Submitted by chopchopped t3_y67tc9 in Futurology
Nuclear fission is not clean or "carbon free" at all, this is pure propaganda.
In these poison factories produce some of the most dangerous toxins known to man which we will have to pay to guard and manage for timescales that are longer than there have been humans.
Solar, hydro, tidal and wind are the answer to producing hydrogen that is actually green. These dangerous antiques should have been retired decades ago, it is super irresponsible to keep these gigantic liabilities running.
Some of the newer salt reactors are actually pretty awesome, but I think everyone can agree that making nuclear energy to make h2 gas to create even less energy and dealing with the radioactive waste produced in the process is just plain stupid. I think we’d all be way more onboard if it was a solar farm, or wind turbines, but using hydrogen, a very reactive gas that requires tons of energy to make on a commercial level, is just idiotic when we have electric cars.
Nothing is carbon free. But nuclear is tied with wind as the cleanest source of energy. (source: IPCC table on page 7)
Only if you do not account for the enormous carbon footprint of guarding and managing the super dangerous nuclear waste these poison factories produce, for the next 20,000 years
No that is considered in the IPCC report on lifetime emissions. It’s not enormous. Don’t make up nonsense.
The IPCC assumes that after a couple of years that this super dangerous, difficult to manage radioactive waste just magically disappears into a hole somewhere with zero management or oversight, which is absolutely ludicrous.
The reality of it is that it is going to remain a huge, expensive, liability that needs to be constantly managed and guarded for many thousands of years to come, at the taxpayers expense.
>”just magically disappears into a hole somewhere with zero management or oversight”
It’s not magic, but that is pretty much how deep geological repositories work.
This is not a viable plan, it is vaporware that the nuclear industry uses as an excuse to irresponsibly keep making a super dangerous poison at the taxpayers expense. Even if it was actually built, (which would be super irresponsible) you can't just shove it into a hole and walk away, it will need to be guarded and managed a great expense to the future taxpayers.
It is actually built lol. Finland is finishing one right now. The US partially built one but uninformed people like yourself made sure it was canceled. We burn plenty of “clean coal” instead, great job.
The “hole” doesn’t need to be guarded. It would be really obvious if someone was trying to dig through a kilometer of bedrock.
Yeah, they built on in the USA too, but it is likely never going to be used because there are a number of flaws and obvious safety concerns.
Until it is actually implemented, it is nothing but vaporware.
Also, it's not like they are going to just chuck it in a hole and walk away if they ever actually decide to use it. That would be incredibly reckless and irresponsible. No it is going to need to be guarded and managed for many thousands of years, at the taxpayers expense.
They put an extremely small amount of resources into guarding the spent fuel. The inherent safety comes from engineering safe and secure facilities.
You are overstating this carbon footprint.
Except the waste products from nuclear don’t go away for eons. Anything that makes a place cancerland for 75,000 years isn’t exactly clean.
I would say “if we could deal with the waste” but we all know that’s never going to happen. If we can’t solve a problem in a year we tend to just say screw it and let people suffer. The problem is following that pattern means cancer and radiation poisoning for a lot of people who wouldn’t have that if we just built some wind farms and called it a day.
Long term storage for nuclear waste is deep geological repositories.
Geological repositories that nobody wants to host and that will eventually leak.
What incentives do you give any location that hosts these? Free cancer meds until 79000 AD? Lead underwear?
I’d be more worried about the cancer you will get from the fossil fuel particulates you are breathing right now. Billions of dollars have been spent researching deep geologic repositories, but no amount of research is enough to overcome ignorance.
It’s not a binary choice between nuclear and fossil fuels. They are both really bad ideas that make lots of money for the companies running it and the politicians that support them. They’re both horrible for the environment, just for different reasons. And they’re both industries run by corrupt assholes that have bs scientists playing down the harms and corrupt, bribe taking politicians. Both will literally kill you if you get in their way, too. As in assassinate you, shoot you, etc. So, no, I’m not buying any argument about how green nuclear is when Silkwood and Three Mile Island are both things that happened. Nobody killed whistleblowers over windmills as far as we know. Nobody has needed to trot out a politician to downplay a radiation release with a solar panel. This stuff happened. The only reason we’re talking about nuclear right now is because most of the folks alive when the scandals happened are so old their memories are shit. The folks who weren’t adults when that happened have no memory of this stuff and, therefore, have no idea how messed up the players in the nuclear industry are and how indifferent they are to actively or passively killing us all for a dollar.
BTW my issue with Three Mile Island isn’t necessarily that they had a meltdown. It’s that they lied about it and got President Carter to do a dog and pony show to give them cover. That’s enough reason for me to call bullshit on that industry.
EDIT: This is all related to a larger problem we Americans have: a lack of historical memory. We’re taught little about history until we get to college. The little we are taught is meant to make us feel good about being Americans. This means things that don’t make us look good are systematically avoided, downplayed, or spun. This includes how American industries and industrialists have actually behaved. As a result, we glorify people and industries that do not deserve the veneration and deference we give them.
Right now it isnt nuclear vs fossil fuels. Renewables are not yet ready to replace 100% of fossil fuels so nuclear is needed as well.
This is the worlds current energy mix.
This was published in 2019, unfortunately it went largely unnoticed: >”these two countries could have prevented 28,000 air pollution-induced deaths and 2400 MtCO2 emissions between 2011 and 2017. Germany can still prevent 16,000 deaths and 1100 MtCO2 emissions by 2035 by reducing coal instead of eliminating nuclear as planned. If the US and the rest of Europe follow Germany's example they could lose the chance to prevent over 200,000 deaths and 14,000 MtCO2 emissions by 2035.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421519303611
And by your logic we should also get rid of hydro, which makes up the majority of renewable energy. Because [insert conspiracy here] could do something bad like that one time.
Considering we’re actually building solar and wind right now and nuclear takes years to setup, it’s safe to say we can scale the mix of renewables faster than nuclear.
Hydro has a lot of issues, too. But those are moot since climate change may eventually make hydro hard to maintain.
Uh, they did bad things at least twice that we know of. And no state in the US is willing to build the geological containment facilities because they aren’t interested in making their groundwater radioactive. Heck, out here in Washington state we can’t even clean up a contaminated site without constant political fights. Why would anyone want the same issue? And it’s going to be an issue anywhere. Not hypothetically… it’s pretty much guaranteed.
So, no, it’s not between nuclear and fossil fuels. It’s where the money is for large companies that will get the contracts… but it’s not in the best interest of anyone that isn’t keen on getting leukemia.
>”It’s safe to say we can scale the mix of renewables faster than nuclear.”
Not to 100%, we dont have the grid storage. Nuclear provides base load which wind/solar do not. They are not in competition with each other, they are both needed to eliminate fossil fuels.
>”they aren’t interested in making their groundwater radioactive.”
Thats fake news, Yucca had plenty of research showing groundwater would not be impacted. But it’s easy to just make sh*t up since everyone is already irrationally scared of nuclear.
>”Heck, out here in Washington state we can’t even clean up a contaminated site without constant political fights. Why would anyone want the same issue? And it’s going to be an issue anywhere. Not hypothetically… it’s pretty much guaranteed.”
You realize nuclear weapons production done in the 1940s is completely unrated to nuclear energy today right?
Not to pick apart your argument or whatever but most nuclear byproducts will last far less time than humans have been around. Plutonium-239 is 24000 years though.
Just wanted to help people understand.
I’d like to add that we could reprocess the fuel like other first world countries if we were ever able to establish a repository.
Edit - words. 24000 year half-life.
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