Re:Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental E...
by q1w2 on Friday April 21, 2023 @06:34PM
(#35661154)
They are referring to the leaking of tritium, which, while "technically" radioactive, regular water contains some tiny amount of tritium and deuterium naturally. They are barely radioactive, and you can actually buy them on Amazon - they are not regulated.
To say that the reactor is "leaking radioactive material" because of tritium is extremely dishonest.
Re:Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental E...
by pvaldes on Saturday April 22, 2023 @06:51AM
(#35665193)
The problem is that some people are categorically denying the leaks for decades until eventually admitting that "yes of course it leaks but only a little"
And later "yep, it leaks routinely but it does not matter because tritium is safe"
And then "of course we knew from the start that is not totally, totally safe for environment, but fuck nature"
Ending with "as long as we can keep the stream of smoke curtains and cheap excuses so can't be linked with us is not a problem". Hey, maybe is not a real french!
This creates a big lack of credibility problem.
In quantities not relevant to safety. We can detect extremely small amounts of radiation, down to 1.0001% higher than backrgound levels.
- rivers are getting too hot to cool down nuclear plants correctly
Not quite: the flow of rivers was low enough that they would exceed the 28C temperature limit (ostensibly to protect fish, but no adverse impact from higher temperatures has been observed). It was entirely possible to cool the plants, if this restriction were not in place. Perhaps the solution here is to ask for better evidence on the supposed adverse ecological impact of higher river temperatures, and examine whether it outweighs the global catastrophe of greenhouse gas emissions.
- nuclear plants are very unreliable, we almost got out of power this winter and next winter will be equally tough (only an abnormally hot winter avoid cuts...)
Quite the contrary: Nuclear plants have some of the highest capacity factors [1] of any energy source. France's reactors were taken down for maintenance, much of it actually scheduled in advance. This is, intentionally or not, cherry picking a year with a particularly low capacity factor.
- the government wants to simplify control organism and laws around building new plants
Correct, and since nuclear thus far as proven to be one of the safest power sources [2] it's a reasonable change to accelerate the fight against climate change.
Nuclear is one of the few sources of decarbonized energy that is both non-intermittent, and geographically independent. Solar, wind, and hydro, are all either geographically dependent, intermittent, or both. Plans for a grid based on solar and wind almost invariably assume that a nearly-free form of energy storage will be invented in order to make these generation systems feasible. Unfortunately, such as system has yet to be produced. The heat engine made modern industrialized society possible, and it's easier to switch to a different source of heat than to restructure all of society around intermittent energy sources.
1. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/what-generation-capacity
2. https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...