I'm overall pretty neutral on the issue, but my main problem with it is when it has gone bad, it has gone really bad.
I think it's appropriate to use it (rather than fossil fuels) to fill gaps for solar, wind and other renewables, but I'd be lying if I said I'd feel comfortable living near a nuclear facility either.
That and I really have a tough time trusting the United States properly taking care of the waste, but that's true for literally everything toxic lol.
I mean, compared to the communites displaced by LNG and oil pipelines? You could avoid displacement from uranium mining with better planning, but capitalists need their labor, so they destroy their communites and make them mine uranium.
Nuclear power without socialism is a dead end though. Capitalists will corrupt it and just turn it into another resource extraction endeavor.
That does not exactly fill me with confidence to see that a primary reason for the difference is that there has been no need to scale it up to those levels.
Nuclear is still the second largest source of energy behind coal and natural gas. I also really don't understand your point unless you're just an anprim that's trolling. Do you think that solar and wind don't require massively exploitative mines to keep them operational?
I mean yeah, fuck everything about fossil fuels, I don't have my concerns with nuclear energy because I am interested in fossil fuels or anything. They've been absolutely catastrophic on our existence from micro-plastics, greenhouse gasses, its extraction, creating car culture, to air pollution etc. etc. I wish they were phased out and all but eliminated decades and decades ago.
Like I was stating above, I'm hopeful on solar and wind meeting more of the future energy needs than nuclear power. I know both also have massive environmental issues with lithium/rare earth metal extraction, or airborne wildlife impacts from wind farms, but they don't have the potential to displace hundreds of thousands or millions of people when they go wrong either.
That's basically my only concern, but I'm also worried about the potential impacts of how the waste is stored hundreds, thousands of years down the line too. Idk, I trust it enough if it's guaranteed to be run properly, but how can we make certain governments won't fuck it up like they've let fossil fuels utterly destroy biodiversity, the environment, and people's health?
I don't think you really understand how invasive solar and wind is on local environments. Wind in places that aren't costal requires mountaintop removal. Solar uses up thousands of acres of land and last for like a decade before they start disintegrating. Nuclear is much more energy dense and can be built anywhere in a footprint of a factory instead of an entire county.
Again, solar and wind are important for preventing bottlenecking and supply chain failures, but are in no way better for the environment than nuclear.
Also we still approach nuclear as if GEs shitty design from 70 years ago is the best it can get. Nuclear waste products are still fissile. They can still be used for power generation in breeder reactors, but because some of the transitional phases involve nuclear material that can be used to make a bomb, it's not allowed. These regulations also make sure that the existing reactors will continue making money for years to come as they "burn through" their fuel when it still has 98% of its energy left.
I'm overall pretty neutral on the issue, but my main problem with it is when it has gone bad, it has gone really bad.
I think it's appropriate to use it (rather than fossil fuels) to fill gaps for solar, wind and other renewables, but I'd be lying if I said I'd feel comfortable living near a nuclear facility either.
That and I really have a tough time trusting the United States properly taking care of the waste, but that's true for literally everything toxic lol.
Less people have been killed or harmed by nuclear power since it was invented then were killed by coal power last week.
Does this sort of accounting include say, indigenous communities displaced by Uranium mining?
I mean, compared to the communites displaced by LNG and oil pipelines? You could avoid displacement from uranium mining with better planning, but capitalists need their labor, so they destroy their communites and make them mine uranium.
Nuclear power without socialism is a dead end though. Capitalists will corrupt it and just turn it into another resource extraction endeavor.
That does not exactly fill me with confidence to see that a primary reason for the difference is that there has been no need to scale it up to those levels.
Nuclear is still the second largest source of energy behind coal and natural gas. I also really don't understand your point unless you're just an anprim that's trolling. Do you think that solar and wind don't require massively exploitative mines to keep them operational?
I mean yeah, fuck everything about fossil fuels, I don't have my concerns with nuclear energy because I am interested in fossil fuels or anything. They've been absolutely catastrophic on our existence from micro-plastics, greenhouse gasses, its extraction, creating car culture, to air pollution etc. etc. I wish they were phased out and all but eliminated decades and decades ago.
Like I was stating above, I'm hopeful on solar and wind meeting more of the future energy needs than nuclear power. I know both also have massive environmental issues with lithium/rare earth metal extraction, or airborne wildlife impacts from wind farms, but they don't have the potential to displace hundreds of thousands or millions of people when they go wrong either.
That's basically my only concern, but I'm also worried about the potential impacts of how the waste is stored hundreds, thousands of years down the line too. Idk, I trust it enough if it's guaranteed to be run properly, but how can we make certain governments won't fuck it up like they've let fossil fuels utterly destroy biodiversity, the environment, and people's health?
I don't think you really understand how invasive solar and wind is on local environments. Wind in places that aren't costal requires mountaintop removal. Solar uses up thousands of acres of land and last for like a decade before they start disintegrating. Nuclear is much more energy dense and can be built anywhere in a footprint of a factory instead of an entire county.
Again, solar and wind are important for preventing bottlenecking and supply chain failures, but are in no way better for the environment than nuclear.
Also we still approach nuclear as if GEs shitty design from 70 years ago is the best it can get. Nuclear waste products are still fissile. They can still be used for power generation in breeder reactors, but because some of the transitional phases involve nuclear material that can be used to make a bomb, it's not allowed. These regulations also make sure that the existing reactors will continue making money for years to come as they "burn through" their fuel when it still has 98% of its energy left.