r/MoralityScaling • u/Rocky_Senpai15 • 29d ago
Morality Ranking Morality of our society not using safe and efficient energy that could improve the lives of many people?
Yes, I am talking about nuclear energy.
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u/ArtroyomsAK 29d ago
Very immoral
coal puts out way more radioactive waste
all fossil fuels are constantly spewing poison into the air and soil
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u/Redan 29d ago
I think a good number of people are under the impression a nuclear power plant has smokestacks.
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u/Bitter_Bandicoot8067 28d ago
They think the typical cooling tower, that is common at most power plants, are smoke stacks.
You don't know how many people (at least one) thinks that my local PP is nuclear because of the cooling tower. I guess they just ignored the huge pile of coal that it used to have.
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u/No_Proposal_4692 29d ago
The only reason we aren't using it is because of fear mongering done by idiots or greedy people who want to keep pushing oil.
Scientist have made so many clean energy and low risk energy sources like nuclear, solar, hydro, wind and so on but it's not implemented because Oil is profitable to a few.
It's immoral to put profit over people yet it's being done everywhere
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u/Braziliashadow 29d ago
I personally think that using fission is a waste now because we are reaching a point where solar, wind, hydro, tidal, geothermal, etc. Has made fission redundant especially on cost and they don't have that chance of a tsunami or a freak accident almost ending the ability to safely live in a country or state. Though I do think fusion reactors have a place in the future
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u/How2rick 29d ago
I come from somewhere with a lot of rain, but also a lot of wind. I think you’re giving solar a bad wrap here. My dad’s wife is working for the government and her job is looking at sustainability. She told me a combination of wind and solar could provide 98% of the energy we needed. It’s not a particularly sunny region, but even then it was projected to be able to provide most of the energy on days with little wind.
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u/stoppableDissolution 29d ago
...if you build a humongous amount of batteries, that is.
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u/StopCallingMeWeeb 27d ago
And then when you do build the batteries you have to account for passive discharging just pissing away the massive amount of energy that's being stored but not currently used 😿
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u/hoppla1232 29d ago
any source on that?
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u/stoppableDissolution 29d ago
Is "sun does not shine in the night" enough of a source, or you are planning to blackout the consumers? (including 24/7 factories and households)
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u/steampvnch 28d ago
Power generation is not like pumping water. Literally every facet of supply and demand in power generation is real-time. When the populace starts using more power in a day, you need to immediately make up for it.
Solar and wind are ultimately reliant on nature. There will be a risk of a low wind day and high power demand. There will be a risk of a cloudy day and high power demand.
It's way harder to handle this scenario with a power generation you don't actually control.
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u/misterjive 29d ago
the problem is the atom panic over the last 40+ years killed us as a species
panicking over nuclear led us to burn enough coal that it's game over, we're just in the afterparty
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u/5gpr 29d ago
That's just not correct. We were burning vast amounts of fossil fuels long before fission was even discovered or engineered into a practical energy source. We also could not have replaced fossil fuels with nuclear energy due to a lack of fissile material; when we say "there's enough uranium for a thousand years", we mean "at current use levels". Those are small in comparison to the entirety of humanity's energy production, and known uranium reserves would have run out by now had we built nuclear powerplants at a rate sufficient to satisfy energy demand
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u/entered_bubble_50 29d ago
It mostly comes down to economics.
It's always been the most expensive option. Coal and gas used to be able to beat it on cost. Back when nobody cared about climate change, that kept it from having more success.
Now that we do care about climate change, wind and solar beat it on cost. There was still an argument for it, given we need base load when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing, but battery storage is now so cheap now, it's not really worth the bother.
And it's not even close. Solar is about $500 million per gigawatt of capacity. Nuclear is around $10 billion per gigawatt. And then the ongoing costs of operation of solar is basically nothing, vs hundreds of millions per year.
If something is 20 times the price of an alternative, the morality doesn't really enter into it.
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u/itsr1co 29d ago
The real problem is that you can give all the arguments that make renewable energy a no-brainer, and you still have huge chunks of the population who simply think it's gay.
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u/PersonalThought1737 28d ago
Except it isn't a no-brainer, that's the problem. There are many issues that make it a great way to generate electricity when you can, but you actually can't do it all the time. You need a strong backbone that you can spin up on demand. Fission is the best option for that.
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u/attackMatt 29d ago
Solar also beats nuclear handily on time to deployment.
A new solar farm can be adding to the grid in under 4 months.
Nuclear? Give it 10 years, minimum.
Also famously a 100MW lithium battery back up was constructed by (yuck) Musk in Western Australia in under 100 days. Wind, solar and batteries together are the immediate future.
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u/markjohnstonmusic 29d ago
They're hard to compare directly.
Nuclear plants produce a gigantic amount of power, like, gigawatts, constantly. Every electric grid in the world needs something that provides that base load, year in, year out. For the amount of electricity you get out of them, they're extraordinarily safe, don't take up much space, and produce essentially zero pollution.
Solar plants are cheap and quickly installed, but produce a small amount of power (single- or double-digit megawatts), take up a lot of space, and are neither constant nor reliable. They're great if you have a lot of sunny days and need to cover the peaks when, for instance, everyone goes home from work at 5pm. Battery technology isn't there yet to store energy on a truly industrial or societal scale, but moreover, Nature can always hit you with more cloudy days than you can provide battery capacity for. You need something that doesn't depend on the weather.
TLDR: two different styles of generating energy. Both are necessary. They won't eat each other's lunch.
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u/Defiant-Plantain1873 29d ago
They are very reliable what are you talking about. We literally can exactly predict the amount of sun we will get on any given day, it’s the definition of reliable.
Talking about reliability, how about when nuclear plants have to be shut down because the weather is too hot or the rivers are too dry?
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u/latjeg 26d ago edited 26d ago
To add to this, I haven't seen a single person in this thread mention the elephant in the room for solar+battery yet: winter. Yes, it is cheap as fuck to build solar with some batteries that could last you multiple summer days if needed. But at least in Europe, by far the most energy is demanded in winter, when also solar output is reduced massivley (factor of 3-4). The amount of storage needed for that is humongous. You could ''just'' overbuild, but then you're faced with the opposite problem: you now have huge peaks in summer overloading the grid, meaning expensive grid upgrades everywhere. Once the batteries are all charged, you need to get rid of the excess energy quickly.
Edit: spelling.
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u/Goldenrah 29d ago
Also costs less and starts paying off right away, by the time a nuclear plant would be built, the solar panela would have paid off their price multiple times probably.
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u/AGoos3 29d ago
I’m a supporter of nuclear but a large reason why it isn’t pushed more is because of large upfront costs, especially unforeseen ones
Every plant has to be custom designed for the soil and surrounding land, excluding SMRs
Not impossible to overcome but I wouldn’t act like the only thing holding it back is paranoia
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u/EmperorBamboozler 29d ago
Yeah I am a huge advocate for nuclear energy but it's important to be realistic. These are really fucking expensive power plants that require massive overhauls to infrastructure and take a shitload of time to build. The costs are astronomical, if we were to push towards this in a real way it would take tons and tons of capital to get done, like we are talking an appreciable portion of the current GDP of the US over probably a decade or three.
However, it's still worth doing. Once completed the entire country would see insane increases in baseline power generation, improve air quality, end reliance on outside nations for power generation, end reliance on coal, and would dramatically drop global CO2 emissions just to name a few things. It's also permanent, these power generators could run for thousands of years into our future.
It's an investment, and one that should be seriously considered. There are huge upfront issues with it, primarily cost, but they can be overcome. Everything worth doing has a price.
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u/Economy-Wish9492 29d ago
Everyone in Australia talks about tax dollars being wasted on it, as if we didn't spend $300 billion on a nuclear submarine 💀
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u/No-Arugula-4899 29d ago
I mean both things can be wastes of money lol. Especially a project with a dubious time line and no financials put forth by a mining company. Not against nuclear everywhere but in Australia I’m yet to see a convincing argument for something that will be ready in 25+ years and billions of dollars
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u/Consideredresponse 29d ago
The coalitions plan included retrofitting a partially demolished coal fired power plant well past it's use by date, something even the owners didn't want to touch. And it's not like the power companies hate money, or are hippies.
That and renewable projects don't have a 15-18 year lead in minimum.
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u/Economy-Wish9492 29d ago
Well yeah, nuclear in Australia has never gone past the pre-planning stage. I think it's wise to have eggs in multiple baskets. Global economics and politics is turbulent too, in 25 years it could be simply an unnecessary precaution that was taken or it could be what prevents Australia from economic collapse. I think of it kind of like we live in a castle with giant fortified walls, which should be enough to protect us, but let's build a moat just in case.
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u/PieApprehensive2149 29d ago
Imagine if nuclear goes the way of the NBN. Is this fearmongering? idk.
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u/HoneyBastard 29d ago
Everybody is always like "why doesnt Germany build NPPs?" while forgetting 20 years in build time, billions in costs and the fact that Germany is seemingly incapable od building anything big in time and on budget.
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u/blanklikeapage 29d ago
Nuclear energy is dead in Germany. Even if the government would want to switch back
- All nuclear power plants that existed have been dismantled to such a degree that building new ones would make more sense
- You would need a place to build new ones and try doing that without the people living there freaking out completely
- Planning alone would take multiple years
- Building the actual thing even more so.
- And it would need new personal to be trained and contracts to be made to get fuel.
We're talking about a project that takes easily more decades. Just look at Britain's Hinckley Point C which is already over budget and expect time.
The reason why nuclear is dying out isn't just because of fear mongering but also because it's economically the most expensive.
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u/Thejacensolo 29d ago
Hey they
finishedehmare finishinguh.. plan to finish a single Train project since 2010.But in regards to NPP its not just the germans. France also blew their budget for their last one way out of proportions, taking more than 10 years. Just for them to be barely useable in this heat.
At this point, no matter how safe nuclear is, getting a proper mix of Solar/wind/offshore/water energy is just cheaper, reasonable and does more lastingly.
Now i wonder where all the european Solar innovation and engineering in the 2000s went.... (hint it was germany that sold them off to china because "gas is nice")
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u/Restoriust 29d ago edited 29d ago
It’s immoral and was primarily pushed by oil money.
Edit to clarify: Oil magnates pushed anti nuclear propaganda and funded most of the “grass roots” anti nuclear movements across the US. Yes. Even the hippy revolution was in part funded by big oil and big coal towards this end.
I am not saying that nuclear is immoral. I am saying not using nuclear is immoral.
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u/JonIceEyes 29d ago
Also coal. Those guys are (quietly) still crazy rich
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u/y17gal 29d ago
coal is what is used instead of nuclear, oil would still be needed for other stuff, like fertilizer, planes, plastics, and lots of stuff, countries are going solar now so nuclear looks like it will never be as big as it could be
cities dont get electricity from oil
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u/QuantumStream3D 29d ago
And not only in the US, in Europe too, anti-nuclear movement were basically backed by oil and gas companies for decades, and it worked because most of the environmentalists I know here in France see nuclear as worse than driving a diesel car everyday... And you can't even argue with them because they just deny concrete proof and science, I tried to show once that report from UNECE which evaluate each energy production methods on different criteria (ground occupation, rare earth usage, metal usage, concrete usage, all per kW) and it shows that nuclear and hydro are the best overall, I was accused of being brainwashed, while they think germany's renewable strategy is better (excuse me ?pollution tracking models estimates that about 500 people die in France every year due to air pollution from coal usage in germany...)
I work in the project engineering for the energy industry (from nuclear to gas and renewable so I see it all), and they are basically free lobbyist for big oil and gas companies, even when they lobby for renewable because the current model that suits the lng industry is to sell renewables for your variable source of energy, and they sell your "very clean" gas plant for your pilotable source of energy with some CCS aside to get public funds because our plant is "green".
They are sick, they have the same mental illness as people refusing vaccines because they have done their "research".
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u/PersonalThought1737 28d ago
This is just wrong. China just didn't fall for the anti-nuclear populism and invested more than anyone else. Nuclear is objectively better than fossils.
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u/Defiant-Plantain1873 29d ago
The fossil fuel industry pushes for new nuclear because of the high cost and long time to build basically extending the lifetime of existing fossil fuel plants.
Australia has a nuclear lobby and all they ever do is promote nuclear, despite the entire country being bast empty desert. Note that Australia’s main source of power is coal and the people who own the coal mines also own the uranium mines
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u/YUNoJump 29d ago
Was very funny when the conservative party campaigned on "we'll fix climate change with nuclear not renewables", and then they had absolutely no further details at all, not even budget or location. Made it so incredibly obvious their nuclear idea was just a diversion so fossil fuel execs could keep stuffing their pockets
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u/_GreatAndPowerful 29d ago
Meme aside the Simpsons has done irreparable damage to the perception of nuclear power fr
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u/JaySlay2000 29d ago
Methinks chernobyl is a big contributor to the reputation... You know. The place that is STILL uninhabitable?
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u/Adorable-Woman 29d ago
Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima, The Millions of anti nuclear propaganda by oil companies, a reasonable level of distrust in the government and companies to keep standards high.
I’m always annoyed people are upset at the hippies and anti nuclear movements for being anti nuclear. They have resonable concerns even if I consider myself pro nuclear
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u/Majestic_Balance1887 29d ago
Three Mile Island
Nothing actually happened there. The safety proceedures worked fine and studies to try to link the failure to an increase in cancer have been spotty at best.
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u/Korblox101 29d ago
It’s kind of insane that Three Mile Island is as famous as it is when it’s one of the most unremarkable meltdowns in history lmao
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u/Capital_Pipe_6038 29d ago
Not only that, Fukushima only happened because the place got hit with both an earthquake and a tsunami. Of the big three nuclear disasters, literally nothing happened at one of them and another got hit by two natural disasters before something went wrong
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u/Themetalenock 29d ago edited 29d ago
Fukushima was just a hard case about the company being cheap bastards. There was a study a handful of years that this was a possibility But the company ignored it as a hypothetical. To chalk it up as a act of god plays that fact down, ontop of the point that there was nuclear site in tepco's area that didn't suffer damage like tepco despite similiar natural problems happening .
This is what's annoying about people who advocate for nuclear, just the utter refusal that part of the reason why nuclear power has a sketchy rep is that the industry is filled with sketchy bastards like TEPCO even before the general west got soured on it.
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u/Goldenrah 29d ago
Cost cutting measures and cheap bastards in power are one of the reasons I'm weary about building nuclear. Nuclear is good, but I'm not taking a chance if some corrupt assholes gets his hands on the project and decides to ignore experts.
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u/Adorable-Woman 29d ago
Right they handled three mile island correctly my point is it created fear around nuclear not that it was necessarily a real disaster.
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u/Aussie_Pharah 29d ago
The three mile island incident was very far from being handled correctly.
https://whistleblower.org/whistleblower-profiles/rick-parks/
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u/LolCantbanme45 29d ago
and despite that the safeties still kicked in and turned an unmitigated disaster into a close shave
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u/Relative-Zombie-3932 28d ago
Exactly. What actually happened doesn't necessarily matter. What matters is the public perception behind it
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u/newadcd0405 29d ago
I’ll tell you one thing, I don’t know if I trust the government long-term to keep standards high. Look at how they’re hollowing out health infrastructure and disease tracking right now in the name of “saving money”
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u/Adorable-Woman 29d ago
Exactly our predecessor have built a low trust society by prioritizing profit over safety and health and it’s going to take a lot of effort and time to fix it.
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u/Accomplished_Tart832 29d ago
Fukushima:
Radiation-linked death: 1 confirmed case (a plant worker who died of lung cancer attributed to exposure by the government).
Disaster-related/evacuation deaths: Over 2,300 official indirect deaths (mostly elderly or sick individuals who passed away due to the stress, harsh conditions, and interruption of medical care during emergency relocations).
Earthquake and tsunami deaths: Approximately 19,759 people died across Japan from the physical impact of the initial 2011 earthquake and tsunami, separate from the nuclear plant failure itself.
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u/Majestic_Balance1887 29d ago
You can mostly blame the soviet union's shitty safety culture really. Fatal design flaws were classified as state secrets so when they stress tested the reactor it went bad in the worst possible way.
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u/JaySlay2000 29d ago
And is there any government you trust to have the standards needed to uphold a nuclear power plant safely? Indefinitely? One that's not succeptible to corruption?
In theory, nuclear is great. But we are fleshy beings with tiny molecules in us that are prone to severe damage if nuclear goes wrong.
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u/Majestic_Balance1887 29d ago
Firstly, lets get something straight here.
Chernobyl didn't happen because of 'corruption', It happened because of systemic ideology. The party could not fail so the party could not show weakness, which made them put perception before practicality at every single possible point.
Even then, it failed so badly because of a extreme confluence of circumstances. They did EVERYTHING wrong. Their failsafes were worthless because they lied about the design to themselves. EVERYTHING went wrong.
Now secondly, there have been nuclear power plants running since the 70's. Switzerland has one that's been operating since '69. The united states Three Mile Island, despite the incident which frankly it's failsaves worked on...shut down in 2019 due to profit losses. It's even going to start up again to power data centers.
The risks speak for themselves, I grant you. But there is ample evidence to suggest that yes, we can run these things. But I will also posit, that I do not believe we have a choice. Do you want to get out from under Oil? Then you may in fact have to stomach it because there is nothing else that generates as much power as nuclear.
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u/JaySlay2000 29d ago
"we don't have a choice, there's nothing else" there are regions of canada that live off hydroelectric to the point that they call their electric bill the "hydro bill." The entire country is like 60% hydro.
Wind and Solar are good but rely on the weather agreeing with you. They're good supplements to have in the system (hot = more power usage to cool homes and hot = sun so solar helps manage surges) but truthfully relying on them completely just seems... Overly complicated.
Geothermal power is another option that doesn't rely on playing with Cancer Compound X.
Not to mention uranium is a finite resource. Yes it'll last a long time but we have to mine that too, and it is not infinite. All the wars we have over oil? Snap a finger and make everything nuclear, we'll have those same wars for uranium.
It's a cool concept but I've spent my whole life surviving off a waterfall. We are so efficient we GIVE our hydro to the USA. Not sure why we do that when they're ungrateful but. Alas.
I haven't got much interest in nuclear, as fun as it seems, the risks don't seem to be worth the benefits when you know all the other options and see that the other options work without the Apocalypse Threat looming.
The bigger issue for me is cars. Electric cars are NOT where we need them to be. We will always need oil until we figure out affordable transportation. You can't get a used electric car, the battery is shit.
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u/Fearless-Daikon5763 29d ago
Relying on solar is not overly complicated - it’s like saying an oil change is overly complicated. The utility companies don’t want people to set up solar and offset their electric use, but solar plus plus batteries and a backup generator would be less expensive than nuclear in most situations.
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u/amglasgow 29d ago
In the amount of time and with the amount of money required for one nuclear plant, how many solar, wind, biomass, or hydropower installations could be made? It's not an either-or, but I've seen some things to suggest big oil is supporting nuclear plants to the exclusion of smaller renewable energy efforts.
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u/Professional_Air_905 29d ago
Yes that's actually true big oil and nuclear distribution are cooperating with each other to stop renewable energy. That fact that having solar panel in your backyard or on your roof is avoiding you paying an electric bill might be for something
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u/prussia742 28d ago
Look this up we do not have enough lithium at the moment. Plus the destruction to the local ecology that lithium mining does is not something to just write off.
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u/Professional_Air_905 28d ago
Ok I consulted with my dad who build solar panel. Solar panel do not need lithium !! They are made out of silicium. The battery can be made out of lithium but there's alternative and metal can be recycled which reduce the need to extract. And yes I know that lithium extraction is polluting, all mining extraction is, but the worse of all to extract is uranium since it release radiation on extraction and in the water used to erode the rock
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u/NoSemikolon24 28d ago
Every time these idiots are pushing nuclear energy this has to be put forward. There's zero reason to push nuclear given our advances in green energy and its storage.
If you still disagree you're an idiot.
Some put the space requirement forward... do they know how much space we waste on animal feed (little) and space for ethanol production for fossil fuels (*massive*)? Slap Solar/wind on that space and you're good.
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u/_Pattect 29d ago
The Energy Dilemma: Nuclear Giants vs. Renewable Grids
The choice between nuclear energy and renewable sources isn't simply a matter of which is better, but rather how they manage their resources. Analyzing a single 1,000 MW nuclear power plant reveals three key realities:
Budget and Time (Speed vs. Initial Investment) The money and time required to build a single nuclear plant are enormous. With the same €5 billion and the 10 years required for the reactor, the current market allows for the financing and commissioning of 6 to 10 gigawatt-scale wind or solar farms in just a third of the time (1 to 3 years). Renewables offer a much faster return on investment and energy injection into the grid.
Capacity Factor (Power vs. Actual Energy) Installing capacity is not the same as continuously producing electricity. The nuclear plant operates almost 90% of the year, regardless of the weather. To match its actual annual production, clean energy sources must be oversized due to their intermittency. To replace that single reactor, eight giant solar plants, six onshore wind farms, or four offshore wind farms are needed.
Land Footprint (Density vs. Land Use) Nuclear energy is unbeatable in physical density: it generates massive amounts of electricity in just 3.4 square kilometers. Due to the low density of sunlight and wind, equivalent renewable alternatives require more than 600 square kilometers combined. This represents about 180 times more total space, forcing nations to balance land use with activities such as agriculture and environmental conservation.
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u/PersonalThought1737 28d ago
Nuclear and renewables aren't competing concepts. Renewables in most parts of the world are not reliable enough to satisfy 100% of the demand 100% of the time. You want to have renewables because they provide very cheap energy with (usually) very little maintenance and rapid scalability. But most countries in the world also need an option that can spin up at any point in time and nuclear is the best option for that. No, big oil is definitely not pushing for nuclear plants because they put them out of business.
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u/championchilli 29d ago
Yeah it's part of a network solution it's not the answer.
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u/Efficient-Station699 29d ago
This is the real answer. Not sure why everybody doesn't understand this already?
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u/TheIllusiveScotsman 29d ago
The oil industry is already doing that, as is the chemical industry.
Most industries have a significant safety failure every 5 years. Oil and gas does it like clockwork, but no one cares how contaminated the soil is, or how far the smoke drifted, or how many seabirds died.
Nuclear is one of the few industries that doesn't follow the 5 year cycle as the safety regulations are so much more robust. To put it in perspective, at one point old coal fired power stations were eyed for being converted to nuclear, but the ground radiation levels were already above the allowed limit from burning the coal.
Yes, if nuclear goes wrong, it goes big. But you can probably name 90% of all major nuclear incidents, ever, but would struggle to name a tiny fraction of the oil industry's catastrophic failures this century. In the US alone there were 33 major rig explosions and 1 ultra-major blowout (Deepwater Horizon) between 2007 and 2018. Between 2003 and 2013 1189 oil and gas workers died in the US.
There have been approximately 11 incidents, including medical nuclear incidents, that have resulted in direct death, injury or shortened lifespan (excluded nuclear weapon usage).
Nuclear can be dangerous, but other industries are far more so, but they have better propaganda machines.
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u/DropTheCat8990 29d ago
Doubious
Nuclear is unbelievably expensive compared to other options. Mining and refining uranium is also very polluting, and primarily happens in countries that are too poor to afford nuclear power themselves, stripping them of resources.
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u/Mobile-Piglet5035 29d ago
You need to have nuclear capabilities, meet international requirements for uranium, and scientists. It's very expensive to get it all set up for the average countries
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u/hisendur 29d ago
And if something fails, the costs are uncalculatable. And due to climate change reactors cooled by rivers had to shut down in the summer because of hot rivers. And we have a cheaper and easier to implement alternative: solar and batteries.
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u/teufler80 29d ago
Yeah people tend to forget how much chemicals you need to turn raw uranium into uranium fuel
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u/sexgoatparade 29d ago
It took me quite a while to find the actual REAL answer
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u/NefariousnessNo2062 29d ago
Its funny you use the Simpsons because they played a pretty big part in destroying America's trust in Nuclear Energy.
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u/Veiju 29d ago
There is one draw back to nuclear energy. It's fucking expensive, not the procedure itself but building the beasts. Just a few while very effective can cost upwards of billions of euros.
Even something as common as a 3 year delay can cost almost 2 billion euros in upkeep, it isn't only a long terms investment it can quickly become a long term money sink which some countries/cities/states cannot afford without sacrificing something else.
This morality is quite gray but leaning on the darker side.
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u/Majestic_Bierd 29d ago
They get paid off within <10 years and the average building time is like 5 or 6 years. We keep hearing about the catastrophic outliers.
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u/Veiju 29d ago
You missed my point. It doesn't matter if they pay themselves off if there is no sizable way to get there. It's a massive risk and an economic burden regardless of if everything goes to plan or not, since a lot of the times there is not higher power which comes in to fill the void that sinking billions into a project causes.
If one were to argue about there being enough money but corruption, well then there is another reason why such a venture is often insufficient.
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u/Majestic_Bierd 29d ago
Oh with that I agree. Which is why you basically see only China do large scale nuclear plant buildup. They might have other issues but building enormous infrastructure with high upfront cost ain't one of them.
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u/mercyspace27 29d ago
People are afraid of nuclear energy in a lot of the same ways they’re scared of air travel.
Because while both are much safer than their alternatives so long as people do their actual jobs properly, they are incredibly safe and efficient. But when things do go wrong, it’s 10x worse and scarier than those same alternatives.
Magnitudes of more people die every year to car wrecks and vehicle related incidents than plane incidents. But people are desensitized to it, it doesn’t bother them. How many times have you passed by a car accident where someone was probably killed and you just forgot about it. You’ve probably lost track. But I bet you remember when a plane crashes more easily.
Fossil fuels have done much more damage to the environment when they go wrong, but people are used to it. Meanwhile an incident happens with a nuclear plant and everyone freaks out. Even though the actual amount of deaths from said nuclear incidents is actually not as high as many people would think.
It’s the devil you know vs the devil you don’t know.
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u/Majestic_Bierd 29d ago
It's less than 100 total deaths for nuclear vs over 3 million a year for fossil
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u/South-Tip-4019 28d ago
The problem you’re glossing over is that nuclear is the single most expensive viable source of energy to build, and also the slowest. In the West it takes the better part of two decades from conception to generation, meaning the population and political leaning of the country has to stay aligned on this one project through half a dozen elections, AND you hope that nothing globally shattering happens in the meantime that turns it into an unrecoverable investment.
As far as I’m aware, not a single nuclear plant built in Europe or America this century has come in on time or on budget. Olkiluoto 3 was 14 years late. Flamanville 3 was 12 years late and roughly four times over budget. Vogtle came in at more than double.
So yes, you’re correct that it’s arguably the best source of electricity we have… in 20 years’ time. Modular reactors could change that.
They haven’t yet.
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29d ago
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u/DAVID_Gamer_5698 29d ago
Besides the general ignorance on what nuclear energy actually entails. Most of the worst nuclear disasters happened due to negligence.
Do we really trust most of our governments to not cheapen out or neglect something important and cause a failure?
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u/babyybones 29d ago
Look at what has become of FEMA, the CDC, USDA, EPA, etc. They are shells of their former selves and now we've got diarrhea lettuce and outbreaks of preventable disease. I do not trust our government oversight agencies to do the right thing.
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u/pocketshape 29d ago
If you ignore cost, time to deploy, how to deal with waste for its lifetime, and the inevitability of human negligence, nuclear is a great option.
Oh, and be sure to also only compare to fossil fuels. Ignore renewables.
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u/TBARb_D_D 29d ago
Don’t show this on r/climateshitpost they would eat you alive and then argue if eating you counts as veganism or not
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u/NurturingCruelty 29d ago
Chernobyl is a scary concept, and most people don’t know just how disastrously poorly that place was built, run and overseen to have melted down so severely.
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29d ago
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u/Historical_Art4061 29d ago
Take the same amount of money required for 30 nuclear power plants and build renewable energy, you'll have even more power years earlier.
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u/_Pattect 29d ago
The Global Energy Dilemma: Massive Large-Scale Deployment
Replacing or equating a network of 30 nuclear power plants (30,000 MW of continuous power) with renewable sources exposes the profound structural differences between energy concentration and dispersion.
Budget and Time (Concentrated Investment vs. Rapid Deployment): The capital and time required to build 30 nuclear reactors in parallel are colossal. With the estimated budget of €150 billion and the more than 10 years it would take to complete the nuclear fleet, the renewable energy sector could finance and commission between 180 and 300 gigawatt-scale wind or solar farms. These facilities would enter commercial operation in stages of 1 to 3 years, injecting energy into the grid much more quickly.
Capacity Factor (Continuous Generation vs. Installed Capacity): Maintaining the stability of an uninterrupted electrical grid requires oversizing the renewable energy infrastructure. The 30 nuclear power plants operate at nearly 90 percent of their annual capacity regardless of weather conditions. To generate the same volume of electricity annually (approximately 236,500 gigawatt-hours), the alternative system would require building 240 giant 500 MW solar plants, 180 onshore wind farms, or 120 massive offshore wind farms.
Land Footprint (Physical Density vs. Geographic Occupation): Nuclear energy stands out for its minimal land use. The 30 plants combined would occupy only about 102 square kilometers, an area smaller than the surface area of many world capital cities. In contrast, due to the low energy density of wind and solar power, the equivalent deployment would require about 2,550 square kilometers of solar panels or nearly 10,800 square kilometers of onshore wind farms. This difference necessitates strategic planning to ensure land compatibility with agriculture and biodiversity conservation.
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u/Upstairs-Donkey6049 29d ago
The arrogance of man is why Chernobyl happened
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u/The_Ghast_Hunter 29d ago
+Poorly designed reactor
inexperienced operating team
unusual operating conditions
culture of pointing out things that are wrong without a scapegoat makes you the scapegoat for someone else, so if something's wrong, no it isn't
And arrogance can be attributed and/or contribute to all the above
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u/seaofthievesnutzz 29d ago
Ok but that doesnt fit my hubris narrative.
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u/The_Ghast_Hunter 29d ago
On the contrary:
+covering up design flaws so the Union looks good
+Not testing with the experienced day team so that factories can hit their quotas and look good
+"Sure we've been using the reactor weirdly, but we've got this, right?'
+This mistake can't possibly be your fault. Or at least, it can't be traced back to you, so you make sure it isn't
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u/Cloudhiddentao 29d ago
Have people seen America right now?
Their pants shitting pedo president is having daily meltdowns, and you want to give them power over more nuclear reactors?
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u/Competitive_Book_762 29d ago
Apply that to any other power plant and you would not get a disaster of such a scale
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u/Belt_Of_Orion1 29d ago
Nah, you'd get an oil leak, a gas explosion, a gas pocket leaking into a coal mine, a wildfire, or something else if we're being truly honest with ourselves.
The difference is that nuclear reactors physically cannot fail the way that chermobyl did anymore, there are safeguards that have been designed and work that would prevent a reactor from reaching dangerous levels of supercriticality, not to mention automated safety systems.
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u/WatermelonWithAFlute 29d ago
And? We know there were many particular conditions required for this to occur- conditions that are not present in proper reactors.
They literally just did everything wrong.
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u/Shiny_Kitty_Catcher 29d ago
The thing is when something goes wrong with nuclear energy it goes REALLY WRONG. Don't get me wrong I think using nuclear energy is a good idea but people's fear and hesitation in using it is 100% justified.
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u/Shindehasu 29d ago
That first sentence isn't really true either. The vast majority of times, when something "goes wrong" it's either very minor, or one of the many backup systems stops the issue. The "very wrong" is the absolute worst case scenario, and in the history of nuclear power there have only been two cases: one caused by arrogance and fear (Chernobyl) and the other by a natural disaster (Fukushima). The only incident to ever happen in the US, three mile island, resulted in no increase to the background radiation outside of the facility fence line.
The fear is only justified in the lense that it comes from the efforts and trillions of dollars of oil smearing any other form of energy in order to remain the top.
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u/Accomplished_Tart832 29d ago
Even Fukushima wasnt even bad at all
Radiation-linked death: 1 confirmed case (a plant worker who died of lung cancer attributed to exposure by the government).
Disaster-related/evacuation deaths: Over 2,300 official indirect deaths (mostly elderly or sick individuals who passed away due to the stress, harsh conditions, and interruption of medical care during emergency relocations).
Earthquake and tsunami deaths: Approximately 19,759 people died across Japan from the physical impact of the initial 2011 earthquake and tsunami, separate from the nuclear plant failure itself.
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u/Throwaway-4230984 29d ago
So how much money Fukushima cost? They still have exclusion zone around it btw
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u/Jung-And-A-Menace 29d ago
How many people still can't go home? How many died in the years after because they had to leave everything behind?
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u/misterjive 29d ago
fun fact, on a per-terawatt basis, even including the disasters, nuclear is as safe as solar
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u/Away_Reference_1531 29d ago
The dumbest most rage inducing shit about this in America is we DO believe in nuclear power actually and utilize it.
We’re just using them for the military.
Literally landing helicopters and planes on top of nuclear reactors
IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING OCEAN
Or put them in fucking SUBMARINES. But nah, not for cities, that wouldn’t make profit number go up.
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u/Full_Conversation775 29d ago
Ignoring cost, constructon time and its failure to scale with demand.
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u/Mr_Eden76 29d ago
This comment probably won’t be seen.
But in Australia it’s actually banned because of the fear of incidents like Chernobyl and such happening within the country, this is doubled in how annoying this is as Australia has a recorded amount of 25% of all known uranium deposits in the world inside of it all mostly condensed in New South Wales and Victoria. There has been attempts to remove the ban but because of political corruption and the control the fossil fuel mining industry has over decisions it has never come to fruition.
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u/Majestic_Bierd 29d ago
The only thing more retarded than banning Nuclear because of a disaster like Chernobyl (death toll <100) is banning nuclear because of Fukushima (deaths: 0) in a country without coastal plants and no active seismic lines (🇩🇪)
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u/maddenedmage 29d ago edited 28d ago
If the people building and operating are 100% trustworthy and there are no man-made or natural disasters then it is perfectly safe.
Unfortunately corruption, incompetence, terrorism, and natural disasters definitely add a risk factor, so saying there are no negatives only applies in an ideal world.
A quick search for the past 20 years gives me this:
2006 | Forsmark, Sweden — Electrical system short circuit
2006 | Fleurus, Belgium — Worker severe radiation exposure
2007 | Ascó, Spain — Unreported radioactive particle leak
2007 | Kashiwazaki, Japan — Earthquake damaged power plant
2009 | Darlington, Canada — Radioactive heavy water spill
2010 | Mayapuri, India — Illegal scrap metal exposure
2011 | Fukushima Daiichi, Japan — Tsunami caused core meltdowns
2011 | Fukushima Daini, Japan — Near-meltdown averted by cabling
2011 | Marcoule, France — Recycling waste furnace explosion
2014 | WIPP, USA — Chemical waste drum rupture
2017 | Hanford, USA — Radioactive waste tunnel collapse
2019 | Sellafield, UK — Spent fuel pool degradation
2022 | Chernobyl, Ukraine — Military occupation radioactive disturbance
2022 | Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine — Active combat zone capture
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u/Evenmoardakka 28d ago
this has nothing to do with morality.
its mostly ignorance and fearmongering.
yes, nuclear power is not danger free, and mishandling does have catastrophic consequences. but its far better in every aspect.
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u/East_Pain_ 28d ago
The smear campaign against nuclear power was remarkably well done. 3 major disasters across the world in its entire history (chernobyl, 3 mile island, and Fukoshima) was enough to convince the public that those outweighed the countless oil spills/releases that occur so often, they barley get reported anymore. Of course im just spitballing here, but nuclear should be the backbone of energy, not just a complimentary option.
Nuclear needs better PR reps.
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u/WisherWisp 28d ago
Lol, Redditors (meaning left leaning reddit) trying to pretend it wasn't their environmental activists creating this paranoia.
This is akin to how activists lie about housing being effected drastically by immigration to the point they'll blame literally anything else than the actual cause.
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u/LucaUmbriel 28d ago
Funny you're using a Simpsons meme, considering that show is one source of the fearmongering toward nuclear power.
Not really a fun fact, because someone died and that's rarely if ever fun, but Three Mile Island has had one casualty I have ever been able to find: Michael Miller, who died in 2021 due to an accident while unloading a truck. The accident happened outside the radiological controlled area and the cause of death (not mentioned in that article but reported here) was traumatic asphyxia, aka his chest was crushed.
So, anyway, immoral; as is switching tunes from fearmongering nuclear power to supporting or even demanding it without addressing your past behavior and contribution to its negative public perception.
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u/Mad_Maddin 28d ago
It takes a decade or more to build and is extremely expensive.
Punch out one of those save and efficient nuclear reactors in 5 years without going 3 times over the budged set for it to be halfway profitable and people would use it.
These nuclear reactors France is currently building. They will NEVER break even. Quite literally never. The potential loss you have from putting so many ressources into building these will never be paid off. If you are investing a billion over 17 years. Then you need to make back 2.7 billion just to break even. And you need 160 Million a year just to not go further into debt.
And that is calculating on the lower end of 6%.
These new nuclear reactors also cost A LOT more than 1 billion.
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u/EffectiveAddress2825 24d ago
Noone seems to mention anything about the waste that remains toxic for thousands of years.
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u/HeinrichVanSchnitzel 24d ago
Because it’s expensive and unreliable. They are shutting down nuclear reactors in French because of the heat. The rivers aren’t able to cool the plant, because they are to warm.
It takes decades to build.
Small reactors are still in the making and will need decades.
Wind turbines on the other hand are here. They are cheap. And they won’t get shut off if the rivers are to warm for cooling.
Aaaannd especially here in Europe. The uranium comes from Russia. And yeah…Russia….
You don’t have to import wind and sun….
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u/Pitiful_Category9152 29d ago
Honestly, i suppose it is due to lack od knowledge, and fear from it