• scoobford@lemmy.zip
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      9 months ago

      Yes, but when things go wrong, the boom is relatively small and contained.

      We can’t run a regular coal or natural gas power plant here without fucking it up and getting people killed. Despite the safety of modern plant designs, I do NOT trust the people in charge here with fissile material.

      • Strykker@programming.dev
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        9 months ago

        Go lookup CANDU reactors, we have designs already that can’t steam explode themselves and instead will fail safe. Also just to be clear nuclear reactors don’t perform a nuclear explosion if they fail, the Chernobyl explosion was a steam explosion that threw nuclear material into the air.

        • scoobford@lemmy.zip
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          9 months ago

          The level of incompetence I’ve grown to expect of my state government would suggest that they’d have fissile material delivered and stored in a leaky shed, where it will create runoff which contaminates the local reservoir, before a crackhead steals it, takes it to the scrapyard, and it is never seen again.

        • Sizzler@slrpnk.net
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          9 months ago

          Or we could just use solar with none of those risks but still using the largest nuclear reaction around.

        • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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          8 months ago

          …and rendered an area the size of a county unsuitable for humans for hundreds of generations.

          You’re going to have to show me a government that isn’t half-full of people who hate education, who hate science, and most of all who hate accountability before I vote for more nuclear power.

      • The_Lopen@sh.itjust.works
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        9 months ago

        You know, the beautiful thing about being a society is we can all just agree to regulate them. I think that’s called a government.

        • scoobford@lemmy.zip
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          9 months ago

          Like I said, we can’t/won’t effectively regulate the power plants we have now.

          Our government is only good for generating moral panics and building roads. I hope that changes one day, but it has been getting worse for a long time, so I won’t hold my breath for it to all be fixed tomorrow.

      • Michal@programming.dev
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        8 months ago

        That’s why people prefer driving over flying, right? If something goes wrong, the boom is small and contained.

        Never mind that planes are much safer and efficient at travelling long distance.

      • purahna
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        8 months ago

        When things go wrong? When things go right for coal and gas plants, the “boom” is a humanity-threatening event that already in its extremely early stages has been named the Holocene Extinction.

  • Norgur@fedia.io
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    9 months ago

    I don’t think even one of those fast fission reactors is still in operation. Wonder why that is.

    • FriendBesto@lemmy.ml
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      9 months ago

      Because, it does not destroy all waste, despite a cartoon claiming as such and gullible people falling for it? Even “short-term” waste needs to be stored somewhere for about 500 years. Sure, it ain’t like the others in terms of length of time but anyone who thinks that is a cheap fact or trivial is an idealogue. Since they can exist at both extremes.

      So the issue of the water table or general environmental contamination is not addressed the way OP claims. There are also higher costs and higher grade fuel is required. Not to say that there are not some advantages but the cartoon is just plain incorrect and taking a toodler’s view on some serious concerns. The Wikipedia article has a list of disavantages for anyone to look into.

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast-neutron_reactor

    • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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      9 months ago

      They’re politically unpopular, more expensive than fossil fuels, and most of them are prototypes.

      India and China each have one. Russia has 3.

    • Technus@lemmy.zip
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      9 months ago

      I blame Nixon for why nuclear power in the US sucks. He axed research on any reactor types that didn’t produce plutonium for weapons, including thorium reactors. Hope he’s rotting in hell.

      • Norgur@fedia.io
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        9 months ago

        According to the future-documentary Futurama, his head is in a jar somewhere, waiting to assume the presidency once again with the headless body of Spiro Agnew.

        • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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          9 months ago

          Nah, they also depict Henry Kissinger that way, but we all know he’s dragging what’s left of his body across a minefield in hell.

    • HikingVet@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      According to Wikipedia there are a few, with more planned. But not nearly enough. IMO, we should switch over to Fast Reactors as standard.

    • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      Canada has CANDU breeder reactors, still in use. They also produce the majority of medical isotopes.

        • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
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          9 months ago

          Yeah, I thought about it after and realized it was probably a different tech, but the point is reliable breeder reactors are possible, and certain medical tech is reliant on their existence.

    • smegforbrains@lemmy.ml
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      9 months ago

      Since there are economic, ecological, conceptual and engineering problems, only five Fast-neutron reactors are operational at the moment. Three in Russia, one in India and one in China. Not surprisingly these are countries that also have an interest in producing weapons grade Plutonium, which FNRs are capable of.
      https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.2968/066003007
      https://spectrum.ieee.org/china-breeder-reactor
      https://scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/sgs15glaser.pdf
      https://energypost.eu/slow-death-fast-reactors/
      https://sussex.figshare.com/articles/report/

      And while nuclear energy production peaked 1996 at 17% and was nowhere near overtaking fossil energy production in it’s 70(!) year long existence, Renewables will overtake fossil fuel power production in 2025, with only minute risks for the biosphere.
      https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/renewable-power-set-to-surpass-coal-globally-by-2025/
      https://www.renewable-ei.org/pdfdownload/activities/REI_NuclearReport_201902_EN.pdf

      So why cling to an outdated technology when there are viable solutions at hand, which are nowhere as complicated and dangerous as nuclear fission? It’s the monetary interest of a dying nuclear industry and its lobbyists.

    • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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      9 months ago

      It’s not really needed. Waste is a boogeyman, but not really a problem. It takes an incredibly small volume to store the waste, and it can be reduced with reprocessing to run in the exact same reactors.

      At some point in the future when there actually is a huge amount of waste causing issues, then it might make sense to build a reactor to use it.

      • Kindness@lemmy.ml
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        9 months ago

        when there actually is a huge amount of waste

        Over 60,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel are stored across Europe (excluding Russia and Slovakia), most of which in France (Table 1). Within the EU, France accounts for 25 percent of the current spent nuclear fuel, followed by Germany (15 percent) and the United Kingdom (14 percent). Spent nuclear fuel is considered high-level waste. Though present in comparably small volumes, it makes up the vast bulk of radioactivity.

        ~ 2019 https://worldnuclearwastereport.org/

        Last “brilliant” plan I heard was dumping it in a hole deep enough we’d never need, nor be able to recover it.

        • szczuroarturo@programming.dev
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          9 months ago

          A quick question . Other than a suprisingly lot of complexity involved in diggin the hole of sufficient size and depth why wouldnt it work ( or is that the reason )?

          • Kindness@lemmy.ml
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            8 months ago

            It would work. Much like every other sweeping of something under the rug, hiding it elsewhere for it to be a problem later always works for the person throwing it away.

            After all, why would we ever wish to extract the remaining U238 from the spent fuel? We utilised a full 4%, let’s call that square and throw the rest down a hole. Perish the thought we’ll ever need to dig near this massive radioactive hole. Or that an undiscovered cycle of nature causes it to come back to bite us. Just throw it down there with the rest of the resources we never want to safely explore, and who cares if there’s something valuable within it’s sphere of radioactivity.

            Apologies for the sarcasm. I consider the idea both wasteful and foolish.

            I’m a fan of both Thorium and Molten-Salt Reactors.

          • Xavienth
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            9 months ago

            It would work, they’re just a hater.

        • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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          9 months ago

          Weight is a way to make the problem sound worse than it is, because nuclear waste is so incredibly dense. It’s not enough to be a big deal yet. Dumping it deep into the ocean is an option, but it’s only going to happen to waste that doesn’t have potential uses first.

          • Kindness@lemmy.ml
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            8 months ago

            nuclear waste is so incredibly dense

            Yes and no. Most current fuels are Uranium or Plutonium. Both between 19 and 20 g/cm3. For reference, liquid water is approximately 1 g/cm3. Unspent fuel is a similar weight to gold.

            “Spent” U238 is usually around 96% U238. If we consider the remainder a rounding error and assume all 60 tonnes is 60 million kg of U238. That will give us a very rough estimate of 3,000 m3.

            Also worthy of noting are other wastes that comes from mining and refining.

            There is much waste already. The “spent” waste is too radioactive to safely re-refine until later.

      • toikpi@feddit.uk
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        8 months ago

        Have a look at the size of the Finnish waste repository.

        “They’ll hold a total of 5,500 tonnes of waste,” says Joutsen. “So Onkalo will take all the high-level nuclear waste produced by Finland’s five nuclear power plants in their entire life cycles.”

        https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230613-onkalo-has-finland-found-the-answer-to-spent-nuclear-fuel-waste-by-burying-it

        The Finnish repository is designed with a life of 100,000 years. Homo sapiens (i.e us) have existed for about 300,000 years.

        Article about the problems warnings that will comprehensible in 10,000 years https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200731-how-to-build-a-nuclear-warning-for-10000-years-time

  • Nomecks@lemmy.ca
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    9 months ago

    So nuclear plants of the future won’t be run by companies who cut important corners on safety to maximize shareholder profits while offloading the consequences to the government and public?

    • Gaia [She/Her]
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      9 months ago

      I hear the argument being made that companies shouldn’t be allowed to run a nuclear power plant, or any infrastructure for that matter.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
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      9 months ago

      I mean that’s how things work in China with state owned companies. I don’t see why everybody shouldn’t be doing that.

  • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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    9 months ago

    Or just bury it miles underground in the desert, but for some fucking reason a state is as likely to store it upstream in a concrete shack as they are to ship it to the mojave where the pit is literally already dug out and designated.

  • Churbleyimyam@lemm.ee
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    9 months ago

    If nuclear stops getting outstripped by renewables on cost I might be more interested in it.

    • Xavienth
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      9 months ago

      Only when you don’t include grid storage

      • Churbleyimyam@lemm.ee
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        9 months ago

        Yeah that is problem. It did just make me think though: I read recently about a UK project to build a solar farm in the Moroccan desert the size of greater London and lay undersea cables all the way back to southwest England. They claim it will be half the cost of the new Hinkley C reactor, which is just up the road and that includes building from scratch the ship to lay the cables. Now, instead of having this solar farm to the south, in a similar timezone, what if it could be to the east or west? There is already an international grid in this part of the world, so perhaps if it was extended, there could be renewable energy coming in from wherever, whenever it was being produced. The sun is usually out and the wind blowing somewhere. That would reduce the burden of storage. It would also require a high level of cooperation and trust, which has its pros and cons.

  • keepcarrot [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    8 months ago

    Correct time was 40 years ago when renewable were worse. Instead we built coal and gas generally. Now the worst people want nuclear, except they don’t actually want it, they just use it as a cudgel to not build any green infrastructure

  • ianhclark510@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    9 months ago

    Just remember that Low level Radioactive Waste is a thing, unless there’s a fast reactor that runs on smocks and used syringes

    • Xavienth
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      9 months ago

      This is the thing a lot of people don’t understand. The vast majority of radioactive waste isn’t fuel. It’s cladding, PPE, etc

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

    It’s so annoying that being irrationality afraid of nuclear power is simply assumed to be a leftist position where I live, by leftists and non-leftists alike. No thought goes into it, nuclear power is scary because of nuclear bombs and Chernobyl and that’s it.

      • zurohki@aussie.zone
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        9 months ago

        It’s more expensive than solar, wind and batteries, though. Not just coal or gas.

    • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      It is not.

      And there is no large margin.

      Referencing several sources that consider a vast array of power generation technologies, from offshore wind to biomass, terrestrial wind, solar, gas, coal and nuclear, and nuclear energy has high start up costs and it’s also not the cheapest per megawatt of power. It’s basically middle of the road on most of the stats I’ve seen.

      Solar, by comparison, has had a much higher LCOE as recently as 5-10 years ago. Most power construction projects take longer than that to plan and build, then operate for decades. Until the last few years, solar hasn’t even be a competitor compared to other options.

      Beyond direct cost nuclear has been one of very few green energy sources, the nuclear materials are contained and safely disposed of. Unless there’s a serious disaster, it’s one of the most ecologically friendly forms of energy. The only sources better are hydroelectric, and geothermal. The only “waste” from nuclear is literal steam, and some limited nuclear waste product. A miniscule amount compared to the energy produced.

      Last time I checked, all of the nuclear waste that’s ever been produced can fit in an area the size of a football field, with room to spare. For all the energy produced, it’s very small.

      Yet, because of stuff like Chernobyl and Fukushima, everyone seems to hate it.

      I live in Ontario, Canada, our entire power infrastructure is hydroelectric and nuclear. I’m proud of that.

      Nuclear isn’t the demon that people believe it is.

      • CyberEgg@discuss.tchncs.de
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        9 months ago

        LCOE of solar is lower than nuclear for eleven years now. Wind has had lower LCOE than nuclear for 14 years now. See figure 52.

        Building a new nuclear power plant takes 9-12 years on average. Hinkley Point C in southeast England was announced in 2008 (16 years ago) and is projected to be finished in 2028, with costs now being estimated around $40 billion. These long realisation times are not a european issue alone, as Korea’s Shin-Hanul-1-2 faces similar problems.

        Safely storing nuclear waste is expensive, too.

        • InputZero@lemmy.ml
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          9 months ago

          Maybe I shouldn’t step in this but here it goes. My personal opinion is that nuclear isn’t good or bad, it’s an option that’s available. I have never heard a nuclear activist say that nuclear energy is superior to renewables. It’s not black and white, it’s all a complex mix of demands and limitations that dictate if renewables are better for an area or nuclear. It’s a whole lot of gray, but nuclear energy isn’t as dangerous as some make it out to be.

          • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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            9 months ago

            Your comment is valid, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

            I wouldn’t say that nuclear is the best option, nor cleanest, nor safest. Like anything, it’s all circumstantial. Sometimes it makes sense, sometimes other options are simply better.

            From what I’ve seen, nuclear is the best for base load on a grid scale. Basically: the load that the grid continually has, is well served by nuclear. To my understanding, most nuclear generation is fairly slow to ramp up and down, compared to other technologies, so keeping it at a relatively steady level, with minor adjustments and changes through the day as required, is the best use case for it. It’s stable and consistent, which is to say it doesn’t vary based on external factors, like the weather, where solar/wind are heavily influenced by external factors.

            It’s entirely on a case by case basis.

          • CyberEgg@discuss.tchncs.de
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            9 months ago

            You’re right, you shouldn’t have stepped in. At least,you shouldn’t have stepped in and build a strawman. The discussion you entered is about costs, not dangers.

            • InputZero@lemmy.ml
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              9 months ago

              You’re wrong, I didn’t talk about dangers and I didn’t put up a strawman. If you wanted to pin a logical fallacy on my argument you should have said I made a generalization fallacy or an informally fallacy because I was so vague. It’s actually pretty telling that you’re attributing a lot of intention where there was none. I am not going to spend the time or energy to make a legitimate argument with some random jerk on the internet that ultimately just gets us Internet points. I have more important things to do with my time.

              And honestly my only reason for posting is to make the comment number go up one tick to keep these communities going. I really don’t care about what you think and unless you’re in a position of power no one else does either.

              Edit: I’ll downvote myself, I don’t approve of anyone behaving like either of us.

              • CyberEgg@discuss.tchncs.de
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                9 months ago

                Your one and only fact-related statement was literally

                but nuclear energy isn’t as dangerous as some make it out to be.

                But sure, you weren’t talking about dangers lol.

                • InputZero@lemmy.ml
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                  9 months ago

                  You’re right, I was careless. It wasn’t a strawman though. It’s still a generalization or informality fallacy. If you’re going to head in so hot at least have use the right terms.

        • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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          8 months ago

          Thanks, that LCOE reference shows that nuclear is on par with several other technologies.

          It thoroughly disproves the point that it is more expensive “by a large margin”. At most it’s a bit more costly than some things, but it’s also not far off from some other options, so it’s definitely not expensive… At least not by a large margin.

    • Emmy@lemmy.nz
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      9 months ago

      You got downvored for truth. That’s pretty sad tbh

  • blind3rdeye@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    This comic is pretty bad. It oversimplifies both positions to the point of complete triviality, then uses it to mock a group of people. The comic is not insightful, or funny, or representative or any real people in any sense. It’s basically just a jab at some people that the author doesn’t like.

  • PotatoesFall@discuss.tchncs.de
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    8 months ago

    then why aren’t we already doing that? Probably it’s not as cost-effective? nuclear power is already crazy expensive.

    That being said a very small amount of nuclear I’m fine with, just to make up for renewable fluctuation until we figure out power storage