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Young climate activist tells Greenpeace to drop ‘old-fashioned’ anti-nuclear stance
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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I mean it's not the companies operating the facilities we put our trust in, but the outside regulators whose job it is to ensure these facilities are safe and meet a certain standard. As well as the engineers and scientists that design these systems.
Nuclear power isn't 100% safe or risk-free, but it's hella effective and leaps and bounds better than fossil fuels. We can embrace nuclear, renewables and fossil free methods, or just continue burning the world.
The worst nuclear disaster has led to 1,000sq miles of land being unsafe for human inhabitants.
Using fossil fuels for power is destroying of the entire planet.
It's really not that complicated.
Except that nuclear isn't the only, or even the cheapest, alternative to fossil fuels.
Except that powering the world with nuclear would require thousands of reactors and so much more disasters. This doesn't even factor the space abandonned to store «normal» toxic materials.
You mean under ground from where it was dug out?
The plant itself, water inevitably getting in contact with wastes and leaking also.
You mean water under ground? It was in contact million years before any of us was born.
Million years were sufficient for the radioactivity to decay before life started to evolve on earth.
Then how does it fuel nuclear reactors?
Both sound terrible.
I don’t really want to pick the lessor of two evils when it comes to the energy.
We are on a time limit thanks to climate change. We can't afford to complain about picking the lessor of two evils.
The option proposed is that making a small area of the planet inhabitable or worsening climate change. Sorry but that’s a shitty comparison.
Bet you’d feel* differently if you were a resident of one of the island nations that’s going to drown in the next decade or two. That part of the world’s definitely going to be uninhabitable if we continue to do nothing.
By not picking, you are picking fossil fuels. Because we can't fully replace everything with solar/wind yet, and fossil fuels are already being burned as we speak.
No, give me an option that doesn’t make a part of the world uninhabitable or increases climate change.
That just a stupid comparison and is there any reason why we can’t also do wind solar thermal hydro also? It’s fossil fuels or nuclear and that’s it?
No, give me an option that doesn’t make a part of the world uninhabitable or increases climate change.
That just a stupid comparison and is there any reason why we can’t also do wind solar thermal hydro also? It’s fossil fuels or nuclear and that’s it huh?
The problem is its potential for harm. And I don't mean meltdown. Storage is the problem that doesn't seem to have strong solutions right now. And the potential for them to make a mistake and store the waste improperly is pretty catastrophic.
"Nuclear waste" sounds super scary, but most of it are things like tools and clothing, that have comparatively tiny amount of radioactivity. Sure it still needs to be stored properly, very little high level waste is actually generated.
You know what else is catastrophic? Fossil fuels and the impact they have on the climate. I'm not arguing that we should put all our eggs in one basket, but getting started and doing something to move away from the BS that is coal, gas, and oil is really something we should've prioritised fifty years ago. Instead they have us arguing whether we should go with hydroelectric, or put up with "ugly windmills" or "solar farms" or "dangerous nuclear plants."
It's all bullshit. Our world is literally on fire and no one seems to actually give a fuck. We have fantastic tools that could've halted the progress had we used them in time, but fifty years later we're still arguing about this.
At this point I honestly hope we do burn. This is a filter mankind does not deserve to pass. We're too evil to survive.
Yea both are horrible. But we can get off fossil fuels and walk away. We can't with nuclear. It'll always be with us and doesn't solve that we need fossil fuel for other things.
Jets and ships are still going to need fossil fuels.
Which is why I think the best thing we could be doing right now is focusing on improving how energy is store. With the right advancement we could solve a lot of these problems with the right battery.
Mercury will always be with us. Arsenic will always be with us. PFAS will always be with us. Natural radiation will always be with us. Fortunately, nuclear waste is easily detectable, the regulations around it are much stronger, the amount of HLW is miniscule and the storage processes are incredibly advanced
Moreover, most Nuclear waste won't always be with us. A lot of fission prodcuts have half lives in the decades or centuries
Jets and ships can be nuclear powered. It's just not a very good idea for jets at least.
Sure, but doesn't that just increase the nuclear waste storage issue if we turn all these vehicles nuclear powered
Not hugely. Actual nuclear waste, not just mildly radioactive uniforms and similar material, is extremely small and compact for the amount of energy generated.
I would say though how much nuclear waste would be acceptable in an aquifer to be an issue. Its great that in relation to the energy produced, its small. But can that small amount still pose a catastrophic risk or not
How do you get the uranium or thorium? Generally, it has to be mined. Are we using nuclear powered mining equipment? No. We use fossil fuel powered mining equipment. Then we use fossil fuels to power the trucks that take the depleted nuclear product to the storage depot, which is powered and requires employees who drive there using fossil fuel powered vehicles, using fossil fuel powered warehouse equipment. When does nuclear power phase out the fossil fuel power? Are we going to decommission oil and coal production facilities? Or are we just going to use nuclear to augment the grid?
Don't forget all the fossil fuels used in machinery that builds nuclear power plants, and the CO2 emissions from all of the concrete used.
Oh, and if you start building a nuclear power plant right now it will be online (maybe) in a decade or two and hopefully for only 150% of the initial cost. There's a nuclear power plant in Georgia that is $17 BILLION over budget.
So basically saving the planet is mega super important, but somehow 17 billions is suddenly too much?
That $17 billion could be spent on renewables that produce cheaper electricity and be online in less than 20 years.
How much renewables do you get for $17B?
Don’t push nuclear power like it’s the only option though.
Where I live we entirely provide energy from hydro power plants and nuclear energy is banned. We use no fossil fuels. We have a 35 year plan for future growth and it doesn’t include any fossil fuels. Nuclear power is just one of the options and it has many hurdles to implement, maintain and decommission.
My country, Sweden, also gets a decent chunk of power from hydro. Back in 2021, about 43% was hydroelectric, and 31% was nuclear.
Honestly, if you can, hydro is brilliant. Not many places can though — both because of geography and politics. Nuclear is better than a lot of the alternatives and shouldn't be discounted.
And what do YOU know about radioactive waste disposal?
We can bury it in the ground and it will literally turn into lead. How are you doing with carbon emissions? Got a fix?
I think it's photosynthesis. 'Bury in the ground' is an extreme simplification btw. Also, I am finished with this topic scince long anough. It feels politically biased. If you'd like to reply, I'd hear it gladly. But I m not going to be involved into a discussion.
I know it's a damn lot easier than carbon recapture, if we're talking waste products. It's not ideal, but there is no such thing as perfect, and we shouldn't let that be the enemy of good. Nuclear fission power is part of a large group of methods to help us switch off fossil fuels.
"Easier"? Are you aware of the fact that radioactive waste tombs are meant to stand for millions of years? It requres a lot of territory, construction and servance charges, and lots of prays for nothing destructive happens with it in its "infinite" lifetime.
Have you tried capturing gas? As difficult as radioactive waste tombs are, they're easier than containing a specific type of air lol.
Read about breathing if you want to know how to capture gas. Also, about photosynthesis.
If you want to buy the land to plant a second Amazon, be my guest. And breathing does the exact opposite of what we want.
I'd rather fill land with trees than with radioactive wastes.
Launch it into the sun or Florida
Launching radioactive waste into space is a terrible idea, because rockets on occasion crash. Once that happens it becomes a nuclear disaster.
Instead we can safely store it in depleted mines.
Mines fill up with water if they're not constantly pumped out. Even the salt mines which seemed like a solution were found to have this issue
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/04/deep-isolation-aims-to-bury-nuclear-waste-using-boreholes.html
Dig a hole, anywhere, there's a chance it'll fill with water. Especially with climate change. We're seeing moisture getting dropped in areas at greater frequencies that didn't happen decades ago. There's no guarantee you can dig a hole anywhere on earth that wouldn't become apart of our aquifers as the water travels back to the ocean.
Sealing a deep narrow borehole isn't a difficult problem. The Earth has contained oil and gas underground for millions of years.
Its contained it using geological features but once exposed how is it possible to recreate that. Its also not like this material is goo
There is no guarantee of anything.
But if you're storing it hundreds of miles from the ocean, the risk is minimal.
It isn't really minimal since the water cycle on earth is all connected.
Water in the ocean evaporates. It's carries inland by Hadley cells that deposit the moisture inland. It gets dumped on the highest points which all run back the ocean and creating all our aquifers along the way. Those aquifers feed our great lakes and wells.
But you're suggesting we bury toxic material that remains toxic for hundreds or thousands of years somewhere remote that would just be high up in that water cycle. In places where private companies would be out of the eyes of watchdog groups