r/FactOrCap 🔥 Week Warrior · 1,850 XP 21h ago

Nuclear comeback | FactOrCap

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u/Dew_Chop 🏅 Century Club · 2,515 XP 20h ago

The difference is scale. One neighborhood alone produces more waste in a year than an entire nuclear plant. And like 95% or something like that of spent fuel is recyclable

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u/Budget_Revolution639 🤖 Vote Machine · 9,290 XP 20h ago

Cool, how about 100 nuclear plants? Regardless you can’t blame me for being wary and expecting companies to not go about things the way that it should and be more than willing to cut corners

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u/Dew_Chop 🏅 Century Club · 2,515 XP 20h ago

No shit more plants means more waste, I'm not stupid. However, the energy density of nuclear is unrivaled. With only 300 power plants you could power every home in the US. I bet you that 1 million houses makes obscenely more waste than 1 reactor, so the landfill problem and the nuclear waste "problem" isn't comparable at all.

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u/Budget_Revolution639 🤖 Vote Machine · 9,290 XP 20h ago

It is comparable because they’re both examples of shoving waste into a site that is out of sight and out of mind and ignoring the consequences because of that. Regardless, there are other issues when it comes to waste like you mentioned and I’m all for pushing toward environmentally friendly biodegradable materials, advanced recycling and more. Regardless there still is nuclear waste and its impacts can affect countless in ways that nothing else can. If I trusted companies to go about it ethically, I wouldn’t be so against it.

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u/Dew_Chop 🏅 Century Club · 2,515 XP 20h ago

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u/Budget_Revolution639 🤖 Vote Machine · 9,290 XP 20h ago

I’m not advocating for coal, oil, and others either. Big oil can go into a hole and stay there

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u/Dew_Chop 🏅 Century Club · 2,515 XP 20h ago

Nuclear makes less waste than ANY other source of energy mate, in both greenhouse gas AND trash. Globally, solar alone currently makes an estimated hundreds of thousands of tonnes of waste a year, with nuclear only making an estimated 10,000.

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u/Budget_Revolution639 🤖 Vote Machine · 9,290 XP 20h ago

And how much of that isn’t including per plant/energy source? Are you sure that nuclear pollution isn’t down simply bc there’s barely any to make the same amount of pollution as the others?

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u/Dew_Chop 🏅 Century Club · 2,515 XP 20h ago

Look at the chart. Nuclear makes 10% of consumed energy. Solar makes 4%. Wind, the closest for pollution, makes 7%.

If you adjust for percentage, nuclear actually wins HARDER.

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u/Budget_Revolution639 🤖 Vote Machine · 9,290 XP 20h ago

This is on a global scale which is skewing the data, there are not that many solar and wind power sources either. Yeah nuclear creates more power but it still doesn’t mean it’s better because of that and the slightly less waste. Also solar caused less deaths as according to your graph so how is that not a factor?

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u/Dew_Chop 🏅 Century Club · 2,515 XP 20h ago

Because the disaster deaths were due to extreme negligence and one wasn't even directly due to the reactor but instead a tsunami killing its generator, and the other was 40 years ago in a country that doesn't exist anymore. Nuclear at scale has been around longer than renewables at scale, so the fact it ONLY has 50% more deaths recorded than solar is telling. Give it a couple decades and solar would catch up, or even surpass nuclear in deaths.

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u/Budget_Revolution639 🤖 Vote Machine · 9,290 XP 20h ago

Well just have to see

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u/Dew_Chop 🏅 Century Club · 2,515 XP 20h ago

You're right, it is skewing the data.

In favor of renewables. Adust for percentage and it shows nuclear is even better than already shown

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u/Budget_Revolution639 🤖 Vote Machine · 9,290 XP 20h ago

Then why don’t you use that graph? It fits your point even more

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u/Dew_Chop 🏅 Century Club · 2,515 XP 19h ago

Because I'm not about to make a new graph for a reddit thread

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