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Re:Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas ... by davrosthedalek on Saturday April 06, 2019 @08:13PM (#19593874)
The problem is that "taking all disaster scenarios into account" is easy in hindsight, but maybe not in planning. But I believe that modern nuclear power reactors can be build intrinsically safe. For me, the real problem begins with the treatment of the waste: It's hard to find a good place to store it or reprocess it. Not so much because finding the actual place is hard, but because using that place will face hard opposition of the locals, which leads, at least in a democracy, to a political compromise for the location (to see this in action, look at the story for long term storage in Germany). If I have to chose between nuclear power and democracy, my vote is on the latter.
Re:Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas ... by scarygliders on Saturday April 06, 2019 @08:21PM (#19593907)
The positive thing about hindsight is that we the human race can learn from it and subsequently re-design things like nuclear power plants, amongst a whole swathe of other technology.

Situated in an earthquake/tsunami-prone land? Situate backup generators on higher ground, build tidal walls sufficiently high.

The human race is built upon hindsight. Who was the first human who unfortunately tried eating a poisonous plant? We subsequently learned which plants were safely edible and which were not, for example.

So don't go dissing those who speak with hindsight - we humans stand on the shoulders of those who, unfortunately, lost their lives for everyone else to have the knowledge to progress :/

Re:Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas ... by merb on Sunday April 07, 2019 @06:06AM (#19595881)
> The positive thing about hindsight is that we the human race can learn from it and subsequently re-design things like nuclear power plants, amongst a whole swathe of other technology.

most reactors fail because of humans and money, how can you learn about that? just look at fukushima, some problems were known, but the management have found that such a event cant happen and saved some money here and there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_Nuclear_Powe...

Re:Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas ... by davrosthedalek on Saturday April 06, 2019 @08:25PM (#19593930)
I'm not dissing anybody, but I believe that there are more ways something can go wrong than we have tried yet. Luckily, our progress is not only dependent on hindsight.
Re:Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas ... by scarygliders on Saturday April 06, 2019 @11:17PM (#19594586)
My response was not directed at you personally, but was a response in general for the benefit of everyone reading the topic.

The point being that the human race's total knowledge and subsequent forward movement is based entirely on "that <event> happened therefore <these lessons have been learned and subsequent actions shall be enacted>."

Re:Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas ... by kenneth on Saturday April 06, 2019 @10:45PM (#19594462)
I'm not so sure I'd pick Democracy over nuclear power. Recent years have made me question our idea of the absolute superiority of Democracy. Look at the clusterfuck that is the US "democracy" vs the success of Singapore or even China. The rest of the Western world in Europe is barely better off than the US.

On the other hand, not getting nuclear power deployed ASAP everywhere essentially means the long term destruction of our planet.

So all in all, I don't think it's nearly as clear cut a decision on nuclear vs. democracy, and if forced to choose I may pick the former.

Re:Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas ... by learc83 on Sunday April 07, 2019 @02:05AM (#19595072)
>Look at the clusterfuck that is the US "democracy" vs the success of Singapore or even China

Tell that to the millions of people in concentrations camps because they practice the wrong religion or were born into the wrong ethnic group.

China also produces more carbon dioxide emissions than the US and Europe combined and it's growing at a faster rate, so I don't think you can say that the Chinese model is offering up a better solution for climate change.

Re:Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas ... by microcolonel on Saturday April 06, 2019 @11:26PM (#19594615)
> success of ... China

Not sure I'd take that definition of success. China seems like an absolute failure in the face of almost certain success. The CCP seems to ruin every good thing about the Chinese culture, suppress every positive instinct, and punish every decent behaviour. They absolutely do not care about your silly environmental causes, and if you got in the way of any one of their state-sponsored ecological disasters, you would be crushed like roadkill.

I think nuclear power generation is an excellent idea, but if it is somehow incompatible with representative democracy, there just isn't an option, I guess we have to find some other good way to generate power. Though I think the idea that the two are incompatible is nonsense.

Re:Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas ... by BurningFrog on Saturday April 06, 2019 @09:15PM (#19594139)
The obvious solution is to store it in an unpopulated location. Only 15% of the Earth's surface is populated.

Yes, observant reader, parts of the ocean floor are some of the best candidate areas.

Re:Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas ... by dorgo on Sunday April 07, 2019 @02:10AM (#19595089)
Lol, plant a reactor on the ocean floor and then let's compare cost/kw to wind and solar..
Re:Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas ... by Tomte on Sunday April 07, 2019 @05:31AM (#19595772)
> Only 15% of the Earth's surface is populated

By humans.

Re:Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas ... by BurningFrog on Sunday April 07, 2019 @12:41PM (#19597968)
Humans do wield the most political power to stop nuclear storage, given the traditional passivity of the Lizard people.
Re:Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas ... by wisty on Saturday April 06, 2019 @08:36PM (#19593986)
Look at Australia. We've been very easily influenced by the coal lobby. If there's plenty of jobs and investment flowing in, we'll do the same for nuclear.
Re:Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas ... by elgenie on Sunday April 07, 2019 @12:26AM (#19594818)
Australia has huge amount of unusable dessert on the interior of the continent that could easily be used to store spent nuclear fuel.

It's honestly nuts that they use carbon-emitting fossil fuels at all given their nuclear, solar, and wind potential.

Re:Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas ... by perilunar on Sunday April 07, 2019 @02:25AM (#19595136)
And some of that desert is already mildly radioactive, due to a. uranium deposits, and b. atmospheric nuclear tests in the 50s.
Re:Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas ... by aryehof on Sunday April 07, 2019 @01:07AM (#19594944)
A colonialist perspective, would see it as "unusable desert" ready for nuclear waste. The original owners, Australian Aborigines, would certainly not.
Re:Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas ... by elgenie on Sunday April 07, 2019 @01:35AM (#19595008)
Population density argues otherwise [0]. The aboriginal population of Australia pre-colonization is estimated to be around 750K spread out over nearly 3 million square miles.

There may be differing perspectives about how much of it is unusable, but the debate is between "most of the continent" and "even more than that". A nuclear waste storage facility in an unvisited portion of the outback would rank rather low on the list of bad things happening to the indigenous people of Australia, wouldn't you say?

[0] https://www.mapsofworld.com/australia/population.html

Re:Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas ... by petre on Sunday April 07, 2019 @02:46AM (#19595196)
A considerable part of the waste can be reprocessed and further burned in fast breeder reactors, creating fuel for the conventional ones. The rest can be vitrified and stored. Why we don't already do this? Fear of nuclear proliferation, breeders are quite expensive, anti nuclear sentiment.
Re:Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas ... by rocqua on Sunday April 07, 2019 @02:56AM (#19595228)
What are the radioactive properties of the end product like? E.g. does this produce waste with longer half lives? Lower initial radiation?
Re:Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas ... by DennisP on Sunday April 07, 2019 @06:20AM (#19595924)
The waste from fast reactors is just the fission products. It's about 1% as much waste by volume as conventional reactors. Encased it in glass, and the overall mix will be back to the radioactivity of the original ore in a couple centuries.

The waste from conventional reactors is the fission products plus lots of U238, a fair amount of plutonium, some U235, and various transuranics. The transuranics and plutonium are the really long-lived radioactive waste.

Re:Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas ... by petre on Sunday April 07, 2019 @03:29AM (#19595361)
https://youtu.be/rv-mFSoZOkE

Longer half-lives = less radioactivity.

Re:Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas ... by pfdietz on Sunday April 07, 2019 @07:45AM (#19596198)
We don't reprocess spent fuel because it's a net economic loss to do so. The separated plutonium is sufficiently difficult to turn into fuel that, far from saving money, it costs more than just enriching fresh uranium.
Re:Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas ... by option on Saturday April 06, 2019 @08:15PM (#19593883)
nuclear waste is not as big of a problem as most people think.
Re:Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas ... by rndgermandude on Sunday April 07, 2019 @02:12AM (#19595098)
As long as shit like this happens, I consider it a big problem:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/recycling-atomic-...

Re:Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas ... by davrosthedalek on Saturday April 06, 2019 @08:26PM (#19593937)
Not technically, but politically. Look at the demonstrations against castor transports in Germany.
Re:Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas ... by specialist on Sunday April 07, 2019 @02:31AM (#19595155)
Once Hanford's contaminated ground water reaches the Columbia River, it will render every place downstream uninhabitable. eg Portland OR.

I think that's a big problem.

Re:Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas ... by ansmithz42 on Sunday April 07, 2019 @12:12AM (#19594776)
I will support nuclear if you have a solid solution that will work for the waste for the island living populations of the world. Hawaii for example. If a good solution for the waste can be presented there, we can more effectively move forward. Looking just at large continental areas when solving the problem leaves some holes to fill. Not saying nuclear is bad, it does have a solid cost presentation and a low pollution foot print.
Re:Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas ... by baddox on Sunday April 07, 2019 @12:55AM (#19594909)
I mean, if the world switches largely to nuclear power, it’s probably fine if small populated islands that don’t have anywhere to store nuclear waste keep using whatever power source they’re using now (or switch to other clean energy sources if possible). There’s no reason to let the perfect get in the way of the better.