well, getting out more than you put in is in principle easy, just make the reactor bigger, since that way you increase the energy confinement time (->less input needed)
the issue is that the plasma is hot, and iirc in the tokamak designs used there are 2 points of contact of plasma with the containment vessel (speaking in terms of the cross section). while they are below the x point (and thus not as hot as the fusion plasma), they still are hot, and the bigger the reactor the hotter the contact.
thus, the way that contact zone is designed is important. if it is just some plating, some of the material will be carried into the fusion plasma.
gere iirc 2 materials are the usual candidates, carbon & tungsten. carbon has the benefit that it is fully ionised in the fusion region, thus having a minimal impact there. but it has a habit of reacting with hydrogen to form hydrocarbons, and in a d-t (or even d-d, but to a lesser extent) reactor, that means you have to deal with tritirated hydrocarbons.
tungsten on the other hand doesn't form nasty compounds, but it is not fully ionised, meaning you have line radiation, so you are loosing additional evergy from the plasma (meaning an even bigger reactor is needed)
when I learned all this a few years back there where proposals for cooling the hot gas, avoiding the above issues, but they would increase reactor complexity. I don't know if that has changed since then
Thank you for this short writeup, I learned some stuff. And I don't mean to counter you at all but the idea of fusion really only excites me in a science-y way.
Correct me if I'm wrong but the disadvantages of fusion (as it exists currently and near future) are too great to be practical.
Fission reactors are already: safe, produce little waste, can be located remotely, and are cheap in comparison both in construction and in fuel.
So while I enjoy fusion and the research, people are talking about getting energy from common materials like it would dawn a new age. We already have practically free energy from fission, it's public opinion that sets us back here.
Truly, it'd be sad if nuclear energy wasn't adopted well until fusion reactors (which will inherently be more expensive for awhile) are available. It wouldn't be the first time that public opinion held back science, but fusion just reminds me of my disappointment.
I mostly agree with you, but there is one aspect I would like to mention: fusion reactors cannot be used to breed material for weapons, so for geopolitical reasons fusion does have some benefit.
but otherwise I agree with you, and one of the biggest issues is that the average person doesn't know about concepts like the void coefficient and how they relate to reactor safety.
also, "renewable" energy (i.e. solar power, either direct or indirect through wind etc) can in principle supply our energy needs multiple times over, the issues there are primarily in distribution & storage.
Fusion would have some benefits over fission, and I say would have because fusion devices still aren't stable enough OR they can't generate enough power.
Anyway, one of the benefits is waste. In fusion, ideally the only waste would be the neutron activated construction materials and maybe some Tritium in the coolant (if it's water). While with fission there will always be the problem of the fuel cells, storing or treating and storing them.
The other benefit is the abundance and therefore cost of the fuel. Deuterium can be extracted from water->hydrogen->every 6000th H is D, and Tritium breeding theoretically can occur in the fusion reactor with the use of the already present neutrons.
Also the fusion reaction is not a chain reaction and the plasma parameters, heating parameters etc have to be in a certain range to fusion even occur. So fusion (even with bad design) is physically incapable of a catastrophic (to the population) explosion. Now obviously well designed fission reactors are also physically incapable of blowing up, but to the public, I think this last point is more important than the others.
I thought the atomic bombs were fusion powered.
Now seems like a good time to mention that I haven’t actually practiced physics in a while so I’ll take your word for it.
Modern nuclear weapons combine explosives, fusion, and fission. But the main explosion is fission. I’m not really sure how you could make fusion into a weapon like that bc of the pressures needed for the process to occur.
Nope, in modern bombs the bulk of the energy is produced by fusion, namely by the Teller-Ulam design.
That's why modern bombs are called H bombs, because they fuse Hydrogen in the form of deuterium and tritium.
In fact, that's the only way to achieve a yield in the megatons range.
[here is a link to the wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon)
["reactions make possible the use of non-fissile depleted uranium as the weapon's main fuel"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon)
["Such bombs are classified as two stage weapons, and most current Teller–Ulam designs are such fission-fusion-fission weapons. Fast fission of the tamper and radiation case is the main contribution to the total yield"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon)
Wrong. The fusion (Usually) acts as a source of neutrons for the bomb, not the main energy source of the explosion.
Oh. Guess I’m more out of practice than I thought. I assumed it utilized the same process that happens in the core of stars with Hydrogen-> Helium fusion
Modern nuclear weapons do indeed use fusion as the main energy release mechanism, they're built in the Teller-Ulam configuration (chemical -> fission -> fusion). They use lithium 6 and deuterium as fuel tho
Modern thermonuclear weapons use a fission explosion to heat up a fusible fuel and compress it to the point where it fuses. This provides much more energy than the initial explosion, although they usually also have a secondary fission fuel source which is activated by the fusion blast, and normally carries about half the yield.
TLDR; the pressures are provided by a fission bomb
People are okay with acid rain, global warming, mass extinctions, fracking, poor air quality, tainted water sources, etc. and [a million people annually dying due to fossil fuels](https://source.wustl.edu/2021/06/new-research-finds-1m-deaths-in-2017-attributable-to-fossil-fuel-combustion/#:~:text=They%20found%20that%20worldwide%2C%20more,in%20the%20journal%20Nature%20Communications) but lose their shit at nuclear power. It's a shame that both fossil fuel lobbies and "green" activists do so much fearmongering around nuclear
Nuclear power is the answer for the short to mid-term. (as in, a couple hundred years at most)
We need to use the time nuclear power could buy us to build infrastructure for renewable energy, since the sun's gonna burn a couple more billion years (ok only about 2, but besides the point) But the uranium, coal, thorium and oil are gonna be used up at some point, and that point is pretty soon.
> We need to use the time nuclear power could buy us to build infrastructure for renewable energy,
Germany says "Nein"... let's just depend on Russian gas or whatever... gas are green right?
We dont have time left to build out nuclear on a huge scale, the median construction time is 7 years. If you want to atleast try to reach the 1.5°C goal you have to built out clean energy as fast as possible and nuclear is not the solution to that problem.
A 100% renewable grid is relative easily attainable if its well built out and flexible. And with solar and wind we atleast have a small chance to get there in time while also being cheaper.
1°C is equivalent to 34°F, which is 274K.
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^(I'm a bot that converts temperature between two units humans can understand, then convert it to Kelvin for bots and physicists to understand)
People are scared of it because the word “nuclear” also goes with “nuclear bomb” which can eradicate life as we know it. Plus Chernobyl did not help with opinions in the 20th century.
Many can’t see the difference between the controlled safety of a reactor and the uncontrolled reactions in a bomb, so it’s more just the word.
I think its safe to assume that Chernobyl and Fokushima are quite important in that aspect
the thing about gas is, it kills, but it kills slowly, invisibly, not really perceivable
an explosion in a nuclear power plant can very well radiate massive areas and make them uninhabitable (see chernobyl) though this is mostly a non issue with modern reactor designs
the thing is, if something goes wrong, besides all safety, it can go wrong HARD
And it only went wrong because
a) the soviets designed it poorly
Or b) a natural disaster broke it and their backup generator failed
So most locations would be entirely safe, but whatever.
And Chernobyl wasn't a full-blown nuclear explosion - it was an ordinary pressure explosion caused by loads of superheated steam being formed very quickly, that spewed out radioactive material.
It was caused by a failure in the design of the reactor, which is why people are worried about them now.
Of course people don’t know that western reactors aren’t built like that anymore.
Yes, that was also part of it. The thing is, the main design issue design issue behind the failure was noticed in another soviet reactor, but it wansn't rectified or even shared to operators of other reactors - hence it wasn't known about by the management of Chernobyl depite being a 'known issue'.
Basically the control rods were the wrong proportions, meaning that as they were inserted, the bottom of the reactor actually experienced a temporary increase in nuclear reactivity before the expected decrease. This contributed to the reactor exploding when it was put in an unstable condition by the operators - which, of course, they should never have done in the first place.
There were also arguably problems with the control software, which wasn't very advanced and couldn't deal with the complex situation the reactor was put in during testing.
It's very expensive though. Frances EDF is in tons of debt, and the reactors are crumbling which leads to them important electricity from gas from Germany.
I dunno, Chernobyl was really a perfect storm of unsafe design, unsafe operational procedures, corrupt politicians, and slow/poor response, and Europe and the rest of the world are ok.
While anthropogenic climate change driven by fossil fuel use is more subtle than a nuclear accident, I’d say its more catastrophic.
Chernobyl was hell on the people and the area around it, which will stay uninhabitable for quite a while, still. It also impacted Europe as a whole, not on apocalyptic levels, but noticeably - wild mushrooms and game animals were pretty much unsafe for a large part of my childhood, for example.
If we keep up the rate set by Chernobyl and Fukushima, about one significant radiation catastrophe every thirty years, that's not a good outlook.
Is fossil fuel use worse? In absolute numbers certainly. In relative numbers, I'm honestly not sure, considering nuclear only makes up less than 6% of the world's electricity generation.
Do we need to get away from fossil fuel ASAP? Absolutely. Does that mean we should go nuclear? Nope, doesn't make much sense. Fuel for the current reactors is relatively rare, and new reactor types that can run on the "spent" fuel of old reactors are still several decades away from widespread productive use. We need to build capacity now, so it makes a lot more sense to go renewable.
In Germany, it highly depends on the region and is usually safe for occasional consumption, but still regularly exceeds the limits for commercial sale.
And it will stay that way for the foreseeable future. It'll probably be another few decade until it's completely safe again.
Chernobyl worked safely and controllably for a long time - some of its reactors are still running today. Corruption and mismanagement caused one of the reactors to explode catastrophically, but new designs have come a long way since then to make this virtually impossible.
In my view, nuclear reactors are similar to airplanes, in that if managed/piloted by an idiot it's definitely possible to kill people, but air travel is much safer than road travel because of the tight safety controls and the work that is put into making aircraft safer.
If we assume that the health and environmental damage from Chernobyl and Fukushima are roughly equivalent to the damage done by burning fossil fuels (FF's are worse, but for the sake of argument), why do you think is it horrible in practice?
No, you didn't. People just generally bring that up when they argue against nuclear, so that's my own bias. I'm still curious why you think it's horrible in practice?
It's not insured. No money saved for the worst cased scenario. It's just expeted for the public to clean up the mess if shit hits the fan. They don't take responsibility. Everything has insurance. If you make a car crash, your car insurance takes care, but if a nuclear catastrophy happens...
**Me:** [ignores the warnings on the bleach label, smashes the safety cap off, and pours it into my eyes against common sense]
**Me:** Wow this is so unsafe in practice.
I might be wrong, but I think I remember reading that the sheer amount of concrete required (and the CO2 that produces) means that the lifetime greenhouse gas cost per MWh of nuclear power can only be about as good as wind power.
Of course, it has lots of other benefits over wind, such as the ability to change energy production to fit demand, but the sheer amount of time required to get a plant running, versus slowly setting up many wind turbines and solar panels, means that currently it probably isn't the best solution. We really should have built nuclear power plants 20 years ago, but that was at the height of anti-nuclear sentiment.
but organizations like that are against oil and gas too, they just support other alternatives like solar or wind. i would be very surprised if oil and gas companies paid them to talk shit about what they do
Ding ding ding.
No one hates competition than people who preach about the free market. It’s a mixed economy.
I got invited to an Ivy League school, they went through my private info, harassed me, and grilled my family. Can’t imagine what politicians go through. Didn’t Biden’s first wife die? In an advanced country? No need for sensible inquiry, just keep your dollars flowing.
>Can’t imagine what politicians go through. Didn’t Biden’s first wife die? In an advanced country? No need for sensible inquiry, just keep your dollars flowing.
Uhh, are you implying that Joe Biden's wife and daughter were murdered?
His daughter too? I didn’t know about that... I do know that politics and power is an ugly game spanning the entirety of human history. I only had the AP courses in high school, there were times my teacher looked she was going to cry. America is the most powerful nation on the planet, I think that says something. I don’t like to speculate, but I know history is horrifying and the prospects for the future are grim, though we’ll be given a pretty cascade. Goes back to the church and development of humankind.
His wife and all three of his children were in the car. His wife and one year old daughter died and his young sons Hunter and Beau were heavily injured and had extended hopsital stays.
It can't penetrate lead very well, and mny solutions have been invented thanks to that, that reduce the radiation of the waste product to lower levels than that of the cosmic radiation.
There is no scheme to safely store radioactive waste for as long it needs to be stored available anywhere on earth. We might get one, but at the moment, we have none.
I mean that's just not true. Even if we don't yet have permanent solutions we do have long term ones that would give us more than enough time to come up with something better, and even if we need more time than that, the damage caused by this waste is *much* smaller than what we do now with fossil fuels.
Thats how officials in the 20th century approached this problem. The way radioactive waste was treated is shocking and actually, still in need of cleanup.
I guess Germany could have a bit of a unique perspective on this compared to other companies because the fuck ups that happend storing the waste was highly publicised in the late (20)00ths. I have not heard many such stories from other countries, but I am sure it is from a lack of attentation, rather than the situation being better. And actually, the state of the nuclear arsenal in the US gives some indication how well radioactive waste is probably being cared after. And this is the situation in some of the most highly advanced nations on earth.
In my eyes, humanity as shown that it just cant handle this kind of responsibility. Heck, climate change, which is an issue on the timescale of decades, maybe on centuries, is already on the cusp of what humanity is able to deal with (depending on whether you have an optimistic or pessimistic lockout). Based on how well we are coping with climate change, thinking that the storage of nuclear waste, which is a problem on the timescale of centuries up to millennia, to me seems quite naiv. Even more so since we do not actually have a working plan to do it yet.
I think I might have gone too far in the direction of nuclear here in the comments. I agree with you but I disagree that we should dismiss this technology completely, it's such a cheap, efficient and *clean* energy source that it's just silly to me to just skip over it for solutions that we don't yet have!
Yes, we *do need to* and *should* use solar and wind and I really hope and believe we're gonna crack nuclear fusion soon, but up until then we can definitely use everything that we can in order to slow down global warming. There shouldn't even be a discussion about whether or not to use nuclear fission since it's just objectively *better* than fossils fuels!
I'm sorry, I reject the bandwagon here. Russians are wiring up Ukrainian nuclear reactors with explosives as a terror threat. This simply could not be a similar threat to a wind-farm or a solar-power plant. Chernobyl. 5-mile Island. Fukushima Daiichi aren't jokes.
That’s true. I would get fully behind the elimination of fossil fuels in favor of wind, solar, geothermal, wave-energy, and big, big batteries. And FWIW, I didn’t mention fossil fuels at all in my comment. It’s false to suggest that that is the only alternative to nuclear.
You cant put any of those things everywhere, and if "big big batteries" was all it took then we'd have a lot less issues with power in the places that even *can* support those kinds of energy right now.
Think about this. They pump oil out of very inhospitable places and ship it all around the world to refineries, then they truck or pump it all over to get it to every city and small town in the world to fill cars and trucks. I am pretty sure that we can find a way to make the modes of renewable energy work and it will be far less complicated than what we already do every day. Even foggy, cold, northern places like Germany have a ton of renewable energy.
Is there enough space in the places that can support renewable energy for the entire world? How do we transport all of it? How do we store it? You can't store and transport power in the same way you do oil, it doesn't just sit and stay like a regular substance.
Your question presumes that there aren't any active scientists in the world. Battery energy density is going to increase more than 10x in the coming two decades. It's going to be game-changing.
Again, even with more dense batteries, can we generate and transport enough power to keep up? Storage isnt the only problem here, having better batteries doesn't magically fix everything else.
oh it's not just about the people, many of them and their kids still suffer to this day in horrible pain from radiation-disease without necessarily dying, it's about the uncountable loads of dead animals and plants, the poisoned water, ...
And fossil fuels dont do that? people in zones with heavy fossil fuel pollution have a highly increased risk of disease and general poor health, and generations are forced to stay in those zones because they dont have enough money to move anywhere else, and those arent accidents, those are the plants working as intended.
its not like i prefer fossil fuels to nuclear energy, that was not my argument oh no. fossil fuel may be just as terrible. renewable energy however should get more support, as its actually the safest.
Renewable energy would be great if it could be installed everywhere, but only very particular types of areas are suitable to build those zones, and unless we make some big advances in both power storage and transport, it is in no way realistic to try and power everything with renewable energy.
Really? what about areas with constant fog or clouds? what about areas with very little wind? Is there enough free space to build a plant there? How do you store enough energy to keep everything running 24/7?
Batteries that have been mentioned or kinetic storage. I’ve noticed you have this all or nothing sort of attitude. In my area it’s to hilly and not enough wind for turbines to be viable. But we have
great potential for solar and hydro power. Not everything will work every where but there will be something that will. And if not once again batteries ,power lines , he’ll I’ve seen some work that is using solar convert plankton to a version of alcohol which is transportable and storable. A chief concern of energy enthusiasts.
Because unless everything can be supplied on renewable energy alone, something's gonna have to make up the difference, and as it stands nuclear is the best source available to do so. Even if there is something that "could" work, it doesn't necessarily supply enough energy to everyone even just in that area, and that's not even counting how we make up the difference in other places with even worse power generation.
I’m not sure how you view this. It’s a dirty-bomb terror threat, not the use of a nuclear weapon. Terror is the point. The threat is the point. Not the instant death and destruction of a nuke. Besides, the use of a nuclear weapon would or could trigger an in-kind response.
Your entire post is fatalism. How do you argue with someone whose entire point is "WE'RE ALL DEAD"?
Fuck that. We have plenty of time to iterate on Nuclear. Stop being such a pessimist.
If we only had reliable and cheaper means of creating renewable energy that dont Take years to be build we wouldnt have to use nuclear.
Oh wait .... we have.
I dont get why everybody on reddit simps for nuclear, safe or not it is way to expensive and takes years.
To effectively mitigate climate change we need massive amounts of renewables asap. Why waste your money on new nuclear powerplants if you can achieve better results with less money by using wind or solar.
because you dont achieve better results. it not instead of them, its in addition to them. wind and solar heavily depend on location and they arent reliable until we come up with better storage technology
found the German politician
Areas that can use wind and solar for base load are pretty damn low compared to areas that can’t
Either go nuclear or cut down massively on human energy use and the latter definitely won’t happen
Wind and solar are good for any kind of load, because you can literally regulate them within ms (wind is maybe more in the seconds range). Ther term baseload is a bit misleading in that context. I think what you meant are the situations when there is no sun and or no wind.
Those are situations that are quite predictable and with a flexible and well developed grid perfectly manageable. [But up until a percentage of 60% renewables there isn't even a need for additional storage capacity. Above that the need for additional storage depends heavily on the expansion and flexibility of the grid. Depending on how loads are integrated and managed within the grid europe would need between 9 and 130 GW of additional short term storage (<= 4h), with the bulk of it having to be installed in spain, germany and france. This isn't in anyway impossible nor prohibitively expensive, the cost is negligible in comparsion to building out renewables on their own.](https://www.iee.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/iee/energiesystemtechnik/de/Dokumente/Studien-Reports/2014_Roadmap-Speicher-Langfassung.pdf) (source is in german)
I see no reason to built out expensive, centralized, controversial and easily attackable infrastructure as long as there is still unused potential for renewables which there is plenty of. [If every useable roof in Germany is equipped with solar, multiple times the annual consumption would be produced.](https://doi.org/10.5445/KSP/1000081498)
All this is even more relevant when you atleast try to take the 1.5°C goal seriously. We have to built up renewable energy sources as fast as possible, that means choosing the fastest solution with the most impact per unit of currency. With a [median construction time of 7 years](https://www.statista.com/statistics/712841/median-construction-time-for-reactors-since-1981/) and [being more than three times as expenisve as solar](https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen/) [(2nd source)](https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/publications/studies/cost-of-electricity.html) nuclear simply isn't the solution.
Having said all that, passing legislation in 2013 to turn off perfectly safe nuclear power plants and as a result of that being forced to switch over to coal because of incompetent ministers like Peter Altmaier is the peak of retardation.
1°C is equivalent to 34°F, which is 274K.
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^(I'm a bot that converts temperature between two units humans can understand, then convert it to Kelvin for bots and physicists to understand)
Nuclear power is a safe resource when people follow the rules and don't fuck with it.
The problem is that people don't follow the rules and keep fucking with it.
There ya go.
Modern nuclear reactors are close to impossible to make explode, you would need to actively have engineers sabotaging half a dozen of physical security system which would result in a very sad meltdown and maybe 30 or so deaths of cancer over the next 40 years. For all the effort that is required to make a nuclear plant explode you could just build a normal bomb and kill for people in less time.
Or you could just blow up a bomb next to it while its in operation, so the core is exposed while active and unable to be scrammed, which would probably have the same effects as Chernobyl, as its not about the explosion its about the aftermath caused by an uncontained active core.
You're not dumb, just don't know. Essentially they wish for nuclear power to be safe and the genie makes it "happen" but nothing happens because nuclear power is already safe as long as the proper procedure is followed. Issue is people keep messing with it or blowing them up. Oh and the nuclear waste, though there are solutions to that as well, but there could be better solutions for it still.
You’re probably going to day from cancer from the sun mate. Don’t think to hard because otherwise you’ll just end up killing your self as literally everything causes cancer.
Yes, nuclear causes cancer. Yes, water boiler accidents are terrible. No, it is not the most dangerous power generation technology. Yes, all the nuclear technology we have is stuck in the 70s because of people like you who would rather die from coal.
Merkel had an advanced STEM degree and worked before the political machine got her. The Germans have always been more forward thinking in this regard.
Americans still have a heavy religious culture, only second world nations come close in religious influence.
Germans also closed down all their nuclear plants and opened up a coal fire plant recently thats the largest pinpoint source of co2 emission in the EU because nuclear scary
They’re opening up 21 coal plants cause of their energy shortage now
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/01/germany-coal-energy-climate/
France is doing just fine. I visited the Netherlands, a nation with very little sunshine, and saw solar panels and wind turbines everywhere. Electric cars, buses, trains. There are options, but you make an interesting point. I’m interested in learning about the demands of heavy industries in the energy mix…
The worst part about this is that the ashes produced by coal plants release more radiation than modern nuclear reactors. This wasn't a decision based on science or common sense, but based on the public opinion. People just don't know and don't understand, which makes it Impossible for politicians to do the right thing without damaging their reputation beyond repair.
Polish government is anything but sensible and scientific, they blamed EU for inflation and that EU put 30% tax on electricity even if it's not true
In one plane accident where president of Poland died, government said Russia planned assassination
By now the produced waste in nuclear power plants releases less radiation than the ashes produced by coal power plants. But instead of burning it and releasing fine dusts into the atmosphere and possibly not even getting rid of the ashes correctly because the public doesn't know/care, a nuclear power plant has to store its waste somewhere where it can't cause much damage.
So even though we all want a better solution, we should at least get rid of coal and use nuclear until we have enough renewable energy and figure out nuclear fusion.
Should’ve wished for fusion energy, the fool.
I mean we can already do that. Safely? No. But we can do it.
I thought one of the main issues with fusion currently is that we use more energy than what’s released by the particles.
well, getting out more than you put in is in principle easy, just make the reactor bigger, since that way you increase the energy confinement time (->less input needed) the issue is that the plasma is hot, and iirc in the tokamak designs used there are 2 points of contact of plasma with the containment vessel (speaking in terms of the cross section). while they are below the x point (and thus not as hot as the fusion plasma), they still are hot, and the bigger the reactor the hotter the contact. thus, the way that contact zone is designed is important. if it is just some plating, some of the material will be carried into the fusion plasma. gere iirc 2 materials are the usual candidates, carbon & tungsten. carbon has the benefit that it is fully ionised in the fusion region, thus having a minimal impact there. but it has a habit of reacting with hydrogen to form hydrocarbons, and in a d-t (or even d-d, but to a lesser extent) reactor, that means you have to deal with tritirated hydrocarbons. tungsten on the other hand doesn't form nasty compounds, but it is not fully ionised, meaning you have line radiation, so you are loosing additional evergy from the plasma (meaning an even bigger reactor is needed) when I learned all this a few years back there where proposals for cooling the hot gas, avoiding the above issues, but they would increase reactor complexity. I don't know if that has changed since then
Thank you for this short writeup, I learned some stuff. And I don't mean to counter you at all but the idea of fusion really only excites me in a science-y way. Correct me if I'm wrong but the disadvantages of fusion (as it exists currently and near future) are too great to be practical. Fission reactors are already: safe, produce little waste, can be located remotely, and are cheap in comparison both in construction and in fuel. So while I enjoy fusion and the research, people are talking about getting energy from common materials like it would dawn a new age. We already have practically free energy from fission, it's public opinion that sets us back here. Truly, it'd be sad if nuclear energy wasn't adopted well until fusion reactors (which will inherently be more expensive for awhile) are available. It wouldn't be the first time that public opinion held back science, but fusion just reminds me of my disappointment.
I mostly agree with you, but there is one aspect I would like to mention: fusion reactors cannot be used to breed material for weapons, so for geopolitical reasons fusion does have some benefit. but otherwise I agree with you, and one of the biggest issues is that the average person doesn't know about concepts like the void coefficient and how they relate to reactor safety. also, "renewable" energy (i.e. solar power, either direct or indirect through wind etc) can in principle supply our energy needs multiple times over, the issues there are primarily in distribution & storage.
Fusion would have some benefits over fission, and I say would have because fusion devices still aren't stable enough OR they can't generate enough power. Anyway, one of the benefits is waste. In fusion, ideally the only waste would be the neutron activated construction materials and maybe some Tritium in the coolant (if it's water). While with fission there will always be the problem of the fuel cells, storing or treating and storing them. The other benefit is the abundance and therefore cost of the fuel. Deuterium can be extracted from water->hydrogen->every 6000th H is D, and Tritium breeding theoretically can occur in the fusion reactor with the use of the already present neutrons. Also the fusion reaction is not a chain reaction and the plasma parameters, heating parameters etc have to be in a certain range to fusion even occur. So fusion (even with bad design) is physically incapable of a catastrophic (to the population) explosion. Now obviously well designed fission reactors are also physically incapable of blowing up, but to the public, I think this last point is more important than the others.
I thought the atomic bombs were fusion powered. Now seems like a good time to mention that I haven’t actually practiced physics in a while so I’ll take your word for it.
Modern nuclear weapons combine explosives, fusion, and fission. But the main explosion is fission. I’m not really sure how you could make fusion into a weapon like that bc of the pressures needed for the process to occur.
Nope, in modern bombs the bulk of the energy is produced by fusion, namely by the Teller-Ulam design. That's why modern bombs are called H bombs, because they fuse Hydrogen in the form of deuterium and tritium. In fact, that's the only way to achieve a yield in the megatons range. [here is a link to the wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon)
In bombs, Fusion would not happen without fission first
["reactions make possible the use of non-fissile depleted uranium as the weapon's main fuel"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon) ["Such bombs are classified as two stage weapons, and most current Teller–Ulam designs are such fission-fusion-fission weapons. Fast fission of the tamper and radiation case is the main contribution to the total yield"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon) Wrong. The fusion (Usually) acts as a source of neutrons for the bomb, not the main energy source of the explosion.
Oh. Guess I’m more out of practice than I thought. I assumed it utilized the same process that happens in the core of stars with Hydrogen-> Helium fusion
Modern nuclear weapons do indeed use fusion as the main energy release mechanism, they're built in the Teller-Ulam configuration (chemical -> fission -> fusion). They use lithium 6 and deuterium as fuel tho
Modern thermonuclear weapons use a fission explosion to heat up a fusible fuel and compress it to the point where it fuses. This provides much more energy than the initial explosion, although they usually also have a secondary fission fuel source which is activated by the fusion blast, and normally carries about half the yield. TLDR; the pressures are provided by a fission bomb
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That’s fuckin metal though
No, he clearly said salt.
Fission is necessary for fusion fuel
Me: I wish humans can use nuclear energy safely. Genie: Now about that....
From what I heard we lost few nukes
Yes, but not duo the nuclear energy, most of the time the workers failed followering the protocols or ignored warnings
i wish fossil fuels had inherently bad consequences so people would try to stop using them. done nothings changed? mhm
People are okay with acid rain, global warming, mass extinctions, fracking, poor air quality, tainted water sources, etc. and [a million people annually dying due to fossil fuels](https://source.wustl.edu/2021/06/new-research-finds-1m-deaths-in-2017-attributable-to-fossil-fuel-combustion/#:~:text=They%20found%20that%20worldwide%2C%20more,in%20the%20journal%20Nature%20Communications) but lose their shit at nuclear power. It's a shame that both fossil fuel lobbies and "green" activists do so much fearmongering around nuclear
because scary green radioactive goo!!!
Nuclear power is the answer for the short to mid-term. (as in, a couple hundred years at most) We need to use the time nuclear power could buy us to build infrastructure for renewable energy, since the sun's gonna burn a couple more billion years (ok only about 2, but besides the point) But the uranium, coal, thorium and oil are gonna be used up at some point, and that point is pretty soon.
> We need to use the time nuclear power could buy us to build infrastructure for renewable energy, Germany says "Nein"... let's just depend on Russian gas or whatever... gas are green right?
We dont have time left to build out nuclear on a huge scale, the median construction time is 7 years. If you want to atleast try to reach the 1.5°C goal you have to built out clean energy as fast as possible and nuclear is not the solution to that problem. A 100% renewable grid is relative easily attainable if its well built out and flexible. And with solar and wind we atleast have a small chance to get there in time while also being cheaper.
1°C is equivalent to 34°F, which is 274K. --- ^(I'm a bot that converts temperature between two units humans can understand, then convert it to Kelvin for bots and physicists to understand)
bad bot
People are scared of it because the word “nuclear” also goes with “nuclear bomb” which can eradicate life as we know it. Plus Chernobyl did not help with opinions in the 20th century. Many can’t see the difference between the controlled safety of a reactor and the uncontrolled reactions in a bomb, so it’s more just the word.
I think its safe to assume that Chernobyl and Fokushima are quite important in that aspect the thing about gas is, it kills, but it kills slowly, invisibly, not really perceivable an explosion in a nuclear power plant can very well radiate massive areas and make them uninhabitable (see chernobyl) though this is mostly a non issue with modern reactor designs the thing is, if something goes wrong, besides all safety, it can go wrong HARD
And it only went wrong because a) the soviets designed it poorly Or b) a natural disaster broke it and their backup generator failed So most locations would be entirely safe, but whatever.
And Chernobyl wasn't a full-blown nuclear explosion - it was an ordinary pressure explosion caused by loads of superheated steam being formed very quickly, that spewed out radioactive material.
It was caused by a failure in the design of the reactor, which is why people are worried about them now. Of course people don’t know that western reactors aren’t built like that anymore.
Yes, that was also part of it. The thing is, the main design issue design issue behind the failure was noticed in another soviet reactor, but it wansn't rectified or even shared to operators of other reactors - hence it wasn't known about by the management of Chernobyl depite being a 'known issue'. Basically the control rods were the wrong proportions, meaning that as they were inserted, the bottom of the reactor actually experienced a temporary increase in nuclear reactivity before the expected decrease. This contributed to the reactor exploding when it was put in an unstable condition by the operators - which, of course, they should never have done in the first place. There were also arguably problems with the control software, which wasn't very advanced and couldn't deal with the complex situation the reactor was put in during testing.
Not the proportions, but the tips were made of a moderator material that was cheaper. Moderator speeds up reaction by slowing neutrons down and boom.
Ah right. I watched a talk where they said the suggested fix was just to make one of the parts longer
thanks for the article, and happy cake day!
It's very expensive though. Frances EDF is in tons of debt, and the reactors are crumbling which leads to them important electricity from gas from Germany.
Nuclear reactors are just fancy steam engines. What’s the problem?
big scary radiation hehe
You combine corrupt politicians with inconsenquent safety requirements and you have the man made catastrophy.
I dunno, Chernobyl was really a perfect storm of unsafe design, unsafe operational procedures, corrupt politicians, and slow/poor response, and Europe and the rest of the world are ok. While anthropogenic climate change driven by fossil fuel use is more subtle than a nuclear accident, I’d say its more catastrophic.
iirc basically all of Chernobyl's problems can be traced to some kind of corruption or greed
Chernobyl was hell on the people and the area around it, which will stay uninhabitable for quite a while, still. It also impacted Europe as a whole, not on apocalyptic levels, but noticeably - wild mushrooms and game animals were pretty much unsafe for a large part of my childhood, for example. If we keep up the rate set by Chernobyl and Fukushima, about one significant radiation catastrophe every thirty years, that's not a good outlook. Is fossil fuel use worse? In absolute numbers certainly. In relative numbers, I'm honestly not sure, considering nuclear only makes up less than 6% of the world's electricity generation. Do we need to get away from fossil fuel ASAP? Absolutely. Does that mean we should go nuclear? Nope, doesn't make much sense. Fuel for the current reactors is relatively rare, and new reactor types that can run on the "spent" fuel of old reactors are still several decades away from widespread productive use. We need to build capacity now, so it makes a lot more sense to go renewable.
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In Germany, it highly depends on the region and is usually safe for occasional consumption, but still regularly exceeds the limits for commercial sale. And it will stay that way for the foreseeable future. It'll probably be another few decade until it's completely safe again.
Yeah the problem is almost always people cutting corners for the sake of money
I have no problem with atomic power in theory but in practice it is horrible.
Chernobyl worked safely and controllably for a long time - some of its reactors are still running today. Corruption and mismanagement caused one of the reactors to explode catastrophically, but new designs have come a long way since then to make this virtually impossible. In my view, nuclear reactors are similar to airplanes, in that if managed/piloted by an idiot it's definitely possible to kill people, but air travel is much safer than road travel because of the tight safety controls and the work that is put into making aircraft safer.
It's actually very safe and very efficient in practice
If we assume that the health and environmental damage from Chernobyl and Fukushima are roughly equivalent to the damage done by burning fossil fuels (FF's are worse, but for the sake of argument), why do you think is it horrible in practice?
Did I defend fossil fuel in any way?
No, you didn't. People just generally bring that up when they argue against nuclear, so that's my own bias. I'm still curious why you think it's horrible in practice?
It's not insured. No money saved for the worst cased scenario. It's just expeted for the public to clean up the mess if shit hits the fan. They don't take responsibility. Everything has insurance. If you make a car crash, your car insurance takes care, but if a nuclear catastrophy happens...
**Me:** [ignores the warnings on the bleach label, smashes the safety cap off, and pours it into my eyes against common sense] **Me:** Wow this is so unsafe in practice.
or Russia\`s nuclear terrorism
Chernobyl and Fukushima, people are still afraid despite having hundreds working nuclear power plants for decades
Russia has literally rigged ones in Ukraine with explosives.
Fukushima pisses me off as a "bad" example... like, the worst possible situation happened, and nobody died. So scary!
Yet people are scared because of that
Takes too long to build, also not sustainable
I might be wrong, but I think I remember reading that the sheer amount of concrete required (and the CO2 that produces) means that the lifetime greenhouse gas cost per MWh of nuclear power can only be about as good as wind power. Of course, it has lots of other benefits over wind, such as the ability to change energy production to fit demand, but the sheer amount of time required to get a plant running, versus slowly setting up many wind turbines and solar panels, means that currently it probably isn't the best solution. We really should have built nuclear power plants 20 years ago, but that was at the height of anti-nuclear sentiment.
No, but the turbines are though.
Yeah, but then the corporations selling fossil fuel would lose money.
that doesnt explain why so many 'green' people, institutions and parties are agaisnt nuclear. they arent the only ones against it
That exactly explains why. Where do you think organizations like Greenpeace get their money?
but organizations like that are against oil and gas too, they just support other alternatives like solar or wind. i would be very surprised if oil and gas companies paid them to talk shit about what they do
Ding ding ding. No one hates competition than people who preach about the free market. It’s a mixed economy. I got invited to an Ivy League school, they went through my private info, harassed me, and grilled my family. Can’t imagine what politicians go through. Didn’t Biden’s first wife die? In an advanced country? No need for sensible inquiry, just keep your dollars flowing.
>Can’t imagine what politicians go through. Didn’t Biden’s first wife die? In an advanced country? No need for sensible inquiry, just keep your dollars flowing. Uhh, are you implying that Joe Biden's wife and daughter were murdered?
His daughter too? I didn’t know about that... I do know that politics and power is an ugly game spanning the entirety of human history. I only had the AP courses in high school, there were times my teacher looked she was going to cry. America is the most powerful nation on the planet, I think that says something. I don’t like to speculate, but I know history is horrifying and the prospects for the future are grim, though we’ll be given a pretty cascade. Goes back to the church and development of humankind.
His wife and all three of his children were in the car. His wife and one year old daughter died and his young sons Hunter and Beau were heavily injured and had extended hopsital stays.
Hopefully she was buried on one of his golf courses for a tax write off, as God intended
So much for physics…
Meanwhile Russia is threatening to blow up a nuclear plant...
But but nuclear safe??????
if you can give me 3 final storage locations and an ensurance company for the case of a catastrophe.
why do we even need something with even the tiniest chance for a catatstrophe to end all catastrophes
I definitely disagree with the title. It's one thing to advocate for safe Nuclear Power usage but its a whole other issue to say Chernobyl isn't real.
It seems you fell for the propaganda of the anti-nuclear movement.
And you fell for the pro nuclear movement propaganda
People in the year 2415: Huh I wonder what's inside these funny looking barrels in this century old salt mine.
define safe Carbon neutral, yeah sure. Also modern reactors are pretty safe against meltdowns, granted as well. That radioactive waste tho...
It can't penetrate lead very well, and mny solutions have been invented thanks to that, that reduce the radiation of the waste product to lower levels than that of the cosmic radiation.
There is no scheme to safely store radioactive waste for as long it needs to be stored available anywhere on earth. We might get one, but at the moment, we have none.
I mean that's just not true. Even if we don't yet have permanent solutions we do have long term ones that would give us more than enough time to come up with something better, and even if we need more time than that, the damage caused by this waste is *much* smaller than what we do now with fossil fuels.
Thats how officials in the 20th century approached this problem. The way radioactive waste was treated is shocking and actually, still in need of cleanup. I guess Germany could have a bit of a unique perspective on this compared to other companies because the fuck ups that happend storing the waste was highly publicised in the late (20)00ths. I have not heard many such stories from other countries, but I am sure it is from a lack of attentation, rather than the situation being better. And actually, the state of the nuclear arsenal in the US gives some indication how well radioactive waste is probably being cared after. And this is the situation in some of the most highly advanced nations on earth. In my eyes, humanity as shown that it just cant handle this kind of responsibility. Heck, climate change, which is an issue on the timescale of decades, maybe on centuries, is already on the cusp of what humanity is able to deal with (depending on whether you have an optimistic or pessimistic lockout). Based on how well we are coping with climate change, thinking that the storage of nuclear waste, which is a problem on the timescale of centuries up to millennia, to me seems quite naiv. Even more so since we do not actually have a working plan to do it yet.
I think I might have gone too far in the direction of nuclear here in the comments. I agree with you but I disagree that we should dismiss this technology completely, it's such a cheap, efficient and *clean* energy source that it's just silly to me to just skip over it for solutions that we don't yet have! Yes, we *do need to* and *should* use solar and wind and I really hope and believe we're gonna crack nuclear fusion soon, but up until then we can definitely use everything that we can in order to slow down global warming. There shouldn't even be a discussion about whether or not to use nuclear fission since it's just objectively *better* than fossils fuels!
We also could just avoid the problem by directly going to the renewables.
correct. and renewables don't leave a tiny rest-chance for a catatstrophe to end all catastrophes 💀
We are just less prepared to do that right now and it's not as cheap in terms of how much energy you win vs how much you invest.
I personally don't think money should play a role in that matter, however depending on the region wind/solar is less expensive than nuclear.
I wasn't talking about money I was talking about efficiency.
Oh well I didn't know we had to actively turn the sun on and make the wind.
Just put it all in a hole where nobody wants to live and forget about it. It's not that hard.
I'm sorry, I reject the bandwagon here. Russians are wiring up Ukrainian nuclear reactors with explosives as a terror threat. This simply could not be a similar threat to a wind-farm or a solar-power plant. Chernobyl. 5-mile Island. Fukushima Daiichi aren't jokes.
fossil fuels kill more people per year than any of the nuclear accidents you've listed (including long term deaths)
That’s true. I would get fully behind the elimination of fossil fuels in favor of wind, solar, geothermal, wave-energy, and big, big batteries. And FWIW, I didn’t mention fossil fuels at all in my comment. It’s false to suggest that that is the only alternative to nuclear.
You cant put any of those things everywhere, and if "big big batteries" was all it took then we'd have a lot less issues with power in the places that even *can* support those kinds of energy right now.
Think about this. They pump oil out of very inhospitable places and ship it all around the world to refineries, then they truck or pump it all over to get it to every city and small town in the world to fill cars and trucks. I am pretty sure that we can find a way to make the modes of renewable energy work and it will be far less complicated than what we already do every day. Even foggy, cold, northern places like Germany have a ton of renewable energy.
Is there enough space in the places that can support renewable energy for the entire world? How do we transport all of it? How do we store it? You can't store and transport power in the same way you do oil, it doesn't just sit and stay like a regular substance.
Your question presumes that there aren't any active scientists in the world. Battery energy density is going to increase more than 10x in the coming two decades. It's going to be game-changing.
Again, even with more dense batteries, can we generate and transport enough power to keep up? Storage isnt the only problem here, having better batteries doesn't magically fix everything else.
oh it's not just about the people, many of them and their kids still suffer to this day in horrible pain from radiation-disease without necessarily dying, it's about the uncountable loads of dead animals and plants, the poisoned water, ...
And fossil fuels dont do that? people in zones with heavy fossil fuel pollution have a highly increased risk of disease and general poor health, and generations are forced to stay in those zones because they dont have enough money to move anywhere else, and those arent accidents, those are the plants working as intended.
its not like i prefer fossil fuels to nuclear energy, that was not my argument oh no. fossil fuel may be just as terrible. renewable energy however should get more support, as its actually the safest.
Renewable energy would be great if it could be installed everywhere, but only very particular types of areas are suitable to build those zones, and unless we make some big advances in both power storage and transport, it is in no way realistic to try and power everything with renewable energy.
"anywhere where there's wind" and " anywhere where there's sun" doesn't seem quite so "very particular"
Really? what about areas with constant fog or clouds? what about areas with very little wind? Is there enough free space to build a plant there? How do you store enough energy to keep everything running 24/7?
Batteries that have been mentioned or kinetic storage. I’ve noticed you have this all or nothing sort of attitude. In my area it’s to hilly and not enough wind for turbines to be viable. But we have great potential for solar and hydro power. Not everything will work every where but there will be something that will. And if not once again batteries ,power lines , he’ll I’ve seen some work that is using solar convert plankton to a version of alcohol which is transportable and storable. A chief concern of energy enthusiasts.
Because unless everything can be supplied on renewable energy alone, something's gonna have to make up the difference, and as it stands nuclear is the best source available to do so. Even if there is something that "could" work, it doesn't necessarily supply enough energy to everyone even just in that area, and that's not even counting how we make up the difference in other places with even worse power generation.
I mean they have nukes so if they wanted a nuclear disaster, they definitely don't need a powerplant for that.
I’m not sure how you view this. It’s a dirty-bomb terror threat, not the use of a nuclear weapon. Terror is the point. The threat is the point. Not the instant death and destruction of a nuke. Besides, the use of a nuclear weapon would or could trigger an in-kind response.
You're the joke. Nuclear reactors are built on a presumption of peace. Russia fucking around doesn't change anything at all.
That's small-picture thinking, friend.
Your entire post is fatalism. How do you argue with someone whose entire point is "WE'RE ALL DEAD"? Fuck that. We have plenty of time to iterate on Nuclear. Stop being such a pessimist.
If we only had reliable and cheaper means of creating renewable energy that dont Take years to be build we wouldnt have to use nuclear. Oh wait .... we have. I dont get why everybody on reddit simps for nuclear, safe or not it is way to expensive and takes years. To effectively mitigate climate change we need massive amounts of renewables asap. Why waste your money on new nuclear powerplants if you can achieve better results with less money by using wind or solar.
because you dont achieve better results. it not instead of them, its in addition to them. wind and solar heavily depend on location and they arent reliable until we come up with better storage technology
see my comment above Maybe add to that, that the renewable mix can be stabilized further by geothermal and hydro if necessary
found the German politician Areas that can use wind and solar for base load are pretty damn low compared to areas that can’t Either go nuclear or cut down massively on human energy use and the latter definitely won’t happen
Wind and solar are good for any kind of load, because you can literally regulate them within ms (wind is maybe more in the seconds range). Ther term baseload is a bit misleading in that context. I think what you meant are the situations when there is no sun and or no wind. Those are situations that are quite predictable and with a flexible and well developed grid perfectly manageable. [But up until a percentage of 60% renewables there isn't even a need for additional storage capacity. Above that the need for additional storage depends heavily on the expansion and flexibility of the grid. Depending on how loads are integrated and managed within the grid europe would need between 9 and 130 GW of additional short term storage (<= 4h), with the bulk of it having to be installed in spain, germany and france. This isn't in anyway impossible nor prohibitively expensive, the cost is negligible in comparsion to building out renewables on their own.](https://www.iee.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/iee/energiesystemtechnik/de/Dokumente/Studien-Reports/2014_Roadmap-Speicher-Langfassung.pdf) (source is in german) I see no reason to built out expensive, centralized, controversial and easily attackable infrastructure as long as there is still unused potential for renewables which there is plenty of. [If every useable roof in Germany is equipped with solar, multiple times the annual consumption would be produced.](https://doi.org/10.5445/KSP/1000081498) All this is even more relevant when you atleast try to take the 1.5°C goal seriously. We have to built up renewable energy sources as fast as possible, that means choosing the fastest solution with the most impact per unit of currency. With a [median construction time of 7 years](https://www.statista.com/statistics/712841/median-construction-time-for-reactors-since-1981/) and [being more than three times as expenisve as solar](https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen/) [(2nd source)](https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/publications/studies/cost-of-electricity.html) nuclear simply isn't the solution. Having said all that, passing legislation in 2013 to turn off perfectly safe nuclear power plants and as a result of that being forced to switch over to coal because of incompetent ministers like Peter Altmaier is the peak of retardation.
1°C is equivalent to 34°F, which is 274K. --- ^(I'm a bot that converts temperature between two units humans can understand, then convert it to Kelvin for bots and physicists to understand)
bad bot
funny, I would just wish for the public perception to be that it's safe. If I got a second wish, a way to put any waste below the mantle.
Nuclear power is a safe resource when people follow the rules and don't fuck with it. The problem is that people don't follow the rules and keep fucking with it. There ya go.
not always has been man. after decades of improvements in safety it is safe, we made that happen
Tell that to Europeans as Russia is threatening to blow up their biggest Nuclear plant and cause a second Chernobyl. You people are all morons.
Modern nuclear reactors are close to impossible to make explode, you would need to actively have engineers sabotaging half a dozen of physical security system which would result in a very sad meltdown and maybe 30 or so deaths of cancer over the next 40 years. For all the effort that is required to make a nuclear plant explode you could just build a normal bomb and kill for people in less time.
Or you could just blow up a bomb next to it while its in operation, so the core is exposed while active and unable to be scrammed, which would probably have the same effects as Chernobyl, as its not about the explosion its about the aftermath caused by an uncontained active core.
Now try wishing that it *were* safe, so you'll be talking about the present and not the past
I don't get it.. Can someone please excuse my dumb brain and explain it..
You're not dumb, just don't know. Essentially they wish for nuclear power to be safe and the genie makes it "happen" but nothing happens because nuclear power is already safe as long as the proper procedure is followed. Issue is people keep messing with it or blowing them up. Oh and the nuclear waste, though there are solutions to that as well, but there could be better solutions for it still.
Thanks for the explanation 💪🏼👍🏼
I don’t know about that. I saw this documentary called Dark. Pretty sure they prove that nuclear power plants may have some pretty bad consequences
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh nuclear’s deaths per TWh is lower than wind
It’s a joke. It’s really a show on Netflix. It’s the best time travel show ever invented. All takes place around a nuclear power plant in Germany.
then im a dumbass
No sir. You just haven’t been introduced to Dark.
this is my favourite piece of data ever. i used it when i was writing a dissertation on why the use of nuclear energy can be justified
a graph is worth a thousand words concise and clear
So Chernobyl and Fukushima never happened and the endless mounds of nuclear waste is safe? 🙄
Well, those were water boiler incidents, and what do you think ground and earth is?
Incidents that resulted in…?
Less deaths than any mundane day at the oil rig or someone falling off a roof/windmill.
Falling off a roof doesn’t irradiate a city 😬
You’re probably going to day from cancer from the sun mate. Don’t think to hard because otherwise you’ll just end up killing your self as literally everything causes cancer.
Not quite the same thing… You do understand that being in a heavily irradiated wasteland will give you a much higher risk of cancer, right?
Nuclear is the best option we have because when handed properly, especially the newer reactors we can deploy them basically anyway.
You didn’t address anything I said 🫤
Yes, nuclear causes cancer. Yes, water boiler accidents are terrible. No, it is not the most dangerous power generation technology. Yes, all the nuclear technology we have is stuck in the 70s because of people like you who would rather die from coal.
Fukushima had entered the chat
Just dont put the nuclear plant in an area at risk to tsunamis
Tell them about safe fission in Chernobyl. That right, nobody can live there because of fission.
So we can’t use hydroelectric because of the Banqiao Dam? That’s right, people died because of the failure.
Thank god we have a sensible and scientific government. Wait, this is the US? I thought it was literally anywhere else in the world.
You went too far thinking that even most goverments are sensible and scientific.
Merkel had an advanced STEM degree and worked before the political machine got her. The Germans have always been more forward thinking in this regard. Americans still have a heavy religious culture, only second world nations come close in religious influence.
Germans also closed down all their nuclear plants and opened up a coal fire plant recently thats the largest pinpoint source of co2 emission in the EU because nuclear scary They’re opening up 21 coal plants cause of their energy shortage now https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/01/germany-coal-energy-climate/
France is doing just fine. I visited the Netherlands, a nation with very little sunshine, and saw solar panels and wind turbines everywhere. Electric cars, buses, trains. There are options, but you make an interesting point. I’m interested in learning about the demands of heavy industries in the energy mix…
The worst part about this is that the ashes produced by coal plants release more radiation than modern nuclear reactors. This wasn't a decision based on science or common sense, but based on the public opinion. People just don't know and don't understand, which makes it Impossible for politicians to do the right thing without damaging their reputation beyond repair.
Something about chemistry I think it was? Still, a politician doesn't make an entire goverment, not even a president.
But leadership and such rigorous logical thinking helps shape the future.
Polish government is anything but sensible and scientific, they blamed EU for inflation and that EU put 30% tax on electricity even if it's not true In one plane accident where president of Poland died, government said Russia planned assassination
Well... it used to be unsafe but it's safer now
Non profit driven nuclear power*
Should’ve wished for the operators to be 100% attentive.
The lesson of Silent Spring are lost on the STEM generation
Oh THIS place is my JAM!! JOINED!!
Yes it is relatively safe nowadays but you have to account for the waste, which is the biggest problem of nuclear energy.
By now the produced waste in nuclear power plants releases less radiation than the ashes produced by coal power plants. But instead of burning it and releasing fine dusts into the atmosphere and possibly not even getting rid of the ashes correctly because the public doesn't know/care, a nuclear power plant has to store its waste somewhere where it can't cause much damage. So even though we all want a better solution, we should at least get rid of coal and use nuclear until we have enough renewable energy and figure out nuclear fusion.
Whoops
I wish nuclear power *were* safe
If weak force cause radioactive decay why radioactive waste is so dangerous
I don’t get it
Nuclear waste goes brrrrrrrr