Summary
China is rapidly surpassing the U.S. in nuclear energy, building more reactors at a faster pace and developing advanced technologies like small modular reactors and high-temperature gas-cooled units.
The U.S. struggles with costly, delayed projects, while China benefits from state-backed financing and streamlined construction.
This shift could make China the leading nuclear power producer within a decade, impacting global energy and geopolitical influence.
Meanwhile, the U.S. seeks to revive its nuclear industry, but trade restrictions and outdated infrastructure hinder progress.
Including disasters like Chernobyl, nuclear energy causes several magnitudes less deaths than fossil fuels. It is utterly fucking insane for the concern to be “the horrors” of the three meltdowns you’re thinking of, of which the only one to kill or injure any civilians was Chernobyl. Fukushima did have some workers undergo significantly higher than usual radioactive doses - I invite you to contrast this with the mortality rate of, say, working on an oil rig.
Fossil fuels are killing this planet before your very eyes. I am thrilled by the progress renewables are making, and small scale nuclear is quite likely the only new nuclear we would benefit from constructing these days. But we could have saved an ungodly amount of fossil fuels being burned and thus lives if it wasn’t for this argument.
Not injecting my own opinion in this thread of conversation, but if you’re expanding the scope to include oil rig worker adverse health effects, which introduces the fuel supply chain, then you need to also include the fuel supply chain health impacts and deaths with nuclear fuel extraction, such as the tens of thousands of uranium miners that have died digging out uranium.
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sfdafafsafafsafasdChernobyl killed around 4000 people locally and contributed to 16000 deaths on the continent. Normal coal operation has killed half a million people over the last 20 years.
All I’m saying is that accidents are possible, sure, but the laxity of regulations regarding coal has killed way more people than that towards nuclear. And it’s not about “one person not having their morning coffee”, Chernobyl was dangerous by design, modern reactors simply can’t fail that way.
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sfdafafsafafsafasdBy that same logic, we should dismantle all our cities, since a natural catastrophe can wipe out so much more people if they are clustered up. Or drive instead of flying, because one airplane crashing is worse than one car crashing.
Nuclear reactors failing make for better headlines. You would literally have to build a reactor design that was not safe even back then - they built it to prioritize weapons grade material refinement - and would have to mismanage it systematically for decades in order to get at 5-10% of the death toll coal generation will do 100% in that timeframe.
The big picture is, if every reactor was Chernobyl, was built like Chernobyl, was operated like Chernobyl and would fail like Chernobyl, that would still cause less deaths than the equivalent coal generation. That’s the big picture. Fixating on one accident that can provably never happen again is the minutia.
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sfdafafsafafsafasdBrother, after reading this thread, you’re the one that’s intentionally missing the point and failing to engage in good faith.
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If you ignore the incident we’ve all been watching slowly unfold for centuries with our thumbs up our asses, and oil spills to a lesser extent, sure
I never said anything about fossil fuels, and do not wish them continued use either.
And the only way to save it is nuclear power? Every thread about this topic makes it look this way.
Thing is: Fossil fuels are killing our planet NOW. Spending 10+ years to build a new state-of-the-art nuclear power plant is simply too slow. Just take the money and dump it into technology that’s already available at short notice: Solar, wind, geothermal and tons and tons of battery storage. I’m not sure about the situation in other countries, but here in Germany there isn’t even a permanent storage site for the nuclear waste we ALREADY produced let alone one for which we’d produce in the future.
Additional factor for not going nuclear in Europe: Do you know which country exports the most fissile material around us? It starts with an R and ends with ussia.
Not sure where you got this from what’s written there
Not sure, maybe from the posts where everybody argues that Nuclear is so much better than coal but totally missing the point that yes, it’s better than coal, but so much worse than renewables.
Both, whatever we can build faster, whatever makes it easier to reduce coal and oil. It shouldn’t be an either-or decision. Also, nuclear is not a fossil fuel, you can debate if it is renewable or not, but nuclear fuel is not made from compressed organic matter.
You are kind of contradicting yourself. Because in both aspects nuclear energy looses to renewables: They are faster and less complex to build. Easier to maintain and dispose of if necessary.
Ok, if you want to split hairs, yes nuclear energy is not fossil but also then there are also no renewables because the energy in the universe is for all we know finite.