Why do people oppose Nuclear Power?

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GratsTheat783

GratsTheat783

kiwifarms.net
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Apr 24, 2024
Whenever I've heard nuclear power talked about, on the right and on the left, it's regarded as the second coming of Christ and the solution to all of our energy problems, yet there seems to be a certain group of people who oppose nuclear energy and try to prevent it going forward. The reasoning I've heard about why they oppose it is because they look back at disasters surrounding nuclear power plants, like Chernobyl, and assume that they occurred solely due to nuclear power rather than due to mismanagement.

Are there any solid reasonings from those who oppose nuclear power or is it mostly fear-mongering?
 
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Hippies and oil company propaganda, someone telling me they want to get rid of fossil fuels and replace them with everything but nuclear power is an indication to me that they live in fantasyland and that I don't need to take them seriously for any reason
 
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Because they see Chernobyl and nothing else. I don't think their opinions are completely unfounded though. Radioactive contamination sticks around for hundreds to thousands of years so even if you theoretically had a perfect plant that was hit with a freak act of nature the pollution could make an area dangerous for centuries.

I find though that the most anti-nuclear people are those that think fossil fuels should also be banned as quickly as possible and somehow they don't see nuclear power as a viable transitional power source so they can build all the solar and wind farms they want before figuring out they're still gonna need nuclear power.
 
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At least for new nuclear:
Economics

Construction takes years and is highly unpredictable when it comes to the cost of the projects. See the following table:

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If you want an example. Look no further than the UK with Hinkley Point C. You can just calculate the capital cost per MW/h

Cost estimate: 53 billion Euro or 46 billion Pound sterling
Net capacity: 3260 MW
Annual full time capacity in hours: 8000
Assumed interest rate: 5 %

Add to that 20-30 % for all the other related costs for fuel, employees and you get the costs of production.

You just don't know if your project will have costs get out of control and you can hardly abandon such a project since the capital costs are such a large part of the total cost. And then you are stuck around with that plant for 60+ years where you better hope no cheaper alternative occurs during that time.
 
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Canadian nuclear has been pretty much perfect for 60+ years. Clean, safe, not hard to run. It's madness that they're not everywhere and especially wee todded that so many Canuckistanis pay out the ass for hydroelectric-derived power instead of demanding more cheap nuke. Especially when that country has so fucking much uranium in the ground.
 
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Unironically hippies. There was a plan half a century ago to make nuclear cargo ships with the shipping routes over deep areas that are effectively desert (most of the ocean is dead) you could dump fuel if you needed to.

For all the fears about Fukushima and ocean contamination it’s not really a big fear. The ocean will disperse most of it to the point where it’s not really a big worry.

The technology was mostly adopted in a crappy fashion. Most US nuclear plants were copy-pasted from submarine designs onto dry land, but most got retrofitted to overcome the issues.
3 mile island and Fermi in the US were basically due to retards not designing the tests properly and thinking that the alarm light was just a test. You can thank Jimmy Carter and other retards for those tests.
 
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People I wouldn’t entrust with babysitting a turd will fight for control of anything which might benefit others, even if the status and clout are entirely superficial. No matter how good the thing is, any plan for implementation which does not thoroughly take either negligence or the intersection of ignorance and greed into account will instead fashion a weapon for those with the will to wield it.

For me, the debate isn’t even to do with the proven technology - It’s to do with people proven able to be incentivized to act against their own interests through nothing more than a pat on the back.
 
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People see things like this bridge in the State of PA that collapsed after over a decade of warnings, reports, a viral social media post warning about it, and some critical mistakes in calculating its maximum load.
People then think about Three-Mile Island (in the same state) and do a little mental math to guess how well it will work out if we invest more into nuclear energy over the next 100 years.
 
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It produces nuclear waste that we just put underneath mountains where it seeps radiation into the environment for millions of years, unless we find a way to shoot nuclear waste onto the moon I don't really see how it's "clean" energy.

(Apparently in the US you guys don't even put it under a mountain and just let it sit out in bins for years)
 
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People are terrified of nuclear accidents and immediately think of the catastrophe that was Chernobyl. Thing is accidents like Chernobyl happened for a variety of reasons and was related to the dangerous design of the RBMK reactors. They pushed the reactor to its limits and due to its design it became a steam bomb. The nuclear material itself wasn't explosive it was the extreme pressure and heat caused by the reactor being put into a dangerous state and the fail safe to shut the whole thing down was flawed and actually acted as a detonator.

Serious accidents like Chernobyl are designed to be impossible in western nuclear reactors. They have loads of safe guards to prevent meltdowns and containment vessels if the worst were to ever happen. The reactors themselves are also designed differently so even if people are wreckless with them they won't explode like Chernobyl. It was the explosion of the reactor that was the main reason it was so bad because it blew the extremely radioactive material in the core all over the place.

Nuclear power is a great option but its opposition by retards has caused significant costs and trouble getting the industry booming again. Honestly even with the inflated costs its still the better option for achieving emission targets then all this carbon tax and other crap that barely puts a dent in things and hurts the economy more.
 
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FamicomGorby said:
Radioactive contamination sticks around for hundreds to thousands of years
Click to expand...
Lidl Drip said:
it seeps radiation into the environment for millions of years,
Click to expand...
The radiation produced is inversely proportional to how long it's radioactive for. Whenever you hear people citing insane half-lives like this, remember that the substances in question are so mildly radioactive as to be negligible. You'll be exposed to more radiation flying on an airplane than holding onto a kilo of the shit.

Lidl Drip said:
Apparently in the US you guys don't even put it under a mountain and just let it sit out in bins for years
Click to expand...
High level waste is essentially dumped in a pond on site. That stuff neutralizes itself in a couple years, yeah.
Medium/low level waste is encased in concrete blocks. It's so dilute in the concrete mixture that there's essentially no radioactive output, even if you crack the blocks open.
 
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