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ThisistheInfiniteIs t1_iy3w779 wrote

They had better dig up all of that soil that they contaminated with Strontium-90, Cobalt-60, Ceasium-137, and a massive plume of tritium, just to name a few. Or will they just lie about having underground pipes that leak radioactive waste again and pretend it's not there?

And there still is no responsible way to deal with all those casks full of super dangerous used radioactive fuel, so it will just sit there, a few feet above the flood plain, just waiting for a big ice jam or flood. Now the taxpayers get to manage that waste for the next 200,000 years.

That awful poison factory should have never been built, I am happy that it is gone. Nuclear fission is a failed technology and that place was grossly mismanaged, because the supposed "regulator" is captured and populated with people from the very industry that it is supposed to be regulating.

They drove this plant into the ground until a huge section of the cooling tower collapsed from neglect and the groundwater around the plant was polluted with fission products that never should have been found outside of containment, then they lied about it, yet were somehow allowed to investigate themselves and "remediate" their own environmental crime, with pretty much zero consequences. The industry is so corrupt.

They stored radioactive waste in kiddie pools, lost track of fuel, tried to gaslight people about the radioactive pollution found in the Connecticut river and tried to soup up that dangerous, embrittled antique instead of doing the responsible thing and shut it down when it should have been decommissioned.

Good riddance, I am happy that these foolish, dangerous, filthy, super expensive power plants are on their way out, because the private sector cannot be trusted to run them safely. Time and again, all over the globe, the industry chooses short term profit over safety.

Thankfully we have much better options now that are actually green, renewable, safe and affordable. It just doesn't make financial sense to build any more of them. Nuclear fission was never a good deal for anyone but the few companies that extracted the short term profit, while leaving future taxpayers to deal with the enormous mess.

A few days worth of expensive electricity for many thousands of years of radioactive waste management, what a deal!

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balding_dad t1_iy3y4nw wrote

We currently consume three times more energy than we produce and 70% of homes are heated by fossil fuels or wood. The status quo is completely unsustainable and nuclear is a crucial part of a balanced energy strategy. I know the old guard green peace types think nuclear is scary but in 10 years when the boomers are gone the rest of us are going to be rueing our failure to build three reactors as the basis of our energy future.

Edit: source

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lantonas t1_iy42k7a wrote

But we can fill every field in Vermont with solar panels instead!

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ThisistheInfiniteIs t1_iy43wha wrote

Vermont's in-state electricity net generation has come almost entirely from renewable resources since the permanent shutdown of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station at the end of 2014.

In fact Vermont already has the lowest carbon dioxide emissions of any state.

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lantonas t1_iy5swhq wrote

A quarter of which is from burning wood. And hydroelectic power from... Canada.

More than half of our power isn't even generated in state.

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ThisistheInfiniteIs t1_iy428zt wrote

>The status quo is completely unsustainable and nuclear is a crucial part of a balanced energy strategy

That is absolutely false, we do not need nuclear fission at all, not to mention the fact that even if you were somehow able to find a site for a new plant, which is very doubtful, it would be a decade just getting the planning done, and like another decade before it was actually built, and most likely billion over budget. Financially, nuclear fission just can't compete, even with the massive subsidies and the Price-Anderson act.

Also, nobody wants a pile of radioactive waste in their back yard.

WE have much better options now, which are much easier, and much much faster to build, which don't come with all of the awful liabilities of nuclear fission, or the permanent radioactive waste problem. In fact, they don't consume any expensive fuel whatsoever and they actually make money instead of wasting it.

The green revolution is here and this failed technology is dead, thankfully.

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balding_dad t1_iy44t8w wrote

The existing renewable options don’t actually fill the same energy niche as coal and natural gas. We still need baseload power to serve as a stable base for consumption. This company has been trying to “solve” grid storage as baseload power since 2012 and they’re still saying “two more years” (spoiler lossless energy storage is very expensive and probably thirty years away). Our existing renewables are great for variable needs but the existing options are coal, natural gas, and nuclear. For the baseload niche, that is our choice today, I choose nuclear.

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ThisistheInfiniteIs t1_iy46wl7 wrote

>We still need baseload power

This is also false, first, we already have "baseload power" from Hydro-Quebec, what we need are sources that can be easily taken on and off line, which nuclear is terrible at. It is actually a liability in our future grid.

Also, everywhere else, "baseload" power stations are not going to be a part of our electric grid going forward, renewables and batteries are what is actually being built now, we have this technology today, which is much cheaper, safer, greener and easier to build than super expensive, dangerous, unpopular nuclear fission plants.

Edit: spelling

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