Why are people so anti-nuclear power?

[KyrtF]

The so-called 'green energies' are way more expensive, less efficient, and take way too much territory that could be used for agriculture or forestation.

The UK is spending about £25 billion pounds to build one nuclear reactor
If it spent that money on solar panels; it would have enough money to cover the roofs of over 2 million homes, and provide triple the power output of the reactor AND give every single one of those homes a powerwall to store and manage excess AND have those homes feed back into the national grid AND do so without covering over even the land requirement of a reactor AND it woudol support many more jobs in installation and maintenance than the reactor.

Green energy is falling rapidly in price and its efficiency is rising quickly.

Wind power requires wind within a safe speed range to work, which varies in intensity and frequency over time. Windmills won't work if there's too much, or no wind.

And the latest vortex generators are much more efficient, smaller, cheaper to run and maintain. Not to mention the tremendous potential in offshore windfarms.

Nuclear plants won't depend on natural factors such as sunlight, wind, and water to generate way more power in less the space of any other technologies. All what it requires is nuclear fuel, which lasts for decades, proper maintenance, and security measures.

The newest nuclear power plant in the UK is budgetted for about £25 billion and was only agreed to after the UK government agreed to let the power company charge triple the price of power. This at a time when energy costs from green plants are falling. That also doesn't include the costs of clean up and disposal over several hundred years.

Nuclear power is expensive and sustained only through the use of massive public subsidies. Those subsidies need to be justified, but nuclear isn't getting any cheaper. Solar and wind are.

[Cerus]

It's actually the most expensive form of energy, both in terms of construction and O&M. See table 1.

https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies...s/capitalcost/

And that's current designs, not any of the hypothetical/prototype gen IV or thorium things, which will be far more expensive.

Bias article. It doesn’t take into account any of the high costs of “green” energies such as production, maintenance or replacement of panels/turbines nor the severe envionmental impact of all the equipment that winds up as trash.

[KyrtF]

Hahahahhaha! Green energy my ass. Solar and wind cause more pollution and can’t come close to meeting the demands of a single large city.

Green energy technologies have produced enough power for entire nations, never mind cities. And yes - solar and wind cause pollution during manufacture...so does constructing nuclear power plants and fortunately, there are systems in place which reduce much of the pollution you seem to talk about. It takes energy to manufacture solar panels as well, but modern panels pay that back in about 6 months.

Nuclear is clean - so long as nothing goes wrong and clean only until it is spent. After which it requires storage for potentially thousands of years.
Nuclear is cheap - so long as the public purse is willing to subsidise the technologies. Otherwise, it is too expensive to build, never mind clean up.
Nuclear is safe - so long as nothing does wrong. But we can say that about everything and a faulty solar panel doesn't leave hundreds of square miles uninhabitable

[badgersmashr]

just spit balling here, but isnt using the sun (solar panels) technically the highest form of nuclear energy XD

[arandomuser]

because even if hteres a 0.0000001% chance of a malfucntion or meltdown, when there is, its pretty fucking huge IE chernobyl, fukushima,

[Masark]

Bias article. It doesn’t take into account any of the high costs of “green” energies such as production, maintenance or replacement of panels/turbines nor the severe envionmental impact of all the equipment that winds up as trash.

That is factored in? Do you not know what O&M means? It's Operation and Maintenance.

Or did you not actually look at the mentioned table with the numbers?

[chazus]

because even if hteres a 0.0000001% chance of a malfucntion or meltdown, when there is, its pretty fucking huge IE chernobyl, fukushima,

Incorrect. As has already been pointed out several times in the thread.

[Deleted]

Not so much I'm against it, it's just very very expensive and and almost as unreliable (due to safety) as wind and solar. And the fact we don't have a really good way of handling the waste. Also every time we start thinking nuclear is the way to go, 3 mile island, chernobyl and fukushima kinda happened.

[matt4pack]

Because no one wants nuclear waste in their backyard even if they pretend to be pro nuclear.

[Mormolyce]

It's super clean. Apart from that radioactive waste with a half life in the thousands to millions of years.

It's also super safe, provided nothing goes wrong.

- - - Updated - - -

coal has killed over 100,000 people since 1900

https://arlweb.msha.gov/stats/centur.../coalstats.asp


BUT MUH NUCLEAR SO EVIL

I dont think most of the people commenting here could even explain how it even works without having to rely on google

I don't think anyone is arguing in favour of coal.

Also, uranium still needs to be mined so those deaths are baseline regardless of which fossil fuel you're looking at.

[chazus]

Because no one wants nuclear waste in their backyard even if they pretend to be pro nuclear.

Nobody wants it in their 'back yard'. Nobody said they did, or implied they did. A handful of miles away in a safe bunker, that's fine though.

It's super clean. Apart from that radioactive waste with a half life in the thousands to millions of years.

People keep tossing out the 'X many years' as if thats some kind of debate point. It's not.

It's also super safe, provided nothing goes wrong.

As long as we don't use soviet era systems and practices... Which, yanno, we wouldn't. Or build it on a fault line with poor practices.

[kail]

Fear that isn't backed by facts. People don't know how plants work so they assume that if Homer falls asleep on the job, their city's population will turn to mutants.

[Mormolyce]

People keep tossing out the 'X many years' as if thats some kind of debate point. It's not.

Of course it is, you need storage that is failsafe on the order of thousands of years plus.

[Rustedsaint]

Cause when they do fail the damage they do could last lifetimes and that whole nuclear waste issue we still dealing with.
Also the whole media demonizing them in movies, books, shows etc doesn’t help
Personally I’m fine with them as long as their possible fallout is nowhere near me.

[chazus]

Of course it is, you need storage that is failsafe on the order of thousands of years plus.

But... we don't. Not really. Im not saying you're wrong, but again with my 'food going bad' analogy. We only need to make sure it's safe until we have a better system... Which is literally within a thousand years. Easily.

I mean, if we don't find out a system within a thousand years, it means we've wiped the human race out already, which... Kinda makes the whole thing moot.

[Wyrt]

Because there were several big disasters with nuclear power plants that made people dislike them.

[Mormolyce]

But... we don't. Not really. Im not saying you're wrong, but again with my 'food going bad' analogy. We only need to make sure it's safe until we have a better system... Which is literally within a thousand years. Easily.

I mean, if we don't find out a system within a thousand years, it means we've wiped the human race out already, which... Kinda makes the whole thing moot.

You're presuming that we also need a perfect system to track all of these sites, and assess their status - you need to know where they are and whether or not the containment is functioning properly. That's just more failure points.

[chazus]

You're presuming that we also need a perfect system to track all of these sites, and assess their status - you need to know where they are and whether or not the containment is functioning properly. That's just more failure points.

Honestly, we wouldn't need that many. There's not -that- much stuff. And in all honesty we'll probably have a method of disposing it properly (that we're researching now) before we have a way to export it entirely.

Either way, none of it really matters within the next few hundred years. There's like 10 different likely scenarios we reach where the "million year" thing is totally moot. It's just a straw man argument.

[Thrive]

I think Chernobyl and Fukushima would like to have a word with you..

As opposed to the alternative? The only real argument against nuclear power and nuclear research, specifically into nuclear fusion, is an emotional and uneducated one.

[Aquinan]

It's the most efficient source of energy we have to this day and the most reliable, so why are so many people against it?

We can increase the efficiency tenfold, if not more, from the same amount of fuel compared to old reactors if we would build new ones today. We could develop reactors that can use the waste of the reactors today as fuel. We could reduce the waste to only last centuries instead of millennia.

Unlike solar or wind energy, nuclear power is far more reliable and does not rely on good weather conditions to produce power.

Tidal power is guaranteed, and is more efficient.