World News

22654 readers

1 users here now

Breaking news from around the world.

News that is American but has an international facet may also be posted here.

Guidelines for submissions:

Where possible, post the original source of information.
- If there is a paywall, you can use alternative sources or provide an archive.today, 12ft.io, etc. link in the body.
Do not editorialize titles. Preserve the original title when possible; edits for clarity are fine.
Do not post ragebait or shock stories. These will be removed.
Do not post tabloid or blogspam stories. These will be removed.
Social media should be a source of last resort.

These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.

For US News, see the US News community.

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Finland's plan to bury spent nuclear fuel for 100,000 years (www.bbc.com)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

12 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

But it has also remained controversial in many countries due to its high cost and long build times, as well as concerns over the safety of nuclear reactors and the unresolved issue of what to do with nuclear waste.

Still, several countries including the US and UK are building new reactors or upgrading existing ones to increase capacity, while others such as India, China and Russia are planning huge expansions.

Debates remain open about the safety of these plants themselves, but a solution also needs to be found for the huge amounts of spent fuel and radioactive waste being accumulated that remains dangerous to the environment and human health for hundreds of thousands of years.

Maybe it's because of press pieces like this generating controversy over it. Somehow coal and oil doesn't have to, and hasn't ever really had to justify the insane environmental impact they have.

Digging a hole for some spicy rods versus heating up the whole atmosphere to the point several countries will be underwater and Africa will be uninhabitable. Such a dilemma.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

The problem with nuclear energy is that so many people are incredibly uninformed about how it works and what the risks and downsides are when compared to fossil fuels, because there's really no contest: nuclear energy is by far the safest and least polluting form of "steady state" energy production (compared to eg. solar or wind which can't produce 24/7) we have right now. Plants tend to be – to use a technical term – expensive as all fuck to build, mainly because they absolutely have to be done right to be safe. It's still nuclear power and the failure modes are way more… uh… interesting than when you're just burning rocks or sludge made from dead ancient trees.

Edit: in case anyone wants to learn more about spicy rocks, I just thought to post a link to MIT's Introduction to Nuclear Engineering and Ionizing Radiation course that's freely available on YouTube in its entirety. It's been super interesting