Permanently Deleted

  • Brown_Pelican [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    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?

    • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      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.