I’m pro nuke energy but to pretend there are no downsides is what got us into the climate mess we are in in the first place.

Cost, being a major drawback, space being another. And of course while they almost never fail, they do occasionally, and will again. And those failures are utterly catastrophic, and it’d hard to convince a community to welcome a nuclear plant, and if the community doesn’t want it then it can’t or shouldn’t be forced onto them.

They also represent tactical strike sites in time of combat engagement. Big red X for a missile.

There are also significant environmental concerns, as we really have no good way to dispose of nuclear waste in a safe or efficient manner at this time.

It’s likely that nuclear based energy is the future, but you need to discuss the bad with the good here or we are just going to end up at square one again. There are long term ramifications.

ITT: ignorant people with 20+ years old knowledge.

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

My issue with nuclear energy isn’t that it’s dangerous or that it’s inherently bad. The world needs a stable source of energy that compensates for wind and solar fluctuations anyways. For the current realistic alternatives that’s either going to be nuclear or coal/oil/natural gas. We have nothing else for this purpose, end of discussion.

My problem is the assumption underlying this discussion about nuclear energy that it somehow will solve all of our problems or that it will somehow allow us to continue doing business as usual. That’s categorically not the case. The climate crisis has multiple fronts that need to be dealt with and the emissions is just one of them. Even if we somehow managed to find the funds and resources to replace all non renewable energy with nuclear, we would still have solved just 10% of the problem, and considering that this cheap new energy will allow us to increase our activities and interventions in the planet, the situation will only worsen.

Nuclear energy is of course useful, but it’s not the answer. Never has technology been the answer for a social and political issue. We can’t “science and invent” our way out of this, it’s not about the tech, it’s about who decides how it will be used, who will profit from it, who and how much will be affected by it etc. If you want to advocate for a way to deal with the climate crisis you have to propose a complete social and political plan that will obviously include available technologies, so stop focusing on technologies and start focusing on society and who takes the decisions.

One simple example would be the following: no matter how green your energy is, if the trend in the US is to have increasingly bigger cars and no public transport, then the energy demands will always increase and no matter how many nuclear plants you build, they will only serve as an additional source and not as a replacement. So no matter how many plants you build, the climate will only deteriorate.

This is literally how the people in charge have decided it will work. Any new developing energy source that is invented serves only to increase the consumption, not to replace previous technologies. That’s the case with solar and wind as well. So all of this discussion you all make about nuclear Vs oil or whatever is literally irrelevant. The problem is social and political, not technological.

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

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

Yes yes. Let’s continute to use energy sources which are limited in terms of available but necessary resources and cause highly problematic by-products. It has been going on so well so far. Hasn’t it?

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

I hate to say it, but regardless of one’s stance, on his back should be “Public perception of Fukushima, Chernobyl, and 3-mile Island.”

I say regardless of one’s stance, because even if the public’s perceptions are off…when we remember those incidents but not how much time was in between them or the relative infrequency of disasters, they can have outsized effects on public attitude.

Must. Not. Feed. The. Troll.

clean… so many storage pools full of spent fuel, no home for them in sight… hundreds of pools, spread all over the US…

clean?

I mean cleaner than coal, sure. but it’s enormous infrastructure and regulatory hurdles aren’t worth it.

No, it’s not the best we have. Solar and wind are way safer, cost less and don’t produce waste.

Sure, nuclear power is safe until it isn’t. Fukushima and Chernobyl are examples of that. Nuclear plants in Ukraine were at risk during Russian attacks. Even if you have a modern plant, you don’t really think that under capitalism there is an incentive to care properly for them in the long run. Corners will be cut.

Besides that they produce so much waste that has to be: a) being transported b) stored somewhere

Looking at the US railroad system and how it is pushed beyond it’s capacity right now and seeing how nuclear waste sites are literally rotting and contaminating everything around them I’d say it’s one of the least safe energies. Especially if you have clean alternatives that don’t produce waste.

Iam so sick of this conversation. It is not cheap, it’s not clear where to let the waste and in the end it’s even dangerous. Don’t let some populists make you think nuklear energy is good. France made a big mistake to go all in. All projects take longer than expected and cost much more than calculated.

https://www.duh.de/fileadmin/user_upload/download/Projektinformation/Energiewende/Positionspapier_Atomkraft_final.pdf

It’s pronounced nookielurr.

If the goal of this meme was to start a discussion pointing out all of the shortcomings or nuclear or was very successful.

Plenty of benefits, but pretty far from problem free.

When can we start talking about fusion again?

literally the least efficient in terms of cost and time.

battery backed renewables are a fraction of the price and are being deployed right now.

https://www.csiro.au/en/research/technology-space/energy/GenCost

edit: the tech is cool as hell. go nuts on research reactors. nuclear medicine has saved my sisters life twice… but i’m sorry, its just not a sane solution to the climate crisis.

Maybe if we store all the waste in Gaza and Israel those goobers will stop fighting over it