• danielbln@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    So uh, turns out the energy companies are not exactly the most moral and rule abiding entities, and they love to pay off politicians and cut corners. How does one prevent that, as in the case of fission it has rather dire consequences?

    • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Since you can apply that logic to everything, how can you ever build anything? Because all consequences are dire on a myopic scale, that is, if your partner dies because a single electrician cheaped out with the wiring in your building and got someone to sign off, “It’s not as bad as a nuclear disaster” isn’t exactly going to console them much.

      At some point, you need to accept that making something illegal and trying to prosecute people has to be enough. For most situations. It’s not perfect. Sure. But nothing ever is. And no solution to energy is ever going to be perfect, either.

      • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        An electrician installing faulty wiring doesn’t render your home uninhabitable for a few thousand years.

        So there’s one difference.

        • SocialEngineer56@notdigg.com
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          1 year ago

          That’s why there are lots of regulations for things impacting life safety. With a nuclear power plant, you mitigate the disaster potential by having so many more people involved in the design and inspection processes.

          The risk of an electrician installing faulty wiring in your home could be mitigated by having a third party inspector review the work. Now do that 1000x over and your risk of “politicians are paid off” is negligible.

          • abraxas@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            That’s why there are lots of regulations for things impacting life safety

            Regulations that a lot of pro-nuclear people try to get relaxed because they “artificially inflate the price to more than solar so that we’ll use solar”. I’m not saying all pro-nuclear folks are tin-foilers, but the only argument that puts nuclear cheaper than solar+battery anymore is an argument that uses deregulated facilities.

            If solar+wind+battery is cheaper per MWH, faster to build, with less front-loaded costs, then it’s a no-brainer. It only stops being a no-brainer when you stop regulating the nuclear plant. Therein lies the paradox of the argument.

          • arglebargle@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            You are saying, regulations will fix this? Politicians create the regulations, the fines, and enforcement.

            Political parties are running on platforms of deregulation right now.

            • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              Regulations are actually generally created by regulatory bodies, which are usually non-political. For instance, the underwriter laboratory is the major appliance, building and electrical approval body in the United States.

              In most countries, building codes and safety codes are created by industry specialists, people who have been in the industry as professionals for many decades and have practiced and been licensed in the field that they are riding the regulations for.

              There’s a big difference between politicians who are passing these laws, and those writing them who are the regulatory bodies. Generally, as a politicians will simply adopt the codes as recommended by the professional licensing and certification bodies.

              I suppose it will be the end of modern civilization if politicians decide to politicize electrical or building codes. Then we’ll be fucked for sure. We’ve seen that happen before with the Indiana pi bill.

              https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill

              “The Indiana Pi Bill is the popular name for bill #246 of the 1897 sitting of the Indiana General Assembly, one of the most notorious attempts to establish mathematical truth by legislative fiat.”

              • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                It’s plenty safe now, but my electricity rates have doubled because the plant was so over budget and they need to make their money back.

      • sederx@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        a wind mill going down and a nuclear plant blowing up have very different ramifications

        • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Exactly, just like a windmill running and a nuclear power plant running have very different effects on the power grid. Hence why comparing them directly is often such a nonsense act.

      • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        Because the energy industry is historically the one lobbying governments for less regulation. Also, has there ever been a nuclear project in the history of mankind that didnt result in depleted Uranium leeching into local watertables and/or radioactive fallout? Your comment is basically tacit acceptance that people are going to act unethically, which, in regards to nuclear power, is bound to have human consequences.

    • Dojan@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I mean it’s not the companies operating the facilities we put our trust in, but the outside regulators whose job it is to ensure these facilities are safe and meet a certain standard. As well as the engineers and scientists that design these systems.

      Nuclear power isn’t 100% safe or risk-free, but it’s hella effective and leaps and bounds better than fossil fuels. We can embrace nuclear, renewables and fossil free methods, or just continue burning the world.

      • The_v@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The worst nuclear disaster has led to 1,000sq miles of land being unsafe for human inhabitants.

        Using fossil fuels for power is destroying of the entire planet.

        It’s really not that complicated.

        • abraxas@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Except that nuclear isn’t the only, or even the cheapest, alternative to fossil fuels.

        • pedroapero@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Except that powering the world with nuclear would require thousands of reactors and so much more disasters. This doesn’t even factor the space abandonned to store «normal» toxic materials.

          • uis@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            This doesn’t even factor the space abandonned to store «normal» toxic materials.

            You mean under ground from where it was dug out?

        • umad_cause_ibad@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Both sound terrible.

          I don’t really want to pick the lessor of two evils when it comes to the energy.

          • Astrealix@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            By not picking, you are picking fossil fuels. Because we can’t fully replace everything with solar/wind yet, and fossil fuels are already being burned as we speak.

            • umad_cause_ibad@lemm.ee
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              No, give me an option that doesn’t make a part of the world uninhabitable or increases climate change.

              That just a stupid comparison and is there any reason why we can’t also do wind solar thermal hydro also? It’s fossil fuels or nuclear and that’s it?

            • umad_cause_ibad@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              No, give me an option that doesn’t make a part of the world uninhabitable or increases climate change.

              That just a stupid comparison and is there any reason why we can’t also do wind solar thermal hydro also? It’s fossil fuels or nuclear and that’s it huh?

              • Astrealix@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                I never said we can’t do also wind, solar, thermal, and hydro; in fact we have to do all of them. But, hydro isn’t possible in most places (and also makes “a part of the world uninhabitable” too — look at how much the Three Gorges Dam displaced, for example), nor is geothermal. And wind and solar are inconsistent — great as part of it, but they can’t be the entirety of the grid, unless you want the entire country to go dark on a cloudy day, cuz we simply can’t make batteries store that much.

            • umad_cause_ibad@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              The option proposed is that making a small area of the planet inhabitable or worsening climate change. Sorry but that’s a shitty comparison.

              • SocialEngineer56@notdigg.com
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                1 year ago

                No. The original comment said the “worst disaster made a very small she’s of the planet uninhabitable”. Keep in mind this disaster was the result of Soviet incompetence and completely avoidable with standards implemented in the US.

                They’re saying our “worst case scenario” using nuclear power is better than worst case scenario continuing to use fossil fuels.

                Likelihood of worse case scenario using nuclear power is also extremely low. Whereas worst case scenario (billions of people dying) for continuing to use fossil fuels is EXTREMELY HIGH.

              • Norah - She/They@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                1 year ago

                Bet you’d feel* differently if you were a resident of one of the island nations that’s going to drown in the next decade or two. That part of the world’s definitely going to be uninhabitable if we continue to do nothing.

                • umad_cause_ibad@lemm.ee
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                  So installing a nuclear reactor in my province where we have ample hydro electric power options would save that island?

                  It’s like you are yell at everyone saying nuclear power or die. There are lots of options to clean reliable energy. In some cases nuclear will be the best option but not always.

                  • Norah - She/They@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                    1 year ago

                    You called me suspicious so here I am fulfilling that expectation. Here’s a fucking great video on why dams, and therefore hydro power, are dangerous and ecologically damaging. The only point I was trying to make is that your argument against nuclear, that it might cause an area of land to become uninhabitable, is flawed. Dams always make an area of land uninhabitable.

                    https://youtu.be/AL57dSIXqBM

                  • Norah - She/They@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                    I’m not that pro-nuclear. You just made a shitty comparison ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

                    Edit: Also if you think hydro is the solution, again, more uninhabitable land. Dams are their own ecological disaster.

          • uis@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Hello, my German friend. I hope your gas reserves are full and coal dust is filling your lungs. /joke

      • umad_cause_ibad@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Don’t push nuclear power like it’s the only option though.

        Where I live we entirely provide energy from hydro power plants and nuclear energy is banned. We use no fossil fuels. We have a 35 year plan for future growth and it doesn’t include any fossil fuels. Nuclear power is just one of the options and it has many hurdles to implement, maintain and decommission.

        • Astrealix@lemmy.world
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          Honestly, if you can, hydro is brilliant. Not many places can though — both because of geography and politics. Nuclear is better than a lot of the alternatives and shouldn’t be discounted.

            • Astrealix@lemmy.world
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              Which each have their drawbacks. Just as an example, though not representative of the majority, what do you do about months of no sun in the Arctic Circle for solar power? There is no single solution to this problem. Nuclear is better than fossil fuels by far, and we should not just throw it away out of fear.

            • Astrealix@lemmy.world
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              I know it’s a damn lot easier than carbon recapture, if we’re talking waste products. It’s not ideal, but there is no such thing as perfect, and we shouldn’t let that be the enemy of good. Nuclear fission power is part of a large group of methods to help us switch off fossil fuels.

              • EMPig@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                “Easier”? Are you aware of the fact that radioactive waste tombs are meant to stand for millions of years? It requres a lot of territory, construction and servance charges, and lots of prays for nothing destructive happens with it in its “infinite” lifetime.

                • Astrealix@lemmy.world
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                  Have you tried capturing gas? As difficult as radioactive waste tombs are, they’re easier than containing a specific type of air lol.

                  • EMPig@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    Read about breathing if you want to know how to capture gas. Also, about photosynthesis.

            • radiosimian@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              We can bury it in the ground and it will literally turn into lead. How are you doing with carbon emissions? Got a fix?

              • EMPig@lemmy.world
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                11 months ago

                I think it’s photosynthesis. ‘Bury in the ground’ is an extreme simplification btw. Also, I am finished with this topic scince long anough. It feels politically biased. If you’d like to reply, I’d hear it gladly. But I m not going to be involved into a discussion.

        • Touching_Grass@lemmy.world
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          It would be cool to see huge investments into battery storage. If we could create a battery that doesn’t just leak energy from storing, we could generate power in one location and ship it out where it’s needed. There could be remote energy production plants using geothermal or hydroelectric power that ship out these charged batteries to locations all over. It would let us better utilize resources instead of having to have cities anchored around these sources.

          Or we could generate a ton of power all at once, store it and use it as needed rather having to have on demand energy production

          Hell with better batteries even fossil fuels begin to be climate friendly since you could store the massive energy created and know you’re using close to 100% of it.

          • Buelldozer@lemmy.today
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            It would be cool to see huge investments into battery storage.

            Globally humanity already invests over 10 Billion dollars per year in advancing battery technology.

            If we could create a battery that doesn’t just leak energy from storing…

            In order to build what you are talking about will almost certainly require real room temperature super conductors. We can get close, maybe, with the next generation of Aluminum-Air or Iron-Air batteries but this is big pimping. It’s incredibly complicated and difficult.

            It’s like Fusion Power. We can see a future where we have it figured out and working but it’s still some years, if not decades, away.

          • njordomir@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Kind of an unconventional battery, but I’ve heard of solar and wind being used to pump water uphill into reservoirs and then released through a hydro plant when the sun/wind aren’t shining/blowing. I’d be curious to know the amount of production lost from storing it this way.

            • Touching_Grass@lemmy.world
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              I heard the loss comes from evaporation. Another cool idea I heard was using a mining cart. So its not practical but I think the idea is cook because I’m pretty science illiterate but it got me thinking about what a battery actually is. So you drag a mine cart up a hill with energy produced using renewable energy and then let it go down the hill and collect the stored energy with its motion. Technically there isn’t anything like evaporation so you could store the mine cart up the hill with no energy loss.

              • njordomir@lemmy.world
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                Interesting. Didn’t consider the evaporation. I imagine friction could effect the minecarts, but no idea to what degree. Some loss is gonna happen so matter what. If I’m understanding correctly, even nuclear, built away from population centers, will lose some power due to transmission distances.

            • Touching_Grass@lemmy.world
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              Power lines would still mean we need energy on demand though wouldn’t it. And if we can transport energy from an area like a huge solar array in the Sahara to Kazakhstan or China it would be better. I was just raising it as an off thought like maybe theres more ways to think about solving this problem than just building plants. What level of storage ability could we have that would let us build a large solar array in the Sahara to power Africa and Europe vs just building more plants. I think our end goal will be energy storage and like you brought up transport/transmission. I think that because I think we have energy production pretty well solved

        • PeleSpirit@lemmy.world
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          Why do you think they’re pushing it for a reason? Renewables are very much a great option without the nuclear power. I hate that they’re here, but the nuclear activists are definitely here. 3 words, Fukushima, Fukushima, Fukushima.

          • Astrealix@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            How many 9.1 magnitude earthquakes do you think there are? And the reports following the disaster showed that there were definitely ways to prevent it from happening, like, for example, not building it so close to the sea.

              • Astrealix@lemmy.world
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                I mean, if we want to go down that path, there’s no reason to think that governments won’t just stick to fossil fuels and fuck us all.

                Even so, it took a literal once-in-a-century earthquake in the right place to send a tsunami to the perfectly misplaced reactor to actually make just one person die. One. And two died from the aforementioned massive tsunami caused by an earthquake that occurs around once a century.

                • PeleSpirit@lemmy.world
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                  I watched that in real time, more than one person died and it ruined a whole region that they’re just now sort of recovering from. It was devastating to them. You’re not even making any sense.

                  • Astrealix@lemmy.world
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                    The deaths came from the, again, once-in-a-century earthquake. Evacuations, yes. Deaths, no.

                    “Nobody died as a direct result of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. However, in 2018 one worker in charge of measuring radiation at the plant died of lung cancer caused by radiation exposure.” — Encyclopedia Britannica. (https://www.britannica.com/event/Fukushima-accident)

          • Harrison [He/Him]@ttrpg.network
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            The nuclear power plant decades older than Chernobyl that got hit by an earthquake and a tsunami and resulted in a only single death and some expensive clean up?

          • radiosimian@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            You know there’s a crapload more reactors than Fukukishima, right? Like over 70% of France’s energy demands are met with nuclear power.

            The issue here is that you are parroting the devisive argument that investors in oil have been putting out for decades. You are also ignoring the harm that outputting millions of tonnes of carbon-based effluent has on the world’s population as a whole.

            Gram for gram nuclear is safer and your horror stories should be discounted. Retort:

            2023 Marco Pol…Sweden, Karlsh…22 October 2023Lennard en z’n …United Kingdo…26 March 20232023 Princess …Philippines, Pol…28 February 20232022 Keystone …United States, …7 December 2022

            Cool, keep on with your ‘nuclear bad’ narrative. It does objectively less harm than carbon-based energy.

            • Buelldozer@lemmy.today
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              The push for nuclear power across social media is 100% an industry sanctioned psyop.

              Oh please, I’ve been advocating for nuclear power since before most people even owned a dial up modem. You younger ones see everything through a haze of recency bias.

            • PeleSpirit@lemmy.world
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              It’s so stupid too, Fukushima just released their contaminated water from over 10 years ago into the ocean last week. Do they not read the news? At least wait until disaster news from actual nuclear power plant disasters aren’t fresh in everyone’s minds.

      • Touching_Grass@lemmy.world
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        The problem is its potential for harm. And I don’t mean meltdown. Storage is the problem that doesn’t seem to have strong solutions right now. And the potential for them to make a mistake and store the waste improperly is pretty catastrophic.

        • Dojan@lemmy.world
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          “Nuclear waste” sounds super scary, but most of it are things like tools and clothing, that have comparatively tiny amount of radioactivity. Sure it still needs to be stored properly, very little high level waste is actually generated.

          You know what else is catastrophic? Fossil fuels and the impact they have on the climate. I’m not arguing that we should put all our eggs in one basket, but getting started and doing something to move away from the BS that is coal, gas, and oil is really something we should’ve prioritised fifty years ago. Instead they have us arguing whether we should go with hydroelectric, or put up with “ugly windmills” or “solar farms” or “dangerous nuclear plants.”

          It’s all bullshit. Our world is literally on fire and no one seems to actually give a fuck. We have fantastic tools that could’ve halted the progress had we used them in time, but fifty years later we’re still arguing about this.

          At this point I honestly hope we do burn. This is a filter mankind does not deserve to pass. We’re too evil to survive.

          • PeleSpirit@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            We do have fantastic options, water, wind, and sun renewables. Let’s focus on them.

          • Touching_Grass@lemmy.world
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            Yea both are horrible. But we can get off fossil fuels and walk away. We can’t with nuclear. It’ll always be with us and doesn’t solve that we need fossil fuel for other things.

            Jets and ships are still going to need fossil fuels.

            Which is why I think the best thing we could be doing right now is focusing on improving how energy is store. With the right advancement we could solve a lot of these problems with the right battery.

            • OriginalUsername@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Mercury will always be with us. Arsenic will always be with us. PFAS will always be with us. Natural radiation will always be with us. Fortunately, nuclear waste is easily detectable, the regulations around it are much stronger, the amount of HLW is miniscule and the storage processes are incredibly advanced

              Moreover, most Nuclear waste won’t always be with us. A lot of fission prodcuts have half lives in the decades or centuries

              • Touching_Grass@lemmy.world
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                Sure, but doesn’t that just increase the nuclear waste storage issue if we turn all these vehicles nuclear powered

                • Harrison [He/Him]@ttrpg.network
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                  Not hugely. Actual nuclear waste, not just mildly radioactive uniforms and similar material, is extremely small and compact for the amount of energy generated.

                  • Touching_Grass@lemmy.world
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                    I would say though how much nuclear waste would be acceptable in an aquifer to be an issue. Its great that in relation to the energy produced, its small. But can that small amount still pose a catastrophic risk or not

      • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        How do you get the uranium or thorium? Generally, it has to be mined. Are we using nuclear powered mining equipment? No. We use fossil fuel powered mining equipment. Then we use fossil fuels to power the trucks that take the depleted nuclear product to the storage depot, which is powered and requires employees who drive there using fossil fuel powered vehicles, using fossil fuel powered warehouse equipment. When does nuclear power phase out the fossil fuel power? Are we going to decommission oil and coal production facilities? Or are we just going to use nuclear to augment the grid?

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          1 year ago

          Don’t forget all the fossil fuels used in machinery that builds nuclear power plants, and the CO2 emissions from all of the concrete used.

          Oh, and if you start building a nuclear power plant right now it will be online (maybe) in a decade or two and hopefully for only 150% of the initial cost. There’s a nuclear power plant in Georgia that is $17 BILLION over budget.

    • BlushedPotatoPlayers@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      While that’s true, we still have for example safe air travel, although I’m pretty sure companies would be happy to ship their passengers minced to maximize their profit.

      Also, thorium reactors would be a great step forward, unfortunately its byproducts can’t be used for nuclear weapons, so their development was pretty slowed down.

      • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        I’m pretty sure companies would be happy to ship their passengers minced to maximize their profit.

        That actually sounds more comfortable than normal airline travel

      • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Also there was that german experimental Thorium reactor that was so mismanaged, it made Burns’ Springfield power plant look well handled. I think that scared a lot of people off of Thorium for a long time.

        Source: Lived right next to that reactor during my childhood.

      • postmateDumbass@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        If only we had a non fossil energy source we could safely export to developing nations instead of ICE technology.

        (Intenal Combustion Engine)

    • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Big news worthy accidents are a really good way to ensure strong regulation and oversight. And nuclear is very regulated now so that it has lower death rate than wind power.

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        1 year ago

        Yes, nuclear accidents are great because then there’s more regulation? That doesn’t sound like a sound argument. You guys are acting crazy.

        • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
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          No, they just have a super incredulous public so even inconsequencal things get blown way out of proportion in the news. So there’s more oversight.

          It’s like flying, but to an even greater extent. Because people are afraid of flying and crashes are very public and news worthy, the FAA does a great job investigating incidents and requiring safety improvements. They’ve made it so flying is orders of magnitude safer than driving. A similar thing happens with nuclear. Because the public is scared, the news covers, so the government makes sure it is very safe.

          • uis@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            They’ve made it so flying is orders of magnitude safer than driving.

            Not that driving was safe anyway

      • cloud@lazysoci.al
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        1 year ago

        Or they could just allow everyone to build nuclear reactors in their backyard, everyone is saying that they are safer than a banana so i don’t see any issue

    • P03 Locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      Much much tighter regulations. Our cars aren’t aluminum cans waiting to crush everybody inside them because of strict safety regulations.

    • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Try to arrange the incentives in such a way that if the plant melts down, the company that owns it loses money.

    • Touching_Grass@lemmy.world
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      And we would be expecting these corrupt Cost cutting types to warehouse nuclear waste for hundreds if not thousands of years while requiring regular inspections and rotation of caskets periodically while also maintaining the facilities. All of that for a product that doesn’t produce any value, it just sits there and accumulates.

      And where does it get stored? Right now almost 100% of waste is stored on site above ground because they really have no good solution. People will say things like “its just a little bit of toxic waste” or “its cool because we could use it in process we don’t have yet but might in the future” and all I can think of is how this was the same thinking that got us into our dependence on our first environmental catastrophic energy source. I’m not confident we that scaling up to another one will end well.

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        “its cool because we could use it in process we don’t have yet but might in the future”

        Is it quote from 60-ies? We have. At least Russia has. US had too.

      • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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        Right now almost 100% of waste is stored on site above ground because they really have no good solution.

        You mean there’s so little they don’t even need a dedicated facility for it, and it’s safe enough that people are willing to work where it’s stored? Sounds great!

        • Touching_Grass@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Combustion engine sounded great too before the entire world started using them everywhere. You trust corporate interest to store this material for hundreds if not potentially thousands of years.

            • Touching_Grass@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              But it isn’t concrete. It needs constant maintenance and inspection. The casks need to be monitored and rotated out when they begin to erode and break down. Whose doing that for 1009 years?

    • Yaztromo@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Easy. Have nuclear power plants operate as government run and backed corporations (what we’d call a “Crown Corporation” here in Canada).

      That way you can mandate safety and uptime as metrics over profit. It may be less efficient from an economic standpoint (overall cost might be higher), but you also don’t wind up with the nuclear version of Love Canal.