Spicy Air ☢️
(midwest.social)
General Memes & Private ChuckleNuclear is the best btw.
Nuclear isn't the best anymore. Batteries, solar and wind are cheaper and take way less time to build
Don't forget, that they produce immediately useable energy. No heat loss, due to steam turbines.
And then there is the timespan that nuclear waste stays harmful. OPs "indestructable" container have to stay indestructable for millions of years.
If we assume 40 years as a generation, that will be 50,000 generations. The whole history of mankind is only 400 generations.
Solar is better in every way
Please explain how fossil fuel is stored in the air?? Dumbest thing ever read!
Fossil fuel waste. You know, carbon dioxide and air pollution.
coal dust is partly radioactive
FEBREEZE
Every Nuclear plant one builds is an inexcapable burden for future generations. Every Nuclear plant is built on the assumption the nation in which it stands will be stable forever and no malicious act will be done unto it. It is built with the assumption all eventualities have been considered.
Once it is built it demands to be considered for all future events - war, change of government, pandemics, etc. And while catastrophes are rare on nuclear plants, they do happen and when one happens it is magnitudes worse than other power-generating systems.
While we are long past the days of Chernobyl and 3-mile-island, we cannot pretend like nuclear energy is some sort of panacea for all our ills. Especially not when we live under capitalism, where capitalists are the ones that would evaluate when, where, why and how plants should be built and driven.
Doing so is pure idealism.
"So you love gasoline????" no dude, that's a completely different sentence.
https://www.desmog.com/2024/09/19/from-uk-to-norway-drillers-legally-dump-tonnes-of-toxic-radioactive-waste-into-the-north-sea/
I'm quite pro nuclear, I think the mass decomissioning of nuclear plants that's been happening in Europe is the wrong move. But this is an incredibly reductive and dishonest meme.
Solar and storage for the win(d)!
It's spelled BREATHE
Breath is what you TAKE Breathe is what you DO
Another tor's cabinet of curiosities watcher, I see!
Breath is what you TAKE
If you're The Police.
seismologically inactive
Exxon-Mobil: About that....
This, but unironically
indestructible
Yeah, I think I've heard that claim before. It seems like every time that claim was made something came along to prove it wrong.
At least we can trust the fossil fuel industries storage place.
Oh well when you put it like that I suppose we should just ignore all issues with another type of energy. Surely this will not come back to bite us in the ass like fossil fuels have.
Still better than coal
Indestructible cask underground is for cowards. In the US we don't have a long term storage site, so we just ship it around to different temporary sites.
As far as I am aware there is no final storage for atomic waste anywhere. France wants to build one in 2030 but we'll see then I guess.
2 just from tom scott
https://youtu.be/aoy_WJ3mE50
https://youtu.be/PB7HT3BZLzM
There is nothing more permanent than a temporary solution
Huh. We don't either in Germany, but I assumed, it was largely because the whole place is inhabitated. Is there not some desert or Alaska or something in the US, where no one minds?
The US highway system, the ideal nuclear waste storage site
In Australia, all the people who were vehemently against solar and were calling for building of more coal fired power plants have lately shifted to saying, that Australia needs multiple nuclear power plants.
Whilst I don't doubt it probably wasn't a good thing to have around 20 years ago, solar and wind are so much cheaper and I know a good percentage of homes have made the switch to solar in recent years.
The only politicians I'm seeing which are calling out for nuclear seem to be very closely aligned with resources companies.
Mining shills who want to spend $10b on concrete manufacturing and uranium mines.
What makes me laugh is that we could still invest that into mining, get the resources to make solar panels and batteries, then stop because battery recycling is a thing. They can still get rich off it. They just have a set period the mining is necessary while we get the amount required. But by then they could buy the solar farms and generate infinite income from the power generation... Are they all just bad at capitalism or something?
Dunno if we should be making any broad conclusions about solar based off Australia
or spicy rain.
Generally, the economics of nuclear involve a very large upfront cost followed by cheap energy afterwards. Maintaining existing plants usually makes sense but building new ones should only be done with careful consideration of other options in the long term. On demand power can be used to supplement a grid so having a variety of options makes sense.
But it seems like everybody just picks up one thing as their pet solution and tries to promote it in absolute terms, which doesn't really make sense. Different environmental conditions call for different solutions, and imperfect options can still have a use case. There isn't really a "best."
You are missing out on the very long tail of waste disposal and treatment and the associated costs and risks.
QAA podcast has a pretty~bleak~ good episode on it here
The long term cost of nuclear is by far the highest, unless we actually figure out a no maintenance storage method or other way to get rid of the waste. It's cheap in the moment, but effectively taking on a debt for a very long time. Not that dissimilar to fossil fuels, really. And just like with fossil fuels, the costs are socialized, because whatever company is responsible for the waste probably won't be around in 100, 500, or 1000 years.
This is a misunderstanding of radioactive material. The atoms already exist & they are already spread all throughout the world. Building a reactor allows us to harness the energy of atoms decaying in a useful way.
As for the end product France is able to recycle up to 96% of spent fuel. The remaining 4% is being prepped & placed back in the ground at a site they are currently building.
If you want to read more this Stanford student wrote a well cited paper.
http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2024/ph241/friedman2/
Or you can read this this science insite article.
https://scienceinsights.org/what-does-france-do-with-nuclear-waste/
indeed. and the fuel gets concentrated and after it is spent and no longer usable, you can buy the fuel pellets on a keychain, yes?
Stop framing it as a dichotomy.
People when they hear nuclear industry propaganda.
People when they hear fossil fuel industry propaganda.
-"But solar panels destroy the environment!!1!"
Nuclear industry propaganda? Lol, lmao even
Outside a few specialized company, nuclear industry doesn't even exist
Where else does the utterly false idea that nuclear waste is a solved problem come from, then?
Exactly. As if a poison that last longer than humans can plan for - or even realistically imagine - could ever be a solved problem.
Dont touch my propaganda 😡
Mom says it’s my turn on the propaganda.
Indestructible is a keyword in Magic the Gathering. I do not see it working the same way in engineering.
https://practical.engineering/blog/2025/4/15/when-kitty-litter-caused-a-nuclear-catastrophe
Supposedly China exported 68GW of photovoltaics in March 2026, which appears to be a bit above the total nuclear capacity of France.
Obviously not a straight comparison because panels don't work at night and etc etc but it seems like nuclear is being totally blotted out by renewables. I suppose that makes the scaremongering about waste even sillier because we aren't going to need many of these plants anyway.
But I don't see the waste coming out of the car, and I f I can't see it it doesn't exist. Well... I haven't actually seen nuclear waste but I assume they are green glowing rods that give me cancer if I get to close
I am not sure if that's sarcasm, but spent reactor fuel doesn't glow, and it never glows green. Any glow you're going to see is cherenkov radiation, and that's a soft blue glow. But you wouldn't see that either.
But you wouldn't see that either.
Not until it's too late
Nuclear is only safe under the constant management of a stable global society. We don’t live in a stable society so I don’t support nuclear.
Nuclear is only safe under the constant management of a stable global society.
Fossil fuels aren't safe even with constant management and a stable global society.
It's very hard to kill millions with solar panels
@naught101@lemmy.world @OwOarchist@pawb.social @Memes@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Sadly, solar panels do kill thousands of birds/avians.
[...] the largest solar power plant in the world, Ivanpah Solar Plant, located in the Mojave Desert in California, is believed to be responsible for at least 6,000 bird deaths each year, as the birds can suffer severe burns or become incinerated if they fly too close to the 40-foot towers that concentrate sunlight from five square miles of solar panels. These numbers are likely an underestimation, as the sight of birds and insects rapidly immolated as they soar too close to the towers, which can reach temperatures of 1000 degrees Fahrenheit
(Source)
Even when birds don't get burnt alive, the reflection of the sunlight from the surface of solar panels is akin to pointing lasers at airplanes and ending up blinding the pilots.
And as I've been an owl-biased person lately, I'd say owls are likely going to be the most affected because their breathtakingly beautiful deep eyes are larger than most avians, therefore having more surface area for the reflected sunlight to blind them, and because they're so reliant on their accurate vision to hunt, blindness will definitely mean death...
I don't know why solar panels have to be this reflective, (yeah, I know, there's a glass protecting the semiconductor from the elements, still) it even seems counterintuitive because you're losing lots of energy in form of reflected light. Ideally, solar panels should be akin to a vantablack, totally dark and, therefore, as fully light-absorbing as possible, practically a human-made optical black hole.
Still, solar energy seems gazillion times better than both nuclear and fossil fuels, because some things that were buried by Mother Nature should stay buried, and both nuclear and fossil fuels digs things that Mother Nature have been burying for ages. Should nuclear power facilities need more nuclear fuel, there are currently 12,187 (as of 2025, maybe an outdated number from Federation of American Scientists) potential sources for the carcinogenic hot stone eager to be dismantled by way more sane scientists instead of being used by "M.A.D." (iykwim) hominids in green garments and boots.
That 6000 figure is from a solar thermal plant, not solar PV. Solar panel reflections are nothing like lasers. And owls would not be affected because they fly at night...
I don’t know why solar panels have to be this reflective
Because those types of solar plants don't use photovoltaic cells, they use mirrors to focus sunlight to a point where the resulting heat is used to generate electricity. So, same basic effect as using a magnifying glass to start a fire to anything that passes through that.
They're also mostly falling out of favour, losing out to photovoltaic panels. Which are simpler to make, operate, and are vastly cheaper to boot, while also not being reflective (They are protected by a layer of glass, so there's a minimum amount of reflection simply because they're smooth, but they're not mirrors).
This has been debunked again and again. What a stupid take.
@Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com @Memes@lemmy.dbzer0.com
What exactly are you referring to? My comment is lengthy and mentions a lot of things.
Solar panels kills birds.
We already debunked wind turbines kill birds.
The thing is, that yes, even windows kills birds.
You know what kills birds 1.000 times more than all three combined?
Cats.
It's an invented "discussion" to blame renewables. You don't think oil&gas kills way way way way more?
birds/avians
lol, why specify both here? Tell me more about these non-bird avians and/or these non-avian birds...
I’d say owls are likely going to be the most affected
Aren't they only active at night, though? The solar farm should pose no hazard at all during the night. Can't be blinded or immolated by reflected sunlight when the sun's not out.
@OwOarchist@pawb.social @Memes@lemmy.dbzer0.com
lol, why specify both here? Tell me more about these non-bird avians and/or these non-avian birds…
At least to me, an ESL (English as a second language) person, both words carry different meanings:
Birds = Passeriformes, such as corvids, mockingbirds, parakeets, etc...
Avians = everyone else from Aves clade, especially the "larger" ones, such as owls, falcons, eagles and swans, but also hawks and chickens.
In Portuguese (I'm Brazilian) we have "pássaros" and "aves", which are definitely going to refer to different winged beings, and owls aren't passerines, therefore they'd be more of an "ave" than a "pássaro".
Both of these categories, however, have species that are equally going to be affected by solar panels, hence my distinction and inclusiveness.
Aren’t they only active at night, though?
That's the beauty of Strigiformes: there are lots of misconceptions about owls in what our common sense believes. There are diurnal and crepuscular owls, such as the northern hawk-owl (Surnia ulula) and the burrowing owl (Athene cunicularia, although she isn't used to fly as higher as her cousins because, and here's another common sense belief to be broken, she doesn't nest on trees and other higher places, she nests underground).
Many owls are crepuscular, active during dawn/dusk when the sun has a lower apparent angle. Depending on the solar panels' position and arrangement (e.g. solar panels facing slightly north/south), this means a sunlight reflected towards the far horizon instead of reflecting upwards. Given how the sunlight during dawn/dusk is fainter, yeah, it's not gonna burn the avians/birds, however it'll definitely blind them if they're flying towards the solar panels, because they'll be looking directly at a focused and magnified sunglare.
And even the so-defined "nocturnal owls" may meet the sunlight, either by being faced by danger/annoyance during sleep/roosting (such as corvids harassing owls or evil hominids attacking owls, among other situations requiring the owl to wake up and flee) or (a guess of mine) by getting active earlier during summer (when sunset happens later than usual), then they'll face the same problem as their crepuscular/diurnal cousins.
But not impossible, if we try.
Actually, solar does kill more than nuclear. Installation, mining, and refinement do have hazards. Nuclear is safer than those, including nuclear disasters, which are more unlikely every time one happens.
Actually, solar does kill more than nuclear.
In raw numbers, sure. But that's because solar installations are far, far more common than nuclear installations.
Instead of looking at raw totals, you need to look at deaths/injuries per gigawatt-hour produced. Looking at it that way, I don't think solar would come out as the more dangerous of the two.
(Deer kill more people than bears. But that's only because people meet and interact with deer much more often. I'd rather be locked in a cage with a deer than locked in a cage with a bear.)
Also, if you're going to include mining and refinement in solar panels, you'd better be including mining and refinement for nuclear plants as well. Not just for the nuclear fuel, but also for all the metals, concrete, and other materials that are necessary to build a plant and deal with its eventual waste products.
To be fair, though, that would be extremely difficult to calculate. Suppose a miner working in a copper mine gets run over by a mine truck on the job. Most of the copper from that mine goes toward making copper wires. A tiny portion of those wires were used in the construction of a nuclear power plant. Another tiny portion of those wires were used to connect solar panels. And the vast majority of those wires were used for different purposes entirely, not related to power generation of any kind. Which energy source gets counted for that worker's death?
That's what I meant, in raw energy numbers. Solar just barely squeeks ahead now it seems, but nuclear was ahead for a while. Nuclear would be if the scale were larger, but we've done everything possible to make it expensive and hard to build. They're actually relatively cheap in raw construction, but we've built laws and systems to increase the price so it doesn't out compete dirty energy (they're the ones with the money, so they write the laws).
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh
Also, if you're going to include mining and refinement in solar panels, you'd better be including mining and refinement for nuclear plants as well.
It does. It's just a much smaller amount required.
Yes but historically speaking, an oil fire doesn’t render the area immediately uninhabitable for thousands of years.
As long as we don’t light oil on fire constantly all over the planet and let it burn for decades, we’re gonna be fine.
an oil fire doesn’t render the area immediately uninhabitable for thousands of years
But the production and burning of it releases just as much radiation and causes just as much cancer. (Actually more.)
Historically speaking, the cumulative effect of lighting oil on fire is set to make the entire planet uninhabitable, permanently.
Nuclear doesn't either. It's just that we're much safer (and made more scared) or radiation. We're overly cautious. It's actually been shown that a little bit more radiation than background may actually be good for you.
Three mile island, Fukushima, and Chernobyl are pretty much safe. (Chernobyl is slightly more dangerous, because there's the potential for hot debris, but that's unlikely at this point. If you're careful, it's safe. If people were to live there, it'd be safe wherever they are, as they'd ensure there's no hot objects.) The last reactor at Chernobyl shut down in 2000, meaning they were working there and operating it for decades safely after the disaster. Three mile Island was operating until 2019 safely, and since there have been plans made to bring it back online.
That feels kind of all-or-nothing. Environmental issues are part of the problem destabilizing societies. Overall, the poisoning of the environment is much worse and much less contained with fossil fuels than with nuclear power. Distant future societies might have no knowledge of nuclear storage sites and a few people might even die before they realize they need to stop breaking into the underground barrels. But a lot more people will die from the environmental havoc that we're causing with fossil fuels. And they can't just stay away from the barrels to avoid that one.
Just to be clear, I think wind and solar (and geothermal where appropriate) are the best ways to get off of fossil fuels. They've gotten a lot cheaper than nuclear so it doesn't make much sense to build new reactors. But it also doesn't make much sense to shut them down if nuclear waste is the only issue.
I agree but also think that we should build both nuclear and renewables. Because we dont have much time left.
Just like a financial portfolio, our energy ecosystem is only safe if it's well and proper distributed. Excess energy can be stored, or simply routed to ground, programs that incentivise energy use during unexpected peak periods already exist, there's absolutely no reason not to over-plan and engineer it just to avoid shit like what goes down in Texas almost every year...
I like your thoughtful take and that you didn’t leap to the assumption that I support fossil fuels. Renewables are the way, and we had renewables (windmills and such) before we had electricity.
...O ...K ... nothing is going to destabilize global society as badly as the collapse of crop growing cycles due to fossil-fuel-induced climate change.
Anything we can do to reduce burning fossil fuels is going to improve global stability.
Yes, but why waste time and effort with a stopgap like Nuclear when we can just go to wind and solar that we already have the tech for?
Bonus, the more its used, the more we learn, the better it gets for efficiency and ability to manufacture.
I think you have it backwards, wind and solar are the stopgap.
Wind and solar require heavy mining of non-renewable, relatively rare resources that will likely run out in a couple generations. Solar panels and wind turbines have a short lifespan of a few decades, and we aren't good at recycling.
Look at the world leader in clean energy- China - and their long term plans. They are heavily invested in solar, for now, as a stopgap measure as they develop thorium reactor power and other related technologies.
I addressed this in another comment, but basically wind and solar both require large amounts of open land to generate significant amounts of electricity. They aren't a complete solution, they simply can't fit everywhere.
Most places that can't fit in fields of solar arrays or wind turbines are reliant on fossil fuels for electricity, and those circumstances aren't going to change anytime soon. The best solution right now would be to replace the coal and gas plants with nuclear.
Both things can be true. The comment you're responding to literally does not mention FF.
The comment you’re responding to literally does not mention FF.
Does it need to? That's the alternative we're talking about, whether it's mentioned specifically or not.
Wind and solar are great and have become so good in the past decade that they're more cost effective than everything else, but they still aren't applicable everywhere, most often due to real estate requirements. Nuclear reactors are bulky too, but nothing compared to the amount of space you need for solar arrays or wind turbines to generate an equivalent amount of electricity. For the places where wind and solar can't fit, it's fossil fuels or nuclear.
That's the alternative you're talking about. Straw men are such mark-ass bitches, right?
What alternative do you propose?
Solar and wind?
I already addressed those.
Not really, no. It is safe pretty much regardless. On-site caskets are bomb proof and contain waste safe enough that it wouldn't make sense for a dirty bomb. Though if you really care then we can just stop considering mountains sacred and instead starting burying the waste as we have planned and fully considered all pros and cons towards 70 years ago.
fossil fuels aren't safe no matter the state of global society
Why have all safety measures when half do and we save money for shareholders!
I really hate people thinking all of nuclear is light water reactors
And how is the nuclear waste supposed to get there? Car, truck, or train will still have a spill
Let's not pretend other fossil fuels don't have the same problem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_spill
Also, in the best case scenario, none of that shit goes back into the ground. We just burn it, or turn it into plastic, and it stays in our lives forever.
I don’t think you understand how durable and well sealed those casks are. It’s not fall off the side of the train and break open kind of tough, it’s get hit by the train going full speed and the train loses kind of tough.
I’m fairly certain I read they can also withstand a direct blast from fairly sizable munitions, like state actor missile size.
https://youtu.be/1LVqkhpp0wQ
Old video demonstrating that nuclear waste casks can survive severe accidents, such as a train crashing at 80 mph
Nuclear only makes economic sense if you also have a military use for the fuel.
If you dont have nuke warheads, or subs that depend on it...it makes no economic sense.
[citation needed]
Name a single Nuclear power plant that was profitable over its whole live cycle without depending on state money for at least one of the phases, from planing it to tearing it down and long time storage of the waste till its save again.
I asked you for a citation dummy
Common sense. And if u to lazy to find me a single profitable nuclear powerplant...dont call me the dummy.
Do you think people are running around just knowing the names and financial details of every nuclear power installation on the planet?
How about this. No googling or looking up a reference here, just be honest.... Name 1 coal power station.
Nobody here is trying to defend coal lmao
The point is not to defend coal. The point is that the information you are asking for casually is not something that the typical person has on hand (nor is it easily researched). The request is patently ridiculous.
Strange? How can that be if Nuclear is "so cheap"....sooo many power plants and u cant find a single one that isnt burning state money to run or clean up after.
Meanwhile solar is so profitable now that even for home usage its worth it to normal people....oh and its also decentral how nice.
Digging shit out of the earth that will poision everthing with radioactive dusts miles around the mine...then using it for a while before not having a solution to store it....makes only sense when you have to run a submarine for national security or a deepspace probes power generator.
But that itself would be very expensive so why no offload some of the mining and refining cost onto the civilians....
Insufferable, it’s almost as if you come across as a German
Canada has entered the chat.
I hate the fact that theres no better alternate to nuclear.
Except, you know, solar and wind power, which are like and order of magnitude cheaper and way faster to build.
What if we put the nuclear reactor up in space, really far away, then used devices of some kind of revieve the energy it transmits to us via low level radiation?
Right... I suppose next you're going to say it could be one of those fusion reactors that are always just 10 years away!
There a really big one only 8 minutes away
Please do not make Fuel Rods from God.
Dirty kinetic impactor is the name of my garrage band.
Without heat dissipation, nuclear reactors go boom.
If we’re using space, I think there be even more feasible to use solar and hydrogen.
I was just referring to the sun in a non technical way.
Ohhh. I get it.
I was thinking more like a large fusion reactor using gravitational containment. I don't think the temperature will be too much of an issue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runit_Island
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site#Cleanup_under_Superfund
what marvel / dc universe do you think that the refuse of nuclear fission lives in ?
More people have died from radiation poisoning due to Coal mining and coal plants than the entirety of all nuclear incidents and weapon uses world wide.
No one here is advocating for fossil fuels
Well if you're advocating against the cheapest and safest fuel source, one does assume you're advocating for fossil fuels; especially when you are explicitly repeating their propaganda.
Just a reminder, Green Peace, the primary reason many 'environmentalists' are against Nuclear power and are so misinformed on the subject, was paid tens of millions of dollars by the oil and coal lobbies to spread said propaganda.
You’re the one buying the propaganda “cheapest and safest”
Ah yes the 'nuclear lobby' that spends hundreds of billions of dollars a year in propaganda. You sure are very smart for recognizing them.
The total number of people that have died in relation to anything nuclear, not just nuclear power, but research, weapons testing, and weapons use, is less than the number of people that died due to fossil fuels last year. It's also lower than the number of people that have died producing and installing solar panels.
The total cost per kWh for nuclear is also still lower than any other method of baseline power generation. This includes Solar + Battery configurations, regardless of the battery technology.
so whats your idea? Should we close all nuclear reactors because its too dangerous?
No, my plan is to force corrupt politicians through a coarse seive until we can continue having a society. What's yours?
Please and thank you.
