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425 points nixass | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.206s | source
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standardUser ◴[] No.26675532[source]
I'm a convert. I was anti-nuclear power, now I am pro with a boatload of caveats.

As a person who changed their mind, let me offer this advice to the people commenting here. Don't pretend there aren't legitimate concerns with nuclear power. Accidents did in fact happen and, given enough time and more reactors, will absolutely happen again. That's not a reason not to build more nuclear power, but let's not play make-believe about it. Don't pretend that just because we are better at handling nuclear waste it is a solved problem. It isn't. A hundred-fold increase in nuclear power generation would be a roughly hundred-fold increase in nuclear waste that must be stored away from all life for several hundred years (until we develop technology to resolve the issue, likely long after we're all dead). And maybe most importantly, acknowledge that nuclear energy is far more expensive than other green energy options and, even if we could drive down the cost, it will not solve all our problems. It is, at best, a big part of the solution, not "the" solution.

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1. arithmomachist ◴[] No.26676109[source]
Nuclear definitely should be paired with energy sources like wind and photovoltaics. These sources are aren't consistent, so you need something to balance the load at night or when the wind isn't blowing. I find it hard to imagine another non-carbon energy source that could fill that role aside from nuclear energy.

Disposing of nuclear waste is certainly a difficult problem, since it requires designing structures to last longer than recorded history up to this point. There is at least one good answer to this problem that's under construction now in Finland, called Onkalo. The issue of nuclear waste disposal seems to be as much a political as an engineering problem. People don't want to have a nuclear waste dump anywhere near them, because they justifiably don't trust the government or industry to build it so that it works.