Don't plan on hauling anything heavy in 25 years.

The scale you'd have to go to with nuclear power would make a Chernobyl incident a matter of when, not if. Not to mention the issue of what to do with all the waste.

 

All you have to do is look at the diesel aftertreatment systems to know what government mandated "innovation" will get us. Took them what, 12 years to get them sort of figured out, excuse me if I don't see that working out well.

 

It'll get sorted. You can bet on that. In 1984 the American sports car personified the corvette had 205 hp. In 2019, you could buy the zr1 vet off the dealer floor with 755 hp. Technology will advance.

 

So a 1960s design that had something like 4 seperate failures by personel on their own safety protocols any of which would have prevented the problem

An incident that resulted in approximately 100 direct deaths. Outside hiroshima/nagasaki it is the worst nuclear disaster in our history, but that was intentional, so we'll ignore those 129k and 226k civilian deaths

We will also ignore that the safety protocols of the time and place (ussr 1986) and attitude towards safety or training can be summed up in a word, "lackluster"

Now this horrible incident, hows that stack up compared to say... coal mining? same year, single incident
September 1986 Kinross Mining disaster. In South Africa an underground fire killed 177 people.

Compare that to say the usa, we gotta have the best safety record right? Msha bragged that for 2020 ONLY 29 miners died "on the job" in the us.
Not to mention year over year the mining death toll from coal miners from black lung...

And we havent even touched oilfield work.


Waste. This is similarly misrepresented. If you took 100 percent of all nuclear waste, shoved it in 55 gallon drums, and set the drums on a football field, it wouldnt even cover the field. ((340 k tons, thats abput 1500 55 gal drums) Note, dont do this, THAT would be highly inadvidable)
Beyond that theres even less understanding of how bad say 1000 year waste is compared to 25 year waste. Most people say they want more of the 25 year waste than 1000 year stuff, theyre wrong. 25 year stuff is only bad for 25 years but during that time its extremely radioactive, as in 5 minute exposure = guaranteed cancer or death bad. The 1k year stuff, i wouldnt want stored in my basement, but if i walk into a basement that had a few drums at least im not giving myself a death sentence unless i put my bed next to it for a few years beacause that stuff is much more weakly radioactive.

Lets compare to coal, at 700 million tons a year, lets say only .005 % is waste coal ash thats really nasty (mercury/lead/arsenic/chromium) what do we do with THAT 340k tons EVERY YEAR? Oh yeah, thats right, we just dump it somewhere to leach into the soil and water table, more responsible plants might mix it into concrete. But tell me, whats the "safe" amount of mercury and arsenic to release from coal into the air and water your kids and grandkids breath and drink?

Forgot to mention. 1/3 of the nuclear waste is recyclable.

Anyway, even at 1 chernobyl every 4 years, thats better in raw lives saved than coal.

Nuke power is also way cheaper in real $/kw too (tenessee valley prices dropped 10 cents a kwh to 2 cents a kwh from 12 in the 70s going coal to nuke, if i remember correctly. so ill take that as well.

As stated above, its still cleaner than coal not even taking any arguements about co2 into consideration.

Any other objections?

 

You know a thing or two more about nuclear power than me. Start building them then, that's the only way we'll generate anywhere near enough electricity to run everything they think they want to. Only way to see if it looks as good in real life as on a screen is do it.

 

Apologies for the paraphrasing, but thats your response to being confronted by actual information? This is why reasonable policy is never implemented. Theres too many people like you that say no because they are unwilling to consider that they might be wrong until theres a headline they cant ignore.

Should we go put lead back in gasoline? Did you prefer the good old days where rivers routinely caught fire?

It took kids dying and having brain damage from lead exposure and rhe rivers catching fire before anyone thought they could live with a little engine knock and a bit of regulation on pollution.

Heres something closer to home, air travel, safest method of long distance transportation, fact. Miles traveled per individual, least deaths. But a single airplane crash has everyone too scared to fly for a little while.

Whats it going to take for the public to see that nuclear is the safest method of energy production?

Whats it going to take for people to see what i posted above and say "hmmm, thats interesting, i never knew that" instead of "why dont you go build your own, not in my backyard"?

 

That's not the way I intended that at all. Nuclear makes more sense as a source for cleaner power than solar or wind, more reliable too. And for the record I don't want a coal plant, a natural gas plant, wind turbine, or solar panels in my back yard either.
Interesting how we take the lead out of gas and attempt to clean things up as much as we have and we have more kids than ever born with autism and Downs than ever, almost like that wasn't actually causing the issues.
I have not ever been on an airplane and have no desire to ever change that. I have issues letting other people drive, nearly die in one car accident gives you trust issues apparently.
Maybe you know the answer to this question I have though. Say we shift everything to electric power, we're still using oil to produce plastics and rubber, bumpers and tires that even electric vehicles will need, what happens to the diesel and gas that are still going to be produced to get the material needed for that? Can that be used in plastic and rubber, not being an ### I genuinely don't know the answer.

 

For the plastics/rubber type petroleum derivatives, the science community is working to come up with functional bio based stuff, heck we may end up with hemp bumpers in the near future.

Scratch around for info on Henry's hemp car, a starting spot for your research:
Henry Ford's Hemp Car: The Truth Behind the Car "Made of Hemp that Runs on Hemp" » HG

Some folks may actually get the recycling farce to work soon:
Our students present ‘waste car’ Luca: a car made largely from recycled waste

Since diesel is also called "home heating oil" and Gasoline is a ####tail of additives in Benzine, I have a high level of confidence that the oil processors will find a different mix of products to refine from a crude that is marketable. They just won't have as many easy buttons. Paint thinner may get cheaper, A gallon can was $20 at the hardware store a bit ago. I was tempted to grab a fuel can and a gallon of diesel to wash out some paint brushes I was painting with.

 

Sorry for the bad reaction, seems you didnt mean things the way i took it.

Short answer to the question, 2012, plastics accounted for 4% of oil produced and refined (worldwide), 2019, it was up to 12 %. (Plastics use increase is almost all in packaging)

Diesel (both heating and transportation) accounts for 70%, gasoline was 10% (2012)
I would doubt that if we moved 100% of transportation to electric that farm and off road equipment would follow suit.
Id also hazard a guess that it wouldnt be an overnight move, allowing a transition in volume of oil processing and type. That said, plastics can be made from nearly any carbon based stuff, bioplastics for instance do show promise, but i also think a saner move would be to reduce plastic usage where possible. (I certainly wouldnt mind seeing less plastic bags blowing everywhere)

Long answer, basically a whole hell of a lot of things are oddly interconnected and anyone that says they can predict future production patterns is spouting a load of bs, BUT human ingenuity has figured their way out of many situations, i doubt this one would be much different.

 

Hmmmm all things gotta evolve I guess. Once California starts, the rest of the country will eventually follow suit. Fossil fuel days are numbered. Can't say if all vehicles will go electric in my life time, but its definitely on the come up