When green energy harms the enviroment

[Something completely different]

And just WHY are we sending our sewerage into the ocean?

Well.

You are


I know that it is illegal here to do it per legislation from the EU parlament.
To be fair it was made to prohibit France from dumping it`s nuclear waste into the ocean.
Yet it prohibts dumping any kind of waste into the ocean on a state and corporate scale.

[Creed of Heresy]

Kichi, you pretty much did sum the green movement entirely there. For years I've been hearing "nuclear power is bad mm-kay?" without any concrete example of why exactly it's so bad. Then an accident happens and a reactor gets breached and people start shrieking "SHUT THEM ALL DOWN, WE TOLD YOU THEY'RE TERRIBLE!"

Uh. No. Actually. There's a much easier, less costly, and more efficient way of fixing this problem that does NOT include shutting down plants that otherwise do not produce any pollution [save for toxic waste which we can dispose of rather easily if they would just let us open some damn lead-lined storage facilities in the middle of the uninhabited desert]. Wanna keep 'em from experiencing accidents? Stop protesting the construction and development of nuclear plants, and instead SUPPORT IT. I know that sounds weird but get this, with higher support, more resources will be allocated to nuclear power. Coal and oil have hit their peak; they're never going to be much more efficient and definitely not going to be any cleaner at this point. But with more resources, and less of a taboo mark on it, nuclear power can be made to be pretty much fool-proof. In fact most of the most advanced designs out there are pretty much riddled with so many failsafes and stopgaps and foolproofing that even if you WANTED to make the reactor melt down it'd take you a ton of time and could be stopped mid-process without any problems save for having to replace the fuel rods. Fukushima didn't melt down because it was a faulty design, it melted down because it was hit by a giant fucking tidal wave, was over 30 years old, and safety protocols were being neglected because they were being underfunded.

Simple fix to a problem and meanwhile we can keep poking around trying to figure out how to get hydrogen and cold fusion to work for us.

[The Grand Nudger]

It also had serious design flaws in it's backup systems, such as the placement of the diesel generators in the basement due to their weight - a decision made in part to cut costs on structural support and reinforcement required to support those engines if they had been placed in an upper floor - part of the initial design for this plant btw.... coupled with the fact that it was hit by a tsunami that knocked out -everything- else supporting it (before flooding the poorly placed generators)...well.

I suppose it's somewhat sad, that even this particular disaster -had- actually been hedged against (even though it wasn't on the books) but that a cost cutting procedure very early on in construction led (in part) to the eventuality of consequences like this faced with such a scenario. I'd say the green response to this should be "Stop cutting fucking corners you assholes" - not "Nukes are bad, mmkay"...just mho.

[Creed of Heresy]

That's always the problem with nuclear power; it appeals to neither side but it provides for everyone. It's ecological...if you don't cut the fucking corners in its construction and development. It's economical...but you always want to squeeze a few pennies out of construction because it IS a heavy initial investment. Economists want to cost-cut the plants. Greenies want to just plain cut them. Neither side is right, both of them are wrong. Nuclear power is not a simple, easy, convenient toy, it's an expensive juggernaut that can power tons of shit for a really long time. I almost think that nuclear power came too soon. The world wasn't ready for it. Now we ARE ready for it, but...old fears die hard. Still, until solar becomes reliable [yes, it provides lots of power reliably, but you have to rely on weather conditions to work with you and we should know better than to demand that of nature by now], ecologists should be backing nuclear power 100% on the conditions that the plants are carefully maintained and upgraded and funded.

[Something completely different]

That's always the problem with nuclear power; it appeals to neither side but it provides for everyone. It's ecological...if you don't cut the fucking corners in its construction and development. It's economical...but you always want to squeeze a few pennies out of construction because it IS a heavy initial investment. Economists want to cost-cut the plants. Greenies want to just plain cut them. Neither side is right, both of them are wrong. Nuclear power is not a simple, easy, convenient toy, it's an expensive juggernaut that can power tons of shit for a really long time. I almost think that nuclear power came too soon. The world wasn't ready for it. Now we ARE ready for it, but...old fears die hard. Still, until solar becomes reliable [yes, it provides lots of power reliably, but you have to rely on weather conditions to work with you and we should know better than to demand that of nature by now], ecologists should be backing nuclear power 100% on the conditions that the plants are carefully maintained and upgraded and funded.

I`d say the biggest problem is the waste.

The only reason why energy companies make a profit is because the goverment pays the cost of safely storing the nuclear waste.
And even the places at which they are currently stored have to be constantly renovated and the waste relocated.

One also has to remember that the waste will be hazerdous material for sometimes even a million years.

This is the main reason why I oppose nuclear power and the argument stand until someone can show me a logisticaly and financialy possible way of storing nuclear waste for a million years.

Which so far no one has.

[Creed of Heresy]

That is the biggest problem so far, but you have to realize if you're arguing against radioactive waste as the sole reason for it being bad you DO realize you will have to argue that a looot of medical equipment shouldn't be allowed or constructed or used either because a lot of radioactive waste is generated by hospitals through the use of their diagnostic machines, machines without which we could not hope to combat the myriad plagues and diseases and maladies we humans are constantly stricken with. Given the amount of hospitals and how much waste they procure, the logistics are no easier or less expensive, but it's handled anyway. We aren't exactly talking about tens or hundreds of miles of land being consumed at a time in the quest to store toxic waste, even at our current rate of consumption...and take in mind too that newer designs produce far less toxic waste than the majority of those that are operational which were built in the 70s and 80s. Or rather, they produce the same levels, but they put out much more power, so the generation of toxic waste is lessened through efficiency.

[The Grand Nudger]

Nuclear power is not a simple, easy, convenient toy, it's an expensive juggernaut that can power tons of shit for a really long time. I almost think that nuclear power came too soon. The world wasn't ready for it. Now we ARE ready for it, but...old fears die hard.

Old fears that exist as relics of the soviet/communist american/capitalist charade. After the soviet unions failure (most spectacularly at Chernobyl) t produce safe nuclear energy it became an imperitive for them to paint all nuclear technology as unsafe (specifically ours - and those that develop it as bastards) to any organization that would lend an ear. Early ideological allies unfortunately eventually morphed into our american greenies. Soviet propaganda based on their own failures ftw!
(I actually am impressed, btw, thats not sarcasm). I disagree with part of that though, nuclear was the energy of the future 70 years ago. We should be beyond that now, but oil was just so cheap, herp derp, that what should now be a artifact of transition is still touted as some kind of future.....going nuclear would be playing catch-up, imho.

@ German "The waste" is a problem for any energy producing technology (solar is dirty, so is wind and tidal and geo and bio.......), Imma go out on a limb and say "the waste" from nuclear has thusfar not presented quite the problem tht the waste from fossil fuels has, nor is it actually so difficult to successfully sequester that waste. You just keep it dry and keep it deep. You know, in places like the place we purpose built for nuclear waste but decided to defund not for technical or safety reasons...but for political ones.......
:hangs head in shame for america:

[pocaracas]

Nuclear Fission, at this stage, still has the problem of waste.
4th generation reactors produce nearly zero radioactive waste, have several passive protection systems which render them nearly impervious to accidents, whether they are natural catastrophes or planes being flown into them, or terrorist bombings.
Sounds almost too good to be true..... but that will only work if they don't cut corners!


Then you have the ever-elusive Nuclear Fusion. Still under development, still under research. ITER is being built in Cadarache, South of France. This machine will demonstrate that fusion can produce more energy than what's being poured into it.... by 2025. After that, DEMO will be constructed to demonstrate a working nuclear fusion reactor with electricity generation. And the best is that all participant states will have access to the whole technical specs and will be able to build their own fusion reactors.
Fusion is not without radioactivity, but, unlike fission, you can turn off the reaction, by not supplying more fuel, Deuterium, which can be harvested from seawater... or so they say.

[Ashendant]

That is the biggest problem so far, but you have to realize if you're arguing against radioactive waste as the sole reason for it being bad you DO realize you will have to argue that a looot of medical equipment shouldn't be allowed or constructed or used either because a lot of radioactive waste is generated by hospitals through the use of their diagnostic machines, machines without which we could not hope to combat the myriad plagues and diseases and maladies we humans are constantly stricken with. Given the amount of hospitals and how much waste they procure, the logistics are no easier or less expensive, but it's handled anyway. We aren't exactly talking about tens or hundreds of miles of land being consumed at a time in the quest to store toxic waste, even at our current rate of consumption...and take in mind too that newer designs produce far less toxic waste than the majority of those that are operational which were built in the 70s and 80s. Or rather, they produce the same levels, but they put out much more power, so the generation of toxic waste is lessened through efficiency.

That's not exactly comparable. Waste from hospitals doesn't have an alternative(has far as i know), while those from nuclear power plants do in green energy.

[The Grand Nudger]

Which green alternative would you consider an acceptable one? Chances are that the PR for that tech has conveniently left out the nasty bits. There are no free lunches.