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#23 | Posted by SomebodyElse at 2026-06-27 04:13 PM
"A nuclear power plant produces power for decades; the nuclear waste it leaves behind will remain lethal for 10,000 years. Put on a blackboard the year the EPA has determined these materials will be safe, 11,993."
Daniel Ellsberg, 1993.
This scaremongering from the usuals old "doomers" and fear of anything "nuclear" is the kind of thinking that left us decades behind China and some other countries in energy buildout that is necessary if we want to have enough relatively cheap energy for all the things that need to be or we want to be electric: EVs, datacenters (AI-centric or plain old "cloud" data storage and servers) and just increase in commercial and consumer electric demand, including portable and wearable devices.
For example, a single ChatGPT query consumes 10x the energy of a Google search.
If we stupidly demand to keep TikTok datacenters in America, then we need plenty of stable portable energy, like nuclear, gas, green/blue hydrogen.
China is energy-abundant, in part, because in the last 20+ years they were also investing in and building nuclear plants and other energy solutions, like hydro, gas and coal.
itif.org - Chinese firms are well ahead of their Western peers. China likely stands 10 to 15 years ahead of the United States in nuclear power - 2024-06-17
world-nuclear.org - Plans For New Reactors Worldwide - 2025-10-29
drudge.com - Why tech giants such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Meta are betting big on nuclear power - 2026-05-11
www.congress.gov -
|------- ... Over the last several hundred years, human beings have been moving away from matter-dense fuels towards energy-dense ones. First we move from renewable fuels like wood, dung, and towards the fossil fuels of coal, oil, and natural gas, and eventually to uranium. ...
... Energy-dense nuclear requires far less in the way of materials, and produces far less in the way of waste compared to energy-dilute solar and wind. A single Coke can's worth of uranium provides all of the energy that the... American... lifestyle requires. At the end of the process, the high-level radioactive waste that nuclear plants produce is the very same Coke can of (used) uranium fuel. The reason nuclear is the best energy from an environmental perspective is because it produces so little waste and none enters the environment as pollution. ...
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www.cnbc.com - New U.S. nuclear power boom begins with old problem: What to do with radioactive waste - 2025-11-09
|------- ... But you can count Gates, the big tech billionaire who was backing nuclear even before the AI data center boom, as having not only thought about the waste problem, but dismissed it as major impediment. "The waste problems should not be a reason to not do nuclear. The amount of waste involved ... that's not a reason not to do nuclear. ... Say the U.S. was completely nuclear-powered - it's a few rooms worth of total waste. So it's not a gigantic thing," Gates said in 2023.
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In addition, new SMRs / fast-breeder reactors can actually reuse and "burn" spent nuclear fuel, in effect reducing nuclear waste.
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Meanwhile, back at the ranch:
Interesting stats:
i.imgur.com
Note the only lowering stat - due to that fact: AI Overview Yes, Poland has consistently refused to participate in the European Union's mandatory relocation schemes for asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa. Successive Polish governments have cited national security, cultural preservation, and a desire to avoid the integration challenges seen in other European nations