Submitted by chopchopped t3_y67tc9 in Futurology
Reply to comment by 11fingerfreak in Nation’s First Nuclear-Powered Clean Hydrogen Production Announced. The Nine Mile Point Generating Station, the oldest operating U.S. nuclear power plant, will soon house the nation’s first nuclear-powered clean hydrogen production facility by chopchopped
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?
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