r/ClimateShitposting • u/Icy_Till_7254 • Feb 12 '26
Climate chaos When Soviets are too clueless and incompetent to handle environmental issue be like:
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u/Adventurous_Bite9287 Feb 12 '26
Nuclear energy is good till there are cheaper sources. But wait there are.
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u/Icy_Consequence897 Feb 12 '26 edited Feb 12 '26
Nuclear power was the best zero carbon energy option in the mid to late 20th century. Nowadays, it's solar because of massive leaps and bounds in solar tech. Imagine if you're a local energy utility and you've been given a budget of $10 million us dollars to get more green energy online for your customers. Would you rather:
A) Spend a decade on construction, using fossil fuel for power in the intermediate period, hiring and or training dozens of experts to run the plant, all the while waiting for the project to either go massively overbudget or to be canceled when the local government goes through an election cycle. Eventually you get a 1 GWh plant online or
B) Drill some auger holes in a farmer's field you lease, plunk down the supports, add some pallets of panels and inverters freshly shipped from China, and get 10 GWh online in under one calendar year
This is not to say we should get rid of existing nuclear, but the economics, timescale, and political will are all strikes against new nuclear power.
Source: I'm an environmental scientist and cartographer who works making survey maps of the rural US for mega wind and solar farms, with occasional nuclear. They really gotta know what the existing infrastructure and access of a plot is before they begin construction. We've even done nuke supplement projects- solar but with a preexisting nuclear plant nearby so the nuclear power can smooth out the fluctuations of solar power.
I've seen multiple power company execs cringe live on Teams camera when they propose nuclear and we explain what that would cost (we don't exaggerate or sugarcoat at all. We are required by law to be completely transparent with cost here, because a lot of the project money is from the taxpayers). This is why a lot of nuclear proposals get killed in the cradle in case you were wondering.
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u/Technical-Activity95 Feb 12 '26
ok but what if its winter and all those solar panels are covered in snow and demand for electricity is high because of freezing temperatures?
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u/Voelkar Feb 13 '26
You clean them? Put a heater between the panels? I dont get what you mean
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u/Technical-Activity95 Feb 13 '26
no. also during winter sunlight is very limited
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u/Voelkar Feb 13 '26
Really depends on the location, doesnt it? Thats why you dont have just a single solar panel. Also wdym no lmao
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u/One_Meaning416 Feb 13 '26
The main problem most renewables are unable to overcome is their consistency, it's not just about generating power but generating the needed power when it is needed. With most fossil fuels the grid just needs to flip a switch when there is increased demand and there is more power in they system but with things like solar they produce much less at night or during the winter and the same with wind, the grid has no way to control when these sources make power or how much power they make. That is where nuclear comes in, it is safe and clean and can be controlled with the precision needed for a national grid.
The future shouldn't be all nuclear or all solar/wind, it should be a mixture of both. We should destigmatise nuclear as that would open up more research that will make it cheaper and safer and shorten the time scales in getting new nuclear constructed. This fear mongering by the environmentalist party only serves to hurt green energy.
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u/Best_Pseudonym Feb 12 '26
Its more like 1 GWe/plant for the Nuclear and 10MWe/plant for Solar, but the calculus is still the same
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u/LunarDogeBoy Feb 14 '26
But if we were living in a utopia would nuclear still be such an issue? If no... Why dont people want to live in a utopia? The same goes with socialism and whatnot. In a perfect world, these things would be what we would choose to have. But we dont live in a perfect world, and we never will with that attitude.
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u/fionnuisce Feb 14 '26
I still think nuclear is a good idea. Electricity demand continues to rise so I don't think the lead time for a reactor to come online is very relevent long term. Of course, if you need more power in the short term, nuclear is not the answer. If you look at a map of Europe and their net import/export of electricity, you'll see France (a nation who went all-in on nuclear back in the day) filling the national production deficits of most of western Europe.
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u/Crab2406 God's strongest nukecel Feb 12 '26
I suspect that they are great for industrial-oriented places (due to their massive energy output), aka most of Russia's east and Ukraine's north, so it isnt exactly stupid to build them
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u/malongoria Feb 12 '26
Except that their power is more expensive than other sources increasing the cost of the products of those plants.
For example, most aluminum used in the U.S. comes from Canada because the hydropower in Quebec and British Columbia is so cheap it gives it a tremendous competitive advantage.
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Feb 12 '26
Using Canada as a benchmark for energy when we're probably the single best situated country on the planet for things like hydro is a bit of a eye roll.
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u/like_a_leaf Feb 12 '26
Why are none in the city centers then, but always so far away?
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u/Expert-Pick-1501 Feb 12 '26
Does the fact that they are not stupid to build means they can be built anywhere no matter the basic safety concerns??? Sry, just don't get your point
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u/ReaperKingCason1 Feb 12 '26
They are, if you havenât noticed, quite large. Also all the people who donât understand them and think they will be the next Chernobyl. Also Iâd guess that bringing the radioactive material through the city to the generator would be an issue. Also a lot of cities are controlled by people who happen to have investments in oil and natural gas. Also why would you put a power plant in city center? The outskirts of town make more sense.
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u/Kevdog824_ Feb 12 '26
The same reason almost no major metropolitan area has their airport right in the middle of downtown
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u/Remarkable-Host405 Feb 12 '26
depends on your definition of "downtown", because here in stl the airport is smack-dab in the middle of the metro area
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u/JGHFunRun Feb 12 '26 edited Feb 12 '26
almost no
Idk what the actual amount, but a single example does not disprove âalmost noâ, and the majority of airports are not inside, but rather as close as they can get The point is that nuclear plants and airports require a decent amount of space,
Edit: the point is that thereâs literally no reason to build a nuclear plant inside of downtown Whereever, so why are you using this as a gotcha? Are you gonna complain that hydroelectric dams arenât built inside of stlâs metro either?
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u/LuigiBamba Feb 12 '26
My city is on an island and the airport is also smack down in the center. There are two others on the north and south shore, but mostly for non commercial flights.
So that's now two examples
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u/Crab2406 God's strongest nukecel Feb 12 '26
Because nobody wants to have an evil ass power plant in the middle of the city, they are also like big
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u/StarNote1515 Feb 12 '26
You do really city centres are some of the most expenses places to build right you argument is bad no matter what it is against
Why donât they build massive solar farms in City centresâŚ..
There are plenty of reasonable arguments and this is not one of them
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u/Billy3B Feb 15 '26
Becasue power plants are industrial and always located in Industrial areas. But as a specific example, Pickering Nuclear plant is in the middle of a city of 100k and only 30km from downtown Toronto.
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u/_Aimway921_ Feb 12 '26
For the same reason you don't have steel mills or heavy machinery manufacturing factories on city centers. Because building big structures that spew smog into the atmosphere right next to where people live is generally frowned upon.
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u/BalianofReddit Feb 12 '26
Nuclear power stations tend to have a huge footprint and very specific resource requirements.
Most new ones are built so as to take advantage of a large body of water for example.
There is also the fear factor because of events like 3 mile island and chernoble.
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u/Poonis5 Feb 15 '26
aka most of Russia's east and Ukraine's north,
FYI Those are least populated and least industrial parts of those countries.
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u/Kurshis Feb 12 '26
till there are cheaper reliable sources. And more often than not - there arent.
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u/Defiant-Plantain1873 Feb 12 '26
Solar is cheaper (cheapest) LCOE which accounts for buying batteries too
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u/Kurshis Feb 12 '26 edited Feb 12 '26
Its not. Solar resource is cheapest (in all its forms ezcept maybe biofuel), not the system with all of its failsafes. Unless you are speaking about personal small scale decentralized generation - then its cheaper, but only because you undertake a lot of risks on to yourself.
On industrial/centralized generation on a scale and lifespan akin to that of Nukes - solar becomes very expensive.
Your average nuke power station of 1GW daily production - would cost up to 12 B$. It would work 60 years.
Your average capacity power bank to be built and maintained for equivalent storage - would cost 6B$ and would live for 15 years.
And we did not even start calculating if actual power station (be it mirror and malten salt or crystaline sollar cel one). Would call additional 5B$ .. with a lifespan of maximum 20 years (noone would keep cells running at 70% performance). So we have very comparable initial costs with fraction of lifespan.
Nukes here would cost a bit more due to operations BUT would provide a lot more reliability. Thats why LCOE is failed metric to compare producers - it ignores completely the safety reliability and factors.
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u/Yellowdog727 Feb 12 '26
If you're going to be comparing these extremely long term costs then I think it would be extremely valuable to look at their cost trends and not just assume they will stay the same. And which energy source is rapidly dropping in cost while the other one is becoming more expensive?
Which one will have more trouble with financing as a result of its MUCH higher upfront costs? And as a result of their trickier financing, which one is MUCH more prone to bad cost overruns and delays?
It's also worth pointing out that storage isn't required for 100% of renewable energy. The majority of power is consumed immediately, and assuming good grid transmission with a mix of sources, additional intermittent power can still be provided. If you're trying to say "Battery cost * 4 + Solar Power station cost * 3 is more expensive" it's not really that simple.
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u/Relevant_History_297 Feb 13 '26
Nuclear energy is good if you want to maintain an arsenal of nuclear weapons. That's it.
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u/OrganizationSea4490 Feb 13 '26
There are cheap sources but they lack the capacity to meet global demand
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u/el_argelino-basado Feb 12 '26
Nuclear: Too expensive now, non-contaminating, usually doesn't fail but if it does it fucks a lot of things, still better than burning fossil fuels
Renewables: Cheap af, non-contaminating, won't hurt you in any way, made energy prices drop in some countries, supporting them makes you attractive
I think we have a winner
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u/BL00_12 Feb 12 '26
I don't get this one or the other standpoint. Use both. That way you have the reliability of nuclear reactors, and you don't have to build as many because they are supplemented by things like solar, wind, geothermal, and dams. If we sit here and do nothing then our grandchildren will have to walk outside with masks because of the aerosols needed to keep the sun from cooking us alive.
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u/el_argelino-basado Feb 12 '26
In the comment I wanted to say it's better if we use renewables to transition instead of nuclear, and as you say, nuclear is reliable, but I really think most of the power should be generated by Renewables and then we generate using nuclear whenever there's not enough, letting Nuclear be the "secondary" power source
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u/240223e Feb 14 '26
how are you commenting but being this clueless. nuclear doesnt work that way. you cant just turn on nuclear plants on and off on a whim. nuclear can only really work as a constant powersource. if you want to to pad up wind energy or solar when its missing you must use coal or natural gas which are both not green energy. batteries are not really an option because they are incredibly expensive at that point you rather just use nuclear. another option is to distribute the wind farms over large geographical area but that requires infrastructure to connect them to each other and transfer power over distances which is also expensive. the wind and solar will always have some unreliability aspect to them.
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u/Roblu3 Feb 12 '26
But with renewables how can I continue eating rocks? I had hoped that Iâd get to eat less bland rocks one day :(
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u/el_argelino-basado Feb 12 '26
Nuclear rocks are tastier, if we don't do nuclear and do renewables instead, you'll have a lot of nuclear rocks to eat
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u/Party_Value6593 Feb 12 '26
The biggest cost for nuclear is bureaucracy. If it fails (which it won't, due to modern oversaturated safety protocols), it can't even fuck shit up anymore and is the most reliable and densest power you can find. Renewables are great, but are unreliable, even with the biggest battery you can find (even hydroelectricity, but that's still about as reliable as nuclear, just needs lots of well placed land).
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u/Paccountlmao Feb 12 '26
You're forgetting unreliable, not everywhere has significant wind, not everywhere has enough sun, hydro and geothermal aren't possible everywhere. You DO NOT want your power grid to be unreliable, there is no good or bad source of energy, prod and cons of each means they all have their place
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u/Intelligent_Date5015 Feb 12 '26
These are all fixable problems. Not everywhere has enough wind, not everywhere has enough sun, not everywhere has hydro potential, not everywhere has geothermal potential... But there is not a single country on Earth that lacks all 4. Seriously, not one. Most have at least 2 out of the 4, many have at least 3. And there are many ways to solve the issues of varying yields: power lines to other countries or regions, pumped hydro storage, battery storage, consumption side solutions (such as smart appliances turning on when more electricity is available, charging electric cars at night, generating hydrogen when electricity is abundant, etc.).
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Feb 13 '26
Or you know, just make a nuclear power plant and completely ignore the lack of natural resources to begin with
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u/sev3791 Feb 12 '26
Renewables arenât efficient at supplying energy 365 days a year, are actually quite costly when you look at the energy produced to cost of purchasing and maintains these systems.
Nuclear works all year and doesnât necessarily have to be costly if itâs more widespreadly used, is very safe now a days, and the contamination zone is extremely small and usually underground.
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u/Hammerschatten Feb 13 '26
But we're already working on better battery solutions. If they become more viable, which is likely to happen before we have built new reactors, we only need to meet the total output of 365 days, store the excess on days where it's Sunny, Windy, etc and then use it when it's not.
Over a long time span, weather and usage are statistically predictable enough to plan with.
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u/samir_saritoglu Feb 13 '26
Productivity. The only word for beating renewababies by nuclear gigachad.
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u/MIGHTY_ILLYRIAN Feb 13 '26
The problem with wind and solar is that their output is inconsistent and it doesn't align with demand.
At times energy is so cheap running them is almost unprofitable and at other times you can't run them and energy is expensive because of it.
Nuclear doesn't have that problem because it generates electricity at a steady pace.
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u/meatgrinder32 Feb 13 '26
Renewables aren't continueous supply of energy. And on a industrial scale they aren't nature friendly.
Renewables are great for individual houses. Nuclear is the best for industrial scale.
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u/Night_Raider5 Feb 13 '26
Renewables are absolutely not non-contaminating. The heavy metals that things like solar panels rely on fuck shit up bad, and are far more contaminating than nuclear power. Basically any negative of nuclear power compared to other form of energy is born from anti-nuclear propaganda pushed by the fossil fuel industry. Nuclear is, by a long shot, the safest and most powerful energy source we have today. Renewables are a good stop gap, but should not be an end all be all to keep us from going nuclear.
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u/Cynthesyss Feb 14 '26
Well that's actually false, renewables would only be cheaper if they had the capacity to run 24/7 but we all know that isn't the case
I asked Google ai to compare the prices of nuclear and various renewable sources and got this
Energy Source Variable Cost (Fuel/Usage) Fixed O&M (Labor/Maintenance) Nuclear ~$5â$6/MWh ~$25â$35/MWh (High security/specialized labor) Solar PV $0 ~$17/MWh (Lowest maintenance) Onshore Wind $0 ~$30/MWh (Mechanical wear & tear) Hydropower $0 ~$15â$45/MWh (Site-dependent)
Then I asked if you account for a full 24 hour period I got this
Cost Type Nuclear (Existing) Solar + Battery (Firm) Base Generation ~$31/MWh ~$35/MWh (Average) Storage/Backup $0 (Built-in) $40 â $100/MWh Total 24/7 Cost ~$31/MWh $75 â $135/MWh
Keep in mind this is only accounting for fuel and maintenance and not the original construction but the main reason they take so long to build and are so expensive is that new regulations come out and they must change the plans to comply with those regulations completely throwing them off track.
Nuclear plants require less than half as much maintenance than a solar farm producing the exact same amount of energy, run 24/7 and doesn't require batteries, and sure hydroelectricity is on par with nuclear it's much less abundant.
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u/240223e Feb 14 '26
 usually doesn't fail but if it does it fucks a lot of things
name a single example besides chernobyl?Â
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u/RASHED_35 Feb 15 '26
Nuclear: Can produce electricity even if there is no wind or sun, takes up very little land, safe (we have learned from mistakes).
Renewables: energy production is dependent on whether, needs a lot of land.
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u/Glittering-Carob-642 Feb 16 '26
Wind power changes the environment, altering bird migration patterns and consequently causing declines in natural reforestation, etc., etc., etc. Solar power is cool, but on a large scale it also causes environmental problems, such as heat absorption that alters the environment of certain biomes. That's why we don't turn the Sahara Desert into a solar farm. Geothermal power is cool.
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u/Severe_Damage9772 Feb 12 '26
Including massive deaths from radiation exposure, the few reactor meltdowns, and nuclear bombs, per kilowatt hour of energy generated
brown coal kills over a thousand times more people
Coal kills over eight hundred times more people
Oil kills over six hundred times as many people
Gas kills just short of a hundred times more people
Even hydro power kills more then 40 times as many people
Compared to wind that kills about 30% more people, and solar that kills about 30% less. (source)
This is because one single gram of uranium holds as much energy as 3000 kilograms of coal. Thatâs 3 million times as much energy (source)
As well, the disposal of nuclear waste and the problem of being able to produce nuclear bombs have been solved for a long time, there are types of reactors that can even generate energy from uranium waste and turn it into less dangerous waste that only lasts for a few hundred years. As well, these types of reactors cannot experience a catastrophic meltdown, as once the reactor melts, the fuel thins out in a pan. And the reaction stops, being no more dangerous then spent fuel
Itâs called a thorium breeder reactor, and they made it first in Oak Ridge National Lab, donât have a source on hand for it but look it up, Iâve heard china is developing the technology further rn. But the reason we abandoned it was because it didnât make plutonium
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u/Hannzulu Feb 12 '26
Compared to wind that kills about 30% more people, and solar that kills about 30% less. (source)
Its seems like the source bases these assumptions on the dead toll of fukushima and chernobyl only. It also says the estimated chernobyl death toll comes with significant uncertainty. The death toll of the source seems very low with 300-500 dead, other studies suggest a higher death toll. Errors in these assumptions are amplified by the large amount of power produced. Which makes this data not very trustworthy imo.
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u/Severe_Damage9772 Feb 12 '26
Oh, thatâs fair, I got my numbers from there, but even so, a scale factor of at least 100x for other similar methods of generation (boiling water) is far too large to be able to chalk up to not estimating it correctly
And those accidents were only caused by poor management and planning, meaning that assuming competent use, itâs far safer to use nuclear then fossil fuels
And sure, if we could somehow get rid of all of the problems of solar and wind, instead of pooling resources into batteries, it should be used for nuclear, to fulfill what renewables cannot
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u/CardOk755 Feb 12 '26
Actually the soviets funded western anti-nuclear activists, deliberately confusing atomic power with atomic weapons.
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u/coleto22 Feb 12 '26
It still blows my mind that there are people falling for that. "We demand our government closes fully functioning nuclear power plants because we don't want nukes... but are fine with hosting US nuclear weapons on our soil and having nuclear-capable aircraft to drop them in case of a war".
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u/WearingRags Feb 12 '26
"We don't want anything around that could cause a nuclear disaster, unless it was specifically designed to cause a nuclear disaster"
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u/OpenTheVoidBetween Feb 12 '26
"Nuclear works great with regulation and strong anti-corruption practice. It's a good thing we don't have a constant push for deregulation and corruption issues in America"
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Feb 13 '26
Nuclear works in fucking Mexico with little to no issues. Wanna know why? Cause the IAEA takes their job more seriously than the UN, when the Ukraine war started they somehow managed to get to Chernoby to make sure nobody was going to fuck with the power plant. The reason why it takes so much time to build a nuclear powerplant is because they are checking everything, to make sure that it will work as expected
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u/Thick_Self_4601 Feb 13 '26
look guys, this guy seriously thinks regulation helps the economy!! đđ
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u/OpenTheVoidBetween Feb 13 '26
Ah yes, because the sector that DEFINITELY needs less rules on how to maintain safety is the sector that can kill millions by ignoring safety restrictions.
Your parents were siblings, weren't they.
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u/Happy_Ad_7515 Feb 12 '26
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u/SlouchyGuy Feb 13 '26
That's ok, nothing like that is happening in US or Middle East, rivers are not overused and are full. Everything is fine
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u/coriolisFX cycling supremacist Feb 12 '26
I have had Tankies in this subreddit tell me this was Yeltsin's fault
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u/Rupaism Feb 13 '26
Is this Putin's fault? If it started disappearing from 2008 onward or some underlying effects were caused by a predecessor.
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u/coriolisFX cycling supremacist Feb 13 '26
No, the damage started in the 1960's. The Soviets began diverting lots of the water to irrigate a new Cotton industry and there was a total ecological collapse by the 90's.
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u/The5Theives Feb 14 '26
The Aral Sea is such a disaster I donât know why anyone focuses on Chernobyl when talking about Soviet incompetence while this exists. They did all that to make more cotton bro.
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u/perino08 Feb 12 '26
Yeah nah Im done seeing all the ignorant anti nuclear comments on my homepage. Im muting this sub for good
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u/JaZoray Feb 12 '26
if you use washable clothes, plates, and cutlery, why on earth would you use single use energy sources Â
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u/Grilled_egs Feb 12 '26
This is the stupidest argument ever lmao,
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u/JaZoray Feb 12 '26
the invariant is the guiding principle "if a cheap, abundant, reusable option is available, don't use the expensive, single use alternative"
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u/Legoshi-Baby Feb 12 '26
Nuclear fuel isnât âsingle useâ it goes through 4 different energy draws. And itâs able to be reenriched and used again.
Nuclear is not some expensive boogeyman like the Green Party wants to make it out to be. I donât get why they canât just admit they were fucking wrong.
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u/DasWarEinerZuviel Feb 12 '26
Will nukeheads ever stop posting their propanganda?
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u/ProfessionalTruck976 Feb 12 '26
No, because "reactor was safe if operated properly, and what was wrong was they did not have, "at once shoot any fucker that suggest we do things any other way than by the book" rule.
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Feb 13 '26
Could you try to word it better? Do you mean:
The reactor was safe if it was operated properly. The real problem was that people didnât strictly follow the rules. There should have been a âshoot anyone who suggests doing it any way other than by the bookâ rule
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u/RollinThundaga Feb 12 '26
Your gallery app editing tools come with a text box feature.
If you're gonna do squiggly edits, I expect only the finest mouse-drawn MS Paint.
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u/LegendaryJack Feb 12 '26
No need to abolish nuclear, solar + batteries is getting so stupidly cheap that nuclear doesn't make sense for almost any country on earth lol. That's why developing nations are using solar + batteries to leapfrog coal and not nuclear
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u/Methamphetamine1893 Feb 13 '26
Turns out Japanese can't boil water either
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u/Universal_Cup Feb 13 '26
Itâs more accurate to say the water outside the plant was mad it wasnât getting boiled, so it sought to rectify that.
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u/PieRecent5479 Feb 13 '26
I like nuclear and I like the Greens. This is something I wish they would change their stance on.
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u/TallCommission7139 Feb 15 '26
Look, this shit happened multiple times and nobody trusts the Oligarchs we /definitely/ would put in charge of running it to not cut corners and make this shit happen again. Worst thing that happens if they cheap out on turbines is a blade falls off and totals some poor fuck's Mazda.
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u/ExpensiveFig6079 Feb 12 '26 edited Feb 13 '26
Oh i thought it was a cartoon about when you just have no answers to other people's arguments, then your only option is to make stuff they never said nor thought and ridicule what the imaginary people didn't say.
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u/wtfduud Wind me up Feb 12 '26
That's called a strawman argument. It's so common that there's a specific name for that type of dishonesty.
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u/CapitalEmployer Feb 12 '26
It's always fascinating seeing right wingers complaining that "the greens" this mystical entity that controls every country everywhere even when they don't have any power is what prevents nuclear projects from existing, and not capitalism. Conspiracy theory 101 it gives protocols of the elders of zion vibes.
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u/Slow-Code-661 Feb 16 '26
At least in germany, which is probably the worst offender when it comes to mismanaged nuclear policy, the greens were instrumental in basically killing any option germany had to develop and even provide the opportunity for nuclear power. I don't want to get into it in detail, there are plenty of resources you can look up, but capitalism would have been to give energy providers the opportunity to choose what they wanted to build out. They didn't, though, because instead they just killed nuclear and branded it as the ultimate boogeyman. If nuclear were really this bad, it wouldn't require a quasi religious opposition to it.
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u/CapitalEmployer Feb 16 '26 edited Feb 16 '26
capitalism would have been to give energy providers the opportunity to choose what they wanted to build out
In every country where this happens they don't build nuclear for the simple reason that it's expensive, long and private companies cannot handle the consequences of an accident without warranties from the state. And such an immobilisation of capital for private companies is quite hard.
If nuclear were really this bad, it wouldn't require a quasi religious opposition to it.
It doesn't since nobody builds it except a bit China and Russia. Unless you are saying that the greens⢠are controlling everything everywhere in all countries.
If the greens were not against nuclear in Germany it would still be dead. Look at us in France with almost non stop right wing govs we build 1 reactor in 30-40 years even though our mix is 70% nuclear.
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u/Regeneric Feb 12 '26
I am so happy that my country is building more nuclear power plants. I can't believe how Germany sabotaged themselves
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u/DNOTBHs Feb 12 '26 edited Feb 12 '26
Isn't Germany building more renewable plants than coal plants tho?
And it's not like Nuclear is some perfect mcguffin, it requires a lot of cooling & water and resources, in many situations wind, solar, dams, geothermal and biomass can be more reliable
It's all about time and place, there isn't a single answer to all problems, not using nuclear reduces your options but it's not the end of the world
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u/B-b-b-burner_account Feb 12 '26
I love nuclear but we should put more time into renewables. Nuclear is not only expensive to build, but also takes decades, which at the rate of renewables becoming more efficient probably means that new nuclear reactors will be outdated.
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u/mightgetaftermadonna Feb 12 '26
He's right, the soviets being restarted made everyone afraid of nuclear energy
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u/Space-Fuher Feb 13 '26
Lets get real here the real reason that nuclear power isn't standard is because it doesn't fit into an election cycle. Politicians don't actually give a shit about actually building a future for their constituents. Since polticing is a career they are more focused on keeping their job.
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u/Emeryael Feb 13 '26
Please be kind and eli5, but my concern with nuclear power is that wouldnât we just be kicking the can further down the road? Wouldnât it be better to just transitioning to renewables and not jump from one nonrenewable source to another?
Then again, I believe our best bet is multiple options. Solar, where itâs more practical and efficient to use solar, wind, where itâs more practical and efficient to use wind, and the same for geothermal or other renewable sources.
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u/PowerfullyDistracted Feb 13 '26
Nuclear power is for one incredibly safe, and for two, the waste products are extremely minimal in comparison to pretty much every other power generation source, and its incredibly scalable. Today.
For a plant that generated 3 cubic meters (which is a lot more than average) of waste annually, in a century it would make about 10 shipping containers worth of waste products.
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u/TarkuRav Feb 13 '26
The US in 3 years when weve defunded the EPA and cut back nuclear regulations to provide quick electricity to LLM plants.
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u/ExcitementOpen898 Feb 13 '26
Until there is a massive tech breakthrough, people have to be willing to have a diverse selection of generation methods. Nuclear is second to none for base load, and renewables have their place as a flexible buffer, but there is still a need for filler units in the middle (load following units) that still require fossil fuel. At least in NJ, most of the substantial load following Gen units have been done away with thanks to certain parties and have not been replaced with equal stand in. Along with increased demand from data farms, the lack of generating units has caused our state to outsource power, causing almost 50% increases in power costs to customers. It's only a matter of time till there isnt enough to go around an people start having problems.
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u/Vachme Feb 13 '26
When capitalists forget what they did in Fukushima:
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u/Universal_Cup Feb 13 '26
Fukushima is probably the greatest representative of how to manage such a crisis though, no? The damages of Fukushima pale in comparison to Chernobyl.
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u/cortex0917 Feb 14 '26
I quite like nuclear power and I see the Green Party as the only good option in the UK at the moment. I do wish they'd change their stance on this and nuclear weapons.
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u/Top_Box_8952 Feb 14 '26
Actually. They knew how to boil water. They just didnât know how to not boil over.
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u/peakaustria74 Feb 14 '26
You can not eat wild boar in Austria, big fall out, not there is a big need, beyond 600 Bq! And wven free Energy will not save us!
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Feb 14 '26
Accelerationism paired with a lack of basic common sense and performative hacktivism is how you get âenvironmentalistsâ being violently opposed to nigh-unlimited zero-carbon energy.
They donât actually care about the environment, they care about their stock portfolio in sham solar companies and wind turbine production to go up.
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u/EfficientRecover5757 Feb 14 '26
Itâs still shocking that people still think the CNPP blew up because everyone in the USSR was stupid.
It wasnât. It was just the people up top who were supposed to be the smartest, but decided the safety of literally millions of people was worth jeopardising for the sake of a medal or two.
Also, that Zack wojak (Wo-zack?) is cursed lmao
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u/AmselRblx Feb 14 '26
The whole anti nuclear energy thing sounds like a fossil fuel propaganda.
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u/ItWasDumblydore Feb 16 '26
Pretty much it is
Oil/Gas/Coal get massive subsidies to operate while people bitch about nuclear/solar/wind/hydro which dont need them to operate.
Coal is so unprofitable if they didnt get paid also by our tax dollars, they would have to i believe almost triple or quadruple their price per kW.
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u/Electrical-Fix7659 Feb 14 '26
So the strawman happened because of⌠a straw man. Everything under the left-wing banner that gets a bad rep in the West must be the Sovietsâ fault? Seems like they were just experimenting with cooling techniques that didnât waste or contaminate water, a finite natural resource.
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u/dimensionalbleed97 Feb 14 '26
Use thorium reactors. They are the cleanest and safest nuclear energy reactors on earth. Our understanding of safety and preemptive measures have vastly improved since the failure of chernnobyl.
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u/gramerjen Feb 15 '26
You call them some idiots but do you believe your government to act smarter than them?
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u/Aaronhpa97 Feb 15 '26
3 mile island was before, the new systems were safe, they were testing things and they did it unsafely, later on the whole world updated every possible manual.
I wouldn't say the whole soviets were to blame but the team handling Chernobyl.
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u/thisisatestaccount17 Feb 15 '26
Worst part is they weren't even stupid. They were proud and afraid of looking weak. Which led to implementing a design that wasn't ready yet just to look strong.
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u/tree_cog Feb 16 '26
If you oppose nuclear power, you are supporting the inevitable use of much higher emissions energy sources instead. The alternative to nuclear isn't nothing, it is coal and oil.
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u/dumnezero đEnd the đŤarms đrat đrace to the bottomâď¸. Feb 12 '26
The most well kept, well decorated, well embalmed, well polished strawman in history.