this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2026
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[–] Captain_Baka@feddit.org 38 points 6 days ago (45 children)

Solar power + battery? Or hydropower? That way there won't be, well, nuclear waste at the end? You know, the kind of waste that's highly radioactive? The waste that doesn't have a plan to be safely stored away for tens of thousands of years?

[–] marcos@lemmy.world 15 points 6 days ago (18 children)

It's not even the waste, that we still need to learn how to recycle. Or the apparent incapacity of any operator to reliably follow the theoretical safety guidelines...

If we put all our effort into a nuclear boom today, the plants will only arrive a decade or two after the planet has been cooked, it won't be enough to replace anything, and we will have to learn entire new ways to mine the fuel in a few decades before the stuff we can get easily is gone.

Meanwhile we are about half-way done with renewables, and the nuclear fans keep denying that...

[–] cynar@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago

I'm a fan of both, but fully accept that fission is now too late to be useful. We also have fusion right on the tipping point of viability. That could likely fill the use cases of fusion quite well, with far less issues.

FYI, nuclear produces 3 sorts of nuclear waste. High activity is nasty, but short lived. Put it in a pool for a few years and it decays away. Low grade is the stuff like lab waste and contaminated pipes. You don't really want it going in normal landfill, but it's not going to kill anyone with radiation (heavy metal toxicity is another matter). It's only the last type, medium activity that is problematic. It lasts a long time, while still putting out enough radiation to cause potential problems. Unfortunately, older "power" plants, were actually bomb factories. They were intended to make plutonium, and so produce a lot more of the medium activity waste than they could.

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[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I can see why people have been scared by the waste, but it's really not a concern. There are long term storage solutions, but they just haven't been implemented in many places. Kyle Hill actually just did a video on one the other day.

The waste just isn't a big enough concern to have put the resources into long term storage yet. The radiation level around the casks is so low that you can be around them and hug them without concern. Flying in a plane is more concerning. This argument is mostly fear mongering so we don't phase out dirty energy. We could have thousands of reactors running, but they've made us scared of the solution so we don't replace them.

[–] Aufgehtsabgehts@feddit.org 1 points 5 days ago (7 children)

Except there aren't any long term storage solutions for highly radioactive waste.

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[–] jagermo@feddit.org 6 points 6 days ago

Forget it, i tried that argument a bunch of times. Also, you are depended on other countries, big plants are an easy target for a drone with some explosives, cost of nuclear is rising while all others are down, etc. People want to believe in a magic, water heating rock

[–] Hazel@piefed.blahaj.zone 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Doesn't Sweden or someplace have a giant abandoned salt mine to store a thousand years of nuclear waste somewhere?

Not that I'm in favor of building nuclear anymore, we should've done that in the sixties.

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 2 points 6 days ago

Finland., although many places have looked at old mines for this purpose. It's a fairly obvious solution.

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