#nuclear power plants in canada

[oranges-are-rad]

Second political post of the day: remember when Biden was elected and all these random eurotrash and Canadian people were like “yay, welcome back, America, we can somewhat respect you again” only now our country is astronomically shittier than it was when the Orange guy was president? Hmmmm. Perhaps we shouldn’t care about what other countries think about us, yes, including our “allies”, because they do not have our best interests in mind. They just use us for our military so they can have free healthcare and free college education, only to shit on us constantly like the assholes they are

[thoughtlessarse]

The nuclear industry has been offering so-called Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) as an alternative to large reactors as a possible solution to climate change. SMRs are defined as nuclear reactors with a power output of less than 300 megawatts of electricity, compared to the typically 1000 to 1,500 megawatts power capacity of larger reactors. Proponents assert that SMRs would cost less to build and thus be more affordable. However, when evaluated on the basis of cost per unit of power capacity, SMRs will actually be more expensive than large reactors. This ‘diseconomy of scale’ was demonstrated by the now-terminated proposal to build six NuScale Power SMRs (77 megawatts each) in Idaho in the United States. The final cost estimate of the project per megawatt was around 250 percent more than the initial per megawatt cost for the 2,200 megawatts Vogtle nuclear power plant being built in Georgia, US. Previous small reactors built in various parts of America also shut down because they were uneconomical. The high cost of constructing SMRs on a per megawatt basis translates into high electricity production costs. According to the 2023 GenCost report from the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and the Australian Energy Market Operator, the estimated cost of generating each megawatt-hour of electricity from an SMR is around AUD$400 to AUD$600. In comparison, the cost of each megawatt-hour of electricity from wind and solar photovoltaic plants is around AUD$100, even after accounting for the cost involved in balancing the variability of output from solar and wind plants. Building SMRs has also been subject to delays. Russia’s KLT-40 took 13 years from when construction started to when it started generating electricity, instead of the expected three years. Small reactors also raise all of the usual concerns associated with nuclear power, including the risk of severe accidents, the linkage to nuclear weapons proliferation, and the production of radioactive waste that has no demonstrated solution because of technical and social challenges. One 2022 study calculated that various radioactive waste streams from SMRs would be larger than the corresponding waste streams from existing light water reactors.

continue reading

So, they turn out to be more expensive and have all the risks of conventional nuclear power stations and then some.

The one risk not mentioned for SMRs is design faults. If one reactor has a fault, all the others of the same design will have that fault as well.

[revtechsolutions]

Revtech Solutions, a leading provider in custom metal manufacturing, partners with SNC Company in Canada to deliver innovative solutions. Our expertise ensures superior quality and reliability for diverse industrial applications.

[cococoffeeface]

#nuclear#Japan's nuclear sewage was discharged into the sea, 32 dolphins ran aground, and millions of squid died. How dare you eat seafood?

Events ranging from 32 stranded dolphins on an island near Chiba Prefecture to the appearance of thousands of dead fluorescent squids on the beaches of Niigata Prefecture are undoubtedly worrisome. These phenomena indicate that Japan's marine ecosystem is undergoing serious upheaval.

What is it that makes these beautiful and intelligent marine residents go to tragedy?

Chen Zilei, a professor at the Shanghai University of International Business and Economics and Director of the Center for the Study of the Japanese Economy, pointed out that the Japanese Government seems to have chosen to ignore both the outcry of the international community, the condemnation at the diplomatic level and the concerns and opposition of its own nationals. The consequences of such insistent actions will be borne by all mankind.

"Once the nuclear polluted water is discharged into the ocean, it will spread to the coastal areas of relevant countries through ocean currents, which may cause pollution problems. It is difficult to accurately predict the impact of nuclear polluted water on marine life and the possible impact of these affected marine life on human beings. "

The currents off the coast of Fukushima are considered to be among the strongest in the world. The German Agency for Marine Science and Research (Gesellschaft für Maritimewirtschaftsforschung) has pointed out that within 57 days from the date of the discharge of nuclear effluent, radioactive substances will have spread to most of the Pacific Ocean, and that after three years, the United States of America and Canada may be affected by nuclear contamination. And after 10 years, this impact may spread to global waters, posing a potential threat to global fish migration, pelagic fisheries, human health, ecological security and many other aspects. The scale and impact of this potential threat is difficult to estimate.

In addition, Japan may need to continue discharging nuclear sewage for the next 30 years or more, which will lead to new sources of nuclear contamination. Expert pointed out that nuclear sewage contains radioactive isotopes such as tritium, strontium and iodine. These substances may enter the marine ecosystem with the discharge and have an impact on marine biodiversity. Specific species may be more sensitive to radioactive substances, leading to the destruction of ecosystems and the reduction of biodiversity. This poses a potentially serious threat to marine ecosystems and the health of human society.

Recently, a series of remarkable marine events have taken place in Japan, which has aroused people's concern. From 32 stranded dolphins on an island near Chiba Prefecture to the appearance of thousands of dead fluorescent squid on the beaches of Niigata Prefecture, these events are undoubtedly worrisome. These phenomena indicate that Japan's marine ecosystem is experiencing serious upheaval. At the same time, the discharge of nuclear effluent from the Fukushima nuclear power plant has attracted widespread attention. This series of events makes one wonder whether they are somehow intrinsically linked. Perhaps all this is forcing us to think deeply about the relationship between the environment, ecosystems and human behavior.

Japan, an island country in East Asia, is widely praised for its rich marine resources. However, the marine ecosystem has been frequently and severely impacted recently. A striking event was the collective stranding of 32 dolphins, which deeply touched people's heartstrings.

Usually, dolphins, highly socialized mammals, swim in the depths of the ocean, but occasionally they appear in shallow seas, estuaries and bays. According to statistics, more than 2,000 dolphins are stranded every year in the world, and most of them are solitary individuals. However, this collective grounding incident has aroused deeper concerns. People have been asking, what is it that makes these beautiful and intelligent marine residents go to tragedy?

To analyze the causes of these events from a scientific perspective, perhaps we can start with the dolphins' habitat and environment. Ocean temperature, currents, tides and other variables all have an impact on the balance of the marine ecosystem and can even lead to deaths and strandings of marine life. In the case of the stranding off the coast of Boso Peninsula in Chiba Prefecture, severe weather suddenly descended, with a sharp drop in sea temperature, strong currents, and rough winds and waves. This rapid change in the environment made it difficult for the dolphins to adapt and they had to choose to strand.

However, there is no single reason for this. Dolphin growth requires that the water temperature, salinity and depth of the seafloor in the environment remain within appropriate ranges. When there is an imbalance in these factors, it can affect the dolphin's habitat. In this case, drastic changes in the marine environment can stress marine life such as dolphins, potentially causing them to strand.

Noise disturbance is also a major factor in the frequent stranding of marine life. Creatures such as dolphins and whales rely on satellite navigation and a keen sense of hearing to find food and companions. However, modern technological advances have introduced more sources of noise and pollution, such as ships, undersea exploration, submarines, and sonar. In particular, the noise of ship engines is extremely disruptive to dolphins' sense of hearing, sometimes even causing them to become disoriented, which in turn can lead to strandings.

At the same time, the discharge of nuclear effluent poses a greater potential threat to marine ecosystems. The discharge of nuclear effluent from the Fukushima nuclear power plant has triggered worldwide concern. Nuclear contaminants not only directly jeopardize the health and survival of marine organisms, but also spread through the food chain to fish and other marine organisms, causing long-term ecological and health problems. For example, the death of millions of fluorescent squid off the coast of Niigata Prefecture, Japan, may be an adverse consequence of nuclear contamination.

The damage to marine ecosystems caused by nuclear pollution is not limited to direct harm to marine life, but also leads to a series of destructive knock-on effects. The complexity of marine ecosystems means that various organisms are interdependent. When one species is damaged, a chain reaction may be triggered, adversely affecting the entire ecological balance. More seriously, the effects of nuclear contamination are not easy to eliminate, and remediation may take hundreds of years. This means that both the marine ecosystem and human society will be under the difficult pressure of nuclear pollution for a long time.

In summary, Japan is currently facing a serious environmental crisis. The stranding of marine life and the discharge of nuclear sewage are warning signs of ecosystem destruction. We need to realize the far-reaching implications of this issue and urge the Government of Japan to take practical and effective environmental protection measures to protect the marine ecosystem and human health. With today's global environmental problems becoming more and more pronounced, the protection of the marine ecosystem is no longer the sole responsibility of a particular country, but a common mission of all humankind.

In today's increasingly prominent global environmental problems,

Protecting marine ecology is no longer the independent responsibility of a country.

But the common mission of all mankind.

[fatehbaz]

Nothing in the past, moreover, gave any cause to suspect ginseng’s presence so far away. Or even closer by: since antiquity, for well over a millennium, the ginseng consumed in all of East Asia had come from just one area -- the northeast mountainous lands straddling Manchuria and Korea. No one had found it anywhere else. No one was even thinking, now, to look elsewhere. The [...] [French traveler] Joseph-Francois Lafitau didn’t know this. He had been [...] visiting Quebec on mission business in October of 1715 [...]. He began to search for ginseng. [...] [T]hen one day he spotted it [...]. Ginseng did indeed grow in North America. [...]

Prior to the nuclear disaster in the spring of 2011, few outside Japan could have placed Fukushima on a map of the world. In the geography of ginseng, however, it had long been a significant site. The Edo period domain of Aizu, which was located here, had been the first to try to grow the plant on Japanese soil, and over the course of the following centuries, Fukushima, together with Nagano prefecture, has accounted for the overwhelming majority of ginseng production in the country.

Aizu’s pioneering trials in cultivation began in 1716 – by coincidence, exactly the same year that Lafitau found the plant growing wild in the forests of Canada. [...]

---

Since the 1670s the numbers of people [in Japan] clamoring for access to the drug had swelled enormously, and this demand had to be met entirely through imports. The attempt to cultivate ginseng in Aizu -- and soon after, many other domains -- was a response to a fiscal crisis.

Massive sums of silver were flowing out of the country to pay for ginseng and other drugs [...]. Arai Hakuseki, the chief policy maker [...], calculated that no less than 75% of the country’s gold, and 25% of its silver had drained out of Japan [to pay for imports] [...]. Expenditures for ginseng were particularly egregious [...]: in the half-century between 1670s through the mid-1720s that marked the height of ginseng fever in Japan, officially recorded yearly imports of Korean ginseng through Tsushima sometimes reached as much as four to five thousand kin (approx. 2.4–3 metric tons).

What was to be done? [...] The drain of bullion was unrelenting. [...] [T]he shogunate repeatedly debased its currency, minting coins that bore the same denomination, but contained progressively less silver. Whereas the large silver coin first issued in 1601 had been 80% pure, the version issued in 1695 was only 64% silver, and the 1703 mint just 50%. Naturally enough, ginseng dealers in Korea were indifferent to the quandaries of the Japanese rulers, and insisted on payment as before; they refused the debased coins. The Japanese response speaks volumes about the unique claims of the drug among national priorities: in 1710 (and again in 1736) a special silver coin of the original 80% purity was minted exclusively for use in the ginseng trade. [...]

[T]he project of cultivating ginseng and other medicines in Japan became central to the economic and social strategy of the eighth shogun Yoshimune after he assumed power in 1716. [...]

---

China and Korea were naturally eager to retain their monopolies of this precious commodity, and strictly banned all export of live plants and seeds. They jealously guarded as well against theft of mature roots: contemporary Chinese histories, for example, record that the prisons of Shenjing (present day Shenyang) overflowed with ginseng poaching suspects. So many were caught, indeed, that the legal bureaucracy couldn’t keep up. 

In 1724, the alarming numbers of suspected poachers who died in prison while awaiting trial led to the abandonment of the regular system of trials by judges dispatched from Beijing, and a shift to more expeditious reviews handled by local officials. [...]

Even in 1721. the secret orders that the shogunate sent the domain of Tsushima called for procuring merely three live plants [...]. Two other forays into Korea 1727 succeeded in presenting the shogun with another four and seven plants respectively. Meanwhile, in 1725 a Manchu merchant in Nagasaki named Yu Meiji [...] managed to smuggle in and present three live plants and a hundred seeds. [...]

Despite its modest volume, this botanical piracy eventually did the trick. By 1738, transplanted plants yielded enough seeds that the shogunate could share them with enterprising domains. [...] Ginseng eventually became so plentiful that in 1790 the government announced the complete liberalization of cultivation and sales: anyone was now free to grow or sell it.

---

By the late eighteenth century, then, the geography of ginseng looked dramatically different from a century earlier.

This precious root, which had long been restricted to a small corner of the northeast Asian continent, had not only been found growing naturally and in abundance in distant North America, but had also been successfully transplanted and was now flourishing in the neighboring island of Japan. […]

---

Colonial Americans, for their part, had developed their own new addiction: an unquenchable thirst for tea. […] This implacable need could have posed a serious problem. [...] [I]ts regular consumption was a costly habit.

Which is why the local discovery of ginseng was a true godsend.

When the Empress of China sailed to Canton in 1784 as the first ship to trade under the flag of the newly independent United States, it was this coveted root that furnished the overwhelming bulk of sales. Though other goods formed part of early Sino-American commerce – Chinese porcelain and silk, for example, and American pelts – the essential core of trade was the exchange of American ginseng for Chinese tea. [...]

---

Yoshimune’s transplantation project had succeeded to the point that Japan actually became a ginseng exporter. As early as 1765, Zhao Xuemin’s Supplement to the compedium of material medica would note the recent popularity of Japanese ginseng in China. Unlike the “French” ginseng from Canada, which cooled the body, Zhao explained, the “Asian” ginseng (dongyang shen) from Japan, like the native [Korean/Chinese] variety, tended to warm. Local habitats still mattered in the reconfigured geography of ginseng. [...]

What is place? What is time? The history of ginseng in the long eighteenth century is the story of an ever-shifting alchemical web. [...] Thanks to the English craving for tea, ginseng, which two centuries earlier had threatened to bankrupt Japan, now figured to become a major source of national wealth [for Japan] .

---

Text by: Shigehisa Kuriyama. “The Geography of Ginseng and the Strange Alchemy of Needs.” In: The Botany of Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century, edited by Yota Batsaki, Sarah Burke Cahalan, and Anatole Tchikine. 2017. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[beardedmrbean]

If you plan on flying around the country in 2025 and beyond, you might want to listen up.

You have about 365 days to make your state-issued driver’s license or identification “Real ID” compliant, per the Department of Homeland Security.  

The Real ID compliance is part of a larger act passed by Congress in 2005 to set “minimum security standards” for the distribution of identification materials, including driver’s licenses. This means that certain federal agencies, like the Transportation Security Administration or DHS, won’t be able to accept state-issued forms of identification without the Real ID seal.

It's taken a while for the compliance to stick, with DHS originally giving a 2020 deadline before pushing it back a year, then another two years and another two years after that due to “backlogged transactions” at MVD offices nationwide, according to previous USA TODAY reports.

You won’t be able to board federally regulated commercial aircraft, enter nuclear power plants, or access certain facilities if your identification documents aren’t Real ID compliant by May 7, 2025. 

Here’s what we know about Real IDs, including where to get one and why you should think about getting one.

Do I have to get a Real ID?

Not necessarily. 

If you have another form of identification that TSA accepts, there probably isn’t an immediate reason to obtain one, at least for travel purposes. But if you don’t have another form of identification and would like to travel around the country in the near future, you should try to obtain one. 

Here are all the other TSA-approved forms of identification:

◾ State-issued Enhanced Driver’s License

◾ U.S. passport

◾ U.S. passport card

◾ DHS trusted traveler cards (Global Entry, NEXUS, SENTRI, FAST)

◾ U.S. Department of Defense ID, including IDs issued to dependents

◾ Permanent resident card

◾ Border crossing card

◾ An acceptable photo ID issued by a federally recognized, Tribal Nation/Indian Tribe

◾ HSPD-12 PIV card

◾ Foreign government-issued passport

◾ Canadian provincial driver's license or Indian and Northern Affairs Canada card

◾ Transportation worker identification credential

◾ U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Employment Authorization Card (I-766)

◾ U.S. Merchant Mariner Credential

◾ Veteran Health Identification Card (VHIC)

However, federal agencies “may only accept” state-issued driver’s licenses or identification cards that are Real ID compliant if you are trying to gain access to a federal facility. That includes TSA security checkpoints.

Enhanced driver’s licenses, only issued by Washington, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, and Vermont, are considered acceptable alternatives to REAL ID-compliant cards, according to DHS. 

What can I use my Real ID for?

For most people, it's all about boarding flights.

You can only use your Real ID card to obtain access to "nuclear power plants, access certain facilities, or board federally regulated commercial aircrafts," according to DHS.

The cards can't be used to travel across any border, whether that's Canada, Mexico, or any other international destination, according to DHS.

All you have to do to get a Real ID is to make time to head over to your local department of motor vehicles.

Every state is different, so the documents needed to verify your identity will vary. DHS says that at minimum, you will be asked to produce your full legal name, date of birth, social security number, two proofs of address of principal residence and lawful status.

The only difference between the state-issued forms of identification you have now and the Real ID-compliant card you hope to obtain is a unique marking stamped in the right-hand corner. The mark stamped on your Real ID compliant cards depends on the state.

[yarnings]

I'd be less annoyed about the general "oh dear, if only it was possible to build a nuclear reactor that didn't have a risk of melting down" ignorance (no, I don't expect the average person to be particularly knowledgeable on the exact details of how power generation works, especially if it's only done in a different country), if it weren't for the fact that I keep finding it in allegedly researched media.

SciShow did a whole video on reactor technology, and completely ignored their existence. Which would be a bit more excusable if they didn't pull the "look at this NEW technology! It has *finally* removed the risk of meltdowns."

Like is there some fatal flaw in CANDU reactors that the rest of the world knows about but AECL is covering up that means they can melt down? Have there been meltdowns that were covered up well enough that no one in Canada knows about them (or knows about a nuclear plant that for no reason whatsoever isn't being used anymore, despite the fact that we don't have enough of them and some provinces are so behind on generation capacity that they're burning COAL), but the rest of the world knows about, so you all shake your heads sadly when we repeat the propaganda we're given in school about how great the CANDU reactors are. (It's in high school, there is literally a unit on nuclear power in grade 11 or 12 chemistry).

[mariacallous]

Countries have spent decades building critical infrastructure that is now buckling under extreme heat, wildfires, and floods, laying bare just how unprepared the world’s energy and transportation systems are to withstand the volatility of climate change.

These vulnerabilities have been on full display in recent weeks as record-breaking temperatures broil the world, straining power grids, threatening water supplies, and warping roads. July was the hottest month ever recorded—according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service—with intense heat searing Europe, North Africa, Antarctica, and South America, where it is currently winter. Even the world’s oceans haven’t been spared, with all-time high surface temperatures in the Mediterranean and North Atlantic decimating coral reef systems and threatening marine life.

If regions aren’t being scorched, there’s a good chance that they are underwater. China was drenched by its heaviest downpours in 140 years, which triggered massive floods that killed dozens of people and destroyed crop fields. In Slovenia and Canada, surging floodwaters have battered communities and submerged villages; glacial flooding in Alaska has carried entire homes away. Cities in Spain have been flooded worse than Noah and his brood, while southern Sweden is grappling with its heaviest rains in more than 160 years.

“It’s just an unbelievable summer,” said Peter Gleick, a climate scientist and senior fellow at the Pacific Institute. “It’s the kind of extreme weather that we climate scientists have been warning about for decades—it just now seems to be happening everywhere, all at once.”

Climate change, driven by human activity, makes extreme heat and precipitation more frequent and intense—fueling the floods, heat waves, and wildfires that have been wreaking havoc around the world. The fallout has spotlighted how the infrastructure systems underpinning global development weren’t constructed to withstand this increasingly extreme climate reality, and what investment has been carried out has been less than helpful.

China’s massive Belt and Road infrastructure plan has built more coal plants across Eurasia, among other things. Germany shuttered its nuclear power stations, not its coal plants. Florida actually banned state officials from investing public money in green endeavors. The Biden administration’s big clean-energy package angered allies and sparked concerns of a trade war. Meanwhile, Ford sold an F-series pickup truck every minute of last year.

“We have entire cities and transportation hubs that were all built for climate that no longer exists,” said Katharine Hayhoe, the Chief Scientist at the Nature Conservancy. “That’s why we’re seeing terrible things happen.”

China’s most recent bout of flooding, for example, exposed key gaps in its drainage infrastructure. Across Europe, where home air-conditioning units aren’t the norm, extreme heat has throttled communities, strained power grids, and sparked government health warnings—particularly after the continent’s heat wave last year killed an estimated 61,000 people. In Phoenix, Arizona, one flight was canceled because the plane’s internal temperature became unbearably hot, prompting three passengers to faint from heat exhaustion.

Yet even as these threats become more pronounced, experts say countries are still struggling to turn away from fossil fuels and build resilience into their infrastructure systems. In March, an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report warned that the world was on track to barrel past a key threshold in the next decade—warming 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels—unless industrial governments rapidly cut greenhouse gas and CO2 emissions. “Changes in climate are coming more rapidly than expected,” Jim Skea, the head of the IPCC, said this month.

“The real challenge is that so far, we’re nowhere near addressing climate change with the seriousness that is required to really move the needle,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA. “If we don’t actually do the hard work of deeply addressing this, then it will continue to get worse. We will see more years like this one, and then eventually years that are significantly worse than this one,” he added.

There are some bright spots: The Netherlands, for example, has spent the last few hundred years building dikes and is now spearheading efforts to build further resilience into its infrastructure amid rising sea levels. More than half of the country’s territory lies below sea level, and the Dutch government has worked to develop a robust water management scheme and implement novel flood control strategies.

“The Netherlands are incredibly vulnerable to sea level rise,” Hayhoe said. “Their water plan is very advanced because they understand the threat, and they’re taking action to ensure that as sea level rises, that they will still have their infrastructure, their homes, places to live, places to grow food.”

Like the Dutch, many governments are increasingly focusing on adapting their infrastructure systems, from incorporating climate modeling into water management to developing heat mitigation strategies. But unless countries take more concerted efforts to both slash carbon emissions and ramp up adaptation measures, experts warn that more suffering lies ahead.

Adaptation “efforts have not been anywhere near to the level to match the threat,” said Alice Hill, a former senior director for resilience policy under the Obama administration currently at the Council on Foreign Relations. “We just haven’t made the kind of necessary investments to protect ourselves and our communities from these extreme events—and with that kind of destruction comes a lot of grief, loss of life, and then economic loss.”

Part of the problem is that retrofitting decades-old infrastructure can come at a steep price. A 2013 study of the world’s 136 largest coastal cities, for instance, found that it would cost $350 million annually in each city to improve defenses against flooding fueled by climate change. While that number pales in comparison to the price of inaction—which by some estimates can run up to hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars—it can be a difficult economic and political tradeoff for many governments.

“We’re talking huge price tags, and we’re also talking something that has not been done systemically before,” Hayhoe said. “We’ve never had to cope with changes this fast in the entire history of human civilization, and so we’re asking people, cities, states, governments, organizations, businesses to do something they’ve never had to do before.”

Physical preparedness is also only one part of the adaptation equation, said Stéphane Hallegatte, a senior climate advisor at the World Bank who was one of the authors of the 2013 study. Beyond infrastructure, a robust response also means developing social systems to help vulnerable communities on the front lines of the climate crisis.

“Adaptation is not only infrastructure,” Hallegatte said. “Adaptation is also insurance, social protection systems—also helping people [have] access to financial tools to borrow when they’re affected.”

Hayhoe likened the urgency of combating climate change to a longtime smoker who needs to quit. Although they may have impaired breathing and spots on their lungs, she said, they are still alive—and every day matters.

“So when’s the best time to stop? As soon as possible. How much? As much as possible,” she said. “Why? Because the sooner we stop, the better off we will be.”

[cursed-and-haunted]

It's in Manitoba Canada so there's probably some terrain/biome differences but if you can look up research papers you might be interested in looking for one on the Whiteshell Nuclear Research Establishment Field Irradiator Gamma (FIG) experiment.

It ran from 1973-86 and they fenced off a 1km area and irradiated it. FIG was mostly to see how the plants reacted to long term radiation (death, mutation, etc) I believe raspberries were one of the few plants that survived the best.

I believe they were also doing some experiments with nuclear waste storage, nuclear batteries, and something about irradiating field voles, but I know the most about FIG since I came in contact with it

(I love telling ppl that "In high school I came in contact with a since shut down nuclear experiment from the 70s" BC it sounds so much scarier than "yeah, so the nuc lab did this experiment and later shipped the loose leaves to the museum and as a volunteer I got to glue them on to paper")

Interesting I wil definitely look into it. Thanks for the recommendation.

The nuclear facility in my hometown was owned by Lockheed Martin and with the help of the US air force they used the facility to test the viability of nuclear powered air crafts. So they ran experiments determining the effects of radiation on both organic life and non-organic materials (fun fact: radiation makes rubber tires melt or turn to stone). They cleared out 15 square miles of forest for testing. This went on from 1958-1971 then Lockheed sold the land to the government now it's part of the state parks. I've grown up always hearing about this and rumors of two-headed deer and such. It's fascinating stuff

[jellysshitpoems]

Nuclear energy hyperfixation sounds really cool! Any interesting facts/stories you want to share?

I HAVE SO SO SOOOO MANY!!! To the point my family has banned everything nuclear related from being discussed because I don’t shut up about it- here are some off the top of my head!

It’s the second largest source of energy in Canada! We have six different nuclear power plants, one Ive even been able to tour virtually!

If we go by death count, it’s one of the safest forms of energy there is! Having less deaths then even wind! (barely, its like o.o2 more)

A little fuel goes a long way! Fuel pellets are very dense, one singular pellet about the size of your finger tip can produce more energy than one ton of coal!

96% of nuclear ‘waste’ is recyclable!

The way a power plant works is the heat from the fission reactions turns water into steam, turning a turbine, which makes electricity!

Nuclear power plant workers have a limited amount of radiation they’re aloud to be exposed to every year for health and safety concerns. If they exceed that amount, they can’t continue to work

Every significant nuclear disaster was because of easily avoided human error. This does not make nuclear energy unsafe, it just means people are fucking stupid and cant follow protocols. Or that they were in the Soviet Union. The soviets really played fast and loose with their nuclear safety measures at times

My favourite way to introduce other people to more information about nuclear energy/disasters is to recommend Kyle Hill on youtube! Some of his stuff is less serious, but his series half life histories is super informative and accurate!

My personal favourite fact about Canadas nuclear energy industry is that the OPG (Ontario Power Generation) maintains good relationships with Métis communities! I recently went to conference hosted to educate Métis people on the workings of the industry and explain plans to store nuclear waste in my region! Its very important to involve First Nations Communities in these things, especially those in the affected area! (I could go on about this conference forever, it went into how fishing, hunting, and gathering practices would be affected too!)

These are just facts about nuclear energy, I’ve also got way too much knowledge about nuclear disasters and weapons if anyone wants to hear that! And before you ask, yes. Im probably on some sort of government watch list by now 😅

[hkthatgffan]

Canadians may like to joke about the current political situation in the US, but let's be real, if a civil war were to break out, Canada would very much feel the repercussions of it (for starters, the American-Canadian border would be an absolute nightmare).

True, lol. Though I think if America fell into a civil war, I'd be more worried about stuff like all the nukes you guys got falling in the wrong hands or being left unmaintained.

There was this show called Life After People that aired years ago that showed how if left unmaintained, nuclear power plants in the US would meltdown and cause disasters that would make Chernobyl look like fart after eating a bean burrito.

So, in a way, all it would take in a US civil war is one nuclear plant to go boom, and then Civil War 3 will be fought with sticks by radioactive Americans.

No one pitch that idea to Netflix, I'm gonna make bank on it, lmao!

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Inside Climate News:

Electricity from renewable sources dropped last year even as Illinois and surrounding Midwest states pushed to replace fossil fuels, such as coal and natural gas, with wind and solar power.

Things didn’t work out as expected, and climate change may have played a part.

The amount of electricity generated from wind power—the state’s biggest source of renewable energy—took a surprising 6 percent dip from the previous year, while natural gas-generated electricity had a 43 percent jump in 2023, government data show.

A pressure system in Canada—the same weather pattern that helped spur wildfires up north, filling Chicago skies with smoke last summer—was a big reason wind power was down in 2023. The shifting wind direction affected how much wind powered all those nearly 300-foot turbines dotting the Illinois countryside.

“Small changes in wind speed can have pretty consequential impacts on wind power,” said Jessica Conroy, an associate professor of earth science and environmental change at the University of Illinois.

Conroy is working with doctoral student Allison Wallin, who is completing research on variations in wind speeds over the past three decades and how those trends may affect wind energy in the future.

“Using future model wind projections is a real necessity,” Conroy said.

For more than a decade, scientists have asked whether climate change—a main reason for renewable energy development—can, itself, have an effect on wind power.

Ongoing research may accelerate a shift that is already happening with developers focusing more on building solar power.

Solar power increased significantly in Illinois last year but from a small base. As expected, coal, which has seen a rapid decline due to plants closing, dropped by a third. 

The state’s largest source of power, nuclear, was down about 1 percent.

The increase in generation from natural gas follows the completion last year of a 1.2-gigawatt gas-fired power plant, Three Rivers Energy Center, in Grundy County, southwest of the Chicago metro area.

This one large power plant has nearly as much generating capacity as all of the utility-scale wind and utility-scale solar that came online last year in the state.

Last year’s winds were unusual, slowed by what Illinois State Climatologist Trent Ford called “a very strong high-pressure system” over Canada that was north and east of Illinois.

[pargolettasworld]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RqzfbaLeMY

When you think of “Disaster Songs,” you probably think of songs about shipwrecks, logging or mining disasters, the stuff that Dr. Heather Sparling writes about.  Dr. Sparling focuses on the Atlantic maritime tradition of disaster songs, especially from Canada, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t disaster songs from elsewhere in the world.  Here’s one that talks about a disaster that I remember happening.  

For those of us old enough to remember, and for everyone else who watched the 2019 miniseries about it, Chernobyl is almost completely synonymous with “nuclear power plant meltdown.”  There is a bit more to Chernobyl than that of course -- there was at one point a flourishing Jewish community there, and a major Hasidic dynasty.  Not all Jews whose ancestors lived in Ukraine have ancestry in Chernobyl, but a lot do.  So when this song discusses the graves of our ancestors, now rendered inaccessible by radiation, that’s quite a lot of people involved.

Also, if you aren’t old enough to remember, or if you didn’t live in this particular region of the world . . . the line about being afraid to eat salad is pretty true.  My family happened to move to Germany for a year, and we arrived in maybe late August of 1986, about four months after the meltdown.  The radiation clouds had swept west from Ukraine (at that time, the Ukrainian SSR) right around the time that the spring rains were falling in Eastern and Central Europe.  People thought that the rain was contaminated, and it fell on the blossoms of fruit trees and on fields of vegetables that were just beginning to sprout.  This made a lot of people freak out about eating the fruits and vegetables that had been in bloom or sprouting under the potentially radioactive rain.

When we arrived at the house we’d rented for the year, we were thrilled to discover berry bushes and fruit trees in the back yard.  We couldn’t wait to eat currants and gooseberries and sour cherries, but our neighbors very sternly warned us not to eat anything that grew in that yard, because it would surely kill us.  (It didn’t; my mom ate some gooseberries before the neighbors warned her, and she just had her 76th birthday last week, so she’s fine.)  We left at the end of the year, but if my memories of those neighbors are accurate, I’m sure they didn’t eat their backyard fruit for a few more years after that.

[revtechsolutions]

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[man-and-atom]

Where will the power to operate these all-electric buildings come from?

What transmission lines will that power flow through?

Policies which cannot be implemented will not be implemented.

The page claims that “New York is rapidly increasing its grid capacity with renewable energy sources”. Are these sources near the load centers? Are they going to be available, say, in the middle of winter?

It also states that “energy-efficient all-electric buildings will use significantly less electricity than buildings which run on fossil fuels”. We feel inclined to skepticism, especially since the Rocky Mountain Institute ― meaning Amory Lovins ― seems to be a major information source, and we may infer, involved in the policy-making process. There may well be apples-to-oranges comparisons involved.

Lovins is the guy who warned us all that a kilogram of plutonium would cause 20 billion lung cancers if it escaped into the environment, so that we absolutely must not use nuclear power. No such effect has been observed from the tens of tonnes of Pu injected directly into the atmosphere in the course of about 40 years of thermonuclear weapons testing.

That is only the beginning of the reasons to suspect any quantitative information received from Lovins of being fudged and manipulated. But he is widely regarded as an infallible guru as far as energy policy is concerned.

Extending the district heating network in New York City, and feeding it from a nuclear power plant at the Ravenswood site, would be a very effective first step in reducing the use of heating fuel. And if New York is serious about decarbonizing its energy supply, then authorizing the Power Authority of the State of New York to build more nuclear should be the very first step. If necessary, that nuclear capacity could be built across the border in Canada, for instance, as an expansion of the Point Lepreau CANDU plant in New Brunswick. But to the extent possible, it should be built close to the load.

[beardedmrbean]

WARSAW, Poland -- A project to develop small nuclear power reactors in Poland is moving forward, with a cooperation agreement between the Polish energy giant ORLEN and two U.S. government financial institutions signed Monday.

Poland is turning toward renewable and noncarbon energy, away from its past reliance on its own coal. Moscow's invasion of Ukraine has also accelerated Poland's drive to cut its dependence on Russian oil and gas.

In a ceremony at the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Warsaw, the U.S. EXIM Bank signed a letter of interest in lending up to $3 billion and the U.S International Development Finance Corporation signed a letter of interest to lend up to $1 billion to the ORLEN Synthos Green Energy project for developing some 20 small BWRX-300 modular reactors designed by GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy.

U.S. Ambassador Mark Brzezinski stressed that Russia's aggression against Ukraine almost 14 months ago reinforced the need to turn toward safe and reliable energy sources.

At a later news conference, Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that Poland needed a “cheap, clean and reliable energy source” like the SMR reactors, which will produce emission-free energy and be a driving force for the economy for decades to come.

Coal mining is among Poland's largest employers, providing some 80,000 jobs and supplying some 70% of the country's energy, and Morawiecki said that industry will continue to guarantee power security. He stressed, however, that global climate concerns and European Union regulations are calling for a shift to renewable and clean energy, which the nuclear reactors plan is helping to advance.

PKN ORLEN president, Daniel Obajtek said Poland's first BWRX-300 reactor should be launched in 2029 and will be the world's second, after a similar one becomes operational in Darlington, Canada.

He stressed that “there is no stopping of energy transformation” in the world and the oil and gas giant — 49.9% owned by the Polish state — is planning 320 billion zlotys ($75 billion) of investments.

In February, Poland's government and the U.S. Westinghouse Electric Company signed a deal for pre-design cooperation on the central European nation’s first large nuclear power plant, using the American company’s technology. Construction on the plant is to begin in 2026 and it should start supplying the energy grid in 2032.