this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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[–] DumbAceDragon@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 year ago (12 children)

Normally I'm not a "lesser of two evils" type, but nuclear is such an immensely lesser evil compared to coal and oil that it's insane people are still against it.

[–] choroalp@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

Coal plants gives more radiation through radioactive mercury as a left over from processign

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[–] qfe0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 year ago (7 children)

For the love of everything, at least let's stop decommissioning serviceable nuclear plants.

[–] GiddyGap@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

Looking at you, Germany...

[–] Uncaged_Jay@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

For real, God forbid we keep the actual safe, clean nuclear plants running

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[–] elouboub@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago (11 children)

Anti-nuclear people in here arguing about disasters that killed a few k people in 50 years. Also deeply worried about nuclear waste that won't have an impact on humans for thousands of years, but ignoring climate change is having an impact and might end our way of life as we know it before 2100.

They're bike-shedding and blocking a major stepping stone to a coal, petrol and gas free future for the sake of idealism.

The biggest enemy of the left is the left

[–] legion@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

People tend to overrate the harms from potential changes, while simultaneously vastly underrating the harms that already exist that they’ve gotten used to.

[–] _Mantissa@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

This is the most wise thing I've read today. We all know it, but it needs to be said more.

[–] PoliticalAgitator@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

A lot of the anti-nuclear sentiment comes from the 80s when the concerns were a lot more valid (and likely before half the pro-nuclear people in this thread were born).

But blaming people on social media for blocking progress on it is a stretch. They're multi-billion dollar projects. Have any major governments or businesses actually proposed building more but then buckled to public pressure?

Anyway, I'm glad this conversation has made it to Lemmy because I've long suspected the conspicuous popularly and regularity of posts like this on Reddit was the work of a mining lobby that can't deny climate change anymore, but won't tolerate profits falling.

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[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I live less than 2 miles from the last remaining coal power station in England.

I would much rather have nuclear instead of a chimney chucking god knows what into the air (and subsequently into me) for my entire life.

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[–] halfempty@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Nuclear power is neither safe nor ecologically sustainable. The waste is immensely toxic for hundreds of thousands of years. The model is centralized so wealthy oligarchs own the power source and sell it to everyone else. Better to move toward distributed power generation that isn't massively toxic. Greenpeace must stay anti-nuke.

[–] iByteABit@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If the Great Filter theory is correct, climate change will most likely be our Great Filter.

Our species is simply not equipped with the ability to deal with the problems it created. Many people can, but they're not powerful to do anything, and there's too many uneducated people for the masses to rise up about this problem.

We think so short term, it's impossible for some people to think about the future and accept that we'll need to change the way we live now so that we can keep living then. They're hung up on Chernobyl because it was a big bang that killed lots of people at once and it was televised everywhere that has a society and TVs, but they are unable to see that in the long term coal and gas have killed and are still killing way more people than nuclear accidents, because it's a process that's continuous and kills people in indirect ways instead of a big blast.

[–] Redredme@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I still don't think it will be our great filter. It will be a filter. But not the end all/be all.

[–] DroneRights@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Coal has the same yearly death toll and chernobyl's total death toll. 80,000.

[–] halfempty@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Holding up coal as a strawman argument in support of Nuclear power is a fallacy. Both are massively toxic in different ways. One does not legitimize the other.

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[–] HawlSera@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago

Don't get scared off by the N Word

Nuclear isn't the monster it's made out to be by oil and coal propagands.

[–] Relo@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (10 children)

Why go nuclear when renewable is so much cheaper, safer, future proof and less centralised?

Don't get me wrong. Nuclear is better than coal and gas but it will not safe our way of life.

Just like the electric car is here to preserve the car industry not the planet, nuclear energy is still here to preserve the big energy players, not our environment.

[–] psoul@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago

For what I’ve read, it’s beats nuclear tech exists and is ready to be built at scale now. Renewables are intermittent in nature and need energy storage to work at scale. We don’t have the tech for a grid wide energy storage.

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[–] archonet@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

do not let "perfect" be the enemy of "good enough"

edit: quick addendum, I really cannot stress this enough, everyone who says nuclear is an imperfect solution and just kicks the can down the road -- yes, it does, it kicks it a couple thousand years away as opposed to within the next hundred years. We can use all that time to perfect solar and wind, but unless we get really lucky and get everyone on board with solar and wind right now, the next best thing we can hope for is more time.

[–] havokdj@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

I completely agree with everything you said except for ONE little thing:

You are grossly misrepresenting how far that can is kicked down, for the worse. It doesn't kick it down a couple thousand years, it kicks it down for if DOZENS of millennia assuming we stay at the current energy capacity. Even if we doubled or tripled it, it would still be dozens of millennia. First we could use the uranium, then when that is gone, we could use thorium and breed it with plutonium, which would last an incomprehensibly longer time than the uranium did. By that point, we could hopefully have figured out fusion and supplement that with renewable sources of energy.

The only issue that would stem from this would be having TOO much energy, which itself would create a new problem which is heat from electrical usage.

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