this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago

Well..

Chernobyl right now is an awesome nature preserve thanks to humans being gone. The entire area has been slowly moving back to its original state with even wolves moving back. That last bit is important as wolves have a huge influence on stability in natural habitats.

I know, silver linings, but still.

To the point: nuclear energy doesn't need to be that bad. Well designed reactor are pretty much safe, and toxic end products are relatively little and manageable in comparison to gas and coal reactors. Chernobyl just was a shit reactor managed by idiots.

Ironically, because of their desig, nuclear power plants do not emit any radiation while coal and oill reactors do emit radiation coming from their fuels. That adds to all the other pollution classic power plants emit.

Then there are other fuels that could / should be used to avoid the "we don't want people to have plutonium" issue.

Then the two big alternative energy generators wind and solar both have their own issues. No wind? No power. Night? No power. Clouds? No power. Wind farms kill birds. Solar panels require replacement every x amount of years because they degrade. The "no power" problem require huge batteries, or if you're lucky, an entire lake to store that energy but now that late basically can't be used for anything else and won't be able to sustain any life.

Then finally: in comparison, nuclear energy generates enormous amounts of power where wind and solar generates very little. Humanity needs huge amounts of power to live.

Nuclear power plants take a long time to build but then give us huge amounts of power for as long as we need it to. If we really want to move away from CO2 emitting power generation, which we really really really do, I really think we can't ignore nuclear energy