As the world grapples with the existential crisis of climate change, environmental activists want President Joe Biden to phase out the oil industry, and Republicans argue he’s already doing that. Meanwhile, the surprising reality is the United States is pumping oil at a blistering pace and is on track to produce more oil than any country has in history.
Nuclear power is hardly a carbon-free power source. Even if the construction, mining, refining, and transport of the fuel was done with electricity, the concrete for the plant would release a lot of CO2.
It’s less than a fossil fuel, to be sure, but calling it carbon-free assumes you just plop down a reactor and it starts making power, which isn’t the case.
Sure, but all those same problems apply to wind and solar too. It isn’t like the concrete to anchor the wind turbine just appears there. If we are going to call wind carbon-free, nuclear is too.
But, coming back to my point, one actively burns fossil fuels in order to use renewables. They are paired with natural gas plants out of necessity for just base-load power. If one is serious about a carbon-free energy grid, nuclear is the best option out there using today’s technology. We should have been building out nuclear since the 70s energy crisis and we should be building it out today. France did, and it is why Germany is now buying power from them in spades.
Jimmy Carter worked on nuclear power in his Navy days. He could have chosen to build nuclear plants but didn’t, mostly because of his experience with nuclear accidents. I’ll trust Jimmy more than some guy on the Internet.
Which nuclear accidents? Three mile island (which happened in '79 and Carter was elected in '76) to this day has a death toll of zero, as well as injuries. In fact only one death has occurred from the facility, which occurred during decommissioning. Unit 1 (of 2) continued operating until 2019 without issue. The Chernobyl accident didn’t happen until '86.
Here’s a list of nuclear accidents. There’s very few, and most of them did not cause any deaths. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_and_incidents
Storage of waste is also very safe and easy. It’s overblown, and the biggest issue is regulation that requires them to store it themselves with no better solution created yet. Coal doesn’t have this issue, for example, making it cheaper than it should be. Solar and wind also don’t have this issue with mining waste and other pollutants. This is a cost issue and not an effectiveness of safety issue though, so not really relevant.
Jimmy isn’t an expert in the field (and neither am I), but the experts say it’s safe and reliable. Jimmy is just a guy who was elected president. He did fairly well, and has done a lot of good after too, but I don’t trust his opinion over experts.
We need solar, wind, probably tidal soon, etc, but nuclear is also clean, safe, and more reliable. It should be considered where appropriate. I prefer solar and wind, but they have different capabilities than nuclear and we should recognize that.
I honestly don’t care enough about anything you said to take the time to reply to any of it, because I’ve heard it all be fore.
But this I will not stand for:
Yes, he is.
Jimmy knows more about nuclear power than both of us combined.
You know, I knew that but totally forgot. Thanks for the reminder. This is a cool article about his experience, particularly in a nuclear cleanup. This part is particularly interesting, considering his long life. “They let us get probably a thousand times more radiation than they would now. It was in the early stages and they didn’t know.” Even a thousand times more than the maximum today isn’t even as harmful as most think.
This is also an interesting insight into how his views changed.
He was originally interested in the technology through reason, but he became opposed through emotion.
However, he’s not an expert. Admittedly, this is a biased source, but there’s no chance he was actually educated on nuclear reactor operations, at least prior to becoming president. He was more knowledgeable than others at the time, who could barely know anything on the subject, but he couldn’t have known how they actually operate.
I don’t disagree he probably has more knowledge on it than both of us combined, but I don’t claim knowledge on it. I claim knowledge of what experts say, and they all say it’s the safest source of energy we have. They say it does have some risks associated with it, but so does everything. There is a near zero risk for meltdown of modern reactors, and even if one were to happen it’s extremely unlikely to cause serious damage.
For example, the thing that caused the most damage with Fukushima was the evacuation, not the actual radioactive waste. They evecuated areas that didn’t need to be and probably caused more harm than they prevented. If they took a measured response, fewer people would have been harmed and less damage would have been done.
Give a counter-argument of why we shouldn’t at least consider utilizing nuclear energy in places where it makes sense?
Edit: Also, for reference, I live very close to probably the largest concentration of nuclear reactors in the world. The Norfolk Naval Shipyard. I haven’t been worried about it for a single second of my life. There have been no accidents, as far as I’m aware, and they’re very safe. There’s a reason the navy makes such good use of them, even on vehicles designed to be under attack.
I’m all for using nuclear energy where it makes sense. Which is basically past the asteroid belt, and possibly the moon because of its two-week-long nights that make solar power difficult. But beyond that I don’t see a use for nuclear fission power.
For the rest of it, the expense and risk of nuclear energy doesn’t make sense, at least to me. I would love for the nuclear dreams of the 50s to be realized. But, like airships, nuclear fission feels like a dead-end technology, especially at this point in time.
I think we would be better off investing in systems that support renewable energy - electricity storage, efficiency, and grid modernization - than it would be to dump billions of dollars into plants that won’t come online for decades.
But that’s me. And I’m really thankful that you took the time to write a great response. LLAP 🖖
The expense and time for constructing reactors is mostly just red tape. We need some amount of that, but it’s rediculous levels. The US Navy puts out reactors faster than commercial can, and those are designed to be portable and to be under attack. There’s no good reason for the amount of time they take in the US. China has been constructing them faster, for example.
I absolutely agree those should be the priority. Grid modernization has to take place no matter what for that matter. I also agree we shouldn’t invest billions into plants that won’t come online for decades. I’m of the opinion we should change the laws to allow much less expensive and faster to build reactors. As it is now, nuclear doesn’t make sense. We need to change the way things are now, whether that’s to focus on renewables, nuclear, or both. The status quo has failed.
LLAP 🖖
Yep. Nope. Done with this.
Nuclear power has less deaths than even wind by terawatt hour produced. Hell rooftop solar has caused significantly more deaths per terawatt hour produced. The fact you think one of the safest power generation sources is a serious danger is not based in reality and is what I was alluding to when I said that the greens don’t want nuclear, so instead we built out natural gas.
There’s lots and lots of reasons why nuclear isn’t going to be a solution, and its danger is only a small part of it.
I’ve gone round and round with nukebros for years so you’re not gonna change my mind on this.
And what are those lots and lots of reasons?
What is it with nukebros and coming out of the woodwork like this. Is there some Discord chat where you let your nukebro friends know somebody’s got a different opinion?
I don’t have time to rehash an argument I’ve had a hundred times already. Go look it up yourself.
I did, couldn’t find anything. Have a nice day.
Don’t be a sealion