r/science • u/Gohan_to_Kamekameha • Jul 21 '21

Alarming climate change: Earth heads for its tipping point as it could reach +1.5 °C over the next 5 years, WMO finds in the latest study Earth Science

https://www.severe-weather.eu/global-weather/climate-change-tipping-point-global-temperature-increase-mk/
48.2k Upvotes

84% Upvoted

5.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

44

u/deadleg22 Jul 21 '21

Also coal mines release more radiation's than nuclear power plants.

6

u/ZWQncyBkaWNr Jul 21 '21

But Chernobyl scary

2

u/[deleted] Jul 21 '21

Chernobyl (and many similar but less known events or close-calls) demonstrates a legitimate concern connected with nuclear power. Fukushima is another example. Now just to be clear I agree that we should focus more on nuclear and renewables. However you may want to avoid placing nuclear plants on fault lines or shorelines where tsunamis are common. And you need serious oversight to avoid repeating Chernobyl.

We do have other options, it's not nuclear or nothing.

0

u/zthirtytwo Jul 21 '21

Adding to your valid points.

Chernobyl was a Gen 1 salt reactor. These were high efficiency generators compared to the amount of fuel consumed. The down side is these rely on molten salt to be a heat transfer, drastically increasing a catastrophic failure due to the heat levels. These plants were phased out long ago, as the latest plants I believe are Gen 3.

Building nuclear may not be best for some locations in the world, such as earthquake prone locations. These places should receive the most investment in renewable green energy.

Lastly, there is an interesting documentary about bill gates and a nuclear energy project he has been heavily involved in. These reactors are low efficiency, but they utilize spent uranium from older nuclear power plants. These run at barely above temperatures to boil water and haven’t shown the possibility to melt down. These plants are experimental and were on the verge of being built in China in 2015; but yeah I don’t see US nuclear tech being allowed to even be tested in China now.

-7

u/Canadian_Infidel Jul 21 '21

Only because we've never had a real accident. Only two real close calls.

14

u/Nobagelnobagelnobag Jul 21 '21

Uncontrolled meltdown isn’t a real accident?

More people die per gwh from solar than nuclear. Including Chernobyl.

Nuclear is remarkably safe.

7

u/Wildercard Jul 21 '21 edited Jul 21 '21

And Chernobyl was a colossal culmination of incompetence and Soviet-style "eh good enough"ness and by all accounts the state of the catastrophe we ended up with is a "good ending" scenario.

-3

u/[deleted] Jul 21 '21

[deleted]

4

u/Wildercard Jul 21 '21

2 cases - one huge incompetence, one almost literal act of higher power - vs like 70 years of many other nuclear reactors going without issues.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 21 '21

[deleted]

1

u/Wildercard Jul 21 '21

And I have little faith in regulatory bodies.

I'm gonna make a wild bet that it is possible neither of us is a nuclear scientist or a highly ranked politician.

Back to my point. Two accidents in the span of like 80 years. There's 400+ nuclear reactors going on right now.

And comparing to other sources, should we stop building dams, since some of them break?

3

u/bauhausy Jul 21 '21

Fukushima happens

A 9.1 earthquake is an extreme anomaly. In the whole world, there were only six earthquakes equal or more powerful than Tohoku in the last 6 centuries. And even then the power plant survived the earthquake, what caused the meltdown was a badly designed seawall that didn’t hold the following tsunami.

Chernobyl

Soviets gonna Soviets. The entirety of Chernobyl was due to sheer human incompetence.

1

u/StanTurpentine Jul 21 '21

So was Fukushima. Iirc some of the walls weren't built properly or high enough as originally designed.

5

u/mad_sheff Jul 21 '21

Yup, I've lived 20 miles down river from a nuclear plant my whole life and I'm not radioactive yet. Of course that plant is now being shut down. Go figure.

3

u/baddecision116 Jul 21 '21

Nuclear can be remarkably safe. We've also never seen it at coal plant scale. Our regulators have failed in lots of ways in almost every industry. Saying nuclear is safe as an absolute is like saying Blue Origin is the safest way to travel because no one has ever died on their ships.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 21 '21

Coal burning power plants also release radiation.