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[-] SARGE@startrek.website 93 points 1 day ago

A lot of comments here are displaying their ignorance of nuclear technology.

Keep eating up the oil company talking points, I guess. "hey guys remember those nuclear meltdowns from outdated reactors that had all kinds of things going wrong because of poor design and decision making, most of which is no longer an issue? Yeah things blow up so better keep chugging away at those fossil fuels while we sabotage any investments into renewables"

I mean goddamn, the "worst" disaster in the USA was a big nothing burger that was sensationalized by newspapers that knew how to sell a headline, and oil companies that knew how to leverage any sort of negative press to their advantage.

When the fallout from nuclear disasters doesn't come close to the amount of radiation out off by burning and refining fossil fuels, there is no argument.

[-] x00z@lemmy.world 59 points 1 day ago

Yeah things blow up

I would stop them right there and ask when the last oil spill was.

It was last month. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oil_spills

[-] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 29 points 1 day ago

Even without oil spills. The fossil fuel method of dealing with waste is to vent it into the atmosphere. Nuclear only does that when something goes very wrong, and even then it causes significantly fewer fatalities.

You could have a Chernobyl every single day and still kill fewer people than coal and oil.

[-] SARGE@startrek.website 13 points 1 day ago

The safety aspects alone SHOULD be enough to convince people, yet here we are.

The difference between nuclear-power- related disasters and fossil fuel related disasters is astronomical.

And honestly the amount of radioactive isotopes that get spewed out from burning coal day in day out for decades on end absolutely dwarfs the amount of radioactivity released from nuclear disasters.

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[-] starlinguk@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago

Why do you think that those against nuclear energy are for fossil fuels? My building has solar panels, and backup power comes from either wind turbines or the hydraulic dam down the river.

[-] HikingVet@lemmy.ca 2 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

The overwhelming resistance to nuclear is pushed by people who want us to stay on fossil fuels, and the number of people suggesting renewables usally state their preferences in the comments alongside their criticism (whether the criticism is valid or not).

[-] expr@programming.dev 23 points 1 day ago

Yep. So much of this shit from "environmental activists" that have no fucking clue how any of this works. It's been shown time and time again that nuclear is the answer for base load energy requirements with minimal environmental impact.

[-] knatschus@discuss.tchncs.de 13 points 1 day ago

When and where? Nuclear is very very expensive. Nuclear doesn't work well as baseload since while you can turn it off rather quickly you can't turn it back on fast when it's needed again

[-] Rakonat@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Baseload means the consistent day to day requirements a grid always has while up, aka people running their lights, tvs and appliances at regular times throughout the day.

Flex loads are unusual peaks on the grid such as unexpectedly hot days where people run air conditioners or electric heat in the winter time. These are the points where things like wind power is invaluable to the grid.

The idea that Nuclear can't flex though is absurd, it's not as fast as wind, but raising or lowering control rods takes seconds to minutes depending on reactor type, not hours like people seem to think. It just makes more sense to run them at schedule outputs because you need to shut them down entirely to refuel them. But if a nuclear plant was built up enough to handle capacity of a given region, it could realistically move between 50% load and 80% load and back in under ten minutes.

Ecologically, Nuclear is by the far safest route, having the among lowest carbon outputs of all power production AND using less land per kw produced. The only thing that even gets close is rooftop solar, and even if you covered every external surface of every building in a city with solar you'd still not meet base loads.

The price point of nuclear is a two part problem, both of which stem from propaganda leveraged against nuclear. We don't have economies of scale because NIMBY and fear mongering how "dangerous" nuclear is (despite being the safest form of power in human history) preventing new constructions, combined with the second front of overzealous and unrealistic safety standards forced upon the nuclear industry that make it difficult for them to be profitable, it's like requiring people to wear full body kevlar pads while driving or biking. Keeps them safe, maybe, but is that level of protection required? Not even remotely. No other form of power production could survive if strangled the same way nuclear has been for the last 80 years, which speaks volumes to how effective it is where even being kneecapped and held back at every turn it still persists to this day. Because it's that damn effective and energy dense.

Edit: It goes without saying the best possible future we can have is wind and nuclear powered with solar being added where it can be done efficiently, such as rooftop or land which has no other use including ecological reclamation. Wind is better in rural setting such as agriculture, where nuclear is better for denser populations like cities and industrial centers. Solar is best used as rooftop or addition to existing structures where it can generate power without inhibiting other functions. (You can't put solar on a green house, for example.)

[-] gnygnygny@lemm.ee 1 points 1 day ago
[-] Rakonat@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

Talk about a cherry picked survey. They only include EU deaths but still opted to add Chernobyl and Fukashima deaths to make solar look better.

Isn't that the point of baseload? To cover the non-highs, but provide the stable base?

[-] yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 20 hours ago

There is no stable base for renewables.

At noon in summer, renewables can produce >100% of energy consumption. The nuclear reactors would need to be shut off and turned back on a couple hours later, for the months from June to September.

But nuclear cannot reactivate quick enough as solar production is winding down in the evening, nor can it shut down quick enough in the morning.

It's much, much cheaper to massively increase battery storage in order to store excess energy produced by renewables.

In winter as of right now, there is not enough energy from renewables but this is hopefully subject to change over the next decade or so. If energy costs are high enough at night, companies will start building private battery storage to fill them during winter days. That way a large part of energy consumption can adapt to production.

In case of energy droughts, gas power plants can be kept because they can turn on and shut down within minutes, making them the best at providing a varying base load.

[-] knatschus@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 day ago

No, you want the baseload to take over when there isn't enough much cheaper renewable energy.

[-] SpacetimeMachine@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

That's what they just said? Just in different words

[-] SpacetimeMachine@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago

....that's why it would be used as a baseload. I.E. something that you never really turn off because that amount is always required.

[-] knatschus@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 1 day ago

That works against renewable resources, which should provide 100% or more during normal days. Which would mean you have to take off wind turbines from the net to keep nuclear going, that makes investing in wind less attractive.

[-] SpacetimeMachine@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

Then you reduce the output of the nuclear plants. I'm not sure where you are getting that it takes them forever to start up nuclear power. You just raise and lower control rods to increase or decrease the heat they are releasing, which lowers the steam produced, which starts/stops some turbines. It's not like the fastest system out there, but afaik it's easily doable in the span of an hour or two.

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[-] Revan343@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 day ago

Nuclear doesn't work well as baseload since while you can turn it off rather quickly you can't turn it back on fast when it's needed again

Nuclear is best used for baseload, since while you can turn it off rather quickly you can't turn it back on fast when it's needed again

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[-] BeNotAfraid@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

These are two excellent videos by Kyle Hill, explaining where we are with nuclear power. They're Invidious Links, because I block all trackers from Google, which means youtube doesn't work for me. I put the titles beside the links in-case people want to search them up themselves. The War in Ukraine, The Far-right, the intolerance and the propaganda on social media. It's because they want to push us to war. Electric cars, plus modern nuclear power means the end to the artificial energy crisis. Means the end to Petrostates like Russia, Saudi Arabia and what the US is fast turning into. The fossil fuel industry has suppressed this technology for the last 70 years. That is why they need us at war, because there are no electric tanks. Anyone who is skeptical about nuclear power, I urge you to watch these. I promise you, threatening Denmark over Greenland will make a lot more sense with this context.

https://yewtu.be/watch?v=BcoN2bdACGA Why Isn’t Thorium Changing the World?

https://yewtu.be/watch?v=4aUODXeAM-k We Solved Nuclear Waste Decades Ago

[-] starlinguk@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

The fossil fuel industry has been suppressing all alternatives to fossil fuels. They have entire research departments that work on inventing green energy solutions and then they patent them and shelve them.

[-] IncogCyberspaceUser@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Thank you for the videos. The links didn't work for me, though, so for anyone else for whom it doesn't work, here are the links:
https://youtu.be/4aUODXeAM-k
https://youtu.be/BcoN2bdACGA

[-] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 4 points 1 day ago

Yeah, no thanks. Solar panels.

[-] HikingVet@lemmy.ca 2 points 21 hours ago

Hope you like lithium mines.

[-] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 1 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

Water is the best battery. Hydro at night, solar and wind at day.

[-] Katzimir@lemmy.dbzer0.com 30 points 1 day ago

Transmutation is not new technology. It has always been too expensive to be used on an industrial level. I dont think that has changed. also by no means does it reduce the cost of dismantling and securing npp sites. Dont be fooled :/

[-] sit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 day ago

You seem to know stuff.

Why don’t we take “depleted” fuel and use it in a low power atomic power plant? The rest radioactivity can be burned off just like their main radioactivity right?

There should be a solution to burn them further down and generate electricity with it.

Or do they lose the properties to burn them?

Thanks

[-] chaosmarine92@reddthat.com 4 points 1 day ago

The reactors we use now can't run on depleted fuel. It's true that like 90% of the uranium is still present in deleted fuel but that's not the problem. The problem is the build up of fission products. The fuel itself is essentially a ceramic pellet in a metal tube. As it gets "burned" some of the atoms in the fuel split into new smaller atoms. Specifically some that are "poisons" and some that are gases. The poisons absorb neutrons much more easily than the fuel atoms, stopping the chain reaction. And the gases create pressure inside the fuel pellet. If enough gases build up this can cause the pellet to crack, releasing them into the metal tube. Now you have one less barrier to releasing radioactive material and your pellet isn't in the shape it's supposed to be anymore making it harder to know how it will react.

So we can't use them in current reactors, what about "low power" reactors? This is a problem of economics. Depleted fuel is hot, but not hot enough to quickly boil water and make steam. It's like asking why don't we power our house off all the free heat coming off a person all the time. The temperature difference and heat output is just too low to be useful in any but the smallest niche application.

So how do we deal with the depleted fuel? We reprocess it. Break down the fuel and dissolve it in acid so you can recover all the useful uranium to make new fuel. The leftover radioactive material can then be turned into glass and safely stored or you could feed it into a different type of reactor that "burns" the waste turning into something that only needs stored for 200 years instead of 20,000 years. All this has been well known and understood since the 80s but politics consistently gets in the way of actually doing anything.

[-] Libra@lemmy.ml 18 points 1 day ago

You lost me at this:

For this transmutation Transmutex proposes using a particle accelerator, probably because the promoter of the idea is a former engineer at CERN,

Yeah it's definitely not that the only reliable method we have of knocking protons off of atoms involves either a nuclear reactor or particle accelerator, dude is just bringing his old job with him cause he doesn't know any better. Right.

[-] Monument@lemmy.sdf.org 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

No, as non-experts, we must dismiss the knowledge of experts because their approach is not non-magical pseudoscience bullshit that consists mostly of evocative imagery.

I don’t need no boring particle accelerator! I want an atom smasher that’s been combined with cutting edge AI and the latest in superconducting magnet technology to tame matter down to the subatomic level so it can shoot a laser made of protons into radioactive materials to fundamentally alter its elemental properties so it no longer emits ~(as~ ~much)~ radiation!

[-] Libra@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 day ago

Indeed, this is like the techbro approach to nuclear reactors, which seems like the worst of all possible worlds: all buzzwords and bullshit hiding barely-concealed scams about shit that can absolutely kill you.

[-] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 19 points 1 day ago

Is there any source with any real information? This one is just bullshit.

[-] richtellyard@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Here's a more measured take on it, particularly the Update section - though it's written by the company creating the long-term waste repository in Switzerland so there's some obvious bias.

It appears the modeling/simulation code Transmutex developed is heavily based on the open-source Geant4 toolkit.

[-] haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 21 points 2 days ago

Nice try, nuclear lobby. We still dont want your dirty tech instead of 100% renewables.

[-] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 23 points 1 day ago

Nice try petroleum and coal lobby, maybe try harder with the "clean coal" next time!

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[-] DreamAccountant@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

Complete bullshit. Just enough of the basic tech checks out to fool an investor. They going to knock protons off thousands of pounds of nuclear waste and irradiated material? One atom at a time? Good thing there aren't many atoms in things, It'll only take a few hours at most, lol.

This'll be used by people wanting to sell expensive, dangerous nuclear reactors. That still produce nuclear waste, and sometimes melt down to create global disasters. Instead of cheap, easy wind and solar.

This is just a scam, but like most scams, there's some real, and some made-up information.

[-] SARGE@startrek.website 9 points 1 day ago

Oh look, another armchair expert going in about how nuclear is a waste of time and effort, literally using the same argument that oil companies have been using to keep nuclear away.

"oh it's so sooper dooper dangerous, you should invest in renewables" lobbies the shit out of nations to keep wind and solar projects from taking off

[-] HikingVet@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 day ago

Sources. You need to back all of that up then compare it to fossil fuels and the damage to the environment they cause then shut the fuck up.

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this post was submitted on 14 May 2025
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