2103
submitted 1 year ago by sv1sjp@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] danielbln@lemmy.world 100 points 1 year ago

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

[-] Carighan@lemmy.world 62 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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

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

[-] Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social 23 points 1 year ago

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

So there's one difference.

[-] SocialEngineer56@notdigg.com 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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

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

[-] abraxas@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago

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

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

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

[-] westyvw@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

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

Political parties are running on platforms of deregulation right now.

[-] PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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

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

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

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

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

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

load more comments (3 replies)
[-] sederx@programming.dev 7 points 1 year ago

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

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] cooopsspace@infosec.pub 3 points 1 year ago

The risks are lower in literally everything else...?

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] dojan@lemmy.world 34 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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

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

[-] The_v@lemmy.world 28 points 1 year ago

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

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

It's really not that complicated.

[-] abraxas@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 year ago

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

load more comments (29 replies)
[-] umad_cause_ibad@lemm.ee 17 points 1 year ago

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

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

[-] Astrealix@lemmy.world 31 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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

load more comments (27 replies)
[-] dojan@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

My country, Sweden, also gets a decent chunk of power from hydro. Back in 2021, about 43% was hydroelectric, and 31% was nuclear.

[-] Touching_Grass@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It would be cool to see huge investments into battery storage. If we could create a battery that doesn't just leak energy from storing, we could generate power in one location and ship it out where it's needed. There could be remote energy production plants using geothermal or hydroelectric power that ship out these charged batteries to locations all over. It would let us better utilize resources instead of having to have cities anchored around these sources.

Or we could generate a ton of power all at once, store it and use it as needed rather having to have on demand energy production

Hell with better batteries even fossil fuels begin to be climate friendly since you could store the massive energy created and know you're using close to 100% of it.

[-] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It would be cool to see huge investments into battery storage.

Globally humanity already invests over 10 Billion dollars per year in advancing battery technology.

If we could create a battery that doesn’t just leak energy from storing...

In order to build what you are talking about will almost certainly require real room temperature super conductors. We can get close, maybe, with the next generation of Aluminum-Air or Iron-Air batteries but this is big pimping. It's incredibly complicated and difficult.

It's like Fusion Power. We can see a future where we have it figured out and working but it's still some years, if not decades, away.

[-] Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It’s like Fusion Power. We can see a future where we have it figured out and working but it’s still some years, if not decades, away.

Allow me to share the most frustrating graph I have ever seen

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments (13 replies)
[-] Touching_Grass@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

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

[-] dojan@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

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

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

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

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

load more comments (7 replies)
load more comments (13 replies)
[-] BlushedPotatoPlayers@sopuli.xyz 14 points 1 year ago

While that's true, we still have for example safe air travel, although I'm pretty sure companies would be happy to ship their passengers minced to maximize their profit.

Also, thorium reactors would be a great step forward, unfortunately its byproducts can't be used for nuclear weapons, so their development was pretty slowed down.

[-] Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

I’m pretty sure companies would be happy to ship their passengers minced to maximize their profit.

That actually sounds more comfortable than normal airline travel

[-] Carighan@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Also there was that german experimental Thorium reactor that was so mismanaged, it made Burns' Springfield power plant look well handled. I think that scared a lot of people off of Thorium for a long time.

Source: Lived right next to that reactor during my childhood.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 13 points 1 year ago

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

load more comments (4 replies)
[-] Harrison@ttrpg.network 7 points 1 year ago

Nationalise energy production.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 year ago

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

load more comments (9 replies)
this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
2103 points (94.3% liked)

World News

39104 readers
1108 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS