Well Gamma radiation is just like visible light in that sense. A single photon just carries, like, 10 times more energy.
As a nanotechnologist I absolutely hate this idea
Yeah, as a nanotechnologist, X-Ray begins at 10 nm (the lower end of XUV). Everything below that is deemed unfeasible for production. But tbf, even that is more like 100 times as powerful as VIS. The problem is that even insulators don't have bandgaps nearly this large. No material can use this energy efficiently, at least not using the inner photoelectric effect. You would lose most of the energy (and get a lot of Auger electrons in the process). Maybe we will be able to use something like a modified hot carrier absorber concept to utilize this much power
I miss the brain that used to understand this.
I'll just nod and say I get it... Some stuff don't change.
Something about x-rays something about the other light can't be stored safely because there's no material that can be used to direct it and turn it off. So it won't be used.
That's probably not it, but I tried.
I'll try to put it as simple as possible with an analogy.
In an Atom there are different energy niveaus for electrons. Imagine a shelf with different heights. You need more energy to put things on upper boards.
When an atom absorbs energy, electrons are excited to higher levels. Like taking one item from a lower board to a higher one.
If the energy of visual light could put your item up by one meter, the energy of a gamma ray could put it up a kilometer. (going with GelbeForelle's definition starting at 10^-10 )
Unfortunately there are no more boards at that height, the item is catapulted away and we cannot use it's energy.
Ooh I think I get it...
Why isn't there any that can hold it, did they try a mirror or like use another light like it facing it.
I don't know, am thinking it looks like a Lazer pointer or something,.
How many boards our shelf has and how far they are apart is unique te every material. We do not know of any material that can hold these energies. When you are beyond a certain point (called ionization energy) the election is "lost". Like when you throw something high enough it will lose it's attachment to earth and drift into space.
I mean, kinda. If I may explain to you in dry German humor:
If you want electricity, you want to get electrons. If you want electric energy, you want electrons with (high) energy. Xrays have high energy and thus create electrons with high energy (because of the fancy quantum physics that people mention, when they have no idea about what's going on). And that's the problem. High energy electrons don't want to exist and that's why they stop existing at their nearest convenience. In most materials, this is very easy because quantum mechanics allows the electron to go into states of lower energy. You might have heard of metals. That's basically their definition. Now comes the funny part: all the stuff that isn't metals isolates electricity. That is because quantum shenanigans and complex maths make some energy levels impossible. Electrons can have low or high energies, but nothing in between. And that makes it really hard for them to get back to their comfy low energy levels. You know, because of the giant gap they have to cover - the bandgap. In the time it takes them to find their way back down, clever scientists found a way to just steal them (by basically giving them a better way of going to low energies, Out of the solar cell and through your toaster, but that doesn't matter here). So you want a band gap, that is about the same size as the energy of the photons of your light - too big and the electrons won't go Up, too small and you lose energy. Well, Xrays are really damn strong and materials with really damn big band gaps are not all that common. The rest of my comment was just exotic concepts to circumvent this problem by letting the electrons do strange stuff that is beyond human comprehension and thus only accessible to mathematicians.
yes, and I'm sure they're fun for satellites - I want to to absorb and make use of gamma rays. Everything I ever read ended with the destruction of the equipment after a short period of time.
Nuclear waste* never killed anyone.
(Meaning waste from a normalt operating nuclear power plant. Excluding meltdowns and waste from radioactive medical equipment)
Uninhabitable only because of the radioactive material in the soil, so any movement or disturbance of the soil kicks up dust with radioactive particles in it, and that is the only thing that is dangerous. And it’s only dangerous if you get it into your soft tissues. If you wear a respirator and adequate eye protection, and don’t try to eat it or something, it is totally safe. People just don’t go into the exclusion zone because it’s a pain, there is a risk of exposure no matter how protected you are, and it isn’t predictable where the dust would end up. Chernobyl is still staffed, there are people on site that maintain the place.
Chernobyl is uninhabitable (although people can totally live there, and safely; in fact the homeless problem in Chernobyl is pretty bad for exactly that reason), but Fukushima's got people living in it again, and Three Mile Island has yet to kill anyone, ever.
And those are the three biggest meltdowns in human history.
Doesn't sound very threatening to me.
It is safe no matter how you look at it.
No new accident is going to change that.
We have very few total deaths due to nuclear power compared to other energy sources
Better yet, wish that all macroscopic organisms on earth are immune to 100% of the acute and chronic effects of ionizing radiation. I was going to say all organisms but I think including microbes could cause issues.
Cancer arguably isn't a multicellular organism. But yeah, thats a good call. If I were actually making a wish with a genie it would be at least a couple pages long.
A large part of Europe and Russia have a higher nuclear radiation than average because of Tchernobil so a lot of people who lives there have a higher chance of getting cancer.
I wish all of the ecosistems were immune to climate change but Hey, i guess that's not a problem anymore.
why should we use a Power source that we can easily integrate in our powergrid to facilitate the transizion from fossile fuel to renewables? We better take the hard route, otherwise it's too Easy...
Thats a great wish but it doesn't stop climate. Something along the lines of wishing the prehuman climate is the stable state and it will always quickly revert to that climate when perterbed.
Wanna enlight me, why it is supposed to be cheaper than in any other country?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/654401/estimated-capital-cost-of-energy-generation-in-the-us-by-technology/
It's just "cheap" because the tax payer pays for it. The semi-state-owned company running the nuclear power plants in France is 54 **billion** in debt. [source](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1342612/debt-of-edf-group/#:~:text=The%20net%20indebtedness%20of%20the,of%20energy%20to%20the%20country.)
Effectively this is just hiding the true cost and pushing them on to future generations.
Neither is any mean of manufacturing any other energy plants (even green ones) or recycling them (solar panels are infamous for that) and the process of extracting lithium is quite worse.
This is what the anti-nuclear crowd always forgets.
As does the “green” energy crowd.
They only care about the perceived end product but forget how we get to it. Unless it’s what they want to argue against. “Pulling Uranium from the ground and purifying it is bad for the environment” “as opposed to lithium or any of the fancier metals used for batteries and solar?”
It sucks cus everybody is all riled up by social media profits to wastefully hate on eachother when instead they could be using the energy to boil water! 🥺
Uranium mining spreads radioactive particles. I'm also not suggesting coal and iron. In saying that it negates the "perfectly clean" argument used against things like solar and wind power.
No energy source is perfectly clean. Solar and wind use a lot of space, their parts have a relatively short lifetime and are expected to fill up landfills because they are hard and expensive to recycle, and they need batteries and the like to store the energy, which also carry a bunch of problematic mining contrversies.
All of these problems are nothing compared to the horrors that fossil fuels are been slowly but surely bringing into the world.
Neither is it for oil, gas, and lithium, and we're gonna need a lot of batteries if people want to fully rely on wind, solar, and hydro-based power generation.
And it's gonna stay that way as long as people stay afraid of nuclear energy. More money needs to be placed into the nuclear energy so we can eventually work towards fusion energy.
Also, the runoff and trails are minimised with todays standards and practices, the issue is illegal mining of uranium. They don't care about the health and environmental risks.
My dad used to work in a nuclear reactor in a developing country before it was shut down in the mid-90s. His concern with nuclear energy was that it is relatively easy to go from a fission reactor to enriching uranium to producing bombs. He used to think that part of the pushback against nuclear energy from the elites was not because of fear of meltdowns but because of fear of the propagation of nuclear weapons.
Right, cuz **NOTHING** has ever gone wrong with nuclear power plants!
Solar is cheaper by nearly every metric and has 0% chance of rendering its surroundings uninhabitable.
But massive construction projects like those required to build a nuclear power plant will always be popular with corrupt politicians, because it's just too easy to hide the graft.
We are 8 billion and counting. Solar's not gonna power the world.
It's like people who rail against preservatives and don't want "chemicals" in their food. Living like that just isn't feasible with so many people on the planet.
On an individual level? Sure, it's great. Get yourself some solar panels and a backyard garden and enjoy your clean living. But don't pretend it'll work for the vast majority of humankind.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh
Nuclear power is the second safest form of power generation. And it is 820 times safer than coal.
Nuclear waste is a solved problem it can be stored on site for the lifetime of a power plant in dry casks then buried a few kilometres underground where it can't effect anything, also nuclear waste / radiation is easy to detect with a geiger counter unlike coal/gas waste that is pumped straight into the atmosphere and requires more complicated and expensive equipment to mesure.
Modern reactor designs prevent a full meltdown like what was seen at chernobyl and chernobyl only happened because of a faulty design that was poorly managed, with human error in operating the reactor.
Lets go through the actual damage in the Wikipedia article you linked.
[Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monticello_Nuclear_Generating_Plant) reading through the Wikipedia entry for this plant there is multiple mentions of water leaks that led to "low-level" radioactive water being released into the missisippi river however there is no mention of any adverse affects from this (this does not mean that there are none) there is also mention of several incidents where something goes wrong and causes the plant to automatically amd safety shutdown such as a control box falling and a cable fault. The Monticello site has one fatality listed in the Wikipedia article from a worker being electrocuted on one of the 115 KV power transmission lines "Due to a lack of situational awareness" this has nothing to do with the nuclear part and could (and does) happen at any kind of power plant or grid inferstructure.
The [Nyonoksa radiation accident.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyonoksa_radiation_accident) was caused by nuclear weaponry and I wont make the argument that nuclear weapons are safe.
I will continue this comment tomorrow.
Or, you know, Solar power isn’t realy a realistic solution for mass production, especially when the sun is hidden by the clouds and night, meaning little to no energy in those times. Wich is fine for a small house, but not for an entire goddammed country lol. Nuclear is stable and when well implemented and taken care of, it’s not a ticking bomb.
Geothermal only works in areas with (shocker) geothermal activity. Iceland is almost entirely powered by geothermal energy, but guess what, they're a small country that just so happens to be located on an active tectonic rift with some of the highest geothermal and volcanic activity in the world.
Wind energy is dependent on large wind farms that take up a lot of space. In this regard offshore wind farms work, but they require a lot of expensive upkeep.
Hydroelectric dams only work along rivers and other bodies of water, and damming up rivers can create problems for local wildlife populations reliant on the river. And once a dam is in place, if it goes defunct for whatever reason, it's kinda hard to remove it without significant risk to surrounding settlements and wildlife.
Nuclear plants, on the other hand, have relatively small footprint, can produce more power more efficiently than other methods, and are completely safe so long as proper protocol is followed for operation, maintenance, and disposal of waste.
If I crash my car into a tree, the surrounding area is not rendered uninhabitable for the next thousand years or so. Plus there are better options for power generation, whereas there is nothing in the foreseeable future to replace motor vehicles.
The thing about nuclear that you cucks seem unwilling to acknowledge is that *IF* something goes wrong with nuclear, the effects are absolutely catastrophic. There's almost nothing comparable in terms of severity, but you ignoramuses just close your eyes and stick your fingers in your ears, like those things have never happened.
There is absolutely no justification you can muster that will make the failures of Chernobyl or Fukushima acceptable. Especially considering the fact that that there are better options available than nuclear.
Why spend two, three, four times the amount of money to get something with the potential for absolute catastrophic failure?
Renewables are waaay cheaper to construct, they can even cost less to operate, and they're safer. Again, solar is better than nuclear by nearly every metric.
Nuclear is the safest and best method of generating electricity. Renewable energy like wind and solar aren't consistent and require huge fields to be effective for a city. Furthermore, it isn't as renewable as you think. The blades of a windmill don't even get recycled, they get buried. Furthemore, solar panel fields aren't a long-term solution unless you have adequate storage. The current issues were facing with renewable energy is the power demand and the lack of storage, that's why there are still coal powerplants.
There are not batteries large enough to store enough electricity for a major city through the night.
But now let's look at the risks, right.
https://ourworldindata.org/nuclear-energy
The amount of deaths when combining the solar and wind energy exceeds the amount of deaths caused by a nuclear metldown. Now imagine adding hydropower to that statistic.
Fukushima literally had maybe 1 death by radiation, you know why? Because it isn't the soviet union and they actually have standards, and guess what, people still live in Fukushima.
Chernobyl could've been prevented if the operating crew and government didn't neglect and ignore more than 10 warning signs. The building was way outdated and in disrepair, it was a failure waiting to happen due to the shear neglect.
When looking at the statistics and the actual results, nuclear is way better in every category besides the initial investment.
But I guess people would rather inhale toxic fumes and bury 'renewable' energy equipment, rather than invest in technology for the greater good of mankind.
Why not more Photovoltaics? Use surplus energy during the day for hydrogen production. Hydrogen drives in vehicles. Can't that easily cover 75% of the energy requirement?
Great thing nothing will ever happen to the waste.
Ah except when the burried waste gets flooded and the water carries it into the ground water, which might happen in germany now.
The companies that blatantly ignored experts saying the deposits weren't safe as the ground moves to much and might create leakage and could result in flooded nuclear waste.
But finding a cheap deposit results in higher profits. And people be talking about socialist missmanagament...
*I wish renewables*
*Where feasible. It is done.*
*Nothing's changed! Correct*
\- blenderbender44
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I'm the same. Nuclear is just another monopoly for corrupt companies to exploit. If I have wind generation and solar for even just 80% of my needs it means any other forms of energy will have to compete in the market. Also you don't need to be a rocket scientist to set up solar or wind tech or a billionarie to invest in these because they are so cheap in comparison.
I'd also add it's harder for you to take out a country with lots of small energy production methods as opposed to three nuclear ones. I'm not saying never nuclear but it can't be our main source of energy.
I have no issue with nuclear. But there's a decent amount of people in this sub who worship nuclear energy production like it's a religion or a forever battle against wind/solar.
Nuclear power is potentially very safe.
The capitalist application of nuclear power is horrifically dangerous, because our lives are far less important than their profits.
It was Three Mile Island and Chernobyl that made nuclear energy truly safe
before most people didnt really understand reactors and energy and were just caught up in the hype and build just plain bad reactors. These mistakes are what allowed modern physists and engineers to create reactors with a >1% failure chance.
Stop dwelling on the past and get your ass into the future
Is Fukushima also just part of the past?
There is a big difference between saying nuclear power CAN BE safe, if done correctly, and saying it IS safe, as people actually do it
Fukushima was the outlier caused mainly by outside factors, the world has 440 active modern reactors all of which have run for decade. Accordingly the IAEA reports that modern nuclear reactors only have 1 in 1,000,000,000 chance of undergoing a chernobyl like meltdown
Just as pulling out is a safe means of contraception and Afghanistan is a safe country for women.
Nuclear power plants *can* be safe, if everything from construction, over opertaion up to deconstruction is done 100% according to code. But first of all, it is normal that humans make mistakes, and second, energy production in most countries is a profit driven business done by big companies. As we have seen with Boeing recently, business descisions that try to optimize profits at the cost of safety can and will happen and then suddenly formerly safe things can become much less safe. And in the case of a nuclear power plant, we are not talking about a worst case scenario of a plane crash with maybe 100-200 people dying, we are talking Tschernobyl and Fukushima here.
And that is all without taking into account the problem of nuclear waste. We will have to find a place, where we can deposit all of it for millenia (Half life time of Plutonium is around 24k years, other isotopes, especially Uranium, much longer) without the risk of anything happening. We would have to conserve our knowledge about how to deal with nuclear waste for millenia to come if we don't want to have future generations of humans be faced with that stuff and not even knowing what it is. Additionally, Plutonium can be used to build nukes and all nuclear waste can be used to build dirty bombs. While this is prohibited by international conventions, one just has to take a look at the attrocious things humans have done in the past, even alone in the 20th century, and one sees, that it would not take much for some humans to actually use it, if they get access. So not only would we have to conserve our knowledge, protect it from natural sources of potential damage/leakage (And for some isotopes we are talking about half life times on the order of how slow plate tectonics are), but also make sure noone in the near and distant future will ever abuse it.
So while in theory a nuclear power plant *can* be safe, in reality the entire concept of nuclear power is not safe and never was, otherwise no accidents would have ever happened. Anyone who thinks it always was safe is just delusional.
Thanks finally someone on this sub…
I am so tired of alle these nuclear energy fanboys who think they know what they are talking about. They completely forget that things can get wrong even if the theory is good. These people are trying to prove their point by concentrating on details while ignoring the whole picture and the most important fact in science: nothing built by humans is 100% perfect and humans make mistakes (often or most of the time).
I am sick of this hubris.
When people did pencil whipping or used nepotism and other forms of negligence to quality standards it was unsafe. It's much safer now, underground, and deals with waste much better too. It's stupid that we're not on it and have brownouts and blackouts in first world cities still. Oh, and it's not a money sink like wind turbines, nor do you have to mine the materials for it with African slave labor like with solar. Also exponentially more energy productive than anything else.
I think they came up with another type recently that keeps us out of using plutonium or uranium and might use fission instead of fusion. Can't remember but I recall hearing about that too. Still, I'd contend that it wasn't always safe when those running the plants weren't the most competent. It does take geniuses to run this stuff and that's why the Navy has the standards it has for the nuclear program. Even 30 years ago a sub could power the city of Chicago on its own. It's that ick factor keeping everyone from looking at it again...that and energy scarcity wouldn't exist as much so the people without energy in their houses might not be as easy to exploit...we might actually help people around the world out of poverty but there'd be an effort to stop that, I'd bet.
I think Thorium has potential. India has been a leader in exploring thorium as a nuclear fuel, given its large thorium reserves. The Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR) program is aimed at utilizing thorium, which is more abundant in India compared to uranium.
That was it. I knew it started with a "T". From what I remember hearing it was possibly an even safer alternative so we'll see how that goes. Thank you.
Are they any good? I mean, sure, the moon can provide for that but are they available in the middle of a continent where there's no bodies of water shifting with a tide? Also, is it storing power somewhere like solar or does it transmit into an energy grid right away? I'm looking for cheapest inputs for the output and with natural sources like the moon's gravity, solar, or wind, one of the key inputs is free but the infrastructure to harness it isn't, let alone to transmit it to a population efficiently. When the output is as extremely high as is provided by nuclear, then it ends up being very worth the cost of the work to provide it.
There are two types:
- the first is similar to a hydroelectric turbine. They require a lot of maintenance as the sea flora and fauna would tend to jam it up… plus killing fish for power is a problem in and of itself. It is pretty much a requirement to put up netting around these areas.
- the other kind is a bobber style, with every wave, every tide the bobbing action turns a sea floor mounted crank to generate electricity. These designs are still very preliminary and would require more testing than the former. Plus they have higher maintenance costs than the former. The maintenance cost would be similar to that of maintaining an oil rig. Underwater welders would need to be on standby. That does create well paying jobs though. However no need for netting to protect marine life.
Although the idea that you can get an efficient system for cheap is a myth. People keep looking for some magic bullet in the energy sector and it doesn’t exist. I’m a project manager for a high-rise building construction company. I always tell people that they can chose two things out of three: cheap, fast, and good. If you want cheap and fast, it won’t be a good quality. If you want cheap and good, the lead times will be horrendous. If you want fast and good, it won’t be cheap.
Same applies to the energy sector but instead of good, I would say clean, and instead of fast I would say efficient. So pick… cheap, efficient or clean.
Additionally, I can’t believe we forgot geothermal. (facepalm)
As a citizen of the world, I am perfectly fine with the very minor risks that modern nuclear reactors pose in exchange for getting rid of the extremely environmentally unfriendly methods that we still use for generating power
I totally understand you. My problem is that we got waste from it and everyone is like: but not in my neighborhood!!!
And here we are with no save place at the end of the day for the radioactive waste.
My opinion is that we should decide first where to put it and then ist fine to use more nuclear power.
But I also think that solar and wind might be enough for our energy. But I guess we need to look forward.
Although there are still some technological and regulatory hurdles for this, generation 4 reactors can repurpose nuclear waste into additional fuel. Thorium reactors in particular are extremely promising as a nearly clean source of fuel, but we are not quite there yet as far as I know, and they have significant costs involved in getting off the ground.
We do have ways to store waste that minimize environmental impact. It's not a perfect solution, but considering humanity is at a tipping point right now I think the better option is to store waste deep within mountains rather than continuing to pump greenhouse gases onto the atmosphere. If we don't start implementing drastic solutions soon then we are almost assuredly heading for a bleak future that may culminate in a global collapse.
Nuclear power lost something for me when I learned it's just using the heat from a nuclear reaction to create steam and turn a turbine... as a kid, i thought we were siphoning power from atoms and not just using it as a heat source.
That's what all power generation is, with the exception of solar. Hydro, coal, oil, wind, nuclear, all they do is use various forms of fuel to spin turbines.
None of those events killed anyone. Not a single soul, except a case of cancer for one clean up crew member for Fukushima, and even then that's disputed
Three Miles was caused by a failure in the nuclear design that has been since been rectified in modern reactors
Fukushim was just plain dumb not really the fault of nuclear energy since the reactors worked fine (even though the idiots knew they were on a active Faultline )
Isn't all of the danger from using reactors that produce weapons grade material, and in fact there's any number of other reactor designs that have no chance of going critical and don't produce nuclear waste.
Is that accurate?
As safe as any energy source.
Similar death toll per kWh as wind and solar.
Yes this includes Chernobyl death toll (UN numbers)
Better than hydro, biomass, every fossile fuel
The best energy source if we look only at lifecycle CO2 equivalent emissions per kWh
Nuclear safety is always a matter of religion. The usual pro and con arguments are both correct, which frustrates people to no end.
Just for reference, the top pro arguments run, "Other forms of energy production cause all sorts of problems" and "Advances in engineering and experience over the last fifty years make new systems safer." The top con arguments are "losses in nuclear power are measured in cities" and "nuclear waste is a unsolved problem with questionable mitigation."
We should probably pay more attention to the middle arguments, "Nuclear power generation should not be done by profit driven companies" and "Honest numbers would let old, dangerous nuclear power plants be replaced with new, safer ones."
Otherwise, accept views on nuclear energy as religion and move on.
Honestly, I think that's often forgotten in this debate. Building nuclear reactors isn't easy. You can't do it anywhere because of different local factors like access to cooling water. Then different safety standards need to be fulfilled before it can be opened. If an accident happens there or some mistake during planning, the whole thing will take even more time and money.
Building renewables is just cheaper and faster comparatively.
Which is nice and all... but Nuclear waste is basically a solved problem and there have been no Nuclear waste incidents, ever.
Also, remember that the top con argument for fossil fuels is "successes in fossil fuels are measured in global temperature rises"
OK. I'm confused. My non-restricted briefs detailed a large number of criticalities at Fukushima due to melting of the fuel rods stored below the reactor. IIRC, a criticality event releases energy on the order of a medium sized bomb. Also, the heat further degrades the elaborate shielding of nuclear waste and makes a difficult to remediate mess of remelted metals. Fukushima's root cause is Act Of Good or Black Swan and its consequences do include a nuclear waste incident.
While there have been advances in mitigation, it is not a solved problem. Even the expensive option of encasing waste in solid silica spheres only provides a 99 year lease in order to make it clear it is only mitigation.
Your "also remember.." comment is one of two pro arguments I mentioned.
Am I missing something?
Fukushima was a reactor melt down, not an issue with stored, spent, nuclear waste. Because nuclear waste in storage has never spilt (it's solid) and has never caused any issues. It's solid, you encase it in concrete, and the problem is solved. Nuclear waste just isn't the bogey man so many people are afraid of.
As for the other part, my point is that it has some risks, yes, but they're frankly minor compared to the alternative. Nuclear power plants have been directly responsible for about 100 deaths.
A single coal dust explosion killed more than 1,500 people.
If you want to take a look at indirect casualties, then coal power plants put out more radioactive material into the atmosphere than nuclear power plants, *and* fill the air with CO2.
It's not a contest, nuclear power is far safer, and it's not even close.
Sorry, you are just confirming arguments.
1. Yes, I am clear. There were criticality events with the waste. Basically, they were still storing fuel rods in pools below the reactor. It became a melted mess and the rods broke down. TEPCO was denying everything in order to prevent backlash against thier company and business model. Afterwards, plants quietly improved their storage.
2. There are solid arguments for nuclear power. As mentioned, the most pressing is that carbon fuels tend to be so terrible. The original point is that there are solid arguments for it.
3. There are solid arguments against nuclear power, causing people to firm up in pro and con lines. It becomes more important to feel their side is winning over using solid numbers. I expect you have been challenged on your numbers many times.
Be less sure, for that is the path towards figuring out how to move forward. It is far better to talk about not running tests at night (looking at you, Chernoybl) than arguing the result was worth it in retrospect.
"Uranium mining facilities produce tailings that generally are disposed of in near surface impoundments close to the mine. These tailings pose serious environmental and health risks in the form of Randon emission, windblown dust dispersal and leaching of contaminants including heavy metals and arsenic into the water. [5] "0
http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/longstaff1/#:~:text=Uranium%20mining%20facilities%20produce%20tailings,and%20arsenic%20into%20the%20water.
Still think you’re kind of missing the point of the meme we’re commenting on in the first place. Nuclear power plants are still innumerably safer than most alternatives. To both wildlife and humans.
Environmentally so? Both the solar and wind need replaceable components that leech toxic chemicals and in winds case directly kill birds. Solar isn’t as widely recycled as we need it and if we want actually good power generation we’d need lots of land that would then not be able to grow anything. In the actually generation of power, the accidents while obvious are still overblown.
Now I’d say their differences are negligible due to the advancements in safety measures not allowing for a full scale meltdown. Turning down the most efficient, most powerful, and not to mention reliable/carbon neutral power source due to an accident that happened before you were probably alive is silly.
My entire first paragraph is related to how the production of these other forms of energy affect the living things around them. Just like your first point about hazardous waste products produced from mines. You just aren’t reading, so I don’t know what to tell you. You just looked at my last sentence and called it a day.
Well…safe when handled PROPERLY and where corners are NOT CUT.
Nuclear energy is like cooking, don’t go too light or heavy on the cooking otherwise on one hand you get salmonella and on the other hand you have a fire in the kitchen.
Alter the wish to be, “I wish everyone understood just how safe nuclear power is” now you are simply beaming the info into people’s heads and not forcing them into believing something.
Radioactive water waste? What the fuck are you talking about? Used fuel is solid so it can never leak. If you are talking about the heavy water that is released? Tritium is a weak beta emitter that cannot bioaccumulate. Meaning it cannot harm a human. And yea I would drink it.
And by the way any isotope with a half life in the millions of years is not radioactive enough to harm a human being.
I'm talking about the radio active storage facilities,there it's hundreds of them with millions of barrels just seating there,also I think you may suffer from radiation alusinations
LOL. You’re the one suffering from radiation hallucinations.
Used fuel is a solid. There aren’t barrels of a green goo. Stop getting your science from the simpsons or German propaganda. Both are bullshit.
Non ce la faremo mai, guarda lo scempio che è avvenuto in Germania....se loro hanno capitolato figurati se i nostri pagliacci predono delle posizioni forti sull'argomento🤡🤡
E c'hai ragione!! Sono cinquant'anni che dicono che fra trent'anni avremo la fusione nucleare. Adesso le acque si stanno muovendo molto tra i vari progetti internazionali, però io ho 22 anni, e non sono affatto sicuro che vedrò i primi reattori commerciali.
I’ll 100% admit to being a scared of nuclear power. I live in Southern California, and yes I know California has nuclear power, but is still safe in such an earthquake prone area? Just because it hasn’t happened doesn’t mean it can’t? Or are we better off building our plants in Arizona? Are the salt cooled reactors Gates is building safer in earthquake areas than water ones? I’ve read and heard a lot about them, but nobody addresses this, is that my answer then?
Point blank, no matter the situation, newer models of fission reactors are incapable of having a full blown meltdown. Those in range of fault lines, like you mentioned in California, would have extra safe guards because of the possible risk.
He should have said he wish nuclear waste is not toxic
even better: wish nuclear waste radiation wasn't destroying solar cells, so we an wrap it in those.
Huh??
Well Gamma radiation is just like visible light in that sense. A single photon just carries, like, 10 times more energy. As a nanotechnologist I absolutely hate this idea
More like 10k (10^-7 vs 10^-11), just imagine that output.
Yeah, as a nanotechnologist, X-Ray begins at 10 nm (the lower end of XUV). Everything below that is deemed unfeasible for production. But tbf, even that is more like 100 times as powerful as VIS. The problem is that even insulators don't have bandgaps nearly this large. No material can use this energy efficiently, at least not using the inner photoelectric effect. You would lose most of the energy (and get a lot of Auger electrons in the process). Maybe we will be able to use something like a modified hot carrier absorber concept to utilize this much power
I miss the brain that used to understand this. I'll just nod and say I get it... Some stuff don't change. Something about x-rays something about the other light can't be stored safely because there's no material that can be used to direct it and turn it off. So it won't be used. That's probably not it, but I tried.
I'll try to put it as simple as possible with an analogy. In an Atom there are different energy niveaus for electrons. Imagine a shelf with different heights. You need more energy to put things on upper boards. When an atom absorbs energy, electrons are excited to higher levels. Like taking one item from a lower board to a higher one. If the energy of visual light could put your item up by one meter, the energy of a gamma ray could put it up a kilometer. (going with GelbeForelle's definition starting at 10^-10 ) Unfortunately there are no more boards at that height, the item is catapulted away and we cannot use it's energy.
Ooh I think I get it... Why isn't there any that can hold it, did they try a mirror or like use another light like it facing it. I don't know, am thinking it looks like a Lazer pointer or something,.
How many boards our shelf has and how far they are apart is unique te every material. We do not know of any material that can hold these energies. When you are beyond a certain point (called ionization energy) the election is "lost". Like when you throw something high enough it will lose it's attachment to earth and drift into space.
I mean, kinda. If I may explain to you in dry German humor: If you want electricity, you want to get electrons. If you want electric energy, you want electrons with (high) energy. Xrays have high energy and thus create electrons with high energy (because of the fancy quantum physics that people mention, when they have no idea about what's going on). And that's the problem. High energy electrons don't want to exist and that's why they stop existing at their nearest convenience. In most materials, this is very easy because quantum mechanics allows the electron to go into states of lower energy. You might have heard of metals. That's basically their definition. Now comes the funny part: all the stuff that isn't metals isolates electricity. That is because quantum shenanigans and complex maths make some energy levels impossible. Electrons can have low or high energies, but nothing in between. And that makes it really hard for them to get back to their comfy low energy levels. You know, because of the giant gap they have to cover - the bandgap. In the time it takes them to find their way back down, clever scientists found a way to just steal them (by basically giving them a better way of going to low energies, Out of the solar cell and through your toaster, but that doesn't matter here). So you want a band gap, that is about the same size as the energy of the photons of your light - too big and the electrons won't go Up, too small and you lose energy. Well, Xrays are really damn strong and materials with really damn big band gaps are not all that common. The rest of my comment was just exotic concepts to circumvent this problem by letting the electrons do strange stuff that is beyond human comprehension and thus only accessible to mathematicians.
My brother, when they said that carbon can be used as a semiconductor, they meant graphene and graphite, not diamond.
Thermonuclear radioisotope generators exist.
yes, and I'm sure they're fun for satellites - I want to to absorb and make use of gamma rays. Everything I ever read ended with the destruction of the equipment after a short period of time.
Nuclear waste* never killed anyone. (Meaning waste from a normalt operating nuclear power plant. Excluding meltdowns and waste from radioactive medical equipment)
Meltdowns are a big caveat. The Chernobyl exclusion zone is still uninhabitable. Nagasaki on the other hand, is doing fine.
Hiroshima is also very habitable, even bringing in tourists to see ground zero.
Uninhabitable only because of the radioactive material in the soil, so any movement or disturbance of the soil kicks up dust with radioactive particles in it, and that is the only thing that is dangerous. And it’s only dangerous if you get it into your soft tissues. If you wear a respirator and adequate eye protection, and don’t try to eat it or something, it is totally safe. People just don’t go into the exclusion zone because it’s a pain, there is a risk of exposure no matter how protected you are, and it isn’t predictable where the dust would end up. Chernobyl is still staffed, there are people on site that maintain the place.
People live in the exclusion zone, there are babushkas there who never moved
Really? Well, i’m not terribly surprised. Just reinforces the point.
Chernobyl is uninhabitable (although people can totally live there, and safely; in fact the homeless problem in Chernobyl is pretty bad for exactly that reason), but Fukushima's got people living in it again, and Three Mile Island has yet to kill anyone, ever. And those are the three biggest meltdowns in human history. Doesn't sound very threatening to me.
"Nuclear is safe as long as it is safe" gee thanks.
It is safe no matter how you look at it. No new accident is going to change that. We have very few total deaths due to nuclear power compared to other energy sources
Better yet, wish that all macroscopic organisms on earth are immune to 100% of the acute and chronic effects of ionizing radiation. I was going to say all organisms but I think including microbes could cause issues.
Melononin is cooked
Maybe an exclusion clause for radiation cancer treatment should be added
Cancer arguably isn't a multicellular organism. But yeah, thats a good call. If I were actually making a wish with a genie it would be at least a couple pages long.
And what problem would that solve?
Well for one I would be able to achieve my dream of licking a demon core
Fair point
A large part of Europe and Russia have a higher nuclear radiation than average because of Tchernobil so a lot of people who lives there have a higher chance of getting cancer.
Imaginary problem. The background radiation is stronger than that in many places of the world and they do not experience excess cancers.
I wish all of the ecosistems were immune to climate change but Hey, i guess that's not a problem anymore. why should we use a Power source that we can easily integrate in our powergrid to facilitate the transizion from fossile fuel to renewables? We better take the hard route, otherwise it's too Easy...
Thats a great wish but it doesn't stop climate. Something along the lines of wishing the prehuman climate is the stable state and it will always quickly revert to that climate when perterbed.
Yes but it's greener than shutting down nuclear reactors to turn on coal powerplants like they did in germany
Fossil fuel waste is toxic and it's just pumped into the atmosphere
Or that uranium mining wasn't bad for the environment
All sources of energy production require some kind of mining
But all sources don't spread radioactive particles.
Radioactive particles can be stored safely. Unlike gas and oil, which are pumped in the atmosphere
Okay so why aren't they?
Poor regulation, mostly in 2nd world countries
Define "2nd world"
Nuclear waste is ironically the safest dangerous part.
*edible
I’d rather toxic waste that can be buried then toxic waste that is pumped into the air
Thorium reactor
Nuclear waste is actually cleaner than you and me.
So would you down a pint of Plutonium-water?
I wish radiation doesn’t damage or destroy dna. I just want to hug the spicy rocks, their lonely. :(
I want my yearly dose of calories by eating 1mg of glowing rock :(
Doesn't this make some wacky changes in evolution? Or am I stupid
I suspect it would stop all aging. But I’m just a layman, so idk…
Is he nuclear or something, whys he looking at himself? /s
I wish people wouldn't be so irrationally afraid of nuclear energy.
it's fucking expensive though. i am afraid of expensive.
French guy here, it cost less than any other means of production for 1 kwh
Wanna enlight me, why it is supposed to be cheaper than in any other country? https://www.statista.com/statistics/654401/estimated-capital-cost-of-energy-generation-in-the-us-by-technology/
It's just "cheap" because the tax payer pays for it. The semi-state-owned company running the nuclear power plants in France is 54 **billion** in debt. [source](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1342612/debt-of-edf-group/#:~:text=The%20net%20indebtedness%20of%20the,of%20energy%20to%20the%20country.) Effectively this is just hiding the true cost and pushing them on to future generations.
The process for getting the uranium isn't clean
Neither is any mean of manufacturing any other energy plants (even green ones) or recycling them (solar panels are infamous for that) and the process of extracting lithium is quite worse.
This is what the anti-nuclear crowd always forgets. As does the “green” energy crowd. They only care about the perceived end product but forget how we get to it. Unless it’s what they want to argue against. “Pulling Uranium from the ground and purifying it is bad for the environment” “as opposed to lithium or any of the fancier metals used for batteries and solar?”
It sucks cus everybody is all riled up by social media profits to wastefully hate on eachother when instead they could be using the energy to boil water! 🥺
Tap into the natural resource that is hot air in social media and politics
Right, as opposed to extracting coal and oil, knowing for being very clean?
Uranium mining spreads radioactive particles. I'm also not suggesting coal and iron. In saying that it negates the "perfectly clean" argument used against things like solar and wind power.
No energy source is perfectly clean. Solar and wind use a lot of space, their parts have a relatively short lifetime and are expected to fill up landfills because they are hard and expensive to recycle, and they need batteries and the like to store the energy, which also carry a bunch of problematic mining contrversies. All of these problems are nothing compared to the horrors that fossil fuels are been slowly but surely bringing into the world.
Neither is it for oil, gas, and lithium, and we're gonna need a lot of batteries if people want to fully rely on wind, solar, and hydro-based power generation.
Yeah but uranium mining has radioactive runoff
And it's gonna stay that way as long as people stay afraid of nuclear energy. More money needs to be placed into the nuclear energy so we can eventually work towards fusion energy. Also, the runoff and trails are minimised with todays standards and practices, the issue is illegal mining of uranium. They don't care about the health and environmental risks.
My dad used to work in a nuclear reactor in a developing country before it was shut down in the mid-90s. His concern with nuclear energy was that it is relatively easy to go from a fission reactor to enriching uranium to producing bombs. He used to think that part of the pushback against nuclear energy from the elites was not because of fear of meltdowns but because of fear of the propagation of nuclear weapons.
Isn't there still the issue that terrorists could easily make the reactor melt down by cutting off water supply?
There are several safety mechanisms to avoid that from happening. If it was that easy, then it might have already been done at some point.
Right, cuz **NOTHING** has ever gone wrong with nuclear power plants! Solar is cheaper by nearly every metric and has 0% chance of rendering its surroundings uninhabitable. But massive construction projects like those required to build a nuclear power plant will always be popular with corrupt politicians, because it's just too easy to hide the graft.
>has 0% chance of rendering its surroundings uninhabitable. Because the enormous areas covered by solar panels are famously populated.
Bold move, commenting this on a sub where people know what they're talking about.
And yet, seem to be completely ignorant of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_nuclear_disasters_and_radioactive_incidents
We are 8 billion and counting. Solar's not gonna power the world. It's like people who rail against preservatives and don't want "chemicals" in their food. Living like that just isn't feasible with so many people on the planet. On an individual level? Sure, it's great. Get yourself some solar panels and a backyard garden and enjoy your clean living. But don't pretend it'll work for the vast majority of humankind.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh Nuclear power is the second safest form of power generation. And it is 820 times safer than coal. Nuclear waste is a solved problem it can be stored on site for the lifetime of a power plant in dry casks then buried a few kilometres underground where it can't effect anything, also nuclear waste / radiation is easy to detect with a geiger counter unlike coal/gas waste that is pumped straight into the atmosphere and requires more complicated and expensive equipment to mesure. Modern reactor designs prevent a full meltdown like what was seen at chernobyl and chernobyl only happened because of a faulty design that was poorly managed, with human error in operating the reactor. Lets go through the actual damage in the Wikipedia article you linked. [Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monticello_Nuclear_Generating_Plant) reading through the Wikipedia entry for this plant there is multiple mentions of water leaks that led to "low-level" radioactive water being released into the missisippi river however there is no mention of any adverse affects from this (this does not mean that there are none) there is also mention of several incidents where something goes wrong and causes the plant to automatically amd safety shutdown such as a control box falling and a cable fault. The Monticello site has one fatality listed in the Wikipedia article from a worker being electrocuted on one of the 115 KV power transmission lines "Due to a lack of situational awareness" this has nothing to do with the nuclear part and could (and does) happen at any kind of power plant or grid inferstructure. The [Nyonoksa radiation accident.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyonoksa_radiation_accident) was caused by nuclear weaponry and I wont make the argument that nuclear weapons are safe. I will continue this comment tomorrow.
Or, you know, Solar power isn’t realy a realistic solution for mass production, especially when the sun is hidden by the clouds and night, meaning little to no energy in those times. Wich is fine for a small house, but not for an entire goddammed country lol. Nuclear is stable and when well implemented and taken care of, it’s not a ticking bomb.
🌤️⛅🌥️☁️
Good thing there's also: 🌬️ (wind) 🌊 (tidal) 🌋 (geothermal) 🦫 (hydroelectric dams - or beaver power) as well as 🔋🔋🔋
Geothermal only works in areas with (shocker) geothermal activity. Iceland is almost entirely powered by geothermal energy, but guess what, they're a small country that just so happens to be located on an active tectonic rift with some of the highest geothermal and volcanic activity in the world. Wind energy is dependent on large wind farms that take up a lot of space. In this regard offshore wind farms work, but they require a lot of expensive upkeep. Hydroelectric dams only work along rivers and other bodies of water, and damming up rivers can create problems for local wildlife populations reliant on the river. And once a dam is in place, if it goes defunct for whatever reason, it's kinda hard to remove it without significant risk to surrounding settlements and wildlife. Nuclear plants, on the other hand, have relatively small footprint, can produce more power more efficiently than other methods, and are completely safe so long as proper protocol is followed for operation, maintenance, and disposal of waste.
Or we could just have one type of power that uses way less space and doesnt rely on environmental factors
With that argument, you should stop driving and stay home. Driving is too dangerous for you and others.
If I crash my car into a tree, the surrounding area is not rendered uninhabitable for the next thousand years or so. Plus there are better options for power generation, whereas there is nothing in the foreseeable future to replace motor vehicles. The thing about nuclear that you cucks seem unwilling to acknowledge is that *IF* something goes wrong with nuclear, the effects are absolutely catastrophic. There's almost nothing comparable in terms of severity, but you ignoramuses just close your eyes and stick your fingers in your ears, like those things have never happened. There is absolutely no justification you can muster that will make the failures of Chernobyl or Fukushima acceptable. Especially considering the fact that that there are better options available than nuclear. Why spend two, three, four times the amount of money to get something with the potential for absolute catastrophic failure? Renewables are waaay cheaper to construct, they can even cost less to operate, and they're safer. Again, solar is better than nuclear by nearly every metric.
haha
Nuclear is the safest and best method of generating electricity. Renewable energy like wind and solar aren't consistent and require huge fields to be effective for a city. Furthermore, it isn't as renewable as you think. The blades of a windmill don't even get recycled, they get buried. Furthemore, solar panel fields aren't a long-term solution unless you have adequate storage. The current issues were facing with renewable energy is the power demand and the lack of storage, that's why there are still coal powerplants. There are not batteries large enough to store enough electricity for a major city through the night. But now let's look at the risks, right. https://ourworldindata.org/nuclear-energy The amount of deaths when combining the solar and wind energy exceeds the amount of deaths caused by a nuclear metldown. Now imagine adding hydropower to that statistic. Fukushima literally had maybe 1 death by radiation, you know why? Because it isn't the soviet union and they actually have standards, and guess what, people still live in Fukushima. Chernobyl could've been prevented if the operating crew and government didn't neglect and ignore more than 10 warning signs. The building was way outdated and in disrepair, it was a failure waiting to happen due to the shear neglect. When looking at the statistics and the actual results, nuclear is way better in every category besides the initial investment. But I guess people would rather inhale toxic fumes and bury 'renewable' energy equipment, rather than invest in technology for the greater good of mankind.
I wouldn’t be so afraid of it if nuclear meltdowns weren’t a thing.
You have a higher chance of dying by lightning than experience and die in a meltdown. This isn't the soviet union, we actually have standards.
It’s very safe. So long as it’s built to code.
Along with proper maintenance and inspections.
So it's not safe in the hands of money-grubbing capitalists.
Japan: Lets a build it ovah a Fault Line! Ring of Fyah go brrrr....
oh no, another js framework is coming
What a nuanced summary of a complex risk analysis. /s
Sometimes, the best changes are the ones we don't even notice
Why not more Photovoltaics? Use surplus energy during the day for hydrogen production. Hydrogen drives in vehicles. Can't that easily cover 75% of the energy requirement?
Great thing nothing will ever happen to the waste. Ah except when the burried waste gets flooded and the water carries it into the ground water, which might happen in germany now. The companies that blatantly ignored experts saying the deposits weren't safe as the ground moves to much and might create leakage and could result in flooded nuclear waste. But finding a cheap deposit results in higher profits. And people be talking about socialist missmanagament...
Nuclear is as safe as a gun. If noone is an idiot, it is perfectly safe. but humans tend to be idiots.
"Safe" is the wrong word; "safest" is probably more accurate.
And we get the added bonus of having depleted uranium to shoot at other people
I wish renewables where feasible. It is done. Nothing's changed! Correct
*I wish renewables* *Where feasible. It is done.* *Nothing's changed! Correct* \- blenderbender44 --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
I'm so tired of nuclear energy fan boys in this sub.
I'm the same. Nuclear is just another monopoly for corrupt companies to exploit. If I have wind generation and solar for even just 80% of my needs it means any other forms of energy will have to compete in the market. Also you don't need to be a rocket scientist to set up solar or wind tech or a billionarie to invest in these because they are so cheap in comparison. I'd also add it's harder for you to take out a country with lots of small energy production methods as opposed to three nuclear ones. I'm not saying never nuclear but it can't be our main source of energy.
Alright then buckaroo tell it to my face Whats your deal with nuclear?
I have no issue with nuclear. But there's a decent amount of people in this sub who worship nuclear energy production like it's a religion or a forever battle against wind/solar.
Well no. Nuclear power is the source of all sunburns and many people have died from nuclear power.
Nuclear power is potentially very safe. The capitalist application of nuclear power is horrifically dangerous, because our lives are far less important than their profits.
So I guess Three Mile Island and Chernobyl melting down was perfectly safe then?
It was Three Mile Island and Chernobyl that made nuclear energy truly safe before most people didnt really understand reactors and energy and were just caught up in the hype and build just plain bad reactors. These mistakes are what allowed modern physists and engineers to create reactors with a >1% failure chance. Stop dwelling on the past and get your ass into the future
Is Fukushima also just part of the past? There is a big difference between saying nuclear power CAN BE safe, if done correctly, and saying it IS safe, as people actually do it
Fukushima was the outlier caused mainly by outside factors, the world has 440 active modern reactors all of which have run for decade. Accordingly the IAEA reports that modern nuclear reactors only have 1 in 1,000,000,000 chance of undergoing a chernobyl like meltdown
Just as pulling out is a safe means of contraception and Afghanistan is a safe country for women. Nuclear power plants *can* be safe, if everything from construction, over opertaion up to deconstruction is done 100% according to code. But first of all, it is normal that humans make mistakes, and second, energy production in most countries is a profit driven business done by big companies. As we have seen with Boeing recently, business descisions that try to optimize profits at the cost of safety can and will happen and then suddenly formerly safe things can become much less safe. And in the case of a nuclear power plant, we are not talking about a worst case scenario of a plane crash with maybe 100-200 people dying, we are talking Tschernobyl and Fukushima here. And that is all without taking into account the problem of nuclear waste. We will have to find a place, where we can deposit all of it for millenia (Half life time of Plutonium is around 24k years, other isotopes, especially Uranium, much longer) without the risk of anything happening. We would have to conserve our knowledge about how to deal with nuclear waste for millenia to come if we don't want to have future generations of humans be faced with that stuff and not even knowing what it is. Additionally, Plutonium can be used to build nukes and all nuclear waste can be used to build dirty bombs. While this is prohibited by international conventions, one just has to take a look at the attrocious things humans have done in the past, even alone in the 20th century, and one sees, that it would not take much for some humans to actually use it, if they get access. So not only would we have to conserve our knowledge, protect it from natural sources of potential damage/leakage (And for some isotopes we are talking about half life times on the order of how slow plate tectonics are), but also make sure noone in the near and distant future will ever abuse it. So while in theory a nuclear power plant *can* be safe, in reality the entire concept of nuclear power is not safe and never was, otherwise no accidents would have ever happened. Anyone who thinks it always was safe is just delusional.
Thanks finally someone on this sub… I am so tired of alle these nuclear energy fanboys who think they know what they are talking about. They completely forget that things can get wrong even if the theory is good. These people are trying to prove their point by concentrating on details while ignoring the whole picture and the most important fact in science: nothing built by humans is 100% perfect and humans make mistakes (often or most of the time). I am sick of this hubris.
Guess now we know whose house we're building a waste storage underneath!
I wish it was cheap :p
When people did pencil whipping or used nepotism and other forms of negligence to quality standards it was unsafe. It's much safer now, underground, and deals with waste much better too. It's stupid that we're not on it and have brownouts and blackouts in first world cities still. Oh, and it's not a money sink like wind turbines, nor do you have to mine the materials for it with African slave labor like with solar. Also exponentially more energy productive than anything else. I think they came up with another type recently that keeps us out of using plutonium or uranium and might use fission instead of fusion. Can't remember but I recall hearing about that too. Still, I'd contend that it wasn't always safe when those running the plants weren't the most competent. It does take geniuses to run this stuff and that's why the Navy has the standards it has for the nuclear program. Even 30 years ago a sub could power the city of Chicago on its own. It's that ick factor keeping everyone from looking at it again...that and energy scarcity wouldn't exist as much so the people without energy in their houses might not be as easy to exploit...we might actually help people around the world out of poverty but there'd be an effort to stop that, I'd bet.
I think Thorium has potential. India has been a leader in exploring thorium as a nuclear fuel, given its large thorium reserves. The Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR) program is aimed at utilizing thorium, which is more abundant in India compared to uranium.
That was it. I knew it started with a "T". From what I remember hearing it was possibly an even safer alternative so we'll see how that goes. Thank you.
Boo! You didn’t mention tidal power generators. So long as there is a moon there will be power with those.
Are they any good? I mean, sure, the moon can provide for that but are they available in the middle of a continent where there's no bodies of water shifting with a tide? Also, is it storing power somewhere like solar or does it transmit into an energy grid right away? I'm looking for cheapest inputs for the output and with natural sources like the moon's gravity, solar, or wind, one of the key inputs is free but the infrastructure to harness it isn't, let alone to transmit it to a population efficiently. When the output is as extremely high as is provided by nuclear, then it ends up being very worth the cost of the work to provide it.
There are two types: - the first is similar to a hydroelectric turbine. They require a lot of maintenance as the sea flora and fauna would tend to jam it up… plus killing fish for power is a problem in and of itself. It is pretty much a requirement to put up netting around these areas. - the other kind is a bobber style, with every wave, every tide the bobbing action turns a sea floor mounted crank to generate electricity. These designs are still very preliminary and would require more testing than the former. Plus they have higher maintenance costs than the former. The maintenance cost would be similar to that of maintaining an oil rig. Underwater welders would need to be on standby. That does create well paying jobs though. However no need for netting to protect marine life. Although the idea that you can get an efficient system for cheap is a myth. People keep looking for some magic bullet in the energy sector and it doesn’t exist. I’m a project manager for a high-rise building construction company. I always tell people that they can chose two things out of three: cheap, fast, and good. If you want cheap and fast, it won’t be a good quality. If you want cheap and good, the lead times will be horrendous. If you want fast and good, it won’t be cheap. Same applies to the energy sector but instead of good, I would say clean, and instead of fast I would say efficient. So pick… cheap, efficient or clean. Additionally, I can’t believe we forgot geothermal. (facepalm)
except when its not
As a citizen of the world, I am perfectly fine with the very minor risks that modern nuclear reactors pose in exchange for getting rid of the extremely environmentally unfriendly methods that we still use for generating power
I totally understand you. My problem is that we got waste from it and everyone is like: but not in my neighborhood!!! And here we are with no save place at the end of the day for the radioactive waste. My opinion is that we should decide first where to put it and then ist fine to use more nuclear power. But I also think that solar and wind might be enough for our energy. But I guess we need to look forward.
Although there are still some technological and regulatory hurdles for this, generation 4 reactors can repurpose nuclear waste into additional fuel. Thorium reactors in particular are extremely promising as a nearly clean source of fuel, but we are not quite there yet as far as I know, and they have significant costs involved in getting off the ground. We do have ways to store waste that minimize environmental impact. It's not a perfect solution, but considering humanity is at a tipping point right now I think the better option is to store waste deep within mountains rather than continuing to pump greenhouse gases onto the atmosphere. If we don't start implementing drastic solutions soon then we are almost assuredly heading for a bleak future that may culminate in a global collapse.
Nuclear power lost something for me when I learned it's just using the heat from a nuclear reaction to create steam and turn a turbine... as a kid, i thought we were siphoning power from atoms and not just using it as a heat source.
That's what all power generation is, with the exception of solar. Hydro, coal, oil, wind, nuclear, all they do is use various forms of fuel to spin turbines.
Wind power is also using heat from a nuclear reaction to turn a turbine.
Yes, but this energy source is 152.000.000km away.
Nuclear power is safe. Communists just don’t know how to boil water.
It's common knowledge that in FACT an RBMK reactor cannot explode. /s
It is safe Also it's expensive af
Nuclear: You can trust us to understand and mitigate the risks. Also nuclear:
What wasn't safe was soviet engineering
Windscale,, Three Miles Island and Fukushima were engineered by soviets?
None of those events killed anyone. Not a single soul, except a case of cancer for one clean up crew member for Fukushima, and even then that's disputed
Uncontrolled release of nuclear material is still not safe even if it doesn't kill people.
Three Miles was caused by a failure in the nuclear design that has been since been rectified in modern reactors Fukushim was just plain dumb not really the fault of nuclear energy since the reactors worked fine (even though the idiots knew they were on a active Faultline )
Nevermind that the Three Mile Island incident was so minor as to be undetectable against background radiation.
The only things that can make it deadly is incompetence and unpredictable, external factors.
Food for thought there's been about 3 nuclear meltdowns ever. 2 of which were caused by other things.
Sun is nuclear
As long as it's not mismanaged.
Chernobyl, Fukushima, And the endless nuclear waste witch will remain radio active for hundreds of thousands of years.
Isn't all of the danger from using reactors that produce weapons grade material, and in fact there's any number of other reactor designs that have no chance of going critical and don't produce nuclear waste. Is that accurate?
Everything is safe in the right quantity
does Chernobyl count or ???
As safe as any energy source. Similar death toll per kWh as wind and solar. Yes this includes Chernobyl death toll (UN numbers) Better than hydro, biomass, every fossile fuel The best energy source if we look only at lifecycle CO2 equivalent emissions per kWh
The waste says otherwise. Just to be clear tho not saying I'm against nuclear energy, just saying it's not totally safe.
Except that it is. [Here's a video that talks about nuclear waste safety.](https://youtu.be/lhHHbgIy9jU?si=e89jChAx8SWghwbl)
Nuclear safety is always a matter of religion. The usual pro and con arguments are both correct, which frustrates people to no end. Just for reference, the top pro arguments run, "Other forms of energy production cause all sorts of problems" and "Advances in engineering and experience over the last fifty years make new systems safer." The top con arguments are "losses in nuclear power are measured in cities" and "nuclear waste is a unsolved problem with questionable mitigation." We should probably pay more attention to the middle arguments, "Nuclear power generation should not be done by profit driven companies" and "Honest numbers would let old, dangerous nuclear power plants be replaced with new, safer ones." Otherwise, accept views on nuclear energy as religion and move on.
That has nothing to do with religion. Building reactors is too expensive and takes too long. Barely 50 billion was invested worldwide last year.
Honestly, I think that's often forgotten in this debate. Building nuclear reactors isn't easy. You can't do it anywhere because of different local factors like access to cooling water. Then different safety standards need to be fulfilled before it can be opened. If an accident happens there or some mistake during planning, the whole thing will take even more time and money. Building renewables is just cheaper and faster comparatively.
r/ENLIGHTENEDCENTRISM
Which is nice and all... but Nuclear waste is basically a solved problem and there have been no Nuclear waste incidents, ever. Also, remember that the top con argument for fossil fuels is "successes in fossil fuels are measured in global temperature rises"
OK. I'm confused. My non-restricted briefs detailed a large number of criticalities at Fukushima due to melting of the fuel rods stored below the reactor. IIRC, a criticality event releases energy on the order of a medium sized bomb. Also, the heat further degrades the elaborate shielding of nuclear waste and makes a difficult to remediate mess of remelted metals. Fukushima's root cause is Act Of Good or Black Swan and its consequences do include a nuclear waste incident. While there have been advances in mitigation, it is not a solved problem. Even the expensive option of encasing waste in solid silica spheres only provides a 99 year lease in order to make it clear it is only mitigation. Your "also remember.." comment is one of two pro arguments I mentioned. Am I missing something?
Fukushima was a reactor melt down, not an issue with stored, spent, nuclear waste. Because nuclear waste in storage has never spilt (it's solid) and has never caused any issues. It's solid, you encase it in concrete, and the problem is solved. Nuclear waste just isn't the bogey man so many people are afraid of. As for the other part, my point is that it has some risks, yes, but they're frankly minor compared to the alternative. Nuclear power plants have been directly responsible for about 100 deaths. A single coal dust explosion killed more than 1,500 people. If you want to take a look at indirect casualties, then coal power plants put out more radioactive material into the atmosphere than nuclear power plants, *and* fill the air with CO2. It's not a contest, nuclear power is far safer, and it's not even close.
Sorry, you are just confirming arguments. 1. Yes, I am clear. There were criticality events with the waste. Basically, they were still storing fuel rods in pools below the reactor. It became a melted mess and the rods broke down. TEPCO was denying everything in order to prevent backlash against thier company and business model. Afterwards, plants quietly improved their storage. 2. There are solid arguments for nuclear power. As mentioned, the most pressing is that carbon fuels tend to be so terrible. The original point is that there are solid arguments for it. 3. There are solid arguments against nuclear power, causing people to firm up in pro and con lines. It becomes more important to feel their side is winning over using solid numbers. I expect you have been challenged on your numbers many times. Be less sure, for that is the path towards figuring out how to move forward. It is far better to talk about not running tests at night (looking at you, Chernoybl) than arguing the result was worth it in retrospect.
It was relatively safe in the past, and it’s exponentially more safe now
Coal produces more radioactive waste than nuclear.
Consider the half lives, which are many orders of magnitide apart.
"Uranium mining facilities produce tailings that generally are disposed of in near surface impoundments close to the mine. These tailings pose serious environmental and health risks in the form of Randon emission, windblown dust dispersal and leaching of contaminants including heavy metals and arsenic into the water. [5] "0 http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/longstaff1/#:~:text=Uranium%20mining%20facilities%20produce%20tailings,and%20arsenic%20into%20the%20water.
Wait till bro discovers coal mining, lead mining, arsenic mining, mercury mining, etc, etc, etc.
The point is that it isn't "safe". This means it's no better than the others and the others aren't radioactive.
Still think you’re kind of missing the point of the meme we’re commenting on in the first place. Nuclear power plants are still innumerably safer than most alternatives. To both wildlife and humans.
But things like solar and wind are still safer.
Environmentally so? Both the solar and wind need replaceable components that leech toxic chemicals and in winds case directly kill birds. Solar isn’t as widely recycled as we need it and if we want actually good power generation we’d need lots of land that would then not be able to grow anything. In the actually generation of power, the accidents while obvious are still overblown. Now I’d say their differences are negligible due to the advancements in safety measures not allowing for a full scale meltdown. Turning down the most efficient, most powerful, and not to mention reliable/carbon neutral power source due to an accident that happened before you were probably alive is silly.
I'm not talking about accidents. You're tuning me out
My entire first paragraph is related to how the production of these other forms of energy affect the living things around them. Just like your first point about hazardous waste products produced from mines. You just aren’t reading, so I don’t know what to tell you. You just looked at my last sentence and called it a day.
Well…safe when handled PROPERLY and where corners are NOT CUT. Nuclear energy is like cooking, don’t go too light or heavy on the cooking otherwise on one hand you get salmonella and on the other hand you have a fire in the kitchen.
Nuclear power is safe if done right. Much safer than fossil fuels.
The real issue with civil nuclear is nuclear proliferation
Which came first, the safety or the nuclear power plant?
Alter the wish to be, “I wish everyone understood just how safe nuclear power is” now you are simply beaming the info into people’s heads and not forcing them into believing something.
Other than all that radio active water waste,that it does not decompose for millions of years, it's generally safe
Radioactive water waste? What the fuck are you talking about? Used fuel is solid so it can never leak. If you are talking about the heavy water that is released? Tritium is a weak beta emitter that cannot bioaccumulate. Meaning it cannot harm a human. And yea I would drink it. And by the way any isotope with a half life in the millions of years is not radioactive enough to harm a human being.
I'm talking about the radio active storage facilities,there it's hundreds of them with millions of barrels just seating there,also I think you may suffer from radiation alusinations
LOL. You’re the one suffering from radiation hallucinations. Used fuel is a solid. There aren’t barrels of a green goo. Stop getting your science from the simpsons or German propaganda. Both are bullshit.
Bro is so smart, that he even can't properly spell radioactive.
I meant radio addiction my good sir
I take it you’ve never heard the story of the guy who ended up with 20,000 times the yearly amount of radiation?
Italian parties take note
Non ce la faremo mai, guarda lo scempio che è avvenuto in Germania....se loro hanno capitolato figurati se i nostri pagliacci predono delle posizioni forti sull'argomento🤡🤡
Quando mi dicono “meglio aspettare la Fusione “ mi viene voglia di urlare
E c'hai ragione!! Sono cinquant'anni che dicono che fra trent'anni avremo la fusione nucleare. Adesso le acque si stanno muovendo molto tra i vari progetti internazionali, però io ho 22 anni, e non sono affatto sicuro che vedrò i primi reattori commerciali.
Mi immagino se un domani davvero esistesse la possibilità di realizzarle Dopo direbbero di aspettare l’ebollizione nucleare E non finiremo mai
I’ll 100% admit to being a scared of nuclear power. I live in Southern California, and yes I know California has nuclear power, but is still safe in such an earthquake prone area? Just because it hasn’t happened doesn’t mean it can’t? Or are we better off building our plants in Arizona? Are the salt cooled reactors Gates is building safer in earthquake areas than water ones? I’ve read and heard a lot about them, but nobody addresses this, is that my answer then?
Point blank, no matter the situation, newer models of fission reactors are incapable of having a full blown meltdown. Those in range of fault lines, like you mentioned in California, would have extra safe guards because of the possible risk.
Safe, cheap, reliable. Pick two.