ukraine.” source

      So relying on nuclear power for electricity means handing the keys of our power supply over to outside countries that are openly hostile to us.

      • dustyData@lemmy.world
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        8 days ago

        Yes, of course. Because oil has never depended on outside countries that are openly hostile. No sire, thank goodness we rely on a power source that no war has ever been fought for, ever in history.

        /s

        • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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          Because oil has never depended on outside countries that are openly hostile.

          That argument is so weak to me. No one is advocating “oil is the future! We need to build more oil consuming power plants!”. If people were, sure you’d have a great counter. Since that’s not reality though, its a Strawman response at best. Its Whataboutism at its worse.

          • dustyData@lemmy.world
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            The argument I’m replying to is a classic “not perfect, thus not worth it”. Its disingenuous and it calls for disingenuous reply. We are also pursuing renewables in despite of their political and technical flaws. The point is that all the flaws that OP exposes about nuclear power also applied to renewables (at one point in history solar power was 10x more expensive than nuclear) and also to oil. They are status quo defending arguments designed to halt thought, paralyze action and scoff change. Just because it isn’t perfect doesn’t mean it isn’t better.

            • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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              7 days ago

              The argument I’m replying to is a classic “not perfect, thus not worth it”. Its disingenuous and it calls for disingenuous reply.

              I wrote nearly a page of text all of factual and relevant points. If your threshold for bad faith replies is that every facet of every argument must be explored before you’ll allow a genuine reply, you’re in the wrong place.

              We are also pursuing renewables in despite of their political and technical flaws.

              Agreed! We are seeing their benefits over their shortcomings. Additionally, its not an all-or-nothing decision. A blend of solutions is the best likely path forward. Some nuclear (currently built) should be part of that. However, putting all the efforts into scaling nuclear would be extremely expensive. If we do that, we should understand that cost will be much larger than most people understand.

              The point is that all the flaws that OP exposes about nuclear power also applied to renewables (at one point in history solar power was 10x more expensive than nuclear) and also to oil.

              Thats a bad argument to support your pro-nuclear position. Other renewables are expensive when they are first developed and get cheaper over time. Nuclear has gone the other direction. Nuclear power is more expensive now than it was when it began, and is only getting more expensive.

              They are status quo defending arguments designed to halt thought, paralyze action and scoff change. Just because it isn’t perfect doesn’t mean it isn’t better.

              My dollar cost argument against nuclear is not that.

              The exceptionally high dollar cost of nuclear was not part of the conversation before I introduced it. It is an important consideration if we’re talking about scaling out any particular solution. If one solution is more expensive than others that produces the same result that is important to consider.

              • dustyData@lemmy.world
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                Nuclear has gone the other direction. Nuclear power is more expensive now than it was when it began, and is only getting more expensive.

                Ask why? don’t just stay with oil companies PR talk points. Nuclear is expensive because innovation has been artificially stifled. A huge part of this, is the insistence to forbid newer designs and more modern improvements, and instead force new plants to use old technologies and models that rely on on-site bespoke construction, as well as arcane and arbitrary administrative processes. Nuclear power is expensive (in the US), because it was made expensive by refusing it all the factors that typically reduce costs of technologies. Nuclear power never got to take advantage of the things that made solar and wind power cheaper, because oil companies lobbied with a shit ton of money to prevent it.

                It doesn’t matter though. Nuclear power could’ve help us survive climate change…40 years ago. It’s too late now anyways. Even if we covered the whole planet with solar power and stopped every single combustion engine in existence, we are already on the way to living in a hellscape. We must focus on survival of the species now.

                • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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                  Ask why? don’t just stay with oil companies PR talk points.

                  I do. I’m not using anyone’s talking points. I couldn’t even tell you what they would be. I have 2 smaller nuclear power plants in my state. I liked the idea of nuclear power, but looked into it myself. It seems like it should be great. Reality shows it isn’t great. I does one thing well (24/7 carbon free electricity), but thats it. Everything else is negatives I found.

                  Nuclear is expensive because innovation has been artificially stifled.

                  I read your article. It doesn’t say what you’re saying it does. That article says “nuclear is expensive” because projects are building old designs retrofitting existing plants.

                  A huge part of this, is the insistence to forbid newer designs and more modern improvements,

                  See you say that, but facts don’t align with that: “NRC Certifies First U.S. Small Modular Reactor Design” Jan 2023 source

                  Do ALL new reactor designs get approved? No. Do no new reactor designs get approved? Also no.

                  Nuclear power is expensive (in the US), because it was made expensive by refusing it all the factors that typically reduce costs of technologies.

                  I read your article there. Its argument is that the theoretical arguments for pricing nuclear power are faulty. We don’t have to work with theoreticals. The customers of the most recently brought online reactors at Vogle nuclear power plant in Georgia are paying significantly more for their electricity as the result of their new nuclear reactors, and will, for decades to come. I pointed this out and cited sources in my OP on this.

                  It doesn’t matter though. Nuclear power could’ve help us survive climate change…40 years ago. It’s too late now anyways. Even if we covered the whole planet with solar power and stopped every single combustion engine in existence, we are already on the way to living in a hellscape. We must focus on survival of the species now.

                  Agreed, so its irrelevant to bring up what could have been done in the past. We have what we have today.

    • cynar@lemmy.world
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      Particularly since coal power stations emit FAR more radioactive material, routinely, than most nuclear “leaks”.

  • SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org
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    No it’s about nuclear waste and where to store it, it’s about how expensive it is to build a nuclear power plant (bc of regulations so they don’t goo boom) and it’s about how much you have to subsidize it to make the electricity it produces affordable at all. Economically it’s just not worth it. Renewables are just WAY cheaper.

    • bouh@lemmy.world
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      Renewable are so cheap, especially when we don’t need as much energy! Fortunately we won’t need as much energy in winter now. :-)

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    Just because burning fossil fuels is bad doesn’t magically make nuclear good, or somehow no big deal. The chance for a catastrophic accident mentioned in the meme is only one drawback (which is bad enough–get real, denial is not a strategy here). Just a few other issues:

    • the problem of what to do with the waste: no permanent solutions have yet been implemented and we’ve been using costly-to-maintain “temporary” methods for decades. Not to mention the thermal water pollution to aquatic ecosystems

    • the enormously out of proportion up front costs to construct the plants, and higher ongoing operation and maintenance costs due to safety risks in proportion to amount of power generated

    • the fact that uranium is also a limited resource that has to be mined like other ores, with all the environmental negatives of that, which then has to go through a lot of processing involving various mechanics and chemicals just to make it usable as fuel.

    Anyway I’m not going to try and go into more detail on a forum post, but all this advocacy for a very problematic method of producing power as if it’s a simple solution to our problems is kind of irritating. At least I hope the above shows we should stop pretending it’s “clean energy”. We should be focusing on developing renewable and sustainable energy systems.

    • dax@feddit.org
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      I don’t get this advocacy either, makes me wonder why? Constructing a nuclear power plant usually takes decades, they are not a solution for the more immediate problem climate change. They also introduce lots of new problems, and it’s not sustainable either.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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    TBF a nuclear incident is not like burning just one house down. It’s burning down the whole city and making it unusable for a decade or ten.

  • Bosht@lemmy.world
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    I always wonder where we would actually be at as a civilization if it weren’t for fuckass lobbyists and money hoarding greedy assholes. This is a perfect example. If we’d learned from our mistakes and actually improved on nuclear energy there’s no telling where we’d be at this point.

    • Agent641@lemmy.world
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      Except the retard didn’t just burn his house down, he burned thousands of people’s houses down in such a way that nobody could ever live there again, and came very close to burning down the whole continent in the same way.

      (I’m still in favour of spicy rock steam)

      • Valmond@lemmy.world
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        Isn’t nuclear energy like super safe and have killed incredibly few people compared to all the other energy sources?

        Or are you talking about destilling the magic rocks very much and putting them in a bomb?

        • Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee
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          Exactly.

          The whole clusterfuck of mishandled Chernobyl cleanup & everything there before and after only claimed a few lives (via direct radiation tissue damage or just accidents).

          Compare that with the daily average of thousands of killed in various (ultimately) oil wars.

          But we don’t even get news about that.

          But western propaganda sure showed us malformed babies & claimed it was from radiation - it turns out it was all bullshit, it was always a toxic chemical behind it (unregulated industries selling toxic shit by the tonnes - fertilisers, paints, even biological warfare).

          We just take radiation super seriously and completely disregard toxic chemical pollution of eg industrial spillages. People just get to live in polluted areas and die sooner because of that. Instead of living for longer & with less health hazards but with a little radiation.

          And lastly - burning coal released way more radiation into air than nuclear accidents.

          • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
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            8 days ago

            While I think most of this is true, I do doubt your claim that Chernobyl didn’t cause birth defects. Even if it didn’t cause defects in humans because they were evacuated, it still caused birth defects in animals that stayed behind. I mean the thing killed a forest. It’s easier to cause mutations than outright kill something - this is especially true in the newly conceived.

            • Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee
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              8 days ago

              Thats the thing, no mutations, not even in mice that live in burrows and have like a generation every two seconds. They even did a DNA study by comparing species to the ones not from that area and found no differences.

              But the main thing they looked at is cancer rates/signs (ionising radiation causing random mutations resulting in cancer, not superpowers), thats why the mice focus (but the fauna there is thriving, the biggest are deer).

              The radiation causing mutation is very theoretical in the sense that the chances if it happening and leading to problems (and DNA corrective measures) seem to be low in the sense that radiation levels needed for that will sooner cause tissue damages too (which ofc is a thing that happens & kills).

              There is still a lot we don’t know bcs there are so few nuclear accidents (and bomb test) sights to study, but the levels how we defined safe is way on the conservative side.

      • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
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        8 days ago

        There was never any real risk of ruining an entire continent. Stop watching TV shows like Chernobyl for accurate information. Perhaps some people thought that at the time, but we now know that kind of thing is impossible. It could have been a worse accident for sure if there was another steam explosion and it would have effected a wider area, but not even close to a continent lol.

      • frayedpickles@lemmy.cafe
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        9 days ago

        Or to put it another way, we almost ruined a large swath of land and learned from that mistake, but chose not to use it so when we do have to switch to nukes because destroyed our planet we will have forgotten all those lessons and do it again.

  • drake@lemmy.sdf.org
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    9 days ago

    There is a huge lobby of pro-nuclear think tanks who try to astroturf pro-nuclear shit onto social media. We, scientifically literate, rational people, need to counteract these harmful narratives with some facts.

    FACT: Renewable sources of energy are as cheap or cheaper per kwh than nuclear.

    FACT: Renewables are faster to provision than nuclear.

    FACT: Renewables are as clean, or cleaner, than nuclear.

    FACT: Renewables are much more flexible and responsive to energy fluctuations than nuclear.

    FACT: Renewables will only get cheaper. Nuclear will only get more expensive, because uranium mining will get harder and harder as we deplete easily accessible sources.

    • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
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      9 days ago

      You don’t actually need to mine more uranium though. You can run certain nuclear designs on Thorium, Plutonium from weapon stocks, or even waste from other reactors. Current generation nuclear designs are laughably inefficient at using the nuclear fuels we have available, and I fully understand why people don’t support them.

      Realistically though I don’t ever expect nuclear fission to be as cheap as renewables in most areas. In some places nuclear or another power source is always going to be needed though just because renewables are not practical in certain conditions.

      In the long term the answer is almost certainly going to be nuclear fusion or another future power source like neutrino voltaic. Solar and wind power are ultimately just offshoots of fusion, and so is fission if you think about where uranium, thorium and so on come from. In fact all power we know of seems to come from either gravity or some kind of nuclear reaction (inc. geothermal and fossil fuels).

      • drake@lemmy.sdf.org
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        9 days ago

        Notice how pro-nuclear people always point towards a bunch of fictional technology as the solution? Oh, we just need fusion, or breeder reactors, or a bunch of other shit that doesn’t exist. No, bro, we just need to build renewables and proper energy grids. It’s really not that complicated. If it’s not sunny where you live, then you just get electricity from where it is sunny. It’s really really simple

        Nuclear energy is a solution looking for a problem. Total tech bro bullshit. Like crypto.

        • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
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          9 days ago

          Renewables folks are also always looking for things that don’t exist. Like magical energy storage and transmission solutions that don’t cost the earth or have huge losses. Or wave power which still hasn’t materialized after decades of research.

        • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
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          9 days ago

          Breeder reactors already exist??? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Notable_reactors

          Moving electricity around is a hard problem. Even just moving energy from one end of Britain to the other looses us 10 or 20%, and we are a small nation. If you need to start moving energy in from somewhere actually sunny like Spain you are going to have a big problem.

          Crypto isn’t looking for a problem, fiat has plenty of problems, it’s just not an optimal solution. Probably the real answer is not using money at all.

        • NιƙƙιDιɱҽʂ@lemmy.world
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          8 days ago

          If it’s not sunny where you live, then you just get electricity from where it is sunny. It’s really really simple

          Yeah, really, really simple. Wait, what are transmission losses?

  • _bcron_@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    “Right in the heart of it is an itty bitty windmill and that just don’t sit right with me” - That one cousin at Thanksgiving

  • reksas@sopuli.xyz
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    there are millions being poured into propaganda against using anything but fossil fuels, much of it stems from there. But i wonder if its better this way or the alternative way where we would use more nuclear energy but since there would be so much money to be made, the rich would use their money to make all safety regulations null. I wish we could just get rid of the source problem.

      • whome@discuss.tchncs.de
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        That’s a crazy oversimplification almost all German party’s had a part in the phase out and shut down of German nuclear energy. To point at the Greens and say it was them, is a right wing talking point pushed by Springer media.

        If there was a way to make good money with nuclear we would have it all around. To say a grass roots movement was able to push this through is laughable, if we look how everything else works in this world. While surely way better to handle securely it’s simply not easy to build and operate. Just look at all the plants currently under construction in Europe, they all struggle to get finished, take years to decades longer then planned and are way more expensive to build then initially estimated. Why is France struggling so hard when they have a population that is definitely way more open minded towards nuclear?

  • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    The year is 2289.

    We know how Dyson spheres work

    That star is just literally free energy

    But we blew up a solar system and wiped out a developing race one time and we stopped using it.

    Imagine if hunters had stopped using fire?!?

    Fukushima showed us the truth, Nuclear Safety is incompatible with capitalism. I don’t care to find out what other time bombs we build into future plants.

    • Zement@feddit.nl
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      That’s the main Issue! It can’t be calculated. It’s an enormous debt for the future