The fucking timeline we’re in
Don’t get me wrong, nuclear energy is good. It’s just being used to power AI. That’s a waste. It’s being used so a corporation can profit, not to power homes. It’s being used to potentially replace humans, who need less power to function and whose power consumption cannot already be avoided anyway.
I did not expect there to be so many “nuclear is scary!” idiots here.
I hadn’t realized until I hung out on a Europe forum that anti-nuclear-power positions are very strong in Germany with the center-left.
Western Austria also has a history here. At one point, they infamously built an entire nuclear power plant – which is where the real costs of nuclear power come from – and then shut it down via a referendum driven by the anti-nuclear-power crowd before ever actually using it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwentendorf_Nuclear_Power_Plant
The Zwentendorf Nuclear Power Plant was the first commercial nuclear plant for electric power generation built in Austria, of three nuclear plants originally envisioned. Construction of the plant at Zwentendorf was finished but the plant never entered service. The start-up of the Zwentendorf plant, as well as the construction of the other two plants, was prevented by a referendum on 5 November 1978, in which a narrow majority of 50.47% voted against the start-up.[1][2]
The plant was purchased by Austrian energy company EVN Group in 2005; it is used as a security training centre[6] and leased for filming, photography, and other events.[7] In 2025, it will be used as the training ground for ENRICH European Robotics Hackathon.[8]
I know certain sentiments are coming, so I’ll put this here: Three Mile Island wasn’t the unmitigated disaster that fearmongers would have you believe. It was an ultimately harmless accident that was highly publicized because of poor communication and irresponsible sensationalist journalism.
More on the topic: https://youtu.be/cL9PsCLJpAA
It was actually a success story. It failed safe, as designed.
Unfortunately “The China Syndrome” really pumped up anti-nuclesr sentiment.
TMI was the opposite of Chernobyl.
“Nuclear” sounds scary but it doesn’t have to be and generally isn’t. There are currently 94 active nuclear reactors in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_States
IMHO, the correct take on “<blank> uses enormous amounts of energy” is “yes, we do need to invest more in renewable and clean energy”. Anyone who didn’t have their head in the sand could have known that last century. This is only a problem now because our political leaders have failed us, year after year, decade after decade.
Small addendum, there’s 94 commercial reactors that are generating power for the grid
But there’s a few dozen more active nuclear reactors that exist for things like training and research.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_research_reactors#United_States
A nuclear plant is not a bad thing, that’s one of the cleanest eneegy sources BUT being Microsoft I’m glad it’s at least on an island
It’s on an island, yes. In a river, ten kilometres from a dense urban region.
It’s a nuclear power plant that provided clean and safe energy for many decades.
There is nothing clean or safe about three mile island. The place had a meltdown and created tons of nuclear waste. Next you’ll be trying to tell me Fukushima and Chernobyl were safe, clean, and cheap.
While that is true, it was also the site of the worst nuclear disaster on US soil.
Don’t get me wrong - I’m not scaremongering, and I support nuclear power. It’s just a bit darkly ironic, imo.
