Well what happens in a war or apocalypse. Then we won't be able to actively cool the cores. I'm just playing devil's advocate. But isn't this one major reason against nuclear?
this post was submitted on 17 May 2024
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Nuclear plants are designed to withstand a passenger jet flying into them, as well as minor direct missile barrages.
And with modern reactors, they can't really have Chernobyl-style meltdowns — if the cooling system fails, the fission stops by itself with no active involvement required.
I.e. you have to actively keep modern fission reactors going otherwise it stops on its own, as opposed to actively keep it cooled and safe, like the reactors of the 60s/70s.
Nuclear energy has, by a staggering margin, the lowest death toll of any form of energy generation per kW produced. And almost all of these come from Chernobyl, where 31 people died due to the explosion, then a further 46 died due to radiation poisoning from the cleanup.
By far the biggest issue with modern nuclear is the cost and them taking 7-12 years to deploy, as opposed to safety. SMRs are supposed to help with that aspect, but not enough have been rolled out to get a very good picture of that.
Really we have two choices, because renewables can't provide 100% of our energy mix yet:
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build out nuclear as a base energy load and massively decrease fossil fuels in the short term
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ignore nuclear and temporarily build out more fossil fuel plants, hoping that planet-scale energy storage will become cheap and extremely ubiquitous in a very short timeframe.
You rely on the official Russian death tolls for Chernobyl? Are you serious?
if the cooling system fails, the fission stops by itself with no active involvement required.
At that point i already stopped reading since it emphazises that you got no clue.
Yes the fission stops. But the fuel still have to be actively cooled for month or years, because it still produces a lot of heat:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_heat
Guess what happened in Fukushima. The reactors shutted down successfully, but the power supply for the cooling failed due to the flooding.
The "Green" Party rejecting low-carbon energy production. Name a more iconic duo.
The green party candidate in my constituency stood on a platform of scrapping plans for a local wind farm. Unbelievable. NIMBYism is a disease.
New nuclear reactors do not make sense as they routinely arrive late and massively over budget. They also steal away resources from cost-effective, realistic production with wind and solar. Also, CO2 is not the only environmental hazard there is: Humanity does not know how to safely store nuclear waste for hundred thousands of years.