Memes

Must. Not. Feed. The. Troll.

Nothing about nuclear energy production is good, sensible and safe! You are dependent on a finite resource, you have to put in an incredible amount of effort to keep it running. Not to mention the damage caused by a malfunction (see Fukushima and Chernobyl).

Is this a joke?

Nuclear power relies on stable, safe, and advanced nations not like, I dunno, starting a land war in Europe that threatens to flood the continent with fallout.

Nah renewables are the best we've got

Where the fuck we gonna put all the waste product? I'm not saying nuclear power is bad, far from it, but we have two problems here:

• Its cost prohibitive to build new Third Generation reactors that are fault tolerant, and moreso to assure that all the Second Generation reactors are fully fault tolerant given how adjacent they are to flood plains and fault lines in the US
• Where the fuck are we gonna put the waste at? Yucca Mountain is off the table for good, WIPP is nearing capacity for a pilot plant, and we have nothing like Onkalo planned out despite the funding being there many times over

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.

The good safety of nuclear in developed countries goes hand in hand with its costly regulatory environment, the risk for catastrophic breakdown of nuclear facilities is managed not by technically proficient design but by oversight and rules, which are expensive yes , but they also need to be because the people running the plant are it's weakest link in terms of safety.

Now we are entering potentially decades of conflict and natural disaster and the proposition is to build energy infrastructure that is very centralized, relies on fuel that must be acquired, and is in the hands of a relatively small amount of people, especially if their societal controll/ oversight structure breaks down. It just doesn't seem particularly reasonable to me, especially considering lead times on these things, but nice meme I guess.

But we don't really have it now, which is the main problem. In the time it takes to build these things (also for the money it takes), we could plaster everything full with renewables and come up with a decentralized storage solution. Plus, being dependent on Kazachstan for fissile material seems very... stupid?

It's interesting watching the discussion in this thread evolving and polarizing. Yesterday the discussion started as 'nuclear is one solution in a portfolio of solutions to combat climate change. vs. nuclear is always bad.' and developed into 'nuclear is good and you're dumb. vs. nuclear is bad and you're evil'.

@spicytuna62 It's not the best we got. The best we got is to stop the wasteful overproduction and stop letting society being about building building building.

We should rather reframe society into being about growing and localizing the economy. Focusing on living with nature, not at it's expense.

ITT: ignorant people with 20+ years old knowledge.

Nuclear energy has been safe for a long time. Radioactive waste disposal is better than ever now.

I agree on them being safe - when rules are properly adhered to, they're extremely safe, similarly to air travel. People only suspect their safety because when they do fail, they tend to fail spectacularly, again similar to air travel.

Having said that, they may be efficient to operate, but they are by no means efficient to build. They cost a lot of resources, and have a 10 year lead time - plus you need to worry about the cost of waste storage and decommissioning.

So sure, nuclear is better than fossil fuels, but you're just kicking the nonrenewable can down the road.

That time and resources would be far better spent on renewables, because that where humanity is gonna have to go long-term no matter how well any other alternatives work.