It is completely inexcusable that people in STEM fields are so reactionary, considering how capitalism utterly destroys science.
If universities were actually "left wing indoctrination factories" like the right thinks they are, every STEM grad would be taught, for example, what Kropotkin had to say about innovation.
You do realise that producing solar panels and wind turbines creates orders of magnitude more toxic waste than a nuclear power plant, right? Before involving any batteries.
lets also talk about that the official quote for fukushima is 0 dead and 40-50 injured. good luck getting those stats in lithium and rare earth mining.
0? check again. some two thousand died in the evacuation
ok so lets assume the worst, then. the biggest, worst, estimate is 60k deaths from anything related to nuclear, including low level poisoning and stress, which means you lived pretty long but it was cut short by the sickness. we have had nuclear technology for around 80 years. if you include the stats from old-gen nuclear reactors like chernobyl, it is slightly worse than wind, but not as bad as solar. if you consider only the newest gen reactors and technology, it beats out every other energy source. in fact, latest gen nuclear reactors have roughly half the death rate of wind. here's a simple, noncomprehensive diagram from forbes: https://i.imgur.com/4LXeCFD.png.
of course, you could argue that 'oh, since these are new they havent had a long enough time to fail'. actually, there have been dozens of failures of new gen reactors and there are lots of them. however, we have gotten really smart about how reactors fail and when they do they don't hurt people.
do go on about how drinking nuclear waste is super great for my health. by comparison or whatever. maybe with batteries even. such a compelling argument.
im sure those wind turbine blades are just awful. so many tonnes of fiberglass. oh no.
Ideed. Five tonnes of fiberglass that contains water-soluble epoxy that cannot be recycled per blade. All to produce 0.3 MW of power and be thrown away after 20 years.
Compare to a depleted uranium fuel bundle, that weights ~100 tons, produces over 3000 MW of power and lasts around 7 years before it needs to be reprocessed. Because yes, unlike turbine blades, it's recyclable.
neat. wind turbine blade technology can certainly be improved and made less wasteful. nuclear, baring significant advancements in fusion tech, will always pose a serious danger because its waste products will kill you.
but no really do go on acting like im unaware, or that i even advocated for wind tech in the first place.
I'm sorry? It was you who brought up the wind turbines.
Your 'technology will fix it' argument is ridiculous, you're pitting toxic plastic recycling technology that doesn't exist against toxic uranium reprocessing technology that has existed for decades (though unprofitable) and needs a scale *500 times smaller..
no. i didnt.
You do realise that producing solar panels and wind turbines creates orders of magnitude more toxic waste than a nuclear power plant, right? Before involving any batteries.
see that part where you brought it up?
also, good second strawman there on me saying anything about recycling plastics. 🙄
Oh, okay. What is your preferred alternative to nuclear?
Edit: or to non plastic materials for a massive wind turbine, I suppose.
loving the crickets right now
I was hoping they'd reply before I went to sleep 😕