Hacker News Reader

Comment by m101 | Hacker News Reader

When I referenced long lasting I mean that some nuclear power stations are no forecast to keep going for 120 years.

CO2 in the atmosphere is also long lasting, do you have a problem with that type of storage?

Spent nuclear fuel is dangerous to stand near for 500 years (without centimetres of concrete), and then dangerous to consume for an further many thousand. It is within our technology to look after the quantities we are talking about indefinitely.

Also, with current plants we could reduce the size of the waste by 30x if we recycled it. Other plant types would burn all the fuel and leave us with very low volumes of radioactive elements.

Wrt Ukraine you choose to focus on the potential for release around Zaporozhzhia Vs the actual destruction occuring from the circumstances of war in the rest of the country?

View on HN

> CO2 in the atmosphere is also long lasting, do you have a problem with that type of storage?

Yes, we have problem with CO2. The solution is to use Solar + Wind + Hydro + Batteries + long lasting storage. Nuclear causes more problems than it solves unless it used to make nukes also.

See that's the thing, you're trying to argue rationally ;)

But the discussion around nuclear energy stopped being rational decades ago. On one side you have the old guard of the environmentalist movement which got started with anti-nuclear protests in the first place and then had their "I told you so" moment in 1986, and on the other side you have that new "nuclear grassroots movement" which tells me that nuclear power is akshually completely safe, and even if an incident happens it's not doing any harm and btw those Chornobyl death numbers are completely overblown, the radiation was actually good for the environment or whatever.

Then I'm seeing that the latest European NPP in Finland was about 15 years late and 3x more expensive than planned (from 3.5 to 11 billion Eu) while wind and solar farms are just popping up everywhere around me without much fanfare, built by whoever has some money and a bit of unused farmland or roof space to spare. And I really can't imagine those same people pooling their money and starting to build nuclear power plants instead ;)

Great overview! :)

> and on the other side you have that new "nuclear grassroots movement" which tells me that nuclear power is akshually completely safe, and even if an incident happens it's not doing any harm and btw those Chornobyl death numbers are completely overblown

You're making it sound like anyone who's not against nuclear, thinks Chernobyl is overblown

I've never heard that sentiment anywhere. (I'm sure you can find examples when looking for it; after all, there's also people who believe vaccines cause bill gates mind control.) Why the strawman argument?

It is actually a very common trope.

The "grassroots"-Jesus, Michael Shellenberger, who dominates the arguments being spread by this movement, doesn't get tired to repeat it. He even had to comment on the TV Show Chernobyl:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/03/11...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/06/06...

There are many more. Just google Shellenbeger and Chernobyl.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com