Elon and Trump make the worst possible argument for nuclear power I have ever heard:
“Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed but now they are full cities again,” the multibillionaire owner of Tesla, SpaceX and X said.
“That’s great, that’s great,” Mr Trump responded.
“It is not as scary as people think, basically,” Mr Musk added.
They joked about nuclear power facing a “branding problem”.
“We will have to rebrand it,” the former president told Mr Musk. “We will name it after you or something.”
Nuclear power does have a problem where perceptions of danger greatly outweigh the actual danger.
Trying to make nuclear power sound safe by saying that a nuclear bombing isn’t that bad is not helping. I fucking hate these two dipshits.
Right? I’m not an anti-nuclear person in general (although I think it’s becoming mores superfluous as other methods become more efficient), but “thousands of people died and then they built a new city, so don’t worry” is so fucking stupid.
(although I think it’s becoming mores superfluous as other methods become more efficient),
Yeah, nuclear power plants are expensive and slow to construct. 20 years ago, hell, 10 years ago, I would’ve said “Yes, building new plants or making major expansions is still a good idea.” Now? Renewables are advancing so fast that it’s probably economically unwise to make major investments in nuclear power.
Nuclear energy has insane energy density in terms of MJ/kg (something like 3.9 x 10^6 ) versus chemical fuels (4.5 x 10^1), but it’s grossly inefficient because most of the output is waste heat and “hot” isotopes-- the last things we need. I don’t have hard numbers on hand but I wouldn’t say nuclear is more than a few tens of percent efficiency. Then there’s the capital costs to build, maintain and operate plants PLUS costs to source, refine, transport, and store the fuel, and then transport and discard (contain) waste product. Not worth it at scale.
Versus Solar, Wind and Tidal which are far less energy dense per unit mass of working fluid¹, but enjoy up to 80% efficiency, and are relatively easy to scale.
Nuclear still makes sense, I think, in interior areas like the American Midwest where wind and solar are fickle, and transportation (transmission) costs for tidal would be unsustainable.
¹ Not a fair comparison because solar efficiency is quantized on intensity x area / time, while wind and tidal would quantized on flux density, or (mass / area) x velocity (over time?).
Nuclear still makes sense, I think, in interior areas like the American Midwest where wind and solar are fickle, and transportation (transmission) costs for tidal would be unsustainable.
There’s another downside to depending on nuclear power that wasn’t so much an issue in the past, but is now, and will be even more in the future: the required cooling capacity to operate a nuclear reactor.
The reason nuclear power plants are built next to large bodies of water is that the waste heat needs to be dispersed somewhere. The heat is transferred to the body of water (lake, river, sea or ocean). Except now with climate change the bodies of water are already warmer so they cannot take away as much heat. In other places drought is reducing the amount of water, meaning less waste heat can be carried away. If you can’t get rid of waste heat from your reactor, you have to turn it off until you have sufficient heat dispersal available.
This isn’t theoretical. Its been happening sporadically for almost a decade. Here’s an article from 2018 detailing Finland having to turn off reactors because of ocean temperatures too high to operate.:
“Finland’s Loviisa power plant, located about 65 miles outside Helsinki, first slightly reduced its output on Wednesday. “The situation does not endanger people, [the] environment or the power plant,” its operator, the energy company Fortum, wrote in a statement. The seawater has not cooled since then, and the plant continued to reduce its output on both Thursday and Friday, confirmed the plant’s chief of operations, Timo Eurasto. “The weather forecast [means] it can continue at least a week. But hopefully not that long,” he said.”
I don’t know why more people aren’t talking about this when they recommend nuclear power for a climate changing world. Its only going to get hotter from now on, which means we’ll be able to effectively only use less nuclear power plant capacity.
exactly. it isn’t that they’re unsafe, its that there’s more effective options that aren’t oil.
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I’m beginning to think this Musk guy isn’t as smart as he lets on…
He should be strapped to a spacex rocket and sent to the sun. It isn’t as scary as you think.
Tell trump it’s ok to go at night, when the sun is cool.
He’ll be blind from staring so he won’t feel much
The SpaceX rocket unfortunately isn’t powerful enough to launch anything into the sun, but yes.
I’m sure we could modify it to make it possible. Even if we miss… 🤷🏼♂️
It would be really fun to punch him in the face for like 30 minutes.
The internet has come full circle!
There used to be a game in the 90’s where you punch Bill Gates in the face.
The World Trade Center was destroyed by terrorists, but they built a new one. Not as scary as you think.
Elon is like that greasy kid in high school who would correct the History teacher with facts he learned by posting on /pol/. “Actually, the slaves loved being slaves because they got free housing and healthcare.”
Can someone please line his shit ass up against the wall already?
There is a reason people call them Weird. Anyone who calls the death of hundreds of thousands of people “not as scary as people think” needs their heads examined. And with those two, I would not mind if that would be perfomed in the autopsy department.
Simply flee the country on a private jet or crawl into your billion-dollar bunker and the blast cannot impact you, what’s the problem? It’s only going to kill hundreds of thousands of poors, NBD.
Wait, that’s the old tech… it’s only going to kill millions of poors, NBD.
Can people stop trying Musk like he is some sort of “cool bro” idol?
I’d like to take a moment to share this video about what happens to the human body at different zones of the blast. It’s pretty horrific, but simulated.
Big difference between the original atomic bombs he’s talking about and current (or even decades-old) thermonuclear weapons. This is just ignorant rambling from someone that wants to be “smart”.
Meanwhile, Annie Jacobsen has a recent book on exactly this subject that has been making the rounds these past months. Those two have to be living in a small bubble to not know about this book.
Never heard of it
Title of book?
Thank you!
Ok, so now that’s Japan, EU, UK and Brazil that hate elon’s guts. He’s gonna start to run out of democracies to fuck with, will he move on to dictators or is that friendly fire?
He will not mess with dictators. Because in those countries he can get anything he wants just by bribing a few people. Not so in democracies.
As a nation of one, one of my foreign policy agendas is the eradication of everything Elon Musk stands for. All my cells voted in favor of this, we are not a house divided.
yeah, yeah, there are people of all kinds in these places, but know that if he attacks your institutions, he is not on your side. Governments have taken notice and are starting to act on it.
Let’s associate a nuclear power plant with Elon’s record of dumping mercury in waterways and not giving a shit about safety.
If Elon musk goes into nuclear energy I guarantee you, the plant he would make will have a meltdown that would make Fukushima and Chernobyl look tame by comparison.
This guy studied physics at MIT right? Doesn’t know how dangerous atomic bombs are?
He didn’t study at MIT. He studied at UPenn and lied about having graduated from there two years earlier than he did, for some reason
Ah my mistake. Reading his wikipedia right now, it says, “he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League university in Philadelphia, where he earned two degrees: a Bachelor of Arts in physics, and a Bachelor of Science in economics from the university’s Wharton School.” Had no idea Bachelor of Arts in physics was a thing. But economics is Bachelor of Science? What happened there? Is that a mistake? Physics is a hard science.
At some schools, any major can result in a BA or BS depending on which electives you take.
Definitely resulted in huge pile of BS with Musk.
Yeah, it’s my perception that the BA for sciences are for people that want to teach high school and lower. That’s how i got a math degree. I’m not sure if i could’ve handled any applied math. Abstract algebra kicked my ass twice, and diff eq took me a couple of months in to get comfortable with.
He’s gonna run for president some time in the future, mark my words. And he’s gonna be a lot worse than Trump.
Cool story Elon. Tell us, how bad would it be if a Fat Man bomb was detonated over your house? Pretty bad? Yeah now STFU.
Nuclear power needs rebranding
Elon: “TrumpX”
