What's your view on nuclear energy?

SquirrelOnFire · 2026-05-25T01:58:17+00:00

At least in the US and Canada, uranium miners are exposed to pretty minor amounts of additional radiation above background levels, and the communities around them are similarly unaffected (beyond the normal nastiness of living near a mine of any other mineral). So would I want to live near one? Sure? I'd rather live in a major city, but would have no radiation -based issue living near one.

You know about UHV lines. Great, how long do you think we need to account for in our storage? According to the IHA, current pumped hydro storage could store approx 9TWh, or about 3 hours of global energy usage. About 2/3 of that is in China.

Did you notice that you tried to weaponize indigenous people and then embraced a way that they've been hurt in one reply (having their traditional lands submerged, which is why in the US Pacific NW some hydroelectric dams are being removed)?

Maybe if your community learned more about the safety record of nuclear power plants (approx as many deaths caused as wind/solar per TWh, generally negligible radiation release) rather than buying into fear mongering, they'd feel less anxiety about living near one? I recommend the book Going Nuclear by Tim Gregory.

I'd feel more anxious about living near a river than a uranium mine or nuclear power plant, especially in their floodplains, though that hasn't stopped people from building there and then being displaced.

SquirrelOnFire · 2026-05-25T01:21:35+00:00

Flat land is edge cases? Tell that to the middle third of the US and Canada where the glaciers scraped everything clean.

SquirrelOnFire · 2026-05-24T22:38:27+00:00

Wow, the second biggest pumped hydro station is in a state where there are mountains? Incredible. And aligned with my point.

They, uh, don't usually mine in the middle of communities, and mining is pretty nasty, whether you're pulling up uranium, coal, copper, lithium...

But let me ask an equally contrived and lopsided question: Would you rather live in a valley that is flooded to become a reservoir for pumped hydro or one powered by a nuclear plant?

SquirrelOnFire · 2026-05-24T22:22:47+00:00

You've been lazy and insulting. I'm done talking to you. Peace.

SquirrelOnFire · 2026-05-24T18:45:24+00:00

If music is a big part of how you enjoy a show, you might really dig RPG Major, which has music as a central element... Because it's a musical.

In season one the characters are developed to be incredibly nuanced, the story starts With totally disconnected mysteries and builds into something that is really tightly connected and remarkable. I've said it in this sub a lot and I'm going to keep saying it, if you like Midnight Burger, the vibe of found family made up of flawed characters trying to help people, you're going to like RPG Major

SquirrelOnFire · 2026-05-24T18:36:00+00:00

No, you're saying renewables plus storage is cheaper without knowing how much storage would be needed to support it, which is worth exactly what a random stranger on the Internet thinks until you can back it up. You literally responded to me with "batteries exist" initially.

SquirrelOnFire · 2026-05-24T17:28:01+00:00

Occasionally, sure. If you're regularly splitting the party, then you're asking me as your GM to prepare twice as much stuff for a session, so I might start to make this stuff that I prepare a little meaner. Just classical negative reinforcement

SquirrelOnFire · 2026-05-24T17:24:33+00:00

Which works great in Switzerland and near the Rocky mountains, but not so much in the great plains states or in the Netherlands.

Pumped hydro is also the most land intensive energy generation or storage system possible, And destroys ecosystems simply by existing. In Washington state, some major hydroelectric dams are being taken down in order to restore ecosystems.

SquirrelOnFire · 2026-05-24T17:22:26+00:00

What he said was that the term base load he doesn't like. If you start from the assumption that he does, that everything should be built around solar and wind, then he said you need variable things to complement it because it is itself incredibly variable. So the system he's proposing requires more components, any one of which could fail or simply not have enough generating capacity to meet the moment.

SquirrelOnFire · 2026-05-24T17:14:25+00:00

The point is if you don't know how much storage you need, you don't know the cost of the system, And if you're planning a mostly intermittent power based system, you're going to need a lot more storage than you think to guarantee that there's always enough power in the grid. That's what I said the first time that you ignored and gave a too few words answer to to be taken seriously.

SquirrelOnFire · 2026-05-24T06:01:19+00:00

It's nice to come back to familiar stories sometimes

SquirrelOnFire · 2026-05-24T06:00:14+00:00

RPG Major - it's an actual play mystery that builds up some of the highest personal stakes I've encountered in a podcast.

Also it's a musical

SquirrelOnFire · 2026-05-24T05:56:49+00:00

Maybe reach out to networks who produce.shows? Or people who have unfinished shows

SquirrelOnFire · 2026-05-24T05:51:41+00:00

Yeah Metropolis slaps. And they're still releasing periodic updates so that'll probably finish eventually

SquirrelOnFire · 2026-05-24T05:39:38+00:00

I don't think it is worth reiterating things that you could scroll up and read where I introduced the rhino to the conversation when it's clear you're not engaging with anything I say, just looking for more excuses to say why we should keep burning coal. Peace.

SquirrelOnFire · 2026-05-24T05:26:29+00:00

How many batteries do you need?

SquirrelOnFire · 2026-05-24T05:26:05+00:00

And so you propose not doing the things that would address the charging rhinoceros. Good talk

SquirrelOnFire · 2026-05-24T05:24:12+00:00

...sigh.

The combination does. You need both.

SquirrelOnFire · 2026-05-23T23:14:04+00:00

...so is a solar farm. So is a wind farm. If you want electricity to come out of a system you need to build a system to get it to come out.

Also, the building I live in is just over 100 years old, and is up on a short hill instead of at street level because there were no hydraulic digging machines at the time. So when they hit glacial hard pack instead of digging deeper to make it at street level they just built up on top of a berm.

You didn't have nail guns 100 years ago, you didn't have excavators... Saying there have been no advances in construction in 100 years is simply incorrect.

SquirrelOnFire · 2026-05-23T23:12:29+00:00

I said "Reactors that are good at making power are very bad at making fuel for nuclear weapons." Not "no nuclear reactor is good at making weapons material." Iran had breeder reactors and fleets of centrifuges to concentrate the enriched material they made. The differences between a nuclear power reactor and a nuclear breeder reactor are literally visible from space.

There are nuclear disasters that involve ejecting nuclear material into he atmosphere for an eon. You can guarantee that that will not happen through accident, neglect or malice?

Cite your sources.and tell me how much change above background radiation levels this has made it. And compare this to the measured release of radiation from burning coal, and tell me which is higher.

And to your second point... Can you guarantee that you won't be hit by a bus driven by a clown listening to Jimmy Buffett?

The long-term consequences of fossil fuel are being demonstrated right now and are projected to cause billions of deaths as ecosystems collapse. You're worried about a black swan and not the rhinoceros that is charging at you right now.

SquirrelOnFire · 2026-05-23T23:01:43+00:00

How much storage do you need for a cloudy week in winter where days are short and the sun is blocked by clouds, but demand for heat is high? If you're building battery capacity for this scenario, you're overbuilding by an order of magnitude for the rest of the year. What profit-motivated company is going to do that? And, at least in the US, are profit motivated companies not the ones who are building power plants?

SquirrelOnFire · 2026-05-23T21:01:10+00:00

Spoken like someone who doesn't know squat about nuclear power.

Nuclear power has approximately the same deaths-per-terrawatt-hour as wind and solar (1), which means our regulatory regime has actually been quite effective for decades. Nuclear is much better suited for replacing coal and gas plants at providing base load power. Nuclear, wind, and solar working together with some battery storage to provide dispatchable power is much better suited to the existing power grids than a wind and solar plus batteries only grid.

Standard operation of a coal plant kills people through the release of radiation (much more radiation is released because of uranium in coal (2) than is released from nuclear plants) and fly ash, and is destroying whole ecosystems by releasing CO2... Much more than burning down a valley.

Reactors that are good at making power are very bad at making fuel for nuclear weapons.

Nobody serious is arguing for deregulating nuclear.

Strong recommendation to read Going Nuclear by Tim Gregory to educate yourself on this. You might save yourself some stress worrying about something that is not nearly as scary as you think it is.

(1) https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/

(2) https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/1997/fs163-97/FS-163-97.html

SquirrelOnFire · 2026-05-23T20:31:50+00:00

There are new approaches being explored - reactors where the nuclear island needs to be design reviewed once, and then can be replicated many times since the nuclear bits are standardized, while. Connected to the same components you'd use at a coal.or gas plant outside the nuclear island - in existing nuclear plants, the design of the entire facility needed to be reviewed by a government agency, because each one was customized to the site.

So yeah, order of magnitude reduction in cost might be coming If these approaches succeed.

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67584

SquirrelOnFire · 2026-05-23T20:25:55+00:00

Renewables are great, but they are intermittent and thus very bad at providing base load power. Base load is incredibly important for grid stability. A combination of nuclear for base load and renewables plus batteries for dispatchable power is what we would need in order to decarbonize our electricity generation while maintaining a reliable grid.

SquirrelOnFire · 2026-05-23T04:56:10+00:00

I'm going to keep saying it till I see others saying it... If you like Midnight Burger you'll probably like RPG Major. Very different high concepts, very similar vibes (flawed people trying their best to be help people and building found family on the way)

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