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A comment on Extinction Rebellion: Nuclear power 'only option' says former spokeswoman. Parent comment

Re:Extinction Rebellion: Nuclear power 'only option' says fo... by coldtea on Friday September 11, 2020 @05:10AM (#24440610)
My reasoning says regarless of the technical merits in theory, people have managed to mess every kind of nuclear reactor setup, have been saying for decades "this time with the new design it's different", and have a horrible track record of nuclear waste storage/disposal (or lack thereof).
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Re:Extinction Rebellion: Nuclear power 'only option' says fo... by yodelshady on Friday September 11, 2020 @05:29AM (#24440722)
My reasoning says we have a few thousand tonnes of solid radioactive waste and a few tens of billions of tonnes of gaseous fossil waste that is wreaking havoc planetwide.

California alone, THIS YEAR alone, has lost an area 3 times the size of the Chernobyl exclusion zone due to weather that should be unusual, but won't be. Australia likewise. Forests near me have been lost due to parasites who should be killed by a frost that never came. This is the new normal. This doesn't end.

Those were the two options, and you knew it. Sorry but my life has been stories of people who claim to be environmental and frustrate every single practical effort to reduce emissions, then claim ignorance of the consequences. You knew.

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Re:Extinction Rebellion: Nuclear power 'only option' says fo... by coldtea on Friday September 11, 2020 @06:19AM (#24441058)
Sorry, but there's a third option: reduce production and consumption (no quick fashion, more durable products, right to repair, penalty on constant ads, etc.), reduce needless transport (e.g. work from home, cut down tourism industry, cut down useless imports/exports, etc.), scale down population growth (this is already happening), and so on.

Unless we curb the endless growth mindset, the world will become a dumpster full of garbage anyway, regardless of the energy source.

And cheapo power will only encourage "more of the same".

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Re:Extinction Rebellion: Nuclear power 'only option' says fo... by wcoenen on Friday September 11, 2020 @05:30AM (#24440732)
I think the concerns around nuclear waste storage are a little overblown. A lot of nuclear waste is stored on site, which is an indication of how incredibly little of it is produced. Compare that to the hundreds of millions of tons (!) of toxic coal ash that are produced and dumped somewhere annually. Surely trading millions of tons of coal ash for a few tons of nuclear waste would be an improvement?
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Re:Extinction Rebellion: Nuclear power 'only option' says fo... by coldtea on Friday September 11, 2020 @06:20AM (#24441074)
Here's a counter example:

a single person getting access to nuclear waste and e.g. spreading it through a city, can kill tens of thousands.

A little more difficult to do with coal ash or conventional waste...

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Re:Extinction Rebellion: Nuclear power 'only option' says fo... by Tepix on Friday September 11, 2020 @05:51AM (#24440895)
You are not considering how long this stuff will be around and how dangerous it is.

That's like comparing a stockpile of bombs and comparing it to a single atomic bomb.

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Re:Extinction Rebellion: Nuclear power 'only option' says fo... by wcoenen on Saturday September 12, 2020 @06:32AM (#24451424)
A dump of coal ash will contain high levels of lead, mercury, cadmium, chromium, arsenic, and selenium. Which will either slowly leach into ground water and water ways (sometimes abruptly by dam failures) or must be kept contained forever.

Heavy metal toxicity may be less dangerous than contamination with radioactive isotopes. But it's not clear to me that the waste rich in heavy metals is preferable if there's millions of times more of it. Because of the smaller scale, radioactive waste could just be put in a big building with some armed guards and regular inspections. Coal ash cannot be kept contained to that degree.

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Re:Extinction Rebellion: Nuclear power 'only option' says fo... by p_l on Friday September 11, 2020 @05:28AM (#24440716)
If you limit to USA, maybe that's true.

France managed to keep all its waste in a small hall thanks to reprocessing. Both Chernobyl and Fukushima involved ancient designs coupled with extra non-reactor errors.

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Re:Extinction Rebellion: Nuclear power 'only option' says fo... by ClumsyPilot on Friday September 11, 2020 @05:54AM (#24440912)
>"mess every kind of nuclear reactor "

There are many reactor designs that have never suffered an accident, and some of them have been around since the 50's. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor

>"horrible track record of nuclear waste"

Compared to what? On a normal year air pollution (combustion waste) kills 500,000 - 2,000,000 people, nuclear waste kills 0.

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Re:Extinction Rebellion: Nuclear power 'only option' says fo... by goatinaboat on Friday September 11, 2020 @05:33AM (#24440755)
a horrible track record of nuclear waste storage/disposal (or lack thereof)

What is this horrible track record of which you speak? Some examples please.

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Re:Extinction Rebellion: Nuclear power 'only option' says fo... by imtringued on Friday September 11, 2020 @05:31AM (#24440743)
I agree. The insistence on new designs is making me feel like they still haven't figured out what the real problem is.
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