Nuclear Power - Lemmy
lemmy.mlA community discussing nuclear power, including fission and fusion. The goal is to talk about generated nuclear power, so avoid simply talking about stars or something unless it is relevant.
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The hate nuclear power gets is so incredibly irrational. We’re in a middle of a climate catastrophe, and nuclear is the one practical option for replacing fossil fuels at scale that’s actually available to us.
My concern with nuclear power is that it seems to me that it is fundamentally incompatible with capitalism. You cannot cut corners when generating nuclear energy, the maintenance of facilities and proper storage of waste outweight the profit motive. The consequences of negligence seem significant. Though thats not to say oil is any different… but i fear the damage caused wont be so apparent to the layman.
This is true, unfettered capitalism is likely to lead to safety standards being compromised and further accidents. I do not think that is reason to stop pursuing it as a solution. Capitalism is also a tool to improve nuclear power, making it vastly cheaper, safer and more efficient.
Agree, the danger of cutting corners for profit gets is as high as it gets when it comes to something like nuclear power.
I hope in time to create a wiki giving a high level overview of why nuclear power is viable w/ sources.
That would be fantastic!
climate catastrophe is actually the result of the planet shifting - it is not mankinds fault, but granted we have played a small role in it. Politicians are of course jumping on this and asking for more taxes from us because of it.
I couldn’t agree more, it pains me to see this kind of thinking run rampant even among ‘environmentalists’, ‘greens’ and such. We’re not going to cover the entire Sahara in solar panels or turbines anytime soon, so I think nuclear is a far better solution. (and let’s not even talk about all the ‘gravity batteries’ and other bullshit all the Musk fanboys and imitators are pushing now)
I agree by and large, but pumped hydro storage is a tried and true technology which has already proven its worth.
Pumped hydro storage is an energy storage method, not energy generation. Its also the most common form of power grid energy storage, so I have no doubt that the countries that are still using nuclear are storing the excess there.
I’m simply responding to the comment which called “gravity batteries” bullshit.
People also forget the environmental impact of producing things like solar panels and wind turbines. There are now whole landfills full of wind turbine blades for example.
Those have environmental impacts?
I wonder what’s the sources for this.
a few examples
https://honuaolabioenergy.com/environmental-impact-of-solar-panel-manufacturing/
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/141111-solar-panel-manufacturing-sustainability-ranking
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turbine-blades-can-t-be-recycled-so-they-re-piling-up-in-landfills
Wind power can be done in an environmentally friendly way wrt the equipment, it just currently isn’t. Just like nuclear could be but currently isn’t. Another problem with wind that no one ever talks about is that sucking that much energy out drastically alters weather patterns (in most but not all cases). Wind is crucial to how weather works. But even bring up the topic and you’d be called a tinfoil hatter.
More importantly than finding ways to generate more energy, we need to be using less. Grid energy itself encourages wastefulness. Homes need to be insulated. Unnecessary travel (such as office work, and yes even ‘shopping’) are practices that must be ended. Those 2 things alone would reduce energy usage by 80%+.
But anyways… Like I said, even mentioning such things gets people very hateful. They don’t want to even consider change.
How so?
Using common metals for the blades and rare-earthless turbines for the generation, doing only small-scale installations such as on homes and distributing true excess through neighborhood microgrids (no supergrids). Also storing minor excess using flywheel or gravity batter rather than chemical battery. Most of these are systemic improvements and not specific to wind but I want to make sure you’re not picturing giant wind farms. Because as I said in my other post the biggest problem is supergrid thinking.
To put a point on it, an efficient home can be powered by a single wind turbine and possibly a solar panel for heavy usage appliances such as laundry machines, which is another problem that can be mitigated with further simple engineering solutions.
Thanks. The reason for big turbines is because they are more efficient. You use less materials for more power. So you’ll never convince an engineer of all this.
I wonder if there is a maximum size of turbine that can be built with steel, given how heavy it is. Wind might become a lot more expensive.
Which would not be a bad thing because the world needs to start converting to sea-swell power asap.
That’s a misleading statement because the efficiency calculations are done with assumptions based on current load, usage patterns, and supergrid as prerequisites.
To do a proper efficiency calculation we need a page 1 rewrite of how we handle energy entirety, as I described. I can prove I’m right with maths.
Also, aluminum not steel. Because you only need 1 meter bladespan when only generating one household of energy.
As for industrial needs, they can be handled by nuclear. Trying to scale up wind or solar is just too environmentally destructive.
But again, the key here is not to keep generating more and more energy, or using existing base loads as a starting point, we need to reduce energy usage drastically. It’s so wasteful right now.
Could be. At least for rural areas, small scale could be more efficent.
IIRC aluminium is never used for rotating parts because of the way it fatigues. After a certain number of strain cycles it will snap.
Yes but now this is a political issue. How are you going to stand between big business’s and its thirst for AI? The usage is growing exponentially and IMO will soon be dominant and the rest of the economy becomes more efficient.
It has always been a political issue. We had 3 generations to fix the problem. Corruption and lack of leadership resulted in the massive failure mode we are experiencing.
Now we need drastic changes quickly. We could be completely fossil fuel free in 5 years, but we’d need to basically retool everything and a billion lifestyles would have to change. (worth pointing out that the change would result in much more comfortable, happy and healthy lives) Now you could argue that’s impossible but I argue it’s the only possibility. Business as usual WILL result in the collapse of society and over a billion lifestyles will have to change anyway. (worth pointing out that this forced change would result in uncomfortable unhappy and potentially unhealthy lives, and even many deaths) That’s just the reality we live in.
Most of the worlds’s society is collapsing. Much of the world is becoming uninhabitable. But only a small corner of the earth needs to remain prosperous, for the rich to keep living rich lives.
Since we’re talking politics now, the solution is direct democracy, where the electorate can compel the government to make a certain law, or take certain measures. Major changes become possible which are impossible now.
Nothing which harms the powerful vested interests will ever happen without direct democracy. Today, governments can simply decline to do things which don’t suit them, even if the electorate demands them.
Anyone who believes in any issue at all, your first priority is direct democracy. It is your new goal. Without it your protests are ignored. With it, you can directly change the world without even having to protest.
I don’t think direct democracy is a good idea, at least not with our current structure. The problem is dumb and easily manipulated people, if you think them voting for representatives that work against their own best interests is bad wait until you see the damage done by voting for actual laws against their best interest. I’ll even give an example: prop 22 in California. There are so many other examples but that one is just so clear cut and over the top.
What I think is better is decentralized federated models. The USA was originally a confederation and then federation of States. It’s in the name. Thing is, back then states were only expected to be a couple million or less citizens. Now cities are that size. And yet even today there are states with less than 500k citizens.
I think a restructuring based on population and land area (territory) is in order.
It’s ok if a small town votes that trans people can’t use a certain bathroom, or they vote that some race is not allowed to move in. But when such laws affect large land masses or large populations then there is a problem.
Things like air particulates affect the entire globe, that should be governed at a global level. There are all kinds of things in between.
These bad laws happen with elected representatives too, but worse. At least with direct democracy, laws will not be made which are against the majority’s best interest, and laws have a legitimate mandate.
For example it’s hard to imagine a direct democracy starting a war of convenience, like representative democracies frequently do and are doing right now. All the most egregious crimes of government would stop.
But the quality of all the little laws is debatable. I would argue it’s higher under DD but I can see why some people disagree.
But it’s hard to discuss very specific examples, because they are always cherry-picked.
Finally, there are several forms of DD and the Californian style is probably the least beneficial.
The community was created to promote knowledge of nuclear power, to discuss it’s potential use and perhaps break down some misconceptions around it. It seems you are not inclined to give us the opportunity to do that.
There is not much to talk about, we had nuclear power and it did not worked out. We had disasters and the next are about to come, it is a mathematically statistic thing. You can build it as secure as you want, there will be unpredictable events and downplaying it is pure Hybris. Downplaying this is something I am not going to support and there are no convincing arguments as the waste problem will remain, even with newer thorium and thorium molten salt based reactors.
I do not like people creating communities to make a joke out of very serious topics. People already died and swiping this under the carpet hurts my and other peoples feelings. This is one of such communities which is destent to very fast will go out of control because people are sensitive to such topics, same like politics I for myself will say out of it because whatever you say can only hold against you because the next disaster will come and I do not think we should encourage or support it even further and lie that this is a good thing.
If people like to talk about okay, but without me and my passion for this, nor do I want to pretend that nuclear energy is something humanity as whole should continue to support. However, I get you point but I for myself try to stay out of it, which is why I block it, there is simply a fine line and I do not want to cross it.
What I am willing to talk about are alternatives and the pros and cons, but pretending that we should continue is simply bad, especially given the fact that we recently saw again what governments can and maybe will do, the next step to create dirty bombs out from it is not so far away and this is something that I cannot respect nor tolerate as a private person.
There have been accidents, disasters, and ecological damage with every single energy generation method.
Many countries are using nuclear effectively, especially France, which gets like 70% of its power from nuclear.
France is “effectifly” extracting it’s uranium from countries like Congo, Niger, provoking countless political disasters over time, ruining others countries environments etc. That’s how.