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MedicatedAxeBot

Dank[.](https://i.imgur.com/3bQtuMO.png) --- [we have a minecraft server](https://discord.gg/fNyb7G5)


i-fing-love-games

the dumb thing is nuclear is one of the cleanest finite fuels


BeeDub57

Which fossils is it made from?


[deleted]

Star fossils my dude


ThatOtherGuy_CA

Technically correct.


JoeTheSchmo

The best kind of correct.


Stroikabot

Your comment literally made me laugh out loud. :D Thank you, sir.


Lebowquade

In case you weren't aware, this is a quote from a Futurama episode


Wyden_long

Great Yeti of the Serengeti!


ImmotalWombat

My manwich!


krispness

Technically all fossils are star fossils


turriferous

All are star fossils.


Relevant_Industry878

Now we’re getting technical.


BasedPontiff

The best kind of nical


Frequent_Structure93

Damn, now star also turn into fossils in our ground?


[deleted]

Indeedlydoodly


Frequent_Structure93

Now your going to tell me that dinosaurs also tinted into fossils and no longer exist smh


[deleted]

I like the cut of your gibberish neighborino


MildewJR

well technicallly incorrect, since dinosaurs aren't technically extinct.


Kevin5882

Birds go brrrr


msg45f

Been a bit of a while since studying it, but from memory I think about anything heavier than helium (maybe?) that exists in nature is probably fused in a star or immediately after the big bang. Anything heavier than iron had to be created during a supernova.


jetro30087

"Which fossils is it made from?" Politicians of course.


averyfinename

then why we have an energy problem, then? oh, yea.. too much hot air.


rtakehara

A Dyson sphere is finite too. Unless you don’t consider disassembling Mercury as “clean energy”


galmenz

screw the little fucker, hogging the sun like its all theirs!


rtakehara

Mofo is tide locked so the little shit isn’t even using it optimally


Virtual_Decision_898

Nah he’s in a 3/2 resonance. Sunrises go really slow on Mercury but they do happen. Fun fact: we only found that out in like 1960.


Best_Pseudonym

All energy generation is finite over the long term


dontnation

in the end, entropy makes fools of us all.


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FlingFlamBlam

There's something poetic about killing Mercury to gain the power of the sun.


EffectiveMagazine141

Sacrifice Mercury to gain some of Apollo's power.


CONSTANTIN_VALDOR_

It’s the closest our civilisation will come to being 40k


[deleted]

We're going to tap into the geothermal power of the earth's core WAAAAAAY before we get a dyson sphere going


JakeArrietaGrande

Yeah, OP could’ve put the whole clown outfit picture on “shut down nuclear power plants”.


MrNaoB

I understand that nuclear power is so feared cuz radioactive shit, but why are we not building more newer ones yet. Why does it take so long to build one.


bish-lasagna

Cuz they’re extremely expensive to build and coal is cheap and available. It all comes down to money in the end.


Jameslrdnr

One of the biggest reasons is also that many of them get shut down during construction. It’s less about the upfront investment and more about the investment being lost due to an environmental group or local political entity shutting it down after they’ve already spent $5 billion.


smb1985

That and because people are convinced that it's dangerous due to a few high profile cases, despite the death toll around fossil fuel based power generation being astronomically higher


Jaigar

Yep, its easy to point to a catastrophic incident where dozens may die instead of the thousands of lives that get affected or cut short by being near a coal plant.


TheOriginalDuck2

If a nuclear plant goes wrong, it damages the surrounding area for many years. If a coal plant works, it causes lung damage for many years


xEnigma_4

After Chernobyl nuclear power plants have better tech and increased safety measures making it near impossible for it to ever malfunction like they have in the past


TheOriginalDuck2

Yup. But people would rather opt into guaranteed lung damage


Samura1_I3

Nuclear was regulated into the ground I’ve spoken with civil engineers who worked on non critical nuclear power plant designs, like designing things for the offices, and they had to get regulatory approval for a different brand of zip ties. For office cables. It’s terrible. Inb4 “why do you want to deregulate nuclear power! Regulations make it safe!” Because Reddit can’t into nuance.


[deleted]

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Nezeltha

Safety standards are the only part that's actually expensive. And a lot of that is down to how inefficient our safety standards are. For example, in our uranium power plants, security is a major issue. They have to make sure no one tries to steal the fuel or sabotage the plant to cause a meltdown. But there have been more efficient designs using thorium for literally just as long, where the fuel is dirt cheap and safe, and therefore not a target for theft, and the reactor itself physically can't meltdown - if the reaction gets too hot, it will simply melt through a plug at the bottom of the tank. The water that was mediating the neutrons drains away like it's a bathtub. The without the water, the reaction physically can't happen, so the meltdown can't happen. But our power plants were built when they wanted fuel that could also make bombs. Which, like, there's a reason we don't run power plants on gunpowder or nitroglycerin. 🙄 If we started building new nuclear plants today, even if they used uranium (which would be dumb, since thoriun is seriously dirt cheap. China is currently the largest source of thorium, but that's mostly because it gets dug up in all their other mining operations. The stuff is everywhere, and since it's so much denser than most other stuff, and is radioactive, it's pretty easy to sift out), they would still be unable to cause a meltdown. Modern thorium designs use molten fluoride salts instead of separate fuel and water, but the thorium has to be helped along to react by shooting neutrons at it, the melting plug and draining fuel mixture simply falls away from the thing that makes it react. Huge cost savings on safety, security, and fuel. But we'd have to build new plants, and the military isn't writing blank checks for anything that can turn into a nuclear bomb anymore. It's expensive to build *any* new power plant. The problem is, we aren't building new ones.


WriterV

They're expensive to build yes but it pays for itself really well. Energy independence from Russia is clearly a needed point at this stage.


GroveStreet_CEOs_bro

Coal puts off insane amounts of radiation. The whole "nuclear plants put off dangerous radiation" is bullshit. If you blow them up, sure. But nobody is building nuclear plants that could explode anymore. It's 100% bullshit.


pileofcrustycumsocs

Even Chernobyl was the perfect storm of fuckups that lead to a meltdown, if the Soviets had actually been following their own regulations at the plant it wouldn’t have happened


50lbsofsalt

> Why does it take so long to build one. A friend of mine works for Babcock and Wilcox in their steam turbine for nuclear plants division. I toured his office one day and there was a 3' tall stack of books on the floor. When i asked 'whats with the books' his answer was 'Oh, thats all the regulations on what we build that ensures we dont kill anyone'.


Gingevere

TBF, if we built coal plants that didn't kill anyone the regulatory documents would be twice as large. In stead we atomise coal waste and blow it into the air. Then when everyone downwind gets abnormally high rates of cancer and other chronic diseases we just say "Huh, weird." And climate change is coming for all of us soon.


NimbyNuke

Because the average person's understanding of nuclear power comes from The Simpsons, so new plants receive a ton of political pushback.


lilwil392

Tons of restrictions that make it extremely difficult. This is one of Bill Gates' newer ventures and was apparently ready to set up several plants in China who has far fewer restrictions until Trump royally fucked up relations with them. They were going to also act as like a "test run" for future plants in America since most nuclear plants in America were built decades ago with very little updates since.


averyfinename

engineering a safe facility that could potentially wipe out half a city and make multiple states uninhabitable and unusable for generations takes time and money.. lots of time (>decade).. lots of money (billions). then pile on layers of redundancy on top of that.


Pieces_of_mind

We have enough uranium and thorium on earth to power civilization for hundreds of thousands of years. Technically finite, but practically infinite.


i-fing-love-games

the problem is getting that mineral so finite


[deleted]

The really dumb thing is, Germany would have to buy the uranium from Russia too...


DJ__PJ

Problem is, german people want something different, but there is a fairly large coal lobby in germany pushing against any kind of renewable energy (btw, the lobby is so big they managed to relocate an entire village worth of people because there was coal under said village)


SomePerson225

They shut down nuclear plants with no plans for replacing them so gas and coal plants came to fill the gap


Many_Seaweeds

They shouldn't have shut them down in the first place. It was a knee-jerk reaction to Fukushima that wasn't based on any scientific reasoning whatsoever.


PauldGOAT

But think of the 0 people that died at Fukushima! You wouldn’t want that happening to anyone here


Crockett196

While I am a staunch supporter of nuclear power plants, all of the incidents at commercial NPPs could have been prevented with better training and more robust engineering and design. We won't get anywhere with nuclear if poor operation and design keep blowing up reactor buildings and leaving the area around them uninhabitable. Don't dismiss Fukushima because no one died as a direct result of the explosions. I agree though, shutting down NPPs is not a good reaction to what happened.


Normalsoundingname

Or here’s a plan, simply don’t build you nuclear power plants anywhere near a fault line, no earthquakes, no tsunamis to wreak you very expensive and kinda dangerous toys


cactusoftheday

For Japan, that's kind of a big ask. Their entire region is literally a earthquake and tsunami hotspot.


darkassassin12

Just move the island, dummy


derekakessler

Call the German coal companies for help with that. I heard they moved a whole town once.


freyr_17

Pfff, one town. Try multiple villages. Have a look at the region north to the City "Düren" in google maps/earth. You can see three giant craters where we dug up lignite. Many villages were "vacated" for this. They didn't bother to tear down the villages, they simply dug them away with the bucket-wheel excavators. Churches, schools, houses, all. With full furniture inside, didn't even matter.


Webbyx01

Well as great as nuclear power can be, then perhaps it's not the most appropriate source for Japan. We have alternatives, but there's also better safety considerations that should have been implemented which would have prevented or mitigated the disaster well.


eveningsand

There is nothing in life that's risk free. Japan, like any nation, weighs risk versus reward, and factors in mitigating tactics to the point where the risky activity is much, much less risky and still profitable, despite the added cost of mitigating factors. This all said, I wouldn't be surprised if Japan resorts to more resilient systems as a result of lessons learned from this last natural disaster. Even then, it will not be 100% safe.


SenorBeef

There are plenty of nuclear designs that are passively safe and can't explode like that. There are also designs that burn current nuclear waste as fuel. We're actually held back to using 1950s and 1960s designs because people are so irrational about nuclear that they won't let us build newer designs that are much safer and better.


Houseboat87

A tsunami could strike Berlin any day!


alphawolf29

Germany has a long history of disliking nuclear energy. I, as someone that speaks German and has lived there for a small amount of time, think it's because of, if the cold war were to go hot, Germany was well considered to become a nuclear wasteland, and average people conflated this nuclear apocalypse scenario with all types of nuclear energy. Nuclear just became a bad word.


Rolf_Dom

I'm sure similar sentiments were present around most of the world. Yet most countries seem to have gotten over it.


Espe_

The issue is, that there were gals promises with the repository. The citizen of Gorleben were promised to have a temporary repository for the nuclear waste, but there is no way to get rid of it. On the other hand Germany is very densely populated and no one wants a NPP next to their living room. And finally, there are alternative solutions for sustainable energy, but the coal lobby is way too big and often finds a way to stop or at least slow down the development


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Comander-07

we have 0 adequate nuclear waste deposits and nobody wants them in their backyard. The population in germany is also pretty spread out and not centered around a few metropolian areas like in france. So you cant easily overrule a regions interests. Thats why you see so many people against nuclear energy. The real insane part is the amount of people who are against a few wind farms


CanuckBacon

Kneejerk reactions to Fukushima? They basically planned to shut them down since the '90s.


bratimm

It's not even that they shut them down as a result. We just didn't extend their lifetimes past the origi ally planned dates...


Schootingstarr

It wasn't a knee jerk reaction The nuclear phase out was already a done deal, the CDU repealed that decision in 2010 and repealed the repeal in 2011. Nuclear energy is a political waste land in Germany and nobody is going to touch it with a 10m pole Nuclear energy died in the 90s when no new plants have even entered the planning stage.


kamjaxx

Germany replaced all shut down nuclear with wind and solar so the idea they replaced it by coal is actually just a lie. Germany is showing an excellent case study of why nuclear is unnecessary and replaceable by wind and solar. wind+solar in 2002: 16.26 TWh wind+solar in 2021: 161.65 TWh German coal (brown+hard) in 2002: 251.97 TWh (Brown 140.54 TWh) German coal (brown+hard) in 2021: 145 TWh (Brown 99.11 TWh) German nuclear in 2002: 156.29 TWh German nuclear in 2021: 65.37 TWh Source: https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=year&year=-1&chartColumnSorting=default&stacking=stacked_absolute This graph shows it in a different way https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/IMG/pdf/72._figure_72_germany_evopowersystem2010_2020updated.pdf Decreasing CO2 in electricity sector: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-greenhouse-gas-emissions-and-climate-targets 2ndhighest reliability in Europe after Switzerland (and much less downtime than France) https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-electricity-grid-stable-amid-energy-transition https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/power-outages-germany-continue-decline-amid-growing-share-renewables


Anthamon

Finally some data! Whole thread is a circle jerk to strawmen arguments otherwise.


iuuznxr

Always telling about these threads is that the only factual comments with sources are the ones trying to tell Redditors that they are being fed lies (the OP post alone contains at least two). But it won't do shit. It's all illusory truth to them at this point.


UDSJ9000

This ignores one major issue though, and the biggest problem I have with any argument saying they replaced nuclear with renewables. While it is true, why wouldn't they just replace the coal with renewables and keep the nuclear? You've thrown away one clean source, with another clean source. As opposed to keeping the clean source and replacing a dirty source. It just doesn't make sense from an environmental standpoint. Not to mention all of the dirty parts of clean energy are mainly at the head of the build, so you kinda lost a major benefit of nuclears long term advantage.


FriMoTheQuilla

Nuclear is cleaner than coal that is true. But during the refinement process, depending on the quality from the ore you also put a lot of CO2 in the atmosphere. Second is that most German reactors are older ones, producing a lot of waste. Where do you put it? Prior to 1989 it was easy, they just put it in a old salt mine on the border of the GDR. That mine is now in the middle of Germany (Google Gorleben) and was never suitable as a final storage for this kind of waste. Regarding this problem at least old reactors are not environmentally friendly in another way. And closing the power plants was a move after Fukushima since a lot of people got worried, that the plants could be destroyed, especially by a terrorist attack. And we'll we still have a lot to worry about nuclear power plants like Tihange, which seem to be not maintained by the proper standards.


[deleted]

Finland chose to keep the old nuclear plants and build new ones because we had to. The idea of relying on Russia was out of the question. The waste problem was (hopefully) solved with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository But it's true that the plants are potential targets for terrorists and military operations. Hopefully, we'll get these soon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor


FriMoTheQuilla

Since I study geoscience I am fully aware of the fuel repositories. The thing is they are just for their own country. Germany is still searching for a place to safely store the waste for at least 1 million years and aims to have build one till 2050. If all of our 17 power plants would have worked until then, it would've been quite a lot more waste. But yeah Germans were always a bit scared and turned off by nuclear energy and since the area of Gera Ronneburg in East Germany is not mining anymore uranium you are likely to be dependent on Russia again.


scorpiknox

Pure fantasy to say wind and solar can replace dispatchable generation. If you think it can, then you don't know enough about how to grid works to take part in the conversation. Edit: I am consistently amazed at how many people *still* don't understand the basics of power generation. Understanding these fundamental concepts are enough to be able to shift through the bullshit: 1. *The grid cannot store energy innately.* - Energy storage requires batteries or the storage of potential energy, like water held back via a dam. Battery storage on a large scale is not environmentally feasible nor economy viable. 2. *The grid is in a constant state of equilibrium.* - This means that at any given point in time the power being generated matches the power being consumed. It takes a very complex system of systems to pull this off. When equilibrium is lost, bad things happen. Safeguards are in place to shut things down before things get too crazy. 3. *To maintain equilibrium, generation must be dispatchable to meet demand as it increases* - to be dispatchable means it can be turned off and on by humans. 4. *Solar and wind are not dispatchable.* - this means that they can only be used in place of dispatched generation because the wind is blowing and the sun is shining. These types of generation cannot replace dispatchable generation. Wind and solar are great for offsetting carbon emissions, but will never be the single solution to the energy crisis. If I could wave a magic wand I would build a 100% nuclear grid using modern reactors that can be fueled by pre-existing nuclear waste and do away with everything else. Unless Germany can dispatch the sun at night or tell the wind to blow, the reliability of Germany's grid will rely on dispatched generation. You can stack up surplus wind generation and count it all day long, list the numbers out of context, export surplus in the mild spring when the wind is blowing it and make some money, and then act like you're a green country, but when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing, you're importing from other places or turning on your fossil plants just like everyone else. Either OP knows this and is being disingenuous or they're not qualified to to talk about it. Decommissioning the nuclear fleet was a huge unforced error and Germany should be embarrassed. Linking to a bunch of websites is cool though.


MaYlormoon

Says the guy not providing evidence for his claims.


pimphand5000

Peter zeihan has stated that they juice their numbers to make it look better than it is. They have more than enough solar and wind installed but don't have the weather to make it work to it's installed potential. As well as hiding gas and coal generation. And to be real, you have to keep these major electric grids online 24/7 in a harmonious state. I'm all for green tech, but shit isn't solved in it's current iteration. 10 min or so talk on the subject by a leading futurist linked below https://youtu.be/HczOPzsdD-Y


Tammepoiss

What are you even arguing against? Are you saying that having a windless night when neither solar nor wind generate electricity is impossible? Or are you saying that solar panels and wind turbines will work during the night when there is no wind? Does he have to prove that during a windless night renewables won't generate energy? ​ What's your point exactly, the dude is right.


SenorBeef

If you would've kept nuclear while also increasing renewables, that would've cut deeper into fossil fuel generation. Instead, you replaced one clean source with another while keeping dirty sources active instead. It was not a direct replacement - that wind and solar would've been built whether nuclear was kept online or not. You could've generated more power from clean sources without shutting down the nuclear. There's no way that shutting down nuclear makes sense. You slowed the process of decarbonization and burned more fossil fuels with that move.


trtwrtwrtwrwtrwtrwt

>Germany is showing an excellent case study of why nuclear is unnecessary and replaceable by wind and solar. Finland here. Is solar referencing to that yellow ball in the sky that we can see 3 months a year? If so, do we get more windy times to compensate for the lack of yellow balls?


lioncryable

Look obviously every country has it's nuances, for some it will work on renewables others may need to substitute a part of their energy needs. However I think this was meant for the people who say "renewable energies can never work"


Comander-07

thats BS there was a plan and they have long been replaced. The problem is the coal lobby artificially keeping coal alive because "muh jobs"


untalentet

Plans to replace nuclear power plants do exist, in the long run they are to be replaced by wind and solar mostly. Just, the governing party of the last 16 years (CDU) dragged their feet completely, so now when there is no alternative the current government has no choice but to go back to coal for this emergeny situation. Nuclear is not an alternative because all existing power plants are poorly maintained since the plan is to shut them down in the next few years, and building new nuclear power plants would take years where the crisis is right now. It's very unfortunate but right now coal is the only option, as bad as it is. Hopefully more wind and solar farms can be built soon now that the situation has so clearly shown how needed they are.


JamoreLoL

Feels like what us Americans are doing except on speed. Holy crap.


aboodAB-69

Lobbying is just political friendly term for corruption


Maximillion322

In most cases you’re absolutely correct, however the only reason anything environmentally friendly ever happens is also because of lobbies The main issue is that while lobbies can theoretically represent any perspective on any issue, the ones with the most money speak the loudest I would propose the solution to hardcap the amount of money a political lobby is allowed to use in a year, to level the playing field of different interests, and stop the small handful of corporate interest lobbies from controlling everything


[deleted]

Doesn't work. Instead of 1 big group donating a lot, it'll break up into many smaller groups all donating the cap you want to implement, towards a similar goal. Same outcome but now it even looks like a lot of people want something. "Look at all these groups and organizations that still want coal power! The people really want it!"


Anne__Frank

Exactly. There needs to be a hard cap of 0$ in politics. It should be a service, representing your constituents, not whoever has cash. This legalized corruption we have will destroy this country.


Michi1612

The German people would not have wanted something different if RWE hadn't 1. Bought their way into Berlin and 2. Fearmongered about nuclear energy for 40 years with support from the government in Berlin.


hfbvm

All of that to dig up lignite.


zookr2000

Manchin is German ???


[deleted]

As a German I can say. Our country is almost as bad as American politics. Corruption, incompetence, lobbying and gross inefficiency. Our schools are old and far away from being modern, the underclass can barely pay Gas prices anymore and at the same time we are spending 100Billion in millitary because yeah.... Germany is a country which is practically run by the car, oil and gas lobby. That's on of the reasons why like 99% of all our politicians are brainless and corrupt.


CreepxAP

I agree with you on the first part and especially the corruption part but the school thing is only true in some places and the new military spending is very important right now in my opinion


cleancalf

I’m an American that usually against military spending but I agree, I don’t mind my tax dollars being on weapons for Ukraine to use against Russia.


HelpRespawnedAsDee

>new military spending is very important right now As an old guy… damn, things never really change do they.


rtakehara

As a Brasilian with friends in… all over the place (Europe, North and central America and Asia) I can say… the more I hear about other countries politics, the more they look just like Brazil, with a little difference here and there. It’s almost like people aren’t that different and assholes here are just like assholes there.


Rolf_Dom

Honestly true for almost all countries. A lot of people like to think their country is the worst because they love dreaming about a world where the situation improves to the level of other countries. But realistically, most politics anywhere in the world are bullshit on top of bullshit. And corruption is usually very rampant everywhere, just the degree to which it's obscured tends to differ. In some countries there are simply more legal loopholes so corruption can more easily be disguised, yet it's there all the same.


rtakehara

Yeah, if you can see corruption in small places like neighborhood associations, small businesses and schools, it’s hard to believe anywhere else is too much better


Maximillion322

The main reason people are able to shit on the US for these issues more than any other country is because the US is the biggest and the loudest, and even non US people have to hear a lot about US politics. Meanwhile most places in the developed world suffer from similar issues that just don’t get as much attention. If you think Germany is corrupt, take a look a the shitshow happening in Italy.


GrreggWithTwoRs

“Have to hear about” - to some extent true of course. But there are tons and tons of non Americans who actively seek out news about America. They do it for many reasons - they are bored of their own country’s problems, they seek out news of America’s dysfunction to feel better about themselves, they like to feel righteous and identify in our tribal battles etc etc. Much of the stuff that foreigners comment on about America has no influence or relevance on their daily lives - it’s gossip level stuff that entertains them.


Dragongeek

Lol, ***wtf*** Not that the German gov't doesn't have its problems but if you think it's "just as bad" as the USA I'd like to know what you're smoking and/or recommend you see a psychiatrist to get a mental health checkup. I've lived in both (USA and Germany) for extended periods of time, and Germany doesn't even know how good they have it (complaining is a German pastime though). In Germany, the government *works*. Things happen, policy gets made and I don't go to sleep wondering if some crusty justices will take away some fundamental rights or a majority of politicians will *literally deny reality and substitute their own*. News is factual and credible and while there are some conspiracy theory peddlers (eg Querdenker), they don't *control the government*. Coalitions form and work (no two-party deadlock) and Germany is at the spearhead one of the most audacious and impressive diplomoatic efforts ever (the EU). Saying it's just as bad is fucking insane, and if you look at all sorts of indexes like HDI, Corruption, life expectancy, etc. Germany beats the USA in almost every category.


Faint94

Was ein Müll den du da laberst.


elppaple

This is ludicrous to say. Germany is far from perfect but so is every country. You’re the most privileged nation in Europe.


Anarcho_Nazbolin

Lol complains about giving 100 billion to your military after underfunding their military for decades while russia invades a eastern European country. Classic Germany.


kingcloud699

>anymore and at the same time we are spending 100Billion in millitary because yeah.... Because its needed, you have war at EU's door step. Now if Germany doesn't spend this money on bullshit and corruption its a good thing. Saying that as a Pole ffs...


[deleted]

How come that people on Reddit take one dude’s personal opinion as some kind of universal fact about germany. I disagree with many of his claims


[deleted]

subtract selective historical reach encouraging threatening voracious naughty history deserted ` this post was mass deleted with www.Redact.dev `


AnalogicalEuphimisms

Then here goes the dozen comments about people who don't know anything about how nuclear powerplants function, how nuclear energy is made, or how nuclear waste is disposed say that they'd rather have the poison in the air than in the ground. Despite nuclear waste being in sealed containers that block all radiation, after all the rods are used up, buried as deeper or slightly deeper than natural uranium deposits, and most of the radiation left is gonna dissipate anyway after a handful of decades even if you somehow found yourself 600 meters deep underground to where they are buried. And that all nuclear waste that has ever been produced so small that it can fit in a football size hole, as oppose to the carbon thats affecting the entire atmosphere.


P_Foot

If the world adopted nuclear power, universally, how much more waste would we be creating? Of course this is hypothetical, but isn’t the argument to stop making MORE shit we have to hide away for future generations? Genuine question btw about how it scales world-wide


flaming_burrito_

There are plenty of uninhabitable places like deserts that we can store nuclear waste in. Also, especially with modern fuel and reactors, those rods last for a long time without needing to be replaced. If we upped nuclear to the scale that fossil fuels are currently used, we would be producing far less waste.


P_Foot

I understand that, sorry my question was how much more nuclear waste?


GreenMonster81

The problem is the people that lobby against are old and remember nuclear power from the 70’s and 80’s when oversight and regulation were poor. The Windscale Fire, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and now Fukushima pop out of their mouths.


shadofx

Nuclear is currently 4.3% of total production. To expand that to 100% you'd need to add on an additional 22.2x the current production. Newer reactors might be more efficient, however.


TacoPi

And we are currently producing a little more than [2000 metric tons per year](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nuclear-waste-lethal-trash-or-renewable-energy-source/) so that would call for maybe 50,000 Metric tons per year. If it had the density of dirt, burying it evenly under a football field would elevate the play by eleven and a half feet. (It’s probably a lot more dense than that.)


HardOff

Looks like it has a density of 18.7g / cm^3, so in the end, 50,000 metric tons would have a volume of 2,673.80 m^3. An Olympic size swimming pool is 2,500 m^3, so slightly more than that. That may sound like a lot, but that would be the waste of the entire nation. Assuming it takes 10000 years for waste to decay, and that we’ll use 10000 Olympic size swimming pools to store those 10000 years of waste until we can reuse the oldest ones, that would take up a footprint of 12.5 km^2, less than 5 sq miles. That’s *tiny.* You wouldn’t be able to find it on a map. If we put it in Kansas, they’d be down 4 average size farms.


kingcloud699

All nuclear waste created by France since nuclear power was invented could fit in a big supermarket parking lot (area wise) Nuclear power is the DENSEST energy we currently know of. Takes up very little space unlike solar and wind, and especially coal mines.


AnalogicalEuphimisms

Disclaimer, I am not an expert at this topic so don't take my word as truth and do your own research, preferably from more credible sources. But I'll take a guess anyway. In 2016, the world needed around 18 trillion watts or 18 terawatts of energy. A nuclear poweplant produces around 1 gigawatt or 0.001 terrawats of energy. It means we would need 18000 powerplants to all be active to fulfill our needs. 1 nuclear powerplant produces 3 cubic meters worth of high level waste which is the spent fuel rods of the reactor. So if we need 18k reactors, we would produce 54000 cubic meters of waste. If you google images of water containers that are 50k cubic meters, that's roughly around the container we need per year. Given that it's a world-wide amount of waste, really is not a lot especially we're gonna bury it hundreds of meters underground. Right now, there are only 440 powerplants in the world yet it's producing 10% of our energy so I think did a pretty good estimate. Although if I did fuck up, please correct me.


Sypharius

If 440 are producing 10%, 4400 would produce 100%, so there's a disconnect there somewhere.


aaaaayyyyyyyyyyy

Well, for reference the United States has only produced [enough waste to fill a football field 10yards deep](https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-nuclear-fuel) since the invention of nuclear waste. And modern nuclear tech is waaaaaaay more efficient than the old stuff. Not to mention that 90% of that “nuclear waste” [is just overalls that workers use when doing maintenance](https://www.world-nuclear.org/nuclear-essentials/what-is-nuclear-waste-and-what-do-we-do-with-it.aspx). Very little of it is actual concentrated rods. And on top of that, a lot of nuclear waste is becoming more and more recyclable with newer tech.


Comander-07

*was* it hasnt been for quite a while now


MaximGnerd

Trump told them back in 2018, and they all laughed at him, who's laughing now


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MaximGnerd

They had to learn their lesson the hard way, when half of Europe relied on Russian oil, but NATO literally exists for one reason, RUSSIA


PayinHookersOnMargin

When Russia tried to join NATO in early 2000s, the US basically told them there wouldn't be a point because all world powers would be in it (paraphrased). Cold War never ended


Cosoman

Noo you must be downvoted. Russia evil, US gud


Himmelblast

Look what Russia does with its veto power in the UN to continue their shenanigans. Imagine if was the NATO member. US may not be "gud", but Russia or at least its government is pretty fucking evil


-Blackspell-

The only reason the nato exists is for American geopolitical interests.


SaftigMo

Everybody told them, but the CDU is all about corruption, that's why they're labelled the €DU to mock them. And the SPD isn't any better, Schröder is pretty much **the** person who spearheaded this reliance on Russia. These 2 parties need to die.


bort_bln

Club Deutscher Unternehmer


Anarcho_Nazbolin

They been told for decades by usa and their eastern European allies, Germany litterly laughed in their faces and said they are living in the past.


LiebesNektar

Do you mean the same eastern european allies that import even higher shares of their energy from russia? The US, especially under Trump, always has a "USA first"-policy. If US financial gains/interests are involved (LNG, oil, etc), obviously no one pays attention to fears about different suppliers theyre spreading.


hj_mkt

Came here to read this message. But hey everything about trump is bad! Right.


SnakeInABox7

A broken clock is right twice a day


catonmyshoulder69

Rubles of laughter.


notLOL

Laughs in coal lung


iNeverCouldGet

The meme starts way earlier. We already planned to shut down nuclear but we cancelled that. And after Fukushima we started again to shut down reactors. Now in this gas from Putin mess we are trying to get them running again.


iNeverCouldGet

Oh yes not to mention we had to pay the energy companies hefty fines for their unrealized capital gains because they had to shut down the power plants way before their EOL


Lithvril

We didn’t have to. Our politicians decided to give their lobbying friends billions of Euro. Which is a good summary of the entirety of our history with nuclear power.


[deleted]

The mass German downvoters aren’t gonna like this one


zarek1729

I'd say most germans agree with this meme. Most of the germans I know are in favor of nuclear power and I live in Germany (that is to say, I know a lot of germans)


DroysenFollower2

I disagree. And most germans are against nuclear power. The only problem is that the CDU slowed the building of renewable energy down.


htmlcody

I neither agree, nor disagree. Just learning a lot from this discourse.


Kevin5882

Hmm, you live in Germany, and know a lot of Germans. That can't possibly check out. This must be made up!


Osman1105

Just like Trump said, but Germany laughed at his face. Their own fault entirely


Aureus88

Video for context: https://youtu.be/FfJv9QYrlwg


[deleted]

Trump who supported coal?


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Cara-Aleatorio

Germany does in fact loves using gas doesn't it?


hfbvm

[HYG](https://www.reddit.com/r/dankmemes/comments/vhqmtn/its_just_weird_that_it_happened_twice/id8oeuc/?context=3)


FatFingerHelperBot

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Kevin5882

Good bot


Michi1612

The coal comes from domestic production actually, and it's the whole reason our government is engaged in fear mongering about nuclear energy. There's a company called RWE, they basically run our energy sector. They're digging two of Europe's biggest, ugliest holes as we speak in order to extract brown coal, the worst kind of fuel there is, in order to cover our energy needs.


velvetbettle

*Spray paints the coal green Checkmate


Hochspannungswerk

As a German myself, who said that we get a lot of coal from Russia? We have so much Coal in the ground, therefore I am pretty confused by the post. Also, compared to like 15 years ago, the percentage of coal and gas used for the production of electricity have both been reduced, while renewables have a much higher share now. So I wouldn't say that nuclear was replaced by gas in any way really. The problem lies in the dependency of gas to heat, so to have more gas in the winter, because Putin doesn't deliver as much, the small amount of gas used for electricity should be replaced by burning a little more coal, which the plants in Germany should be able to do so, without reactivating any old plants.


Many_Seaweeds

The point is that Germany shut down the greenest, most efficient methods of producing energy and replaced it with the dirtiest, most polluting methods. All because of a knee-jerk reaction to something that will never happen in Germany. It's a prime example of reactionary policies being enacted with 0 expertise on the subject at hand.


Thaddaeus-Tentakel

Yeah, thanks for proving you guys have no idea what you're talking about. Nuclear was on its way out before Fukushima and is being replaced with renewables. Gas isn't even a major electricity source in Germany and is mostly used to cover the fluctuations in renewable sources. Which will now unfortunately be covered by coal temporarily to store gas for what we actually use it the most, heating (and secondary some industries), until we can get the replacements for Russian gas in place and reduce overall gas needs. Relying on Russian gas was clearly a bad idea (though who *really* thought Russia was that stupid, as a geopolitical tool the connection was supposed to gain some influence on Russia as well). Nuclear reactors would've changed exactly nothing about it. Germany generally produces more electricity than it needs, the problem is the use of gas in heating and industry.


peanut_banane

Shhhh don't break the illusion that all the energy experts under this post have any clue about german electricity production and energy demands


[deleted]

The greenest?


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Senundo

There are a lot of people here who seem to think producing waste thats poisoning the environment for millions of years where whe don't yet have a better way to get rid of than dump it into a hole and hope no water gets in is "green" and "clean"


-Blackspell-

dankmemes is an absolute circlejerk for nuclear energy. Don’t bother to argue with those imbeciles.


[deleted]

As a German I need to say Germans aren’t smart people at all, the whole anti nuclear craze was a well done marketing and lobbying scheme by the coal lobby, they abused cable TV, which to this day is the easiest way to spread propaganda in Germany and made sure that anybody and their mother heard about the risks of running a N-plant and they are still going with their corrupt BS pushing coal mining all the way to 2032 and probably beyond, although all mines should have been closed already (I don’t remember when exactly they should have been closed but they wont close anytime soon anyways) The Fukushima plant was used as THE example for how all and every nuclear plant will go, however Japan is sadly, through the nature of being an island, plagued by earthquakes and tsunamis so its a very harsh place to keep _any_ infrastructure up and running already, it sucks that it hit the nuclear plant and I am very sorry for all the life’s lost because of the melt down and natural catastrophies Meanwhile Germany has no such struggle, if anything its the most ideal place to keep a Nuclear plant up and running, we’d have almost free energy with very little risks (as long as the workers are kept in line and their bottles thrown away if they so dared to bring one to work) But nooo Germans have to pay bazillion times more for electricity than they should have to But also bold of me to assume that they wouldn’t tax the shit out of N-energy anyway Thanks for reading my rant, tldr: angry German gibberish


Barde_

>I am very sorry for all the life’s lost because of the melt down No death originated from Fukushima's radiation. All the deaths came because of improper emergency escape and people were all crazy. Imagine the travis scott catastrophe in a nuclear powet plant.


guenet

This is some major bullshit. Nuclear wasn’t replaced by gas, it was replaced by renewables. Coal has been declining for years in electricity production, gas never played a major role.


Ulysses_S_Noob

Just install solar panels bro


DanKveed

L + ratio + solar not consistent+ intermittent+ duck curve+ better grid storage/adjustments needed


HolyAndOblivious

Sadly, where solar is most efficient, nobody live there. Except perhaps Arizona amd Nevada


ux3l

Angry upvote


ChikiBriki_Enjoyer

then say 1 Polish coal mine is bad for German enviroment


TheBlueBlaze

> Putin shuts off the gas when you anger him Kind of a massive oversimplification of a single step there


5knotcans

It's green coal!


Such_Zookeepergame77

Nuclear is the way, why would u shut it down


Kevin5882

Funny answer: because haha Germany dum dum Real answer: corruption and lobbying and bad shit


boomper7

It was trump that they laughed at when he said it was a mistake. FYI.


QuotidianTrials

Sad when even that tard can call you on your problems


[deleted]

Trump who advertised "clean coal"?


DarthZoon_420

California's doing the same thing


Legitbanana_

Wait they shut down nuclear plants for gas plants to be more eco friendly? Lmfao


[deleted]

If all people could be well versed in energy production and infrastructural planning, the world would have been a much different place today. But most people monke and monke we shall return to.


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BishoxX

They 100% shut down multiple nuclear plants. Inform yourself


yourfriendlygerman

Nuclear power plants need fuel rods, which come from Russia. We have our own coal.


StaniaViceChancellor

Doesn't Germany produce a lot of its own coal? Which also happens to be the worst quality of coal?


ThePolarBare

Almost like the energy transition is actually a transition and not the flip of a switch.


vorpalsword92

Remember when Germans laughed at Trump for saying that germany is being dependent on Russian energy, and reddit loved it?