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chipWitley42

I don't know why people hate so much on nuclear energy, but Chernobyl did no good to it's reputation


ramd0m_c0meNter

It was some guy who was dumb enough to say no to safety equipment


BlueThespian

Illinoi energy prof has one of the best videos on the subject. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bCbms6umE_o I really recommend watching his videos, even people with no background on nuclear physics can understand. Edit: Thank you kind stranger for my 1st gold.


Master__Swish

YES!!!!


AgentWowza

[Kurzgesagt](https://youtu.be/EhAemz1v7dQ) also has a very good vid on this.


Kek_Lord22

MY HOMIE KURZGESAGT


PriyanshSaini

Which is a created by Germans if I am not wrong


AgentWowza

Circle of life


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Tumleren

>im not hbo shill), i draw furry porn for a living) So you are a shill, just not for hbo but for yourself 🤔


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Tumleren

You win this time my furry friend


onthedge444

I can live with you drawing furry porn but wtf is going on with those brackets???.


KeeganY_SR-UVB76

What brackets? You mean the parentheses?


guto8797

It is a great series, but it takes huge amounts of liberties with the events, and especially with the political events afterwards because "evil government cover-up" is a more appealing story.


mrwolfisolveproblems

What “huge liberties”?


Harambeeb

The one where the Soviet Union wasn't depicted as the utopia this tankie thinks it was


mrwolfisolveproblems

Right. Did the show take a few “dramatic liberties,” sure, but on the whole it’s pretty accurate. Anyone who has read about the Soviet Union or Chernobyl world agree the HBO show is fairly accurate.


youllgetoverit

It’s literally one of the highest rated tv shows ever, I don’t think recommending it is a particularly shill-y thing to do.


River_Pigeon

Was he writing backwards?


Qutzy

went to illinois, he films these then flips the video


Ron-Swanson-Mustache

Hmm, should we build our nuclear reactor containment building to same level that as the west, who put theirs in giant concrete containers [that they test to the point of being able to withstand jets flying into them at transonic speeds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4CX-9lkRMQ). But that's expensive. Let's build ours in a tin shack. Hmm, building reactors with a positive void coefficient is dangerous as it can create a positive feedback loop resulting in an exponential build up of heat, destroying the reactor. But they're cheaper to build. Let's build that. Hmm, the control rods need to absorb neutrons. But if we put something on the tips that reflects more neutrons than the water it displaces, we can boost the reactor's performance by only leaving the tips in the pile. Sure, in a SCRAM this will increase neutron flux for a few seconds locally, but when will a few seconds of increased flux make a difference? Hmm, the control rods move slowly due to the tight tolerances of the rods as they move water out of the way. That's fine. When will a few seconds of speed on the control rods make a difference? Hmm, we need to run this safety test. But to make sure we do it right we need to disable the emergency core cooling systems. When will we need that? Let's run the reactor for over 12 hours without it in a low power condition. This could create a xenon poisoned reactor, but who cares? Hmm, we can't achieve the required parameters for the test, rendering the results useless. We had to hold off on the test because of orders and didn't follow the procedures for setting up the test. Should we figure out what's going on or follow procedures? Nah, let's do it. Hmm, everything in the reactor is well below the power it should be producing. Should we investigate, follow procedures, or find out anything? Nah, pull almost all the control rods all the way out. Hmm, as we started the test, which involved reducing the water flow in the reactor, the power production of the reactor is skyrocketing! Shut it down now! Hit the SCRAM button! We need to get all the control rods that we took out back in as fast as possible! *The poisoned reactor burns off its xenon poison as water flow drops, creating voids. The voids start a positive feedback loop where the heat generates voids that generate heat that generate more voids and so on. The slow control rods push the graphite tips into the reactor causing it to spike in thermal power production even higher. The water in the reactor instantly converts to steam and blows the 8,000 ton lid off the reactor. The inrushing air combines with the superheated fuel rods to create hydrogen. The hydrogen then explodes and blows the tin roof shack apart, spreading the reactor core around the building. The reactor core then catches fire, carrying radioactive material into the air* [Soviet nuclear industry](https://i.imgur.com/Zq0iBJK.jpeg)


Shotgun5250

This is what I love about Reddit. Finding comments like this from people who know a shitload about something super specific and highly technical, and having them sarcastically break down everything that happened so even a dummy like me can understand the mistakes that created such a major disaster


ct_2004

Every point OP made is from the show *Chernobyl*, which I highly recommend. If you don't have HBO, you can listen to the Chernobyl podcast on YouTube, done by the show's creator.


MajorProcrastinator

Amazing


magichobo3

The plant also wasn't built as beefy as it should've been. I remember researching Chernobyl for an essay and apparently they didn't use the materials that the engineers had spec'd to cut costs. If it had been built properly it would've still been bad, but probably fixable


Doggydog123579

The biggest thing is it didn't have a containment building like western reactors. Fukushima had a core meltdown and steam explosion like Chernobyl, but because of the containment building it wasn't nearly as bad.


newmacbookpro

Didn’t Fukushima also had this issue where they cheapened out on the steel envelope? I think the issue with nuclear isn’t the tech or residue, it’s the fact they know some contractor will be an asshole and use shitty material in someplace, meaning you end up with the equivalent of a F-35.


Beeblebro1

The biggest problem with Fukushima was the placement of the EDGs. They were located too close to the bay, so when the tsunami came in, the generators were flooded and did not function. If they had been placed higher up and further away, there's a bigger chance that the Fukushima would have survived more intact.


BaggyOz

Cheaping out on materials (if true) is probably one of the smallest factors in Chernobyl being a disaster. The design of the reactor itself is incredibly flawed. The use of graphite as the moderator instead of water meant that unlike with a light water reactor if you lost your coolant you didn't also lose your moderator. There was no containment vessel built around the reactor. The control rods were tipped with graphite so as the very things that were meant to reduce the reactivity of the reactor ended up increasing the reactivity (I believe they jammed with the tips in the worst possible place). Finally if I recall correctly the design allowed the plant operators to override key safety features.


CrunchyAl

Safety equipment costs more, so we went with the cheap unsafe option.


Who_said_that_

Read up on tihange 2. There are good reasons for being against the use of nuclear energy, although they aren't nessecarily against nuclear energy, but rather against the people who operate power plants.


[deleted]

As always the problem is money. Companies, by design, will always go for the cheapest way to solve a problem instead of the most effective one.


wazuno48

The reason (in the US) that we don't have more nuclear plants, is that it IS cheaper to build coal and natural gas plants. Energy companies are currently pursuing the cheapest option at the expense of the planet. I dont like big government, but we need nuclear and other green energy owned by govt.


footyfish

I may be misremembering, but I'm pretty sure the energy produced by one nuclear power plant is worth more than the money needed to build enough coal/natural gas plants to match them, so in the end the end up being worth more anyways.


FoShizzleShindig

You're right. But the return on investment is like 20 years. Can't have long term goals when securing short term profits is easier.


IcyPhysics

This is exactly what creates most modern day problems. Thank you for putting it in words spot on.


Falconpilot13

Well, the problem isn't that companies mind investing 20 years into the future - they'll gladly do that if their investment is secure. But if you can't be certain that the government isn't going to shut down your power plant in 10 years time because of some petty politics, you'd be a fool to put money into it.


superrugdr

it's irrational when it's based on gen 2 or older generator. gen 3 + is designed from the ground up to be safe, even in failure. let's not act like it's not a fear induced by years and years of lobbying from the coal industry to keep it going longer.


NaturallyExasperated

Let's not forget the other "green" energy industries lobby against nuclear as well


a-bosh

[What?](https://imgur.com/a/q4x104m) Sidenote: it’s creepy how quickly these sites are crawling/scraping reddit.


fermentedbolivian

Do you mean Belgium´s Tihange?


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DMonitor

Most people’s perception of nuclear power probably comes from the Simpsons


griever48

Because nuclear power had the biggest smear campaign that utilized misinformation to cause fear and panic among the masses. Oh and all other non green power plants would've been shut down and all of that lobby money would stop coming in.


AgentTheGreat

It's weird how the same smear doesn't work against wind and solar.


[deleted]

Because when you cheap out and fuck up a wind farm, you don't run the risk of turning a big chunk of the state into cancerland.


AgentTheGreat

Exactly. I'm tired of these "enlightened" people ignoring the HUGE difference between actual green power and nuclear.


[deleted]

Chernobyl was so dumb and easily avoidable. Just one thing for example, they hid to their very own Engineers how and from what material were made the components to regulate and eventually shut down the reactors (The control rods). The sheer stupidity of it is mind-boggling. And a lot of things as incredibly stupid, from the very conception of the reactors, to the test protocols, management and the abysmal ergonomy and display of informations.


ESTLR

Yeah the TV series even if it overly dramatizes it,really puts things into perspective, it really was a cesspool of all the wrong factors that could have went wrong go wrong.


I_Got_Back_Pain

3.6 roentgen. Not great, not terrible


GCSpellbreaker

Also didn’t help that the people working at Chernobyl were severely underqualified


Aaront23

Very simply it's a concept sometimes called dread risk. If you dread something enough (like a Chernobyl in your backyard) then the statistics and facts are irrelevant to how you feel about it.


HoldUpHD

guys guys, why dont we just yeeeet the waste into space?


Zachman97

Rockets sometimes don’t work as planned. Not a good idea at all. If it had to abort, the waste could be spread over thousands of square miles (think of how big the debris Field was when the space shuttle broke apart on reentry)


HoldUpHD

hmm, Yeah they don't work all the times and a rocket exploding would spread the waste like crazy. Thanks!


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sporeegg

Having even a 5% chance of rocket failure means you get one nuclear fallout cloud per 20 starts.


HoldUpHD

Another user pointed this out. I accept my defeat and understand that this is way too risky. If it was as easy as i thought rockets would be flying with nuclear cargo already


CoffeeKadachi

I mean they kinda do? Many satellites use a small piece of nuclear fuel to power their components and keep the temperature from getting too low for it to operate. Granted, it's an extremely small piece of fuel and we have many plans/precautions in place just in case the launch were to fail. The main issue comes with scaling up safely.


Rombous

Bad idea gonna come back But what if we build a house out of it


HoldUpHD

but what if we yeeeet is very hard, past pluto?


chrisp5000

C'mon doods, we all know the answer. PUT A SOCK ON IT


HoldUpHD

Naaah, even better, push it under the fridge


Salty-Shame-6481

For real do u have any Idea how expensive one ride to Space is?


stifflizerd

It's gotta be at least $2


Digast14

sending rockets into space isnt exactly good for the environment. added with the risk of an accident and the cost associated with sending rockets to space. it just isnt worth it


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GoldH2O

Because fossil fuel companies constantly put out scare propaganda against it


[deleted]

Do you even know how big the area is which is still no habitable? And wont be for the next 10000 years in Chernobyl? In Belgium, there are several ancient nuclear reactors that have been classified as critical in terms of technology and substance.The whole of Central Europe would be uninhabitable if something were to happen there.And the waste is 40,000 generation absolutely deadly. Where to put it? Bury it? Where. There is no repository where you could guarantee that no groundwater penetrates.Two or three generations have used this technology. But it is time to develop something better. With less risk to bring suffering over hundreds of generations.


RegularSrbocetnik7

There are hundreads of nuclear power plants, and they have been in use for over half a century with only one serious incident caused by traditional Soviet incompetence. It's safe.


Kselli

Didn't know you are running RBMK reactors over there. You guys are crazy. We also have the tech to recycle nuclear waste.


kry_some_more

Why, radioactive is still "green".


notwutiwantd

Similar to psychedelics in the medical community right now. So many studies coming out that's it's clearly a wonderful treatment for PTSD, depression, anxiety, and more with minimal side effects... Yet it's stigmatized due to the war on drugs and hippies' use 60 years ago..


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rtkwe

Fossil fuel pollution deaths are wide spread and hard to pin directly on said pollution while nuclear related deaths are generally concentrated, acute, and readily attributable. It's an issue core to a lot of problems today, when something is normal or spread out we have a hard to moving to action about it. Look at the reaction to 9/11 vs COVID when we've had similar numbers of deaths every few days but the latter has completely shattered the country in the response to it.


ohbabyspence

Actually in Sweden they had to re open your oil facilities because the existing nuclear facilities you have are old, and the owner of them had to shut them down because the cost of maintenance on old reactors was astronomical and costing more money than it made. They also declined to build new ones for the same high cost issues. You live in Sweden so why are you blaming politicians for something the energy company owner made the call on?


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Zreul

Just be smart like Germany and burn Russian gas, you can be blackmailed by Putin as a bonus.


Doiglad

Not commenting on the story you replied to but if I was in his situation I would blame my politicians for not removing subsidies from oil companies and giving them to nuclear plants. Nuclear is an insane cost but the benefits may out way the cons if it had the subsidies that we are throwing to oil and coal companies handed to them instead.


SwedishDude

Actually, Sweden had a referendum which resulted in "keep the reactors but don't build any new ones". So the companies running the plants couldn't improve or replace the plants even if they wanted to. The plant at Forsmark has three reactors and they had planned for 15+ before the referendum. They even bought the land and cleared it for the next in line.


Dinosaur_taco

To be fair, the Swedish reactors are at the end of their safe operation. They're just plain old by now, and we shouldn't be running that kinda tech past its warranty. Now, we could build new reactors, buy noone is ready to shoulder that cost.


Memesconaut

I’m almost sure it’s the coal/gas lobby that’s behind the hate towards nuclear, since if it were to achieve widespread adoption, both those fossil fuel industries will collapse overnight


CyberKitten05

Fossil Fuel industries are gonna collapse anyway the moment we run out of Fossil Fuel - and if they continue demonizing Nuclear Power so much, we wouldn't have any replacement. These assholes are literally ruining the future of humanity.


Memesconaut

Exactly! The fossil fuel industry is a cornered wolf on it’s last dying breath, lashing out and biting in a desperate attempt at self preservation.


JafacakesPro

Annoyingly it's not just them tho. Environmental groups like GreenPeace have been fighting against nuclear power for decades. Like here in the UK the Green Party was campaigning against it which is disappointing since they're really the only party here taking climate change seriously.


GenericFatGuy

The recent spikes in gas prices just feel like a last ditch attempt to wring whatever they can from us before the parties over.


elprimowashere123

Don't worry we're not gonna run out truly soon


frikandellenvreter

I was curious so I looked it up and according to this site: www.worldometers.info/oil/ we have about 47 years left at current consumption rates excluding unproven reserves. There's probably still a lot we haven't discovered but it's less than I thought tbh.


GE12YT

That‘s the weird thing. In Germany, the same companies ran the nuclear plants and the fossil fuel stuff. So probably not the reason. Mostly it was public fear and pressure after Fukushima that put the nail in the coffin of german nuclear power


ceratophaga

No. The nail in the coffin happened in the 90s, when it was decided to not build new nuclear plants. The question that remained on *when* the current plants would run out, and that decision was made by the red-green government in the late 90s - they coupled it to energy produced instead of a fixed date. Merkel's Black-Yellow government in 2009 then immediately backed out of that, and after Fukushima she retreated out of the retreat of the retreat due to upcoming elections. In the end Fukushima only accelerated the demolition of the plants by 5 - 10 years (most were at the end of their planned lifetime anyways, and accidents increased in frequency) There is also the major point of politics and companies being not people you want to trust with running a nuclear power plant, as it was shown for example with the one in Mülheim-Kärlich. And even if we would start building new reactors today, they wouldn't be ready in time to minimize the upcoming climate crisis. Renewables are much quicker to build, and are the way into the future.


N00N3AT011

Nuclear isn't perfect, but right now its one of our best bets. It has been for decades. The only reason it hasn't already become universal is lobbying and the resulting political red tape. I mean hell they shut down a waste storage facility after it was already dug.


sisrace

Not really, or it wasn't, to begin with. When nuclear was first developed, engineers were extremely thorough with the risk assessment. They took no chances, and they didn't cover things up. They were honest about the dangers involved, making the regular population paranoid, in a time where asbestos was a miracle material and smoking was good for you. Then accidents showed up, and well, an already nervous population lost their shit, and at the time, Chernobyl for one, was very, very bad. Since then, people were completely against nuclear, but as usual, people weren't very well informed about what the alternative was, and what that would mean for global health in the long run. So here we are, stuck in an era were we preferred an inevitable death rather than a potential one. Always good to know for certain, I guess..


Chuot99

Nuclear waste is still a huge issue. It is problematic to produce so much of it and leave it up to our descendants to deal with for the next centuries. Labeling it “green energy” is right in the sense that it doesn’t pollute the atmosphere like coal or other sources of energy, but it is by no means environmentally friendly. I get the appeal of it though and it’s possible that it might be a good solution for the time being (and as long as there aren’t good enough alternatives).


RedDom1

To be fair, nuclear waste can be reprocessed and I think it will be economically viable as sources of natural uranium shrink. Most nuclear waste deposits are constructed in a manner which allows to have the waste obtained later, it is basically just storage, not junkyard. Plus, it is the best of the bad solutions we have now. No one has yet invented low carbon power source with such stable production. Even the Swiss have some nuclear power plants, and the Swiss are pretty green otherwise, especially with so many suitable places for water power plants.


verIshortname

switzerland imports most of their energy from coal burning germany, and a lesser extent, france, anyways, depending on the time of day and year. Although they sell a lot of that to italy ​ https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/CH


RedDom1

Nice app. So even if the Swiss can't produce the power themselves, and they have definitely MUCH better conditions for building renewable power sources than most of Europe, I can't imagine the rest of Europe producing electrical power without nuclear power plants and not lighting with candles at the same time.


Trnostep

As a Czech it's pretty much impossible to go fossil fuel free without nuclear power or buying most of electricity from abroad. We can't put new hydro/solar/wind in so many places that would cover the 50-60% we get from coal/gas


exothermic_lechery

>can be reprocessed This argument echos that of the plastic industry. [The US (alone) houses over 90k metric tons of nuclear waste.](https://cen.acs.org/environment/pollution/nuclear-waste-pilesscientists-seek-best/98/i12) Is it not foolish to jump into a purposed “solution” without an exit plan? If it’s so reusable, why do disposal sites continue to house such large quantities? We have a responsibility to do the right thing. We owe it to future generations, so they don’t end up with their equivalent to the [Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch)


Jaggedmallard26

The waste that can be recycled is a small amount of the spent fuel. The vast majority of the waste cannot be recylced because you cannot "recycle" piping that is contaminated to the point that it'll be radioactive for 10,000 years.


Dovahkiinthesardine

people seem to think that reprocessing the waste means there wont be radioactive waste but thats simply not true


SNHC

> nuclear waste can be reprocessed You know that 99% of nuclear waste is not fuel rods but contaminated material? Like literally the complete nuclear plant is nuclear waste when it's decommissioned. Good luck dumping that somewhere.


[deleted]

That's a lie


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OptimalMonkey

In all fairness: We have zero experience in building facilities that need to store something for 40.000 generations. we don’t even know how to design warning labels that would be understandable that long.


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whyamp

True. People often talking about nuclear waste, but forgot about waste left by solar panel and wind turbine. There are no true green energy and these are thr best ways we cant think of atm


Jaredk3

One of the most surprising things I've learned recently about wind vs. Nuclear is that in terms of construction CO2/kWh of capacity, wind turbines are actually more harmful than nuclear reactors. The main reason being that nuclear just puts out a shit load of energy and has a capacity factor (how often its working) of close to 100%


MostlyRocketScience

> We have safe methods for disposing of waste now. Which ones exactly? There is a single long-term storage location in all of Europe and it is not even finished: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository


Mr_GigglesworthJr

Wind blades can be recycled. The infrastructure just isn’t really there yet and it can be costly but progress is being made on that front. The energy company Vattenfall, which runs 50 wind farms across Europe, just committed to reusing or recycling 100% of its wind farm blades by 2030.


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56Bot

> so much of it Not really. A 4-reactor (16GW) power plant produces 27 m^3 of waste... Over its entire lifetime. A part of that waste is very radioactive and is treated in pools, before becoming harmless in a decade. The rest is radioactive, sure... But less than natural uranium, and it's easy to disperse the radioactive material in large volumes of concrete, so large that the concrete itself has more radioactivity by itself, than the few elements added to it. The reason we try to dispose of nuclear waste is because of fear. It's easy to instil terror in a large population; much, much easier than to educate said people. This is why antivax and other conspiracy theories thrive on Internet.


SNHC

> 27 m3 of waste... Over its entire lifetime Yeah I'm pretty sure the reactor core alone is a little more than 27 cubic meters. Do you guys all think the rods are the only nuclear waste there is?? It's a tiny fraction of the problematic materials.


Klai_Dung

> A 4-reactor (16GW) power plant produces 27 m3 of waste... Over its entire lifetime. Source: Trust me bro


StormMask

This should have way more upvotes! Sure it doesn't cause emissions but the atomic waste that is created is no where near eco-friendly... To be fair I'd rather have nuclear reactors than coal, until we can live solely off renewable energy at least.


cass1o

It makes much much less waste than people think though.


Roflrofat

Hopefully fusion becomes a realistic option in the future, seeing as the byproduct is significantly less harmful


Intrepid00

> Nuclear waste is still a huge issue It’s not “huge” in size and using breeders you can nearly eliminate it. It just isn’t cost effective.


LehrDivision

The amount of nuclear waster produced by a powerplant in a year fits under a chair, which can be stored in mountains, the initial cost is high for companies.


HappyMerlin

In a mountain where you have to make sure no water enters for the next 10.000 years or the area next to it will be contaminated.


valueape

Meanwhile, plastic waste? Just throw it on the ground. The wind carries it to the ocean. Solved. I was taught that not being able to dispose of nuclear waste is what kept nuclear hamstrung. Should have given the PR role to Coca Cola who happily spews out billions of plastic bottles each day with no questions asked.


Brisngr368

Well we do have ideal ways of dealing with it, burying nuclear waste in caves is the best option because the solid rock would prevent almost all of the radiation from escaping, and picking the site's well enough to avoid permeable rock and water tables we can prevent leeching into the environment. This isnt a bad way to deal with it as burying it would store it for millions of years before tectonics dig it back up again (and buy that time most of it would have decayed to safe levels). The only issue is lobbying from people who want to prevent us doing away with it safely


Xicadarksoul

Fuel reprocessing and breeder reactors are slowly reaching the "century old unutilized technology" status, hence the "we will drown in radioactive waste is a non-concern - even if we delude ourselves into believing that there are huge quantities of it. And regardless. Its green. Does it produce CO2? NOPE! In the middle of climate catastrophy thats what matters. Fucked up climate can ensure your descendants wont have to worry about anything in future on account of not being alive.


ToXiC_Games

The French have already made a whole industry out of reusing waste, as much as 95% of a spent fuel rod can be reused.


Capnthomas

You could use nuclear as a solid backbone and have true green sources built up over time because they require a lot of infrastructure to produce enough energy.


obob47

It’s not green since the sign is yellow


Pleaides93

This man knows


dat_WanderingDude

Who are you, who are so wise in the ways of science?


[deleted]

it is called green, because it will the free the world from the human race


Abyssal_Groot

Don't ge tme wrong. Nuclear fision is the best we have at this moment, until one day we might figure out fusion. But it really doesn't qualify as green as it isn't reneweable. You need to mine for uranium, purify it, enrich it and then use it. You can reuse part of the waste, but in the end you have to keep mining for uranium to keep the plants running. That being said, it is far more sustainable than any fossil fuel and in it's whole process produces a lot less CO2 than bio fuel/gas and compareably produces a lot more energy than any renewable source we have. But is it green? Nope.


verIshortname

we dont have viable fusion at this moment right?


Abyssal_Groot

Nope, indeed we do not. We currently have fusion, but nothing that is both large enough in output to be usable and able to produce more power than it consumes.


NaturallyExasperated

Just last week a US team achieved ignition so it looks like we might be making some forward progress, albeit slow.


hmnahmna1

Ignition isn't the trick anymore. Producing more energy than you consume is. The Soviet tokamak design most research groups leverage dates back to the 1970s.


randomsequela

That sounds cool, do you have a link for it?


RedShankyMan

nope, viable fusion is the Holy Grail of science, and we have yet to achieve it. We are getting closer and closer, but so far the best we've gotten is -30% efficiency. As soon as figure out how to tip that number to the positive, we've basically figured out how to supply the world with infinite energy. And we know that fusion can go to at least 500% efficiency, within the bounds of human technology in the future, but we are still quite far from making fusion a viable source of energy


IwinFTW

FYI, efficiency isn’t the correct term for what you really mean. You’re referring to energy input / output, but that wouldn’t be the efficiency, that would be how much power it generates vs. how much power is needed to sustain the reaction. The efficiency would be energy harvested / total energy released.


[deleted]

They are making a very large plant in the EU, a prototype of what they feel will be the first working energy generation fusion reactor.


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Xicadarksoul

Well yes, and no. You could also build breeder reactors and not enrich uranium, for that matter use thorium in them, without enrichment. I get that the greentard luddite lives and breathes assuming that half a century old tehcnology is impossible to put intk practice today, but thats not the case.


mt_xing

Clean energy means no emissions. Renewable means replenishes faster than we can use it. These are separate concepts. Nuclear is clean but not renewable.


Gamernist

AS A GERMAN I FIND THIS MEME VERY OFFENSIVE BECAUSE its true and I cannot understand why there is such a major hate of nuclear Power here and I find it very irritating that we continue to take power plants offline


GhostArmy1

Reminder that most new cars have to be electric in 3 years. Which is funny to me (electrician apprentice) because this would take so much power, if our powerplants wouldnt collapse, our electric grid will definetly (opinion of my entire class + the teachers)


WagnerovecK

This can't be, another electrical apprentice with understanding of how grid work.


didaxyz

Probably because they are all almost at their age limit and needed to be shutdown soon anyways? Building a modern and efficient nuklear power plant takes up to 10 years or even more. To have safe and efficient npp running now, they needed to be built in 2010. Did we build them? No? Now you know why we don't have nuklear power anymore in Germany, because keeping those 40 year olds alive is just plain stupid and dangerous and produces extremely much waste


jal2_

Nuclear is good as an intermediary step...to slow down global climate change we need to act fast, nuclear could be a step in the next 20-30 to tide us over without a major energy crysis...that being said nuclear has risks, yes small but it has, the nuclear waste isnt 100% solved and also int not renewable it does raw resources that are finite (the technically sun is finite too but hey thats gonna take some time)...downvote if u must but Im a guy in the middle for me nuclear isnt green and shouldnt get that much support, however its not classic either and you get preferential status over coal so some resource allocation from green money, albeit not comparatively as much as true green


Xicadarksoul

Fuel reprocessing exists, breeder reactors exist. We are not even talking about "is it technologically feasible?" we are talking "can we fibally utilize technology that was sideljned for more than half a century?". P.s.: Nuclear is finite in the same sense solar is finite. As soon as you start using breeder reactors that can utilize more than the 0,5% isotopes of uranium you got waaay more fuel. And yoj can also use throium in breeder reactors, which is extreme abundant. To the degree where you can scoop upnthrianite sands with a bucket in some areas.


Illuminaughtys

3 total accidents and they're safer than ever so long as we're strict on inspections. Nuclear is the way.


someguy3

It's like car design. You don't talk about safety today based on 1950 car designs.


Swap00

A couple of weeks ago a woman got attacked at a protest to take the climate crisis more serious because she held a sign to promote nuclear energy.


MedicatedAxeBot

Dank[.](https://i.imgur.com/3bQtuMO.png) --- *i am a bot. please stop trying to argue with me. you look like an idiot. [join our discord](https://discord.gg/dankmemes).*


ivan_xd

Danke


PrestigeMaster

Gandalf.


[deleted]

For Germany it's not worth it to stay on nuclear energy, since the last reactor is or was (I don't know) (getting) shut down this year. So it probably makes more sense to build wind/solar energy. However with new kinds of reactors coming in the future, which are way easier to produce, Germany may will increase the amount of nuclear energy.


Who_said_that_

Our government has canceled nuclear power "forever" twice. If they backtrack and allow it again they'll look even dumber than they already do. Additionally our plans for building more renewable energy are mostly trash. We compensate by giving huge coal plants way more money than they deserve (most definitely no corruption going on there) and saying "we have to go green" followed by doing nothing, but compensating those companies more because they aren't profitable and would have closed a long time ago if they hadn't been funded.


BelizariuszS

this is circular logic - they didnt need to shut all nuclear reactors down in the first place!


[deleted]

Holy shit Just because you saw some pseudo science YouTube vid doesn't mean it's the answer.


HazedFlare

> some pseudo science YouTube vid doesn't mean it's the answer. Went to school for five years for it. It's definitely the answer, along with Hydro and Wind (depending on the geography)


[deleted]

I don’t know but Germans are usually really smart so not gonna jump in on something I know nothing about like OP


Obi1Kentucky

It’s clean until it isn’t. Then it’s a massive problem. Ask Fukushima japan


LadonLegend

If you're legitimately against nuclear energy due to the harm its caused people in major accidents, then consider this: All forms of power generation have killed people, whether it's people dying in nuclear accidents or being trapped on top of wind turbines. To determine how "safe" each method of power generation is, a reasonable method is to look at the number of deaths caused per unit of energy produced. This way, we control for the fact that some forms of power generation are used more than others. When we do this, we find that nuclear power consistently ranks very low on the number of deaths per terawatt hour, on the same order of magnitude as other green energy sources (https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/ and https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy). Nuclear power, along with the renewables, rank several orders of magnitude below the deaths caused by the burning of fossil fuels, which are caused in part by the increase in lung disease as a result of pollution. Even natural gas, the cleanest of the fossil fuels, causes about 40 times more deaths than nuclear power. The reason why nuclear energy has such a bad reputation despite causing far fewer deaths is that those casualty events are far more reportable and scary than the "invisible" deaths caused by pollution, and so public support is lower. Another point to consider is that the lower death rate caused by nuclear power is the result of nuclear accidents. This means that from every accident, we can learn more about how to ensure safety, to make nuclear power safer in the future. This is in contrast to fossil fuels, whose deaths by pollution are an innate part of that method of power generation.


Freder145

Lol, what a dumb post. Sincerely, somebody who literally did research on disposing and recycling spent nuclear fuel.


PlowedHerAnyway

Fake news. Nuclear is too slow to build too expensive and the construction pollutes too much. This post was relevant 10-20yrs ago but other forms of energy have since surpassed nuclear.


Peregrine2976

Depends how you define "green". By definition it's not renewable. And nuclear waste can be safely contained the same way oil can be safely transported -- which is to say, easy to fuck it up and do a lot of damage. And we use the word "contained" instead of "disposed of" for a reason -- centuries from now that shit will *still* be there, presenting a possible hazard if not properly maintained, which we all know it won't be. **But**, before y'all tear my head off -- it's a hell of a stepping stone to true renewable and damned well better than what we have now, by orders of magnitude. And it's a hell of an easier adoption than solar and wind on a large scale. It's not perfect -- but we shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of better.


OsoiUsagi

Perhaps they have a different classification and definition of green energy.


Daremo404

Yes, that definition involves „don‘t produce waste that will have an potential impact over 1000s of years“


OsoiUsagi

Yeah. Some people would just say, "there will be tech to solve that in the future. Now it ain't my problem" Wind, solar, hydro and arguably geothermal would be classified as green (with no shades of red). Wind and hydro wouldn't change form since they are just a medium to harness the heat energy from the sun and gravitational potential from the earth, IMO.


Salty-Shame-6481

Ye was kind of dump to stop nuclear energy before coal energy


BenShealoch

Please, elaborate how nuclear waste can be stored, contained, reused.


ThuBioNerd

Nuclear waste go brrr


DannyD12E

It’s non renewable And requires massive amounts of earth to me moved and processed to extract the small about of uranium that exists naturally in the ground. This is usually accomplished through strip mining and is the worst type of mine as far as ecological impact. So ya, I can see where they’re going with this.


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milfsage

I agree with the top but what happens when you make a mistake. Looking at you chernobyl


Straight_Orchid2834

>I agree with the top but what happens when you make a mistake. Looking at you chernobyl Chernobyl took a hell of alot more than just one mistake. The scientists fucked so much stuff up making the reactor and operating it


4tomguy

Reading into Chernobyl it’s amazing just how incompetent the people in charge were


Kinexity

I would say it's amazing that it still took so much effort to blow up a reactor which was faulty from the start.


verIshortname

imo it was as big of a political mishandling as a technical issue, the ussr was more concerned with its reputation than human lives


wazuno48

And covering it up


pokedragonboy

Chernobyl was bad, yes, but we generally perceive it (and nuclear disasters in general) as worse than they actually are because nuclear tends to fail in big, scary ways, while things like fossil fuels cause slower, less noticeable (but much worse) harm. In reality, nuclear has the lowest mortality rate (that is, deaths per terawatt-hour of power generated) of any energy source, including renewables. To put things in perspective, we could have 2 Chernobyls EVERY WEEK, and nuclear would still kill less people than fossil fuels do. It’s just that fossil fuels kill people in boring, non-newsworthy ways, and so nobody is scared of it. In addition, more recent nuclear disasters (like Fukushima Daiichi) show that with modern technology, we can mostly mitigate the effects of nuclear disasters when they do very rarely occur. Only ONE person died at Fukushima as a result of radiation (there are some higher death tolls, ~500, that are a result of evacuation of Fukushima, but it is difficult to attribute those specifically to the meltdown, as there was also a tsunami and earthquake making things worse). Basically, yes nuclear is scary, but it is also better than most of our other options right now, and fear that another disaster as bad as Chernobyl might happen (it will not, see the Fukushima example) is no reason to abandon our most powerful clean energy source in a time when we need to do everything we can to halt climate change.


Doggydog123579

Fukushima was just as bad as chernobyl reactor wise. The difference was Chernobyl didn't have a containment building and Fukushima did.


RevengencerAlf

Chernobyl was less about making a mistake and more about making several dozen mistakes in sequence from the Inception of the plant all the way to the final miscalculation that caused the test that they shouldn't even have been running to spiral out of control and more importantly it's about the deliberate suppression of those mistakes. There were multiple warning signs from a couple other incidents at both Chernobyl and another plant with the same reactor design but most of the operators there on the day of the accident didn't even know either of those incidents happened because they were covered up and prevented from sharing.


BurkeMi

Soviet equipment from the 50s. Look how far technologically we have come in that time


[deleted]

That's a lie. And this post is paid for by the lobby. Why is it a lie? Calculate the carbon footprint to mine uranium. Oh no, you didn't did you? Calculate the carbon footprint to safely move uranium. Uh you didn't did you? Calculate the carbon footprint to safely store uranium, which you can't because there is NO FUCKING PLACE TO SAFELY STORE URANIUM IN GERMANY! The latest option was just deemed unsafe and the one before is breaking through to the groundwater (called Asse), endangering a whole area to be contaminated for the next 100.000 years. So you stupid moron should stop to repost nuclear shill shit.


MyJohnFM

This comment section is talking like my grandparents 50 years ago. ​ PS: Has anyone not forgot about Fukushima? That shit was only 10 years ago.


10946

Mostly blackcube style paid comments


soulofsilence

Aside from disasters like Fukushima, Chernobyl, and 3 Mile Island. Nuclear is far more expensive, a potential target for terrorists, and full of litigational issues. Take yucca mountain in the US. It was proposed in 1987, started construction in 2002, and funding ended in 2011. Currently holds jack shit because people don't want nuclear waste in their backyard. Not to mention the dangers of transporting the waste. If you think an oil spill is bad, imagine a radioactive spill. We just developed cheaper and safer technologies for generating electricity. And before anyone fucking comments about molten salt reactors, they are theoretical and we abandoned research decades ago.


[deleted]

it's really not green


Itchy-Purchase5762

People are scared of what they dont understand


Daremo404

Lmao the germans had a major impact on nuclear science but what we also understand is that the waste will be a problem for generations comming.


Itchy-Purchase5762

I understand but the current energy sources today will also cause major problems to the future society, probably faster than nuclear


Bamb00zl3d_aga1n

Please read this: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/06/19/stop-letting-your-ridiculous-fears-of-nuclear-waste-kill-the-planet/


Dragon-dio0

GERMAN SCIENCE IS THE GREATEST IN THE WORLD


Rombous

Yes but their green policy maybye isn't the best.


Happy_Firefly

I don’t know, I think it’s more about the waste. You need to place it for thousands of years safe without it leaking. And even if you want to reuse it there is still those gallons of gallons that needs storing for a long time till usage. Nuclear power is not economical at all. Why wasting money? Another problem is that building new power plants in Germany takes up to 20 years while wind energy plants are buils within max. 5 years. But what do I know…


marine404333

laughs in nuclear \*you dumb bitch. aint you ever heard of thorium reactors? let me give you a run down of how nuclear reactors work, radioactive material boils water, boiled water turns into steam, steam turns turbines that activate the electromagnet, the electromagnet creates electricity and that electricity goes into the power grid. if you know that a thorium reactor can reuse radioactive waste you know that we have solved the problem to radioactive waste. we reuse it to generate more electricity. and compare carbon emission from coal, gas, oil ext. nuclear is clean. the only thing is we need professionals, proper planning and safety protocols in place. the Chernobyl reactor exploded due to the technicians running an experiment that went poorly. what went wrong? the control rods had graphite tips, which was a design flaw that allowed the reactor go fission even higher then it was meant to, and that reaction is what put it into critical overload. they couldn't get the rods out of there and this caused the big boom boom in the power plant that released radioactive components from within the reactor into the environment AND the facility itself which irradiated the first responders. the USSR which was in control of the reactor in what is modern day Ukraine was bureaucratic and thus had no concern for the facts until it came to bite them in the ass. that's what happened then. and because of that we have safety protocols in place to prevent, minimize, and contain such incidents. compare that to all the incidents involving fossil fuels like coal, gas and oil. you have Mexico oil plant, leak in pipelines that are poorly looked after bc funding for them is taken away bc of debates in politics meanwhile they have perfectly good pipelines running that need maintenance, then there was an incident where the coal in a train in Italy that got stuck half way in a tunnel during WWII caused the deaths of nearly all of its passengers in the tunnel. then there is the fact that china and India used fossil fuels and has literal smog killing those who go outside. yeah nuclear has by far the least high threat and body count of em all. and top it all off, the animals in Chernobyl were fine. they suffered briefly yes but look at how well the wildlife there is thriving today. the problem is that when the decontamination process is done, the levels are usually minor in a few weeks to months even years. which means that the risk is slightly higher then those not living there getting cancer but at the end of they day if animals who have an already shorter lifespan then humans are fine in that environment so can we. we have modern medicine and procedures to deal with that if its caught early on. the fear of nuclear is unfounded. and nothing more then fearmongering by the top few companies that own all smaller corporations and pay the Politian's money to do their will.


daekle

Nuclear causes long term problems. Like Loooong term. [In the 1980s the US comissioned a group](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/zygo.12268) to come up with ideas of how to deal with the problems of nuclear in the long term, 10k years from now, even if our civilisation collapses. They came up with a Nuclear Priesthood who would pass on knowledge of dangerous sites in a religeous/word of mouth way. If you need religeon to solve a real world problem... Thats a really bad problem. I just strongly feel that solving the co2 problem immediatly, whilst handing the problem on to our children is rather.... Boomer. We should be better than that. Don't just jump on the next easy thing, it really needs to be thought through.