this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2023
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Neoliberal
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Free trade, open borders, taco trucks on every corner. Latest discussion thread: April 2024 **We in m/Neoliberal support:** - Free trade and competitive markets
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Personally, I think this is a good development because we need sources of clean energy, and nuclear power generates a lot of it!
There is always the problem of nuclear waste, but we have ways to safely contain and dispose of it. Until we find a way to generate energy via fusion, nuclear power is the cleanest way to generate energy in the quantities we need it.
I’m not worried about waste so much as logistics. It takes a LOT of money and many years to spin up a nuclear power plant. How many windmills, solar panels, heat pumps etc could be leveraged for the same time and cost? Not saying it’s either/or just that it will take a spectrum of tech.
This is fair. But with proper planning I think it can be overcome. We can use wind and solar in the short term, but why not plan with nuclear in the long term?
We already have guidelines for 200 year buildings - many skyscrapers, for example, fall into this category. With proper maintenance, they could last much longer (the Roman Pantheon, though much smaller and less complex than a skyscraper, is an example of this.) Why not try this with a nuclear power plant? (Note: I don’t actually expect a power plant to last thousands of years, I am only pointing out we can build to last if we put our mind to it.)
I think our society has shifted far too much towards the short term, and we need to start investing in infrastructure projects that might only benefit subsequent generations.
Wind, solar and other renewable sources need to be the long term future. Nuclear can only serve as a in-between, as they are not absolutely safe as history has proven and from a cost perspective it makes zero sense to build new ones today. Even for the running plants I don't think a single country actually did successfully establish a safe final disposal side, so as of now, it's still theoretical that we can create and maintain them. And one we can, I am not sure why people are hyped to have nuclear waste below their feet, especially when there are already a lot of concerning cases where leaks in temporary storage was actually not disclosed by governments and shrugged away as "probably still safe". Sure, the idea is thatbfinal storage sites can't leak but... temporary ones also were not supposed to simply leak.
Why would we risk another Chernobyl or Fukushima when wind and solar is safe?
I really don't get why people are suddenly so hyped about nuclear power when we have alternatives, especially since a lot of them you can install on your own property to safe money and be a bit more independent.