this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2024
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Just because burning fossil fuels is bad doesn't magically make nuclear good, or somehow no big deal. The chance for a catastrophic accident mentioned in the meme is only one drawback (which is bad enough--get real, denial is not a strategy here). Just a few other issues:
the problem of what to do with the waste: no permanent solutions have yet been implemented and we've been using costly-to-maintain "temporary" methods for decades. Not to mention the thermal water pollution to aquatic ecosystems
the enormously out of proportion up front costs to construct the plants, and higher ongoing operation and maintenance costs due to safety risks in proportion to amount of power generated
the fact that uranium is also a limited resource that has to be mined like other ores, with all the environmental negatives of that, which then has to go through a lot of processing involving various mechanics and chemicals just to make it usable as fuel.
Anyway I'm not going to try and go into more detail on a forum post, but all this advocacy for a very problematic method of producing power as if it's a simple solution to our problems is kind of irritating. At least I hope the above shows we should stop pretending it's "clean energy". We should be focusing on developing renewable and sustainable energy systems.
I don't get this advocacy either, makes me wonder why? Constructing a nuclear power plant usually takes decades, they are not a solution for the more immediate problem climate change. They also introduce lots of new problems, and it's not sustainable either.
What takes decades is the bureaucracy, it can take as little as 3-5 years without the constant attempts to slow it down. We know the plant can then run for the next 50+ years. It needs to be part of the solution because power demand is constantly growing and we need to phase out other sources. Solar and wind aren't enough and can't get built fast enough alone.
The alternative option is to just force China, India, and every African nation to stop developing. That would reduce power needs enough that solar and wind would be sufficient.