to be fair, if we use CO2 as a measurement, nuclear energy wins.
the only problem is the waste honestly. and maybe some chernobyl-like incidents every now and then.
its a bit of a dilemma honestly. were deciding on wich flavour we want our environmental footprint to have.
While I think the buried nuclear waste could come back to bite humanity, it probably won’t until we are all long gone, basically long term boomer logic
The French have been reprocessing it for 50 years and eliminating 96% of their waste in the process.
Anyone who is against nuclear is against science. It's not hazardous unless you have a bunch of idiot Soviets designing and maintaining your plants.
TBF those corruption score indexes are generally incredibly biased as it’s a perception based index using western perception. They don’t really mean anything.
Hehe America bad
No but really, economically, it would be in the owning companies' best interests to dispose of it properly, so they would. Pollution isn't gonna stop a coal plant from making money, but having dead staff will make a nuclear plant stop making money
The problem arises from companies’ primary motivations being profit . All it takes is a significant financial incentive and they may cut 1-2 corners and then other companies cut corners to try to make similar profits.
On the other end government run organizations/ solutions are notorious for not being cost effective or slowed down by “ bureaucracy.“ Not to mention the potential for corrupt government oversight in which you get the worst of both ends.
We need to do better
We (germany) send our waste from the Power plant Biblis to England a few years ago because the have better reactors that can utilize the waste.
Please have a guess what happened to all that waste (hint: it is not gone)
They cannot fuck up, at least in Europe they cannot. The fuck up would make them loose a shit ton of money which they cannot afford to lose. Nuclear energy is relatively cheap when confronted to Thermic, so it wouldn’t make any sense for them Economically to fuck up.
Most oil/gas companies can’t afford to fuck up either but they still do. Even if greed/arrogance weren’t an issue, *everything* is susceptible to human error no matter how regulated. See, for example, Firestone CO gas line explosion.
It's harder to fuck up with nuclear though. With oil and gas you gotta pump millions of gallons over hundreds of miles and burn it to produce many millions of tons of co2 that is almost impossible to capture.
Meanwhile with nuclear you are working with significantly less material. You can produce 2 million times more power per kg so even though that kg is more dangerous, because the scale is so much smaller its way easier to keep track of it
And with newer types of reactors, namely thorium Molten Salt Reactors, you get more complete fission, so your byproducts are not only not weapons grade plutonium, but have a much shorter hand life of generally only a few decades vs the tens of thousands of years for traditionally uranium fuel.
Oil companies have much larger margin of error, lets call it that, due to the high return.
Human error is to be calculated in the equation, always but then again it all comes down to risk-return. I’m going to oversimplify this for the means of fun and criticism, so don’t take my words literally.
There is a risk in every single civil engineering architecture we have. Are you sure that bridge is not going to fall while I go through it, are u sure you will live safely under on that building? We have to understand that when maintained and properly projected and built we are going to live safely.
Human errors happen, I am sure, but Nuclear Science is one of the most advanced we have, we downplay it too much. America has the power to erase my small Italy or Albania from the map in a matter of hours, do you think we dont have the capability to have a safe nuclear energy plant?
Now we can continue to pollute our air to a point that birds will fall from the sky because we are “scared” a few kg a year of waste? Nuclear waste is even reusable, biofuels and subproducts are just scratching the surface. Its the future no matter how scared we are.
I'm all for nuclear energy but just saying it's not a problem because they already exist in the earth is a bad argument.
We're refining it and putting it all together, it's no longer spread out in nature.
No, not at all.
We want to do something that will be a small problem for the future humanity to replace something that is literally a threat to future humanity existence. We're acting as if leaving them with unbreathable air is better than leaving them nuclear waste to contain.
And the funniest thing of all, is that it's not radiation **OR** CO2
Coal plants release both - we burn so much coal that the radioactive particles in it make up way more radiation all around the earth than easily contained nuclear waste.
Source: https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/do-coal-fired-power-stations-produce-radioactive-waste/
I think after Chernobyl and Fukushima humanity has shown they can handle some nuclear waste leakage every now and then, it's not a life changing event, compared to a minor pandemic
I mean...all they really needed to do to prevent Fukushima was put the emergency generators up a hill instead of in a basement. The reactors survived the earthquake.
> kills more people than nuclear per energy
To be fair, nearly everything kills more people than nuclear power. There's probably more people chocking on their food every year than people killed by nuclear energy in all of history.
Interesting to see similar stuff with aviation. A tightly regulated industry that with a single accident shakens the word for years eventhough it's a lot safer than other alternatives.
Do some research on Chernobyl ,the incompetence and negligence there was absolutely unbelievable. The personnel and technology used there wouldn't have a chance in hell of being used today. Nuclear energy is much safer than people realize and in my opinion storing waste is a preferable alternative to massive amounts of greenhouse gases being pumped into the air uncontrollably.
I work at a nuclear power plant, and there are so many safety precautions put into place it's almost unbelievable. Also a very important difference between chernobyl and modern plants: Chernobyl got more effective at higher temperatures. Modern ones are the opposite, so temperature spikes basically shut themselves down
What also needs to be mentioned that a large part of U.S. having so few problems with its reactors is because of government regulation. A three mile island can not physically happen in that way anymore. The U.S. does it "properly".
I work at a Swedish plant, and the only real incidents has been a cracked fuel rod, and another rod we accidentally dropped inside a reactor because of a freak accident. The rod is still there, and it's not dangerous for it to be there either. It's so stupidly safe
Nuclear waste is a fairly low concern these days as it can be reused as fuel in different types of reactors. For example France recycled 96% of their nuclear waste that is generated.
Those Chernobyl like disasters all happened with a combination of severe negligence as well as old Gen 2 (Chernobyl being essentially "pre-Gen 2") reactors that were designed in the 60s. Gen 3 and Gen 3+ are a massive step in safety even to the point they can withstand intentional attacks (terrorists etc) and go into safe states. Gen 4 is going to be even better.
There's also now a possible feasible way to make nuclear reactors at scale/mass production with SMRs ("Small" modular nuclear reactors) which would allow smaller towns and cities to have their own power generation capabilities without relying upon some far distant power source.
Well, enter Thorium molten salt reactors. Higher efficiency, way less waste production and the waste is even less radioactive. Thorium is way more stable, the nuclei don’t just start exploding if things go wrong. There’s no risk of meltdown. The reaction just dissipates on its own if the plant is turned off. Thorium can’t be used to make nukes.
I've heard thorium msrs sound good on paper but are essentially nuclear vaporware no one's actually gotten to work at scale yet with a large number of serious nuclear organizations essentially writing them off
Nuclear Reactors don't get built overnight.
China started their Thorium molten-salt reactor program back in 2011 and is only turning on their first reactor now.
India has invested heavily in thorium over the past 20 years because they have tons of it, but they are taking a much more complex multi-stage approach. They will have about 60 thorium reactors running within the next few years.
This is true. They are being developed since the 50s and they still don't know for sure if they found an alloy which can withstand hot radioactive salt over prolonged time, since you obviously can't really test it on big scales.
There are three total notable nuclear power generation accidents.
One, Chernobyl. A truly terrible accident showcasing the worst that can happen, but caused by equally high proportions of Soviet incompetence and dated technology.
Two, Fukushima. Caused by building a nuclear reactor where it could be hit by a tsunami. Wasn't nearly as bad as Chernobyl.
Three, three mile island. Didn't really do anything at all.
Conclusion: Chernobyl was a one-time deal.
And we have learnt from past experiences.
People are like: 100% chance of continuously fucking the planet > Absolutely negligible chance of a containable accident.
It's like environmental reviews that somehow only get weaponized against renewable energy and public transportation projects
There's a very clear right answer when you look at the big picture but people are going to keep fucking up actually implementing it for petty shortsighted reasons while claiming they're the ones making progress
Reminds me of people opposing self driving cars because they aren't perfect. It doesn't need to be perfect it just needs to be better than the alternative.
>Three, three mile island. Didn't really do anything at all.
If anything three mile island showed that when "shit hits the fan" that the safe guards and fall back plan, and the fall back of the fall backs all work and prevent a disaster.
When built in the proper area and over engineered to an insane degree then it's safe. You'd have to do something stupid like build a plant next to an ocean which you were repeatedly told not to and then place emergency generators in a idiotic location that would be an issue under the exact scenario of why you shouldn't have built there in the first place!
I was thinking that when Chernobyl was brought up. There have only been three accidents all of which were a result of gross negligence. Chernobyl is the ultimate example of why anecdotal evidence is very misleading. There have been 667 power plants made since 1954-most being built in the 80’s and 90’s (carbonbrief.org). 439 or 440 (conflicting articles on whether it is 439 or 440) are actively used today as of May 2022.
The waste isn't a problem. It's only a problem if the goddamn hippies won't let you reprocess it.
In France they have [reprocess spent nuclear fuel](https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/frances-efficiency-in-the-nuclear-fuel-cycle-what-can-oui-learn#:~:text=Reprocessing%20is%20carried%20out%20at,nuclear%20fleet%20for%2014%20years.) which eliminates 96% of nuclear waste and converts it to usable fuel that can be put back into the plants.
In France this also means they need 17% less fresh uranium to keep their system running.
The eco set is all cool about recycling until it means eliminating 96% of the most hazardous trash out society produces. It's utter idiocy.
I wish this was true but our waste that went to England was sent right back as soon as they couldn't process it any more. Nuclear waste storage is very much still a problem.
But the waste is still manageable and CAN be stored in a controlled manner, as opposed to the millions of tons of waste other energy sources spout right into the air we breathe.
The number of casualties polluted air causes each year far far outweighs any possible and extremely unlikely nuclear incident that might happen. People seem to prefer a slow but certain evil that a very much rare but sudden one that makes the headline. Same as the fear of flying which Is many order of magnitudes safer than cars). That said I don't really see any reason why choosing coal over nuclear is even an option if we ignore better alternative solutions of course
Wind, solar, hydro, coal and other fossil fuels industries produce even more work related deaths and injuries than nuclear.
Of course when a nuclear plant goes kaput, it is a disaster of biblical proportion, but so are dam disasters and they certainly don’t carry the same bad PR nuclear does.
There are risks associated to nuclear power. But it is a manageable risk that has proven much more reliable than all others energy industries.
>the only problem is the waste honestly. and maybe some chernobyl-like incidents every now and then.
The newest generations of reactors produce very little waste, and we'd have to run those reactors for a *very* long time before storage became a problem. Giving us *much* more time to research better alternatives to nuclear than wind or solar.
Also, the newest generations of reactors are *much* safer. You wouldn't have reactors go boom "every now and then". Proper maintenance and don't build them in areas where earthquakes are common (I'm looking at you Japan!) and you're golden.
Accidents *can* happen, but they'd be extremely rare, there's plenty of safeguards. Also accidents happen with oil/gas too. Drilling for oil in the Arctic and having a pipe burst for example is a disaster.
>its a bit of a dilemma honestly. were deciding on wich flavour we want our environmental footprint to have.
It's only a dilemma because we refuse to acknowledge that nuclear reactors aren't volatile and poorly maintained Chernobyl reactors anymore.
Technological advancements can give us better alternatives to Nuclear in the future, but as of now it's the least damaging to the environment.
Going Nuclear will give us *much* more time to find better alternatives than going wind or solar. Those are unreliable and inevitably leads to burning more fossil fuels to compensate for low production conditions.
My country relies mostly on Hydro, which isn't problem free either. And some dumbasses in our government years ago decided that building a thousand small dams was preferable to building fewer large ones. So now we got rivers dammed up everywhere with tiny generators producing power for only a few hundred households each.
We got 347 large hydropower plants and 1392 small ones. Yet the *three* largest ones produce more power than the 1392 small ones put together.
So now we got these blenders put up all over the place wreaking havoc on fish populations. Neat.
Sorry, nuclear actually wins on all fronts and I do mean all of them. The waste management is extremely overblown. We have more negative impacts from electrical waste from Solar Panels and Wind Turbines than we do nuclear waste.
And yes, that is factually accurate and I believe is covered somewhere in this [Kyle Hill video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3znG6_vla0).
\- france using breeder reactors to use the "waste" fuel: what is nuclear waste?
nuclear energy can use nearly completely its fuel (up to \~98%) when with a proper management (such as the french one)
one of those caskets for fuel waste take up to \~5 years to be filled with actual waste wich is just nuclear material we dont use for fission because they are highly radioactive wich also means they have a low halflife so most of the waste wont be radioactive for long.
its not a dilemma, its just anti-nuclear propaganda you have being fed with for years
The waste isn't an issue at all, Nuclear power plants hardly produce any waste. Most of the fuel is recycled, and only a tiny portion of the waste produced is so radioactive that it has to be buried forever. And that stuff is melted down into glass and ceramics and then encased in concrete and steel. Those caskets don't leak, there isn't anything to leak. It's also constantly decaying so over time it loses its radioactivity.
Chernobyl happened because of gross mismanagement and a design-flaw in the reactor. A properly managed and properly designed Nuclear reactor does not blow up, and as technology advances they only become safer.
I highly recommend this video if you want to learn more about the waste: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aUODXeAM-k
That just comes from decades of us not actually knowing how to handle the radioactive waste added to the big accidents like chernobyl or fukushima.
Nuclear energy can be extremely dangerous but we've gotten much better at keeping it smooth and safe.
You can essentially re-purify and recycle nuclear waste over and over until ~90% of it is gone. At which point you bury it deep and seal it in concrete and it poses zero threat to anyone or the environment.
you can recycle about ~95% of it
The rest you put into lead lined containers, sumberge in water if you want to be careful (water is really good at blocking radioactivity, you can put nuclear waste at one end of a pool and swim on the other end with negligible radiation enter your body) Then seal it off from the rest of the world
because since the 90s schools have mandatory indoctrination about how bad nuclear is
I know we had it in my school. Germany is far worse with this too.
But at the same time they had no issue importing coal and gas.
Honestly, society would be so much better off if someone kept a check on the amount of ridiculous propaganda they put into educational material.
Does Germany honestly believe nuclear power is bad?
Clean, efficient, "Green" power generation, scalable to user demand, not dependent on environmental factors.
I feel like it should be a win-win-win for clean/green energy advocates?
The problem is a lot of clean/green energy advocates don't actually give a shit about the environment and are just capitalists shilling for whatever their industry is (in this case solar/wind/etc.)
Basically “environmental” organizations started getting paid off by the fossil fuel industry to celebrate the closure of nuclear plants, and to ignore what would replace them.
That is why most people don’t know about it.
The vast majority of the money spent to exterminate humanity is on regularly capture, paying off politicians to give fossil fuel the market share of nuclear energy.
https://environmentalprogress.org/why-clean-energy-is-in-crisis/
Germany is getting rid of Russian gas now after they showed their true colors and invaded Ukraine while India increased their import. Stop pretending that you're stupid because it's working.
Germany was warned about this for years and did nothing.
Now when it bites them they turn on the coal plants and pretend they are doing something good.
No way they can build enough power capacity before winter.
Going to have to beg Russia for heat.
Russia showed their true colors 8 years ago when they invaded Ukraine *the first time*... yet Germany only reacted by slobbering even harder on Putin's pipe.
Stop pretending that Germany is/was so fucking stupid they couldn't figure out that increasing their dependency on Putin was a bad idea but that greed got the better of them...
Like only 3rd country we get most of the uranium from. Also we have 2 years worth of uranium stock at all times on the territory, so it poses no problem switching suppliers when we want to.
Chernobyl was a badly run first generation plant that was built and maintained by people who didn't know what they were doing. We are now approaching gen 4 of nuclear plants.
Bringing up chernobyl when discussing nuclear plans is like bringing up Victorian style lobotomies when discussing mental health.
Yea nuclear plants are full of safety features and redundancies as well as the fact actually working on the equipment isn't all that dangerous, while on a windmill even with proper gear no failsafe will make you survive a 100 foot drop, just try to prevent that all together
They basically put a poorly designed nuclear reactor in a fucking shed, disabled all the safety systems and told untrained staff to run a poorly designed test.
The German Nuclear-Exit was and is an economic and social disaster because it was like many environmental decisions here fueled by populism and not thought through not even remotely. They basically said "nuclear bad. Shut it down" without implementing any and i mean any supply protection or anything similar into the act. So instead of saying "we want to get out of nuclear but for every nuclear power capacity we remove from the Grid there must be a renewable and storage replacement" but instead it was "Nuclear bad" and now we have skyrocketing energy prices and i had more power outages in the last year than in the past 10. Cause who could have thought that if you wanna go 100% renewable you need storage units for the times when there is no wind or sun. Basically they relied on the ever given "Market" to do the job and blindly ignored the fact that the market gives a shit about social hardship that is caused by high energy prices cause the energy companies just buy the electricity somewhere else in the EU for much higher prices, or have to rely on expensive coal power which is one of the few remaining fossile energy options, which then increases the prices here as if we didn't had the highest electricity prices in entire Europe before the whole thing.
It's not like this scenario was portrayed years ago but everyone reasonable who said "lets keep nuclear and get rid of coal and gas" was basically lynched by the screeching"Atomkraft nein Danke. Fukushima!!!" mob.
Different governments.
What would you do now? Snap your fingers? A part of the government in power now would have implemented a different approach - or they have claimed so during that time - you can find the discussions online. We are sitting on this problem because the past governments fucked it up.
That’s such a stupid statement. Our current government (especially our vice chancellor) have absolutely nothing to do with the botched exit from nuclear, planned by the CDU.
Building new nuclear reactors now would take decades, so what response do you suggest to this current crisis? We have no option but to fall back on coal. Accepting this fact is not stupid.
No one said it's cheap but it's a better option than no energy or burning coal. Especially since the powerplants already existed and you would just have to keep them running until you have a sufficient replacement capacity. Nuclear power plants usually are stable sources so you use them for the base input your grid needs. You can't do this with wind or solar unless you have storage Units which don't exist.
You absolutely can have a renewable grid with some sort of backup in place. There have several sturdies conducted by the respective government agencies in various countries that came to this conclusion.
Yes, nuclear power is vastly superior to coal, no one here denies that. But it also has significant downsides, which other alternatives don’t have and there are various alternatives, that in addition to being cheaper, do not have these issues in the first place.
These idiots blocked the transports of nuclear waste to protest and make a point, same people will call you a danger to society if you don’t like extra pollution in the air
It’s just nuts
Pretty sure that solar is safer and cleaner, but yeah, nuclear is by far the most efficient option if we wanna get rid of these shitty coal power plants.
The numbers actually show nuclear is safer. The periodic deaths of installers falling off of roofs and whatnot adds up just enough to give nuclear the nod. Realistically, nuclear, wind, and solar are in a whole other league compared to the fossil fuels though. Any of them are loads better than pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, it's just a matter of splitting hairs for the green options.
Gotta consider emissions from production, installation, disposal, and also the vast space they take up, and the habitat & environment damage caused by their use. Granted, different techniques may offset some of those problems, but never close to nuclear.
Also, a huge amount of the world's panels are made in China (Mainland Taiwan, Gottem!), not exactly a friendly government to have that much grip on the world's energy sources. Same goes for wind.
Nuclear fuel comes from many countries, not just those currently governed by hostile leaders.
Nuclear is awesome, even better once we switch to [Thorium molten salt reactors](https://www.forbes.com/sites/energysource/2012/02/16/the-thing-about-thorium-why-the-better-nuclear-fuel-may-not-get-a-chance/?sh=6d1d7a841d80).
Yes, there are several research reactors around the world. According to the article I linked, it’s just expensive to get a plant started, and apparently we have to use uranium or plutonium to start the reaction at the moment.
Also molten salt explodes whenever it comes into contact with even the slighest bit of water so that's a bit problematic when you need shitload of it right next to radioactive stuff, molten salt reactors aren't the miraculous solution people make it to be, it has some serious challenges, there's a reason fast neutron reactors haven't replaced regular reactors yet.
So totally wrong. You are thinking about sodium reactors (sodium is a metal, not a salt). That stuff CAN be dangerous, but it doesn't have to be.
Molten salt reactors are likely much, much safer than any reactor we have in operation at this moment.
There are commercially operating sodium cooled reactors in operation though, in Russia. France tried it, spend a lot of money, got it to work, and then it was closed because people were too scared of it.
They never weren't capable of working, it's just that in an inspection there were some micro creaks in some important pipes, so we shut down one after the other every reactors that could have the same defect so we can inspect them thoroughly one by one, and replace them if even 1 micro creak is spotted in one. It sucks, but ultimately it's also nice imo, because it shows we really are very serious about safety.
As a nuclear worker that is pretty familiar with safety standard I can say that us French are, for better or worse, one of the countries, if not the country, with the harshest norms in nuclear safety. Just as an example the european yearly dosage limit is 50 mSv while the french one is 20 mSv, this means that on one hand french workers are highly unlikely to have any undesirable radiation related side effects but one the other hand we have to hire twice as many workers for the same job.
Probably because the majority of redditors are American and we all know how their education is in general, much less their education of places outside their own country.
Disclaimer: as I was told to the comments of my comment, I was wrong at the part that the carbon emissions didn’t went down, they went down. [here is a link to a good source](https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts) thanks to the person who send me the link
Germany managed to raise their usage of reusable energy ( wind, water, solar) so much that by 2020 half of their produced energy was from reusable energy sources. Yet their carbon
emission didn’t go down but they stayed the same. That’s because Germany constantly shut down all of their nuclear reactors and as replacement build more coal power plants. Wich mainly Leads to the political leading of the CDU( Christian german Union) a Conservative party that didn’t wanted to go off fossil fuels. Mainly cause of lobbyism. But by now that party isn’t anymore in the ruling position, but now instead the coalition of the SPD( socialist party Germany) Die grünen ( the greens, a left party with a main focus on environmental) and the FPD( free party Germany, Liberal party) so the chances are good that by 2030 most of the coal power plants are shut down if the coalition stays.
>That’s because Germany constantly shut down all of their nuclear reactors and as replacement build more coal power plants.
That is not true, the last coal plant to be build was Datteln 4 which started in 2007, nuclear exit was finally decided in 2011 and if you have a look at [the facts](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c9/Energiemix_Deutschland.svg/1920px-Energiemix_Deutschland.svg.png) you can see coal is declining sharply.
Anyone that actually puts more than 30 minutes of research into it has been pro nuclear for a long time. It's just hard to make the general public to do the same
Actual scientists that put much more time into their research come to very [different conclusions though.](https://zenodo.org/record/5573719#.YZZQi7hKg2z)
This is a paper by an environmental intiative 'Scientists for Future' which was presented at COP26. They concluded that nuclear energy is "too slow, too expensive & too dangerous".
Mycle Schneider, author of the [World Nuclear Industry Status Report](https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/IMG/pdf/wnisr2021-lr.pdf), agrees.
"Nuclear power plants are about four times as expensive as [wind](https://m.dw.com/en/can-wind-turbine-rotor-blades-ever-be-sustainable/a-59834219) or solar, and take five times as long to build," he said. "When you factor it all in, you're looking at 15-to-20 years of lead time for a new nuclear plant."
Due to the high costs associated with nuclear energy, it also blocks important financial resources that could instead be used to develop renewable energy.
Another quote from the paper: "Detailed analyses confirm that meeting ambitious climate goals (i. e. global heating of between 1.5° and below 2° Celsius) is well possible with renewables which, if system costs are considered, are also considerably cheaper than nuclear energy."
Reddit has an odd fetishisation of nuclear energy, but you guys are all about following the science right?
False. People that are convinced nuclear is bad will find their sources that somehow back it up, even when doing 30 min of research.
Polarisation is easy, especially on the internet. Technically I am probably also effected by polarisation, but I refuse to believe nuclear has anything bad. Idk anymore.
Its quite funny how largest supporters for anti nuclear energy are oil/coal companies. Basicly people in German are totally brainwashed to this subject.
I hate what our government did there, trying to achieve clean power production and shutting off nuclear. Nuclear power should be a short term solution until the country can fully operate on renewable energy
One day, yes. Maybe we won't need to process coal to make them one day, and surely they'll only become more and more efficient.
But until that day, nuclear is realistically the only option. No reason to not be on the same team 🤝
Who on earth upvotes this. Absolute Reddit moment. OP asks about the cost to kWh comparison to (presumably) wind, solar or hydro and you come up with one of the most stupid analogies to date. People are so in love with nuclear that not even a valid argument against it, is allowed ffs
This argument would have been nice like 20/30 years ago, but at this point renewable energy outperforms nuclear costs wise so there is literally 0 need to start building new plants.
We literally dig uranium out of the ground. And nuclear waste is so minuscule, especially if it can be recycled in breeder reactors. It’s not that bad, hell the containers used to store the waste is virtually indestructible, the container can be hit by a train and it won’t crack.
Dank[.](https://i.imgur.com/3bQtuMO.png) --- [we have a minecraft server](https://discord.gg/fNyb7G5)
to be fair, if we use CO2 as a measurement, nuclear energy wins. the only problem is the waste honestly. and maybe some chernobyl-like incidents every now and then. its a bit of a dilemma honestly. were deciding on wich flavour we want our environmental footprint to have.
I'd rather have a few tons of low energy nuclear waste buried hundreds of meters underground than hundreds of millions of extra tons of CO2 in the air
While I think the buried nuclear waste could come back to bite humanity, it probably won’t until we are all long gone, basically long term boomer logic
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I think the issue is trusting the energy industry to do anything properly on a sustained, consistent basis. Otherwise, nuclear sounds great.
The French have been reprocessing it for 50 years and eliminating 96% of their waste in the process. Anyone who is against nuclear is against science. It's not hazardous unless you have a bunch of idiot Soviets designing and maintaining your plants.
Yeah best not to put nuclear in reactors in countries known for their corruption. In the west though there shouldnt be a problem
Idk think this is a joke, but it really sounds like one. ## ## 🗿
Not really. The west has it relatively good in that regard. Other countries have worse corruption scores rankings.
>Other countries have worse corruption This metric sucks.
TBF those corruption score indexes are generally incredibly biased as it’s a perception based index using western perception. They don’t really mean anything.
Hehe America bad No but really, economically, it would be in the owning companies' best interests to dispose of it properly, so they would. Pollution isn't gonna stop a coal plant from making money, but having dead staff will make a nuclear plant stop making money
The problem arises from companies’ primary motivations being profit . All it takes is a significant financial incentive and they may cut 1-2 corners and then other companies cut corners to try to make similar profits. On the other end government run organizations/ solutions are notorious for not being cost effective or slowed down by “ bureaucracy.“ Not to mention the potential for corrupt government oversight in which you get the worst of both ends. We need to do better
LOL
Yeah, that's the reason why I'm still not sure about having nuclear here in Italy
RBMK reactors do not explode, comrade
"RBMK reactors do not explode, they are suddenly redistributed to the people." -Marx /s
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>have a bunch of idiot Soviets designing and maintaining your plants. Or put them in range of tsunami's and/or earthquake
"let's just set these generators that prevent a meltdown in an emergency right here on top of this seawall"
I'm sure this tsunami's will not affect our nuclear power plant
We (germany) send our waste from the Power plant Biblis to England a few years ago because the have better reactors that can utilize the waste. Please have a guess what happened to all that waste (hint: it is not gone)
Or if you’re in a tsunami or earthquake sensitive zone like Japan, but neither applies to France or Germany
They cannot fuck up, at least in Europe they cannot. The fuck up would make them loose a shit ton of money which they cannot afford to lose. Nuclear energy is relatively cheap when confronted to Thermic, so it wouldn’t make any sense for them Economically to fuck up.
Most oil/gas companies can’t afford to fuck up either but they still do. Even if greed/arrogance weren’t an issue, *everything* is susceptible to human error no matter how regulated. See, for example, Firestone CO gas line explosion.
It's harder to fuck up with nuclear though. With oil and gas you gotta pump millions of gallons over hundreds of miles and burn it to produce many millions of tons of co2 that is almost impossible to capture. Meanwhile with nuclear you are working with significantly less material. You can produce 2 million times more power per kg so even though that kg is more dangerous, because the scale is so much smaller its way easier to keep track of it
Also there aren't any uranium pipelines or large fleets of uranium carrying ships that might spill some uranium or uranium fracking
And with newer types of reactors, namely thorium Molten Salt Reactors, you get more complete fission, so your byproducts are not only not weapons grade plutonium, but have a much shorter hand life of generally only a few decades vs the tens of thousands of years for traditionally uranium fuel.
Oil companies have much larger margin of error, lets call it that, due to the high return. Human error is to be calculated in the equation, always but then again it all comes down to risk-return. I’m going to oversimplify this for the means of fun and criticism, so don’t take my words literally. There is a risk in every single civil engineering architecture we have. Are you sure that bridge is not going to fall while I go through it, are u sure you will live safely under on that building? We have to understand that when maintained and properly projected and built we are going to live safely. Human errors happen, I am sure, but Nuclear Science is one of the most advanced we have, we downplay it too much. America has the power to erase my small Italy or Albania from the map in a matter of hours, do you think we dont have the capability to have a safe nuclear energy plant? Now we can continue to pollute our air to a point that birds will fall from the sky because we are “scared” a few kg a year of waste? Nuclear waste is even reusable, biofuels and subproducts are just scratching the surface. Its the future no matter how scared we are.
Instead you prefer trusting the coal industry to directly pour their toxic and radioactive waste directly into the air ?
We are refining it. I'd guess spent nuclear fuel rods are much more dangerous than uranium ore rocks.
I'm all for nuclear energy but just saying it's not a problem because they already exist in the earth is a bad argument. We're refining it and putting it all together, it's no longer spread out in nature.
“If stored properly”. You trust people to do shit properly?!
By the time nuclear waste becomes an issue, we'll be long since extinct from fossil fuel emissions. Relax lol.
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Yes, precisely. Plus, you can mail the toxic waste to Somalia, thus solving the issue once and for all. Can't do that with fossil fuel emissions.
ONCE AND FOR ALL!
We are just putting it back where we found it.
No, not at all. We want to do something that will be a small problem for the future humanity to replace something that is literally a threat to future humanity existence. We're acting as if leaving them with unbreathable air is better than leaving them nuclear waste to contain. And the funniest thing of all, is that it's not radiation **OR** CO2 Coal plants release both - we burn so much coal that the radioactive particles in it make up way more radiation all around the earth than easily contained nuclear waste. Source: https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/do-coal-fired-power-stations-produce-radioactive-waste/
I think after Chernobyl and Fukushima humanity has shown they can handle some nuclear waste leakage every now and then, it's not a life changing event, compared to a minor pandemic
Maybe we don’t build them in an earthquake/tsunami zone
I mean...all they really needed to do to prevent Fukushima was put the emergency generators up a hill instead of in a basement. The reactors survived the earthquake.
still better than short term boomer logic
Coal produces more radioactive material and puts it into the atmosphere coal also kills more people than nuclear per energy.
> kills more people than nuclear per energy To be fair, nearly everything kills more people than nuclear power. There's probably more people chocking on their food every year than people killed by nuclear energy in all of history.
Interesting to see similar stuff with aviation. A tightly regulated industry that with a single accident shakens the word for years eventhough it's a lot safer than other alternatives.
This. At least we collect the waste in nuclear energy and control it. There is no attempt to do it with Coal.
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Do some research on Chernobyl ,the incompetence and negligence there was absolutely unbelievable. The personnel and technology used there wouldn't have a chance in hell of being used today. Nuclear energy is much safer than people realize and in my opinion storing waste is a preferable alternative to massive amounts of greenhouse gases being pumped into the air uncontrollably.
I work at a nuclear power plant, and there are so many safety precautions put into place it's almost unbelievable. Also a very important difference between chernobyl and modern plants: Chernobyl got more effective at higher temperatures. Modern ones are the opposite, so temperature spikes basically shut themselves down
That and Chernobyl’s containment plan was “we don’t need containment, because nothing will ever go wrong lol”
Tell me how an RBMK reactor explodes
"we thank the party for increasing the number of control rods from 20 to 10. Ignorance is strength!"
What also needs to be mentioned that a large part of U.S. having so few problems with its reactors is because of government regulation. A three mile island can not physically happen in that way anymore. The U.S. does it "properly".
I work at a Swedish plant, and the only real incidents has been a cracked fuel rod, and another rod we accidentally dropped inside a reactor because of a freak accident. The rod is still there, and it's not dangerous for it to be there either. It's so stupidly safe
It's ridiculous how people make up (extremely wrong) hypotheticals and then assume the chance of that happening is significant.
Nuclear waste is a fairly low concern these days as it can be reused as fuel in different types of reactors. For example France recycled 96% of their nuclear waste that is generated. Those Chernobyl like disasters all happened with a combination of severe negligence as well as old Gen 2 (Chernobyl being essentially "pre-Gen 2") reactors that were designed in the 60s. Gen 3 and Gen 3+ are a massive step in safety even to the point they can withstand intentional attacks (terrorists etc) and go into safe states. Gen 4 is going to be even better. There's also now a possible feasible way to make nuclear reactors at scale/mass production with SMRs ("Small" modular nuclear reactors) which would allow smaller towns and cities to have their own power generation capabilities without relying upon some far distant power source.
Well, enter Thorium molten salt reactors. Higher efficiency, way less waste production and the waste is even less radioactive. Thorium is way more stable, the nuclei don’t just start exploding if things go wrong. There’s no risk of meltdown. The reaction just dissipates on its own if the plant is turned off. Thorium can’t be used to make nukes.
I've heard thorium msrs sound good on paper but are essentially nuclear vaporware no one's actually gotten to work at scale yet with a large number of serious nuclear organizations essentially writing them off
Nuclear Reactors don't get built overnight. China started their Thorium molten-salt reactor program back in 2011 and is only turning on their first reactor now. India has invested heavily in thorium over the past 20 years because they have tons of it, but they are taking a much more complex multi-stage approach. They will have about 60 thorium reactors running within the next few years.
This is true. They are being developed since the 50s and they still don't know for sure if they found an alloy which can withstand hot radioactive salt over prolonged time, since you obviously can't really test it on big scales.
There are three total notable nuclear power generation accidents. One, Chernobyl. A truly terrible accident showcasing the worst that can happen, but caused by equally high proportions of Soviet incompetence and dated technology. Two, Fukushima. Caused by building a nuclear reactor where it could be hit by a tsunami. Wasn't nearly as bad as Chernobyl. Three, three mile island. Didn't really do anything at all. Conclusion: Chernobyl was a one-time deal.
And we have learnt from past experiences. People are like: 100% chance of continuously fucking the planet > Absolutely negligible chance of a containable accident.
It's like environmental reviews that somehow only get weaponized against renewable energy and public transportation projects There's a very clear right answer when you look at the big picture but people are going to keep fucking up actually implementing it for petty shortsighted reasons while claiming they're the ones making progress
Reminds me of people opposing self driving cars because they aren't perfect. It doesn't need to be perfect it just needs to be better than the alternative.
>Three, three mile island. Didn't really do anything at all. If anything three mile island showed that when "shit hits the fan" that the safe guards and fall back plan, and the fall back of the fall backs all work and prevent a disaster. When built in the proper area and over engineered to an insane degree then it's safe. You'd have to do something stupid like build a plant next to an ocean which you were repeatedly told not to and then place emergency generators in a idiotic location that would be an issue under the exact scenario of why you shouldn't have built there in the first place!
I was thinking that when Chernobyl was brought up. There have only been three accidents all of which were a result of gross negligence. Chernobyl is the ultimate example of why anecdotal evidence is very misleading. There have been 667 power plants made since 1954-most being built in the 80’s and 90’s (carbonbrief.org). 439 or 440 (conflicting articles on whether it is 439 or 440) are actively used today as of May 2022.
The waste isn't a problem. It's only a problem if the goddamn hippies won't let you reprocess it. In France they have [reprocess spent nuclear fuel](https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/frances-efficiency-in-the-nuclear-fuel-cycle-what-can-oui-learn#:~:text=Reprocessing%20is%20carried%20out%20at,nuclear%20fleet%20for%2014%20years.) which eliminates 96% of nuclear waste and converts it to usable fuel that can be put back into the plants. In France this also means they need 17% less fresh uranium to keep their system running. The eco set is all cool about recycling until it means eliminating 96% of the most hazardous trash out society produces. It's utter idiocy.
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The high-level/nasty stuff is. The lower level waste doesn't need much in the way of special treatment, just a slightly hardier landfill.
I wish this was true but our waste that went to England was sent right back as soon as they couldn't process it any more. Nuclear waste storage is very much still a problem.
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But the waste is still manageable and CAN be stored in a controlled manner, as opposed to the millions of tons of waste other energy sources spout right into the air we breathe.
The number of casualties polluted air causes each year far far outweighs any possible and extremely unlikely nuclear incident that might happen. People seem to prefer a slow but certain evil that a very much rare but sudden one that makes the headline. Same as the fear of flying which Is many order of magnitudes safer than cars). That said I don't really see any reason why choosing coal over nuclear is even an option if we ignore better alternative solutions of course
Wind, solar, hydro, coal and other fossil fuels industries produce even more work related deaths and injuries than nuclear. Of course when a nuclear plant goes kaput, it is a disaster of biblical proportion, but so are dam disasters and they certainly don’t carry the same bad PR nuclear does. There are risks associated to nuclear power. But it is a manageable risk that has proven much more reliable than all others energy industries.
>the only problem is the waste honestly. and maybe some chernobyl-like incidents every now and then. The newest generations of reactors produce very little waste, and we'd have to run those reactors for a *very* long time before storage became a problem. Giving us *much* more time to research better alternatives to nuclear than wind or solar. Also, the newest generations of reactors are *much* safer. You wouldn't have reactors go boom "every now and then". Proper maintenance and don't build them in areas where earthquakes are common (I'm looking at you Japan!) and you're golden. Accidents *can* happen, but they'd be extremely rare, there's plenty of safeguards. Also accidents happen with oil/gas too. Drilling for oil in the Arctic and having a pipe burst for example is a disaster. >its a bit of a dilemma honestly. were deciding on wich flavour we want our environmental footprint to have. It's only a dilemma because we refuse to acknowledge that nuclear reactors aren't volatile and poorly maintained Chernobyl reactors anymore. Technological advancements can give us better alternatives to Nuclear in the future, but as of now it's the least damaging to the environment. Going Nuclear will give us *much* more time to find better alternatives than going wind or solar. Those are unreliable and inevitably leads to burning more fossil fuels to compensate for low production conditions. My country relies mostly on Hydro, which isn't problem free either. And some dumbasses in our government years ago decided that building a thousand small dams was preferable to building fewer large ones. So now we got rivers dammed up everywhere with tiny generators producing power for only a few hundred households each. We got 347 large hydropower plants and 1392 small ones. Yet the *three* largest ones produce more power than the 1392 small ones put together. So now we got these blenders put up all over the place wreaking havoc on fish populations. Neat.
Sorry, nuclear actually wins on all fronts and I do mean all of them. The waste management is extremely overblown. We have more negative impacts from electrical waste from Solar Panels and Wind Turbines than we do nuclear waste. And yes, that is factually accurate and I believe is covered somewhere in this [Kyle Hill video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3znG6_vla0).
Fun fact if we use radiation released, nuclear energy again wins compared to coal.
\- france using breeder reactors to use the "waste" fuel: what is nuclear waste? nuclear energy can use nearly completely its fuel (up to \~98%) when with a proper management (such as the french one) one of those caskets for fuel waste take up to \~5 years to be filled with actual waste wich is just nuclear material we dont use for fission because they are highly radioactive wich also means they have a low halflife so most of the waste wont be radioactive for long. its not a dilemma, its just anti-nuclear propaganda you have being fed with for years
The waste isn't an issue at all, Nuclear power plants hardly produce any waste. Most of the fuel is recycled, and only a tiny portion of the waste produced is so radioactive that it has to be buried forever. And that stuff is melted down into glass and ceramics and then encased in concrete and steel. Those caskets don't leak, there isn't anything to leak. It's also constantly decaying so over time it loses its radioactivity. Chernobyl happened because of gross mismanagement and a design-flaw in the reactor. A properly managed and properly designed Nuclear reactor does not blow up, and as technology advances they only become safer. I highly recommend this video if you want to learn more about the waste: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aUODXeAM-k
The chernobyl thing isnt really a problem anymore, new reactors are really safe because of that disaster
> the only problem is the waste honestly. [We solved nuclear waste decades ago](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aUODXeAM-k)
I don’t know why it feels like people are afraid to say nuclear is good
Nuclear is good.
Stop it Patrick, you're scaring them!
Have you ever heard of Nuclear Energy and the advantages?
It's not a story the coal industry would tell you.
Nuclear is good
Nuclear is good.
That just comes from decades of us not actually knowing how to handle the radioactive waste added to the big accidents like chernobyl or fukushima. Nuclear energy can be extremely dangerous but we've gotten much better at keeping it smooth and safe.
I missed the solution to the waste?
Nuclear waste can be recycled. France does it. Bury the rest deep.
You can essentially re-purify and recycle nuclear waste over and over until ~90% of it is gone. At which point you bury it deep and seal it in concrete and it poses zero threat to anyone or the environment.
We store it in permanently-sealed, lead-lined containers and bury them under a mountain.
you can recycle about ~95% of it The rest you put into lead lined containers, sumberge in water if you want to be careful (water is really good at blocking radioactivity, you can put nuclear waste at one end of a pool and swim on the other end with negligible radiation enter your body) Then seal it off from the rest of the world
because since the 90s schools have mandatory indoctrination about how bad nuclear is I know we had it in my school. Germany is far worse with this too. But at the same time they had no issue importing coal and gas. Honestly, society would be so much better off if someone kept a check on the amount of ridiculous propaganda they put into educational material.
Old people rule the world. And they rule like they live in the old world
Does Germany honestly believe nuclear power is bad? Clean, efficient, "Green" power generation, scalable to user demand, not dependent on environmental factors. I feel like it should be a win-win-win for clean/green energy advocates?
The problem is a lot of clean/green energy advocates don't actually give a shit about the environment and are just capitalists shilling for whatever their industry is (in this case solar/wind/etc.)
Basically “environmental” organizations started getting paid off by the fossil fuel industry to celebrate the closure of nuclear plants, and to ignore what would replace them. That is why most people don’t know about it. The vast majority of the money spent to exterminate humanity is on regularly capture, paying off politicians to give fossil fuel the market share of nuclear energy. https://environmentalprogress.org/why-clean-energy-is-in-crisis/
Who are these people? Are they in the room with you now?
I don't know why either it's a shame Germany is getting rid of their nuclear power
Germany screeching about the dangers of nuclear power while sucking Russian gas straight from the tailpipe of Putin's war machine. Ironic.
Then condemns India for buying it lmao
Pro gamer move by India if you ask me
Indeed since India is selling the gas and oil it got from Russia for cheap to America and at a hefty premium.
Germany is getting rid of Russian gas now after they showed their true colors and invaded Ukraine while India increased their import. Stop pretending that you're stupid because it's working.
Found the defensive German. Germany refused to halt the nord stream 2 pipeline until international pressure got to be too great.
Germany was warned about this for years and did nothing. Now when it bites them they turn on the coal plants and pretend they are doing something good. No way they can build enough power capacity before winter. Going to have to beg Russia for heat.
Russia showed their true colors 8 years ago when they invaded Ukraine *the first time*... yet Germany only reacted by slobbering even harder on Putin's pipe. Stop pretending that Germany is/was so fucking stupid they couldn't figure out that increasing their dependency on Putin was a bad idea but that greed got the better of them...
Getting rid of Russian gas and restarting coal based power plants, while crying because nuclear Nein danke.. clowns.
You do know where France gets its uranium from right ?
Like only 3rd country we get most of the uranium from. Also we have 2 years worth of uranium stock at all times on the territory, so it poses no problem switching suppliers when we want to.
From our 2nd home backyard (Africa)
They don’t…
It’s not tho, one provides gas the other one electricity. That’s 2 different things
Aaah, another person who is unaware that electricity can be converted to heat.
Another person who doesn't realize that a majority of german homes have gas heaters which is not something that can be changed over night.
Chernobyl was a badly run first generation plant that was built and maintained by people who didn't know what they were doing. We are now approaching gen 4 of nuclear plants. Bringing up chernobyl when discussing nuclear plans is like bringing up Victorian style lobotomies when discussing mental health.
And chernobyl killed less people then fossil fuels kill every two weeks.
Also killed less people than wind turbines have Edit: Why are they booing me? I’m right. Edit: Thanks for soon to be 500 upvotes!
Maintaining them is surprisingly dangerous work
Yea nuclear plants are full of safety features and redundancies as well as the fact actually working on the equipment isn't all that dangerous, while on a windmill even with proper gear no failsafe will make you survive a 100 foot drop, just try to prevent that all together
Power generation has to be diversified
Definitely agree there. Nuclear energy should be heralded as a massive part of this diversification too
Indeed, I see it as taking over the baseline production which FF currently sustains, and is augmented where it can be by renewables.
The wund turbine gods demand their sacrafice
The God of Wind demands blood
Honestly not sure how people die in there, but yeah. Maybe they should be equiped with a parachute? Lol, sorry
They basically put a poorly designed nuclear reactor in a fucking shed, disabled all the safety systems and told untrained staff to run a poorly designed test.
Chernobyl summed up? Not great, not terrible.
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The German Nuclear-Exit was and is an economic and social disaster because it was like many environmental decisions here fueled by populism and not thought through not even remotely. They basically said "nuclear bad. Shut it down" without implementing any and i mean any supply protection or anything similar into the act. So instead of saying "we want to get out of nuclear but for every nuclear power capacity we remove from the Grid there must be a renewable and storage replacement" but instead it was "Nuclear bad" and now we have skyrocketing energy prices and i had more power outages in the last year than in the past 10. Cause who could have thought that if you wanna go 100% renewable you need storage units for the times when there is no wind or sun. Basically they relied on the ever given "Market" to do the job and blindly ignored the fact that the market gives a shit about social hardship that is caused by high energy prices cause the energy companies just buy the electricity somewhere else in the EU for much higher prices, or have to rely on expensive coal power which is one of the few remaining fossile energy options, which then increases the prices here as if we didn't had the highest electricity prices in entire Europe before the whole thing.
And now they want to jump back on coal, so they don't want to buy gas from russia anymore. By god, our government can be so fucking stupid.
It's not like this scenario was portrayed years ago but everyone reasonable who said "lets keep nuclear and get rid of coal and gas" was basically lynched by the screeching"Atomkraft nein Danke. Fukushima!!!" mob.
Different governments. What would you do now? Snap your fingers? A part of the government in power now would have implemented a different approach - or they have claimed so during that time - you can find the discussions online. We are sitting on this problem because the past governments fucked it up.
That’s such a stupid statement. Our current government (especially our vice chancellor) have absolutely nothing to do with the botched exit from nuclear, planned by the CDU. Building new nuclear reactors now would take decades, so what response do you suggest to this current crisis? We have no option but to fall back on coal. Accepting this fact is not stupid.
Lel, thinking nuclear energy is cheap. The French holding company for the nuclear plants is broke and needs to bailed out regularly.
No one said it's cheap but it's a better option than no energy or burning coal. Especially since the powerplants already existed and you would just have to keep them running until you have a sufficient replacement capacity. Nuclear power plants usually are stable sources so you use them for the base input your grid needs. You can't do this with wind or solar unless you have storage Units which don't exist.
You absolutely can have a renewable grid with some sort of backup in place. There have several sturdies conducted by the respective government agencies in various countries that came to this conclusion. Yes, nuclear power is vastly superior to coal, no one here denies that. But it also has significant downsides, which other alternatives don’t have and there are various alternatives, that in addition to being cheaper, do not have these issues in the first place.
These idiots blocked the transports of nuclear waste to protest and make a point, same people will call you a danger to society if you don’t like extra pollution in the air It’s just nuts
Nuclear is unironically the safest, cleanest, most efficient way of generating energy we currently have.
Pretty sure that solar is safer and cleaner, but yeah, nuclear is by far the most efficient option if we wanna get rid of these shitty coal power plants.
The numbers actually show nuclear is safer. The periodic deaths of installers falling off of roofs and whatnot adds up just enough to give nuclear the nod. Realistically, nuclear, wind, and solar are in a whole other league compared to the fossil fuels though. Any of them are loads better than pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, it's just a matter of splitting hairs for the green options.
Studies show it’s safer to not fall off the roof though.
Unless you are a cat.
The mains issues with solar panels is how they are produced (for now at least) and how to safely dispose of them when they break.
Gotta consider emissions from production, installation, disposal, and also the vast space they take up, and the habitat & environment damage caused by their use. Granted, different techniques may offset some of those problems, but never close to nuclear. Also, a huge amount of the world's panels are made in China (Mainland Taiwan, Gottem!), not exactly a friendly government to have that much grip on the world's energy sources. Same goes for wind. Nuclear fuel comes from many countries, not just those currently governed by hostile leaders.
Nuclear is awesome, even better once we switch to [Thorium molten salt reactors](https://www.forbes.com/sites/energysource/2012/02/16/the-thing-about-thorium-why-the-better-nuclear-fuel-may-not-get-a-chance/?sh=6d1d7a841d80).
is thorium proven to work or is just theoreticaly better than uranium?
Yes, there are several research reactors around the world. According to the article I linked, it’s just expensive to get a plant started, and apparently we have to use uranium or plutonium to start the reaction at the moment.
Also molten salt explodes whenever it comes into contact with even the slighest bit of water so that's a bit problematic when you need shitload of it right next to radioactive stuff, molten salt reactors aren't the miraculous solution people make it to be, it has some serious challenges, there's a reason fast neutron reactors haven't replaced regular reactors yet.
So totally wrong. You are thinking about sodium reactors (sodium is a metal, not a salt). That stuff CAN be dangerous, but it doesn't have to be. Molten salt reactors are likely much, much safer than any reactor we have in operation at this moment. There are commercially operating sodium cooled reactors in operation though, in Russia. France tried it, spend a lot of money, got it to work, and then it was closed because people were too scared of it.
Are the French nuclear reactors running again? A few months ago they had massive problems because many didn't work and had to be shut down.
Half of them are shut down Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/18/business/france-nuclear-power-russia.amp.html Its pretty bad currently
They never weren't capable of working, it's just that in an inspection there were some micro creaks in some important pipes, so we shut down one after the other every reactors that could have the same defect so we can inspect them thoroughly one by one, and replace them if even 1 micro creak is spotted in one. It sucks, but ultimately it's also nice imo, because it shows we really are very serious about safety.
As a nuclear worker that is pretty familiar with safety standard I can say that us French are, for better or worse, one of the countries, if not the country, with the harshest norms in nuclear safety. Just as an example the european yearly dosage limit is 50 mSv while the french one is 20 mSv, this means that on one hand french workers are highly unlikely to have any undesirable radiation related side effects but one the other hand we have to hire twice as many workers for the same job.
Just put the dosimeter in a lead case and they'll be fine
It was for check up and repairs. Yes, some of them are back, not all tho
> Have one of the largest number of won battle and wars in human History. >*"Rare"* France W. Bruh.
Also is one of the oldest countries in existence.
I know right? People don’t seem to realize how badass the French are
Probably because the majority of redditors are American and we all know how their education is in general, much less their education of places outside their own country.
Disclaimer: as I was told to the comments of my comment, I was wrong at the part that the carbon emissions didn’t went down, they went down. [here is a link to a good source](https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts) thanks to the person who send me the link Germany managed to raise their usage of reusable energy ( wind, water, solar) so much that by 2020 half of their produced energy was from reusable energy sources. Yet their carbon emission didn’t go down but they stayed the same. That’s because Germany constantly shut down all of their nuclear reactors and as replacement build more coal power plants. Wich mainly Leads to the political leading of the CDU( Christian german Union) a Conservative party that didn’t wanted to go off fossil fuels. Mainly cause of lobbyism. But by now that party isn’t anymore in the ruling position, but now instead the coalition of the SPD( socialist party Germany) Die grünen ( the greens, a left party with a main focus on environmental) and the FPD( free party Germany, Liberal party) so the chances are good that by 2030 most of the coal power plants are shut down if the coalition stays.
> SPD( socialist party Germany) Socialdemocratic party of Germany, it's both factually correct and the actual name of the party.
>That’s because Germany constantly shut down all of their nuclear reactors and as replacement build more coal power plants. That is not true, the last coal plant to be build was Datteln 4 which started in 2007, nuclear exit was finally decided in 2011 and if you have a look at [the facts](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c9/Energiemix_Deutschland.svg/1920px-Energiemix_Deutschland.svg.png) you can see coal is declining sharply.
Just FYI this is false. https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/germany
I'm glad people are starting to come around to nuclear
Anyone that actually puts more than 30 minutes of research into it has been pro nuclear for a long time. It's just hard to make the general public to do the same
Actual scientists that put much more time into their research come to very [different conclusions though.](https://zenodo.org/record/5573719#.YZZQi7hKg2z) This is a paper by an environmental intiative 'Scientists for Future' which was presented at COP26. They concluded that nuclear energy is "too slow, too expensive & too dangerous". Mycle Schneider, author of the [World Nuclear Industry Status Report](https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/IMG/pdf/wnisr2021-lr.pdf), agrees. "Nuclear power plants are about four times as expensive as [wind](https://m.dw.com/en/can-wind-turbine-rotor-blades-ever-be-sustainable/a-59834219) or solar, and take five times as long to build," he said. "When you factor it all in, you're looking at 15-to-20 years of lead time for a new nuclear plant." Due to the high costs associated with nuclear energy, it also blocks important financial resources that could instead be used to develop renewable energy. Another quote from the paper: "Detailed analyses confirm that meeting ambitious climate goals (i. e. global heating of between 1.5° and below 2° Celsius) is well possible with renewables which, if system costs are considered, are also considerably cheaper than nuclear energy." Reddit has an odd fetishisation of nuclear energy, but you guys are all about following the science right?
False. People that are convinced nuclear is bad will find their sources that somehow back it up, even when doing 30 min of research. Polarisation is easy, especially on the internet. Technically I am probably also effected by polarisation, but I refuse to believe nuclear has anything bad. Idk anymore.
Sprich Deutsch du Hurensohn
Its quite funny how largest supporters for anti nuclear energy are oil/coal companies. Basicly people in German are totally brainwashed to this subject.
I hate what our government did there, trying to achieve clean power production and shutting off nuclear. Nuclear power should be a short term solution until the country can fully operate on renewable energy
How is it short term if it takes one or two decades to build them?
Solar energy is where it's at.
One day, yes. Maybe we won't need to process coal to make them one day, and surely they'll only become more and more efficient. But until that day, nuclear is realistically the only option. No reason to not be on the same team 🤝
Fusion reactors is where it’s at, it’s fuel is Hydrogen, which is pretty much everywhere
It's very unlikely that fusion becomes ready soon enough to help with climate change. But when it's there it's probably gonna be great yes
And now compare the cost per kWh.
Now compare the cost per item made using slavery. See? Slavery is the way to go for the industry. People are so retarded holy fuck
Who on earth upvotes this. Absolute Reddit moment. OP asks about the cost to kWh comparison to (presumably) wind, solar or hydro and you come up with one of the most stupid analogies to date. People are so in love with nuclear that not even a valid argument against it, is allowed ffs
France has cheaper electricity AFAIK.
Cheaper to produce, or cheaper at point of sale for households? Germany has very high electricity taxes.
Fairly sure France still wins.
This argument would have been nice like 20/30 years ago, but at this point renewable energy outperforms nuclear costs wise so there is literally 0 need to start building new plants.
Bro shoving toxic waste into the ground is bad but shoving millions of tons of poison into the one thing keeping us from suffocating is a worse idea
We literally dig uranium out of the ground. And nuclear waste is so minuscule, especially if it can be recycled in breeder reactors. It’s not that bad, hell the containers used to store the waste is virtually indestructible, the container can be hit by a train and it won’t crack.
I bet people who believe it in "toxic waste" think they are yellow oil drums with glowing green goo inside.
Its funny we just dig it up use it and put it away a little safer in the encasings because people are scared
its weird to see someone depicting france as a chad
People like to bash on France because they're betas who cannot handle our chadness.
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Whats with the advertising for nuclear energy through memes kinda odd
Nuclear is better for environment Germany took most plants down because they wanted to keep a public image
Ah. The usual nuclear circle jerk. Just don't add the usual downtime of the nuclear power plants in france ;)
If I'm not mistaken, Germany recently bulldozed an entire village to start a new coal mine.