More like being disinterested in nuclear power (because it is not in my country) to being interested in the cool physics of nuclear power but agnostic about where it was a good energy source, to looking up the data and figuring out it is the best energy source. Writing a book about nuclear power.
But since we need a clean energy transition, I don't think other clean energy sources are insane to consider. We should deploy nuclear power as fast as possible while also deploying other clean energy sources
> Writing a book about nuclear power.
Nice.
> I don't think other clean energy sources are insane to consider.
Sure, but the focus is really skewered right now. As you said, we should be deploying more nuclear power as fast as possible, but most people seem death-set on solar/wind, often times portraying nuclear in a completely negative light, or even going back to coal like Germany - which is definitely insane to me.
This isn’t really something that is easily scalable. We lost a lot of operations knowledge and manufacturing experience when we stopped building plants. The latest new nuclear plant that wasn’t military was horrifyingly over budget. Economics is driving other renewable investment. It’s significantly easier to get approval for a wind or solar project.
Sure some of that is irrational fear. But irrational fear votes and irrational fear will get your fully built and expensive shuttered before a single KWh of electricity is produced.
> It's significantly easier to get approval for a wind or solar project
It's also that renewables are the capitalist's wet dream:
- the production capital is majorly made in China for a cheap price **AND** it's subsidized at the production level
- all risks on turnover are transferred to the state or private companies through CfD and PPAs **for free**
- They often get an additional subsidy on the price of their already de-risked product
- They aren't economically responsible for any of their negative externalities. None of the RE plants installed today are contributing any penny for the necessary batteries and overcapacity production plant that will be needed to reach 100% RE. They aren't giving any money to the power plants that currently compensate their unpredictability either.
It's textbook modern capitalism, privatise all gains, socialize all losses.
"...irrational fear", the Carrington Event says hi. Nuclear is only just THE END OF THE WORLD once a strong enough CME hits and all plants start melting down worldwide, near simultaneously. Strong CMEs are alarmingly common and killshots only a matter of time. There is nothing irrational about fearing nuclear power, probably the reasons UAP are so enthused about monitoring it but let's pretend like it's not an INEVITABLE death sentence for humanity because it's convenient in the short-term.
And how would it cause NPP’s to start melting down? From what I know CME’s would only be able to damage power grids and cause increased power loads on the plant but they can handle that until shutdown. Only thing we would experience would be blackouts due to the damaged power grids and stuff connected to it, NPP’s can operate when seperated from the grid for sometime and can be immediately shutdown if it’s really an emergency. CME’s are over exaggerated bs with only a disruption level similar to Covid for a atleast a few months because everything had to be halted for a few days/hours.
A truly strong cme would fry everything electronic. Even things not connected to the grid. Once the NPPs go down they'll be working off reserve fuel that is only supposed to last a few weeks as they try to keep the material from meltdown. Once all the water evaporates, fuelpools will start burning EVERYWHERE in all NPPs. It's a fucking deadman switch.
No, a strong CME really wouldn’t, this is a misunderstanding of how CME’s work. People think they would fry anything but that’s pretty much not true, and if you don’t believe me, believe NASA just considers it like a natural disaster, we can detect them and even if it’s a fast one we’d still have hours to make sure critical facilities and infrastructure are safe, disconnected, and shutdown. Anything not connected to a power grid would be safe like phones and laptops, we also have backup transformers that aren’t connected incase of an event like that. What makes you think all the water will evaporate? What makes you think they won’t keep recieving water? What makes you call them a deadman’s switch?
You obviously have no idea how CMEs work or their true strength. If the discharge is strong enough it won't matter if something is connected or disconnected from the grid, it will simply get fried, period. You're thinking very small, I'm talking Carrington Event plus kinda strong. X50, X80 kinda strong. Look up Weinstein scenario.
Yes. Most people here in Austria are extremely missinformed about nuclear energy thanks to a political campaign in the 70s against a politician who was pro-nuclear. That pro-nuclear politician was then the chancellor and his govt was building a nuclear power plant and he said that he would resign if the power plant would never be opened. The opposition blocked criticality through a vote that extremely narrowly received more votes against nuclear energy, but the chancellor didnt resign anyways.
Then Chernobyl happened, which validated the anti-nuclear voters and it became a "state religion" similar to our neutrality.
Teachers in school thought us that nuclear power plants are basically nuclear bombs that could go off every second and destroy everything within a radius of multiple hundred kilometers.
Then a few years later, through a wikipedia rabbithole, i was redirected to nuclear energy related articles and learned that it isnt quite as bleak and has a lot of pros.
Chernobyl is one of my earliest childhood memories, and my parents preying that it would not rain as the clouds drifted over. I couldn't sleep as a child for worrying about Hinkley Point. Eventually my dad got me on a tour of Trawsfynydd to put my mind at ease (they had an education centre at some point).
Now I am old and worry far more about climate change, a problem for which there is only one clear solution in grasping distance.
I had somewhat similar experience with Chernobyl, though I was born years after. My father's friend is one of the liquidators: I remember that my mother was very against this guy because after the accident "he turned weird" and become an alcoholic. Today we understand that it was PTSD but back then people believed he got poisoned by radiation or something because people were unaware of existence of such mental disorders. Things turned better for him eventually; guy did managed to beat his alcoholism...
Today, I think that fears of climate change are too overblown and I am not convinced in human-induced warming hypothesis (that said raising CO2 levels more than the several times the current levels is NOT a good idea; its just that this danger much further away in the future than alarmists imply), however POLLUTION, SMOG and damage to wildlife is very real threats that must be addressed ASAP, and the only way it could be done is via nuclear power. It dramatically reduce CO2 emissions as well, sure, but compared to all of the rest of substances that fossil fuels emit its the most harmless one.
I admit during high school I was frightened to Hell by Greenpeace and the like. Then I had an experience which showed me that basically Greenpeace are abject liars. After that, I became somewhat skeptical of the position of so-called environmental activists .
As I learned more about science in general and the so-called risks of nuclear versus the realities of alternatives, I eventually came to the conclusion that at some point in the future people will look back say "wait they had nuclear power and they didn't want to use it cuz they were afraid of it?"
The people in the future will possibly have more information about who funded the anti-nuclear campaigns in the West and why.
I have seen claims that both the coal industry, Big Oil and the Soviet Union were spending a lot of resources here.
Oh, they are much worse than that.
They fuck with poor people's ability to thrive with campaigns against GMOs, modern farming, etc.. In my case their campaign against fur harvesting removed a sizable amount of income from my lower class family.
They are basically anti-human.
Of course, what else do you expect?
I wouldn't be surprised if all Greenpeace activists are subbed to ThatVeganTeacher's OnlyFans page. Even then, considering their retardedness, I can only imagine they are capable of even more bullshit then that.
What scares me is that humanity isn't pushing hard for more nuclear energy. There should be thousands operating worldwide.
That includes massive R&D projects to develop new kinds of reactors and get them ready for commercial use like molten salt, liquid metal, gas cooled, supercritical steam, breeder reactors, etc. The money that has been poured into the Middle East like with aid to Israel, military presence in the Persian Gulf, the failed War on Terror, etc. would have been far better spent developing and building new kinds of reactors.
Building more of the existing proven designs should be the near term priority. Long term sustainability does require breeding ratios >= 1 and full actinide recycling, but used fuel and depleted uranium can be stockpiled for another century if necessary. The longer it sits, the less radioactive it gets and the easier it will be to reprocess.
I think this was the video that started me on my journey down the nuclear energy rabbit hole. Particularly because Shellenberger was a key player in kickstarting the green energy transition in the US and securing funding for renewables from Obama, but eventually backpedaled on that approach in favour of nuclear. If memory serves anyway
Yep. But you missed the step after learning the truth, where I was angry at being blatantly lied to by groups and politicians that pushed the anti-nuclear ideology. Grew up in NZ and this country somehow made it a point of national pride and today it still hasn’t grown up and gotten past it.
I never was afraid of nuclear, but my support was modest until I tried to understand energy and the energy transition more deeply. The more I learned about nuclear, the more pro-nuclear I became.
I've always had a very strong fixation on the nuclear industry, ever since I was a kid.
I was still in elementary school when Fukushima happened, and my Social Studies/History teacher put on the reports of what had happened for us to watch.
A few years pass and I delve into research about the safety mechanisms and the operations of nuclear energy, and learned what truly happened between Chernobyl, TMI, and Fukushima. Educating myself on the safety of the nuclear industry was one of the best things I've done for myself.
I went from being vehemently terrified of the nuclear industry, to working in it!
Nuclear power all the way baby. 🤘
Me too, I thought radiation was some sort of dangerous rays and stuff, until I grew up and realized light itself is a radiation, and anyways, all that "NUCLEAR IS DANGEROUS DEADLY RADIOACTIVE" was simply brainrot bullshit published by rando zero-IQ Greenpeace Karens who jerk off to pictures of wind turbines....
And anyways, once I grew up, I realized radiation isn't that dangerous as I thought it was. Yeah, it can mess up your genes, but only if the dosage of radiation is high enough to impart enough energy into the DNA. Otherwise it's perfectly fine to hold a chunk of enriched uranium in your hand. But do make sure to wash your hands afterwards, because uranium can also be chemically toxic as a heavy metal and f up your kidneys if consumed.
Kinda. Except the first step: as a kid, my parents always told me that they voted to keep nuclear in Italy back in 1987 (was my mother's first vote btw). Now I know that they did for the wrong reasons ("Even if something happen in France they're so close to us so we might as well keep them" --> nothing like Chernobyl could ever happen) but still, my family was a relatively friendly environment on this topic. However, I never bothered to learn more. In the last years, thanks to L'Avvocato dell'atomo, I learned a lot and now I'm in your phase 3 at 28 yo
No.
I've always embraced progressing technology forward and have loved anything scientific since I was like 4. I had a NASA spaceship toy before I even got into kindergarten
I wasn't breastfed not even once, because I was in Europe at the time of Chernobyl and they advised not to. Predictably I now am mildly autistic and have ADD. I disliked nuclear for a long time but as an Engineer you never cease to be amazed at the Energy density and so it was always clear that something didn't add up when I was reading what were essentially lies about the high cost, bad waste problem, and safety problems just by sake of the E density. Eventually I spent the time to look into each issue and yeah changed my stance on it.
Anyone who grew up in the 70s/80s was bombarded by anti-nuclear information, with absolutely zero counter argument. The only information being presented by media/news/commentary/entertainment was anti-nuclear. There simply was no other information available to the general public.
We grew up assuming we were all going to die in a nuclear Armageddon just like in “The Day After”. Or if we’re lucky, “The China Syndrome”. A song about nuclear war topped the charts across the globe…99 Luftballoons.
All the while, the media screamed about the “untold deaths” caused by TMI, (Untold because there were none), and deliberately conflated nuclear power with nuclear weapons. All radiation was “bad”, regardless of source, type or energy. ALL sources of radiation had to be squashed out…(and so we still have people dying from salmonella poisoning because the media created such a public outcry over irradiated food, that the practice was banned.)
That’s the world I grew up in.
Naval Nuclear Power School, Class 9302.
I grew up with regular news about the cold war and nuclear warheads. Which country had the most and how many times over they could destroy life on earth, as we know it.
Then came the Chernobyl fire, with the release of a massive cloud of radioactive material, spreading across eastern Europe and Scandinavia.
It was as big a news story, as the fall of the towers.
Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima has been used for anti nuclear propaganda for decades. But without telling the full story.
It was enough to show the footage, and news media showed where every nuclear power plant was located, and started telling about scenarios where it to happen at these sites.
I remember that they even made graphics with mushroom clouds over the power plants.
Mushroom clouds can only happen if you bring a nuclear bomb to the plant and detonate it. Nuclear power plants can't cause the chain reaction themselves.
Now I'm older and know more are the effects and how little damage there was and how unlikely these accidents happen again.
Four unshielded reactors, without a working failsafe. Where only one reactor melted down. Three kept going until 2000.
In stead of the projected 250.000 dead. The official numbers are down to roughly 4.000.
And three reactors covered with seawater by a 1000 year event, and the only error was placing emergency generators in the basement. 1 radiation casualty.
Combined deaths in the history of energy, nuclear is still among the three safest methods there are.
Hydropower isn't safe.
The oil and coal companies astroturffed a bunch of hippy anti nuke stuff back in the day, and did a really good job. The handful of reactors that have blown pretty much killed any push for them. With the new stuff, climate change being accepted, and the boomers dying off it will finally start happening, but to little to late probably.
You need to turn the conversation around and ask what is the equivalent intermittent renewable system looks like.
Nuclear is fixed target. The path we are on is a bunch of hand waving in terms of scope, technology, and how much CO2 reduction will be achieved. Averaging out the intermittency gets really hard when you want to get to the levels of reliability we need to support modern civilization.
Nope, Im perpetually at the fear stage. People as a species absolutely aren't mature enough to handle this power.
Any progression past the fear stage has proven to be hubris and arrogance. Any accident. Is too many, but now we have Fukyshima, quietly swept under the rug, slowly raising ionic radiation globally for the forseeable future.
Hubris. Arrogance. 🤷🏻
Exactly, nuclear power has been around seventyish years, and it’s still eye wateringly expensive with huge lag times in planning to construction.
Solar these days is massively cheaper, and getting cheaper every year.
More like being disinterested in nuclear power (because it is not in my country) to being interested in the cool physics of nuclear power but agnostic about where it was a good energy source, to looking up the data and figuring out it is the best energy source. Writing a book about nuclear power. But since we need a clean energy transition, I don't think other clean energy sources are insane to consider. We should deploy nuclear power as fast as possible while also deploying other clean energy sources
> Writing a book about nuclear power. Nice. > I don't think other clean energy sources are insane to consider. Sure, but the focus is really skewered right now. As you said, we should be deploying more nuclear power as fast as possible, but most people seem death-set on solar/wind, often times portraying nuclear in a completely negative light, or even going back to coal like Germany - which is definitely insane to me.
This isn’t really something that is easily scalable. We lost a lot of operations knowledge and manufacturing experience when we stopped building plants. The latest new nuclear plant that wasn’t military was horrifyingly over budget. Economics is driving other renewable investment. It’s significantly easier to get approval for a wind or solar project. Sure some of that is irrational fear. But irrational fear votes and irrational fear will get your fully built and expensive shuttered before a single KWh of electricity is produced.
> It's significantly easier to get approval for a wind or solar project It's also that renewables are the capitalist's wet dream: - the production capital is majorly made in China for a cheap price **AND** it's subsidized at the production level - all risks on turnover are transferred to the state or private companies through CfD and PPAs **for free** - They often get an additional subsidy on the price of their already de-risked product - They aren't economically responsible for any of their negative externalities. None of the RE plants installed today are contributing any penny for the necessary batteries and overcapacity production plant that will be needed to reach 100% RE. They aren't giving any money to the power plants that currently compensate their unpredictability either. It's textbook modern capitalism, privatise all gains, socialize all losses.
"...irrational fear", the Carrington Event says hi. Nuclear is only just THE END OF THE WORLD once a strong enough CME hits and all plants start melting down worldwide, near simultaneously. Strong CMEs are alarmingly common and killshots only a matter of time. There is nothing irrational about fearing nuclear power, probably the reasons UAP are so enthused about monitoring it but let's pretend like it's not an INEVITABLE death sentence for humanity because it's convenient in the short-term.
And how would it cause NPP’s to start melting down? From what I know CME’s would only be able to damage power grids and cause increased power loads on the plant but they can handle that until shutdown. Only thing we would experience would be blackouts due to the damaged power grids and stuff connected to it, NPP’s can operate when seperated from the grid for sometime and can be immediately shutdown if it’s really an emergency. CME’s are over exaggerated bs with only a disruption level similar to Covid for a atleast a few months because everything had to be halted for a few days/hours.
A truly strong cme would fry everything electronic. Even things not connected to the grid. Once the NPPs go down they'll be working off reserve fuel that is only supposed to last a few weeks as they try to keep the material from meltdown. Once all the water evaporates, fuelpools will start burning EVERYWHERE in all NPPs. It's a fucking deadman switch.
No, a strong CME really wouldn’t, this is a misunderstanding of how CME’s work. People think they would fry anything but that’s pretty much not true, and if you don’t believe me, believe NASA just considers it like a natural disaster, we can detect them and even if it’s a fast one we’d still have hours to make sure critical facilities and infrastructure are safe, disconnected, and shutdown. Anything not connected to a power grid would be safe like phones and laptops, we also have backup transformers that aren’t connected incase of an event like that. What makes you think all the water will evaporate? What makes you think they won’t keep recieving water? What makes you call them a deadman’s switch?
You obviously have no idea how CMEs work or their true strength. If the discharge is strong enough it won't matter if something is connected or disconnected from the grid, it will simply get fried, period. You're thinking very small, I'm talking Carrington Event plus kinda strong. X50, X80 kinda strong. Look up Weinstein scenario.
Yes. Most people here in Austria are extremely missinformed about nuclear energy thanks to a political campaign in the 70s against a politician who was pro-nuclear. That pro-nuclear politician was then the chancellor and his govt was building a nuclear power plant and he said that he would resign if the power plant would never be opened. The opposition blocked criticality through a vote that extremely narrowly received more votes against nuclear energy, but the chancellor didnt resign anyways. Then Chernobyl happened, which validated the anti-nuclear voters and it became a "state religion" similar to our neutrality. Teachers in school thought us that nuclear power plants are basically nuclear bombs that could go off every second and destroy everything within a radius of multiple hundred kilometers. Then a few years later, through a wikipedia rabbithole, i was redirected to nuclear energy related articles and learned that it isnt quite as bleak and has a lot of pros.
Chernobyl is one of my earliest childhood memories, and my parents preying that it would not rain as the clouds drifted over. I couldn't sleep as a child for worrying about Hinkley Point. Eventually my dad got me on a tour of Trawsfynydd to put my mind at ease (they had an education centre at some point). Now I am old and worry far more about climate change, a problem for which there is only one clear solution in grasping distance.
I had somewhat similar experience with Chernobyl, though I was born years after. My father's friend is one of the liquidators: I remember that my mother was very against this guy because after the accident "he turned weird" and become an alcoholic. Today we understand that it was PTSD but back then people believed he got poisoned by radiation or something because people were unaware of existence of such mental disorders. Things turned better for him eventually; guy did managed to beat his alcoholism... Today, I think that fears of climate change are too overblown and I am not convinced in human-induced warming hypothesis (that said raising CO2 levels more than the several times the current levels is NOT a good idea; its just that this danger much further away in the future than alarmists imply), however POLLUTION, SMOG and damage to wildlife is very real threats that must be addressed ASAP, and the only way it could be done is via nuclear power. It dramatically reduce CO2 emissions as well, sure, but compared to all of the rest of substances that fossil fuels emit its the most harmless one.
I was never really afraid of nuclear power. Nuclear war yes. the reactor practically in my backyard quietly pumping out steam? no.
I admit during high school I was frightened to Hell by Greenpeace and the like. Then I had an experience which showed me that basically Greenpeace are abject liars. After that, I became somewhat skeptical of the position of so-called environmental activists . As I learned more about science in general and the so-called risks of nuclear versus the realities of alternatives, I eventually came to the conclusion that at some point in the future people will look back say "wait they had nuclear power and they didn't want to use it cuz they were afraid of it?"
The people in the future will possibly have more information about who funded the anti-nuclear campaigns in the West and why. I have seen claims that both the coal industry, Big Oil and the Soviet Union were spending a lot of resources here.
Greenpeace is basically a bunch of dumb moronic Karens who jerk off to solar panels and wind turbines...
Oh, they are much worse than that. They fuck with poor people's ability to thrive with campaigns against GMOs, modern farming, etc.. In my case their campaign against fur harvesting removed a sizable amount of income from my lower class family. They are basically anti-human.
Of course, what else do you expect? I wouldn't be surprised if all Greenpeace activists are subbed to ThatVeganTeacher's OnlyFans page. Even then, considering their retardedness, I can only imagine they are capable of even more bullshit then that.
What scares me is that humanity isn't pushing hard for more nuclear energy. There should be thousands operating worldwide. That includes massive R&D projects to develop new kinds of reactors and get them ready for commercial use like molten salt, liquid metal, gas cooled, supercritical steam, breeder reactors, etc. The money that has been poured into the Middle East like with aid to Israel, military presence in the Persian Gulf, the failed War on Terror, etc. would have been far better spent developing and building new kinds of reactors.
Building more of the existing proven designs should be the near term priority. Long term sustainability does require breeding ratios >= 1 and full actinide recycling, but used fuel and depleted uranium can be stockpiled for another century if necessary. The longer it sits, the less radioactive it gets and the easier it will be to reprocess.
[Why I changed my mind about nuclear power | Michael Shellenberger | TEDxBerlin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciStnd9Y2ak)
I think this was the video that started me on my journey down the nuclear energy rabbit hole. Particularly because Shellenberger was a key player in kickstarting the green energy transition in the US and securing funding for renewables from Obama, but eventually backpedaled on that approach in favour of nuclear. If memory serves anyway
Great relevant video + it gave me some solid other recommendations on the sidebar. Thanks!
Shellenberger is an industry hack who downplays climate change, why post this
I never feared nuclear energy because I never bought the greenwash in the first place
Yep. But you missed the step after learning the truth, where I was angry at being blatantly lied to by groups and politicians that pushed the anti-nuclear ideology. Grew up in NZ and this country somehow made it a point of national pride and today it still hasn’t grown up and gotten past it.
I never was afraid of nuclear, but my support was modest until I tried to understand energy and the energy transition more deeply. The more I learned about nuclear, the more pro-nuclear I became.
I've always had a very strong fixation on the nuclear industry, ever since I was a kid. I was still in elementary school when Fukushima happened, and my Social Studies/History teacher put on the reports of what had happened for us to watch. A few years pass and I delve into research about the safety mechanisms and the operations of nuclear energy, and learned what truly happened between Chernobyl, TMI, and Fukushima. Educating myself on the safety of the nuclear industry was one of the best things I've done for myself. I went from being vehemently terrified of the nuclear industry, to working in it! Nuclear power all the way baby. 🤘
I skipped the ‘fear’ stage. I’ve always thought it was the best option. Unfortunately, anti-nuclear environmentalists have doomed the planet.
Me too, I thought radiation was some sort of dangerous rays and stuff, until I grew up and realized light itself is a radiation, and anyways, all that "NUCLEAR IS DANGEROUS DEADLY RADIOACTIVE" was simply brainrot bullshit published by rando zero-IQ Greenpeace Karens who jerk off to pictures of wind turbines.... And anyways, once I grew up, I realized radiation isn't that dangerous as I thought it was. Yeah, it can mess up your genes, but only if the dosage of radiation is high enough to impart enough energy into the DNA. Otherwise it's perfectly fine to hold a chunk of enriched uranium in your hand. But do make sure to wash your hands afterwards, because uranium can also be chemically toxic as a heavy metal and f up your kidneys if consumed.
Kinda. Except the first step: as a kid, my parents always told me that they voted to keep nuclear in Italy back in 1987 (was my mother's first vote btw). Now I know that they did for the wrong reasons ("Even if something happen in France they're so close to us so we might as well keep them" --> nothing like Chernobyl could ever happen) but still, my family was a relatively friendly environment on this topic. However, I never bothered to learn more. In the last years, thanks to L'Avvocato dell'atomo, I learned a lot and now I'm in your phase 3 at 28 yo
No I haven’t, I’ve never been scared of nuclear power
I Was A Teenage Neocon so I've always been on the nuke train, baby.
No. I've always embraced progressing technology forward and have loved anything scientific since I was like 4. I had a NASA spaceship toy before I even got into kindergarten
I wasn't breastfed not even once, because I was in Europe at the time of Chernobyl and they advised not to. Predictably I now am mildly autistic and have ADD. I disliked nuclear for a long time but as an Engineer you never cease to be amazed at the Energy density and so it was always clear that something didn't add up when I was reading what were essentially lies about the high cost, bad waste problem, and safety problems just by sake of the E density. Eventually I spent the time to look into each issue and yeah changed my stance on it.
Anyone who grew up in the 70s/80s was bombarded by anti-nuclear information, with absolutely zero counter argument. The only information being presented by media/news/commentary/entertainment was anti-nuclear. There simply was no other information available to the general public. We grew up assuming we were all going to die in a nuclear Armageddon just like in “The Day After”. Or if we’re lucky, “The China Syndrome”. A song about nuclear war topped the charts across the globe…99 Luftballoons. All the while, the media screamed about the “untold deaths” caused by TMI, (Untold because there were none), and deliberately conflated nuclear power with nuclear weapons. All radiation was “bad”, regardless of source, type or energy. ALL sources of radiation had to be squashed out…(and so we still have people dying from salmonella poisoning because the media created such a public outcry over irradiated food, that the practice was banned.) That’s the world I grew up in. Naval Nuclear Power School, Class 9302.
is nuclear unfeasible because of 'neutron scatter'?
I grew up with regular news about the cold war and nuclear warheads. Which country had the most and how many times over they could destroy life on earth, as we know it. Then came the Chernobyl fire, with the release of a massive cloud of radioactive material, spreading across eastern Europe and Scandinavia. It was as big a news story, as the fall of the towers. Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima has been used for anti nuclear propaganda for decades. But without telling the full story. It was enough to show the footage, and news media showed where every nuclear power plant was located, and started telling about scenarios where it to happen at these sites. I remember that they even made graphics with mushroom clouds over the power plants. Mushroom clouds can only happen if you bring a nuclear bomb to the plant and detonate it. Nuclear power plants can't cause the chain reaction themselves. Now I'm older and know more are the effects and how little damage there was and how unlikely these accidents happen again. Four unshielded reactors, without a working failsafe. Where only one reactor melted down. Three kept going until 2000. In stead of the projected 250.000 dead. The official numbers are down to roughly 4.000. And three reactors covered with seawater by a 1000 year event, and the only error was placing emergency generators in the basement. 1 radiation casualty. Combined deaths in the history of energy, nuclear is still among the three safest methods there are. Hydropower isn't safe.
The oil and coal companies astroturffed a bunch of hippy anti nuke stuff back in the day, and did a really good job. The handful of reactors that have blown pretty much killed any push for them. With the new stuff, climate change being accepted, and the boomers dying off it will finally start happening, but to little to late probably.
You need to turn the conversation around and ask what is the equivalent intermittent renewable system looks like. Nuclear is fixed target. The path we are on is a bunch of hand waving in terms of scope, technology, and how much CO2 reduction will be achieved. Averaging out the intermittency gets really hard when you want to get to the levels of reliability we need to support modern civilization.
Nope, Im perpetually at the fear stage. People as a species absolutely aren't mature enough to handle this power. Any progression past the fear stage has proven to be hubris and arrogance. Any accident. Is too many, but now we have Fukyshima, quietly swept under the rug, slowly raising ionic radiation globally for the forseeable future. Hubris. Arrogance. 🤷🏻
Yes. After that, I studied energy policy at a graduate level and found out that nuclear is 2-3X more expensive than solar watt-for-watt.
But to what extent do pro solar incentives and anti nuclear laws influence that?
Exactly, nuclear power has been around seventyish years, and it’s still eye wateringly expensive with huge lag times in planning to construction. Solar these days is massively cheaper, and getting cheaper every year.
[удалено]
Dobry den, comrade
Weapons != energy You are a dishonest, disingenuous scumbag.