It is not the top one in the typical usage of the word “nuclear energy.” Sure, it is nuclear energy, but that normally refers to electrical infrastructure, not nuclear weapons. Nuclear electricity is pretty much always just heating water up in a safe and controlled manner, and using that to spin a turbine.
Nuclear plant accidents have happened tho. Remember Fukushima? It was 13 years ago, not that long. It didn’t strait up explode like a nuclear bomb, and neither did Chernobyl, but still; contamination is a pretty big deal. You can argue that the risk isn’t that bad or that fossil energy plants also have risks; but you can’t just dismiss it as a superstition.
The idea of an explosion is. That’s what this thread is about. It’s not just about meltdowns, which, like you said, is very low risk, and lower than ever from what we’ve learned in the past.
Fukushima? It was 13 years ago, not that long. It didn’t strait up explode like a nuclear bomb, and neither did Chernobyl, but still;
fukushima was a BWR design, put on the coast of a place known for having tsunamis, and wasn’t properly equipped with emergency generators (they flooded, oopsies) which they couldn’t get to, in order to service the reactor, due to the roads being fucking yeeted.
Literally any other plant on earth is going to have a better outcome.
Humanity, or at least written scripture, is roughly 10,000 years old. So if you take humanity = earth, then yes it’s approximately true. But also, it’s an incredibly egoistic viewpoint because earth is not just humanity.
Edit: by humanity, I mean human culture and not so much human biology.
how many cancers have they witnessed from the likes of coal power? Or things like asbestos? Shit like arsenic, or worse, lead. They probably have a significant IQ drop from leaded fuel, assuming they’re american.
Sure, nuclear energy is valid and all, but you sound like an absolute spanner…
If you want to argue that nuclear energy has its place, maybe don’t ridicule people who remember how much of an issue the last major nuclear meltdown was (and partially is).
sure, like corners are cut in every industry including renewables (which have a higher accident rate even). yes a nationalized nuclear power program is less perversely incentivised. if you look at countries where nuc is accepted more you wont find insane accident rates nor are plants bombs.
I heard that Fukushima was problematic because non-engineers thought it would be easier cheaper?) to put some of the critical infrastructure near the sea rather than on the hill…
I heard that Fukushima was problematic because non-engineers thought it would be easier cheaper?)
fukushima was problematic because literally everything in the chain of safety that should’ve happened, either didn’t or was ignored, due to callous stupidity.
If literally any one thing had gone differently, there’s a good chance it wouldn’t have been that bad.
Critical? Yes but there are a few different kinds of critical. Critical to the power supply? Ofc. Critical as in potential environmental disaster? Some, dams are 1 example.
Sometimes transportation is the cause of the potential of an environmental disaster like gas pipes. Those are a potential wildfire. Tbh, badly maintained high voltage over the ground wires have caused huge disaster too.
Station safety is so overboard, that we only had like three meltdowns or so, and only some hundreds of thousands of people killed by premature cancer deaths as a result of them and some million or so permanently displaced.
But surely after the next event we will have learned and then it will be totally safe. Like they said after Three Miles Island. And like they said after Chernobyl. And like they said after Fukushima.
more like a few thousand ever, if you are really really conservative tens of thousand, though the methodology to get there is unscientific. tmi killed nobody, fukushima will have killed nobody. meanwhile people falling off roofs installing solar or accidents working on wind are much more common. keep doing solar and wind, but your perception about nuclear is wholly irrational and unfounded.
have we built and RBMK reactors since chernobyl? Have we built and confusing and badly maintained reactors since TMI (that weren’t legally operating btw) have we built any BWR reactors in bad places, with no concern for safety since fukushima?
Did people during the concept and design phase of these anticipate them causing disasters?
Did the people who operate them adhere to best safety practices, maintenance and regulations?
Did the regulatory authorities ensure that there would be no disaster possible through enforcing said regulations, in particular regarding location specific concerns such as Tsunamis in Fukushima?
As long as you have the same human characters in the same economic structures in the same administrative structures, there is no reason to be confident, that these disasters will not happen again.
Did people during the concept and design phase of these anticipate them causing disasters?
in terms of the RBMK? Yes, it was noted in the design specifications that it gets particularly unstable at low power levels due to xenon poisoning. The operators were also aware that they were operating outside of design spec, and not following the recommended operating procedure. They had also remove WAY more control rods than ever should’ve been removed.
In every possible definition of it, they fucked up in literally every possible way.
Did the people who operate them adhere to best safety practices, maintenance and regulations?
in what way? In most cases, the vast majority of them in fact, yes. This is why only a handful of reactor plants have had issues like this, and the vast majority are operating perfectly fine until this day. Safety practices, maintenance, and regulations are a problem in every industry, so unless you want to argue we should stop doing everything because “bad things happen sometimes” this isn’t really an argument unfortunately.
If you need a better example, just look at nuclear powered submarines, there has never been an accident. Including all of the various sinkings that have happened throughout the years.
Did the regulatory authorities ensure that there would be no disaster possible through enforcing said regulations, in particular regarding location specific concerns such as Tsunamis in Fukushima?
So in this case it’s more complicated. Japanese culture is a little different to western culture, so this was ultimately a failure of culture, and you can still see the effects of this today with how TEPCO handles itself. At the time nuclear regulation was extremely lax, due to how “formal” it was, so that was the ultimate cause of this problem, but again, this happens in literally every industry.
As long as you have the same human characters in the same economic structures in the same administrative structures, there is no reason to be confident, that these disasters will not happen again.
as long as you have people, and capital, then people should not do anything ever in the potential scenario that somebody gets hurt, or worse, injured, or even maybe killed in an event that shouldn’t have otherwise happened* FTFY
And to be clear, the human impact of nuclear energy, INCLUDING all of these disasters is STILL lower than coal, gas, or oil, and on par, if not better than solar, and especially wind.
Chernobyl was a ridiculous level of negligence on the part of the technicians working at a plant with a very unsafe design.
Fukushima was a reasonably safe reactor design with terrible (and noted as such decades before the meltdown) site designs which could be described as “designed to fail”.
You could argue that lessons have been learned from both of those, and Three Mile Island, and safer designs are the result. Or you could argue that Fukushima clearly shows that people shouldn’t be involved in such high-risk projects because they will cut corners that will inevitably lead to disasters. If the second is your stance, take a look around. There are plenty of projects with similar risks in other fields all the time.
Here’s a list of industrial disasters. Take your pick of the ones that count as engineering or negligence (and Chernobyl was at least as much negligence as engineering) and tell me how many you get to.
Of course, we haven’t discussed what kind of risk we’re talking about. And is it better to have thousands of low-impact high-risk activities or one or two high-impact low-risk activities? Because, make no mistake, nuclear has cost less in human lives per unit of energy than any other power generation method we have. And hydroelectric has as profound an impact on the environment as nuclear fallout, it just tends to make some nice beaches and fishing so it isn’t negative, right?
that’s the thing though, the exponential chain reaction isn’t possible.
The problem is that when fuel breaks the strictly controlled fuel rod environment, it stops being cooled properly, and regulating it becomes more interesting (not impossible, there are some clever solutions out there, look at metal cooled reactors for example) and as a result, the spicy particle generation tends to break containment, which is why we have things like PCVs, which contain the corium long enough to at least prevent the elephants foot troll, which is then contained by the secondary containment (the building around it) which is also contained by the rest of the building, surrounding the containment building.
It’s pretty hard to fuck up a reactor. Even harder when the idle state of the reactor is safe, as is with metal cooled reactors. Those are some of the most promising designs, because you can literally just do nothing with them, and nothing bad happens.
It is not the top one in the typical usage of the word “nuclear energy.” Sure, it is nuclear energy, but that normally refers to electrical infrastructure, not nuclear weapons. Nuclear electricity is pretty much always just heating water up in a safe and controlled manner, and using that to spin a turbine.
deleted by creator
Until something goes wrong and it is not safe and controlled anymore. You know, because of the whole exponential chain reaction thing.
So do you still believe in bloodletting to cure colds or the earth being 10,000 years old?
Nuclear plant accidents have happened tho. Remember Fukushima? It was 13 years ago, not that long. It didn’t strait up explode like a nuclear bomb, and neither did Chernobyl, but still; contamination is a pretty big deal. You can argue that the risk isn’t that bad or that fossil energy plants also have risks; but you can’t just dismiss it as a superstition.
The idea of an explosion is. That’s what this thread is about. It’s not just about meltdowns, which, like you said, is very low risk, and lower than ever from what we’ve learned in the past.
Modern reactor designs have no such problem, hence the reference to ancient science.
fukushima was a BWR design, put on the coast of a place known for having tsunamis, and wasn’t properly equipped with emergency generators (they flooded, oopsies) which they couldn’t get to, in order to service the reactor, due to the roads being fucking yeeted.
Literally any other plant on earth is going to have a better outcome.
Humanity, or at least written scripture, is roughly 10,000 years old. So if you take humanity = earth, then yes it’s approximately true. But also, it’s an incredibly egoistic viewpoint because earth is not just humanity.
Edit: by humanity, I mean human culture and not so much human biology.
so basically, if you define a leaf as a caterpillar, it’s basically the same thing, got it.
yeah, you got it!
sick
My parents have witnessed not one but two nuclear catastrophes in their lifetime. Wtf are you talking about?
how many cancers have they witnessed from the likes of coal power? Or things like asbestos? Shit like arsenic, or worse, lead. They probably have a significant IQ drop from leaded fuel, assuming they’re american.
Sure, nuclear energy is valid and all, but you sound like an absolute spanner…
If you want to argue that nuclear energy has its place, maybe don’t ridicule people who remember how much of an issue the last major nuclear meltdown was (and partially is).
N stiwtosotsotskgsgms
meltdowns do not resemble bombs at all. nor are they really possible either.
On a world where everybody is effraid of nuclear power, station safety is really overboard, and nuclear is super safe.
If everyone accepted nuclear power the same way we accept cars, then you can be sure capitalism would cut corners on nuclear safety…
(Source: many of my clients are nuclear power plants people)
sure, like corners are cut in every industry including renewables (which have a higher accident rate even). yes a nationalized nuclear power program is less perversely incentivised. if you look at countries where nuc is accepted more you wont find insane accident rates nor are plants bombs.
I heard that Fukushima was problematic because non-engineers thought it would be easier cheaper?) to put some of the critical infrastructure near the sea rather than on the hill…
that is believable, no structures should have been where fukushima was nor with the lacking tsunami protections it had.
fukushima was problematic because literally everything in the chain of safety that should’ve happened, either didn’t or was ignored, due to callous stupidity.
If literally any one thing had gone differently, there’s a good chance it wouldn’t have been that bad.
and yet, cars keep getting safer, and safer every year, they also keep getting larger, and more expensive and harder to repair, but they do get safer.
Interesting.
To be complete, you can’t ignore the dangers of nuclear power plants in a war setting. It sucks but it is what it is.
To be honest, every large power generation systems is critical is a war setting… Don’t tell them about hydro dams!
Critical? Yes but there are a few different kinds of critical. Critical to the power supply? Ofc. Critical as in potential environmental disaster? Some, dams are 1 example.
Sometimes transportation is the cause of the potential of an environmental disaster like gas pipes. Those are a potential wildfire. Tbh, badly maintained high voltage over the ground wires have caused huge disaster too.
Energy is dangerous by nature. But some are more abusable and have longer term consequences than others. In a war setting, you have to assume abuse and plan with the consequences in mind.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaporizhzhia_Nuclear_Power_Plant_crisis it is a reality.
Station safety is so overboard, that we only had like three meltdowns or so, and only some hundreds of thousands of people killed by premature cancer deaths as a result of them and some million or so permanently displaced.
But surely after the next event we will have learned and then it will be totally safe. Like they said after Three Miles Island. And like they said after Chernobyl. And like they said after Fukushima.
more like a few thousand ever, if you are really really conservative tens of thousand, though the methodology to get there is unscientific. tmi killed nobody, fukushima will have killed nobody. meanwhile people falling off roofs installing solar or accidents working on wind are much more common. keep doing solar and wind, but your perception about nuclear is wholly irrational and unfounded.
Coal power plants release more radioactive waste in the environment than nuclear stations.
I’m not sure if this statistics includes meltdowns, but considering their rarity, it may still be true.
Which is why both technologies need to be abolished asap and replaced with cheaper and sustainable renewable energies.
have we built and RBMK reactors since chernobyl? Have we built and confusing and badly maintained reactors since TMI (that weren’t legally operating btw) have we built any BWR reactors in bad places, with no concern for safety since fukushima?
Did people during the concept and design phase of these anticipate them causing disasters?
Did the people who operate them adhere to best safety practices, maintenance and regulations?
Did the regulatory authorities ensure that there would be no disaster possible through enforcing said regulations, in particular regarding location specific concerns such as Tsunamis in Fukushima?
As long as you have the same human characters in the same economic structures in the same administrative structures, there is no reason to be confident, that these disasters will not happen again.
in terms of the RBMK? Yes, it was noted in the design specifications that it gets particularly unstable at low power levels due to xenon poisoning. The operators were also aware that they were operating outside of design spec, and not following the recommended operating procedure. They had also remove WAY more control rods than ever should’ve been removed.
In every possible definition of it, they fucked up in literally every possible way.
in what way? In most cases, the vast majority of them in fact, yes. This is why only a handful of reactor plants have had issues like this, and the vast majority are operating perfectly fine until this day. Safety practices, maintenance, and regulations are a problem in every industry, so unless you want to argue we should stop doing everything because “bad things happen sometimes” this isn’t really an argument unfortunately.
If you need a better example, just look at nuclear powered submarines, there has never been an accident. Including all of the various sinkings that have happened throughout the years.
So in this case it’s more complicated. Japanese culture is a little different to western culture, so this was ultimately a failure of culture, and you can still see the effects of this today with how TEPCO handles itself. At the time nuclear regulation was extremely lax, due to how “formal” it was, so that was the ultimate cause of this problem, but again, this happens in literally every industry.
as long as you have people, and capital, then people should not do anything ever in the potential scenario that somebody gets hurt, or worse, injured, or even maybe killed in an event that shouldn’t have otherwise happened* FTFY
And to be clear, the human impact of nuclear energy, INCLUDING all of these disasters is STILL lower than coal, gas, or oil, and on par, if not better than solar, and especially wind.
Chernobyl was a ridiculous level of negligence on the part of the technicians working at a plant with a very unsafe design.
Fukushima was a reasonably safe reactor design with terrible (and noted as such decades before the meltdown) site designs which could be described as “designed to fail”.
You could argue that lessons have been learned from both of those, and Three Mile Island, and safer designs are the result. Or you could argue that Fukushima clearly shows that people shouldn’t be involved in such high-risk projects because they will cut corners that will inevitably lead to disasters. If the second is your stance, take a look around. There are plenty of projects with similar risks in other fields all the time.
Then name three examples please, that have a Chernobyl level of risk.
Here’s a list of industrial disasters. Take your pick of the ones that count as engineering or negligence (and Chernobyl was at least as much negligence as engineering) and tell me how many you get to.
Of course, we haven’t discussed what kind of risk we’re talking about. And is it better to have thousands of low-impact high-risk activities or one or two high-impact low-risk activities? Because, make no mistake, nuclear has cost less in human lives per unit of energy than any other power generation method we have. And hydroelectric has as profound an impact on the environment as nuclear fallout, it just tends to make some nice beaches and fishing so it isn’t negative, right?
That must be why it’s still advised to not collect and eat wild mushrooms in parts of southern Germany.
Also I didn’t say they resembled bombs.
did i claim chornobyl didnt have any effects or are you just searching for stuff to argue about?
that’s the thing though, the exponential chain reaction isn’t possible.
The problem is that when fuel breaks the strictly controlled fuel rod environment, it stops being cooled properly, and regulating it becomes more interesting (not impossible, there are some clever solutions out there, look at metal cooled reactors for example) and as a result, the spicy particle generation tends to break containment, which is why we have things like PCVs, which contain the corium long enough to at least prevent the elephants foot troll, which is then contained by the secondary containment (the building around it) which is also contained by the rest of the building, surrounding the containment building.
It’s pretty hard to fuck up a reactor. Even harder when the idle state of the reactor is safe, as is with metal cooled reactors. Those are some of the most promising designs, because you can literally just do nothing with them, and nothing bad happens.