Nuclear Warming?

[Spaced Out Ace]

Uranium mining and the Navajo people - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Pretty grim reading. One thing I learned pursing this article is that one of these mines was actually re-opened in 2022.

Meh. Who gives a shit about people on the Rez? /S

In all seriousness, I believe there are areas of the Nevada desert that are still unusable, but hey, nuclear energy is totally safe, say the caved in skull droolers on Twitter.

 

[StevenC]

Yeah, Nuclear energy is safe and clean, with absolutely no draw backs.

Just tell that to the kids who went to school on land that was practically given away and ended up getting cancer from it. I'm not sure what this push for nuclear energy is about, but it's really weird that people are acting like it has absolutely zero drawbacks. Silliness.

Yeah, nuclear energy is incredibly safe. This is just a fact.

And this may shock you, but all kinds of mining were done without regard for environmental impacts in the 40s and 50s. And even still today.

But no, you're right, burning the planet and poisoning the air is so much better. Let's keep doing that.

 

[zappatton2]

So these are the sorts of things I watch to pass the time;


My takeaway; climate scientists are notoriously conservative with their projections (contrary to the usual accusations of "panic" or "hysteria"), and the present-day reality ends up being worse than prior expectations. Strangely though, no mention of "nuclear warming". Funny, that.

 

[wheresthefbomb]

Yeah, nuclear energy is incredibly safe. This is just a fact.

And this may shock you, but all kinds of mining were done without regard for environmental impacts in the 40s and 50s. And even still today.

But no, you're right, burning the planet and poisoning the air is so much better. Let's keep doing that.

Other kinds of mining being equally destructive does not negate the incredible harm done, and continuing to be done, by uranium mining. This extraction is also poisoning the planet, and is also part of the continuing genocide of indigenous peoples in north amerika. I don't think any of us disagree that we need an alternative, and maybe nuclear energy right now could be part of a plan that moves us further away from energy production that hinges on destructive extraction in the same way that natural gas is discussed as such, but nuclear energy is far from "incredibly safe."

 

[BlackMastodon]

Meh. Who gives a shit about people on the Rez? /S

In all seriousness, I believe there are areas of the Nevada desert that are still unusable, but hey, nuclear energy is totally safe, say the caved in skull droolers on Twitter.

Yeah, nuclear energy is incredibly safe. This is just a fact.

And this may shock you, but all kinds of mining were done without regard for environmental impacts in the 40s and 50s. And even still today.

But no, you're right, burning the planet and poisoning the air is so much better. Let's keep doing that.

I view it as "the lesser evil". Aside from the dirty destructive, and murdering-indigenous-people mining, I think nuclear edges out most other forms of power generations when we look at the destructive output/side-effects of the generation. Near power generates steam (which is fine) and spent uranium (which is only [probably] fine as long as it's buried in a stable area and doesn't leak) but nets way more energy, whereas something like coal creates pollution and is also dirty to mine and kills poor people.

I still think we just need to slap solar panels on fucking everything that gets sun and throw turbines in wherever we can get wind, and find the best option to store that shit.

 

[Spaced Out Ace]

coal creates pollution and is also dirty to mine and kills poor people.

The mining in these communities tends to be the only thing they can do for money. Homelessness/lack of food vs mining coal. Either of those is likely not an enjoyable future.

 

[nightsprinter]

Hello, West Virginia coal miner lemme thank you for your tiiime you work a forty hour week for a liviiiiiin just to send it on down the liine

 

[Cannibalcricket]

Walking ghost phase sounds like some pretty scary stuff to me, and a dope band name.

 

[Cannibalcricket]

Hisashi Ouchi and his story is worth a google

 

[narad]

Or watch the HBO chernobyl mini-series. As a horror aficionado, probably the scariest thing I've ever watched and probably #1 on my least desirable way to die list.

 

[StevenC]

Other kinds of mining being equally destructive does not negate the incredible harm done, and continuing to be done, by uranium mining. This extraction is also poisoning the planet, and is also part of the continuing genocide of indigenous peoples in north amerika. I don't think any of us disagree that we need an alternative, and maybe nuclear energy right now could be part of a plan that moves us further away from energy production that hinges on destructive extraction in the same way that natural gas is discussed as such, but nuclear energy is far from "incredibly safe."

Nuclear power is literally our only path forward. I'd be very happy for USA to stop genociding indigenous people, but they do that regardless of uranium. Uranium mining can be improved ethically, but gas and coal and oil can't be as low carbon as fission.

Unless you happen to have some knowledge the rest of the world doesn't, it is our only future.

Or watch the HBO chernobyl mini-series. As a horror aficionado, probably the scariest thing I've ever watched and probably #1 on my least desirable way to die list.

Good fantasy show

 

[narad]

Good fantasy show

Huh?

 

[StevenC]

Huh?

That show's not exactly grounded in reality.

 

[narad]

That show's not exactly grounded in reality.

All the terrifying and relevant-to-this-discussion parts are.

 

[StevenC]

All the terrifying and relevant-to-this-discussion parts are.

Yeah, it's wild how there are pictures of Fukushima, but news articles always use pictures of an oil power plant disaster because it looks scarier.

 

[narad]

Yeah, it's wild how there are pictures of Fukushima, but news articles always use pictures of an oil power plant disaster because it looks scarier.

Sounds irrelevant to me. I'm talking about real and disastrous thing that happened as a consequence of "incredibly safe" nuclear energy. How a news article is put together is neither here nor there.

 

[BlackMastodon]

Good fantasy show

I mean, they took some liberties yeah, but it's still pretty factual in the events that took place.

 

[MFB]

The mining in these communities tends to be the only thing they can do for money. Homelessness/lack of food vs mining coal. Either of those is likely not an enjoyable future.

I mean, they put all their eggs in one basket, and stuff like this is why governments need to take a look at UBI in the future; we're actively shooting ourselves in the foot of the planrt while relying on coal as means of fuel but people will say "BUT THOSE MINING TOWNS!"

At a certain point, shit moves on and you need to pivot to adapt whether you like it or not, it ain't personal.

 

[slippityslaps]

Other kinds of mining being equally destructive does not negate the incredible harm done, and continuing to be done, by uranium mining. This extraction is also poisoning the planet, and is also part of the continuing genocide of indigenous peoples in north amerika. I don't think any of us disagree that we need an alternative, and maybe nuclear energy right now could be part of a plan that moves us further away from energy production that hinges on destructive extraction in the same way that natural gas is discussed as such, but nuclear energy is far from "incredibly safe."

This is exaggerated. Uranium is one of the most plentiful resources on our planet which makes it highly accessible. Going down the rabbit hole of what mining is least bad is really not a productive conversation. Electric vehicle batteries go through a refining process that is incredibly destructive for local ecosystems. At one point in Germany, there was a push for linseed oil to be used as a bio-diesel fuel source, but the crops (corn) are so nitrogen intensive that the soil became almost unusable for agricultural areas. Even now the country's carbon footprint has raised since they shut down their nuclear reactors because solar and wind cannot compete with energy demands (even transporting the energy across the country is its own problem), their reliance on coal has escalated as a result. I think solar is better for houses that can mount panels on their roofs.

Nuclear energy itself has an incredibly high output and extremely low carbon footprint. Even the waste is not only tiny in volume, but is practically identical to background radiation. You get a higher dose of radiation working in a coal plant than at a nuclear reactor. To wit: The amount of energy a human requires in the US equates to about 30 tons of waste from coal, which goes up into the atmosphere, or low dose radiation that is about the size of a can of soda. Literally encase it in a thin layer of concrete and you're doing more than you need to.

It's important to note that nuclear energy has the potential for incredible destruction, but the destruction of power plants is always at the fault of improper design. Blaming nuclear energy for Chernobyl or Fukushima is looking in the wrong box. Chernobyl was the result of a failing political system, and Fukushima used an outdated safety mechanism resulting in its failure. Do we blame the car when a negligent owner ignores maintenance that keeps the brakes from failing? Quite simply it is our most prominent answer for clean, abundant fuel, but encompassing all this into bite sized chunks to help the public understand is incredibly daunting. I'd argue a lot of the fear is centered around misinformed environmentalist parties and oil companies that need to continue exploiting consumers for profit.

 

[TedEH]

So, I'm a dummy, and this will be dumb, but at some point, doesn't it become inevitable that whatever we extract power from will be dangerous? Like, if we're trying to extract the most energy from something, then that something must be full of energy, right? Even if your source of power wasn't full of "destructive" potential, as soon as you store it, you've compacted it back into something dangerous again, right? Or am I missing something here?

Without really understanding the details, it seems to me like you can't extract more and more power from something without some part of the process being more and more dangerous. Even if you made the most efficient solar and wind battery to ever exist - if that produced the same amount of power as a nuclear source, you're still jamming that all into a battery that now contains that same potential, aren't you?

Like how the added danger from electric car fires isn't that they're more likely to catch fire, but that they're more destructive when some inevitably do - which means any conversation about safety is talking about two distinct things -> rates of failure vs. damage when failure happens. I assume when people are talking about nuclear being safe or not, they're speaking about different things. "It's safe because rates of failure are extremely low", "yeah, but when it does fail, it's devastating, and you can never assume a 0 rate of failure".