• 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.

      • 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.

    • 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.

      • 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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          1 year ago

          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.

            • radiosimian@lemmy.world
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              1 year 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?

      • Touching_Grass@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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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          1 year ago

          “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.

          • Touching_Grass@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            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.

      • 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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              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?