rollin' coal

When our living conditions deteriorate gradually, we adapt to these conditions instead of fixing of them. But sudden threats get sorted out immediately.
Coal has done far more damage than nuclear energy ever will, but coal has over 2300 stations worldwide and nuclear has 400.
A perfect example of the 'Boiling Frog Syndrome'.
- I read somewhere that the boiling frog thing is total bullshit. They'll totally jump out once the water gets too hot.
  
  The frogs only stayed in the water because Friedrich Goltz lobotomized the frogs beforehand. Which makes it a perfect metaphor because the Murdoch media has definitely lobotomized the public.
  
  in this case the boiling frogs can’t jump out except for the ones with the top 1% of the cash in the pot so,
  still applies i think

rich bastards claiming that windmills would harm them through visual pollution.
you fucking fuckwits, smog is visual pollution. But they don't care.
- you fucking fuckwits, smog is visual pollution.
  I'm old enough to remember people losing their shit at China over the 2008 Beijing Olympics drowning in a toxic cloud. The international outcry was such that the state spent a decade cleaning all that shit up (which produced its own wave of "Has Chinese Eco-fascism Gone Woke?!" screamer articles in turn).
  But their rate of pollution has been falling steadily for the last two decades, in no small part because the state wasn't fighting an uphill battle against corporate slobs in white doctor's coats trying to tell everyone that smog wasn't happening/was good aktuly.
  Meanwhile, US expenditures on lobbying, denialism, and greenwashing stretch into the billions of dollars annually. And its not hard to understand why, when the ROI is $7T/year on the international stage.
  
  ROI is continued existence for some. It's a similar reason to why the leadership of the west is so against communism and socialism: because the best path forward doesn't include them.
- Windmills are a whole lot better than burning coal, but aren't perfect. Recyling the blades after their 20 year lifespan is a nightmare.
  
  nothing is perfect. we need imperfect things that don't emit co2. windmills have many detractors but at the moment represent mostly co2-free power if we're willing to take it. and recycling industries for solar and wind are coming, they'll never be perfect either, but when the waste stream becomes lucrative enough they'll find a way.
  
  I doubt it's any worse than the other mountains of waste we produce. I'd wager it'd barely even register.
- Smog is like vaccines. People don't see the smog/disease anymore, so they think they don't need the protections/vaccines.

inb4 comment section full of uncited factoids and personal attacks
- ur mom gay
  
  dont need a citation for that one :)
- Ha ha your mom suck me good and hard through my jorts
- factoids
  Factoids are wrong to begin with, just like claims that coal ash is significantly radioactive.
  
  Studies show that ash from coal power plants contains significant quantities of arsenic, lead, thallium, mercury, uranium and thorium[1]. To generate the same amount of electricity, a coal power plant gives off at least ten times more radiation than a nuclear power plant.
  The process of burning the coal concentrates contaminants of all kinds tenfold compared to their original concentration. So even if it isn't significantly radioactive, we shouldn't be allowing the other shit in there either.

I have a Prius. Not for any stupid "I'm saving the planet despite still driving an ICE car" reasons, because I save a lot on gas.
Doesn't stop every "rollin' coal" asshole from doing it when they drive by me because "haw haw dumb librul hippie." You sure showed me by spending a lot more on gas than I do.
- Man I recently got a 2010 Prius off an auction. Very cheap purchase and it works great already getting savings on gas. But I did notice people have the urge to want to pass or take over when I'm in it even though I'm definitely going fast enough. Funny enough it doesn't happen when I'm in my Miata going the same speed.
- Literally children who want big loud vroom vroom trucks with lots of chrome.
- my favorite fun fact is that one time that one 16 year tried to roll coal on bicyclists, and then just ran them over and killed them.
- When its a culture of hate, people only need a little push to become bigotted.
- I agree with this. I'm looking at a plug in hybrid for my next car. It's a bit more costly up front, but day to day, it should save me so much. Hybrids are better, sure, but plugin hybrids can charge overnight, when we have remarkably low electricity costs where I live, especially overnight, so charging it up is trivial in costs, and it can run a good distance on the battery alone.
  If I want to go fast, and have fun, ICE cars and race tracks are things still, I can go do that. In the meantime, there's still a speed limit on the freeway, so while your fuel burning monstrosity can go 200mph+... You can't.
  For commuting/daily chores/errands, a plug in hybrid is easily one of the cheapest options available, especially for me, per mile driven (or kilometer, if you're not American).
  I still want a weekend/fun car, but for daily driving, plug in hybrid is going to get me there for a lot less.
  With the prices of everything going up, it's the only logical choice.
  
  Really depends, had a plugin hybrid.
  The use case for phev versus hev is pretty narrow. the added battery weight and space was significant.
  Plugin part was great for a daily commute of under 10 miles (had ~20 mile ev range) but with ~50 mpg, that was saving less than a gallon a week.
  And on longer trips the added weight was dead weight. That let me take less stuff when i needed to take stuff.
  Maybe they engineered the ones your looking at better, but that was my experience. For me its a choice between pure EV or HEV.
  Good luck.
- You sure showed me by spending a lot more on gas than I do.
  The big difference is that trucking generates profit while car use is a personal cost. Rolling coal is negligible to a guy who probably doesn't even own the rig in an industry where ROI on shipping is well above the cost of the fuel. Meanwhile, we've spent a long time dismantling our rail networks in order to profit the automotive industry.
  In the end of the day, everything is made deliberately less efficient in order to carve out more and more little profit-centers for middle men and profiteers. It might look stupid and inefficient to you, but to them its just a fringe benefit in an industry with literal money to burn.
  
  Rolling coal generally refers to people who have modified their pickup trucks to intentionally belch out black clouds of smoke.
  
  It's mostly assholes in pickup trucks doing it.
  
  when the fuck were people using their personal vehicles as company vehicles? And when were company vehicles noted for rolling coal and being a general public nuisance, while doing an illegal act? Surely any self respecting company that isn't committing crimes already is going to reprimand employees for that shit.
  If we're talking about semi trucks, than i don't know why you even left this comment. Those are a non problem?

ok real talk. 3 mile island reportedly had no result on the environment, on account of being fully contained. Chernobyl was significant, obviously.
Fukushima as far as we can tell today, has no significant long lasting effects. Notably i've read that rates of certain cancers in areas surrounding the plant did rise, but i've also heard that it was still below the nominal expected rate. So nothing of significant concern. The local sea life near to the plant could very well be an issue, but we don't really have much data on that at the moment. Especially now that they've started releasing tritiated water into the ocean for the next 20-50 years or whatever the fuck the plan is supposed to be.
Nuclear energy fucks around sometimes.
- certain cancers in areas surrounding the plant did rise
  just a note to add that if you start checking the population for something routinely like thyroid cancer... the rate that you find it goes up. This is why the detected cancer rate increasing is not considered a cause for alarm.
  
  yeah, but then again if you did have a significant raise, you would expect it to be outside of what is statistically nominal for the general population, and from what i understand, it was not. So even if it was a result of the radiation. It would still be lower than the average human expectancy throughout one life time. I.E. Not statistically significant to any degree of concern.
- Especially now that they’ve started releasing tritiated water into the ocean for the next 20-50 years or whatever the fuck the plan is supposed to be.
  the tritiated water is no-more concentrated than what other power plants around the world release. (the latter may be surprising to know) In addition, tritium has a half-life of only 12.3 years and is diluted in a literal sea, which is an extremely good radiation shield.
  
  yeah. This is all very true, but like most dilutions, things take time, and it'll be interesting to follow the dilution process as it moves forwards. From what i understand the tritiated water is also released farther out form the shore to prevent local pollution, but i believe there are still elevated levels of radiation in sea life surrounding the shore. Though i can't remember if that was significant or not. Regardless, humans consume fish, it's something to be weary of to some degree (i believe there are laws around this already though)
  Also, last i heard, they were handing out bottles of this tritiated water during a press conference they gave near the plant. Definitely not in accordance with regulations and stipulations recommending how you interact with this type of radiation, but then again, flying in for that press conference is going to expose you to more radiation anyway so.
  BTW, fun fact for anyone curious as to why they don't just "remove the water" It's because tritiated water is so closely related to your average water molecule, that it's basically identical from a molecular composition point of view (except for the fact that it has tritium in it) as a result, there is no way of removing it. Or, an easy way of removing it.
- The part that I'm amazed by is that no civilian seems to know about the TVA meltdown. It's the only full meltdown we ever had, and the Army Corps of Engineers lost all access to nuclear power because of that incident, as they intentionally melted it down to test China Syndrome. This was in the 50s. They did build the thing inside of a mountain to contain all the radiation, but had the physicist that came up with China Syndrome been right, that wouldn't have really mattered. They also could have just done the math to figure out that, yet again, the physicist in question understood physics just fine, but lacked in mathematics.
  Chernobyl and Fukushima were chemical explosions. Three Mile Island didn't get to the meltdown stage, just got dangerously close. Seems that running nuclear power as a for profit venture isn't a good idea.
  
  I looked up TVA meltdown, got no results about it.
  
  i've never heard of it, i would assume it isn't out there. Technically there is one other meltdown we had though, the SL-1 reactor, killed three people. Caused a bit of a mess, wasn't super significant though.
  Was that a naval/sub reactor? Or was this something else?
  
  It is my understanding that the Three Mile Island incident was a meltdown, that the fuel rods got hot enough to melt themselves and pool in the bottom of the reactor vessel but did not escape containment, unlike Chernobyl whose reactor core is currently a big lump in a sub-basement.

He's back to promote nuclear energy and insult everyone who disagrees!
- those are some smooth pits

Fukisima
- Unfortunately, due to budget constraints, the editor has been fired and replaced with a stoned dog.
  
  *dawg

You still can't safely eat mushrooms in parts of Germany that got contaminated by Chernobyl.
- It's not a binary choice between coal (and other fossil fuels) and nuclear. Both are bad for the environment, and we should be looking to renewables instead. I fully agree that the climate crisis is the more pressing issue. I'm personally involved in climate activism. But this post is specifically about radioactivity, not overall impact
- Yet even accounting for all of that, including Chernobyl and Fukushima, nuclear is still 1000x safer than coal and as safe as wind and solar.
- Bbbeeee aaaafffffrrrraaaiiiiiddddddddddddd!1!!1!!!1!!!!1!!1!!!!!1!!!
  C'mon. Chernobyl was like a drunk driver bypassing the blow device, and now you want to ban all cars everywhere for everyone and everything for eternity. Just to replace it with horses that kill even more people.
  
  When I misuse a coal plant, it breaks down and potentially pollutes the vicinity. When I misuse a photovoltaic plant, it might get damaged. If I misuse a nuclear plant, an area becomes uninhabitable for centuries.
  But accidents are not the main concern, when there are currently nuclear power plants being held hostage in an ongoing war
- That's fine, I don't like mushrooms anyways

They're all just clones that say the exact same thing I swear

It centralizes control, power and money.

So to make nuclear sound better it's compared against the most polluting source?
I can't say I've seen much push for more coal power plants.
The fact the nobody on any side likes to bring up (and most aren't aware of tbh) is that using large amounts of energy that isn't part of the natural cycle of the planet (i.e. current solar energy), whether that's fossil energy (solar energy the the past), nuclear fission or fusion, it means the population of our species can grow beyond the carrying capacity (and I'm not speaking of simply making enough food, there are many other limits) and puts us into a race condition where we have to figure out how to colonize space before destroying the planet.
- Nothing more nuclear than the sun.
  That said, the primary appeal of uranium/thorium fuel is in energy density. Its a cheap way to localize consumption and distribution of electric energy, which has its own ecological costs. Nuclear can and should be comparably efficient to solar and wind. Radioactive decay is as much a part of the natural cycle as solar radiation or lunar tidal force and there's no shame in harnessing it, so long as we manage the waste efficiently (a thing that molten salt thorium reactors do exceptionally well).
  Some states are trailblazing a path towards functional reactor design faster than others
  
  It's not about shame, it's about too much energy added to a system causing imbalance. Large scale use of nuclear or fossil energy does the same thing as adding tons of nitrogen to a lake (eutrophication). It's temporarily great for the few nitrogen lovers but otherwise destroys the ecosystem.
  By using nuclear or fossil energy, humans are causing the equivalent of eutrophication of our own environment.
- natural gas is only 40% cleaner than coal. Petroleum is probably about the same, if not worse, due to all the dirty oil we refine on a daily basis.
  The fact that nuclear is still significantly better than coal, and it's comparatively "clean" alternatives, should be a fucking telling statement.
  Oh and on the fact of coal power plants, i would recommend you look into australia, clean coal, china, germany (post gas export shenanigans) and steel manufacturing (though that's not a power plant)
  
  The fact that nuclear is still significantly better than
  If you ignore that near everlasting radioactive waste problem we have yet to come with a solution for.
- There is an intrinsic micro-mort rate for working on a roof. If you take this number and the number of hours that are spent working at height fitting solar panels (I got this from industry data a few years ago) its then fairly easy to put the annual deaths from fitting solar panels far above that of nuclear. These deaths are a 'tragic accident', rather than systemic so...
  [edit: I can't find a value for professionals anymore. This link mentions 1micromort per person on a ladder at home] [edit: clarity]
  
  If you do that then count the deaths finding and acquiring nuclear materials, the political tensions nuclear materials cause and any related deaths, the deaths of people building the plant, the engineers that died in car accidents in the decade going back and forth to the office in their gas car in the plant planning stages, etc.
  There is no perfect energy source, we should stop looking for "the one", use the nuclear plants we have as we degrow and use more green energy (which is a scam if sold as a solution for eco problems on it's own).
- me when I am malthusian:

Anyone watch the 3 Mile Island documentary on Netflix? Indeed, Holy Shit! That was close, the cleanup was just as bad, and all for profit. The natural gas lobby killed the coal mining industry.

Most people who are against nuclear power, have the following reasons:
it's the most expensive form of energy due to massive regulations
the power plants take way too long to build
nuclear waste is a problem, no one wants to have it buried near their homes
the fissile material is already rare and difficult to come by, mostly sourced from politically difficult regions, such as fucking Russia
Nuclear power is not a solution.
- nuclear waste is a problem, no one wants to have it buried near their homes
  No one? My basement is available. Go right ahead and pay me and store it. I don't want to hear a single person make this claim when I am inviting the industry to pay me for my basement.
  
  You jest, but long term nuclear waste storage really is a problem. The public at-large tends to get all NIMBY about it. In the 1980's, the federal government was working on a long term underground storage facility in rural Nevada, near the Nevada Test Site (aka in the middle of fucking nowhere) and of course the locals threw a giant fit and got the project shut down. As a result, spent nuclear fuel is routinely held at naval shipyards and power plants around the country without a final destination.
  Not a good enough reason to not invest in nuclear power, but a problem nonetheless.
  
  I guess that'd work if you live in a very remote area, alone, without neighbors.
- Russia is 12th in Uranium exports, with 0.001% of global exports. Kazakhstan is first at 59%, but there's Canada with 30%, France with 8%, and the US with 2%. There's plenty of politically easy Uranium, especially if people start buying it over Kazakhstan.
  India, Brazil, Australia, and the US are also slated to have the most Thorium resources, which could be a more significant nuclear fuel with modern and near-modern reactors.
- it’s the most expensive form of energy due to massive regulations
  So deregulate to the same standards Fossil Fuels are regulated at
  the power plants take way too long to build
  because of all of the red tape from your last point, as well as fossil fuel organized NIMBYS
  nuclear waste is a problem, no one wants to have it buried near their homes
  Again because disinformation spread by fossil fuel organized NIMBYS
  the fissile material is already rare and difficult to come by, mostly sourced from politically difficult regions, such as fucking Russia
  Breeder reactor

Also polluted ground water by nuclear waste which we have no way of safely storing and where we just say "let future generations deal with it"

Rather than fission power choose fusion power delivered wirelessly to you house. Our space based fusion reactor can provide you with clean, reliable and inexpensive power today.
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