this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2024
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Science Memes

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

TBF a nuclear incident is not like burning just one house down. It’s burning down the whole city and making it unusable for a decade or ten.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 56 minutes ago (1 children)

I think a town burning down would be fatal for most the inhabitants 3000 BC

[–] [email protected] 2 points 42 minutes ago

Yes, maybe… but the point being they could, and often did, rebuild right where they’d been before. Radiation prevents that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 40 minutes ago

Do I sit out on the nuclear ralley, hmmm

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago

What if fire burned down everything in a 10 km radius when there's not enough water around the specific area the fire was ignited at?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago
[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 hours ago

He should, reason they ditched them for coal and gas was because big daddy Exxon and BP are pushing for it so they don't go out of bussiness. FUCK BP AND EXXON!

[–] [email protected] 21 points 6 hours ago

That is an extreme over simplification of a very complicated subject, it's never that simple.

Having said that: yeah. It was stupid to stop using nuclear energy

[–] [email protected] 41 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

It's sad that the coal lobby has convinced so many people that the most reliable clean energy source we've ever discovered is somehow bad.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

It’s sad that the coal lobby has convinced so many people that the most reliable clean energy source we’ve ever discovered is somehow bad.

Its bad in the sense that is a crazy expensive way to generate electricity. Its not theoretical. Ask the customers of the most recent nuclear reactors to go online in the USA in Georgia. source

"The report shows average Georgia Power rates are up between $34 and $35 since before the plant's Unit 3 went online. " (there were bonds and fees on customer electric bills to pay for the nuclear plant construction before it was even delivering power.

...and...

"The month following Unit 4 achieving commercial operation, average retail rates were adjusted by approximately 5%. With the Nuclear Construction Cost Recovery (NCCR) tariff removed from bills, a typical resident customer using 1,000 kWh per month saw an estimated monthly increase of $8.95 per month. This follows the previous rate impact in 2023 following Unit 3 COD of $5.42 (3.2%)."

So another $5.42/month for the first reactor built on top of the $35/month, then another $8.95/month on top of all that for a rough total of $49.37/month more just to buy electricity that is generated from nuclear.

Maybe the power company is greedy? Nope, they're even eating more costs and not passing them on to customers:

"Georgia Power says they're losing about $2.6 billion in total projected costs to shield customers from the responsibility of paying it. Unit 4 added about $8.95 to the average customer's bill, John Kraft, a spokesman for the company said."

So that $49.37/month premium for electricity from nuclear power would be even higher if the power company passed on all the costs. Nuclear power for electricty is just too inefficient just on the cost basis, this is completely ignoring the problems with waste management.

The next biggest problem with nuclear power is where the fuel comes from:

"Russia also dominates nuclear fuel supply chains. Its state-owned Rosatom controls 36 percent of the global uranium enrichment market and supplies nuclear fuel to 78 reactors in 15 countries. In 2020, Russia owned 40 percent of the total uranium conversion infrastructure worldwide. Russia is also the third-largest supplier of the imported uranium that fuels U.S. power plants, accounting for 16 percent of total imported uranium. The Russian state could weaponize its dominance in the nuclear energy supply chain to advance its geostrategic interests. During the 2014 Russia-Ukraine crisis, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin threatened to embargo nuclear fuel supplies to Ukraine." source

So relying on nuclear power for electricity means handing the keys of our power supply over to outside countries that are openly hostile to us.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Yes, of course. Because oil has never depended on outside countries that are openly hostile. No sire, thank goodness we rely on a power source that no war has ever been fought for, ever in history.

/s

[–] [email protected] 23 points 7 hours ago

Particularly since coal power stations emit FAR more radioactive material, routinely, than most nuclear "leaks".

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

there are millions being poured into propaganda against using anything but fossil fuels, much of it stems from there. But i wonder if its better this way or the alternative way where we would use more nuclear energy but since there would be so much money to be made, the rich would use their money to make all safety regulations null. I wish we could just get rid of the source problem.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

Europe's regulations are strict and robust. However, the German Greens convinced lots of people that they aren't enough.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

That's a crazy oversimplification almost all German party's had a part in the phase out and shut down of German nuclear energy. To point at the Greens and say it was them, is a right wing talking point pushed by Springer media.

If there was a way to make good money with nuclear we would have it all around to say a grass roots movement was able to push this through is laughable, if we look how everything else works in this world. While surely way better to handle securely it's simply not easy to build and operate. Just look at all the plants currently under construction in Europe they all struggle to get finished take years to decades longer then planned and are way more expensive to build then initially estimated. Why is France struggling so hard when they have a population that is definitely way more open minded towards nuclear?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago

The curse of Private-Public Partnerships (P3s) means middle-men sapping all the value out of long-term government projects. We simply cannot trust these organizations with our energy infrastructure.

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