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[Sheb]

Basically, a populist move after Fukushima.

[LordSlowpoke]

why the balls is it good pr though

i mean ukraine built two new reactors in the last decade and they have a genuine, first-hand reason to not want nuclear anything around

i'm not even... fukushima? a disastrous fluke is being weaponized by shitlords who want cash to be funneled into horribly ineffective "green" sources while at best they're not even going to produce enough energy that's been needed to produce them in the first place with how they'll likely be placed. that is the most logical thing that could be occurring right now. i'm not even going to get started on greenpeace protesting nuclear power plants on the off-chance that it'll be the one in a few dozen years struck by an earthquake/tsunami/meteor strike combo and create a good ol' shitstorm especially when coal is the only real alternative

overall politics has been an annoyance lately. i'll refrain from posting here until i've taken a rest from it.

[kaian-a-coel]

Also the whole nuclear fear could cause people to amalgamate shitty, inneficient, dirty and bomb-making uranium reactors with thorium salts reactors, or even, Science forbid, fusion reactor.
I still dont understand why we continue building uranium reactors when a flat-out upgrade, superior in every fucking regard, is available. #rethoricalquestion

[10ebbor10]

Are we building Uranium reactors? I thought the nuclear expansion was mostly stopped.

On a side note, Thorium is, IIRC, not quite there yet. Still some problems with the fact that it's quite acidic.

[Another]

And the problem with new perspective reactor types that are not there yet is that the R&D needed to finally be there is not being done enough for a bunch of retarded political reasons.

[aenri]

Yeah, nuclear plants are they way forward. Its a disaster that we are closing the plants right and left and in meantime we still rely on things like coal. But why wouldnt politicians go for this easy popularity grab.

[10ebbor10]

Actually, I'm afraid it might be in vain. Especially for nuclear. A full on nuclear solution is a heavy investment, and there's no time for that.

[Evil Knievel]

The main issue with nuclear power is in the long term the waste.

Currently, there is no solution to this. There are different ways proposed to deal with this worldwide, but none is of such a kind that it would have been envisioned prior to starting nuclear energy production. Those are all ideas that we come up with because there is waste now, and needs to be dealt with somehow. We must solve it because we must, not because we have a good solution. And actually, since politics prefers to ignore the problem, we don't really do anything with that right now.

And this relates to another issue: In a world where half of the infrastructures are controlled by authorities that are power-hungry and corrupt, and possibly also incompetent, it does not really matter if humans are clever enough to safely deal with nuclear power. There will always be some in charge somewhere who don't care, or simply are not able. Note, that Fukushima happened in a high-tech high-discipline society.

And remember all that has happened so far.

The Germany energy debate tells me more than anything that renewables can be forced, but it has to be done more cleverly than they do it. So maybe it is a question of doing just that.

[Sheb]

You can also look at Fukushima from this perspective; the decision to use nuclear energy raised Japan's death toll in the Tsunami from 18,537 to 18,538 (some old worker died of heatstroke while working in an hazmat suit).

Indeed, it may be argued that most of the casualties of the Fukushima problem will be caused not by radiation or anything of the sort, but by the coal & gas plants that will be put online to replace nuclear power.

As for costs, again I'm sure than even counting the cost of the clean up (With estimates going into the tens of billions), Japan is a net winner since it didn't have to import costly gas and coal for its electricity generation.

Now, regarding the question of the waste... Well, we have several ways to go about it: Breeder reactor to burn them, or just dig deep enough. Making an underwater storage deep below the abyss would be my favorite solution: geologically stable, far away from anything, with clays that sticks to radioisotopes. The main problem now is a lack of will, not anything else. That, and no one wants to store waste in its backyard.

[Helgoland]

Combined fusion/fission? Great idea - using the fast electrons created by fusion reactiors to either transmutate waste or split U-238 to generate energy. And we have a ton of U-238.

[Sheb]

Also, I never got what was so special about nuclear waste. Sure, Plutonium last a million year, but arsenic is forever and will kill you just as easily.

[kaian-a-coel]

Thorium reactors have less waste which last far less.

[Darvi]

Problem is you can only get it from really dangerous and deadly places.

[Alastar]

Quite interesting for those concerned about radiation hazards of nuclear power: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste

[Sheb]

Not exactly true. It's just that coal plants tend by their design to spread whatever radioactivity they have around, whereas the nuclear waste don't go up a smokestack in a nuclear plant.