With climate change looming, it seems so completely backwards to go back to using it again.
Is it coal miners pushing to keep their jobs? Fear of nuclear power? Is purely politically motivated, or are there genuinely people who believe coal is clean?
Edit, I will admit I was ignorant to the usage of coal nowadays.
Now I’m more depressed than when I posted this
There are concerns outside of the list you wrote. For example:
And they’re going for coal in some places because the political situation has made other reliable energy sources unavailable:
Outside of coal, nuclear, and natural gas, there aren’t many options for reliable sources of electricity.
Didn’t the US bomb them, tried to blame Russia at first, and are now trying to blame Ukraine? With friends like that, who needs enemies?
The big problem with nuclear is scalability and infrastructure. The power plants take long to construct and require huge investment. Even if that’s solved and the whole world goes nuclear tomorrow, there’s huge doubts about there even being enough easily minable Uranium. Honestly solar and wind should be the way to go, but then there’s the intermittency issue. Which is an issue fossil fuels don’t have. At this point degrowth is desperately needed to avert the worst effects of global warming.
Blaming Russia was either stupid b/c putting the Nord Stream out of commission hurt Russia, or cynical b/c they thought we’d be stupid enough to buy that story. Blaming Ukraine has a basis in reality. https://www.reuters.com/world/us-had-intelligence-ukrainian-plan-attack-nord-stream-pipeline-washington-post-2023-06-06/ We may well have done it, as Biden promised, in concert with Ukraine or without them. https://www.wsj.com/video/video-biden-says-no-nord-stream-2-if-russia-invades-ukraine/B5942F2D-E4E5-4BD1-8CB3-8816A2ECAF19.html
Look up the stuff Alex Hirsch has been putting out over the last decade.
It’s Gravity Falls, and a background role producing The Owl House. Great shows! The LGBT representation in the latter goes hard, and I love everybody involved pushing back hard on Disney to make it happen.
Anyways, I actually meant Seymour Hersh. I just typed it wrong at first, but I felt compelled to gush about some incredible kids shows with great messages.
The US did it and Norway helped.
Why are people so against nuclear? It doesn’t make any sense.
Nuclear power is a bit like aviation. Statistically, traveling by airliner is the safest way to travel; it’s been over a decade since the last fatal crash of an American-registered airliner. But when a plane does crash, SHEEW BUDDY does it make the evening news.
Nuclear power has that same effect. Statistically, nuclear power has a fucking amazing safety record. Very, very few people are hurt or killed in the nuclear power industry, especially compared to the fossil fuel industry, and the second hand smoke factor is non-existent as long as the plant is operating correctly. But as soon as it does go wrong, SHEEW BUDDY does it make the evening news. And it has gone wrong, multiple times, in spectacular fashion.
A major concern I have about building new nuclear power plants is my government is trying as hard as it can to steer into the hard right anti-science anti-regulation of industry space, and successful, safe operation of nuclear power plants requires strong understanding of science and heavy government oversight. The fact that we have no plan whatsoever for the nuclear waste we’re already generating, and that no serious solution is on the horizon indicates to me that we are already not in a place where we should be doing this.
There’s also the concern that nuclear power programs are often related to manufacturing fuel for nuclear weapons. That that’s what the megalomaniacal assholes that are somehow “in charge” actually want nuclear power plants for, and megawatts of electricity to run civilization with is a cute bonus I guess.
Nuclear is probably the safest form of power when proper protocols are put in place but it’s hard to do that when the largest country in Europe (Russia, both by size and population) is currently in a war
What is safe on Nuckear Power Plants?
It’s enough for hundredthousand of years, if only one time happens a SuperGAU. Only once is enough.
And the nuclear waste is dangerous as fuck for also hundredthousand of years.
And you can produce 30, 40 or maybe 50 years electric energy, and it needs the same time to decontaminate and dismantle a nuclear powerplant. And before it takes 20, 30 or mor years, to build such a plant… This is not cheap, not safe and not sustainable.
I don’t trust the US Federal government to properly dispose of it. The waste from the Manhattan Project is buried in a landfill, a landfill that’s on fire.
The problem isn’t fire, it’s that the waste at Hanford has leached into the soil and a plume of it is headed towards the Hanford Reach on the Columbia River. There’s a mitigation plan in place and it looks like it’s ultimately going to work, but it’s very expensive and not something that anyone wants to see happen again.
I was referring to the Westlake Superfund site in St Louis right next to the Missouri river
Fair play. That said, please do look up Hanford. It’s way bigger than Westlake and is potentially a much bigger problem, though granted, Westlake is problematic as well.