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Elon Musk Wisdom: "Bring back Nuclear Power you Fools!" (the abridged version)

ManaByte

Member
Not Great Ok GIF by Sky España
 

akimbo009

Gold Member
Best, cleanest energy option we have but with the worst PR. As a result, it is wrapped up in a ton of red tape and has a NIMBY issue. But worse, some nations have chosen not to allow nuclear for unscientific reasons.

Maybe someday folks will come back around to it.
 

Blade2.0

Member
Something i actually agree with him on. Aren't fusion plants supposed to be operational soon? We need to be going all in on that
 

Dream-Knife

Banned
He is not wrong. Isn't there a location in Russia that's famous for its "radioactive" caviar?
I've not heard of that. Kazakhstan has many issues from the soviet era largely due to their environmental disregard. Radioactive dust is an issue, as is the now land connected bio weapons lab in the Aral sea.
 

CGiRanger

Banned
Best, cleanest energy option we have but with the worst PR. As a result, it is wrapped up in a ton of red tape and has a NIMBY issue. But worse, some nations have chosen not to allow nuclear for unscientific reasons.

Maybe someday folks will come back around to it.

Because they think every nuclear plant in the world will blow up like Chernobyl and Fukushima.

It sucks that in both cases, and certainly the former, it was mainly thanks to serious flaws in thinking that led to those things. Chernobyl of course being a extreme example of a flawed design, insufficient safety protocols and not entirely qualified personnel being stretched to the limit. Granted it's mainly Chernobyl that led to the biggest rise in anti-nuclear outcries since I recall those campaigns from the late 80's and 90's.
 

Belgorim

Member
The nuclear waste is terrible though .
Not compared to the alternative sources wastes.

(And also, it is technicaly still fuel)

Edit: Elon has been too optimistic on renewables for a long time now as a replacement to fossils. Hopefully now he promotes nuclear more. Storage for renewable off-hours is just not feasible.
 
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Nikodemos

Member
I've not heard of that. Kazakhstan has many issues from the soviet era largely due to their environmental disregard. Radioactive dust is an issue, as is the now land connected bio weapons lab in the Aral sea.
90% of radioactive contamination is due to weapons production. The militaries of the world didn't give a shit about environmental issues in their drive to acquire them, back in the 1960s and 70s.

Ironically, Chernobyl is also, indirectly, a result of weapons production, since that design was derived from a military arms-making one.
 

SJRB

Gold Member
Nuclear power is the way. Idk why people get so weird about it.

Because people are idiots and have been brainwashed into thinking that anything involving "nuclear" is bad.

Elon is right of course, but let's all dunk on the guy making electric cars for saying we need other power sources.
 
He's right. Sadly retards like my government's green party (Belgium) that have less than 10% percent of the votes can make decisions to stop nuclear power and push a gigantic bunch of people in to poverty with the rising gas prices.

Over here they're even saying the want to ban gas usage in new homes BUT they want to build new gas power plants instead of using our nuclear plants. Can't make this shit up.
 
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McCheese

Member
Doesn’t all metal have a trace of radiation since Chernobyl? I remember reading they have to use metals dug out of the earth prior to then for medical equipment that measures radiation due to the trace amount
 
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Wildebeest

Member
Renewables are cheaper, but they simply cannot respond to surges in peak demand. If you still want to think that fossil fuels don't have waste issues or massive hidden costs, then I don't know what to say.
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Nuclear waste is an issue, but the reality is that its a containable one. Emissions from fossil fuels, not so much.

Renewable sources have their place for sure, but they are very susceptible to climate and weather. Ironically this makes them a far better complement to nuclear plants.

The larger truth I fear is like everything to do with climate change and power, the political will always seems to push alternate directions as opposed to fixing existing issues.
 

Artoris

Gold Member
Chernobyl and Fukushima for both built quite a long time ago

I am sure any modern plant could be built with much higher safety level
 

Buggy Loop

Member
Nuclear power is the way. Idk why people get so weird about it.

Because i simply do not trust humans on a scale of thousands of years to not fuck it up with the waste management. I don't even trust them for 50 years of fucking service. We've seen <1% of the timeline required for storing these wastes and we tap ourselves on the back for it? SAFE?

I'm sure on paper, some MIT engineer built the best goddamn reactor imaginable, on paper. I simply don't trust the long term management of it all. In these uncertain times especially, with god knows what the future holds when a huge portion of the equatorial line is unhabitable, food and water scarcity lead to wars. These are easy peasy targets to fuck shit up. Stop external electric supply of to these plants for 1 month? You have meltdowns all over the country. Seems too feeble to me.
 
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Didn't he also claim that solar power could very easily power the whole planet with current tech? If that's true, why would anyone ever want nuclear?
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
A friend of my father growing up that used to go fishing with us, worked at one of the local nuclear plants in the state I used to live in. We used to fish near the plant too, because the stripers was plenty and massive due to the warmer water temperature.

They would wear cards on their chest, like a nametag, that would measure the levels of radiation output and the like. He said the plants are completely save and shielded when properly upkept and safety is followed.

I mentioned the card, because he noted to me, "that when he would go home from work and sit in front of his television (CRTs at the time) the meter on the card would read far higher than when he was working in the power plant which had very little to no reading."
 
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Wildebeest

Member
Didn't he also claim that solar power could very easily power the whole planet with current tech? If that's true, why would anyone ever want nuclear?
I don't know if that claim in particular holds water. But at scale, it is easier to turn on a nuclear power plant than store all that energy from the day in batteries to use at night.
 

IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
Oh neat Elon you ate food once in a place after a radiation issue occurred there, SO ITS NOT A RISK!

Not necessarily disagreeing with the overall message, but that is some dumb anti-scientific shit lol You can also go get a single x-ray w/o issue, but try getting an x-ray every single day and see what happens.
 
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DeepEnigma

Gold Member
Oh neat Elon you ate food once in a place after a radiation issue occurred there, SO ITS NOT A RISK!

Not necessarily disagreeing with the overall message, but that is some dumb anti-scientific shit lol You can also go get a single x-ray w/o issue, but try getting an x-ray every single day and see what happens.
I certainly wouldn't eat the fish where the leak is dumping into, which is still leaking by the way.
 

EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
Pick your poison. Fossil fuels are less reflexively scary but thousands of times more deadly to humans and harmful to the planet. I'd love to see residential solar on every roof, but there needs to be a consistent baseline output powering the grid to account for time of day and cloud cover variability. Nuclear is the best option for that.
 

MrMephistoX

Member
Nuclear waste is an issue, but the reality is that its a containable one. Emissions from fossil fuels, not so much.

Renewable sources have their place for sure, but they are very susceptible to climate and weather. Ironically this makes them a far better complement to nuclear plants.

The larger truth I fear is like everything to do with climate change and power, the political will always seems to push alternate directions as opposed to fixing existing issues.
Don’t the French have a method of converting the waste into a harmless ceramic? Then isn’t the issue just where do you store it due to NIMBYism? Is Yucca mountain still a thing in the US?
 

AJUMP23

Member
Solar is the future, but it isn't there, in the mean time lets use Nuclear and Fossil where it makes sense.
 

NickFire

Member
Pick your poison. Fossil fuels are less reflexively scary but thousands of times more deadly to humans and harmful to the planet. I'd love to see residential solar on every roof, but there needs to be a consistent baseline output powering the grid to account for time of day and cloud cover variability. Nuclear is the best option for that.
IMO, until society expands nuclear energy output we are just dividing ourselves over little more than talking points. I completely understand the fear of it, and like everyone else would prefer the plant gets put a few hundred miles downwind from my locale. But it is the only feasible solution short of massive population reductions and return to horse and buggy. It is not just the current grid that needs sufficient energy. It is the current grid, with massive demand increases (even if population stays stagnant) for everyone who will convert to electric autos, and for everyone who heats their home with fossil fuels.
 

poppabk

Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
If German figures are to be believed, then they have more than replaced the energy they were getting from nuclear with renewable sources. So this isn't a case of them just replacing nuclear energy with fossil fuels, or having an increased energy shortfall due to getting rid of nuclear.
 

Blade2.0

Member
Isn't one Exxon Valdez or deep water horizon worse for the environment than all nuclear accidents combined? Maybe I'm wrong I just heard the impact oil spills have on our environment is like, magnitudes worse than anything we've done with nuclear power. Do we let that shit slide just because it's in such demand?! And please let me know if I'm wrong.
 

FunkMiller

Member
Nuclear a far better interim alternative to fossil fuels while the world moves to environmentally friendly ways of energy production properly…. At Least ten years later than it should have.
 

Artoris

Gold Member
Pick your poison. Fossil fuels are less reflexively scary but thousands of times more deadly to humans and harmful to the planet. I'd love to see residential solar on every roof, but there needs to be a consistent baseline output powering the grid to account for time of day and cloud cover variability. Nuclear is the best option for that.
I was thinking of solar on every car if they are electric, but they don't provide that much energy, and it would be an extra weight for a car also solar energy on land takes space from food production, roof is probably the best idea, but it's only practical in some places
and you would have to clean leaves, bird shit, dust and other stuff off them regularly
 

EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
I was thinking of solar on every car if they are electric, but they don't provide that much energy, and it would be an extra weight for a car also solar energy on land takes space from food production, roof is probably the best idea, but it's only practical in some places
and you would have to clean leaves, bird shit, dust and other stuff off them regularly
Maintenance isn't that bad, you generally only need to clean your panels once per year to keep efficiency up.
 

MastaKiiLA

Member
I'm not an Elon evangelist, but he is right. Nuclear power is clean and efficient. We shouldn't be using the Soviet-era negligence of Chernobyl (and who knows how many smaller leaks the USSR successfully hid from the public), or the biblical flood of Fukushima as typical examples of nuclear power.

The USSR was a shitshow. No point discussing the massive amount of negligence that lead to Chernobyl. We can learn from Fukushima, however, like keeping your backup generators NOT in a basement of a powerplant located right next to the ocean, in one of the most seismically active regions in the world. Instead of abandoning nuclear energy, because commies and mother nature were dicks, we should just make the necessary improvements, based on the lessons learned.

On top of that, thorium reactors should be the future. I think India is investing heavily into the tech, and it really looks to have all the upside of nuclear energy, with little downside of the uranium/plutonium based reactors, as thorium reactors should be self-stalling in the case of a runaway reaction. Coal and gas need to due, but solar, wind, thermal, and hydro aren't going to be enough to fill that gap. Only nuclear can generate the quantity required in a steady and reliable form. Too bad we spent so much time scaring citizens about the dangers of nukes, instead of educating.
 

LordCBH

Member
Nuclear power is incredibly safe, and gets an unnecessarily bad rep because of events that mostly happened a long ass time ago.

It’s safe, it’s clean, it’s effective, it’s a no-brainer. Nuclear should be the future
 
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