Why are people so anti-nuclear power?

[Thrive]

Tidal power is guaranteed, and is more efficient.

And unrealistic at the moment. Nuclear fusion is the power source of the future, plain and simple. We are getting ever closer to making it viable. The fact of the matter is that it's incredibly reliable, useful, and it's something we need to work with.
Not to mention tidal power won't work when we inevitably need power sources not on earth.

[Torgent]

People bought into the fear of "OMG LOOK! It's failed twice when we did a really shitty job, so clearly if we work hard at it, it would fail too!". Ignorant people being scared of the word nuclear mostly.

[kasuke06]

Chernobyl and Fukushima. Twice in recent history has large areas been rendered completely uninhabitable for quite a while. Water, wind and Sun is the way to go

Fukushima was poor placement and chernobyl was a shitshow start to finish, based on a faulty design the russians stole and built without even fucking checking for the most basic failures, like a feedback loop which would lead to a steam explosion, which, by the way is why it was rejected for use anywhere else. The people actually making the designs saw it was fucked six ways from sunday and said "nope. fix that shit before you kill us all" but whoever the russians had as a plant went "hey it's a reactor design and our malnourished, uneducated populace is falling behind in every aspect of the modern world except soul crushing depression, we need literally any kind of reactor, they'll fix it before it gets put together right?"

But yeah, let's completely ignore out best chance for extra-planetary power sources because of idiot russians being too stupid to do basic checks on the shit they steal and people not accounting for acts of nature seemingly becoming sentient and pissed off at one spot in particular. Come on, tell me of the great advances in wind power in a vacuum.

[Osmeric]

If you don’t know the answer then why are you commenting in a thread about technologies you don’t even understand? Solar works great for a small house but an entire major city? Not hardly.

Please explain why this is rather than just asserting it is true. I figure if you want a gigawatt instead of a kilowatt you just install 1,000,000x as many modules. Are you saying this fails for some reason? Please explain in detail.

[Mafic]

Fukushima was poor placement and chernobyl was a shitshow start to finish, based on a faulty design the russians stole and built without even fucking checking for the most basic failures, like a feedback loop which would lead to a steam explosion, which, by the way is why it was rejected for use anywhere else. The people actually making the designs saw it was fucked six ways from sunday and said "nope. fix that shit before you kill us all" but whoever the russians had as a plant went "hey it's a reactor design and our malnourished, uneducated populace is falling behind in every aspect of the modern world except soul crushing depression, we need literally any kind of reactor, they'll fix it before it gets put together right?"

But yeah, let's completely ignore out best chance for extra-planetary power sources because of idiot russians being too stupid to do basic checks on the shit they steal and people not accounting for acts of nature seemingly becoming sentient and pissed off at one spot in particular. Come on, tell me of the great advances in wind power in a vacuum.

Any point on the earth's surface is vulnerable to earthquake as well as underground. Bottom line is you can't engineer enough layers of redundancy to prevent a disaster.

If a solar panel fails you can fix it. If a wind farm fails you can fix it all. If a coal plant goes belly up you shut it down and clean up. If a nuclear plant is too dangerous you have to build a sarcophogus that you must come back to and build another one over and over again for many, many years.

[Hammerfest]

Why are people so anti-nuclear power?

Because they are largely uninformed about it.

[chazus]

Any point on the earth's surface is vulnerable to earthquake as well as underground. Bottom line is you can't engineer enough layers of redundancy to prevent a disaster.

That's... actually not true. Also, taking example from literally the most earthquake prone place in the world as your baseline is a bit biased.

Fun fact: A lot of tech industries are moving to Nevada, and Las Vegas, because it is one of the few places on the planet that is devoid of virtually all natural disasters.

If a nuclear plant is too dangerous you have to build a sarcophogus that you must come back to and build another one over and over again for many, many years.

False.

[kasuke06]

Any point on the earth's surface is vulnerable to earthquake as well as underground. Bottom line is you can't engineer enough layers of redundancy to prevent a disaster.

If a solar panel fails you can fix it. If a wind farm fails you can fix it all. If a coal plant goes belly up you shut it down and clean up. If a nuclear plant is too dangerous you have to build a sarcophogus that you must come back to and build another one over and over again for many, many years.

...you know the sarcophagus was over chernobyl, not fukushima right? and the problem with chernobyl was that the design itself was horrifically faulty? Not what could be called the actions of a pissed off god looking to pile it on at one specific time?

This is why people are against nuclear power, because they have literally no idea what they're talking about beyond "OMG A PLANT FAILED ONCE BECAUSE IDIOTS USED AN INHERENTLY FAULTY DESIGN MADE WORSE BY ENGINEERS FUCKING IT UP EVEN WORSE THEREFORE ALL PLANTS WILL EXPLODE AND KILL US ALL!"

How do you eat? I mean someone fucked up cooking exactly what you eat(literally anything.) at some point, and by your logic, one fuck-up damns the entire effort forever.

[zealo]

That's... actually not true. Also, taking example from literally the most earthquake prone place in the world as your baseline is a bit biased.

Fun fact: A lot of tech industries are moving to Nevada, and Las Vegas, because it is one of the few places on the planet that is devoid of virtually all natural disasters.

Earthquakes can happen far away from tectonic plate boundaries. They're just exceedingly more rare than the variant common near a plate boundary.

[chazus]

Earthquakes can happen far away from tectonic plate boundaries. They're just exceedingly more rare than the variant common near a plate boundary.

They can, but they're rare, and they're weak, relatively speaking. So much so that one could more or less consider it 'safe' to build reactors there. You know. NOT on an active fault line using sub-part materials and construction.

Under that mentality, we shouldn't build anything, anywhere, forever. This "if its not 100% safe we shouldn't do it" is silly.

[Stormspark]

Right... with only the minor problem of reactive nuclear waste for 100 thousand years or so....

The really dangerous nuclear waste is from producing plutonium for nuclear weapons, NOT from nuclear power plants. While nuclear power plants do produce waste, the waste from them is solid (just used fuel rods). The tanks in places like Hanford full of "radioactive waste" are from making bombs. Not saying the used fuel rods aren't dangerous, but compared to the other stuff the risk is small.

[Aquinan]

And unrealistic at the moment. Nuclear fusion is the power source of the future, plain and simple. We are getting ever closer to making it viable. The fact of the matter is that it's incredibly reliable, useful, and it's something we need to work with.
Not to mention tidal power won't work when we inevitably need power sources not on earth.

No its not, it's proven and there are projects in the works. Cold fusion still has not been achieved, they have been "getting close" for years. If it does happen then yay, until then I'll not bet on it.

[knubfub]

well its not exactly great for the environment ya know

[Neversage]

Because they don't understand it.

[mittacc]

Fukushima would like to have a word with you..

That was because of an eathquake lol. Don't build nuclear plants in zones with high risk of earthquakes. Before you bring up Chernobyl I'll just tell you that they deliberatively shut down their safety measures in a already ancient facility where they didn't think about the safety.

[Kellhound]

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.

I can sum up the opposition in 6 words: Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island.......

[Slant]

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.

Unlike solar and wind energy, nuclear isn't just more reliable, it also produces reliably more difficult waste that we can't recycle very well nor actually get rid off for the next few thousand years. It may not look it, but nuclear energy is looking at a dead end down the road. Humanity is being smart and doesn't make itself dependent on yet another energy producer that pollutes the planet.

This is on top of all the bad rep nuclear plants get from Chernobyl to Fukushima. Bottom line is, no matter how safe you make it, Murphy's law always wins. And even safe things break once in a while. But unlike, say airplanes, we have alternatives to nuclear. And if we pushed them a little further, they would be sufficient for humanity in a clean and safe manner with little to no extra cost.

Until we can get to a better energy source.

[Wikiy]

No its not, it's proven and there are projects in the works. Cold fusion still has not been achieved, they have been "getting close" for years. If it does happen then yay, until then I'll not bet on it.

Cold fusion? No one legit actually thinks cold fusion is a good prospect for fusion reactors. As for the projects that are in the works... More than half of the nuclear physics society is dedicated to that problem. ITER alone is a huge project with subdivisions and has thousands of engineers and physicists working on it.

[Shalcker]

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

I'm living in a city with nuclear plant just 43 kilometers away from our city, Ekaterinburg, center.

My grandparents lived in village just 10km away from it; then they moved to city that is literally built around that power plant, with their house being just 5km away from it. I spent a lot of summers with them there, swimming in same lake that is used to cool down power plant.

My uncle died in 2000s from what he described was complications from working on that power plant in 70s and various things they had to do that broke safety regulations; and seeing how it looked like it was easily believeable.

So, let me tell you - nuclear power is safest power we have.

[Mafic]

That's... actually not true. Also, taking example from literally the most earthquake prone place in the world as your baseline is a bit biased.

Fun fact: A lot of tech industries are moving to Nevada, and Las Vegas, because it is one of the few places on the planet that is devoid of virtually all natural disasters.


False.

It is true...Nevada is in the Basin and Range region.

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...you know the sarcophagus was over chernobyl, not fukushima right? and the problem with chernobyl was that the design itself was horrifically faulty? Not what could be called the actions of a pissed off god looking to pile it on at one specific time?

This is why people are against nuclear power, because they have literally no idea what they're talking about beyond "OMG A PLANT FAILED ONCE BECAUSE IDIOTS USED AN INHERENTLY FAULTY DESIGN MADE WORSE BY ENGINEERS FUCKING IT UP EVEN WORSE THEREFORE ALL PLANTS WILL EXPLODE AND KILL US ALL!"

How do you eat? I mean someone fucked up cooking exactly what you eat(literally anything.) at some point, and by your logic, one fuck-up damns the entire effort forever.

They need to build a sarcophagus over Fukushima too. The Japanese government is dragging their feet on something that should have been done. This is where I give the Soviets a kudos for acting quickly unlike the Japanese government.

In before someone comes in and tells me "dilution is the solution".