Nuclear is the best btw.

      • trem ( trem@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English
        3·
        6 months ago

        Huh. We don’t either in Germany, but I assumed, it was largely because the whole place is inhabitated. Is there not some desert or Alaska or something in the US, where no one minds?

        • TranscendentalEmpire ( TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today ) 
          3·
          6 months ago

          We actually have a perfect place for it in the yucca mountains that was designated in the 1980s, but the actual construction of it has been held up since then thanks to nimby shit.

          I would love to see the US head towards nuclear power, but I’m not hopeful it’s ever going to happen. By design the federal government just doesn’t have the power to mandate a state to do anything it doesn’t want too, and a functional electric grid powered by nuclear would require more federal control than what is possible in the foreseeable future.

          Our government was designed to grant corporations and the aristocratic class to be able to exert a huge amount of influence over the government. They have decided that it’s a lot more profitable to not progress past fossil fuels.

          • Xerxos ( Xerxos@lemmy.ml ) 
            4·
            6 months ago

            Well, nuclear power, at least for now, is quite expensive. As long as no new technological breakthrough comes along, it’s simply cheaper to use wind and solar as main power producers. Of course, this has its own problem in the form of power storage, but at least we already have the technology for this.

            • Rooskie91 ( Rooskie91@discuss.online ) 
              7·
              6 months ago

              Power storage is only half of it. Most grids transmit AC power, and in order for that you need SOMETHING in the grid that provides a stable frequency aka a stable prime moves whose speed is unaffected by changes in load. That can be provided by fossil fuel plants, nuclear plants, or hydropower (as long as shifting climate patterns continue to keep reservoirs full).

              Wind turbines don’t have a consistent enough prime mover (the wind, so unreliable that it’s a metaphor for constant, rapid change). Solar panels supply DC power, so another option is figuring out long range DC power transmission, which is what China is doing I believe. It’s an incredibly costly and resources intensive solution though.

              Power generation is more complicated than just making something spin. You have to consider loading, reactive load, what to do with excess power during off peak hours, balancing load between multiple power sources. Unfortunately, solving the climate crisis is going to take more than “just build renewable sources”.

              It also doesn’t help that our infrastructure is out of date due to refusing upgrades because they included green sources (Trump preventing off hore wind farms, for example, also prevents infrastructure upgrades) and/or NIMBYism.

              Source: I work in nuclear power.

              • Xerxos ( Xerxos@lemmy.ml ) 
                4·
                6 months ago

                I didn’t want to trivialize the problems with switching to greener alternatives; I just wanted to say that we don’t need some ‘future tech’ to get it done. All we need is what is already known and implemented somewhere in the world.

                Also building more nuclear facilities - without any groundbreaking new improvements - is more expensive than the alternative.

        • TranscendentalEmpire ( TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today ) 
          1·
          6 months ago

          Yeah, but at least everyone else has long term storage solutions even if it’s not permanent. The US just has short term storage where you can only keep it for a number of years before having to shuffle it to a different short term storage facility via train or semi truck.

  • supersquirrel ( supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz ) 
    32·
    6 months ago

    As a Geologist the idea that there are seismically inactive magic rocks that will sit there and not change shape or be affected by anything for eternity and that we can assume placing radioactive waste in them will be fine for an indefinite amount of time is honestly hilarious.

    • Safeguard ( Safeguard@beehaw.org ) 
      12·
      6 months ago

      I understand your point. But also, not really the point. I’d rather have barrels of waste that I can point to, then to pump it into the air for everyone to breath.

      The barrels are very much in our face, we need to pay attention to them. The air… well that’s someone else’s problem…

    • Echo Dot ( echodot@feddit.uk ) 
      7·
      6 months ago

      I’m kind of concerned that somebody who calls himself a geologist doesn’t understand radiation. The time scales involved are just not compatible. The rock is geologically inactive over the time scales that you need to store radioactive material which is at most maybe a few thousand years.

    • OwOarchist ( OwOarchist@pawb.social ) BannedBannedEnglish
      35·
      6 months ago

      Nuclear is only safe under the constant management of a stable global society.

      Fossil fuels aren’t safe even with constant management and a stable global society.

      • 4am ( 4am@lemmy.zip ) 
        8·
        6 months ago

        Yes but historically speaking, an oil fire doesn’t render the area immediately uninhabitable for thousands of years.

        As long as we don’t light oil on fire constantly all over the planet and let it burn for decades, we’re gonna be fine.

        • Cethin ( Cethin@lemmy.zip ) English
          9·
          6 months ago

          Nuclear doesn’t either. It’s just that we’re much safer (and made more scared) or radiation. We’re overly cautious. It’s actually been shown that a little bit more radiation than background may actually be good for you.

          (Edit: Watch this before you downvote: https://youtu.be/gzdLdNRaPKc)

          Three mile island, Fukushima, and Chernobyl are pretty much safe. (Chernobyl is slightly more dangerous, because there’s the potential for hot debris, but that’s unlikely at this point. If you’re careful, it’s safe. If people were to live there, it’d be safe wherever they are, as they’d ensure there’s no hot objects.) The last reactor at Chernobyl shut down in 2000, meaning they were working there and operating it for decades safely after the disaster. Three mile Island was operating until 2019 safely, and since there have been plans made to bring it back online.

        • OwOarchist ( OwOarchist@pawb.social ) BannedBannedEnglish
          7·
          6 months ago

          an oil fire doesn’t render the area immediately uninhabitable for thousands of years

          But the production and burning of it releases just as much radiation and causes just as much cancer. (Actually more.)

    • JillyB ( JillyB@beehaw.org ) 
      32·
      6 months ago

      That feels kind of all-or-nothing. Environmental issues are part of the problem destabilizing societies. Overall, the poisoning of the environment is much worse and much less contained with fossil fuels than with nuclear power. Distant future societies might have no knowledge of nuclear storage sites and a few people might even die before they realize they need to stop breaking into the underground barrels. But a lot more people will die from the environmental havoc that we’re causing with fossil fuels. And they can’t just stay away from the barrels to avoid that one.

      Just to be clear, I think wind and solar (and geothermal where appropriate) are the best ways to get off of fossil fuels. They’ve gotten a lot cheaper than nuclear so it doesn’t make much sense to build new reactors. But it also doesn’t make much sense to shut them down if nuclear waste is the only issue.

        • fonix232 ( fonix232@fedia.io ) 
          2·
          6 months ago

          Just like a financial portfolio, our energy ecosystem is only safe if it’s well and proper distributed. Excess energy can be stored, or simply routed to ground, programs that incentivise energy use during unexpected peak periods already exist, there’s absolutely no reason not to over-plan and engineer it just to avoid shit like what goes down in Texas almost every year…

    • NaibofTabr ( NaibofTabr@infosec.pub ) English
      18·
      6 months ago

      …O …K … nothing is going to destabilize global society as badly as the collapse of crop growing cycles due to fossil-fuel-induced climate change.

      Anything we can do to reduce burning fossil fuels is going to improve global stability.

      • RamenJunkie ( RamenJunkie@midwest.social ) English
        6·
        6 months ago

        Yes, but why waste time and effort with a stopgap like Nuclear when we can just go to wind and solar that we already have the tech for?

        Bonus, the more its used, the more we learn, the better it gets for efficiency and ability to manufacture.

        • Krono ( Krono@lemmy.today ) 
          4·
          6 months ago

          I think you have it backwards, wind and solar are the stopgap.

          Wind and solar require heavy mining of non-renewable, relatively rare resources that will likely run out in a couple generations. Solar panels and wind turbines have a short lifespan of a few decades, and we aren’t good at recycling.

          Look at the world leader in clean energy- China - and their long term plans. They are heavily invested in solar, for now, as a stopgap measure as they develop thorium reactor power and other related technologies.

        • NaibofTabr ( NaibofTabr@infosec.pub ) English
          3·
          6 months ago

          I addressed this in another comment, but basically wind and solar both require large amounts of open land to generate significant amounts of electricity. They aren’t a complete solution, they simply can’t fit everywhere.

          Most places that can’t fit in fields of solar arrays or wind turbines are reliant on fossil fuels for electricity, and those circumstances aren’t going to change anytime soon. The best solution right now would be to replace the coal and gas plants with nuclear.

            • NaibofTabr ( NaibofTabr@infosec.pub ) English
              2·
              6 months ago

              True, but this doesn’t really work for densely populated areas. There isn’t enough roof space on top of a 20-story apartment or office building to place enough solar panels to serve the building’s needs.

              For places like Barcelona:

              New York:

              Seoul:

              etc. there’s a lot of energy demand, but all of the nearby ground space is already occupied. Even if you put solar panels on top of all the buildings, each rooftop wouldn’t be enough to power its own building, so collectively you would only get a fraction of the city’s energy needs. The cost of doing each install and the wiring infrastructure would outweigh the benefit, it would never be practical.

              *Edit: just to ballpark this, New York City used 15-16 billion kWh in Jan 2026, so ~15 million MWh/month, 180 million MWh/year. The Mojave Solar Project is one of the largest solar installations in the world. It generates ~580 GWh/year (580,000 MWh/year). So, to serve New York City we need only 310 equivalent MSP installations. The MSP installation takes up ~1765 acres, so we only need about 540,000 acres (2100 sq km), or a little over 1/10 of the state of New Jersey.

              Just for New York City. Not the whole state.

              And that’s assuming reliable output, with no transmission losses.

              And that estimate is probably too low, because any solar installation in that area wouldn’t get the same amount of regular sunlight as the Mojave Desert.

  • eestileib ( eestileib@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 
    17·
    6 months ago

    The biggest issue is that people don’t understand that the shit that will kill you Chornobyl dead burns itself out relatively fast. Sushi grade polonium is only spicy for a couple of weeks.

    The “it’s radioactive for zillions of years” stuff is typically a heavy metal hazard far more than a radiation hazard.

    If it’s decaying for a zillion years a gram might be popping off a few sextillion gamma rays a second, insignificant.

    Jimmy Carter, by shutting down the reprocessing industry, fucked the whole thing sideways.

    • crapwittyname ( crapwittyname@feddit.uk ) 
      8·
      6 months ago

      You’re right, and it’s even less dangerous than you’re saying.
      If each gram was emitting a few sextillion gamma rays per second you’d be able to harness it as a power source, it would be producing megawatts per gram (I did do the math!). The rate of decay is years /decades per atom. One gram of Plutonium 239 would only give off a few hundred thousand gamma particles per second near the start of its decay.
      Sorry if this comes off as me correcting you, I just read your comment and got curious so I did some calculations and wanted to share. If anything, I’m extra-agreeing with you.

      • Zink ( Zink@programming.dev ) 
        2·
        6 months ago

        I’d argue that the rate of decay per atom is actually random, except that the probability per unit time is scaled according to how long the half life is.

        You need a shitton of atoms so that you can average out all that randomness and find the emergent property that is half life.

        Fortunately, any amount of radioactive material large enough for us to do anything with it does indeed have a shitton of atoms! Avogadro’s number is one of my favorite scientific constants because it reveals the crazy scale of the atoms we take for granted.

        Like with U238 and its 4 billion year half life, one mole of just that atom would weigh 238 grams and have 6.022x10^23 atoms. A half-pound or quarter-kilo chunk of very heavy metal that fits in the palm of your hand contains over 602,200,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms.

        Some of those atoms are going to decay today, and some of them will still be radioactive in 100 billion years.

        • crapwittyname ( crapwittyname@feddit.uk ) 
          2·
          6 months ago

          Yep, once you know the half life, you can use that figure to work out the mean lifetime: the average time you’d expect to be looking at once nucleus before it decays. It works out to be 1.4x the half life of the material. You’re right though, it is random, and you could be waiting three nanoseconds or three million years.

  • OBJECTION! ( Objection@lemmy.ml ) 
    8·
    6 months ago

    Generally, the economics of nuclear involve a very large upfront cost followed by cheap energy afterwards. Maintaining existing plants usually makes sense but building new ones should only be done with careful consideration of other options in the long term. On demand power can be used to supplement a grid so having a variety of options makes sense.

    But it seems like everybody just picks up one thing as their pet solution and tries to promote it in absolute terms, which doesn’t really make sense. Different environmental conditions call for different solutions, and imperfect options can still have a use case. There isn’t really a “best.”

  • Dippy ( Dippy@beehaw.org ) 
    7·
    6 months ago

    Nuclear would be the best if any of the new projects ever came online ever. Solar is winning so hard by being cheapest and fastest, and its not close.

  • mavu ( mavu@discuss.tchncs.de ) 
    5·
    6 months ago

    Nuclear is best.
    The problem is, that unless you cut corners somewhere between mining uranium and electricity comes out, it’s also the most expensive way to make electricity known to mankind.

  • ssfckdt ( ssfckdt@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 
    5·
    6 months ago

    iNdEsTrUcTiBlE

    He really said “indestructible”

    He really said it

    Guys guys guys

    He said the word

    This is why no sane person takes nuke fans seriously. They have to literally lie and be dumb

  • Not_mikey ( Not_mikey@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) 
    4·
    6 months ago

    But I don’t see the waste coming out of the car, and I f I can’t see it it doesn’t exist. Well… I haven’t actually seen nuclear waste but I assume they are green glowing rods that give me cancer if I get to close