Big Nuclear’s Big Mistake - Linear No-Threshold
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Nuclear is finally looking up from an informal “keep your head down” policy. However, it’s bringing with it a relic – a part of safety culture that is actua...

This may be a “hot” one, considering lots of people do not like anything nuclear. If you would want to know my “bias”, well I have always been “pro nuclear”. So if you want to take this claim with huge mountains of salts, feel free to do so.

Here is a relevant wiki article for radiation hormesis. This is a proposed effect that certain amounts of radiation exposure may even be beneficial instead of harmful as LNT may suggest.

TL;DW for folks who do not want to watch video (I have not included examples or numbers)

  • Radiation from natural sources (like radioactive bananas you eat, or from soil or space) are always present.

  • Most nuclear safety guidelines consider that there are no “safe limits” of exposure to radiation. For example, there are safe limits of some metals in our body, there is no limit for mercury or lead exposure. There is a required amount of vitamins you need, but there is also a limit beyond which they are not safe. Radiation is treated like mercury in guidelines.

  • If it has no safe limits, then due to natural exposure, places with higher background exposure must have naturally higher rates of cancers developing - but the thing is, experiments and data collected does not match.

  • Your body has natural means to repair damage done by radiation, and below a certain limit, your body can withstand (and arguably benefit, see the linked article) the radiation.

  • Over estimating danger due to radiation leads to large scale paranoia, and leads to general public be scared of nuclear disasters, when they are not as bad ast they may seem.

And pre-emptively answering some questions I am expecting to get

  • Do you support nuclear bombs? Hell no. We should stop making all kinds of bombs, not just nuclear.

Are there not better means of renewable energy generation like

  • solar? - no, you still need rare erath metals, you need good quality silicon, and you need a lot of area. Until we have a big “stability” bump in perovskite solar cells, it is not the best way. is it better than fossil fuel? everything is better than fossil fuel for practical purposes.

  • wind? geothermal? - actually pretty good. but limited to certain geographies. if you can make them, they are often the best options.

  • hydro? - dams? not so much. There are places where they kinda make sense, for example really high mountains with barely any wildlife or people. otherwise, they disturb the ecosystem a lot, and also not very resistant to things like earthquakes or flooding, and in those situations, they worsen the sitaution.

  • ricdeh@lemmy.worldEnglish
    23·
    2 days ago

    no, you still need rare erath metals, you need good quality silicon

    That does not compare in the least to the environmental damage and resource depletion that mining uranium causes. Unlike solar or wind power plants, nuclear power plants must constantly be fed a fuel that is only available in limited quantity, while the power source for renewables is realistically infinite (for our purposes). Uranium-235 is way scarcer than natural gas or oil, so power generation through nuclear fission is almost by definition less sustainable than even fossil-fuel power generation.

    Finally, there is the matter of nuclear waste, which accumulates over the lifetime of a power plant and does not get smaller, but rather larger every year that the power plant is in operation. Getting rid of this waste is so difficult because it will radiate for thousands of years, and you can’t guarantee that its containers will last that long, so you need geological structures that are 100% known to remain stable into the far future. These are difficult to find. I want to underline that this problem is already here, and for every new fission power plant you build, it gets worse. There is no reverse direction this process can be taken.

    Thus, I would even go so far to say that this statement of yours: “everything is better than fossil fuel for practical purposes.” Is wrong. Even natural gas would be preferable over nuclear, FAR preferred, in fact. In Germany, nuclear fission was successfully phased out for cleaner natural gas, without adverse effects on power grid stability, and with cost savings in the long run (natural gas comes with its own problems, I am aware, especially with regard to the supply chain, but that is not much different with regard to uranium).

    • sga@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      1·
      18 hours ago

      That does not compare in the least to the environmental damage and resource depletion that mining uranium causes.

      please look up energy density of uranium. yes it still needs to be mined, but it is just so energy rich, that for equivalent energy production, it requires roughly 100x lower mining than coal. and just to say, we have a lot more uranium than coal (or any other fossil fuels, combined).

      Unlike solar

      just a side note, but solar panels have a life expectancy of 20-25 years. they also need replacement. and they can not be recycled well.

      Uranium-235 is way scarcer than natural gas or oil

      just the particular 235 isotope is rare, not all uranium. we do enrichment to concentrate the 235. and uranium is not the only element - there is plutonium, thorium. yes thorium reactors are always 5 years away, but that is partly because there is no interest for building more nuclear.

      geological structures that are 100% known to remain stable into the far future.

      this is kinda a solved problem. you essentially just drill 1 or so km deep, on lands which are far from tectonic boundaries. just put your waste, add cement/or rocks. then bury with dirt you mined. A great solution? no, but it works

      In Germany, nuclear fission was successfully phased out for cleaner natural gas, without adverse effects on power grid stability, and with cost savings in the long run

      which resulted in increased reliance over russia’s cheap oil, which after the ukraine conflict started, meant much increased costs. in same period, france, which has a strong nuclear network, did not have an increased demand.