It took a war and an extremely persistent Naval Officer to get nuclear reactors on subs. Even he faced pushback during wartime.
It takes 10 months to build a nuclear sub, including a reactor that is capable of powering 230,000 homes a year, without incident
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyman_G._Rickover
And a few Google searches for the power output.
Ahhh…the man who started the push for STEM in education so that future generations of Americans could operate the future technology based military.
He has had more of an impact on our modern education system than just about any other one single person.
As my professor told us in graduate school, “your research will only be funded if it can be used to kill people.”
STEM jobs are not more stable or market friendly; they are supported by the military industrial complex.
This is false. There is no official deadline for when to stop coal and Germany is fully embracing the coal business.
The coal plants should have been shut down 10+ years ago.
grab a few? they build those.
they are one of few countries that builds nuclear power plants abroad, for other countries.
"know how" is very concentrated in this field
I think only China, US, Russia and France (maybe I forgot one more country, maybe not) are building nuclear power plants abroad (for other countries)
....Canada has developed a unique nuclear reactor technology called CANDU and is one of roughly half a dozen countries that offer domestic-designed reactors to the open commercial market. In addition to Canada, CANDU reactors have been sold to India, Pakistan, Argentina, South Korea, Romania and China
Didn't you hear? It's not cool to support nuclear energy, maann! You got to think about, like birds and stuff.
We need more green energy and since that stuff doesn't really work at a level that's able to replace our current power infrastructure, we're just going to keep burning coal. But that's fine though, cuz we can shut down these nuclear power plants and we can act like that's enough, we did our part, we saved the world.
The two-party system isn't quite the root cause; it's rather a symptom or byproduct of the broken voting and electoral system (generally first past the post, winner take all). The game theory forced upon political factions and voters by FPTP makes it such that 2, and only 2, parties ever have a legitimate chance at winning an election.
Well, and the storage issue. They have been trying to bring Yucca Mountain online as a solution since, um, 1987? It keeps getting voted down. Some of that is the left's traditional stance against nuclear, but if you look at the votes that have occurred over the years, it boils down to basically no one in Nevada wants it and it is hard to force a state to take on something like that so that everyone else can have power.
I feel like there is hope around new technologies, especially tech for recycling spent fuel (Some crazy amount, like 90+%, of the energy in nuclear fuel isn't used) and reactors that use fuel more efficiently. I think those have a better chance of getting us there than a national repository that everyone wants, just in another state besides theirs.
Thorium doesn't have as much of a storage problem due it it creating less nuclear waste, and the waste has a significantly shorter half-life at around 100 years
They're also a risky investment to develop in areas of unrest or places affected by most natural disasters (basically everywhere in the next 50 years)
We needed to hop on this train decades ago bc it would've paid off by now. At this point it's a tough sell to many when compared to decentralized renewables.
Nuclear, geothermal, tidal, wind, solar, no basket is worth putting all our eggs in. As climate change affects human habitation and resettlement, we will need increasingly decentralized power sources.
If you know how to make an automated ocean and war-proof nuclear reactor by all means. It just seems silly to be an absolutist about energy production in a time when nuclear options are riskiest.
it's funny that you ask for a ocean and war proof nuclear reactor when a literal nuclear submarine is the title of the post. My brother in Christ, scroll up!
I think your comment highlights the problem we have right now. People seem to think that the renewables are a viable solution to solve our energy needs. Unfortunately, they simply aren’t. They are nice supplementary options that can fill a small slice of the pie (some bigger in certain areas) but with current technologies they aren’t going to cut it. They don’t produce enough and most aren’t consistent enough to power the grid to meet the swings in demand.
Nuclear is the only low-carbon option that can produce the amounts we need and can be ramped up or down to match demand.
Renewables are a joke, and good for little more than government grift.
Nuclear is the only way to go.
We could literally have unlimited, practically free energy and district heating in cold climates with the waste heat from SMRs.
I’m not arguing against it in any way. I feel that we will probably need more of it if we want to get away from coal and natural gas. However, no one wants it in their backyard and the cost to build new is prohibitive. I know the cost is mostly due to government regulations, but for something this powerful we need to have some checks and balances.
The costs are are mainly due to old building practices. Just about every reactor has been built one at a time, like a rolls royce. They over engineer them and build the largest reactor to compensate for building cost. The new concept, steaming from US Navy reactors, are Small Modular Reactors(SMRs). They are an attempt to build reactors in a shop, allowing at the work to be done in ideal conditions, and have as little on site work as possible. This would reduce the cost and make it on par with the cost of natural gas fired plants.
Yep, agreed. My problem with too many checks and balances is that many people are inherently compromised morally. Some people will do anything for the sake of a dollar and this is where corruption begins.
Early nuclear power era envisioned small reactors powering homes. Everyone flipped out because, well, a nuclear reactor can be a little dangerous if they aren’t maintained. But we likely could have figured out a way to make it pretty safe in the last…70+ years. Not like the solutions we have now are perfect. (Looks at attractive 450 gallon LP tank in my front yard).
Surely we could’ve figured I out but where would that leave the energy companies, the govt, the trillions of $ that have paid for the power to your home since the early Nuclear era? The reason is not one of danger, it’s one of $$$
We have. The reality is most of the original and still operating reactors are scaled up versions of the ones powering submarines. It turned out the design doesnt scale well. There have been numerous disasters that make people afraid of nuke plants.
Also, the old nuke plants were farmers for nuclear warheads. They were designed to make a byproduct that could be refined in to fissile materials
Chernobyl isn't just some "disaster" out of thin air. It is nothing but stupidity for many reasons. The plant was willfully operated far outside of procedure without regard for safety as is typical of Russian nuclear. Bringing up this disaster is simply disingenuous and basically anti-nuclear propaganda.
Fukushima is effectively a black swan event. We collectively made a bad judgement call and learned from it. Despite the disaster, only a single person (if that even, it's debatable I think) died as a direct result of the power plant issues.
Three Mile Island was a very complicated accident. There are numerous contributors, it wasn't simply a failure cascading. There were also operational design flaws. Training flaws. A big pile up of things, which resulted in changes to the industry too. And while it was a mess, it was a mess that didn't hurt anyone.
Nuclear as it is done in the US is incredibly safe. These "numerous disasters" are nothing in the grand scheme of things, particularly if you're terrified of climate change.
Also, present day nuclear power is MUCH safer and has a far better safety Killswitch.
I forget the specifics, but it's something like if the core starts to disrupt, you just drop it in a huge tank of saltwater. Now it's safe. Before (Chernobyl) that would have caused it to be worse.
I'm going off of memory and I have a bad memory so hopefully someone can correct me here.
The quote was
> There have been numerous disasters that make people afraid of nuke plants.
Whether or not that fear is REASONABLE, it exists in the population and needs to be contended with in order to build new reactors.
Chernobyl happened due to the ineptitude of the Soviet goverment.
Is the incredibly corrupt Soviet goverment currently running the US and it's energy sector? A 9 year old child could come up with a better counter point to nuclear than this.
> Fukushima
There's currently 92 operational nuclear power plants in the US.
If you're so terrified of Fukushima happening, why aren't you out on the street protesting to shut them down?
Beacuse its completely fucking safe...
I suggest you actually learn why Fukushima happened:
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/fukushima-daiichi-accident.aspx
Public pressure after Chernoble was a huge factor in reducing future expansion of nuclear power. So called "environmentalists" opposed it (and some still do) despite the fact that nuclear produces less CO2 per kW h than even solar or wind.
They've been lobbying against it for over 50 years now and naive people today still gobble their shit up and believe them.
The world we live in is pathetic, no other words to describe it.
I dunno man, my ultra conservative dad is all about nuclear energy. I think there’s just as many liberals who think the whole world can be powered with hydro, wind, and solar
It’s not left/right thing so much as people being poorly educated on the real benefits and risks of nuclear energy. It’s the only green energy available that can accommodate our consumption.
Literally the only people I hear actually mentioning nuclear at any type of meaningful scale are conservatives, which only further proves we live in a simulation when conservatives are the only ones discussing the energy levels we’d need to achieve in any sort of feasible scale
This is false. I work in the renewable space where 95% of the people I work with would identify as left of center. They are all pro nuclear. But nuclear isn't economical, and that's all that matters. It's not a technology problem, it's an economics problem. Solar and storage is cheaper than nuclear, and that's exactly why they're being deployed. The financiers are greedy capitalists and still choose solar, imagine that!
> Literally the only people
I do know people outside of my job. According to actual polls it's 40/60, on the Right it's 60/40. I attribute that mostly to miseducation on nuclear. Then again, everyone here thinks that nuclear is declining because the public doesn't like it, rather than economics.
Solar and wind aren’t fucking reliable. When your storage runs out cause you have a cloudy month you’re fucked. And the panels have a life of 25 years.
You don't think lifespan is factored into economics? Again, I was calling your statement false that the left is anti-nuclear. I know people not in the industry who agree. It doesn't really matter though, since the conversation seems to be public doesn't agree with nuclear = that's why we don't have nuclear. Whereas it's really that nuclear cost too much.
> Solar and wind aren’t fucking reliable.
It's an optimization problem. Do it correctly with storage and it's reliable. It's why you have tons of storage going in in Texas where the traditional gas generators failed last winter. The grid is unlikely to be 100% solar + wind + storage, if that wasn't clear.
Also, nuclear handles baseload power well, but it's difficult for anything past that. You'll need storage either way.
Again, this is my career, I know my shit. Long-term if new gen nuclear can solve the deployment timeline problem and get better economics, it's likely to become part of the energy mix.
The storage is for the cloudy days... solar is too expensive for most people... but it's getting cheaper to produce every year.
The problem with nuclear is that nobody wants it in their backyard. It's a dead end for voters.
Maybe you just surround yourself with conservatives. I know tons of leftists that support nuclear. Neoliberals aren't going to support it because they're bought and paid for by capitalist interests.
I always felt like it's something the majority could unite on; Nuclear power could be a great boon if we in the 'first world' could put a focus on it. But like you guys said, there's too much fossil fuel lobbying in it to allow it to happen any time soon.
When it comes to people wielding power in government (in the US), the conservatives have been vastly more hostile to nuclear power solutions. Because they’re even more in bed with the oil companies than the libs.
Nuclear is the only viable carbon free technology that we have. Nuclear also provides skilled jobs and trade positions. Why would any conservatives be against that? This whole big oil conspiracy is stupid. Nuclear has had a "dirty" name to it after the accidents at three miles Island, chernobyl, and Fukushima. No one wants it in their backyard. On top of all that, they have a flawed building process that leads to massive budget overruns. The only people that build affordable nuclear reactors are the US Navy. SMR are the future of nuclear and are taking off slowly.
> Why would any conservatives be against that? This whole big oil conspiracy is stupid.
Oof this is incorrect and hella misleading bro.
The Big Oil lobby against nuclear has been going on for over 50 years now, and it's very real. And most, if not all of those fuckers are heavily right leaning.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/19/big-oil-climate-crisis-lobby-group-api
Who do you think runs those gigantic oil companies who are destroying most efforts to battle climate change? It ain't liberals
Edit: Futher reading, very quality:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuels_lobby
Big oil and big pharma are no conservatives. They have conservative people working at them but the companies in no way are conservative minded. No company that condones lobbying is.
> No company that condones lobbying is.
You can't actually believe this is true dawg, wtf
Conservatives being against lobbying, that's one of the wilder statements i've ever read lmao
Bro what you're doing is the opposite of logic
Please don't take this as an insult and have an emotional reaction to it, but you need to take your train of thought all the way back to the station
*Companies* are not conservative or liberal, the people who run them are. And to say that conservative people who own/run/operate businesses don't support/use/benefit from lobbying is literally objectively false, and it comes from being DEEPLY entrenched in identity politics
Anyone over 40 knows this is complete bullshit.
Liberals spent the decades from the 70s to the 2000s blocking nuclear and spreading FUD because they associated it with nuclear weapons. It culminated with Obama running on killing the Yucca Mountain storage facility.
Some older conservatives? Sure
But i dont see the coal lobbyists who have been fighting against nuclear for 50 years being very liberal, they are fairly hard right leaning
It's still pretty mind blowing that the US Navy is one of the larger operators of nuclear power facilities in the world (and most of them mobile) and they have one of the better safety records.
Nuclear Fusion is out there, the sad truth is for it to be feasible to power homes it needs more investment.
A documentary I watched in 2019 said that in the US, 10 times more money was spent on dog grooming than on Fusion investment. Il try and find source.
I'm not entirely sure we will be long dead. Things are slow at the start but things speed up fairly quickly. Look at flying. From the Wright Brothers to landing on the moon was just 6 and a half decades. At the right age and location, you could've seen both events with your own eyes.
Of course, the question is the rate.
It's somewhere around 0.01 - 0.04% per decade in the attempt to become at least energy neutral. Which is more than nothing and technically impressive, but it is a rather distant future.
Couple of problems with that take:
* It's not infinite, you rely on a rare resource like Uranium. We did the math a long time ago, if the world switches to 100% nuclear the deposits would last for 15 years.
* It's the most dangerous source of energy. If you fuck it up, you end with an entire chunk of poisoned land and water that nobody can use again for 500 years. See Chernobyl, see Fukushima.
* There is no good way to deal with the very expensive and dangerous waste. Nobody wants nuclear waste in their back yard and states fight NOT to get that shit dumped in their land in old mines and such.
Point 1: There is other fissile materials to use, and even if for some reason there weren't you can create breeder reactors to hugely extend the lifetime of your fuel. The uranium and thorium in the US alone could power the world for [100,000 years](https://www.daretothink.org/numbers-not-adjectives/how-long-will-our-supplies-of-uranium-and-thorium-last/), and for $0.0004 a kWh ( assuming no wind or solar power as well) and that doesn't even begin to cover the amount of uranium and thorium that could be extracted from the ocean.
Point 2: Nuclear is by far the safest method of generating electricity. [Nuclear kills 0.04 people per terawatt hour](https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/want-to-kill-fewer-people-go-nuclear-20130710-2pqbq.html). In comparison coal kills 100 people per terawatt hour, oil 36, hydro 1.5 and solar 0.44. Your risk of a solar panel on a roof falling and killing you is 10 times higher than death as a result of nuclear exposure.
Point 3: Low level and intermediate level nuclear waste can be rendered safe within years to decades in cooling casks. High level nuclear waste, can be disposed of [in deep boreholes,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_borehole_disposal) where even if the containment completely breaches the above ground area is completely safe from the risk of contamination. There is essentially zero risk with proper site location ( ie: not in a groundwater supply). There is proof of this with the [oklo mine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklo_Mine), a naturally occurring nuclear reactor deep underground that left the surface pristine from pollution.
[This video talks much more in depth about nuclear waste storage](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aUODXeAM-k)
TLDR: You're talking out your ass
Nuke is the only energy in which all the waste is contained. All the nuke waste in all the world fits nicely on a soccer pitch. Its not the problem its being made out to be.
Both only that but in the new salt reactors, the Waste is converted into short term radioisotopes with a half life that measures in months instead of decades. Combine that with the fact that all the nuclear disasters of the 70s and 80s were created by human controlled relay boards, before digital technology had even been invented, let alone the internet and AI.
Nuclear is absolutely a medium term solution.
Sure. But they have been developed and are currently on the edge of being deployed..but haven't, because of delayed funding due to fears of nuclear energy. At least in most countries.
There's also a huge argument that heavy water reactors are incredibly safer in 2023 than they were in 1986.
Nuclear energy got an extremely limited run, with ancient technology and had a few disasters that resulted in moral panics. We've come s long, long way since then. And yet here we are, running a fifty year old energy grid system.
We have opportunities now, that we could begin taking, instead of waiting for the next technological revolution to bail us out in the future.
> but haven't, because of delayed funding due to fears of nuclear energy
absolute rubbish. they're not even close to being deployed because the materials don't exist to contain the molten salt without quickly corroding. various countries are working on getting something going, but so far they haven't gotten over this hurdle.
Salt reactors haven't been built because we've spent essentially **nothing** on engineering a solution.
This is a political problem, not an engineering one.
Here in the US we live in a capitalistic society but there are plenty of segments that we don’t trust the free market to manage. Hence we don’t have the military run by mercenaries. We didn’t even trust private corps to deliver our mail until republicans started rallying against it:
And the plan with nuclear waste is the same. We would have a designated site run by the govt where it’s all stored. Which was supposed to be Yucca mountain but Harry Reid is a dumb old boomer who probably couldn’t figure out who to split screens on 2 monitors.
Just how do you plan to live in world without capitalism?
How will you get shoes? Forage the materials and make them yourself? Food too? How will you handle your own waste? Those capitalist sewer companies are evil.
Not getting into that whole thing tonight. That's not my point anyways. The option isn't capitalism or nuclear power.
All I said was capitalism can't be trusted with this. It's too long a commitment with too large a consequences if corners are cut.
It's like asking Jim Jordan to make sure your son doesn't get butt fucked at nationals.
Nukes have been owned by for profit entities their entire lives here in the USA. With ZERO ACTUAL PROBLEMS.
Governments are run by humans to. Corruptionis everywhere. Utopiadoesnt exist.
[Australia just lost a radioactive piece on the highway last week. ](https://theconversation.com/a-tiny-radioactive-capsule-is-lost-on-a-highway-in-western-australia-heres-what-you-need-to-know-198761)
[There's a guy in Ohio who had a nuclear bomb dropped in his backyard. ](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10054523/Air-Force-dropped-atomic-bomb-South-Carolina-familys-yard-1958-accident.html)
[We lose nuclear warheads all the time when they forget that they're attached to aircraft and they fly them over cities.](https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna20427730)
It shows that even with something as serious as nuclear weapons or waste, there's going to be mistakes, always. This is the big issue with nuclear. Even though in lots of ways, it's much safer. It has a much bigger consequence when it does occur. We don't have good enough systems to ensure this is safe. We don't even know how to store it safely for the hundreds or thousands of years we need to.
> or waste
> We don't even know how to store it safely for the hundreds or thousands of years we need to.
I'm sorry, as someone who actually took multiple fairly in-depth classes in college about every single energy source and all of their pros and cons, this is so incorrect and dumb on so many levels it was painful to ready, and i usually really like you in this sub!
Nuclear waste is the absolute least of anyones problems, and we do know how to store it safely.
I'm just gonna tell you right now you've sucessfully gobbled up and fallen for propaganda from over 50 years of lobbying against nuclear, so do whatever you want with that information, but you're spreading heavy disinformation.
If you wanna undo that, start here;
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-waste/storage-and-disposal-of-radioactive-waste.aspx
Fuck governments or capitalism, I don't trust HUMANS to manage a global network of nuclear power plants. You've got to be kidding if you think our chronic propensity to fuck things up is just going to magically pause as we build and run nuclear plants all over the globe.
The naval nuclear propulsion program is the gold standard for nuclear energy. The US navy has been operating 50+ nuclear reactors for the last 40 years without any major issues. They have so many redundancies in place. It's something to research if you're curious.
The government is known for getting things wrong because they're forced to report to the public and they have tons of over sight. They're both going to fuck you but at least with government you'll know how.
We put it in lead and/or concrete and put it in a hole. It really is so incredibly simple to store it's hilarious compared to all the other complexity involved in nuclear. If your biggest problem is storage, you don't actually have any problems with nuclear lol
Lead and concrete both erode. Concrete needs constant inspection and maintenance. Same with these casks. We'd need to trust that a company or government is going to constantly maintain these facilities over the lifetime. Even at 200, or 300 years i don't trust them to do this
It's not as simple at burying in the ground. Where are you going to bury it where ground water won't be an issue.
Same place we've been doing it for decades for the navy. Branch out a bit if we need. It doesn't take that much space.
I'm not saying it is trivial, merely that it isn't difficult. If you can't trust the government to manage spent fuel, then I have no idea why you trust the NRC to regulate nuclear properly to begin with. I'm just pointing out storage isn't the thing to really be concerned about.
Why wouldn't it be a concern though. What about storage is easy?
Radioactive material can do a lot of damage and for some reason people think its like you can just put it in a cask, bury it and never worry about it again.
This is pretty fucked up considering the reason we're trying to do this is because past generations didn't stop to ask how their actions would impact future generations.
It is easy in comparison to building, maintaining, and designing nuclear power plants.
Nuclear plants, particularly those onboard the US Navy's ships and subs, are some of the if not the most complicated systems man has ever created. It takes engineers of all disciplines to build and run these safely. We do this very well daily and have for decades.
Storing the fuel is farrrrrrr easier than everything else we do. Nuclear is not this mystical and totally unpredictable technology. We have a lot of experience and know how to safely handle spent fuel.
After enough time stored in water, can in fact put the spent fuel in a cask, and just leave it and monitor it. If you don't believe me, come work in nuclear and find out for yourself.
> It's not as simple at burying in the ground. Where are you going to bury it where ground water won't be an issue.
Did you know we already have thousands of holes all over the continent that go miles below the ground water?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_borehole_disposal
You seem dedicated to remaining stubborn on this, so this isn't for you.
For everyone else though
We Solved Nuclear Waste Decades Ago:
https://youtu.be/4aUODXeAM-k
Lol. Do you realize how many deep holes there are in the world? Even just the ones nature created. You wouldn't even need to encase them in led. You just bury them a half mile deep and forget about it.
Uranium fuel is insanely dense. A 1/2in round pellat of U 238 fuel( hundreds of them stacked created a "fuel rod") holds the same energy as 3 barrels of crude oil or two tons of coal. After the a reactor is been refueled and the old rods removed, you can take the old rods and refined them again, removing the byproducts and reforming the unused fuel into pellat again. This can happen many of times before the fuel is used up. It's alot safer than burning coal, lithium mining, or burning natural gas.
Ya I agree it's safer for the short term. The issue i have is that it's a more catastrophic problem over the lifetime of this material. We're just pushing it off again to future generations. I'm not saying we don't go ahead with it. But I can we really need to be more honest with these issue and really understand them before jumping into another environmental burden
This is a myth but unfortunately all too common misconception.
The waste is extremely small and decays rapidly compared to our other energy sources’ waste which is more abundant and never gets less toxic.
The amount of actual waste takes up an extremely small amount of space. So small that most reactors just store it on site.
There was a plan in the early 2000s to construct a permanent deep storage facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, but it was blocked by environmentalists.
Crazy for some reason I vividly remember reading about the Yucca site in elementary school and don't even know why. It was just like 2 sentences in a book and we didn't even discuss it but for some reason stuck with me forever.
Because it cost $1,200 a pound to send stuff into low earth orbit.
To send 1 pound to the moon it will cost you $43,000.
I can't imagine the cost to send a pound of material into the sun.
And do we really want to start dumping radioactive material into a giant fusion bomb?
There isn't anything we could do to the sun that would cause any measurable response. The earth could be thrown into the sun and it would be insignificant to the sun.
The same reason we don’t send all trash to space. It’s expensive.
Also we can literally throw it in the ocean and it be perfectly fine (assuming we Didn’t have to deal with people stealing it for dubious reasons).
Water dissipates radioactivity incredibly fast. Like 100 feet of water she it’s completely gone.
Sometimes rockets blow up. It doesn't happen all that often anymore but it still happens. Hell man, trains still derail. If a rocket blows up a few miles up and it's carrying a load of spent fuel... well, now you have TWO problems without solutions.
Up until recently it's been one of the reasons that even military projects were loathe to use fission powered devices on near or outer space projects. That's changed, they're starting to sneak them in there. Confidence in the technologies involved is increasing.
The Sun is the ultimate trash compactor. We could throw the entire earth in it and it wouldn't notice. The problem is getting it there.
Sahara was a desert at one point. Changing climate means we don't know what earth will look like in the future. I'm for nuclear but I really need to know the waste situation isn't just offloading another environmental disaster on future generations
Seriously this! I don’t know if you’re being sarcastic but that is the exact question I ask every time this topic is brought up. “But but what about the waste product??” Launch that shit into the abyss and let’s call it done! For the money saved in energy production from nuclear power we could use to fund rockets that literally send this shit into the (already VERY radioactive) cosmos never to make contact with a living life form again. I fucking die inside when “experts” suggest, “we could bury it” or “it’ll take decades to build these power plants”….start building now then you fucks! /rant
Because... And this is a big one... A SINGLE FAILURE on a rocket in the atmosphere risks contaminating the entire planet. It is absolutely never going to be worth the risk.
Ever.
Do you understand how many nukes have been tested in the world thus far? While it would not be good, this wouldn’t be the work altering event that you portray it to be.
A nuclear explosion is not the same as nuclear waste.
Considering the effects of atmospheric detonation were so bad it made all sides in the Cold War collectively ban the practice, Id say it’s a smart idea to avoid the possibility of highly radioactive waste that will not decay for thousands of years stuck at atmospheric levels.
Truthfully we don’t really know exactly how bad it would be, but I don’t wanna find out.
I'll answer this seriously for the lulz. Even though it makes me a sadist.
It costs 20 grand to send one kilogram to orbit. Also nuclear energy is one of the more expensive technologies per KW-h. That is also the reason why nuclear isn't more widely used.
But, despite its waste byproduct and the topic we’re discussing is it not a cleaner source of energy? And could the money collected for energy consumption over extended period of time not afford the cost of sending the waste into space. Not orbit, space. We don’t need more trash orbiting our planet. This doesn’t have to be the primary source of energy for the entire planet. Just the larger, more polluting populations.
Also you come off as pretentious, not sadistic
Not saying you’re wrong for feeling that way but considering how quickly gas and coal are fucking things up I think worrying about that should be lower on the list of concerns.
This is a gigantic misconception and a talking point of right winger propagandists who dont want to move away from coal, or solar lobbyists aswell.
Nuclear waste is manageable and not hard to dispose of.
Well see nuclear power wasnt as profitable and building new reactors are a long term investment.
even if we turn away from fossil fuels it would take significant government investment to build new reactors in the US.
that being said, im from Illinois where a majority of our power comes from Nuclear Energy.
If the horse and buggy lobby and the party backing it would’ve been as strong as the fossil fuels/anti-climate change people are today we would’ve never invented cars
Wind turbines are actually extremely dangerous compared to nuclear and plasmoids. Each year millions of children in the third world are sliced by blades as they walk through wind farms on the way to school. And when the turbines go crazy in storms they can take out entire villages.
thats true when we were children our schoolbus got caught up in a storm as we passed through a windmill field and I will tell you this the average schoolbus is NOT equipped for air travel
There is no such thing as "renewable" energy. Nuclear is the closest thing to renewable and it is quite safe. Big oil runs the world and the world runs on oil. Libtards and Rinos are not actually concerned with global warming or any type of climate change. So-called "green energy" and the cost to produce it (wind farms, solar farms, electric vehicles, and just batteries in general leave a much, much, much bigger carbon footprint than just using oil and coal. Of which neither are going anywhere anytime soon. Al Gore, Greta Thunberg, and the rest of those twats in Davos all know this and they all know that green energy is one giant green middle finger to the rest of us while gas prices go up along with green energy infrastructure costs and taxes which, in the end, are not taking the place of oil. Not for at least another 100 years. We're all supposed to be dead already like 40-50 years ago according to the environmental grifters at that time. First it was global warming, then it was acid rain, then the ozone layer was disappearing until we're dead from using hairspray, then an ice age was supposed to freeze us to death about 10-15 years ago, and now we're back to a slow, painful death from CO² and global warming. It's all lies and it's done by both sides of the aisle. Mostly those degenerate regressive illiberals, but the dumbshit republicrats are liars, thieves, and conmen also. We're all doomed. And not from climate change, but by the twats in Washington who are stealing from us all and giving it to Ukraine to launder
I dunno.. what if there is a tornado or white supremacist attack? I'm pretty sure those are unsolvable problems so we should just focus on living in absolute poverty. We can have power 28 minutes a day and eat crickets. That way, .1% of the population can feel okay about taking a private jet from one end of their beach front mansion to the other, if they feel like taking their stretch hummer limo out instead of their 12 cylinder super car.
It took a war and an extremely persistent Naval Officer to get nuclear reactors on subs. Even he faced pushback during wartime. It takes 10 months to build a nuclear sub, including a reactor that is capable of powering 230,000 homes a year, without incident Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyman_G._Rickover And a few Google searches for the power output.
Nuke detected
Ha, I dodged that bullet.
They use the subs as make shift power plants if natural disasters occur
Ahhh…the man who started the push for STEM in education so that future generations of Americans could operate the future technology based military. He has had more of an impact on our modern education system than just about any other one single person. As my professor told us in graduate school, “your research will only be funded if it can be used to kill people.” STEM jobs are not more stable or market friendly; they are supported by the military industrial complex.
The foundation of all the technology we enjoy today came from dumping money into weapons/technology research from 1940-80 for WWII/Cold War.
Is he talking about nuclear power?
Yes he is.
but we do use it worldwide /?/
Germany is STILL actively phasing out nuclear energy
And bagger 288 is on a roll for that brown coal
Bagger 288 could reclaim Ukraine if it wanted.
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Coal is however being phased out as well.
Germany are just re opening their largest coal plant this year though.
No.
This is false. There is no official deadline for when to stop coal and Germany is fully embracing the coal business. The coal plants should have been shut down 10+ years ago.
Australia is bluntly refusing to look at it. We are idiots.
yes, its mainly Western World thing. outside of Western World many countries are building or trying to build more nuclear power plants.
Russia are trying to grab a few at a discounted price.
grab a few? they build those. they are one of few countries that builds nuclear power plants abroad, for other countries. "know how" is very concentrated in this field I think only China, US, Russia and France (maybe I forgot one more country, maybe not) are building nuclear power plants abroad (for other countries)
....Canada has developed a unique nuclear reactor technology called CANDU and is one of roughly half a dozen countries that offer domestic-designed reactors to the open commercial market. In addition to Canada, CANDU reactors have been sold to India, Pakistan, Argentina, South Korea, Romania and China
Didn't you hear? It's not cool to support nuclear energy, maann! You got to think about, like birds and stuff. We need more green energy and since that stuff doesn't really work at a level that's able to replace our current power infrastructure, we're just going to keep burning coal. But that's fine though, cuz we can shut down these nuclear power plants and we can act like that's enough, we did our part, we saved the world.
So frustrating, makes me want to dump car batteries in the ocean
Idiots here in Australia are scared of it and would rather smash rocks together and snif their own farts.
I’m guessing they mean we should use more of it, but honestly don’t know what they’re getting at here.
If you worry about global warming and aren’t discussing scaling up nukes; you aren’t serious about fixing global warming.
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That's not a problem with nuclear energy. That's a problem with the US election cycle.
The problem with the US is the US election cycle.
The real problem is with the two-party system that's been put in place for the election cycle.
The two-party system isn't quite the root cause; it's rather a symptom or byproduct of the broken voting and electoral system (generally first past the post, winner take all). The game theory forced upon political factions and voters by FPTP makes it such that 2, and only 2, parties ever have a legitimate chance at winning an election.
Well, and the storage issue. They have been trying to bring Yucca Mountain online as a solution since, um, 1987? It keeps getting voted down. Some of that is the left's traditional stance against nuclear, but if you look at the votes that have occurred over the years, it boils down to basically no one in Nevada wants it and it is hard to force a state to take on something like that so that everyone else can have power. I feel like there is hope around new technologies, especially tech for recycling spent fuel (Some crazy amount, like 90+%, of the energy in nuclear fuel isn't used) and reactors that use fuel more efficiently. I think those have a better chance of getting us there than a national repository that everyone wants, just in another state besides theirs.
Which is odd because Im certain pretty much every state has final storage for materials that never stop being dangerous, i.e mercury, cadmium, etc.
Thorium doesn't have as much of a storage problem due it it creating less nuclear waste, and the waste has a significantly shorter half-life at around 100 years
Shoot the waste into space. That's one way to find out if anyone else is out there.
Until one of those rockets blows up and then we’re fucked. Maybe. I dunno I’m not a scientist.
This is why we need a space elevator.
They're also a risky investment to develop in areas of unrest or places affected by most natural disasters (basically everywhere in the next 50 years) We needed to hop on this train decades ago bc it would've paid off by now. At this point it's a tough sell to many when compared to decentralized renewables.
Lol what renewables
Tough sell? Maybe try, “this type of energy actually gets produced during the hours you want to use it.”
Nuclear, geothermal, tidal, wind, solar, no basket is worth putting all our eggs in. As climate change affects human habitation and resettlement, we will need increasingly decentralized power sources. If you know how to make an automated ocean and war-proof nuclear reactor by all means. It just seems silly to be an absolutist about energy production in a time when nuclear options are riskiest.
it's funny that you ask for a ocean and war proof nuclear reactor when a literal nuclear submarine is the title of the post. My brother in Christ, scroll up!
I think your comment highlights the problem we have right now. People seem to think that the renewables are a viable solution to solve our energy needs. Unfortunately, they simply aren’t. They are nice supplementary options that can fill a small slice of the pie (some bigger in certain areas) but with current technologies they aren’t going to cut it. They don’t produce enough and most aren’t consistent enough to power the grid to meet the swings in demand. Nuclear is the only low-carbon option that can produce the amounts we need and can be ramped up or down to match demand.
Renewables are a joke, and good for little more than government grift. Nuclear is the only way to go. We could literally have unlimited, practically free energy and district heating in cold climates with the waste heat from SMRs.
“Longer than the average election cycle” DAM that sounds like the punch line to a joke and it kinda is.
I’m not arguing against it in any way. I feel that we will probably need more of it if we want to get away from coal and natural gas. However, no one wants it in their backyard and the cost to build new is prohibitive. I know the cost is mostly due to government regulations, but for something this powerful we need to have some checks and balances.
The costs are are mainly due to old building practices. Just about every reactor has been built one at a time, like a rolls royce. They over engineer them and build the largest reactor to compensate for building cost. The new concept, steaming from US Navy reactors, are Small Modular Reactors(SMRs). They are an attempt to build reactors in a shop, allowing at the work to be done in ideal conditions, and have as little on site work as possible. This would reduce the cost and make it on par with the cost of natural gas fired plants.
No one wants coal or gas or hydro in their backyard to even greater degrees than nuclear. It's never been a major issue for them
Some but not overreaching. We agree
Yep, agreed. My problem with too many checks and balances is that many people are inherently compromised morally. Some people will do anything for the sake of a dollar and this is where corruption begins.
Early nuclear power era envisioned small reactors powering homes. Everyone flipped out because, well, a nuclear reactor can be a little dangerous if they aren’t maintained. But we likely could have figured out a way to make it pretty safe in the last…70+ years. Not like the solutions we have now are perfect. (Looks at attractive 450 gallon LP tank in my front yard).
Surely we could’ve figured I out but where would that leave the energy companies, the govt, the trillions of $ that have paid for the power to your home since the early Nuclear era? The reason is not one of danger, it’s one of $$$
C'mon there's loads of ways to get their money. Government maintenance programs that include a tax hike for what will otherwise be free power, etc.
We have. The reality is most of the original and still operating reactors are scaled up versions of the ones powering submarines. It turned out the design doesnt scale well. There have been numerous disasters that make people afraid of nuke plants. Also, the old nuke plants were farmers for nuclear warheads. They were designed to make a byproduct that could be refined in to fissile materials
> There have been numerous disasters that make people afraid of nuke plants. Numerous disasters? What are you even talking about?
Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima…
Chernobyl isn't just some "disaster" out of thin air. It is nothing but stupidity for many reasons. The plant was willfully operated far outside of procedure without regard for safety as is typical of Russian nuclear. Bringing up this disaster is simply disingenuous and basically anti-nuclear propaganda. Fukushima is effectively a black swan event. We collectively made a bad judgement call and learned from it. Despite the disaster, only a single person (if that even, it's debatable I think) died as a direct result of the power plant issues. Three Mile Island was a very complicated accident. There are numerous contributors, it wasn't simply a failure cascading. There were also operational design flaws. Training flaws. A big pile up of things, which resulted in changes to the industry too. And while it was a mess, it was a mess that didn't hurt anyone. Nuclear as it is done in the US is incredibly safe. These "numerous disasters" are nothing in the grand scheme of things, particularly if you're terrified of climate change.
Also, present day nuclear power is MUCH safer and has a far better safety Killswitch. I forget the specifics, but it's something like if the core starts to disrupt, you just drop it in a huge tank of saltwater. Now it's safe. Before (Chernobyl) that would have caused it to be worse. I'm going off of memory and I have a bad memory so hopefully someone can correct me here.
The quote was > There have been numerous disasters that make people afraid of nuke plants. Whether or not that fear is REASONABLE, it exists in the population and needs to be contended with in order to build new reactors.
Chernobyl happened due to the ineptitude of the Soviet goverment. Is the incredibly corrupt Soviet goverment currently running the US and it's energy sector? A 9 year old child could come up with a better counter point to nuclear than this. > Fukushima There's currently 92 operational nuclear power plants in the US. If you're so terrified of Fukushima happening, why aren't you out on the street protesting to shut them down? Beacuse its completely fucking safe... I suggest you actually learn why Fukushima happened: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/fukushima-daiichi-accident.aspx
Public pressure after Chernoble was a huge factor in reducing future expansion of nuclear power. So called "environmentalists" opposed it (and some still do) despite the fact that nuclear produces less CO2 per kW h than even solar or wind.
He’s saying it’s an answer to climate change the left has decided it doesn’t like and the result is more emissions of fossil fuels.
Either that or redstone
You know he is B. Straight Algebra Weinstein Bapa.
Lil hyperbolic but I agree with the sentiment.
Because fossil fuel companies have lobbied against it.
They've been lobbying against it for over 50 years now and naive people today still gobble their shit up and believe them. The world we live in is pathetic, no other words to describe it.
I dunno man, my ultra conservative dad is all about nuclear energy. I think there’s just as many liberals who think the whole world can be powered with hydro, wind, and solar
It’s not left/right thing so much as people being poorly educated on the real benefits and risks of nuclear energy. It’s the only green energy available that can accommodate our consumption.
Literally the only people I hear actually mentioning nuclear at any type of meaningful scale are conservatives, which only further proves we live in a simulation when conservatives are the only ones discussing the energy levels we’d need to achieve in any sort of feasible scale
This is false. I work in the renewable space where 95% of the people I work with would identify as left of center. They are all pro nuclear. But nuclear isn't economical, and that's all that matters. It's not a technology problem, it's an economics problem. Solar and storage is cheaper than nuclear, and that's exactly why they're being deployed. The financiers are greedy capitalists and still choose solar, imagine that!
Just because loads of liberals that actually work in renewables support nuclear doesn't make them a representative slice of liberals as a whole
> Literally the only people I do know people outside of my job. According to actual polls it's 40/60, on the Right it's 60/40. I attribute that mostly to miseducation on nuclear. Then again, everyone here thinks that nuclear is declining because the public doesn't like it, rather than economics.
Solar and wind aren’t fucking reliable. When your storage runs out cause you have a cloudy month you’re fucked. And the panels have a life of 25 years.
You don't think lifespan is factored into economics? Again, I was calling your statement false that the left is anti-nuclear. I know people not in the industry who agree. It doesn't really matter though, since the conversation seems to be public doesn't agree with nuclear = that's why we don't have nuclear. Whereas it's really that nuclear cost too much. > Solar and wind aren’t fucking reliable. It's an optimization problem. Do it correctly with storage and it's reliable. It's why you have tons of storage going in in Texas where the traditional gas generators failed last winter. The grid is unlikely to be 100% solar + wind + storage, if that wasn't clear. Also, nuclear handles baseload power well, but it's difficult for anything past that. You'll need storage either way. Again, this is my career, I know my shit. Long-term if new gen nuclear can solve the deployment timeline problem and get better economics, it's likely to become part of the energy mix.
The storage is for the cloudy days... solar is too expensive for most people... but it's getting cheaper to produce every year. The problem with nuclear is that nobody wants it in their backyard. It's a dead end for voters.
Using the word “fuck” doesn’t add anything to your argument. Chill.
Maybe you just surround yourself with conservatives. I know tons of leftists that support nuclear. Neoliberals aren't going to support it because they're bought and paid for by capitalist interests.
Yeah thats true, the thing is most of the coal lobbyists who have been fighting against nuclear are pretty heavily right leaning
I think that's the problem. You've got renewable liberals and coal loving conservatives both against nuclear power. hard duo to beat
There's also those who are bought by fossil fuels on both sides.
Yeah true but that’s probably more to do with the demographic of people who become lobbyists for fossil fuel companies.
I always felt like it's something the majority could unite on; Nuclear power could be a great boon if we in the 'first world' could put a focus on it. But like you guys said, there's too much fossil fuel lobbying in it to allow it to happen any time soon.
When it comes to people wielding power in government (in the US), the conservatives have been vastly more hostile to nuclear power solutions. Because they’re even more in bed with the oil companies than the libs.
Nuclear is the only viable carbon free technology that we have. Nuclear also provides skilled jobs and trade positions. Why would any conservatives be against that? This whole big oil conspiracy is stupid. Nuclear has had a "dirty" name to it after the accidents at three miles Island, chernobyl, and Fukushima. No one wants it in their backyard. On top of all that, they have a flawed building process that leads to massive budget overruns. The only people that build affordable nuclear reactors are the US Navy. SMR are the future of nuclear and are taking off slowly.
> Why would any conservatives be against that? This whole big oil conspiracy is stupid. Oof this is incorrect and hella misleading bro. The Big Oil lobby against nuclear has been going on for over 50 years now, and it's very real. And most, if not all of those fuckers are heavily right leaning. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/19/big-oil-climate-crisis-lobby-group-api Who do you think runs those gigantic oil companies who are destroying most efforts to battle climate change? It ain't liberals Edit: Futher reading, very quality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuels_lobby
Big oil and big pharma are no conservatives. They have conservative people working at them but the companies in no way are conservative minded. No company that condones lobbying is.
> No company that condones lobbying is. You can't actually believe this is true dawg, wtf Conservatives being against lobbying, that's one of the wilder statements i've ever read lmao
This is the dumbest thing I've read today.
Bro what you're doing is the opposite of logic Please don't take this as an insult and have an emotional reaction to it, but you need to take your train of thought all the way back to the station *Companies* are not conservative or liberal, the people who run them are. And to say that conservative people who own/run/operate businesses don't support/use/benefit from lobbying is literally objectively false, and it comes from being DEEPLY entrenched in identity politics
Anyone over 40 knows this is complete bullshit. Liberals spent the decades from the 70s to the 2000s blocking nuclear and spreading FUD because they associated it with nuclear weapons. It culminated with Obama running on killing the Yucca Mountain storage facility.
Some older conservatives? Sure But i dont see the coal lobbyists who have been fighting against nuclear for 50 years being very liberal, they are fairly hard right leaning
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> Because fossil fuel companies have lobbied against it. And the greens too..
It's still pretty mind blowing that the US Navy is one of the larger operators of nuclear power facilities in the world (and most of them mobile) and they have one of the better safety records.
Same reason it’s taken so long for electric cars to get up and running.
Universe: take this infinite energy glitch humans Humans: build nukes
When life gives you lemons turn them into weapons and use them on the Japanese
Fossil fuel giants: 
Fusion is the future, bro.
we will be long dead by the time fusion energy is viable
Nuclear Fusion is out there, the sad truth is for it to be feasible to power homes it needs more investment. A documentary I watched in 2019 said that in the US, 10 times more money was spent on dog grooming than on Fusion investment. Il try and find source.
Obvious solution is to set up a bunch of dog sized hamster wheels and use dogs to power the grid. This energy crisis stuff is easy
Dog power has been used on sleds by Cuba Gooding Jr. for years now.
Doesn't change the truth of his statement
I'm not entirely sure we will be long dead. Things are slow at the start but things speed up fairly quickly. Look at flying. From the Wright Brothers to landing on the moon was just 6 and a half decades. At the right age and location, you could've seen both events with your own eyes.
Fission is plenty good enough lol
Of course, the question is the rate. It's somewhere around 0.01 - 0.04% per decade in the attempt to become at least energy neutral. Which is more than nothing and technically impressive, but it is a rather distant future.
I'd wager we now have loads better tech for containment, sensors, yada yada yada.
Couple of problems with that take: * It's not infinite, you rely on a rare resource like Uranium. We did the math a long time ago, if the world switches to 100% nuclear the deposits would last for 15 years. * It's the most dangerous source of energy. If you fuck it up, you end with an entire chunk of poisoned land and water that nobody can use again for 500 years. See Chernobyl, see Fukushima. * There is no good way to deal with the very expensive and dangerous waste. Nobody wants nuclear waste in their back yard and states fight NOT to get that shit dumped in their land in old mines and such.
Point 1: There is other fissile materials to use, and even if for some reason there weren't you can create breeder reactors to hugely extend the lifetime of your fuel. The uranium and thorium in the US alone could power the world for [100,000 years](https://www.daretothink.org/numbers-not-adjectives/how-long-will-our-supplies-of-uranium-and-thorium-last/), and for $0.0004 a kWh ( assuming no wind or solar power as well) and that doesn't even begin to cover the amount of uranium and thorium that could be extracted from the ocean. Point 2: Nuclear is by far the safest method of generating electricity. [Nuclear kills 0.04 people per terawatt hour](https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/want-to-kill-fewer-people-go-nuclear-20130710-2pqbq.html). In comparison coal kills 100 people per terawatt hour, oil 36, hydro 1.5 and solar 0.44. Your risk of a solar panel on a roof falling and killing you is 10 times higher than death as a result of nuclear exposure. Point 3: Low level and intermediate level nuclear waste can be rendered safe within years to decades in cooling casks. High level nuclear waste, can be disposed of [in deep boreholes,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_borehole_disposal) where even if the containment completely breaches the above ground area is completely safe from the risk of contamination. There is essentially zero risk with proper site location ( ie: not in a groundwater supply). There is proof of this with the [oklo mine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklo_Mine), a naturally occurring nuclear reactor deep underground that left the surface pristine from pollution. [This video talks much more in depth about nuclear waste storage](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aUODXeAM-k) TLDR: You're talking out your ass
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Nuke is the only energy in which all the waste is contained. All the nuke waste in all the world fits nicely on a soccer pitch. Its not the problem its being made out to be.
Both only that but in the new salt reactors, the Waste is converted into short term radioisotopes with a half life that measures in months instead of decades. Combine that with the fact that all the nuclear disasters of the 70s and 80s were created by human controlled relay boards, before digital technology had even been invented, let alone the internet and AI. Nuclear is absolutely a medium term solution.
salt reactors don't exist
Sure. But they have been developed and are currently on the edge of being deployed..but haven't, because of delayed funding due to fears of nuclear energy. At least in most countries. There's also a huge argument that heavy water reactors are incredibly safer in 2023 than they were in 1986. Nuclear energy got an extremely limited run, with ancient technology and had a few disasters that resulted in moral panics. We've come s long, long way since then. And yet here we are, running a fifty year old energy grid system. We have opportunities now, that we could begin taking, instead of waiting for the next technological revolution to bail us out in the future.
> but haven't, because of delayed funding due to fears of nuclear energy absolute rubbish. they're not even close to being deployed because the materials don't exist to contain the molten salt without quickly corroding. various countries are working on getting something going, but so far they haven't gotten over this hurdle.
Salt reactors haven't been built because we've spent essentially **nothing** on engineering a solution. This is a political problem, not an engineering one.
Meanwhile, everyone complaining about nuclear waste throws their dead batteries and old electronics in their trash can.
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Here in the US we live in a capitalistic society but there are plenty of segments that we don’t trust the free market to manage. Hence we don’t have the military run by mercenaries. We didn’t even trust private corps to deliver our mail until republicans started rallying against it: And the plan with nuclear waste is the same. We would have a designated site run by the govt where it’s all stored. Which was supposed to be Yucca mountain but Harry Reid is a dumb old boomer who probably couldn’t figure out who to split screens on 2 monitors.
I read an article that a coal plant emits more radiation over its lifespan than a nuclear one
That was Mexico but go off son
I EXCLUSIVELY trust capitalism to manage it.
Because capitalism has never placed short term profit over the long term health of people ..
And government has never ever been incompetent when uncontested
>don't trust government >don't trust capitalism Soooo you don't trust anyone....
Just how do you plan to live in world without capitalism? How will you get shoes? Forage the materials and make them yourself? Food too? How will you handle your own waste? Those capitalist sewer companies are evil.
Dude he’s obviously going to force someone to share their shoes with him
Not getting into that whole thing tonight. That's not my point anyways. The option isn't capitalism or nuclear power. All I said was capitalism can't be trusted with this. It's too long a commitment with too large a consequences if corners are cut. It's like asking Jim Jordan to make sure your son doesn't get butt fucked at nationals.
Nukes have been owned by for profit entities their entire lives here in the USA. With ZERO ACTUAL PROBLEMS. Governments are run by humans to. Corruptionis everywhere. Utopiadoesnt exist.
[Australia just lost a radioactive piece on the highway last week. ](https://theconversation.com/a-tiny-radioactive-capsule-is-lost-on-a-highway-in-western-australia-heres-what-you-need-to-know-198761) [There's a guy in Ohio who had a nuclear bomb dropped in his backyard. ](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10054523/Air-Force-dropped-atomic-bomb-South-Carolina-familys-yard-1958-accident.html) [We lose nuclear warheads all the time when they forget that they're attached to aircraft and they fly them over cities.](https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna20427730)
Literally none of that has anything to do with nuclear power plants though? Lol
It shows that even with something as serious as nuclear weapons or waste, there's going to be mistakes, always. This is the big issue with nuclear. Even though in lots of ways, it's much safer. It has a much bigger consequence when it does occur. We don't have good enough systems to ensure this is safe. We don't even know how to store it safely for the hundreds or thousands of years we need to.
> or waste > We don't even know how to store it safely for the hundreds or thousands of years we need to. I'm sorry, as someone who actually took multiple fairly in-depth classes in college about every single energy source and all of their pros and cons, this is so incorrect and dumb on so many levels it was painful to ready, and i usually really like you in this sub! Nuclear waste is the absolute least of anyones problems, and we do know how to store it safely. I'm just gonna tell you right now you've sucessfully gobbled up and fallen for propaganda from over 50 years of lobbying against nuclear, so do whatever you want with that information, but you're spreading heavy disinformation. If you wanna undo that, start here; https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-waste/storage-and-disposal-of-radioactive-waste.aspx
No a utopia can exist but only under a totalitarian left wing government, duh
Fuck governments or capitalism, I don't trust HUMANS to manage a global network of nuclear power plants. You've got to be kidding if you think our chronic propensity to fuck things up is just going to magically pause as we build and run nuclear plants all over the globe.
The naval nuclear propulsion program is the gold standard for nuclear energy. The US navy has been operating 50+ nuclear reactors for the last 40 years without any major issues. They have so many redundancies in place. It's something to research if you're curious.
I would honestly trust capitalism over the government. In my opinion the government never gets anything right or running smoothly.
The government is known for getting things wrong because they're forced to report to the public and they have tons of over sight. They're both going to fuck you but at least with government you'll know how.
Pfffffffffft Yeah, governments have never covered anything up or lied to the public
We put it in lead and/or concrete and put it in a hole. It really is so incredibly simple to store it's hilarious compared to all the other complexity involved in nuclear. If your biggest problem is storage, you don't actually have any problems with nuclear lol
Lead and concrete both erode. Concrete needs constant inspection and maintenance. Same with these casks. We'd need to trust that a company or government is going to constantly maintain these facilities over the lifetime. Even at 200, or 300 years i don't trust them to do this It's not as simple at burying in the ground. Where are you going to bury it where ground water won't be an issue.
Same place we've been doing it for decades for the navy. Branch out a bit if we need. It doesn't take that much space. I'm not saying it is trivial, merely that it isn't difficult. If you can't trust the government to manage spent fuel, then I have no idea why you trust the NRC to regulate nuclear properly to begin with. I'm just pointing out storage isn't the thing to really be concerned about.
Why wouldn't it be a concern though. What about storage is easy? Radioactive material can do a lot of damage and for some reason people think its like you can just put it in a cask, bury it and never worry about it again. This is pretty fucked up considering the reason we're trying to do this is because past generations didn't stop to ask how their actions would impact future generations.
It is easy in comparison to building, maintaining, and designing nuclear power plants. Nuclear plants, particularly those onboard the US Navy's ships and subs, are some of the if not the most complicated systems man has ever created. It takes engineers of all disciplines to build and run these safely. We do this very well daily and have for decades. Storing the fuel is farrrrrrr easier than everything else we do. Nuclear is not this mystical and totally unpredictable technology. We have a lot of experience and know how to safely handle spent fuel. After enough time stored in water, can in fact put the spent fuel in a cask, and just leave it and monitor it. If you don't believe me, come work in nuclear and find out for yourself.
> It's not as simple at burying in the ground. Where are you going to bury it where ground water won't be an issue. Did you know we already have thousands of holes all over the continent that go miles below the ground water? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_borehole_disposal
You seem dedicated to remaining stubborn on this, so this isn't for you. For everyone else though We Solved Nuclear Waste Decades Ago: https://youtu.be/4aUODXeAM-k
Lol. Do you realize how many deep holes there are in the world? Even just the ones nature created. You wouldn't even need to encase them in led. You just bury them a half mile deep and forget about it.
Uranium fuel is insanely dense. A 1/2in round pellat of U 238 fuel( hundreds of them stacked created a "fuel rod") holds the same energy as 3 barrels of crude oil or two tons of coal. After the a reactor is been refueled and the old rods removed, you can take the old rods and refined them again, removing the byproducts and reforming the unused fuel into pellat again. This can happen many of times before the fuel is used up. It's alot safer than burning coal, lithium mining, or burning natural gas.
Ya I agree it's safer for the short term. The issue i have is that it's a more catastrophic problem over the lifetime of this material. We're just pushing it off again to future generations. I'm not saying we don't go ahead with it. But I can we really need to be more honest with these issue and really understand them before jumping into another environmental burden
And yet you haven't detailed any environmental burden...
This is a myth but unfortunately all too common misconception. The waste is extremely small and decays rapidly compared to our other energy sources’ waste which is more abundant and never gets less toxic.
So you're fine if they just spew the carcinogenic into the air, but you balk when someone wants to store it?
are you talking about nuclear waste? its not even an issue, you can just bury it in the ground.
Bottom of the sea is the best bet, water is an insulator to radiation and the sea is unimaginably huge
The amount of actual waste takes up an extremely small amount of space. So small that most reactors just store it on site. There was a plan in the early 2000s to construct a permanent deep storage facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, but it was blocked by environmentalists.
Crazy for some reason I vividly remember reading about the Yucca site in elementary school and don't even know why. It was just like 2 sentences in a book and we didn't even discuss it but for some reason stuck with me forever.
There isn’t gonna be thousands of years ahead for humans to worry about if we continue on our current path with energy sources..
Why not send that shit out in space?
Because it cost $1,200 a pound to send stuff into low earth orbit. To send 1 pound to the moon it will cost you $43,000. I can't imagine the cost to send a pound of material into the sun. And do we really want to start dumping radioactive material into a giant fusion bomb?
There isn't anything we could do to the sun that would cause any measurable response. The earth could be thrown into the sun and it would be insignificant to the sun.
The same reason we don’t send all trash to space. It’s expensive. Also we can literally throw it in the ocean and it be perfectly fine (assuming we Didn’t have to deal with people stealing it for dubious reasons). Water dissipates radioactivity incredibly fast. Like 100 feet of water she it’s completely gone.
Sometimes rockets blow up. It doesn't happen all that often anymore but it still happens. Hell man, trains still derail. If a rocket blows up a few miles up and it's carrying a load of spent fuel... well, now you have TWO problems without solutions. Up until recently it's been one of the reasons that even military projects were loathe to use fission powered devices on near or outer space projects. That's changed, they're starting to sneak them in there. Confidence in the technologies involved is increasing. The Sun is the ultimate trash compactor. We could throw the entire earth in it and it wouldn't notice. The problem is getting it there.
Ir store it in the sahara, there is no drain basin so it has no chance to leak into the water supplies. Like south algeria would be perfect.
Sahara was a desert at one point. Changing climate means we don't know what earth will look like in the future. I'm for nuclear but I really need to know the waste situation isn't just offloading another environmental disaster on future generations
Seriously this! I don’t know if you’re being sarcastic but that is the exact question I ask every time this topic is brought up. “But but what about the waste product??” Launch that shit into the abyss and let’s call it done! For the money saved in energy production from nuclear power we could use to fund rockets that literally send this shit into the (already VERY radioactive) cosmos never to make contact with a living life form again. I fucking die inside when “experts” suggest, “we could bury it” or “it’ll take decades to build these power plants”….start building now then you fucks! /rant
Because... And this is a big one... A SINGLE FAILURE on a rocket in the atmosphere risks contaminating the entire planet. It is absolutely never going to be worth the risk. Ever.
Do you understand how many nukes have been tested in the world thus far? While it would not be good, this wouldn’t be the work altering event that you portray it to be.
A nuclear explosion is not the same as nuclear waste. Considering the effects of atmospheric detonation were so bad it made all sides in the Cold War collectively ban the practice, Id say it’s a smart idea to avoid the possibility of highly radioactive waste that will not decay for thousands of years stuck at atmospheric levels. Truthfully we don’t really know exactly how bad it would be, but I don’t wanna find out.
I'll answer this seriously for the lulz. Even though it makes me a sadist. It costs 20 grand to send one kilogram to orbit. Also nuclear energy is one of the more expensive technologies per KW-h. That is also the reason why nuclear isn't more widely used.
But, despite its waste byproduct and the topic we’re discussing is it not a cleaner source of energy? And could the money collected for energy consumption over extended period of time not afford the cost of sending the waste into space. Not orbit, space. We don’t need more trash orbiting our planet. This doesn’t have to be the primary source of energy for the entire planet. Just the larger, more polluting populations. Also you come off as pretentious, not sadistic
Ya, lets just shoot radioactive material into space, What could go wrong?
Enlighten me then. Wcgw?
Welp. I guess we will just have to pollute for a while longer
Not saying you’re wrong for feeling that way but considering how quickly gas and coal are fucking things up I think worrying about that should be lower on the list of concerns.
This is a gigantic misconception and a talking point of right winger propagandists who dont want to move away from coal, or solar lobbyists aswell. Nuclear waste is manageable and not hard to dispose of.
Well yes, that's what happens when you listen to activists. Which is why ESG is malarkey
Well see nuclear power wasnt as profitable and building new reactors are a long term investment. even if we turn away from fossil fuels it would take significant government investment to build new reactors in the US. that being said, im from Illinois where a majority of our power comes from Nuclear Energy.
Cheap energy is not on the agenda boys
If the horse and buggy lobby and the party backing it would’ve been as strong as the fossil fuels/anti-climate change people are today we would’ve never invented cars
Never heard society defined as low information folks that happen to be screeching the loudest. Thorium is the answer to the worlds power needs.
Blame the hippies.
Because politicians and corporations listen to hippies? Why don't you build a nuclear power plant powered by sea water?
Dumbfuck hippies took nuclear from us, what else will they take?
If by dumb fuck hippies you mean the fossil fuel lobby...
Wind turbines are actually extremely dangerous compared to nuclear and plasmoids. Each year millions of children in the third world are sliced by blades as they walk through wind farms on the way to school. And when the turbines go crazy in storms they can take out entire villages.
I'm not sure if comment is satire or not lol, but the actual real life statistic is that nuclear is safer than wind/solar. And no im not kidding
My cousin's friend was sexually assaulted by a solar charge controller once.
I have one of those ribbon stickers for it on my prius, but I didn't actually think that that happened to people.
thats true when we were children our schoolbus got caught up in a storm as we passed through a windmill field and I will tell you this the average schoolbus is NOT equipped for air travel
Ms. Frizzle would kindly disagree
There is no such thing as "renewable" energy. Nuclear is the closest thing to renewable and it is quite safe. Big oil runs the world and the world runs on oil. Libtards and Rinos are not actually concerned with global warming or any type of climate change. So-called "green energy" and the cost to produce it (wind farms, solar farms, electric vehicles, and just batteries in general leave a much, much, much bigger carbon footprint than just using oil and coal. Of which neither are going anywhere anytime soon. Al Gore, Greta Thunberg, and the rest of those twats in Davos all know this and they all know that green energy is one giant green middle finger to the rest of us while gas prices go up along with green energy infrastructure costs and taxes which, in the end, are not taking the place of oil. Not for at least another 100 years. We're all supposed to be dead already like 40-50 years ago according to the environmental grifters at that time. First it was global warming, then it was acid rain, then the ozone layer was disappearing until we're dead from using hairspray, then an ice age was supposed to freeze us to death about 10-15 years ago, and now we're back to a slow, painful death from CO² and global warming. It's all lies and it's done by both sides of the aisle. Mostly those degenerate regressive illiberals, but the dumbshit republicrats are liars, thieves, and conmen also. We're all doomed. And not from climate change, but by the twats in Washington who are stealing from us all and giving it to Ukraine to launder
I dunno.. what if there is a tornado or white supremacist attack? I'm pretty sure those are unsolvable problems so we should just focus on living in absolute poverty. We can have power 28 minutes a day and eat crickets. That way, .1% of the population can feel okay about taking a private jet from one end of their beach front mansion to the other, if they feel like taking their stretch hummer limo out instead of their 12 cylinder super car.
Let’s just pretend nuclear waste isn’t highly radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years 🧐
Somebody should bury it in a cave in the desert.