• danielbln@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    So uh, turns out the energy companies are not exactly the most moral and rule abiding entities, and they love to pay off politicians and cut corners. How does one prevent that, as in the case of fission it has rather dire consequences?

    • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Since you can apply that logic to everything, how can you ever build anything? Because all consequences are dire on a myopic scale, that is, if your partner dies because a single electrician cheaped out with the wiring in your building and got someone to sign off, “It’s not as bad as a nuclear disaster” isn’t exactly going to console them much.

      At some point, you need to accept that making something illegal and trying to prosecute people has to be enough. For most situations. It’s not perfect. Sure. But nothing ever is. And no solution to energy is ever going to be perfect, either.

      • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        An electrician installing faulty wiring doesn’t render your home uninhabitable for a few thousand years.

        So there’s one difference.

        • SocialEngineer56@notdigg.com
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          1 year ago

          That’s why there are lots of regulations for things impacting life safety. With a nuclear power plant, you mitigate the disaster potential by having so many more people involved in the design and inspection processes.

          The risk of an electrician installing faulty wiring in your home could be mitigated by having a third party inspector review the work. Now do that 1000x over and your risk of “politicians are paid off” is negligible.

          • arglebargle@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            You are saying, regulations will fix this? Politicians create the regulations, the fines, and enforcement.

            Political parties are running on platforms of deregulation right now.

            • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              Regulations are actually generally created by regulatory bodies, which are usually non-political. For instance, the underwriter laboratory is the major appliance, building and electrical approval body in the United States.

              In most countries, building codes and safety codes are created by industry specialists, people who have been in the industry as professionals for many decades and have practiced and been licensed in the field that they are riding the regulations for.

              There’s a big difference between politicians who are passing these laws, and those writing them who are the regulatory bodies. Generally, as a politicians will simply adopt the codes as recommended by the professional licensing and certification bodies.

              I suppose it will be the end of modern civilization if politicians decide to politicize electrical or building codes. Then we’ll be fucked for sure. We’ve seen that happen before with the Indiana pi bill.

              https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill

              “The Indiana Pi Bill is the popular name for bill #246 of the 1897 sitting of the Indiana General Assembly, one of the most notorious attempts to establish mathematical truth by legislative fiat.”

          • abraxas@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            That’s why there are lots of regulations for things impacting life safety

            Regulations that a lot of pro-nuclear people try to get relaxed because they “artificially inflate the price to more than solar so that we’ll use solar”. I’m not saying all pro-nuclear folks are tin-foilers, but the only argument that puts nuclear cheaper than solar+battery anymore is an argument that uses deregulated facilities.

            If solar+wind+battery is cheaper per MWH, faster to build, with less front-loaded costs, then it’s a no-brainer. It only stops being a no-brainer when you stop regulating the nuclear plant. Therein lies the paradox of the argument.

      • sederx@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        a wind mill going down and a nuclear plant blowing up have very different ramifications

        • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Exactly, just like a windmill running and a nuclear power plant running have very different effects on the power grid. Hence why comparing them directly is often such a nonsense act.

      • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        Because the energy industry is historically the one lobbying governments for less regulation. Also, has there ever been a nuclear project in the history of mankind that didnt result in depleted Uranium leeching into local watertables and/or radioactive fallout? Your comment is basically tacit acceptance that people are going to act unethically, which, in regards to nuclear power, is bound to have human consequences.

      • cloud@lazysoci.al
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        1 year ago

        Or they could just allow everyone to build nuclear reactors in their backyard, everyone is saying that they are safer than a banana so i don’t see any issue

    • Yaztromo@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Easy. Have nuclear power plants operate as government run and backed corporations (what we’d call a “Crown Corporation” here in Canada).

      That way you can mandate safety and uptime as metrics over profit. It may be less efficient from an economic standpoint (overall cost might be higher), but you also don’t wind up with the nuclear version of Love Canal.

    • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Big news worthy accidents are a really good way to ensure strong regulation and oversight. And nuclear is very regulated now so that it has lower death rate than wind power.

    • P03 Locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      Much much tighter regulations. Our cars aren’t aluminum cans waiting to crush everybody inside them because of strict safety regulations.

    • Dojan@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I mean it’s not the companies operating the facilities we put our trust in, but the outside regulators whose job it is to ensure these facilities are safe and meet a certain standard. As well as the engineers and scientists that design these systems.

      Nuclear power isn’t 100% safe or risk-free, but it’s hella effective and leaps and bounds better than fossil fuels. We can embrace nuclear, renewables and fossil free methods, or just continue burning the world.

      • umad_cause_ibad@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Don’t push nuclear power like it’s the only option though.

        Where I live we entirely provide energy from hydro power plants and nuclear energy is banned. We use no fossil fuels. We have a 35 year plan for future growth and it doesn’t include any fossil fuels. Nuclear power is just one of the options and it has many hurdles to implement, maintain and decommission.

        • Astrealix@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Honestly, if you can, hydro is brilliant. Not many places can though — both because of geography and politics. Nuclear is better than a lot of the alternatives and shouldn’t be discounted.

            • Astrealix@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              I know it’s a damn lot easier than carbon recapture, if we’re talking waste products. It’s not ideal, but there is no such thing as perfect, and we shouldn’t let that be the enemy of good. Nuclear fission power is part of a large group of methods to help us switch off fossil fuels.

              • EMPig@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                “Easier”? Are you aware of the fact that radioactive waste tombs are meant to stand for millions of years? It requres a lot of territory, construction and servance charges, and lots of prays for nothing destructive happens with it in its “infinite” lifetime.

                • Astrealix@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Have you tried capturing gas? As difficult as radioactive waste tombs are, they’re easier than containing a specific type of air lol.

                  • EMPig@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    Read about breathing if you want to know how to capture gas. Also, about photosynthesis.

            • radiosimian@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              We can bury it in the ground and it will literally turn into lead. How are you doing with carbon emissions? Got a fix?

              • EMPig@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                I think it’s photosynthesis. ‘Bury in the ground’ is an extreme simplification btw. Also, I am finished with this topic scince long anough. It feels politically biased. If you’d like to reply, I’d hear it gladly. But I m not going to be involved into a discussion.

      • The_v@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The worst nuclear disaster has led to 1,000sq miles of land being unsafe for human inhabitants.

        Using fossil fuels for power is destroying of the entire planet.

        It’s really not that complicated.

        • abraxas@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Except that nuclear isn’t the only, or even the cheapest, alternative to fossil fuels.

        • pedroapero@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Except that powering the world with nuclear would require thousands of reactors and so much more disasters. This doesn’t even factor the space abandonned to store «normal» toxic materials.

          • uis@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            This doesn’t even factor the space abandonned to store «normal» toxic materials.

            You mean under ground from where it was dug out?

        • umad_cause_ibad@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Both sound terrible.

          I don’t really want to pick the lessor of two evils when it comes to the energy.

          • Astrealix@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            By not picking, you are picking fossil fuels. Because we can’t fully replace everything with solar/wind yet, and fossil fuels are already being burned as we speak.

            • umad_cause_ibad@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              No, give me an option that doesn’t make a part of the world uninhabitable or increases climate change.

              That just a stupid comparison and is there any reason why we can’t also do wind solar thermal hydro also? It’s fossil fuels or nuclear and that’s it?

            • umad_cause_ibad@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              No, give me an option that doesn’t make a part of the world uninhabitable or increases climate change.

              That just a stupid comparison and is there any reason why we can’t also do wind solar thermal hydro also? It’s fossil fuels or nuclear and that’s it huh?

            • umad_cause_ibad@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              The option proposed is that making a small area of the planet inhabitable or worsening climate change. Sorry but that’s a shitty comparison.

              • Norah - She/They@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                1 year ago

                Bet you’d feel* differently if you were a resident of one of the island nations that’s going to drown in the next decade or two. That part of the world’s definitely going to be uninhabitable if we continue to do nothing.

      • Touching_Grass@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The problem is its potential for harm. And I don’t mean meltdown. Storage is the problem that doesn’t seem to have strong solutions right now. And the potential for them to make a mistake and store the waste improperly is pretty catastrophic.

        • Dojan@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          “Nuclear waste” sounds super scary, but most of it are things like tools and clothing, that have comparatively tiny amount of radioactivity. Sure it still needs to be stored properly, very little high level waste is actually generated.

          You know what else is catastrophic? Fossil fuels and the impact they have on the climate. I’m not arguing that we should put all our eggs in one basket, but getting started and doing something to move away from the BS that is coal, gas, and oil is really something we should’ve prioritised fifty years ago. Instead they have us arguing whether we should go with hydroelectric, or put up with “ugly windmills” or “solar farms” or “dangerous nuclear plants.”

          It’s all bullshit. Our world is literally on fire and no one seems to actually give a fuck. We have fantastic tools that could’ve halted the progress had we used them in time, but fifty years later we’re still arguing about this.

          At this point I honestly hope we do burn. This is a filter mankind does not deserve to pass. We’re too evil to survive.

          • Touching_Grass@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Yea both are horrible. But we can get off fossil fuels and walk away. We can’t with nuclear. It’ll always be with us and doesn’t solve that we need fossil fuel for other things.

            Jets and ships are still going to need fossil fuels.

            Which is why I think the best thing we could be doing right now is focusing on improving how energy is store. With the right advancement we could solve a lot of these problems with the right battery.

            • OriginalUsername@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Mercury will always be with us. Arsenic will always be with us. PFAS will always be with us. Natural radiation will always be with us. Fortunately, nuclear waste is easily detectable, the regulations around it are much stronger, the amount of HLW is miniscule and the storage processes are incredibly advanced

              Moreover, most Nuclear waste won’t always be with us. A lot of fission prodcuts have half lives in the decades or centuries

              • Touching_Grass@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Sure, but doesn’t that just increase the nuclear waste storage issue if we turn all these vehicles nuclear powered

                • Harrison [He/Him]@ttrpg.network
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                  1 year ago

                  Not hugely. Actual nuclear waste, not just mildly radioactive uniforms and similar material, is extremely small and compact for the amount of energy generated.

                  • Touching_Grass@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    I would say though how much nuclear waste would be acceptable in an aquifer to be an issue. Its great that in relation to the energy produced, its small. But can that small amount still pose a catastrophic risk or not

      • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        How do you get the uranium or thorium? Generally, it has to be mined. Are we using nuclear powered mining equipment? No. We use fossil fuel powered mining equipment. Then we use fossil fuels to power the trucks that take the depleted nuclear product to the storage depot, which is powered and requires employees who drive there using fossil fuel powered vehicles, using fossil fuel powered warehouse equipment. When does nuclear power phase out the fossil fuel power? Are we going to decommission oil and coal production facilities? Or are we just going to use nuclear to augment the grid?

        • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Don’t forget all the fossil fuels used in machinery that builds nuclear power plants, and the CO2 emissions from all of the concrete used.

          Oh, and if you start building a nuclear power plant right now it will be online (maybe) in a decade or two and hopefully for only 150% of the initial cost. There’s a nuclear power plant in Georgia that is $17 BILLION over budget.

    • Touching_Grass@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      And we would be expecting these corrupt Cost cutting types to warehouse nuclear waste for hundreds if not thousands of years while requiring regular inspections and rotation of caskets periodically while also maintaining the facilities. All of that for a product that doesn’t produce any value, it just sits there and accumulates.

      And where does it get stored? Right now almost 100% of waste is stored on site above ground because they really have no good solution. People will say things like “its just a little bit of toxic waste” or “its cool because we could use it in process we don’t have yet but might in the future” and all I can think of is how this was the same thinking that got us into our dependence on our first environmental catastrophic energy source. I’m not confident we that scaling up to another one will end well.

      • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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        1 year ago

        Right now almost 100% of waste is stored on site above ground because they really have no good solution.

        You mean there’s so little they don’t even need a dedicated facility for it, and it’s safe enough that people are willing to work where it’s stored? Sounds great!

      • uis@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        “its cool because we could use it in process we don’t have yet but might in the future”

        Is it quote from 60-ies? We have. At least Russia has. US had too.