Lol I KNEW HE WAS ALREADY DEAD!! That picture was taken in the cooler fridge where they keep his body in storage in-between sessions of weekend at Bernies style puppeteering.
I can’t believe I have to vote for an actual corpse…
If you’re interested in energy solutions and haven’t read the RethinkX report on the feasibility of a 100% solar, wind and battery solution, it’s definitely worth taking a look.
Whilst I agree that we need to decarbonise asap with whatever we can, any new nuclear that begins planning today is likely to be a stranded asset by the time it finishes construction. That money could be better spent leaning into a renewable solution in my view.
Exactly this. I am "in favor" of nuclear energy, but only in the sense that I'd like fossil power to be phased out first, then nuclear. Any money that could be spent on new nuclear power plants is better spent on solar and wind.
I’d like Nuclear power not to be thrown out with the bathwater because it is practically essential for space travel/colonization in the long term. Solar panels can only get us so far, and batteries are a stop-gap. We need nuclear power because it is the only energy source that can meet our needs while being small enough to carry with us.
it is practically essential for space travel/colonization in the long term.
Seems like it’s pretty important we not burn through our finite reserves of it if we can help it. I’m not saying we should reach zero nuclear, but I don’t think we should be relying on it too much either.
We are no where near close to running out of nuclear material. And for its energy density, we are unlikely to run out anytime in the next 10000 years. It can also be found in asteroids or other rocky bodies, so unlike wood or fossil fuels, Earth isn’t the only place to get it.
Does it cover everyone on the planet using the same amount of electricity as a North American? 8 billion people now. And usage is increasing too, gotta power EVs and AI (but not limited to that).
Nah, they won’t. It goes bling-bling, has a couple of good use cases, but because it generates Market Hype, Companies will cram it into everything. And i hate it.
I agree it’s safe but idk it’s the best we currently have, I think that probably depends on locale.
Solar and wind (and maybe tidal?), with pumped hydro energy storage is probably cheaper, safer, and cleaner… But it requires access to a fair bit more water than a nuclear plant requires, at least initially.
But nuclear is still far better than using fossil fuels for baseline demand.
Land usage is also a huge concern with hydro power. Pumped hydro storage means permanently flooding an area to create the reservoir, which carries many above and beyond just the destruction of whatever was there before. The flooded land has vegetation on it, enough is now decaying under water. This can release all sorts of unpleasantness, most notably mercury.
I agree it absolutely has problems and I hope we come up with a better solution in the near future.
But it’s currently the lesser evil. Even though nuclear plants don’t need a lot of fuel, getting that fuel is still typically more damaging than creating a water reservoir, or using an existing natural reservoir.
Land usage is what makes nuclear the most ecologically sound solution. Solar and wind play their part. But for every acre of land, nuclear tops the chart of power produced per year. And when you’re trying to sate the demand of high density housing and businesses in cities, energy density becomes important. Low carbon footprint is great for solar and wind but if you’re also displacing ecosytems that would otherwise be sucking up carbon, its not as environmentally friendly as we’d like.
Are you displacing whole ecosystems, though?
How much do wind farms affect grasslands and prairies, etc? They’ll have an impact for sure, but it’s not like the whole place gets paved over.
And solar can get placed on roofs of existing structures. Or distributed so it doesn’t affect any one area too much.
I have to admit idk much about sourcing the materials involved in building solar panels and windmills. Idk if they require destructive mining operations.
I imagine that a nuclear reactor would require more concrete, metal, and rate earth magnets that a solar/wind farm, but idk. I likewise don’t know the details about mining and refining the various fissile material and nuclear poisons.
The other advantage of renewables is that it’s distributed so it’s naturally redundant. If it needs to get shut down (repairs, or a problem with the grid) it wont have a big impact.
I like nuclear, and it’s certainly the better choice for some locations, but many locations seems better suited for renewable
Right, like I’ve said it’s not the best solution everywhere. But where it’s an option (which is many places) it’s a better one. Not solar in the case of grasslands, probably wind. But you get the idea.
I’m not against renewables but utilizing them as our main source of energy just is not practical for long term, there are serious ecological issues that have been sidelined because of global warming/climate change. Things like rooftop solar only become viable in low density housing, but low density housing is also not good use of land.
I agree it’s not the ideal solution, but it’s better than most solutions we have, depending on location.
Rooftop solar doesn’t only need to be on residential buildings, it can also be on industrial and commercial buildings, which take a significant land area.
One last benefit of most renewable energy that is related to its distributed nature: it’s easy to slowly roll out update and replacements. If a new tech emerges you can quickly change your rollout plan to use the new tech, and replace the old tech a little bit at a time, without any energy disruption.
With mega-projects like nuclear reactors, you can’t really change direction mid-construction, and you can’t just replace the reactors as new tech comes online, because each reactor is a huge part of the energy supply and each one costs a fortune.
Also, according to the doc you shared of land-use, in-store wind power is nearly the same as nuclear, since the ecology between the windmills isn’t destroyed.
So while I agree that nuclear absolutely has a place, and that renewables have some undesirable ecological repercussions, they’re still generally an excellent solution.
The elephant in the room, though, is that all the renewable solutions I mentioned will require energy storage, to handle demand variation and production variation. The most reliable and economically feasible energy storage is pumped hydro, which will have a similar land usage to hydro power. On the upside, although it has a significant impact, it does not make the land ecological unviable, it just changes what ecosystem will thrive there - so sites must be chosen with care.
No one talks about land usage for solar either. Which is a real shame, because with some relatively minor redesigns solar plants can be integrated into the ecosystem without causing massive damage, instead of what usually happens which is just clear-cutting a huge field and destroying any plant and animal life there.
Nuclear plants also have to built adjacent to reliable water supply. I’ll bet the land is more expensive and a bigger environmental impact whereas the location for solar is more flexible
The USA specifically has so much useless land with minimal ecological value, that if an energy project could actually be done at a federal level we could probably not have to worry about it.
There is a whole bunch of land in central USA that is not especially unique or teaming with life, slap down a big renewable energy farm.
Wanting to try a different breakfast sandwich. Pull up. Cant see menu because last guys order is showing. Flicks over to menu. Can i help you? Ill take a <same old thing> because i didnt get enough time to see the menu and dont wsnt to hold up the line.
I hate to say it, but regardless of one’s stance, on his back should be “Public perception of Fukushima, Chernobyl, and 3-mile Island.”
I say regardless of one’s stance, because even if the public’s perceptions are off…when we remember those incidents but not how much time was in between them or the relative infrequency of disasters, they can have outsized effects on public attitude.
It’s not a great idea from the risk. If future governments let the windmills fall into disrepair, all that happens is windmills are useless. They can never accidently summon centuries of nuclear winter.
They can never accidently summon centuries of nuclear winter.
Neither can nuclear power plants, lol. Nuclear power plants are not built in a way that can trigger a nuclear bomb explosion, which is inherent to the theory of nuclear winter of nuclear explosions leaving material in the atmosphere to blot out the sun.
Maintaining a fission reaction is an incredibly complicated process that requires human intervention to sustain. If nuclear plants fell into “disrepair” the would just turn off and be useless, like windmills.
Dude, you realize a nuclear meltdown releases far more nuclear poison than a nuclear bomb. It’s not about the immediate destructive potential.
A nuclear winter would last at most a decade or two due to the dust thrown into the atmosphere by the explosions. A disaster like Chernobyl, while not even close in terms of destructive power, had the potential to release enough radiation to leave half of Europe uninhabitable for centuries, maybe even millenia. Chernobyl is still dangerous to this day while cities like Hiroshima and Nagasaki are thriving.
And to think you could just abandon a nuclear power plant safely…
You realize used nuclear fuel is extremely hot and still radiating heat and has to be cooled for a long time. You abandoned one without safety measures and the pools cooling the used fuel would just boil and evaporate. The water gone would no longer shield the radiation and you’d have a ton of radioactive material shitting poison into the atmosphere and meltdown.
Some people don’t know shit about nuclear power and like to act condescending “it’s not like a nuclear bomb”. No, it’s far more dangerous. And all it takes is a couple of really bad accidents to ruin the planet. And Murphy’s law tells us those improbable accidents will happen eventually. That means with nuclear power, quick or slowly we are walking towards the abyss. When we reach it we fall and there’s no way out.
It’s not clear what your trying to stay, but if you’re saying that coal is very bad and nuclear power is better, that’s not untrue, but it’s important to remember that the economic pressure right now is against coal and for renewable energy, even in coal country businesses won’t build in a state that won’t explicitly commit to only building renewable energy exclusively for all new ot replacement energy sources. The situation isn’t perfect, there should be more aggressive removal of dirty energy, granted, but nuclear power isn’t the only clean option, and it comes with a lot of risks.
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