this post was submitted on 17 May 2024
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Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.

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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world. About 1C of total warming. Second chart: about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability. Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases. About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:

Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.

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Five Things the “Nuclear Bros” Don’t Want You to Know About Small Modular Reactors (blog.ucsusa.org)
submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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A realistic understanding of their costs and risks is critical.

What are SMRs?

  1. SMRs are not more economical than large reactors.

  2. SMRs are not generally safer or more secure than large light-water reactors.

  3. SMRs will not reduce the problem of what to do with radioactive waste.

  4. SMRs cannot be counted on to provide reliable and resilient off-the-grid power for facilities, such as data centers, bitcoin mining, hydrogen or petrochemical production.

  5. SMRs do not use fuel more efficiently than large reactors.

[Edit: If people have links that contradict any the above, could you please share in the comment section?]

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (6 children)

The nice thing about nuclear waste is that it kind of just sorts itself out too. I half suspect not knowing what to do with it and kicking the can down the road is sort of the whole point. Nominally it's pretty easy to deal with nuclear waste, you seal it up somewhere and leave it to not be radioactive any more. The problem is it takes a long time, and we don't really know how to communicate to anyone 1000 years in the future "there's nuclear waste here, stay the fuck away". Making sure it's an active topic for discussion kind of keeps it at the forefront and means it's not forgotten about.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (4 children)

Except that is hardly unique to nuclear waste. A wide variety of industrial processes produce high grade chemical waste, especially electronics like computers, solar panels, and inverters. This is just as deadly as any nuclear waste, and if stumbled upon will kill just as quickly in a hundred years, a thousand years, million years, or a billion years.

There is however a well established solution to this problem, and that is making sure the government knows what and where it is as well as that someone it monitoring and securing the site. The actual chemical makeup of the stuff that kills you doesn’t actually matter all that much compared to makeing sure it stays where it’s supposed to be.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (3 children)

You uh... want to give a single example of solar panel manufacturing waste that is as deadly as nuclear waste in a thousand years?

Humanity has never built anything that has intentionally lasted 10,000 years, much less 250,000.

It's the height of arrogance to think your society will last a thousand times longer than any in the history of the world.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago

Humanity has never built anything that has intentionally lasted 10,000 years

You don't know what those cave people were thinking when they drew those pictures.

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