• lemmyseizethemeans
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    9 months ago

    But solar and wind don’t. Why must we use nuclear. We could weatherproof houses and paint rooftops white. There are a million solutions that don’t require me to get radiation poisoned

    • Hestia [comrade/them, she/her]@hexbear.net
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      9 months ago

      Because not all places are sunny or windy, and solar requires copious amounts of lithium which needs to be extracted from the earth, which has its own consequences. That said, Japan should look into developing their ability to harness the kinetic energy from tidal forces. It’s wise to diversify the power grid.

    • ProfessorOwl_PhD [any]@hexbear.net
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      9 months ago

      You’re not going to get radiation poisoning from a nuclear plant, unless you’re planning to personally planning to break in and turn off all the safeties to cause another Chernobyl (also there are more safeties now, since, y’know…). You don’t have concerns about nuclear, you have baseless fears. With current battery technology we can’t fulfill energy demands just off solar and wind, so it’s coal or nuclear. As much as it does have legitimate downsides, you are at about as much risk from radiation as you are from a windmill falling on you.

        • ProfessorOwl_PhD [any]@hexbear.net
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          9 months ago

          Hexbear doesn’t have downvotes, so there’s no point complaining to me about it, but you’re not being downvoted for promoting solar and wind, you’re being downvoted for fear mongering over nuclear. We all want more solar and wind, and hydroelectric and all the other renewable energy sources, but we don’t have the technology to run the world on them yet. Until we do, we have to use nonrenewables, and nuclear is by far the least damaging of the nonrenewables we have access to. The naturally occuring radioactive isotopes in coal result in coal plants release more radiation into the atmosphere than nuclear plants, so screeching about how nuclear energy is going to give you radiation poisoning and we should just use renewables shows you to be deeply ignorant about both.

    • SoyViking [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      9 months ago

      These things are certainly going to be part of the solution. We want multiple sources of power and we want to improve the efficiency of our energy usage. But we are still going to need ways of generating power when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining. And here nuclear is one of the safest options.