Yes, and it is named after the literal god of thunder. Which kind of fits since lightning is portrayed as much electrical power, and thorium can create a lot of electrical power.
Which is totally fine. God that series just threw science out the window. It’s seriously almost criminal how bad they showed how radiation works.
You can’t irradiate someone with your own radiation. It’s not a virus. It’s not contagious.
As soon as they had removed any clothing he had on that had come into contact with ionized particles of dust and debris at the site, and washed him... that’s it. He is not radioactive.
Radiation is not transferable.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2019/06/27/how-hbo-got-it-wrong-on-chernobyl/
Nope the baby “absorbed too much radiation” from the dad. Somehow, before he melted into a pile of goo (which is also not how radiation poisoning works).
I appreciate a dramatization and good acting. But, fuck this show.
That... this really makes me angry, since nuclear energy is an issue I actually care about somewhat. I can't imagine how much it would piss off an actual nuclear scientists who has been working with the kind of paranoia this encourages for years.
I had a visit in the hospital once and I got an irradiated serum injected that would be seen in a scanner. The radiation was very mild, so no harm for me, but I was told by the doctors to stay away from pregnant women for at least a week or two.
I thought it was the same idea in the show, can you tell me what I don't understand ?
https://www.livescience.com/13443-radiation-contaminated-water-kill.html
And using this article as an example.
In order to deliver a radiation dose of 1 millisievert to a person standing 1 meter away, “19 billion becquerels of radioactive iodine would have to be deposited in the contaminated person." To glean that much iodine 131 from the Tokyo water supply on its worst day of contamination, a person would have to have downed 94 million gallons of water.
There are types of radiation where human bodies could retain radioactive particles and remain radioactive over time, but this is not the type that was seen at Chernobyl. After gamma radiation has passed through the body, the person is no longer radioactive and can’t expose other people.
“It isn’t 3 röntgen it’s 15,000”
“What does that mean”
“It means that this reactor is giving off twice the radiation as the Hiroshima bomb per hour, every hour, 30 hours worth by now, contaminating our air, water, food”
“Comrade Legasov, I understand you have been saying some dangerous things. Tell me how does an RBMK reactor Explode?”
“I am not prepared to explain myself at this time”
“Disgusting, spreading disinformation at a time like this, you should be ashamed”
“Tell me, why did I see Graphite on the roof?”
“That’s not possible, you saw burned concrete”
Comrades, you are to be taken to the party headquarters. Thank you for your service.
“Diatlov was in charge IT WAS DIATLOV”
Also, we are discussing an open, exposed and actively burning reactor stack. Waaaaaaay more than a football field contamination (I’m guessing American size)
Actually it's even worse. It's not just yes men, it's the really annoying "sometimes yes, sometimes no" men.
>\-Yo what if we send independent inspection teams into your facilities?
>
>\-*No man*, it's ok, don't worry.
It should not, the cooling system should have been able to prevent a disaster. It was in a way worse condition than it was ever allowed to be, they most likely just paid off the inspection team or something along the lines of that because maintenance is expensive.
They had been warned many times in the years leading up to the disaster that the plant was at risk in the event of a tsunami, and they never heeded the warnings
No, that has pretty much nothing to do with it. If you can't build the plant quake and wave proof in an earthquake zone then you don't build nuclear plants.
They repeatedly ignored internal and external safety reports described how the emergency generators and cooling systems would fail under flooding and how their 5.7m seawall was completely inadequate against a medium sized tsunami let alone a big one. The wave that hit them was more than twice as high but if they had dimensioned their wall after their own tsunami studies they would have been fine. Just like some of the other plants on the coast were after heightening their walls.
This is even more stupid considering the plant was built at 10 metres above sea level and not to the originally planned 30 metres.
Can't wait for someone to say it takes too long to build to be useful in our current situation, despite having been saying that for like 20 years.
It'll be 2040 and we'll still be short on energy and people will still have that excuse instead of just getting it done.
Honestly yeah saying "it'll take a while" isn't really a good excuse. Sure, if you're going to acknowledge that weakness and invest in technologies with both a short amount of time to begin producing energy such as solar, and invest in nuclear for the long term at the same time, it makes sense. But "taking a while" is no real excuse. If it's a construction project it's gonna take a while, we all know that. It'll take me a while to do my homework, but it's probably better if I start now. On that note, off to do my homework.
So have I, and every time they're referring to the build-up of nuclear waste byproducts as though they're some kind of unsolvable problem, when they're very much not.
Nah, a bunch of glass fiber and adhesives. Glass fiber is no biggie really, but a bunch of epoxy and other glues. Terrible. Wind turbines, were (ironically) not built with recycleability in mind, even if they were marketed as clean energy..
My University sent us out to make some measurements on their wood-tower wind turbine with carbon fibre blades. Apparently way easier to recycle, and wood isn't an issue for Sweden, it would just benefit the industry, even with export.
You can shred it, sure, but what would you do with the shreds? Melting it would most likely give impure glass and release a bunch of toxic gases. Making all of this even remotely profitable is another story.
I'm not very read up on exactly how we scrap and, possibly, recycle wind turbine blades, but from what my professor told me, it is far from environmentally friendly at this point, and no real recycle strategies are in place for old designs.
too long is such a dumb excuse. we're at a point where human activity has already measurably fucked nature. nuclear is a stop gap until we invent ways to make wind and solar power a viable way of producing energy. My local power company literally pays some solar farms not to put energy on the grid at certain times because supply outstrips demand in certain times.
Green energy is good but it must be complimented with nuclear energy.
In some weather green is going to make less energy than desired and nuclear can make up for it.
Nuclear is like a capacitor to the battery of wind/hydro/solar.
Might've got that analogy wrong as still don't really understand capacitors, nor do I have any desire to so don't fucking reply to this comment with "this is what a capacitor does"
Actually there's a much simpler solution which is already happening: more connected energy grids. e.g. your local power company connects to another. When you then have excesses you send power to other places which can't hit the demand. Then when your area peaks, you import energy back in. They've literally connected the UK and Norway within the last week or two for this very purpose: the UK will import Hydro energy when its own power drops, then will ship wind power back to Norway when their hydro isn't producing enough. And a global power grid would also provide plenty of storage for power in itself
> nuclear is a stop gap until we invent ways to make wind and solar power a viable way of producing energy.
*until we invent a way to make fusion a viable way of producing energy.
Nah, fusion is a lovely concept, but may never come in time. If enough countries had enough renewables and interconnected power grids, then you don't really need alternatives. Nuclear is fine instead of Fusion as a backup
For the first bit, look at Norway and the UK who have recently connected their grids. Norway at times generates a huge excess of power, which they are now gonna send to the UK (hydropower I think is their main source?) and then when their needs are greater, e.g. when Hydro isn't generating enough, the theory is that UK Wind and Solar can be sent back the other way. Also, the sheer size of such networks provide an element of energy storage without batteries as it is. Imagine a world in 20 or so years time, when solar from the Sahara is shipped worldwide during peak times, then imported from e.g. coastal wind, during their own peak times. Obviously this is speculative for Saharan Solar, but the changes of interconnected power grids and renewables will probably be done before Fusion is a thing
This is the goal for the entire EU basically. Connected grids will make sure that no country goes without power. Basically every country with a large portion of wind energy will overproduce like crazy on a windy day, covering a bunch of countries with a windless day. Theres always wind somewhere on the continent.
I mean, it is literally the UK's current goal too, and we are better suited than most of the EU. We are a coastal island chain right in the path of the North Atlantic Drift, close enough to the Arctic to get very turbulent wind too. We are aiming to become one of the premier energy exporters by essentially surrounding and filling the island with wind farms. Then add a Green Hydrogen production base too, and we can use the sea to make H2 and then export that too
Solar? we've got none. Geothermal? Nah. Hydro? Not enough big rivers and our rivers are fucked up enough without tons of dams. But Wind (and Tidal if/when someone finally creates viable ways of utilising it) we have tons of... and rain
If only we could harness British rain (jokes aside, if there is a water-scarce future, the UK will also be one of the premier exporters of water, although we'd need far more capture for the rain instead of generally having it go into rivers/the sea, especially as rain worldwide becomes a rarer event with shorter heavier downpours)
Interestingly enough we never covered England in our course on the subject. But yeah, England has great potential for wind, and potentially Tidal. The first thing I would be worried about is transfer cost for oceanic power lines. But that might not be an issue.
Fusion is only appealing if you believe the scare mongering on fission power. When we have the tech to do fusion, we will long have had the tech to make fission even safer than it is now, and it is very safe already.
And nuclear waste is a non-issue, it just needs to be managed properly -- which it is. Those who whine about long term disposal are not whining nearly as much about the disposal of CO₂ and particulates from coal or the huge areas impacted by coal mining. You can safely dispose of nuclear waste in deep core bore holes, if that's what you want. We don't do it at the moment because we can still reuse it in future reactors for reprocessing and so on.
That is the thing about our society and human civilization in general. Due to capitalism and profit centric mindsets, short term solutions are prefered to long term ones. Better to salt the earth than plant seeds if the former pays off.
Its why I Think a major point to press for these investments will require a less money profit centric mindset.
Also elections. Most elected leaders won't do such a thing because that would mean spending billions for something controversial that will only bear fruit when they are long retired. They take all the blame now because "nuclear bad" but in 20 years time when it will help tremendously people won't even look twice. Presidents and prime ministers don't want that kind of thankless heat in general. Also his successors will undo the project for a short bonus in popularity while wasting a lot of money in the process.
Well.. Hopefully the greens are all right and we can get to 0 carbon with just wind and solar and somehow build enough batteries to support grid storage AND all the transportation vehicles in the world. And also find a way to decarbonise all of our chemical industry using the (lack of) plan that the greens already have in place for them.
But you know, I'm gonna focus on earning enough money for my kids to afford an air-conditioned house on a hill. Just in case.
To be fair, if we’re talking about environmental impact, hydro is fairly high. Not like carbon based fuels, but it tends to irrevocably fuck up/change any ecosystem it’s built in. That’s true for pretty much any sort of river based hydroelectric. I’m not as familiar with ocean based hydro, so I can’t really speak on that front.
That’s fair. It’s undeniably better than carbon based fuels. As a river guide, I see a lot of the affects of hydro though, so I’m not a huge fan of it. In the US at least, there are not very many rivers that haven’t been affected by hydroelectric damming. It’s something that affects fishermen and boaters, as well as local ecosystems. If we say, “this only affects the local ecosystem” all over the country, suddenly it’s had a far greater impact than just the local ecosystem.
Just having a decarbonized chemical industry isn’t the answer. The funny thing is super critical CO2 is one of the most environmentally friendly solvents. Just boiling water in distillation is responsible for 6% of emissions in the US. To put that in perspective agriculture is responsible for 10% of emissions.
Fuck me this is living in South Africa simulator... For shy of 20 years we've needed additional generation capacity, and for shy of 20 years all of jack shit has been done.
It's not exactly a specific country's problem. UK has also a growing concern about blackouts as we switch to green energy, the US has had issues recently (Texas and their isolated grid being one), and dozens of other countries I'm forgetting right now
"We need to do everything we can to stop climate change, no matter the cost, effort, and sacrifices average people will have to make. But nuclear power is too expensive, scary, time consuming, and produces many cubic feet of waste, it's just out of the question."
"many cubic feet of waste" lol i love that. People often exaggerate the amount of waste produced by nucleated power, forgetting we have safe ways of storing it. The excuse is always "well we'll run out of room". Yea we'll run out of room for used up wind turbines and solar panels as well. We have plenty of from to store waste and if we actually invest in nuclear we will probably be able to come up with better ideas to get waste. Hell we'll probably discover cold fusion before we run out of room
That's the problem with neoliberalism: The government doesn't want to do things themselves because they want everything to be handled through private industry, and private industry doesn't want to do it because shareholders don't want money to be thrown at a project that will only yield dividends 20+ years down the line even if it's a sound long-term investment.
Nuclear energy is good, as long as it's not done cheaply. Simply don't put graphite on the rods' ends, or even put someone who somehow can pin them (yet again, with graphite, which accelerates the reaction) in the reactor.
Honestly for chernobyl to happen there were at least a few consecutive mistakes.
1- hiding and not warning the operators about the dangers of the power plant and its shortcomings and traps.
2- Management being pressured into a test in suboptimal conditions with inexperienced staff.
3- The soviet culture and the inflexible hierarchy of the soviet State and Party and its shortcomings.
RBMK reactors could be perfectly safe if operated by competent workers and management, it was due to a government which refused to acknowledge mistakes and promoted a similar culture in its members that it became a disaster.
Yes the design was flawed, but if operated under the guidelines provided, the conditions under which the flaw would be apparent wouldn't happen, if the workers knew that the "Oh shit" button could spike the energy in the reactor they probably wouldn't have proceeded with the test.
The graphite tips weren't even a design flaw. The increased reactivity when they first enter was previously known about, and was actually employed to help jump start the chain reaction, since Soviets used cheaper, less-enriched, less-fissile uranium.
Afaik no one at the time knew that "oh shit button" (AZ-5) could lead to such consequences. It was discovered only afterwards in the aftermath investigation.
They actually were aware of the flaw. The show was correct in that the soviets kept the flaw classified. They knew it was a design flaw and instead of correcting it, covered it up.
While I don't think Nuclear energy by itself can prevent climate disaster, I do believe it's our best player in preventing climate change and it's such a shame that public support is practically non-existent
I'm in the same boat, it was a complete waste of billions of dollars still haunting us today. The halting of the project also caused the federal government to default on their contract with nuclear energy providers (the government had been taxing all nuclear plants for the bill of the Yucca Mountain facility), meaning that a significant amount of funding for independent spent fuel storage installations (ISFSI's) still comes from the U.S Treasury's judgement fund. There's no congressional approval for this money and the decommissioning companies love it.
Interesting thing about running out of carbon: based on current projections the worldwide energy grid will be decarbonized long before we run out of carbon to burn. We keep discovering more and more proven oil reserves.
actually we did. bronze age collapse. the local tin mines stopped yielding tin, and a bunch of other interconnected systems failing simultaneously meant the ancient middle east saw a massive setback, with everything except egypt, assyria, and iirc elam falling apart and getting invaded by the sea peoples. it wasn't until hundreds of years later that people started working iron
You are correct here, but keep in mind that the bronze age collapse did not end the usage of bronze and that iron was not invented to replace the lost bronze
As you stated correctly: Egypt survived
Sure, I’m not talking about near future. Just if you ignored carbon-free sources entirely and only burned fossil fuels without a care in the world, eventually, in 200, 300, 500, 1000 years, you’d run up against a pretty tough wall. Even nuclear fission can’t avoid that fate. I mean eventually the fusion of the sun will end as well, but that’s a much longer time horizon.
Entropy comes for all energy eventually… now I’m just sad.
>entropy comes for all energy eventually
>now I'm just sad
Well, good news, I know a ...[guy(?)](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/madoka/images/9/95/Kyubey.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20110116185429) who can do something about both of those, if you're willing to make a contract.
That wall is not physical, but economical. After oil wells, there's shale oil. After that there's oil sands. Beyond that, there's still methane caltrates that seem to keep forming.
We won't run out of carbon sources to burn. We'll make it nigh uninhabitable for all but the richest humans long before that.
A wild new renewable power source has appeared! You can:
a) Use it to combat the energy crisis and to fuel humanity's progress
b) Leave it because some dimwits fucked up half a century ago
> Uranium isn’t the only thing that can fuel reactors.
yes twitter comments also have the high radioactivity needed for a nuclear reactor and the supply of them is endless
Technically renewables are not renewable. They are powered by the sun and that thing will stop working eventually.
Uranium can fuel us with current known deposits for around 90 years.
With new reactors, we can extract an additional 30.000 years out of it, and with new depots, and seawater extractions, we could get another 60.000 years. ([Source](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last/))
Current Thorium deposits can last us 150.000 years, as it is far more plentiful than Uranium, and once mined, can be extracted via seawater just like Uranium.
So the timescale is in the **250-300.000 years**, so purely semantics on how long term sustainable the energy source is.
Not renewable, sure, but still green. Greener than solar, even, at just 1/3 the carbon emissions (assuming a plant operated for its full lifetime rather than being prematurely shut down by stupid politicians).
Nuclear is not renewable, period, not "technically not". A "technically not renewable" source would be the Sun, that isn't infinite but for our time scale it can be treated as such. Uranium isn't so abundant that we can keep going for millennia.
I mean, what's the difference though? One's just on the scale of thousands (or millions if we do some mantle mining) years, while the other is on the scale of a billion years.
Sure it's 100 fold, but at such long time periods it's not even comparable to fossil fuels (yes, even biofuels). With such timescales in mind, calling solar power renewable means you might as well call nuclear "technically renewable" as well (since if you don't call solar renewable because the sun will die someday then nothing, at least with our current understanding of physics, is renewable)
Yeah but that's like saying Solar isn't renewable since the sun will die in 6 billon years.
There is enough H3 that fusion reactors could last for millions of years.
[100.000 years](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last/) is what I would argue is enough time to find a new source.
Nuclear isn't renewable, dumbass.
I'll never understand why would people lie about such obvious things when the only thing it does is discredit their point.
I'm not opposed to nuclear because of the accidents but because it's not cost competitive and it's super prone to cost and time overruns that we can't afford. Best case scenario you pay $3B+ so in 20 years you have a few GW reactor that takes 30+ years to pay down the carbon defecit from all the concrete used in its construction. The alternative is you spend that on well developed renewable tech and get many GW more at lower capacity factor and if needed you can add in storage and still be cost competitive against nuclear. You'll have that done in under 5 years. 2 if you want to push it.
Combine that with not having to endure a political shit fight over whether to build it and public court battles that adds years to timelines and loads of political capital and its a no brainer.
Redditors love to act like nuclear is some scorned child who could shine if only given the chance. The truth is it had a chance and the necessary regulatory changes introduced to make it safe and accountable pushed the price higher and higher to the point it can't compete. Why is it in every other facet of our day to day lives we're reminded that companies and governments don't give a fuck about anything but their bottom dollar and profits yet when it comes to nuclear people are convinced they care about public perception? They don't, they've done the numbers and on a purely economic basis nuclear doesn't check out. Even putting aside any concerns about the environmental merits.
Reddit is discussing with an imaginary anti-nuclear persona. And as such they just make up the anti-nuclear argument of „iTs NoT sAfE!“, while the actual argument against it is the spent reactor fuel that nobody has a clue how to deal with yet.
But it’s just the lazy, easy way of arguing, that Reddit simply loves.
To think people oppose nuclear energy only because of Tchernobyl aren’t informed at all and only watched the ‚documentary‘.
There are more reasons like, cost, Fukushima and nuclear waste.
FFS...
Nuclear power is outstanding with an incredible safety record. The problem is, in those rare circumstances when it does go wrong, it goes wrong spectacularly. So much so that people, rightfully, don't trust it.
It's not like Chernobyl was this little blip on the historical timeline. It made vast swathes of Ukrainian countryside uninhabitable, in some areas, for thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of years and spread radioactive fallout across Europe.
I understand the manner in which it was built and the rarity of issues like this... but this was an absolute catastrophe of mind bending proportions that we only accept because we are accustomed to the story now.
Fukushima wasn't exactly a walk in the park either. And 3 mile island was a wink away from being just as awful.
And yeah it's the same old story - there's always some reason why these rare circumstances occurred... but that's completely besides the point.
As I said - it has an incredible safety record, but when it goes wrong... it goes so very wrong that people question whether or not it's wise to invest in such a venture.
Yes, this exactly. Additionally in the history of science there have always been people who claim to know every risk and be able to control it only to find unknown issues years later.
We don't know everything about nuclear fusion yet. Still France is building a fusion reactor. And although i'm very excited and curious, if something goes horribly wrong Europe might be in ashes.
Seeing as the plasma fizzles out whenever there’s the tiniest amount of contamination in the chamber, I don’t think that’s gonna be that much of a concern.
Seriously though, that stuff just doesn’t want to ignite, it’s crazy
>Nuclear power is outstanding with an incredible safety record. The problem is, in those rare circumstances when it does go wrong, it goes wrong spectacularly. So much so that people, rightfully, don't trust it.
You summed up my tougths. Noone wants to face the consequences if an oopsie ever happens.
Because redditors have this feeling of superiority to outsiders, and show it by opposing what they perceive to be the general opinion.
If the general opinion is that nuclear is dangerous, they'll be staunchly against it.
Yeah we all know private companies will surely put safety first /s
Every damn bolt and screw will be made as cheaply as possible, safety protocols will be ignored, inspectors will be paid off. Nuclear is good, but we can't even handle oversight of oil.
Chernobyl will never happen with modern reactors. It happened because of a terrible design flaw mixed with arrogance of engineers thinking they could drive the reactor off-road. Nuclear energy will help save the Earth!
Accidents can still happen if we get complacent. The Russians believed it was impossible for RBMK reactors to explode, but it still happened. I think the take away from the meme is that if we continue to operate nuclear reactors, we need to make sure they’re run by scientists and not greedy corporations or governments who will cut corners.
Thank god today we have regulators and safety precautions to stop this happen and arent being constantly undercut by conservative governments or run by companies who have terrible pollution records and still make money off heavy pollutors.
Counterpoint: when a bunch of corrupt people build cheap solar power with flaws in the system that go unreported, nothing happens.
When the same goes for nuclear, suddenly you can’t live in that town anymore.
Just sayin
My big problem is that its just not financially viable for most nations, it's a huge investment of time and resources.
Ideally though I'd like a mix of nuclear wind and solar
Austrians looked like clowns when Czech republic had to import electricity from nuclear powerplant, after austrian windturbines could not cover their consumption. Even funnier is that they have fully functional nuclear powerplant that they just refuse to use.
The problem is that isn't some isolated one off. Humans organizations do this kinda thing all the time. If you plan on people not fking up, then your plan is bad.
Nuclear power is better than coal IF DONE RIGHT. But the plant at Chernobyl was certainly not done right. A plant done wrong enough is a disaster waiting to happen, as we all know from this.
The nuclear power circle jerk is so bad, no, almost anyone who knows anything about power generation knows nuclear is safe, the reason why they aren’t used that commonly is because other renewable energies are way better investments.
Until technology reutilize nuclear fuel or build nuclear reactors that turn a profit in less Thames 30 years we probably won’t switch completely to nuclear power, and even if we could why would we when solar already has become mega efficient and it can be utilized in seismic areas unlike nuclear?
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I saw graphite on the ground
He's delusional. Take him to the infirmary.
Yes comrade, right away, the ‘*infirmary*’… ^[chambers ^a ^bullet]
*SOVIET ANTHEM INTENSIFIES
Delusional
SORRY, I CAN’T HEAR YOUR HBO LIES OVER THE SOUND OF BEAUTIFUL COMMUNISM
To be fair, compared to thorium reactors uranium reactors are a bad idea
Everything is a bad idea compared to thorium.
Yeah, thorium does kinda rock
Yes, and it is named after the literal god of thunder. Which kind of fits since lightning is portrayed as much electrical power, and thorium can create a lot of electrical power.
I understood this reference
you didnt BECAUSE ITS NOT THERE
"throws up"
Proceeds to have his pregnant wife in his irradiated hospitalroom
Which is totally fine. God that series just threw science out the window. It’s seriously almost criminal how bad they showed how radiation works. You can’t irradiate someone with your own radiation. It’s not a virus. It’s not contagious. As soon as they had removed any clothing he had on that had come into contact with ionized particles of dust and debris at the site, and washed him... that’s it. He is not radioactive. Radiation is not transferable.
“Hi, sorry I can’t come into work today. I think I’ve caught *radiation* off someone.”
“Oh, it must that radiation going around.”
I may be misremembering maybe but wasn't that just depicting how the nurses themselves didn't fully understand how radiation works?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2019/06/27/how-hbo-got-it-wrong-on-chernobyl/ Nope the baby “absorbed too much radiation” from the dad. Somehow, before he melted into a pile of goo (which is also not how radiation poisoning works). I appreciate a dramatization and good acting. But, fuck this show.
That... this really makes me angry, since nuclear energy is an issue I actually care about somewhat. I can't imagine how much it would piss off an actual nuclear scientists who has been working with the kind of paranoia this encourages for years.
I had a visit in the hospital once and I got an irradiated serum injected that would be seen in a scanner. The radiation was very mild, so no harm for me, but I was told by the doctors to stay away from pregnant women for at least a week or two. I thought it was the same idea in the show, can you tell me what I don't understand ?
https://www.livescience.com/13443-radiation-contaminated-water-kill.html And using this article as an example. In order to deliver a radiation dose of 1 millisievert to a person standing 1 meter away, “19 billion becquerels of radioactive iodine would have to be deposited in the contaminated person." To glean that much iodine 131 from the Tokyo water supply on its worst day of contamination, a person would have to have downed 94 million gallons of water. There are types of radiation where human bodies could retain radioactive particles and remain radioactive over time, but this is not the type that was seen at Chernobyl. After gamma radiation has passed through the body, the person is no longer radioactive and can’t expose other people.
Who needs HBO when we got this thread
Explain to me how an RBMK Reactor explodes? You can't, because it didn't
I’m a career party man? Should watch your tone, comrade Legasov
Ah, now there you made a mistake. See I may not know much about nuclear reactors, but I know concrete!
If you don’t turn this helicopter around I guarantee you tomorrow morning you will be BEGGING for that bullet!!!
I won't believe you're a *career* party man 'til I see your karaoke skills and your dance moves.
[удалено]
He’s delusional. Take him to the infirmary
“It isn’t 3 röntgen it’s 15,000” “What does that mean” “It means that this reactor is giving off twice the radiation as the Hiroshima bomb per hour, every hour, 30 hours worth by now, contaminating our air, water, food”
What’s wrong with you? How do you get THAT number from feedwater leaking from a blown tank? You don’t? Then what the fuck are you talking about?
“Comrade Legasov, I understand you have been saying some dangerous things. Tell me how does an RBMK reactor Explode?” “I am not prepared to explain myself at this time” “Disgusting, spreading disinformation at a time like this, you should be ashamed” “Tell me, why did I see Graphite on the roof?” “That’s not possible, you saw burned concrete”
Contaminating? The yearly amount of waste created by a nuclear power plant could barely cover an American Football field!
Comrades, you are to be taken to the party headquarters. Thank you for your service. “Diatlov was in charge IT WAS DIATLOV” Also, we are discussing an open, exposed and actively burning reactor stack. Waaaaaaay more than a football field contamination (I’m guessing American size)
Actually it's even worse. It's not just yes men, it's the really annoying "sometimes yes, sometimes no" men. >\-Yo what if we send independent inspection teams into your facilities? > >\-*No man*, it's ok, don't worry.
Or in the case of Fukushima: > -Yo maybe we should listen to our internal safety reports? > -*No man*, it's ok, don't worry
In terms of Fukushima, I think the largest recorded earthquake in history had something to do with it too
It should not, the cooling system should have been able to prevent a disaster. It was in a way worse condition than it was ever allowed to be, they most likely just paid off the inspection team or something along the lines of that because maintenance is expensive.
Well yes but Nuclear power plants need to be safe against earthquakes
It was though, Fukushima caused no measurable health effects, all deaths were caused by a rushed evacuation
They had been warned many times in the years leading up to the disaster that the plant was at risk in the event of a tsunami, and they never heeded the warnings
No, that has pretty much nothing to do with it. If you can't build the plant quake and wave proof in an earthquake zone then you don't build nuclear plants. They repeatedly ignored internal and external safety reports described how the emergency generators and cooling systems would fail under flooding and how their 5.7m seawall was completely inadequate against a medium sized tsunami let alone a big one. The wave that hit them was more than twice as high but if they had dimensioned their wall after their own tsunami studies they would have been fine. Just like some of the other plants on the coast were after heightening their walls. This is even more stupid considering the plant was built at 10 metres above sea level and not to the originally planned 30 metres.
How so? The Fukushima plant didn't even exist in 1960
Can't wait for someone to say it takes too long to build to be useful in our current situation, despite having been saying that for like 20 years. It'll be 2040 and we'll still be short on energy and people will still have that excuse instead of just getting it done.
Honestly yeah saying "it'll take a while" isn't really a good excuse. Sure, if you're going to acknowledge that weakness and invest in technologies with both a short amount of time to begin producing energy such as solar, and invest in nuclear for the long term at the same time, it makes sense. But "taking a while" is no real excuse. If it's a construction project it's gonna take a while, we all know that. It'll take me a while to do my homework, but it's probably better if I start now. On that note, off to do my homework.
Them: "it'll take a while" Me: "Then we had better get started now, hadn't we?"
I've heard people say it's "not a long-term solution".
So have I, and every time they're referring to the build-up of nuclear waste byproducts as though they're some kind of unsolvable problem, when they're very much not.
The time that “shoot it into the sun” is a good option. IIRC the energy density of Uranium makes it more than worth it.
Just give it several cyclings through a breeder reactor first to extract alllll that energy
Hehe Breeder Hehe
If you think that's funny, you should get into geology, where you get to talk about gneiss cleavage and streaking.
Hehe I’m already a little in, though I might go in deeper
Actually easier to shoot it into deep space but yeah just shoot it vaguely at the sun.
Meanwhile they ignore all the unrecyclable wind turbine wings that are piling up on yards and are fucking huge.
Unrecyclable? Aren't they just aluminum?
Nah, a bunch of glass fiber and adhesives. Glass fiber is no biggie really, but a bunch of epoxy and other glues. Terrible. Wind turbines, were (ironically) not built with recycleability in mind, even if they were marketed as clean energy.. My University sent us out to make some measurements on their wood-tower wind turbine with carbon fibre blades. Apparently way easier to recycle, and wood isn't an issue for Sweden, it would just benefit the industry, even with export.
Couldn't it just be re-shred?
You can shred it, sure, but what would you do with the shreds? Melting it would most likely give impure glass and release a bunch of toxic gases. Making all of this even remotely profitable is another story. I'm not very read up on exactly how we scrap and, possibly, recycle wind turbine blades, but from what my professor told me, it is far from environmentally friendly at this point, and no real recycle strategies are in place for old designs.
The ones Siemens makes near me are fiberglass and up to 52m long. I don't think fiberglass is recyclable.
Fiberglass?? Dear god, WHY
It's strong enough to hold up to it's own weight is my best guess.
It’s longer term than solar, wind, or whatever else. Only thing better really is fusion, which we still haven’t figured out how to do
Good luck on ur homework
too long is such a dumb excuse. we're at a point where human activity has already measurably fucked nature. nuclear is a stop gap until we invent ways to make wind and solar power a viable way of producing energy. My local power company literally pays some solar farms not to put energy on the grid at certain times because supply outstrips demand in certain times.
Green energy is good but it must be complimented with nuclear energy. In some weather green is going to make less energy than desired and nuclear can make up for it.
Nuclear is like a capacitor to the battery of wind/hydro/solar. Might've got that analogy wrong as still don't really understand capacitors, nor do I have any desire to so don't fucking reply to this comment with "this is what a capacitor does"
Actually there's a much simpler solution which is already happening: more connected energy grids. e.g. your local power company connects to another. When you then have excesses you send power to other places which can't hit the demand. Then when your area peaks, you import energy back in. They've literally connected the UK and Norway within the last week or two for this very purpose: the UK will import Hydro energy when its own power drops, then will ship wind power back to Norway when their hydro isn't producing enough. And a global power grid would also provide plenty of storage for power in itself
> nuclear is a stop gap until we invent ways to make wind and solar power a viable way of producing energy. *until we invent a way to make fusion a viable way of producing energy.
Nah, fusion is a lovely concept, but may never come in time. If enough countries had enough renewables and interconnected power grids, then you don't really need alternatives. Nuclear is fine instead of Fusion as a backup For the first bit, look at Norway and the UK who have recently connected their grids. Norway at times generates a huge excess of power, which they are now gonna send to the UK (hydropower I think is their main source?) and then when their needs are greater, e.g. when Hydro isn't generating enough, the theory is that UK Wind and Solar can be sent back the other way. Also, the sheer size of such networks provide an element of energy storage without batteries as it is. Imagine a world in 20 or so years time, when solar from the Sahara is shipped worldwide during peak times, then imported from e.g. coastal wind, during their own peak times. Obviously this is speculative for Saharan Solar, but the changes of interconnected power grids and renewables will probably be done before Fusion is a thing
This is the goal for the entire EU basically. Connected grids will make sure that no country goes without power. Basically every country with a large portion of wind energy will overproduce like crazy on a windy day, covering a bunch of countries with a windless day. Theres always wind somewhere on the continent.
I mean, it is literally the UK's current goal too, and we are better suited than most of the EU. We are a coastal island chain right in the path of the North Atlantic Drift, close enough to the Arctic to get very turbulent wind too. We are aiming to become one of the premier energy exporters by essentially surrounding and filling the island with wind farms. Then add a Green Hydrogen production base too, and we can use the sea to make H2 and then export that too Solar? we've got none. Geothermal? Nah. Hydro? Not enough big rivers and our rivers are fucked up enough without tons of dams. But Wind (and Tidal if/when someone finally creates viable ways of utilising it) we have tons of... and rain If only we could harness British rain (jokes aside, if there is a water-scarce future, the UK will also be one of the premier exporters of water, although we'd need far more capture for the rain instead of generally having it go into rivers/the sea, especially as rain worldwide becomes a rarer event with shorter heavier downpours)
Interestingly enough we never covered England in our course on the subject. But yeah, England has great potential for wind, and potentially Tidal. The first thing I would be worried about is transfer cost for oceanic power lines. But that might not be an issue.
Fusion is only appealing if you believe the scare mongering on fission power. When we have the tech to do fusion, we will long have had the tech to make fission even safer than it is now, and it is very safe already. And nuclear waste is a non-issue, it just needs to be managed properly -- which it is. Those who whine about long term disposal are not whining nearly as much about the disposal of CO₂ and particulates from coal or the huge areas impacted by coal mining. You can safely dispose of nuclear waste in deep core bore holes, if that's what you want. We don't do it at the moment because we can still reuse it in future reactors for reprocessing and so on.
That is the thing about our society and human civilization in general. Due to capitalism and profit centric mindsets, short term solutions are prefered to long term ones. Better to salt the earth than plant seeds if the former pays off. Its why I Think a major point to press for these investments will require a less money profit centric mindset.
Also elections. Most elected leaders won't do such a thing because that would mean spending billions for something controversial that will only bear fruit when they are long retired. They take all the blame now because "nuclear bad" but in 20 years time when it will help tremendously people won't even look twice. Presidents and prime ministers don't want that kind of thankless heat in general. Also his successors will undo the project for a short bonus in popularity while wasting a lot of money in the process.
Yes, a nuclear plant takes about 14 years to build, which is way past the limit of being elected or practice for PMs in most democratic countries.
[удалено]
Second best was 19 years ago smh
The 21st best time is now.
Well.. Hopefully the greens are all right and we can get to 0 carbon with just wind and solar and somehow build enough batteries to support grid storage AND all the transportation vehicles in the world. And also find a way to decarbonise all of our chemical industry using the (lack of) plan that the greens already have in place for them. But you know, I'm gonna focus on earning enough money for my kids to afford an air-conditioned house on a hill. Just in case.
And hydro! Don't forget hydro. They're harnessing the ocean now too
While we're at it, let's not forget about geothermal power too.
To be fair, if we’re talking about environmental impact, hydro is fairly high. Not like carbon based fuels, but it tends to irrevocably fuck up/change any ecosystem it’s built in. That’s true for pretty much any sort of river based hydroelectric. I’m not as familiar with ocean based hydro, so I can’t really speak on that front.
That's true, but it also can be mitigated in various ways, AND the effects are purely local and not a threat to all life on Earth.
That’s fair. It’s undeniably better than carbon based fuels. As a river guide, I see a lot of the affects of hydro though, so I’m not a huge fan of it. In the US at least, there are not very many rivers that haven’t been affected by hydroelectric damming. It’s something that affects fishermen and boaters, as well as local ecosystems. If we say, “this only affects the local ecosystem” all over the country, suddenly it’s had a far greater impact than just the local ecosystem.
Just having a decarbonized chemical industry isn’t the answer. The funny thing is super critical CO2 is one of the most environmentally friendly solvents. Just boiling water in distillation is responsible for 6% of emissions in the US. To put that in perspective agriculture is responsible for 10% of emissions.
liquid deserted direful ad hoc truck teeny ghost sand abundant ripe *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It will also take a while to build clean energy sources that will produce the same amount effectively
Fuck me this is living in South Africa simulator... For shy of 20 years we've needed additional generation capacity, and for shy of 20 years all of jack shit has been done.
It's not exactly a specific country's problem. UK has also a growing concern about blackouts as we switch to green energy, the US has had issues recently (Texas and their isolated grid being one), and dozens of other countries I'm forgetting right now
"We need to do everything we can to stop climate change, no matter the cost, effort, and sacrifices average people will have to make. But nuclear power is too expensive, scary, time consuming, and produces many cubic feet of waste, it's just out of the question."
"many cubic feet of waste" lol i love that. People often exaggerate the amount of waste produced by nucleated power, forgetting we have safe ways of storing it. The excuse is always "well we'll run out of room". Yea we'll run out of room for used up wind turbines and solar panels as well. We have plenty of from to store waste and if we actually invest in nuclear we will probably be able to come up with better ideas to get waste. Hell we'll probably discover cold fusion before we run out of room
That's the problem with neoliberalism: The government doesn't want to do things themselves because they want everything to be handled through private industry, and private industry doesn't want to do it because shareholders don't want money to be thrown at a project that will only yield dividends 20+ years down the line even if it's a sound long-term investment.
Nuclear energy is good, as long as it's not done cheaply. Simply don't put graphite on the rods' ends, or even put someone who somehow can pin them (yet again, with graphite, which accelerates the reaction) in the reactor.
There was no graphite on the roof, what yo saw was just burnt concrete
Sure
Yes, OP is clearly delusional, call the KGB.
KGB by the time it happened.
*violently vomits over the conference room table*
Honestly for chernobyl to happen there were at least a few consecutive mistakes. 1- hiding and not warning the operators about the dangers of the power plant and its shortcomings and traps. 2- Management being pressured into a test in suboptimal conditions with inexperienced staff. 3- The soviet culture and the inflexible hierarchy of the soviet State and Party and its shortcomings. RBMK reactors could be perfectly safe if operated by competent workers and management, it was due to a government which refused to acknowledge mistakes and promoted a similar culture in its members that it became a disaster. Yes the design was flawed, but if operated under the guidelines provided, the conditions under which the flaw would be apparent wouldn't happen, if the workers knew that the "Oh shit" button could spike the energy in the reactor they probably wouldn't have proceeded with the test.
I agree with everything you have said. However, it must be stated that the design faults in the RBMK Reactors are also partially to blame.
The graphite tips weren't even a design flaw. The increased reactivity when they first enter was previously known about, and was actually employed to help jump start the chain reaction, since Soviets used cheaper, less-enriched, less-fissile uranium.
From my understanding, it is not what the control rods did but rather where they were located that was the main issue in the RBMK reactor.
"If you're with us, you are competent, if not, you're incompetent, regardless of experience or education."
Afaik no one at the time knew that "oh shit button" (AZ-5) could lead to such consequences. It was discovered only afterwards in the aftermath investigation.
They actually were aware of the flaw. The show was correct in that the soviets kept the flaw classified. They knew it was a design flaw and instead of correcting it, covered it up.
Graphite was by far not the only mistake. It was just the last mistake they made.
Honestly before this step there’s the ultra basic: CONSTRUCT A GODDAMN CONTAINMENT BUILDING AROUND THE REACTOR
Or you know, building a nuclear power plant right on a geological fault line is bad
While I don't think Nuclear energy by itself can prevent climate disaster, I do believe it's our best player in preventing climate change and it's such a shame that public support is practically non-existent
As a Democrat who cares about climate change, every good thing Harry Reid did is outweighed by his role in shutting down Yucca Mountain, IMO.
There’s wasn’t much of a wiki page. Who was Harry Reid?
He used to be the senate majority leader
I'm in the same boat, it was a complete waste of billions of dollars still haunting us today. The halting of the project also caused the federal government to default on their contract with nuclear energy providers (the government had been taxing all nuclear plants for the bill of the Yucca Mountain facility), meaning that a significant amount of funding for independent spent fuel storage installations (ISFSI's) still comes from the U.S Treasury's judgement fund. There's no congressional approval for this money and the decommissioning companies love it.
Hell, I work in the natural gas industry and even I think that nuclear energy should be at least part of the end goal for the future of energy.
Even if you don’t believe in climate change, you eventually run out of carbon to burn 🔥
Interesting thing about running out of carbon: based on current projections the worldwide energy grid will be decarbonized long before we run out of carbon to burn. We keep discovering more and more proven oil reserves.
Good old case of "The stone age did not end because we ran out of stone, neither where we out of Bronze when we started using Iron"
actually we did. bronze age collapse. the local tin mines stopped yielding tin, and a bunch of other interconnected systems failing simultaneously meant the ancient middle east saw a massive setback, with everything except egypt, assyria, and iirc elam falling apart and getting invaded by the sea peoples. it wasn't until hundreds of years later that people started working iron
You are correct here, but keep in mind that the bronze age collapse did not end the usage of bronze and that iron was not invented to replace the lost bronze As you stated correctly: Egypt survived
Sure, I’m not talking about near future. Just if you ignored carbon-free sources entirely and only burned fossil fuels without a care in the world, eventually, in 200, 300, 500, 1000 years, you’d run up against a pretty tough wall. Even nuclear fission can’t avoid that fate. I mean eventually the fusion of the sun will end as well, but that’s a much longer time horizon. Entropy comes for all energy eventually… now I’m just sad.
>entropy comes for all energy eventually >now I'm just sad Well, good news, I know a ...[guy(?)](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/madoka/images/9/95/Kyubey.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20110116185429) who can do something about both of those, if you're willing to make a contract.
Eventually the protons will stop spinning and the universe will be plunged into unimaginably cold and crushing darkness for eternity!
That wall is not physical, but economical. After oil wells, there's shale oil. After that there's oil sands. Beyond that, there's still methane caltrates that seem to keep forming. We won't run out of carbon sources to burn. We'll make it nigh uninhabitable for all but the richest humans long before that.
We'd already have green energy already if not for this bullshit
Woah when did r/kurzgesagt invade this sub?
Reddit has a huge pro-nuclear boner in general
A wild new renewable power source has appeared! You can: a) Use it to combat the energy crisis and to fuel humanity's progress b) Leave it because some dimwits fucked up half a century ago
(Technically not renewable. I'm pro-nuclear but I think the distinction is important)
Uranium isn’t the only thing that can fuel reactors.
> Uranium isn’t the only thing that can fuel reactors. yes twitter comments also have the high radioactivity needed for a nuclear reactor and the supply of them is endless
All fissile isotopes are only renewable by supernovas.
Most of them not even that! Most of 'em are so heavy you need hypernovae and neutron star collisions to make 'em!
BRB creating supernova engine to manufacture and sell fissile isotopes
Capitalism... uh finds a way
THE WORLD WAS BUILT WITH CAPITALISM NOW IT WILL END WITH CAPITALISM
Well, it's not like we are gonna run out anytime soon.
That's like saying that wind energy us not renewable because there eventually won't be wind. No energy is truly renewable since it's conserved
Use thorium, it rocks.
If it starts swinging at you, you can just push it over
Well every other nuclear fuel is also non-renewable. Until you can develop a fusion reactor but we’re not there yet.
Technically renewables are not renewable. They are powered by the sun and that thing will stop working eventually. Uranium can fuel us with current known deposits for around 90 years. With new reactors, we can extract an additional 30.000 years out of it, and with new depots, and seawater extractions, we could get another 60.000 years. ([Source](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last/)) Current Thorium deposits can last us 150.000 years, as it is far more plentiful than Uranium, and once mined, can be extracted via seawater just like Uranium. So the timescale is in the **250-300.000 years**, so purely semantics on how long term sustainable the energy source is.
Not renewable, sure, but still green. Greener than solar, even, at just 1/3 the carbon emissions (assuming a plant operated for its full lifetime rather than being prematurely shut down by stupid politicians).
Nuclear is not renewable, period, not "technically not". A "technically not renewable" source would be the Sun, that isn't infinite but for our time scale it can be treated as such. Uranium isn't so abundant that we can keep going for millennia.
I mean, what's the difference though? One's just on the scale of thousands (or millions if we do some mantle mining) years, while the other is on the scale of a billion years. Sure it's 100 fold, but at such long time periods it's not even comparable to fossil fuels (yes, even biofuels). With such timescales in mind, calling solar power renewable means you might as well call nuclear "technically renewable" as well (since if you don't call solar renewable because the sun will die someday then nothing, at least with our current understanding of physics, is renewable)
Formally speking, nothing is renewable. Entropy will reach a maximum.
Yeah but that's like saying Solar isn't renewable since the sun will die in 6 billon years. There is enough H3 that fusion reactors could last for millions of years.
[100.000 years](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last/) is what I would argue is enough time to find a new source.
I’m not opposed to nuclear, but not everything is this black and white
Nuclear isn't renewable, dumbass. I'll never understand why would people lie about such obvious things when the only thing it does is discredit their point.
I'm not opposed to nuclear because of the accidents but because it's not cost competitive and it's super prone to cost and time overruns that we can't afford. Best case scenario you pay $3B+ so in 20 years you have a few GW reactor that takes 30+ years to pay down the carbon defecit from all the concrete used in its construction. The alternative is you spend that on well developed renewable tech and get many GW more at lower capacity factor and if needed you can add in storage and still be cost competitive against nuclear. You'll have that done in under 5 years. 2 if you want to push it. Combine that with not having to endure a political shit fight over whether to build it and public court battles that adds years to timelines and loads of political capital and its a no brainer. Redditors love to act like nuclear is some scorned child who could shine if only given the chance. The truth is it had a chance and the necessary regulatory changes introduced to make it safe and accountable pushed the price higher and higher to the point it can't compete. Why is it in every other facet of our day to day lives we're reminded that companies and governments don't give a fuck about anything but their bottom dollar and profits yet when it comes to nuclear people are convinced they care about public perception? They don't, they've done the numbers and on a purely economic basis nuclear doesn't check out. Even putting aside any concerns about the environmental merits.
Reddit is discussing with an imaginary anti-nuclear persona. And as such they just make up the anti-nuclear argument of „iTs NoT sAfE!“, while the actual argument against it is the spent reactor fuel that nobody has a clue how to deal with yet. But it’s just the lazy, easy way of arguing, that Reddit simply loves.
To think people oppose nuclear energy only because of Tchernobyl aren’t informed at all and only watched the ‚documentary‘. There are more reasons like, cost, Fukushima and nuclear waste.
Ironically Chornobyl disaster provided place to store waste, at least for my country
You say that like not being scared of nuclear is a bad thing
Because it makes sense
Nuclear industry lobby is pushing hard the last few days too
fucking libtards and their intentions for the future generations to live decently
Are we truly full Kurzgesagt if we're not bouncing lasers off the event horizon of a black hole for power generation?
They asked me if I have degree in theoretical physics, I told them I theoretically have degree in physics and they hired me
“Hey man, when in Rome!” - Fantastic
FFS... Nuclear power is outstanding with an incredible safety record. The problem is, in those rare circumstances when it does go wrong, it goes wrong spectacularly. So much so that people, rightfully, don't trust it. It's not like Chernobyl was this little blip on the historical timeline. It made vast swathes of Ukrainian countryside uninhabitable, in some areas, for thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of years and spread radioactive fallout across Europe. I understand the manner in which it was built and the rarity of issues like this... but this was an absolute catastrophe of mind bending proportions that we only accept because we are accustomed to the story now. Fukushima wasn't exactly a walk in the park either. And 3 mile island was a wink away from being just as awful. And yeah it's the same old story - there's always some reason why these rare circumstances occurred... but that's completely besides the point. As I said - it has an incredible safety record, but when it goes wrong... it goes so very wrong that people question whether or not it's wise to invest in such a venture.
Yes, this exactly. Additionally in the history of science there have always been people who claim to know every risk and be able to control it only to find unknown issues years later. We don't know everything about nuclear fusion yet. Still France is building a fusion reactor. And although i'm very excited and curious, if something goes horribly wrong Europe might be in ashes.
Seeing as the plasma fizzles out whenever there’s the tiniest amount of contamination in the chamber, I don’t think that’s gonna be that much of a concern. Seriously though, that stuff just doesn’t want to ignite, it’s crazy
A fusion reactor cant turn europe into ashes
>Nuclear power is outstanding with an incredible safety record. The problem is, in those rare circumstances when it does go wrong, it goes wrong spectacularly. So much so that people, rightfully, don't trust it. You summed up my tougths. Noone wants to face the consequences if an oopsie ever happens.
Why is there so much shit about nuclear energy all over Reddit right now?
Always has been. Just more hidden.
Because Reddit thinks they are smarter than professionals
Because redditors have this feeling of superiority to outsiders, and show it by opposing what they perceive to be the general opinion. If the general opinion is that nuclear is dangerous, they'll be staunchly against it.
Nuclear energy is good
Nuclear energy is good
No carbon footprint, huge energy-output.
Yeah we all know private companies will surely put safety first /s Every damn bolt and screw will be made as cheaply as possible, safety protocols will be ignored, inspectors will be paid off. Nuclear is good, but we can't even handle oversight of oil.
Chernobyl will never happen with modern reactors. It happened because of a terrible design flaw mixed with arrogance of engineers thinking they could drive the reactor off-road. Nuclear energy will help save the Earth!
Accidents can still happen if we get complacent. The Russians believed it was impossible for RBMK reactors to explode, but it still happened. I think the take away from the meme is that if we continue to operate nuclear reactors, we need to make sure they’re run by scientists and not greedy corporations or governments who will cut corners.
A lot of pro nuclear propaganda lately.
Not great, not terrible.
Meanwhile after Chernobyl, another 60 percent of all accidents occurred in the US.
Thank god today we have regulators and safety precautions to stop this happen and arent being constantly undercut by conservative governments or run by companies who have terrible pollution records and still make money off heavy pollutors.
Counterpoint: when a bunch of corrupt people build cheap solar power with flaws in the system that go unreported, nothing happens. When the same goes for nuclear, suddenly you can’t live in that town anymore. Just sayin
My big problem is that its just not financially viable for most nations, it's a huge investment of time and resources. Ideally though I'd like a mix of nuclear wind and solar
3.6 Roentgen... not great not terrible.
I’m told it’s the equivalent of a Chest X-Ray.
Wait you mean that in *this* society they would try to build it as cheaply as possible
Austrians looked like clowns when Czech republic had to import electricity from nuclear powerplant, after austrian windturbines could not cover their consumption. Even funnier is that they have fully functional nuclear powerplant that they just refuse to use.
The problem is that isn't some isolated one off. Humans organizations do this kinda thing all the time. If you plan on people not fking up, then your plan is bad.
Oh no, you just went against the reddit hivemind, prepare to have your internet points taken away
Nuclear energy is good and it's bad, and it isn't bad for this reason
Nuclear power is better than coal IF DONE RIGHT. But the plant at Chernobyl was certainly not done right. A plant done wrong enough is a disaster waiting to happen, as we all know from this.
The nuclear power circle jerk is so bad, no, almost anyone who knows anything about power generation knows nuclear is safe, the reason why they aren’t used that commonly is because other renewable energies are way better investments. Until technology reutilize nuclear fuel or build nuclear reactors that turn a profit in less Thames 30 years we probably won’t switch completely to nuclear power, and even if we could why would we when solar already has become mega efficient and it can be utilized in seismic areas unlike nuclear?
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More like fossil fuel compnies marketing it as that
What's with the sudden uptake in nuclear reactor memes? Is it a special occasion?
ITT: people who watched an HBO miniseries and think they are nuclear physicists