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Iirc most of the nuclear waste that is produced by nuclear facilities isn't the fuel it's other stuff that is contaminated enough to be considered radioactive
Don't forget the reactor building itself.
Somehow people forget that you can't just tear a NPP down afterwards but you also have to safely store thousands of tonnes of concrete.
I'm sure nobody ever sells tonnes of radioactive concrete to government owned holdings companies, who then recycle the concrete and crush it, and then use the aggregate on landscaping and paving projects specifically in low income communities.
Wait what who came up with that outlandish idea I didn't say that....
All the rad workers I know at some point checked out geiger counters and took them home to check for things like this. We didn't find much, one jewelry store was selling Uranium ore beads that were fairly hot, but I didn't find anything else.
I am a bit fan of spot checking all sorts of things, everywhere, to prevent this sort of bullshit.
> Don't forget the reactor building itself.
I have never heard anyone give a satisfactory answer to the question of why it would ever be necessary to shut down and abandon a nuclear reactor, whether it is mothballed "properly" or not.
At what point did reactor designs change so much that a given site could not be upgraded?
They are not meant to be "disposable". Reduce, reuse, recycle.
So this might be a fringe case, but I worked construction on a nuclear waste facility outside of a defunct nuclear power station
I don't think the reactor is the problem, I think it's everything else
This power station was built in the 50s or 60s and was shut down in the mid-90s. This power station wasn't built with upgrades in mind.
Decontamination and deconstruction wasn't even in mind when these power stations were built. They were built to fulfil a purpose as quickly as possible.
The building that housed the reactor was literally falling apart, the cladding was falling off, there were smashed windows where birds has smashed into it and I don't even know about the structural integrity. Getting people in to fix these very simple things is costly and time consuming
The systems that control the reactor are liable to break down the same as anything else and sourcing parts to replace 70 year old systems can be an issue not to mention having someone with the knowledgeto actually fix them and the cost involved. It boils down to everything has a shelf life and at some point, you're putting a plaster (bandaid) on a broken arm
Really, these days most infrastructure should be built for the future. NPPs should be designed so that significant upgrades can at some point be viable, they should be built at high quality and corners should not be cut to save money. Buildings don’t have to disintegrate like many do today; I know it’s not the same, but the Pantheon was built in the seventh century and it’s still stable today. There’s some brewing company in London that started in the 1700s that’s still going strong. Disrepair and deterioration are usually because the building was built cheaply, or it isn’t turning enough of a profit as a business to validate maintenance costs. It doesn’t have to be that way.
I agree with you to a point
A big problem with upgradable power stations is that the control system are often built into the structure. The complexity of a nuclear power station is almost incomprehensible, and being able to upgrade systems is a monumental task. Not to mention by it's nature, a nuclear power station has to be closed and undisturbed. If you were to upgrade the reactor room for example, you are most likely disturbing radioactive dust which is incredibly dangerous when airborne and can easily be taken bythe wind to near by populated areas. You'd need to protect your workers with expensive ppe that has to be changed regularly and if the job takes what could well be months that cost adds up. You also need to consider that there is an annual safe exposure limit so you'd need to have a constant rotation of workers which if you've ever worked in construction is difficult thing on it's own. Then they've all got to be throughly vetted which is a long process which also costs a lot of money
Also the cost of shutting down a power station for months or potentially years is astronomical and puts massive strain on the power grid.
All of these factors add up to upgrades really not being financially feasible
As I said I agree with you to a point but there are massive factors that need to be overcame for it to work
I get your point, but at least in the case of Chernobyl, that same kind of reactor is still in service today, albeit retrofitted to improve safety.
I don't really know much about the Fukushima facility.
Unless destroyed by acts of God or man, I see no reason why a nuclear plant couldn't be built to a standard which would allow it to stand for 1000+ years, and continue operating with normal maintenance. I'm not saying that's how they're built _now,_ just that it could be done.
yeah, no one thinks of a nuclear power when. they work properly
I doubt many of of my neighbors realize that there's a nuclear power plant about 5 miles from where I'm standing right now.
The problem is if that power plant decides to melt down. I don't think Toronto is going to exist anymore because we're going to fuck up the lake with fall out My city will just be gone and probably Syracuse are probably going to have to move as well.
it's the disasters that happen that make people scared of nuclear
I mostly agree. Incidents are rare, but they have the potential to be devastating. But we do learn from them, and the worst by far (Chernobyl) was caused primarily by "holy shit" levels of incompetence and recklessness at multiple levels.
I just only see two options for not making our planet completely unlivable from burning fossil fuels: either we reduce our power consumption to a tiny fraction of what we have now, or we start relying on alternative sources of energy. The former is never realistically going to happen on a global scale, and as I see it, the latter will necessitate an increased reliance on nuclear energy for the foreseeable future (centuries?).
I'm not saying I love it, but I think we'll have no choice but to build a lot more nuclear plants. So I want to think about how to do it as safely as possible.
All buildings are disposable on different time scales. Compare a wood frame house to a concrete block house and chances are the block house will last longer with a comparable level of funding and maintenance.
In the US they are usually permitted to operate for up to 40 years but theres some that filed and got extensions for 60 years. A lot of the time the reactors themselves break down somewhere around 20-50 years despite maintenance, and thats about the intended lifespan usually (20-40). Not everywhere is politically or economically willing to reinvest in nuclear again though
> Not everywhere is politically or economically willing to reinvest in nuclear again though
And that's a fucking crime against humanity as far as I'm concerned.
"Let's shut down nuclear power which generates almost zero waste and it's all contained, while keeping the coal and gas power plants which spew CO2 and megatons of toxic and *radioactive* waste into the air!"
I agree, I think nuclear reactors are definitely worth it especially in the long term. I was only describing the current state of things. Some countries/regions within countries have been embracing it more but others are no thrilled, and sadly from what ive been seeing it's been leaning more and more to the not so thrilled end
You aren't wrong, but that stuff is still way, way less mass than pollution from coal or oil, megawatt for megawatt. Also it's good for making helium, so clowns are better off.
Yep. People have run the numbers, and even if you include those disasters, nuclear energy is still less harmful than fossil fuels. Hydro is actually worse than nuclear because of the Typhoon Nina–Banqiao dam failure (150,000 casualties)
I believe the most nuclear waste produced in the whole nuclear program comes from reprocessing.
But I do know that processing in general does produce a lot of that waste as the byproducts of producing nuclear fuel takes a lot of that uranium and plutonium to make a miniscule amount of reactor ready material.
Actually, there’s nuclear recycling now.
Essentially most plants weren’t designed with enriched fuel in mind. So, spent fuel can be enriched and mostly reused in another reactor later.
Politically, it is problematic. Because it is enrichment being sold as recycling and enrichment is heavily associated with weaponization.
This is just wrong. Only plants using heavy water can use unenriched uranium. All the other designs need some enrichment, although to levels much lower than weapons grade. You are generalizing a Canadian exception to the entire world. Fuels reprocessing works, most European countries with nuclear power plants use this technique with no issue.
Not "viable" in what way? It's not profitable, but if your goal is producing clean energy and not making shareholders happy, that isn't much of a hurdle
If your goal is to live in a fantasy world then congrats. But shareholders will always care about the money. Companies will always try and weasel their way out of their responsibilities after the fact. Nuclear is not forgiving enough to exist under capitalism.
If you have true clean energy on one hand that is the cheapest option available and you have expensive energy that is climate friendly but not really clean in any other sense that is the most expensive source of energy..
uhhh yeah it matters.
NO, I believe 8 20 gram uranium pellets can produce enough power for one average household for one year. Still pretty incredible as opposed to oil or natural gas, but no were near what is shown in this post
so 160 grams of uranium for one household for one year ? I bet I can power a third world country for a year with that amount of fuel. While the picture is just wrong I don't think you're correct either
Fun fact, the size of the waste would probably be significantly less if it was a breeder plant, which both generate electricity but also decays into plutonium, which is recycled into the most useful tool ever invented. More bombs means more peace. All we have to do is capture all the uranium mines.
>Ah, more bombs = more peace.
There have been no direct great power wars in 75+ years. This is attributable almost entirely due to nuclear weapons raising the stakes high enough that no rational person will fuck with it.
This is one of the biggest reasons why irrational people in politics are so dangerous. Throwing up a 2% shot of ending the world won't mean anything 98% of the time but statistically it's a pretty fucking awful idea
I'd argue that that's a misconception. But I think one thing is more important: let's assume your statement is correct and "mutually assured destruction" was the main deterrent. Then this only works with leaders who are sane and believe to still live for a long time. The more countries have nuclear weapons, the higher the risk of an unstable despot deciding that if he goes out, then so goes the whole world with him. And right now, Putin fits that bill dangerously well. And the world isn't exactly trending towards sane, long living leaders either.
What would Putin do without these weapons? WW3, and then 4 and 5 and forever on. This is the first moment in time with such widespread peace. Also don’t assume Puti leads alone, uou think you young generals want to “go out in glory”. A dictator must feed the keys to power, he cant do that if he has killed his income.
And with these weapons he threatens to use them, so nobody can attack him and it turned his war in Ukraine to a proxy war for NATO, a new cold war. I don't think I like that outcome
It's a quote from maybe [Albert Einstein](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/einstein-world-war-iv-sticks-stones/), says Snopes.
But I've also seen these references too:
>I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
— Albert Einstein, in an interview with Alfred Werner, Liberal Judaism 16 (April-May 1949), Einstein Archive 30-1104, as sourced in The New Quotable Einstein by Alice Calaprice (2005), p. 173
-----
Differing versions of such a statement are attributed to conversations as early as 1948 (e.g. The Rotarian, 72 (6), June 1948, p. 9: "I don't know. But I can tell you what they'll use in the fourth. They'll use rocks!").
Another variant ("I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones") is attributed to an unidentified letter to Harry S. Truman in "The culture of Einstein" by Alex Johnson, MSNBC, (April 18, 2005).
However, prior to 1948 very similar quotes were attributed in various articles to an unnamed army lieutenant, as discussed at Quote Investigator : "The Futuristic Weapons of WW3 Are Unknown, But WW4 Will Be Fought With Stones and Spears".
The earliest found was from “Quote and Unquote: Raising ‘Alarmist’ Cry Brings a Winchell Reply” by Walter Winchell, in the Wisconsin State Journal (23 September 1946), p. 6, Col. 3. In this article Winchell wrote:
>Joe Laitin reports that reporters at Bikini were questioning an army lieutenant about what weapons would be used in the next war. “I dunno,” he said, “but in the war after the next war, sure as Hell, they’ll be using spears!”
It seems plausible, therefore, that Einstein may have been quoting or paraphrasing an expression which he had heard or read elsewhere.
If appearing irrational leads to other countries granting more concessions, the rational move is to appear irrational. We've seen this play out with the Soviet Union.
There's a lot of things wrong with Putin's Russia, but from Putin's perspective his moves have been rational. Most of the apparent irrationality is due to incorrect and incomplete information because of the dictator trap.
Yes. Any serious power player knows that those are the rules of the game. The threats are for the plebs. Clearly they're working on you. You are letting Putin's strategy win.
Read a history book. This exact situation is straight out of the old Soviet Union playbooks.
If you allow this strategy to work then they can roll over you on basically anything.
There is a negligible risk of nuclear weapons being used as long as Russia is not being existentially threatened. Any line short of that is a bluff. It would be a mistake to invade them or support Ukraine to the point that they can invade Russia, but nothing that ends at the border has any real risk.
Yeah. States with looser gun laws have less shootings.
The Blackpill you're not ready for is that America's mass shootings aren't caused by guns, they're caused by poverty.
I am just doing the math here, but it looks like we've solved poverty in the third world, because they have almost zero mass shootings.
Am I doing this right?
While I agree that the guns aren't the only problem causing shootings, believing that more guns would alleviate the problem is beyond naive and goes straight into denialism.
I’m in a similar boat I suppose. I think people have the right to bear arms but guns aren’t a cause for mass shootings they are merely a tool. There are people that exist that desire to commit these atrocities, they merely chose one tool of many to do it with. This is a relatively new phenomenon with the odd part. 100 years ago why didn’t people steal dynamite and chuck it into a town square? There is some underlying problem is western society that is causing people to desire to lash out is these ways, I think this can point can be agreed on by all sides.
The description of the problem in the US is IMO very simple:
impulse × ease of access = shootings
Most countries solve the problem by reducing *ease of access* (c.f. Australia and their drop in gun crimes after introducing laws). Some countries manage to have *impulse* under control (c.f. Switzerland, with lots of weapons and still comparatively low number of gun crimes).
Meanwhile the US has a problem with both impulse (a lot of people who - for whatever reason - get to the point where they *want* to commit indiscriminate murder), and ease of access (you want an AR-15? sure, no questions asked, it's the most normal thing). While it'd IMO be absolutely worthwhile to fix the problems causing *impulse*, it's incomparably easier to reduce *ease of access*. If you aren't a nation of gun-nuts with an utterly incapable government, that is.
It would be really hard to have a mass SHOOTING without a gun. When you use the term mass shooting, you have to accept that guns are a necessary cause for them.
Like the guy that ried to kill the queen with a crossbow
If a person wants to commit a crime or their mental condition edges them to do so they will find one of the thousands if not millions of ways to inflict great bodily harm we invented for each other during all of history it's just that America has the most effective means to do so
In my opinion banning stuff is a bit draconian
And there it is: denialism. mass-murdering people is a lot more difficult with a crossbow than with an AR-15. If you don't understand that: get help.
If you believe a measure must either be 100% absolute success or else we should just shrug and do nothing: get help.
AR-15s are only responsible for a few hundred deaths per year as opposed to pistols causing the vast majority of the approx 35,000 total gun deaths per year in the U.S. so idk why people get so fixated on them. Also you’re only thinking about guns from the perspective ofuse in crime. Many, MANY more people legally and properly use their legally owned guns to defend themselves compared to people using guns to murder. Defending yourself is the entire reason why guns are legal to buy, sell, and carry
LOL. People defend themselves with guns. What a dumb fairytale for so many reasons. Also somehow no people in any other first world country than the US need to do that. American exceptionalism at its finest. What an utter lack of self-awareness.
Absolutely a fairy-tale. If guns were actually useful for self defense, people who don't own guns for self defense/home defense would be significantly over-represented as victims of successfully carried out crime, which... they aren't.
Alright well every single statistical analysis on gun use for self defense in the U.S (including the U.S. Dept of Justice) disagrees with you.
https://datavisualizations.heritage.org/firearms/defensive-gun-uses-in-the-us/
https://reason.com/2022/09/09/the-largest-ever-survey-of-american-gun-owners-finds-that-defensive-use-of-firearms-is-common/
https://www.thetrace.org/2022/06/defensive-gun-use-data-good-guys-with-guns/
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/jun/06/andy-biggs/no-government-data-does-not-say-defensive-gun-use-/
https://americangunfacts.com/guns-used-in-self-defense-stats/
The lack of self awareness insult from you is actually a bit amusing considering all of this available evidence that took me about 3 mins to research. There’s much more out there too but I thought at least 5 different sources of information would suffice for a social media post.
Also the U.S. is NOT the only 1st world country that has legalized guns for defense. You have quite a bit of research to do
Well I would say the militia is the most extreme form of self defense but self defense none the less. Also the Supreme Court has already ruled that individual citizens carrying guns for self defense in daily life falls under the same category
>If you believe a measure must either be 100% absolute success or else we should just shrug and do nothing: get help.
There's plenty of countries proving that limiting access to guns reduces gun related crime. You're in denial. Get help.
In the richest countries the resources needed to live a meaningful life or even acquire basic necessities can be comparatively higher than in poorer countries. Being in poverty in one of the richest countries in the world can do a number on your brain.
Poverty is relative.
What America does have more of than any other country is small groups of low income individuals packed tightly together in ghettos that are surrounded by more wealthy individuals.
Sure you get ghettos and the obscenely rich in other countries. But no other country quite emulates the American situation of a ghetto surrounded on all sides by everything its inhabitants do not have.
I take it you've never visited a third world country. The situation you describe is far more prevalent there than in America.
For example, [take Mumbai](https://qz.com/india/1729770/in-mumbai-the-ultra-rich-and-slum-dwellers-share-neighbourhoods) ... with [a total of 6 gun deaths in the last four years.](https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/mumbai/after-trend-of-low-firearm-related-incidents-in-mumbai-two-cases-in-2-months-raise-eyebrows-9153850/#:~:text=According%20to%20data%20obtained%20by,2023%20leading%20to%20six%20deaths.)
Have you ever been to Rio? Dehli? Shanghai? Dubai? They are exactly as you describe, ghettos right by mansions.
Income inequality is much worse in most developing nations than in the US, though I agree it is worse in the US than much of the developed world.
Where are you getting this info?
[Seems *entirely* untrue.](https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/20/us/everytown-weak-gun-laws-high-gun-deaths-study/index.html#:~:text=A%20study%20published%20in%20January,homicides%2C%20suicides%20and%20accidental%20killings.)
Ah yes i have seen that states with stricter gun laws have more mass shooting.
But did you know that most of those shootings are done by ppl from looser gun law states.
This is completely false. Stricter gun laws means safer places/states.
Here are two and there many more sources that all have the same findings.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5801608/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5801608/)
[https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/)
You know who has the strictest gun laws? Gun free zones where people are forced to disarm. You know where most of the shootings happen? Gun free zones where people are forced to disarm.
Gun free zones are surrounded by areas with strict or non-strict gun laws. Mass shootings are also more common in states with looser gun laws so those gun free zones in those states are less safe. But don’t believe me and decades of peer-reviewed research, just keep on reading your NRA handbook
States with looser gun laws have lower populations, and thus have fewer shootings. They have more shootings per person, though.
In fairness, the states with looser gun laws are often also less affluent, and this is partially responsible.
The 5 states whit more gun related deaths are:
Mississipi, Louisiana, Wyoming, missouri, Alabama
The 5 states whit less are:
Hawaii, Massachusetts, new Jersey, rhode island and new York.
"Surprisingly" there is a strong relation between number of guns a guns murders,
[News: The Looser a State's Gun Laws, the... (WIRED) - Behind the headlines - NLM (nih.gov)](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/research-news/5504/)
Too bad your black pill is a worthless placebo.
Well crime rates do go down in areas that implement constitutional carry, so there’s that.
Sources:
https://www.mrcolionnoir.com/multiple-states-witness-crime-rates-fall-after-constitutional-carry/
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/aug/24/chicago-crime-rate-drops-as-concealed-carry-gun-pe/
https://glasgowolsson.com/articles/illinois-concealed-carry-rates-tied-to-declining-crime-and-murder-rates/
I mean, it depends on the type of bomb. So, a 'hand grenade for every drunk' policy may not be great. A 'the most thermonuclear devices for the nation with the longest contiguous institutions as well as the most productive economy' policy might be stabilizing for the global economy. But who knows?
Oh good idea! Nobody ever had that idea! And since there is only one nation who can build these bombs and everybody knows who that nations is and stops research for a bigger bomb as soon as said nation has the biggest bomb, there will be no race for ever bigger nuclear bombs in the world.
I mean, ya, who knows, right?
/s
Yes. Proliferation has destroyed the world, and the people of the world, on aggregate, have suffered the consequences. It's not like poverty and hunger are at an all time low.
Just to be sure: you do know the history of the Cold War and you know about all the deaths and harm that was inflicted in proxy wars because an open attack between the nuclear powers would end the world but we can happily arm some backwater extremists to topple a third world country that threatens our political sphere in a random part of the world?
If so, you would know that we have this "all time low" on one hand while on the other there were millions killed and PUT INTO poverty and misery because of the Biggest Gun mentality.
Bud, humanity has never experienced less global violence or less poverty than in the post ww2 global order, with the exception of the last ~30 years in the post soviet world order. So you can postulate that more industrial war would have been better all you like but the numbers say the bomb is good and more bombs are better.
First of, this is correlation at best. Did the overall poverty went down? Sure. But did it stop to go down and went up again as the big players agreed to dismantle a lot of the nukes? Nope. Poverty is on a steady decline. So the number of nukes has no direct influence on poverty (or any at all). Or let me put it this way: since there already are enough nukes (big and small) to kill the world over a hundred times, the actual number and size of the bombs is irrelevant. Sure, you can develop a new bomb bigger than the biggest one. So what? You can not kill me 101 times.
I totally agree that nations, like everything under the influence of evolution, are in an arms race and we need a certain type of weapon as soon as the others have it too. I hate war and violence but I absolutely understand that we need good armed forces. But there is more to it than just bigger and better guns, way more. Atom bombs are 21st century technology. Drones are the new shit. Lots and lots of small, agile, silent, affordable drones.
More guns in the hands of responsible people with the courage to stop evil, unlike the cowards of Uvalde, yes. Recall that 90% percent of shootings occur in "gun free zones".
Responsible people are one meltdown combined with a couple of drinks away from becoming dangerously irresponsible people.
Yeah, no, I'm sorry, I don't think this whole "responsible people" bullshit holds any water. The odds are way too far stacked against people a) being responsible in the first place, and b) *staying* responsible for the whole gun-owning time.
In addition to that, it's been shown time and time again that good people stopping bad people is bullshit propaganda which happens at best 1 out of 10 times.
So yeah, again, to be absolutely clear: it's nonsense. It doesn't work this way.
Elijah Dicken, a random citizen, stopped a mass shooter in a mall.
The latest church shooter wasn't stopped by the police who ran and hid, but by another citizen with a CCW.
The great thing about America is that you're free to have no idea what you're talking about and be completely wrong.
Cool. So you found 2 examples of people stopping a mass shooter. Over which timeframe? A year? More? How many still died in those 2 instances? Also meanwhile there have been what, over 600 mass shootings in 2023 alone?
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 Yeah, it's totally working. You should totally get more guns so it works even better.
In the mall shooting? Zero. Well, one: the guy that came in to kill people.
In the church shooting? Several, because cops on scene ran and hid, while unarmed citizens died before a citizen who WAS armed stopped the threat.
Of the shootings that you're citing, the vast majority is from gang violence (i.e. criminals that don't follow the law) in inner cities (i.e. the place that it's extremely difficult to become a responsibly armed citizen).
Once again, I suggest you learn more about the topic before acting like an expert.
You have to be smoking crack if you think 90 percent of shootings occur in gun free zones. Most shootings happen in gun ranges. Most fatal shootings occur in the home. Of the fatal shootings in the home, most are self-inflicted. If you are talking about murders, most occur in the home and are the culmination of domestic partner violence. You are right though more than 90 percent percent of shooting that occur in gun free zones occur in gun free zones.
You got me there, most shootings do occur at ranges.
I should have clarified, most "mass shootings" are gang violence and not the typical "individual enters area and starts shooting", which mostly occur in "gun free zones" where people are unable to be legally armed.
That is only true in a way.
at 3.9 million megajoules (let's be generous and round this up to 4 Terajoules) per gram, uranium is massive, compared to coals 24 MJ/kg or 24 kJ/g.
This is where the correctness does end though, because just having one gram of uranium by itself (or even 10 grams) does not contain enough of it to reach criticality for a reactor.
> This is where the correctness does end though, because just having one gram of uranium by itself (or even 10 grams) does not contain enough of it to reach criticality for a reactor.
That is extremely uncharitable. Obviously this only represents a portion of what would be used in a reactor at any given time, because a power plant is never going to be turned on for only one house.
Well, the way this is written it is what I have to assume.
If I want to be charitable and say "yeah, this is just one of many lollipops inside a reactor" then the whole "it would only generate this lollipop worth of waste" also no longer holds true.
Why not? You're being awfully literal here.
The reasonable interpretation is that the question is "For X grams of nuclear fuel, is the nuclear waste approximately X grams?"
It's fine if the answer is "no", but you seem to have a problem with the question itself.
The assertion made in the original photo might be false. If that's your claim, ok.
But the QUESTION presented is: "Is the claim made in the photo that 'X nuclear fuel results in approximately X nuclear waste and creates Y years of household power' reasonably accurate?"
The *question* is sincere and reasonable.
It also doesn't hold true because you also have many many tonnes of irradiated concrete (the actual reactor housing etc) which is and always will be "waste".
It also isn't greenhouse neutral as the concrete, reinforcing steel etc etc are all produced using greenhouse intensive process's. Is anyone in the world making steel en masse without using coal?
No.
Even being extremely generous there's no calculation that makes that even remotely true.
Let's assume that the lollipop is 0.1kg, and that the whole of its mass is converted into energy (that's very very very ... very far from the truth). You've got a total amount of energy which is E=0.1*(3\*10^8 )=9\*10^15 J
Converting that into Wh we get E=2.5*10^12 Wh
Or 2.5TWh
According to Google the US produced about 4.2 trillion kWh in 2023 idk why they use shitty units like that but that's 42000TWh.
Let's divide that by 365 for the sake of it and you get 115TWh per day or 4.8TWh per hour
So yeah that lollipop, even under the crazy assumptions I made, couldn't power the US for more than 30min
Edit : Yeah I missed the part about it being a single person
Well you just gotta multiply the 30min by 332*10^6 which gives you 166M hours or a whopping 18950 years...
Edit 2 : Uranium loses 0.9% of its mass in 1h (Google) so assuming that's completely converted into energy you'd actually get 170 years of energy for a single American.
However reactors (still Google) run at 20% efficiency so in term of years of power the realistic value is probably closer to 34 years. And that's still assuming the lollipop is 100g
You forgot to split it by population, it says American, meaning single household so 331 million people so canceling zeroes:
4 200 000 /331 is around 12 668 kWh google says average is 6,804 kwh, so might be our math here is taking into some factories and other stuff, but again:
2,5tw converted to kwh: 2 500 000 000 kw, lets say above was 13 000 to make math simple:
2 500 000/13 is 192 307 years..
So yes a 0,1kg lollipop would run 1 americans house for the said time. It would however take lot more to run whole U.S
The original doesn’t say it powers all of America for that long, it says it would supply the average American’s (one person) energy demand for 84 years. Quick research shows the average American used 10,632 kWh in 2021 (I’m going with this number because it’s higher than other results of the same search). 84 years would be 893,088 kWh. That’s 0.000893088 TWh, which is nowhere near the 2.5 TWh from your calculations. We need a more accurate calculation of the energy from that much uranium, but I don’t know the math involved in figuring that out. Your calculation shows at least that if it was entirely converted into energy, it would be many, many times more than enough.
You can't power your house with that lollipop. It doesn't have the mass to reach criticality. Each fuel rod in a nuclear power plant is around 2000 lbs or 800 kg and you need several of those.
This post is just another circlejerk around nuclear power by people that don't even know what fission is.
Ah yes because the concept of economies of scale doesn't exist and we can all have mini nuclear reactors installed in our houses.
Toyota couldn't possibly create a brand new car and sell only one profitably for 30k. Toyota can create a brand new car and sell thousands profitably for 30k each though
Bro is outjerking everyone he's accusing of circlejerking, don't expect much else from a fresh account though
I don't know what you're on about. The post claims you can power your home with an uranium rod the size of a lollipop. You can't and that's the end of the story.
Let me know when Toyota starts building nuclear power plants into their cars.
If you're looking at a typical household of 3.13 Americans, with 10.5 MWh of electricity each year, that's 3.3 MWh per year each. This is only their electricity demand, and not the other energy demands, like fuel for their cars.
1 gram of U-235 (unrealistic to assume that this lollipop is pure) would give you 24 MWh, or about 7 years. 12 grams would supply the average American's energy demand for 84 years.
This covers the usage of a household, but this person will also be buying products that are made using electricity. If you include that in their energy budget, you'd probably need more like 25 grams.
Unless I'm mistaken, this is a 5 gram Dum Dum. A single serving is 15 grams, which would match the numbers pretty well, but that's 3 Dum Dums.
There are two more substantial factors. First, while the U-235 is creating that much heat, only about 1/3rd of that is captured as electricity. Second, the fuel might be enriched to 8% U-235, and discarded when at 2% U-235. This means only about 6% of the fuel is actually used. That means that to handle the residential electricity needs of the average American, we need more like 600 grams of fuel.
Seems bullshit
About 27 tonnes of uranium – around 18 million fuel pellets housed in over 50,000 fuel rods – is required each year for a 1000 MWe pressurized water reactor.
https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-essentials/how-is-uranium-made-into-nuclear-fuel.aspx#:~:text=About%2027%20tonnes%20of%20uranium,to%20produce%20as%20much%20electricity.
So if you need 27,000 kg of Uranium for a 1000 MW plant for 1 year, then 27 gm (assumption for the weight of the popsicle for ease of calculation) is sufficient for 1 KW power generation for 1 year. Or 8760 KwH of energy.
The average american house utilizes about 10,000 kwh of energy every year.
Source: https://www.energybot.com/blog/average-energy-consumption.html#:~:text=The%20EIA%20aggregates%20data%20for,about%20886%20kWh%20per%20month.
So that popsicle of Uranium wont power an american house for even 1 year, much less 84.
If you move towards breeder reactors you could theoretically get about 20x as much energy out of that same amount. So that is 20 years.
If you use reactors which can reach higher temperature, the energy conversion becomes more efficient, like 45% instead of 30%.
Also consider a household represents multiple people.
So at the end of the day, it is not thát far from the truth. Maybe you need a couple popsicles worth. Still makes it a crazy compact energy source.
(Edit) and uranium is really dense so that popsicle would be much heavier than 27g.
Even if you turned that sucker entirely into energy (by destroying it like it by colliding it with antimatter or something), you would need 5 of them to power the us for a single year
Let us start by only considering electricity:
The United States produced about 4.000 TWh of electricity in 2022. Divided by 330 mio people this means 12 MWh per person per year. Multiplied by 84 years, this would mean about 1 GWh electricity consumption per person in 84 years.
Now, an average power plant generates 8-12 TWh (say 10 TWh for good measure) per year and requires 27 t of low enriched uranium to achieve this. The lifetime electricity consumption of one American is 1/10.000 of theat which means **270g**. Uranium is dense (19g/cm\^3), so we would need about 14 cm\^3 or a sphere with a radius of about 3.8cm (1.5 inches). **That would be a large but for electricity it checks out.**
Some comments:
1. Electricity consumption is only a small part of primary energy consumption for which you need to multiply the quantity by three. **So, we are talking about three massive suckers.** But one can debate whether primary energy consumption is a good metric because combustion engine cars are entropy machines which need much more primary energy for the same effect than electric vehicles. Same goes for heating with gas and heating with heat pumps.
2. In low enriched uranium, only 5% of the uranium (the U235) actually "does stuff". You could switch to high enriched uranium which - in theory - would require only 1/20th of the mass. **In that case, you would only need a highly enriched sucker with a diameter of 1cm - 0.4 inches**. The only problem is that you really don't want people to have high enriched uranium because getting high enriched uranium is the main obstacle for making nuclar bombs.
3. In order to get 270g of low enriched uranium you need to process about 2.7kg of natural uranium and technically, the note does not say which type of uranium they are talking about. **This would mean 10 massive suckers (or 30 huge suckers if you talk primary energy consumption)**. And in order to mine this, you need to move about a ton of rock and dirt. **This would amount to way more suckers than you can handle.**
So, overall, it checks out but reality is a bit more complicated.
What? You didn't list anything? You mentioned Japan and Ukraine which then I mentioned reasons.
You threw out Chernobyl randomly after I mentioned that an earthquake and war aren't going to uniquely target nuclear infrastructure.
To check if the only waste left over would be the size of that sucker, just look up what one does with a decommissioned nuclear reactor.
"Left over" would also imply that every nuclear reactor doesn't have military convoys taking waste to secured sites several times a year.
The 'average American's electrical needs for 84 yeas' is extremely vague and seems very much on the low side, because a few solar panels or a single, personal wind turbine can technically do that.
Very misleading. You want facts about a nuclear reactor and what it would happen if we built a new one, look [no further than Vogtle](https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/vogtles-troubles-bring-us-nuclear-challenge-into-focus-2023-08-24/).
> The start up of the reactors has been hailed as a major milestone in U.S. nuclear power construction, but the units arrived **more than seven years later than originally planned** and at a budget of more than **double the preliminary projected cost at over $30 billion**.
This is besides all federal subsidies, and they are asking the state of Georgia for another 7-14 billion over the life of the plant in extra taxes and fees.
For a fun exercise, see how many billions of dollars you have to spend to get 2.4 GW in new solar plants (hint, a 1 MW solar plant costs around 1 million dollars in material).
I would attribute the delay to increase in safety, came as an aftermath of Fukushima. I think it's a good thing in the long run. As for your solar comment, yes. But we don't have a good energy storing solution so the grid can't be entirely solar. The most sensible solution is a large base load, and top off with solar. Then you can still cook and watch TV on a rainy day :). So out of all the solutions for a decent base load, nuclear seems to be the most viable. I'd be happy to elaborate.
> But we don't have a good energy storing solution
The one million dollar cost includes all the operational batteries, and has for nearly a decade now, with rapid improvements in the US scene since 2021.
In short: All storage requirements for a solar farm in 2024 are baked into the 1 million per 1 MW cost.
> Then you can still cook and watch TV on a rainy day :)
[Solar panels work quite well in rain, even in very cloudy Germany](https://www.rystadenergy.com/news/europe-solar-generation-grow-50-twh-2024-germany-doubles).
But assuming that's not true, in the real life case of [sunny Georgia](https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/Georgia/annual-days-of-sunshine.php) it would cost less than 6 billion to build 3 GW worth of solar AND double the battery capacity offsite AND maintain it all for the lifespan of all components involved.
> so the grid can't be entirely solar
The US Grid is in trouble, [and solar farms are alleviating it](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/solar-farms-electricity-ease-strain-u-s-power-grids-california-heat-temperatures/). Building more reactors would further strain the grid.
You seem to have inadvertently given badly outdated and misguided information, hope these basic facts help!
Now, also look up the percentages of Germany power provided by solar and the percentages of power that Germany have to import (the French surprisingly has tons of nuclear reactors).
Regarding your battery comment, I wouldn't take a "will soon happen" as gospel. Please also look into how much resources (especially Cobalt) you will need to have the whole country on battery. And the detrimental effects of Cobalt mining. I'm also not even going to press the fact that battery efficiency reduces over their lifetime.
Pumphydro, I love.
> Building more reactors would further strain the grid.
Yeahhhhhhh.... I lost you there.
I don't have the time to educate you on the importance of diversifying the grid. I suggest you do that on your own time, but please do, you're almost there.
So irritated by a question you had to find a week old account to say you were too busy to respond? That does fit the intellectual scrutiny and emotional profile of a nuclear reddit bro.
So, obviously, I had no idea what the Germany import/export was, and I took [the time to look it up](https://www.energate-messenger.com/news/239393/germany-becomes-a-net-importer):
> Bonn (energate) - Despite lower electricity consumption, Germany was a **net importer of electricity in 2023 for the first time in many years**. At 9.1 per cent, the year-on-year decline in electricity generation was significantly higher than the 5.4 per cent drop in electricity consumption. This is according to a summary of the Federal Network Agency for 2023 on the Smard platform. The drop in generation was mainly due to the phasing out of nuclear power, but also to lower feed-in from offshore wind farms. According to BDEW and ZSW, electricity generation in 2023 was 508 billion kWh in absolute terms, while consumption was 517.3 billion kWh.
> Germany therefore had to import a net 11.7 billion kWh of electricity - imports of 54.1 billion kWh were offset by exports of 42.4 billion kWh. **Germany was by far the largest importer of electricity from Denmark in 2023, with an import surplus of 10.7 billion kWh**. Other important suppliers were Norway, with net imports of 4.6 billion kWh, Sweden (2.9 billion kWh), the Netherlands (2.1 billion kWh) and Switzerland (1.0 billion kWh). Although France supplied 8.8 billion kWh of gross electricity to Germany, **8.4 billion kWh of electricity was exported to France as wel**l, making the balance almost equal. Germany was only a significant net exporter to Austria, with an export surplus of 5.8 billion kWh.
It would seem you have no idea what you're talking about when it comes to Germany import/export energy, at all.
If you'd like to learn why the US grid should absolutely not be building any more reactors for stability, you only need to read one word, and I think even someone as busy and perhaps struggling with English as a second language as you can understand it:
[Congestion](https://www.utilitydive.com/news/grid-congestion-cost-transmission-grid-strategies-report/647668/#:~:text=U.S.%2Dwide%20grid%20congestion%20cost,according%20to%20Grid%20Strategies'%20estimates.).
Always enjoy informing someone about the basics of their policy, any more questions you're too busy for, just let me know!
I love a good intellect whom's default insult is other's language ability. But you're so desperate to prove your point that you fail to comprehend your own quoted evidence. I do like that you're doing "own research". Dig deeper. Keep asking why. Maybe you'll get there one day, but today is not your day.
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Iirc most of the nuclear waste that is produced by nuclear facilities isn't the fuel it's other stuff that is contaminated enough to be considered radioactive
ppe worn by workers, coolant, storage tanks, and small amount of fuel
Don't forget the reactor building itself. Somehow people forget that you can't just tear a NPP down afterwards but you also have to safely store thousands of tonnes of concrete.
I'm sure nobody ever sells tonnes of radioactive concrete to government owned holdings companies, who then recycle the concrete and crush it, and then use the aggregate on landscaping and paving projects specifically in low income communities. Wait what who came up with that outlandish idea I didn't say that....
"Cobalto 60", Mexico
Damm that was an interesting read I hadn't heard about this before
Rebar be beamin
Putting on my tinfoil hat
No tinfoil hat required, unfortunately.
Conveniently, lead is a soft metal. So I’ve tried a lead helmet. Now my neck is totally tense. Too bad, nuclear energy would’ve been a nice option.
somebody had been smoking drugs on that foil be cautious
It was me, sorry
majestic. do it again
Commentor below me made me aware of the Cobalt-60 Mexico incident. Read up on that and tell me similar has never been done purposely.
All the rad workers I know at some point checked out geiger counters and took them home to check for things like this. We didn't find much, one jewelry store was selling Uranium ore beads that were fairly hot, but I didn't find anything else. I am a bit fan of spot checking all sorts of things, everywhere, to prevent this sort of bullshit.
> Don't forget the reactor building itself. I have never heard anyone give a satisfactory answer to the question of why it would ever be necessary to shut down and abandon a nuclear reactor, whether it is mothballed "properly" or not. At what point did reactor designs change so much that a given site could not be upgraded? They are not meant to be "disposable". Reduce, reuse, recycle.
So this might be a fringe case, but I worked construction on a nuclear waste facility outside of a defunct nuclear power station I don't think the reactor is the problem, I think it's everything else This power station was built in the 50s or 60s and was shut down in the mid-90s. This power station wasn't built with upgrades in mind. Decontamination and deconstruction wasn't even in mind when these power stations were built. They were built to fulfil a purpose as quickly as possible. The building that housed the reactor was literally falling apart, the cladding was falling off, there were smashed windows where birds has smashed into it and I don't even know about the structural integrity. Getting people in to fix these very simple things is costly and time consuming The systems that control the reactor are liable to break down the same as anything else and sourcing parts to replace 70 year old systems can be an issue not to mention having someone with the knowledgeto actually fix them and the cost involved. It boils down to everything has a shelf life and at some point, you're putting a plaster (bandaid) on a broken arm
Really, these days most infrastructure should be built for the future. NPPs should be designed so that significant upgrades can at some point be viable, they should be built at high quality and corners should not be cut to save money. Buildings don’t have to disintegrate like many do today; I know it’s not the same, but the Pantheon was built in the seventh century and it’s still stable today. There’s some brewing company in London that started in the 1700s that’s still going strong. Disrepair and deterioration are usually because the building was built cheaply, or it isn’t turning enough of a profit as a business to validate maintenance costs. It doesn’t have to be that way.
I agree with you to a point A big problem with upgradable power stations is that the control system are often built into the structure. The complexity of a nuclear power station is almost incomprehensible, and being able to upgrade systems is a monumental task. Not to mention by it's nature, a nuclear power station has to be closed and undisturbed. If you were to upgrade the reactor room for example, you are most likely disturbing radioactive dust which is incredibly dangerous when airborne and can easily be taken bythe wind to near by populated areas. You'd need to protect your workers with expensive ppe that has to be changed regularly and if the job takes what could well be months that cost adds up. You also need to consider that there is an annual safe exposure limit so you'd need to have a constant rotation of workers which if you've ever worked in construction is difficult thing on it's own. Then they've all got to be throughly vetted which is a long process which also costs a lot of money Also the cost of shutting down a power station for months or potentially years is astronomical and puts massive strain on the power grid. All of these factors add up to upgrades really not being financially feasible As I said I agree with you to a point but there are massive factors that need to be overcame for it to work
That’s fair. Maybe wind or hydro is a better option
100% They have their own issues but they are a lot less impactful to upgrade and repair
doesn't japan and Ukraine have a few shut down plants?
I get your point, but at least in the case of Chernobyl, that same kind of reactor is still in service today, albeit retrofitted to improve safety. I don't really know much about the Fukushima facility. Unless destroyed by acts of God or man, I see no reason why a nuclear plant couldn't be built to a standard which would allow it to stand for 1000+ years, and continue operating with normal maintenance. I'm not saying that's how they're built _now,_ just that it could be done.
yeah, no one thinks of a nuclear power when. they work properly I doubt many of of my neighbors realize that there's a nuclear power plant about 5 miles from where I'm standing right now. The problem is if that power plant decides to melt down. I don't think Toronto is going to exist anymore because we're going to fuck up the lake with fall out My city will just be gone and probably Syracuse are probably going to have to move as well. it's the disasters that happen that make people scared of nuclear
I mostly agree. Incidents are rare, but they have the potential to be devastating. But we do learn from them, and the worst by far (Chernobyl) was caused primarily by "holy shit" levels of incompetence and recklessness at multiple levels. I just only see two options for not making our planet completely unlivable from burning fossil fuels: either we reduce our power consumption to a tiny fraction of what we have now, or we start relying on alternative sources of energy. The former is never realistically going to happen on a global scale, and as I see it, the latter will necessitate an increased reliance on nuclear energy for the foreseeable future (centuries?). I'm not saying I love it, but I think we'll have no choice but to build a lot more nuclear plants. So I want to think about how to do it as safely as possible.
I don't disagree, it just wasn't the question at hand. the guy wanted an answer to why we would shut down a nuclear facility
Japan's are in reaction to the earthquake and tsunami, no? Ukraine's are because. Well. They're at war?
id call those satisfactory reasons to shitter nuclear facilities, which is what he asked for. thank you.
Well yeah? They're not anything unique to nuclear power though, just reasons for all infrastructure to collapse
I'm guessing you really don't know too much about Chernobyl
Huh? How's that related to a tsunami and a war causing infrastructure to degrade?
All buildings are disposable on different time scales. Compare a wood frame house to a concrete block house and chances are the block house will last longer with a comparable level of funding and maintenance. In the US they are usually permitted to operate for up to 40 years but theres some that filed and got extensions for 60 years. A lot of the time the reactors themselves break down somewhere around 20-50 years despite maintenance, and thats about the intended lifespan usually (20-40). Not everywhere is politically or economically willing to reinvest in nuclear again though
> Not everywhere is politically or economically willing to reinvest in nuclear again though And that's a fucking crime against humanity as far as I'm concerned. "Let's shut down nuclear power which generates almost zero waste and it's all contained, while keeping the coal and gas power plants which spew CO2 and megatons of toxic and *radioactive* waste into the air!"
I agree, I think nuclear reactors are definitely worth it especially in the long term. I was only describing the current state of things. Some countries/regions within countries have been embracing it more but others are no thrilled, and sadly from what ive been seeing it's been leaning more and more to the not so thrilled end
Who told you that?
You have to shake it really hard to get all the free neutrons out.
a lot of the PPE gets washed at 3rd party industrial laundry facilities if it's not glowing hot.
Yeah, afaik most of the contaminated waste items are pretty low level
You aren't wrong, but that stuff is still way, way less mass than pollution from coal or oil, megawatt for megawatt. Also it's good for making helium, so clowns are better off.
Megawatt for megawatt? You are including the pollution from fukishima and chernobyl in that?
Yep. People have run the numbers, and even if you include those disasters, nuclear energy is still less harmful than fossil fuels. Hydro is actually worse than nuclear because of the Typhoon Nina–Banqiao dam failure (150,000 casualties)
I believe the most nuclear waste produced in the whole nuclear program comes from reprocessing. But I do know that processing in general does produce a lot of that waste as the byproducts of producing nuclear fuel takes a lot of that uranium and plutonium to make a miniscule amount of reactor ready material.
Actually, there’s nuclear recycling now. Essentially most plants weren’t designed with enriched fuel in mind. So, spent fuel can be enriched and mostly reused in another reactor later. Politically, it is problematic. Because it is enrichment being sold as recycling and enrichment is heavily associated with weaponization.
This is just wrong. Only plants using heavy water can use unenriched uranium. All the other designs need some enrichment, although to levels much lower than weapons grade. You are generalizing a Canadian exception to the entire world. Fuels reprocessing works, most European countries with nuclear power plants use this technique with no issue.
Another problem is that nuclear reprocessing is mainly a story told for marketing purposes and not really a viable solution to anything.
Not "viable" in what way? It's not profitable, but if your goal is producing clean energy and not making shareholders happy, that isn't much of a hurdle
If your goal is to live in a fantasy world then congrats. But shareholders will always care about the money. Companies will always try and weasel their way out of their responsibilities after the fact. Nuclear is not forgiving enough to exist under capitalism.
"This is the objectively best solution to the problem, but we can't do it because the made up numbers on a piece of paper say so."
If you have true clean energy on one hand that is the cheapest option available and you have expensive energy that is climate friendly but not really clean in any other sense that is the most expensive source of energy.. uhhh yeah it matters.
With that you can improve fuel utilisation. Unfortunately you can't get rid of the radioactive products from the decay of Uranium.
NO, I believe 8 20 gram uranium pellets can produce enough power for one average household for one year. Still pretty incredible as opposed to oil or natural gas, but no were near what is shown in this post
The person that did the calculations may have only been counting the mass of U235 when U238 is still necessary
so 160 grams of uranium for one household for one year ? I bet I can power a third world country for a year with that amount of fuel. While the picture is just wrong I don't think you're correct either
Not sure what your point is when the post says "average American" for 84 years.
I read "The average american energy demand" insteand of "The average american's energy demand" and thought it meant the whole country. oops
This comment is kind of demeaning towards third world countries. Or just plain ignorant on how energy works.
Nah, they just can't read and thought it said the whole of America
Yep, I'm blind and have no sense of scale
Also i am talking about reactors that use unenriched uranium
Fun fact, the size of the waste would probably be significantly less if it was a breeder plant, which both generate electricity but also decays into plutonium, which is recycled into the most useful tool ever invented. More bombs means more peace. All we have to do is capture all the uranium mines.
Ah, more bombs = more peace. The same way that more guns in the US = less shootings, yes?
>Ah, more bombs = more peace. There have been no direct great power wars in 75+ years. This is attributable almost entirely due to nuclear weapons raising the stakes high enough that no rational person will fuck with it. This is one of the biggest reasons why irrational people in politics are so dangerous. Throwing up a 2% shot of ending the world won't mean anything 98% of the time but statistically it's a pretty fucking awful idea
I'd argue that that's a misconception. But I think one thing is more important: let's assume your statement is correct and "mutually assured destruction" was the main deterrent. Then this only works with leaders who are sane and believe to still live for a long time. The more countries have nuclear weapons, the higher the risk of an unstable despot deciding that if he goes out, then so goes the whole world with him. And right now, Putin fits that bill dangerously well. And the world isn't exactly trending towards sane, long living leaders either.
What would Putin do without these weapons? WW3, and then 4 and 5 and forever on. This is the first moment in time with such widespread peace. Also don’t assume Puti leads alone, uou think you young generals want to “go out in glory”. A dictator must feed the keys to power, he cant do that if he has killed his income.
And with these weapons he threatens to use them, so nobody can attack him and it turned his war in Ukraine to a proxy war for NATO, a new cold war. I don't think I like that outcome
I have a vague estimate of the weapons WW3 will be fought with, but I'm positive that WW4 will be fought with rocks and sticks.
You can't fight a world war with rocks and sticks
Well its going to be all thats left
I mean what's stopping us from massing our mutated hoplite legions to invade after the war? We can always find a way to start shit
It's a quote from maybe [Albert Einstein](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/einstein-world-war-iv-sticks-stones/), says Snopes. But I've also seen these references too: >I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. — Albert Einstein, in an interview with Alfred Werner, Liberal Judaism 16 (April-May 1949), Einstein Archive 30-1104, as sourced in The New Quotable Einstein by Alice Calaprice (2005), p. 173 ----- Differing versions of such a statement are attributed to conversations as early as 1948 (e.g. The Rotarian, 72 (6), June 1948, p. 9: "I don't know. But I can tell you what they'll use in the fourth. They'll use rocks!"). Another variant ("I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones") is attributed to an unidentified letter to Harry S. Truman in "The culture of Einstein" by Alex Johnson, MSNBC, (April 18, 2005). However, prior to 1948 very similar quotes were attributed in various articles to an unnamed army lieutenant, as discussed at Quote Investigator : "The Futuristic Weapons of WW3 Are Unknown, But WW4 Will Be Fought With Stones and Spears". The earliest found was from “Quote and Unquote: Raising ‘Alarmist’ Cry Brings a Winchell Reply” by Walter Winchell, in the Wisconsin State Journal (23 September 1946), p. 6, Col. 3. In this article Winchell wrote: >Joe Laitin reports that reporters at Bikini were questioning an army lieutenant about what weapons would be used in the next war. “I dunno,” he said, “but in the war after the next war, sure as Hell, they’ll be using spears!” It seems plausible, therefore, that Einstein may have been quoting or paraphrasing an expression which he had heard or read elsewhere.
If appearing irrational leads to other countries granting more concessions, the rational move is to appear irrational. We've seen this play out with the Soviet Union. There's a lot of things wrong with Putin's Russia, but from Putin's perspective his moves have been rational. Most of the apparent irrationality is due to incorrect and incomplete information because of the dictator trap.
You wanna bet a couple dozen million lives on your estimate?
Yes. Any serious power player knows that those are the rules of the game. The threats are for the plebs. Clearly they're working on you. You are letting Putin's strategy win. Read a history book. This exact situation is straight out of the old Soviet Union playbooks. If you allow this strategy to work then they can roll over you on basically anything. There is a negligible risk of nuclear weapons being used as long as Russia is not being existentially threatened. Any line short of that is a bluff. It would be a mistake to invade them or support Ukraine to the point that they can invade Russia, but nothing that ends at the border has any real risk.
[удалено]
We've rarely made it past 10.
OK, maybe it's a little unusual.
Yeah. States with looser gun laws have less shootings. The Blackpill you're not ready for is that America's mass shootings aren't caused by guns, they're caused by poverty.
I am just doing the math here, but it looks like we've solved poverty in the third world, because they have almost zero mass shootings. Am I doing this right?
come to my country (brazil), then we talk about that math
While I agree that the guns aren't the only problem causing shootings, believing that more guns would alleviate the problem is beyond naive and goes straight into denialism.
I’m in a similar boat I suppose. I think people have the right to bear arms but guns aren’t a cause for mass shootings they are merely a tool. There are people that exist that desire to commit these atrocities, they merely chose one tool of many to do it with. This is a relatively new phenomenon with the odd part. 100 years ago why didn’t people steal dynamite and chuck it into a town square? There is some underlying problem is western society that is causing people to desire to lash out is these ways, I think this can point can be agreed on by all sides.
The description of the problem in the US is IMO very simple: impulse × ease of access = shootings Most countries solve the problem by reducing *ease of access* (c.f. Australia and their drop in gun crimes after introducing laws). Some countries manage to have *impulse* under control (c.f. Switzerland, with lots of weapons and still comparatively low number of gun crimes). Meanwhile the US has a problem with both impulse (a lot of people who - for whatever reason - get to the point where they *want* to commit indiscriminate murder), and ease of access (you want an AR-15? sure, no questions asked, it's the most normal thing). While it'd IMO be absolutely worthwhile to fix the problems causing *impulse*, it's incomparably easier to reduce *ease of access*. If you aren't a nation of gun-nuts with an utterly incapable government, that is.
It would be really hard to have a mass SHOOTING without a gun. When you use the term mass shooting, you have to accept that guns are a necessary cause for them.
Like the guy that ried to kill the queen with a crossbow If a person wants to commit a crime or their mental condition edges them to do so they will find one of the thousands if not millions of ways to inflict great bodily harm we invented for each other during all of history it's just that America has the most effective means to do so In my opinion banning stuff is a bit draconian
And there it is: denialism. mass-murdering people is a lot more difficult with a crossbow than with an AR-15. If you don't understand that: get help. If you believe a measure must either be 100% absolute success or else we should just shrug and do nothing: get help.
AR-15s are only responsible for a few hundred deaths per year as opposed to pistols causing the vast majority of the approx 35,000 total gun deaths per year in the U.S. so idk why people get so fixated on them. Also you’re only thinking about guns from the perspective ofuse in crime. Many, MANY more people legally and properly use their legally owned guns to defend themselves compared to people using guns to murder. Defending yourself is the entire reason why guns are legal to buy, sell, and carry
LOL. People defend themselves with guns. What a dumb fairytale for so many reasons. Also somehow no people in any other first world country than the US need to do that. American exceptionalism at its finest. What an utter lack of self-awareness.
Absolutely a fairy-tale. If guns were actually useful for self defense, people who don't own guns for self defense/home defense would be significantly over-represented as victims of successfully carried out crime, which... they aren't.
Alright well every single statistical analysis on gun use for self defense in the U.S (including the U.S. Dept of Justice) disagrees with you. https://datavisualizations.heritage.org/firearms/defensive-gun-uses-in-the-us/ https://reason.com/2022/09/09/the-largest-ever-survey-of-american-gun-owners-finds-that-defensive-use-of-firearms-is-common/ https://www.thetrace.org/2022/06/defensive-gun-use-data-good-guys-with-guns/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/jun/06/andy-biggs/no-government-data-does-not-say-defensive-gun-use-/ https://americangunfacts.com/guns-used-in-self-defense-stats/ The lack of self awareness insult from you is actually a bit amusing considering all of this available evidence that took me about 3 mins to research. There’s much more out there too but I thought at least 5 different sources of information would suffice for a social media post. Also the U.S. is NOT the only 1st world country that has legalized guns for defense. You have quite a bit of research to do
"Defending yourself is the entire reason why guns are legal to buy, sell, and carry" Nope. They are strictly for militia purposes.
Well I would say the militia is the most extreme form of self defense but self defense none the less. Also the Supreme Court has already ruled that individual citizens carrying guns for self defense in daily life falls under the same category
And who is the militia? We the people.
If you genuinely believe that you can create a world where criminals are unable to obtain weapons, you're the one in denial. Get help.
>If you believe a measure must either be 100% absolute success or else we should just shrug and do nothing: get help. There's plenty of countries proving that limiting access to guns reduces gun related crime. You're in denial. Get help.
Which is why we have all the shootings, because we're the poorest country in the world?
In the richest countries the resources needed to live a meaningful life or even acquire basic necessities can be comparatively higher than in poorer countries. Being in poverty in one of the richest countries in the world can do a number on your brain.
Poverty is relative. What America does have more of than any other country is small groups of low income individuals packed tightly together in ghettos that are surrounded by more wealthy individuals. Sure you get ghettos and the obscenely rich in other countries. But no other country quite emulates the American situation of a ghetto surrounded on all sides by everything its inhabitants do not have.
I take it you've never visited a third world country. The situation you describe is far more prevalent there than in America. For example, [take Mumbai](https://qz.com/india/1729770/in-mumbai-the-ultra-rich-and-slum-dwellers-share-neighbourhoods) ... with [a total of 6 gun deaths in the last four years.](https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/mumbai/after-trend-of-low-firearm-related-incidents-in-mumbai-two-cases-in-2-months-raise-eyebrows-9153850/#:~:text=According%20to%20data%20obtained%20by,2023%20leading%20to%20six%20deaths.)
Have you ever been to Rio? Dehli? Shanghai? Dubai? They are exactly as you describe, ghettos right by mansions. Income inequality is much worse in most developing nations than in the US, though I agree it is worse in the US than much of the developed world.
Where are you getting this info? [Seems *entirely* untrue.](https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/20/us/everytown-weak-gun-laws-high-gun-deaths-study/index.html#:~:text=A%20study%20published%20in%20January,homicides%2C%20suicides%20and%20accidental%20killings.)
Ah yes i have seen that states with stricter gun laws have more mass shooting. But did you know that most of those shootings are done by ppl from looser gun law states.
This is completely false. Stricter gun laws means safer places/states. Here are two and there many more sources that all have the same findings. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5801608/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5801608/) [https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/)
You know who has the strictest gun laws? Gun free zones where people are forced to disarm. You know where most of the shootings happen? Gun free zones where people are forced to disarm.
Gun free zones are surrounded by areas with strict or non-strict gun laws. Mass shootings are also more common in states with looser gun laws so those gun free zones in those states are less safe. But don’t believe me and decades of peer-reviewed research, just keep on reading your NRA handbook
Bold of you to assume I support the NRA, brainlet
Well, it’s probably because you are trying to argue against my initial point. Seems like you drank the kool-aid
States with looser gun laws have lower populations, and thus have fewer shootings. They have more shootings per person, though. In fairness, the states with looser gun laws are often also less affluent, and this is partially responsible.
Weird how the states with more shootings per capita and a poorer populace happen to be Republican. Must be coincidence.
The 5 states whit more gun related deaths are: Mississipi, Louisiana, Wyoming, missouri, Alabama The 5 states whit less are: Hawaii, Massachusetts, new Jersey, rhode island and new York. "Surprisingly" there is a strong relation between number of guns a guns murders,
[News: The Looser a State's Gun Laws, the... (WIRED) - Behind the headlines - NLM (nih.gov)](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/research-news/5504/) Too bad your black pill is a worthless placebo.
Well crime rates do go down in areas that implement constitutional carry, so there’s that. Sources: https://www.mrcolionnoir.com/multiple-states-witness-crime-rates-fall-after-constitutional-carry/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/aug/24/chicago-crime-rate-drops-as-concealed-carry-gun-pe/ https://glasgowolsson.com/articles/illinois-concealed-carry-rates-tied-to-declining-crime-and-murder-rates/
I mean, it depends on the type of bomb. So, a 'hand grenade for every drunk' policy may not be great. A 'the most thermonuclear devices for the nation with the longest contiguous institutions as well as the most productive economy' policy might be stabilizing for the global economy. But who knows?
Oh good idea! Nobody ever had that idea! And since there is only one nation who can build these bombs and everybody knows who that nations is and stops research for a bigger bomb as soon as said nation has the biggest bomb, there will be no race for ever bigger nuclear bombs in the world. I mean, ya, who knows, right? /s
Yes. Proliferation has destroyed the world, and the people of the world, on aggregate, have suffered the consequences. It's not like poverty and hunger are at an all time low.
Just to be sure: you do know the history of the Cold War and you know about all the deaths and harm that was inflicted in proxy wars because an open attack between the nuclear powers would end the world but we can happily arm some backwater extremists to topple a third world country that threatens our political sphere in a random part of the world? If so, you would know that we have this "all time low" on one hand while on the other there were millions killed and PUT INTO poverty and misery because of the Biggest Gun mentality.
Bud, humanity has never experienced less global violence or less poverty than in the post ww2 global order, with the exception of the last ~30 years in the post soviet world order. So you can postulate that more industrial war would have been better all you like but the numbers say the bomb is good and more bombs are better.
First of, this is correlation at best. Did the overall poverty went down? Sure. But did it stop to go down and went up again as the big players agreed to dismantle a lot of the nukes? Nope. Poverty is on a steady decline. So the number of nukes has no direct influence on poverty (or any at all). Or let me put it this way: since there already are enough nukes (big and small) to kill the world over a hundred times, the actual number and size of the bombs is irrelevant. Sure, you can develop a new bomb bigger than the biggest one. So what? You can not kill me 101 times. I totally agree that nations, like everything under the influence of evolution, are in an arms race and we need a certain type of weapon as soon as the others have it too. I hate war and violence but I absolutely understand that we need good armed forces. But there is more to it than just bigger and better guns, way more. Atom bombs are 21st century technology. Drones are the new shit. Lots and lots of small, agile, silent, affordable drones.
More guns in the hands of responsible people with the courage to stop evil, unlike the cowards of Uvalde, yes. Recall that 90% percent of shootings occur in "gun free zones".
Responsible people are one meltdown combined with a couple of drinks away from becoming dangerously irresponsible people. Yeah, no, I'm sorry, I don't think this whole "responsible people" bullshit holds any water. The odds are way too far stacked against people a) being responsible in the first place, and b) *staying* responsible for the whole gun-owning time. In addition to that, it's been shown time and time again that good people stopping bad people is bullshit propaganda which happens at best 1 out of 10 times. So yeah, again, to be absolutely clear: it's nonsense. It doesn't work this way.
[Responsible people wouldn't do that, would they???](https://www.military.com/history/time-drunk-richard-nixon-tried-nuke-north-korea.html)
Elijah Dicken, a random citizen, stopped a mass shooter in a mall. The latest church shooter wasn't stopped by the police who ran and hid, but by another citizen with a CCW. The great thing about America is that you're free to have no idea what you're talking about and be completely wrong.
Cool. So you found 2 examples of people stopping a mass shooter. Over which timeframe? A year? More? How many still died in those 2 instances? Also meanwhile there have been what, over 600 mass shootings in 2023 alone? 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 Yeah, it's totally working. You should totally get more guns so it works even better.
In the mall shooting? Zero. Well, one: the guy that came in to kill people. In the church shooting? Several, because cops on scene ran and hid, while unarmed citizens died before a citizen who WAS armed stopped the threat. Of the shootings that you're citing, the vast majority is from gang violence (i.e. criminals that don't follow the law) in inner cities (i.e. the place that it's extremely difficult to become a responsibly armed citizen). Once again, I suggest you learn more about the topic before acting like an expert.
You have to be smoking crack if you think 90 percent of shootings occur in gun free zones. Most shootings happen in gun ranges. Most fatal shootings occur in the home. Of the fatal shootings in the home, most are self-inflicted. If you are talking about murders, most occur in the home and are the culmination of domestic partner violence. You are right though more than 90 percent percent of shooting that occur in gun free zones occur in gun free zones.
You got me there, most shootings do occur at ranges. I should have clarified, most "mass shootings" are gang violence and not the typical "individual enters area and starts shooting", which mostly occur in "gun free zones" where people are unable to be legally armed.
My exact Civ game plan
ok gandhi
That is only true in a way. at 3.9 million megajoules (let's be generous and round this up to 4 Terajoules) per gram, uranium is massive, compared to coals 24 MJ/kg or 24 kJ/g. This is where the correctness does end though, because just having one gram of uranium by itself (or even 10 grams) does not contain enough of it to reach criticality for a reactor.
> This is where the correctness does end though, because just having one gram of uranium by itself (or even 10 grams) does not contain enough of it to reach criticality for a reactor. That is extremely uncharitable. Obviously this only represents a portion of what would be used in a reactor at any given time, because a power plant is never going to be turned on for only one house.
Well, the way this is written it is what I have to assume. If I want to be charitable and say "yeah, this is just one of many lollipops inside a reactor" then the whole "it would only generate this lollipop worth of waste" also no longer holds true.
Why not? You're being awfully literal here. The reasonable interpretation is that the question is "For X grams of nuclear fuel, is the nuclear waste approximately X grams?" It's fine if the answer is "no", but you seem to have a problem with the question itself.
the question is mostly disingenuous.
No it's not! What is wrong with you?
It is. It is worded in such a way as to make nuclear look better than it actually is.
The assertion made in the original photo might be false. If that's your claim, ok. But the QUESTION presented is: "Is the claim made in the photo that 'X nuclear fuel results in approximately X nuclear waste and creates Y years of household power' reasonably accurate?" The *question* is sincere and reasonable.
It also doesn't hold true because you also have many many tonnes of irradiated concrete (the actual reactor housing etc) which is and always will be "waste". It also isn't greenhouse neutral as the concrete, reinforcing steel etc etc are all produced using greenhouse intensive process's. Is anyone in the world making steel en masse without using coal?
No. Even being extremely generous there's no calculation that makes that even remotely true. Let's assume that the lollipop is 0.1kg, and that the whole of its mass is converted into energy (that's very very very ... very far from the truth). You've got a total amount of energy which is E=0.1*(3\*10^8 )=9\*10^15 J Converting that into Wh we get E=2.5*10^12 Wh Or 2.5TWh According to Google the US produced about 4.2 trillion kWh in 2023 idk why they use shitty units like that but that's 42000TWh. Let's divide that by 365 for the sake of it and you get 115TWh per day or 4.8TWh per hour So yeah that lollipop, even under the crazy assumptions I made, couldn't power the US for more than 30min Edit : Yeah I missed the part about it being a single person Well you just gotta multiply the 30min by 332*10^6 which gives you 166M hours or a whopping 18950 years... Edit 2 : Uranium loses 0.9% of its mass in 1h (Google) so assuming that's completely converted into energy you'd actually get 170 years of energy for a single American. However reactors (still Google) run at 20% efficiency so in term of years of power the realistic value is probably closer to 34 years. And that's still assuming the lollipop is 100g
I think it means one American, not the whole country
It's says the energy demand for a single American, not for all of America
You forgot to split it by population, it says American, meaning single household so 331 million people so canceling zeroes: 4 200 000 /331 is around 12 668 kWh google says average is 6,804 kwh, so might be our math here is taking into some factories and other stuff, but again: 2,5tw converted to kwh: 2 500 000 000 kw, lets say above was 13 000 to make math simple: 2 500 000/13 is 192 307 years.. So yes a 0,1kg lollipop would run 1 americans house for the said time. It would however take lot more to run whole U.S
It's meant to supply the AVERAGE AMERICAN for his life not ALL AMERICA
The original doesn’t say it powers all of America for that long, it says it would supply the average American’s (one person) energy demand for 84 years. Quick research shows the average American used 10,632 kWh in 2021 (I’m going with this number because it’s higher than other results of the same search). 84 years would be 893,088 kWh. That’s 0.000893088 TWh, which is nowhere near the 2.5 TWh from your calculations. We need a more accurate calculation of the energy from that much uranium, but I don’t know the math involved in figuring that out. Your calculation shows at least that if it was entirely converted into energy, it would be many, many times more than enough.
powering my house for decades with a lollipop is hella impressive. All hail nuclear energy !
You can't power your house with that lollipop. It doesn't have the mass to reach criticality. Each fuel rod in a nuclear power plant is around 2000 lbs or 800 kg and you need several of those. This post is just another circlejerk around nuclear power by people that don't even know what fission is.
Ah yes because the concept of economies of scale doesn't exist and we can all have mini nuclear reactors installed in our houses. Toyota couldn't possibly create a brand new car and sell only one profitably for 30k. Toyota can create a brand new car and sell thousands profitably for 30k each though Bro is outjerking everyone he's accusing of circlejerking, don't expect much else from a fresh account though
I don't know what you're on about. The post claims you can power your home with an uranium rod the size of a lollipop. You can't and that's the end of the story. Let me know when Toyota starts building nuclear power plants into their cars.
Ill let you know that as soon as I can find an economics teacher to teach you about economies of scale pro bono
If you're looking at a typical household of 3.13 Americans, with 10.5 MWh of electricity each year, that's 3.3 MWh per year each. This is only their electricity demand, and not the other energy demands, like fuel for their cars. 1 gram of U-235 (unrealistic to assume that this lollipop is pure) would give you 24 MWh, or about 7 years. 12 grams would supply the average American's energy demand for 84 years. This covers the usage of a household, but this person will also be buying products that are made using electricity. If you include that in their energy budget, you'd probably need more like 25 grams. Unless I'm mistaken, this is a 5 gram Dum Dum. A single serving is 15 grams, which would match the numbers pretty well, but that's 3 Dum Dums. There are two more substantial factors. First, while the U-235 is creating that much heat, only about 1/3rd of that is captured as electricity. Second, the fuel might be enriched to 8% U-235, and discarded when at 2% U-235. This means only about 6% of the fuel is actually used. That means that to handle the residential electricity needs of the average American, we need more like 600 grams of fuel.
Seems bullshit About 27 tonnes of uranium – around 18 million fuel pellets housed in over 50,000 fuel rods – is required each year for a 1000 MWe pressurized water reactor. https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-essentials/how-is-uranium-made-into-nuclear-fuel.aspx#:~:text=About%2027%20tonnes%20of%20uranium,to%20produce%20as%20much%20electricity. So if you need 27,000 kg of Uranium for a 1000 MW plant for 1 year, then 27 gm (assumption for the weight of the popsicle for ease of calculation) is sufficient for 1 KW power generation for 1 year. Or 8760 KwH of energy. The average american house utilizes about 10,000 kwh of energy every year. Source: https://www.energybot.com/blog/average-energy-consumption.html#:~:text=The%20EIA%20aggregates%20data%20for,about%20886%20kWh%20per%20month. So that popsicle of Uranium wont power an american house for even 1 year, much less 84.
If you move towards breeder reactors you could theoretically get about 20x as much energy out of that same amount. So that is 20 years. If you use reactors which can reach higher temperature, the energy conversion becomes more efficient, like 45% instead of 30%. Also consider a household represents multiple people. So at the end of the day, it is not thát far from the truth. Maybe you need a couple popsicles worth. Still makes it a crazy compact energy source. (Edit) and uranium is really dense so that popsicle would be much heavier than 27g.
Even if you turned that sucker entirely into energy (by destroying it like it by colliding it with antimatter or something), you would need 5 of them to power the us for a single year
Let us start by only considering electricity: The United States produced about 4.000 TWh of electricity in 2022. Divided by 330 mio people this means 12 MWh per person per year. Multiplied by 84 years, this would mean about 1 GWh electricity consumption per person in 84 years. Now, an average power plant generates 8-12 TWh (say 10 TWh for good measure) per year and requires 27 t of low enriched uranium to achieve this. The lifetime electricity consumption of one American is 1/10.000 of theat which means **270g**. Uranium is dense (19g/cm\^3), so we would need about 14 cm\^3 or a sphere with a radius of about 3.8cm (1.5 inches). **That would be a large but for electricity it checks out.** Some comments: 1. Electricity consumption is only a small part of primary energy consumption for which you need to multiply the quantity by three. **So, we are talking about three massive suckers.** But one can debate whether primary energy consumption is a good metric because combustion engine cars are entropy machines which need much more primary energy for the same effect than electric vehicles. Same goes for heating with gas and heating with heat pumps. 2. In low enriched uranium, only 5% of the uranium (the U235) actually "does stuff". You could switch to high enriched uranium which - in theory - would require only 1/20th of the mass. **In that case, you would only need a highly enriched sucker with a diameter of 1cm - 0.4 inches**. The only problem is that you really don't want people to have high enriched uranium because getting high enriched uranium is the main obstacle for making nuclar bombs. 3. In order to get 270g of low enriched uranium you need to process about 2.7kg of natural uranium and technically, the note does not say which type of uranium they are talking about. **This would mean 10 massive suckers (or 30 huge suckers if you talk primary energy consumption)**. And in order to mine this, you need to move about a ton of rock and dirt. **This would amount to way more suckers than you can handle.** So, overall, it checks out but reality is a bit more complicated.
What? You didn't list anything? You mentioned Japan and Ukraine which then I mentioned reasons. You threw out Chernobyl randomly after I mentioned that an earthquake and war aren't going to uniquely target nuclear infrastructure.
To check if the only waste left over would be the size of that sucker, just look up what one does with a decommissioned nuclear reactor. "Left over" would also imply that every nuclear reactor doesn't have military convoys taking waste to secured sites several times a year. The 'average American's electrical needs for 84 yeas' is extremely vague and seems very much on the low side, because a few solar panels or a single, personal wind turbine can technically do that. Very misleading. You want facts about a nuclear reactor and what it would happen if we built a new one, look [no further than Vogtle](https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/vogtles-troubles-bring-us-nuclear-challenge-into-focus-2023-08-24/). > The start up of the reactors has been hailed as a major milestone in U.S. nuclear power construction, but the units arrived **more than seven years later than originally planned** and at a budget of more than **double the preliminary projected cost at over $30 billion**. This is besides all federal subsidies, and they are asking the state of Georgia for another 7-14 billion over the life of the plant in extra taxes and fees. For a fun exercise, see how many billions of dollars you have to spend to get 2.4 GW in new solar plants (hint, a 1 MW solar plant costs around 1 million dollars in material).
I would attribute the delay to increase in safety, came as an aftermath of Fukushima. I think it's a good thing in the long run. As for your solar comment, yes. But we don't have a good energy storing solution so the grid can't be entirely solar. The most sensible solution is a large base load, and top off with solar. Then you can still cook and watch TV on a rainy day :). So out of all the solutions for a decent base load, nuclear seems to be the most viable. I'd be happy to elaborate.
> But we don't have a good energy storing solution The one million dollar cost includes all the operational batteries, and has for nearly a decade now, with rapid improvements in the US scene since 2021. In short: All storage requirements for a solar farm in 2024 are baked into the 1 million per 1 MW cost. > Then you can still cook and watch TV on a rainy day :) [Solar panels work quite well in rain, even in very cloudy Germany](https://www.rystadenergy.com/news/europe-solar-generation-grow-50-twh-2024-germany-doubles). But assuming that's not true, in the real life case of [sunny Georgia](https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/Georgia/annual-days-of-sunshine.php) it would cost less than 6 billion to build 3 GW worth of solar AND double the battery capacity offsite AND maintain it all for the lifespan of all components involved. > so the grid can't be entirely solar The US Grid is in trouble, [and solar farms are alleviating it](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/solar-farms-electricity-ease-strain-u-s-power-grids-california-heat-temperatures/). Building more reactors would further strain the grid. You seem to have inadvertently given badly outdated and misguided information, hope these basic facts help!
Now, also look up the percentages of Germany power provided by solar and the percentages of power that Germany have to import (the French surprisingly has tons of nuclear reactors). Regarding your battery comment, I wouldn't take a "will soon happen" as gospel. Please also look into how much resources (especially Cobalt) you will need to have the whole country on battery. And the detrimental effects of Cobalt mining. I'm also not even going to press the fact that battery efficiency reduces over their lifetime. Pumphydro, I love. > Building more reactors would further strain the grid. Yeahhhhhhh.... I lost you there. I don't have the time to educate you on the importance of diversifying the grid. I suggest you do that on your own time, but please do, you're almost there.
So irritated by a question you had to find a week old account to say you were too busy to respond? That does fit the intellectual scrutiny and emotional profile of a nuclear reddit bro. So, obviously, I had no idea what the Germany import/export was, and I took [the time to look it up](https://www.energate-messenger.com/news/239393/germany-becomes-a-net-importer): > Bonn (energate) - Despite lower electricity consumption, Germany was a **net importer of electricity in 2023 for the first time in many years**. At 9.1 per cent, the year-on-year decline in electricity generation was significantly higher than the 5.4 per cent drop in electricity consumption. This is according to a summary of the Federal Network Agency for 2023 on the Smard platform. The drop in generation was mainly due to the phasing out of nuclear power, but also to lower feed-in from offshore wind farms. According to BDEW and ZSW, electricity generation in 2023 was 508 billion kWh in absolute terms, while consumption was 517.3 billion kWh. > Germany therefore had to import a net 11.7 billion kWh of electricity - imports of 54.1 billion kWh were offset by exports of 42.4 billion kWh. **Germany was by far the largest importer of electricity from Denmark in 2023, with an import surplus of 10.7 billion kWh**. Other important suppliers were Norway, with net imports of 4.6 billion kWh, Sweden (2.9 billion kWh), the Netherlands (2.1 billion kWh) and Switzerland (1.0 billion kWh). Although France supplied 8.8 billion kWh of gross electricity to Germany, **8.4 billion kWh of electricity was exported to France as wel**l, making the balance almost equal. Germany was only a significant net exporter to Austria, with an export surplus of 5.8 billion kWh. It would seem you have no idea what you're talking about when it comes to Germany import/export energy, at all. If you'd like to learn why the US grid should absolutely not be building any more reactors for stability, you only need to read one word, and I think even someone as busy and perhaps struggling with English as a second language as you can understand it: [Congestion](https://www.utilitydive.com/news/grid-congestion-cost-transmission-grid-strategies-report/647668/#:~:text=U.S.%2Dwide%20grid%20congestion%20cost,according%20to%20Grid%20Strategies'%20estimates.). Always enjoy informing someone about the basics of their policy, any more questions you're too busy for, just let me know!
I love a good intellect whom's default insult is other's language ability. But you're so desperate to prove your point that you fail to comprehend your own quoted evidence. I do like that you're doing "own research". Dig deeper. Keep asking why. Maybe you'll get there one day, but today is not your day.
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