2229
Young climate activist tells Greenpeace to drop ‘old-fashioned’ anti-nuclear stance
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
2229 points (94.2% liked)
World News
38707 readers
3903 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News [email protected]
Politics [email protected]
World Politics [email protected]
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Bullshit. Nuclear waste (more precisely, spent fuel that can be reprocessed for new fuel or other useful radionuclids) is the only waste we have actual good solutions for. It's not an engineering problem, we know very well how to safely dispose of the small amount of ultimate nuclear waste.
All the other waste, including waste from producing new and retiring old solar panels and wind turbines, basically just gets thrown into the landscape with no containment whatsoever. And some of that stuff is toxic, some will never degrade (plastics used in composite materials the wind turbine blades and towers are made of).
Plus, if you only used nuclear energy throughout you life, the amount of ultimate waste can literally fit into a coke can. That's how efficient and energy dense it is.
What's this amazing waste disposal method you're convinced exists? Last I checked, the waste will still be around for at least a millennia and the only process we have to deal with it is bury it in a hole with a sign that says 'BAD' in a way we hope future generations can still interpret.
Last you checked? When was that?
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/02/nuclear-waste-us-could-power-the-us-for-100-years.html
"Significantly less" is not defined. Is it 80% less? 50? 30? 10? The guy they're quoting, who has a vested interest in selling us this tech, sure doesn't say and uses the qualifier 'can be'. In fact, I can't seem to find that information anywhere, let alone this article.
Irregardless, there's still waste that will take hundreds (thousands?) of years to decay. The solution is renewable energy.
You're obviously not willing to change your mind, so this will be my last response. Googling "breeder reactor" will show you plenty of peer reviewed papers and findings from past experimental reactors that can answer your questions.
Apart from that, the point of the technology is obviously not to replace renewables, it's to
Especially point 2, you are obviously and rightfully worried about nuclear waste - breeder reactors are the solution, the only one we currently know of. What else do you suggest we should do with that waste? Store it for millennia?
It's not that I'm not willing to change my mind, it's that I'm hugely suspicious of the recent push for Nuclear. Energy companies dumped massive amounts of money into the technology and want to see a return on those failed investments. So I am skeptical that there's not some astroturfing and/or disinformation going on.
That said, when I was doing the research, I was looking up Fast Fusion, not Breeder Reactors so I'll look into it.
Also, your point about using nuclear to phase out of coal and into renewable has merit, but I think there's a danger that we get stuck on nuclear as it becomes easier/cheaper than coal and so development in green tech, like batteries, languishes for another four decades or whatever.
Anyways, I'll look into breeder reactors and, who knows, maybe have a change of heart (maybe).
Kyle Hill has a very educational video about this if you're interested:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=4aUODXeAM-k
https://piped.video/watch?v=4aUODXeAM-k
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=4aUODXeAM-k
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Way ahead of you this time, bot. Keep fighting the good fight.
Can't you chuck it back into a reactor and reuse it that way, to help reduce the radioactivity, and get more power back out of it?
We already have more nuclear waste than we have capacity to store. And we arent reusing that nuclear waste. If you wanna become a nuclear engineer and get them to start using it please do, but right now the nuclear waste plan is to bury it for many millenia
Out of sight out of mind, right? Great solution. Coke can? Ummmmmmmmmmm nope.
Where do you think the discarded blade of wind turbine go? 🤔
Not into underground storage for tens of thousands of years
That's precisely where they go—landfills. They're made of non-recyclable glass fiber-plastic composites that won't degrade for millions of years.
Landfills arent underground, and theyll break down within a millenia. Well the plastic anyway. Then youre left with recyclable glass if it isnt crushed into sand first
Landfills not being underground is even worse (but normally they are buried under soil when they go unused).
While the plastics degrade mechanically, being reduced into small particles, chemically they are not. They just turn into microplastics which I'm sure you're aware is a huge problem.
With the small amount of ultimate nuclear waste that cannot be reprocessed further, the solution is simple: drill a km deep shaft into the bedrock, place them at the bottom, fill the shaft with rubble and cement. Done. No-one's going to accidentally dig them up and they pose absolutely no threat to anyone. The finns are doing something like this as we speak.