Nuclear Reactions Are Smoldering Again At Chernobyl (sciencemag.org) 139
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science Magazine: Thirty-five years after the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine exploded in the world's worst nuclear accident, fission reactions are smoldering again in uranium fuel masses buried deep inside a mangled reactor hall. "It's like the embers in a barbecue pit," says Neil Hyatt, a nuclear materials chemist at the University of Sheffield. Now, Ukrainian scientists are scrambling to determine whether the reactions will wink out on their own -- or require extraordinary interventions to avert another accident.
Sensors are tracking a rising number of neutrons, a signal of fission, streaming from one inaccessible room, Anatolii Doroshenko of the Institute for Safety Problems of Nuclear Power Plants (ISPNPP) in Kyiv, Ukraine, reported last week during discussions about dismantling the reactor. "There are many uncertainties," says ISPNPP's Maxim Saveliev. "But we can't rule out the possibility of [an] accident." The neutron counts are rising slowly, Saveliev says, suggesting managers still have a few years to figure out how to stifle the threat. Any remedy he and his colleagues come up with will be of keen interest to Japan, which is coping with the aftermath of its own nuclear disaster 10 years ago at Fukushima, Hyatt notes. "It's a similar magnitude of hazard."
Sensors are tracking a rising number of neutrons, a signal of fission, streaming from one inaccessible room, Anatolii Doroshenko of the Institute for Safety Problems of Nuclear Power Plants (ISPNPP) in Kyiv, Ukraine, reported last week during discussions about dismantling the reactor. "There are many uncertainties," says ISPNPP's Maxim Saveliev. "But we can't rule out the possibility of [an] accident." The neutron counts are rising slowly, Saveliev says, suggesting managers still have a few years to figure out how to stifle the threat. Any remedy he and his colleagues come up with will be of keen interest to Japan, which is coping with the aftermath of its own nuclear disaster 10 years ago at Fukushima, Hyatt notes. "It's a similar magnitude of hazard."
We're all in this together. (Score:2)
Any remedy he and his colleagues come up with will be of keen interest to Japan, which is coping with the aftermath of its own nuclear disaster 10 years ago at Fukushima, Hyatt notes.
I think the Japanese have a different set of problems united by...radioactivity!
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I think the Japanese have a different set of problems united by...radioactivity
Yeah, for one - Russia doesn't have a history of giant radioactive monsters showing up and attacking their cities...
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Oh, it wasn't that bad [youtu.be].
Re: We're all in this together. (Score:2)
Maybe not Russia, but what about Ukraine?
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Re: We're all in this together. (Score:2)
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Optimism (Score:2)
Institute for Safety Problems of Nuclear Power Plants. Talk about a positive organization name.
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That's a name that opens doors. Imagine if you were the President of Ukraine and told your staff that you didn't want any meeting today. Well, with that kind of business card, I'm pretty sure his staff would let you come in for a meeting.
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What's their slogan? "That's a nice nuclear power plant you have there, it would be a shame if a safety problem happened to it"?
A few years? That remains to be seen. (Score:5, Insightful)
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They need to make sure it doesn't get to this stage at Fukushima too. The current timeline for getting to the areas where this could happen is rather long and they seem to just be hoping that it doesn't happen.
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But after that instant moment of panic and the news that containment was being implemented via the huge concrete sarcophagus,
Re:A few years? That remains to be seen. (Score:5, Informative)
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There is a lot of hope involved in dealing with nuclear disasters. The designers of all that crap never thought so far. Whenever I think of these people, I think engineers cannot sink much lower than that level of incompetence. They are an utter and complete disgrace to the field.
How bad is it? (Score:4, Funny)
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Call the local fire brigade.
Re: How bad is it? (Score:2)
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Actually reliably deadly in about a week. And getting to that stuff would take much longer.
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Which is how the first sarcophagus was built, but working people until the radiation sickness got in the way of them actually working. A couple of thousand dead, a good number not yet dead. Probably more people have died on each side in the Russian-Ukranian war, all of them buried with military honours. Die
Why? (Score:2)
I didn't glean this from TFA but I'm hoping someone here knows: why would neutron counts be rising? It sounds like water incursion is an issue, but I guess I would think that's temporary (maybe not?). Is the fuel physically shifting around down there? Is something else impacting the reaction?
I am skeptical. Reads like FUD. (Score:2)
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You're saying the Ukrainian Institute for Safety Problems of Nuclear Power Plants is trying to make the Chernobyl safety issue sound like a bigger deal than it really is? Why would they want to do that?
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Why would they want to do that?
To get funding?
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There are no fission decay products that emit neutrons years after formation. The only ones that can do that - release delayed neutrons - decay to nothing within a minute. It neutrons are being emitted much above the cosmic ray background the only possible source are fission reactions. It is not hard to imagine what is likely taking place. The Chernobyl explosion and core collapse left a pile of enriched uranium and graphite moderator in the bottom of the structure which has been flooded with water -- creat
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Reality has an anti-nuclear sentiment (Score:2)
All it took was one big accident to annihilate the case for radioactive water heaters, and you've had two.
managers still have a few years to figure out how (Score:2)
managers still have a few years to figure out how to stifle the threat
Oh, boy, that statement is so scary.
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managers still have a few years to figure out how to stifle the threat
Oh, boy, that statement is so scary.
Sounds like an SEP. (Somebody Else's Problem)
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I recently did speed runs through all those games, so I'm ready if anyone needs me.
The only one I had any trouble with was METRO: EXODUS for some reason, but I got through it with mask filters to spare.
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Not unless reality-bending anomalies appear.
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Pretty good film too if you haven't seen it. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0... [imdb.com]
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Is this RoHS compliant?
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Re:Neutron absorbers, or concrete (Score:4, Informative)
They tried that in 1987 with the original Shelter.
It didn't work very well.
Yet we still build more nuclear power plants. (Score:2)
Heavy Water a Moderator, not Absorber (Score:5, Interesting)
Time to pour concrete or some other neutron absorber into there.
As the article explains they can't do that easily. The places with the highest counts are where the solidified FCM is buried under tons of debris which shields it from the gadolinium nitrate sprinklers installed in the containment structure and radiation counts are incredibly high so nobody can go in to do anything manually. The idea they have is to try to use robots to insert boron pellets into the FCM since boron is an excellent neutron absorber.
Like, Heavy water can be made and flushed into it, but that would likely do little to stop the reaction, just slow it down
Are you nuts? Heavy water has a far lower neutron absorption cross-section than ordinary water but, like ordinary water, is still an excellent moderator - slowing neutrons down so that they can initiate fission more effectively. This makes it a very efficient moderator which is why it is sometimes used in the cores of reactors. Pouring that onto the remains would be like pouring petrol onto a smouldering fire it's also incredibly expensive.
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it's also incredibly expensive
And tastes better, too.
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solidified FCM is buried under tons of debris which shields it from the gadolinium nitrate sprinklers
It sounds like they need to do some type of directional drilling through the ground in from outside with very long drill bits or remote-piloted drills to go punch in numerous holes into the tons of debris and while doing so continuously flood the holes with fluid containing neutron poisons like that gadolinium until they completely seep into whatever's left.
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This is a very well established technique in the civil engineering field, specifica
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Possibly a silly question but why not the usual borated paraffin
Probably because it's not a liquid and will not run through the cracks and crevices to reach the same place that water does. Plus, if there is existing water there the gadolinium will diffuse into it over time increasing neutron absorption, helping to damp any fission.
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Why borated
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I think the parsimonious explanation is that the OP couldn't handle the intellectual task of clicking a link and RTFAing. Which has been standard behaviour here since well before you were a subscriber.
I was half way through RTFAing and I was thinking "that sounds like a job for directional drilling", and you know what - the engineers on site had already thought of that, and even more shockingly, the journalist had reported it. Who'da thunk it?
I saw a programme recently about the construction
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Shocking the way that engineers predicted the same problems as you, 20 years ago in the design phase, and mitigated them. Even more surprising is that the bankers making the decisions actually listened to the engineers.
Re:Neutron absorbers, or concrete (Score:4, Informative)
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Time to ignore the "problem".
The fuel for a nuclear reactor isn't going to produce a nuclear explosion. It's not enriched enough to do that. So, worst case outcome is that it gets warmer than ambient.
This bit of news is designed to frighten the anti-nuke crowd enough to make sure that we build a few dozen new coal-plants....
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Stupid. It can still start to burn and blow a lot of really, really toxic stuff into the atmosphere. That is the actual risk here. And this is not "anti-nuclear" either, despite no-clue morons like you liking to claim that.
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The original Chernobyl disaster wasn't a nuclear explosion either, and yet here we are. The fact that there won't be a nuclear explosion is really not comforting (not that I'm saying what happened before can happen again the same way).
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Fortunately, it is not people like you making these decisions. Otherwise this catastrophe would get much, much larger.
Re: Neutron absorbers, or concrete (Score:2)
Re:Neutron absorbers, or concrete (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know if he could be a bigger moron or not, but you certainly couldn't be a bigger asshole if you tried.
Re:Neutron absorbers, or concrete (Score:5, Funny)
I think that's an unfair assessment.
If he's casually this big of an asshole, I'm sure if he tried harder he could be a vastly greater asshole.
We've only seen him use 1% of his asshole power.
If we built this large wooden badger... (Score:2, Redundant)
OMG, could you be a bigger moron? Seriously, pour molten lead on it? Like that's going to cover up the problem. Not to stoop to your idiot level but covering the problem with solid lead would be a lot more effective, until a few minute later when the lead melts and drains away. Better yet, lets pour heavy water on it that will do the same thing - drain away. Jack ass.
If we built this large wooden badger...
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good thing there are so many internet experts to solve this problem,so easy. why didn't anyone else think of lead or concrete.
Re:Windmill blades (Score:4, Funny)
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Yeah, those fiberglass blades will take up space at the end of their lives - but it's just glass. More importantly, how are you going to deal with the fact that spent nuclear fuel will be an extremely toxic waste problem millions of years after it has ceased to be radioactive?
And some people die in uranium mines. If a tech falls off a cooling tower while changing an aircraft warning light, is
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Anyway, since you asked.
If a tech falls off a cooling tower while changing an aircraft warning light, is that death an industrial accident or an indictment of nuclear power generation?
It's an aviation problem. Just another indication that Man was never meant to fly.
Probably Boeing's fault if you dig deep enough.
how are you going to deal with the fact that spent nuclear fuel will be an extremely toxic waste problem millions of years after it has ceased to be radioactive?
The Russians have figured it out. Like their dolls one inside the other. They do this at Chernobyl already. Every decade or so you just build another concrete dome over the top of the old one. By the time we run out of concrete we'll be living on Mars anyway.
Oh shit. I forgot, we weren't meant to fly...
We're fuck
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Sarcasm without a point is just derp.
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Sarcasm without a point is just derp.
The sarcastic troll post made all the same points that yours did.
You just used more words and made it easier for the shallow thinkers to get it.
We already know the questions. We already know the answers. We see them in every article about nuclear, solar or wind.
Think of it more like a summary. That you later expanded on. Even though it wasn't necessary. As everyone already knows by now.
The whole subject at this point is just people talking derp past each other.
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Fair enough as nuclear power is a dead end, no matter how much its fans pretend otherwise. Sometimes, though, blunt force mockery in public is the only thing that works, even temporarily. Like when Jon Stewart had on that lunar conspiracy theorist who got knocked on his ass by Buzz Aldrin. Stewart played the clip of him getting decked and said, 'you know, from this angle the punch looks fake.'
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An alien armada is heading towards Earth, it'll be here in about 3 years, what do fantasy solution do you suggest for this?
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Awesome post
+1 (Score:2)
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Not to mention the nuclear waste which must be stored for thousands of years
Which radioactive isotopes would those be? I would bet you have no idea.
Comments like this show that people do not understand how radioactive decay works. Isotopes with short half lives are highly radioactive but, because we are talking about isotopes with short half lives, they decay away quickly. Isotopes with long half lives are not very radioactive. We use long half life isotopes like uranium to shield people from the radiation of other isotopes.
There's also the matter of not all radiation being equal. The types of emissions include alpha, beta, gamma, neutrons, and some more exotic kinds. Gamma is the really hard to contain type. Neutrons are a bit of a problem too. Alpha and beta emitters are far from harmless, you don't want to use this stuff to season your salad, but putting these isotopes in a steel drum until it all decays away is a perfectly cromulent way to deal with them.
The most dangerous isotopes from nuclear fission have half lives somewhere around 30 years, specifically strontium-90 and cesium-137. These isotopes are biologically active and so are taken up quickly by plants and animals, and tend to accumulate in the food chain. Once in the body it can decay and do considerable damage, but since most of the radiation from these elements is beta decay it can be contained in a simple steel drum. Not for thousands of years but for an estimated 300 years. 300 years is about 10 half lives, the atoms decayed down to 1/1000 of it's original number. That means one tonne of the stuff decays down to one kilogram, or one kilogram becomes just a gram. 300 years is a long time, but it's also not "thousands" of years. Humans have been building structures that last more than 300 years for quite some time, we can do that again today and with much greater ease than 1000 years ago.
Most fission products have very short half lives, they decay away in a few years. Spent fuel rods are stored at nuclear power plants for a few years in cooling pools to allow these to decay away. The water not only keeps the fuel cool but it is a very effective shield against all types of radiation. The worst stuff takes 300 years to decay away to levels of little concern. The really long lived stuff, like plutonium, is not a radiation hazard. There's a lot of concern about containing plutonium just not because it is radioactive. There is so much concern about it because it is a valuable fuel. Like any fuel it can be burned slowly to power machines or burned quickly to make weapons. A truck loaded with fuel oil can heat an office building all winter, or level it in seconds. The plutonium from spent fuel is worthless for weapons because it contains isotopes that are far too willing to spontaneously fission. A weapon core made from reactor grade plutonium could detonate prematurely, which I would imagine is quite undesirable. A more likely outcome is it gets real hot from the fission and melts, destroying any weapon it may be in and irradiating anyone around it with potentially lethal doses of neutrons. We call it "reactor grade" because it's the kind that comes out of reactors and also the kind that goes into reactors for fuel. We can reprocess this into fuel, potentially creating a breeder cycle of turning depleted uranium and thorium into fuel.
Spent fuel from nuclear power does not need to be contained for thousands of years, it becomes quite inert in a matter of centuries at most, perhaps suitable for reprocessing in only decades. The logging industry deals with production cycles on the order of decades. The airline industry plans for keeping the same model of airplanes flying for decades. The waste products from nuclear power is manageable, and has been managed for decades already. This is a solved problem, the only thing that held these solutions up for the last 50 years have been Democrats and the Democrats had a change of heart last summer.
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That's funny when nuke cultists flush 99Tc down the memory hole, along with its 200,000 year half life.
Finally, you got something right. Spent fuel needs to be contained for millions of years, as it will remain extraordinarily toxic long after it has ceased to be radioactive.
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Nobody is forgetting any radioactive isotopes.
This is a very silly argument as we deal with toxic metals all the time. Are we running around like our hair is on fire because old solar PV cells contain arsenic, or old automotive batteries contain lead? No, we don't. We process these toxic elements into new products. This is routinely done and at very little risk to people and the environment.
Technetium has a handful of industrial and medical uses, and we can use spent nuclear fuel as a source. There may be an over production of technetium, more than we could ever expect to use. In that case it can take two other options. It can re-enter the waste stockpile, put back in a new steel drum with new spent fuel and allowed to decay away with the medium lived isotopes. Or, it can be put back into a fission reactor and destroyed by neutron bombardment.
There you go, three options on how to handle technetium that doesn't require guarding the same steel drums of waste for millions of years and just watching the pile just grow and grow. We are going to go back to this pile of spent fuel anyway to get other long lived isotopes you may have heard of before, uranium and plutonium.
So, let us review. The spent fuel has stayed put long enough where it is no more radioactive than natural uranium, something we currently handle like so many other toxic metals we dig out of the ground. Then we extract the long lived isotopes, technetium, uranium, plutonium, and perhaps others. Then we have three choices. First, industrial and medical uses. Second, return the technetium to the waste stream where it is mixed with new spent fuel and then allowed to decay away. Third, put the technetium in a fission reactor for destruction by neutron bombardment, turning it into something inert that can be extracted and put to use or disposed of like any other stable element.
Given time we may develop a fourth or even fifth option. As it is with the three options I know of this is a solved problem.
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Nobody is forgetting any radioactive isotopes.
So it was a deliberate omission?
These pro-nuclear arguments are getting silly. Not only are they arguing that nuclear power plants are safe while ignoring all the nuclear accidents that happen, including the two largest ones, Chernobyl and Fukushima, but they argue that we can safely store nuclear waste for tens of thousands of years without incident. Because while people might take shortcuts with nuclear power plants, they would never take shortcuts with nuclear waste storage, would they?
I don't want to
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So it was a deliberate omission?
WTF? Whatever it is you are smoking you need to put it down or at least share so we can all have a better understanding of your hallucination.
There was no mention of technetium because it's a solved problem. I don't make a big deal about how I'm going to get to the grocery store because I can drive there, take a bus, ride a bike, or if I must I'll walk. We don't obsess over solved problems.
The rest of your post is just more complaints about problems that have been solved. Nobody is ignoring any problems
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You just did.
Very silly deflection as neither arsenic nor lead are radioactive, and they aren't being concentrated in
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Can we stop modding up the Anonymous Cowards especially when they have no fucking clue what they are talking about?
Thank you, drive through.
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Says a nuke cultist. Nuclear power isn't just a power source for some people, it's a religion. All it took was one big accident to destroy the case for radioactive water heaters, and you've had two.
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Says a nuke cultist. Nuclear power isn't just a power source for some people, it's a religion. All it took was one big accident to destroy the case for radioactive water heaters, and you've had two.
Hi there. After pondering your post, normally I would respond with a scientific explanation on how wrong you are. Your education on the subject would be so complete that you would not only see the error of your ways but would begin to doubt everything you thought you knew. But that would take time, I would have to dumb it down to your level of intelligence, then we would have to help you with the big words.
Instead here are a series of YouTube videos that are more inline with your intelligence level an
Like I said, a religion (Score:2)
That's a lot of pompous words to say "I have no actual response". The devout faithful like to dismiss Chernobyl as the result of bureaucratic incompetence, but Fukushima will be polluting the Pacific for a very long time, and how much wind and solar do you think could have been built for the $200+ billion spent so far on cleanup costs.
The faithful also like to throw the Baseload Bullshit FUD at wind and solar, but it applies far more to your radioactive water heaters. The wind and sun don't stop blowing or
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What big words do you need help with?
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Oh no, just like your what you think of nuclear power you are completely wrong, again. I actually do have an actual response for you, I just chose not too.
An my reasons are simple. In your first response you clearly indicated that you where a closed minded anti nuke kook. Therefor you would be completely obvious to any form of facts and figures that I brought to the table. Instead of asking intelligent questions and backing up your own options with reasonable thought out facts the conversation with
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You can't lose much if you don't have any. Ukraine won't spend trillions fixing it, simply because they are not Japan.
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Nuclear disasters are thankfully very rare, tend not
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If by "much higher" you mean "zero", then yes. Once a solar farm turns into an Archemeaies Death Ray and burns down a city, or a wind farm starts a tornado, then you can talk. Until then, "nuclear is the safest power source" is as much a fantasy as "too cheap to meter".
Re: This is why Nuclear is not an option (Score:2)
Going from something not-stupid (like, say, curtailing development of nuclear power plants after Three Mile and Chernobyl, even moreso post-Fukishima) to something stupid (like, just for example, deciding to start building more nuclear reactors again) is, I suppose, "progression", but it's not what people mean when they speak of "progress".
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It's hard to convince a nuke fanboy of basic facts when his religion is dependent on his not understanding them. Wind and solar have been cheaper than coal for years now, with none of nuclear's near or long term batshit insane costs. You fanboys like like harp on the Baseload Bullshit fallacy, except it's your radioactive wa
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Sure. And have them fail, like they did in every fucking large-scale nuclear accident, ever. You have no clue. Oh, and those failures were in the news time and again, so I guess you are also functionally illiterate.
Re:"Cheap" and "safe" nuclear again... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Fukishima fuckup has already cost hundreds of billions and will likely cost hundreds of billions more. You can buy one or two solar panels for that much money.
Nuclear powered false dichotomy. Coal is a straw man when wind and solar have been cheaper than coal for years.
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First zero deaths from Fukushima. 20,000 died from the Earthquake/Tsunami, yet you are more concerned about the zero deaths from the reactor. Also the Tsunami caused trillions of dollars of damage.
Second not a false dichotomy. Solar and wind are intermittent. Look at Germany. They solve intermittency by burning coal. They also failed to decarbonize after spending nearly 500 billion euros on renewables. They should have spent it on nuclear.
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Laughable. There have been radiation [bbc.com] deaths, and dozens more due to the evacuation from the meltdown. You do know that terminal cancer can take years or even decades to manifest, yes? And it's not like you wouldn't blame evacuation related deaths on hydro if a dam collapses.
Not remotely as intermittent and as your water heater bomb factories. The Baseload Bullshit FUD applies far more to nuclear, because while wind and solar doesn't stop worki
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Death
Debatable. He was a plant work who died several years later from lung cancer. Lung cancer is not correlated with radiation exposure.
You do know that terminal cancer can take years or even decades to manifest, yes?
You do know that the amount of radiative material released was negligible meaning there won't be any terminal cancer deaths from fuhushima?
And it's not like you wouldn't blame evacuation related deaths on hydro if a dam collapses.
No. But if the deaths were from a mass panic that was unnecessary than I blame the panic.
Not remotely as intermittent and as your water heater bomb factories
First nuclear power plants are not bomb factories and they are not intermittent. Do you really think solar and wind are more reliable than nucle
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US spent 500 times more on stimulis (buying everyone a new video card to play games), than what the Chernobyl accident cost to the Ukraine.
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1) That's irrelevant
2) You're going to spend far more on storing toxic nuclear waste for millions of years
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Yeah. As I keep telling these guys, nuclear power isn't just a source of power, it's a cult.
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Yeah. As I keep telling these guys, nuclear power isn't just a source of power, it's a cult.
Indeed. These people are completely irrational and dangerous.
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Yeah. As I keep telling these guys, nuclear power isn't just a source of power, it's a cult.
Indeed. These people are completely irrational and dangerous.
Clearly psychological projection [wikipedia.org]
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Oh, so you have a short list of wind and solar farms that have caused meltdowns, costing hundreds of billions of dollars to deal with? Or are you projecting about projection...
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Soviet Union fuckups are not a valid excuse for you killing people with fossil fuels.
Solar and wind are intermittent source of electricity that cannot power society by themselves. They actually cause more deaths than nuclear(even when you include bullshit Chernobyl numbers).
The antinuclear movement is a cult. If you think we can solve climate change with only wind, water, and sunshine I have bridge to sale you.
And opposition to nuclear energy is evil as it has led to mass death, climate change, a
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Ah yes, the canard that opposing nuclear means loving fossil fuels. Dumb when wind and solar became cheaper than coal years ago, and that was even allowing coal to externalize all its costs.
Not as intermittent as your radioactive water heaters that go down for weeks or months at a time for planned (or worse, unplanned) maintenance. So your Baseload Bullshit FUD applies fa
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Ah yes, the canard that opposing nuclear means loving fossil fuels.
It is a historical reality. Opposition to nuclear energy results in fossil fuels.
Dumb when wind and solar became cheaper than coal years ago,
Then why does Germany burn so much coal? Oh wait. It is because wind and solar are intermittent you dumb fuck.
Not as intermittent as your radioactive water heaters
Nuclear has capacity factors greater than 90%. Wind and solar are usually less than 30%.
Try not a single one, sparky.
If you fall off of a windmill or solar roof that is a death.
If a worker dies in a uranium mining accident, is that death due to nuclear power generation?
Yes it is from nuclear power generation. Luckily that no longer happens. It hasn't happened since the 1950's.
If a tech replacing an aircraft warning light on a cooling tower falls to his death, is that an indictment of nuclear power generation?
Yes. Those deaths are counted against nuclear.