Deep level irony that you used a Simpsons meme, which takes place in a city that suffers from a Nuclear Power Plant that doesn't dispose of nuclear waste properly.

Every form of energy generation is problematic in the hands of capital. Security measures can and are often considered unnecessary expense. And even assuming that they will respect all safety standards, we still have the problem of fuel: France, for example, was only able to supply its plants at a cheap cost because of colonialism in Africa. Therefore, nuclear energy potentially has the same geopolitical problems as oil, in addition to the particular ones: dual technology that can and is applied in the military, not necessarily but mainly atomic bombs.

Also, I thought memes were supposed to be funny...

[–] phx@lemmy.ca 12 points 4 months ago

Yeah, I'd tend to agree on that. Even beyond the security issues, nuclear has the potential to be a safe, but it also has the potential to be disastrous if mis-managed.

We see plenty of issues like this already, including what occurred here: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/fukushima-daiichi-accident

Now imagine a plant in Texas, where power companies response to winter outages has basically been "sucks to be you, winterizing is too costly".

Or maybe we'd like to go with a long-time trusted company, who totally wouldn't throw away safety and their reputation for a few extra bucks. Boeing comes to mind.

I like nuclear as a power source, but the absolutely needs to be immutable rules in place to ensure it is properly managed and that anyone attempting to cut corners to save costs gets slapped down immediately. Corporate culture in North America seems to indicate otherwise.

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