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"Reverts" I hate the messaging here. Nuclear is the future, let's stop talking about it like some ill from our past.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 85%. (I'm a bot)


ADVERTISEMENT. In a reversal, the new policy says nuclear power provides stable output and serves "An important role as a carbon-free baseload energy source in achieving supply stability and carbon neutrality" and pledges to "Sustain use of nuclear power into the future."
Nuclear energy accounts for less than 7% of Japan's energy supply, and achieving the government's goal of raising its share to 20-22% by fiscal 2030 will require about 27 reactors, from the current 10 - a target some say is not achievable.
Despite the failure and closure of the Monju plutonium-burning reactor, Japan insists on continuing with spent-fuel reprocessing at the trouble-prone Rokkasho plant and nuclear fuel recycling, which has created a stockpile of excess plutonium and drawn international concerns over its nuclear safeguards.


Extended Summary | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: reactor^#1 nuclear^#2 new^#3 Japan^#4 policy^#5 >

Good on japan honestly >

Yea now fix Fukushima and make the rest earthquake proof >

It wasn't even the quake that was the issue on Fukushima. It was the tsunami that came after, and even that wouldn't have been a problem if TEPCO addressed the concerns from the regulatory bodies on raising the tsunami wall a bit more, another plant nearer to the epicenter was fine due to having higher tsunami walls in place and continued to provide power to the area in the aftermath. Even then, the plant would've been fine if the generators weren't taken out due to seawater flooding the basement, if only the generators were placed not on the basement.
Since then, most plants now have upgraded safety for those rare but freak disasters. >

A real concern/risk is always the human involvement... >

Which hopefully get's mitigated more with the newer Gen 4 reactor designs which have been devised to be passively safe. Where even if there was no human involvement, it would self-stabilize itself. >

Passive like the molten salt where they'll melt a plug to prevent runaway? 
Huge nuclear proponent but a bit behind on new developments these days >


Huge nuclear proponent but a bit behind on new developments these days

There's that for molten salt and sodium cooled designs, the freeze plug melts when there's total loss of power and drains the coolant + fuel to another container where it cools down. 
For HTGRs and VHTRs, high temperature resistance along with TRISO fuel where in accident scenarios it can passively go down to an idle temperature state (around 1200C on recent tests in Japan) via radiative cooling when active cooling isn't present, this has been tested and verified by Japan's recent HTTR safety tests in Jan (30% power) and recently in March (100% power). >

Brilliant, I'll look into those designs. Thanks! >

Nuclear might be the only "high density carbon free energy" while in production, so if we want to save the earth and keep our high comfort lives, I don't see any other choices...
Weirdly, people don't want nuclear because of the risks and the waste, but don't want wind turbines (noise, visual impact, even at sea), or solar farms (too much space, visual impact again) in their neighborhoods too, AND at the same time don't want to change daily habits (or simply can't), with lots of electrical stuff and soon to come lots of electrical cars...
And without saying that once built and loaded, it's yours energy for at least 10 years, and don't rely on continuous external fuel delivery, like russian gas (for example).
So nuclear might be one solution, but with studies to manage waste and better safety.
(Sorry for my English)
Edit: precision about fuel. >

Nuclear isn't "carbon free".  The mining of the fuel alone is disastrous, never mind the fatally flawed economics, the safety issues and toxic waste.  
What is carbon free?  All the various renewable sources.  And they happen to be improving and expanding exponentially while nuclear just continues to stagnate and remain corrupt. >

Other renewables aren't carbon free either. They also require mining of toxic chemicals, and creating them takes energy as well, which today is supplied by fossil fuels.
And the reason nuclear is stagnant is because people are unjustifiably scared of it. Nuclear is a great resource as part of a mix of energy generation along with solar and wind. >

False.  Renewable sources are, by definition, carbon free.
Not sure if you're deliberately gaslighting here or if someone seriously tricked you i the wind or sun burn carbon.  They don't.  Nor does hydro or geothermal.  
Nuclear isn't just toxic and unsafe, it's financially non-viable.
Every time you pump for the corrupt nuclear construction industry, you take away from the viable potential of renewables, which you claim to value. >

By your definition, nuclear is carbon free too....
Please cite some sources here. Why is nuclear "toxic and unsafe" while renewables that require mining and refining of rare earth metals are not? 
And accepting the value of nuclear does not take away from the value of solar and wind. The fact remains that if we'd invested in nuclear energy 10-20 years ago, we'd be seeing the reduction in emissions that we need today instead of the growing issues we actually have, and it was fearmongering like yours that prevented it.
And if nuclear is financially unviable, how does France generate 70% of its power from nuclear? The country must be financially doomed right? >


And accepting the value of nuclear does not take away from the value of solar and wind. The fact remains that if we'd invested in nuclear energy 10-20 years ago,

We did.  We were conned into it 60 and 50 and 40 and 30 years ago.  And now we have multiple unfixed nuclear accidents.  And multiple money-losing plants.  And every single project was late and drastically over budget. And plants failing prematurely, before they can hit their break even on operation.
And the corrupt than you're currently being conned by told us they'd never have any accidents (they lied) 
And they told us they'd have a cure for the toxic waste right away (they lied)
And they said the costs would come down and become viable (they lied)
So if someone was naive 60 years ago that would be understandable.  But given several generations of further evidence and exposure and evidence and education, there's no excuse for it.

France

You got that your rant has zero correlation to the financial viability right?  You doing this as a gag?  Or do you seriously not know the economics of new nuclear plants are non-viable?  

it was fearmongering like yours that prevented it

No, it was liemongering like yours that led to numerous nuclear catastrophes, none of which have been cleaned up yet.  

the value of nuclear does not take away from the value of solar and wind

That's literally false.  If we get duped into another unsafe and toxic nuclear build, that's tons of time and resources wasted which could be better devoted to renewables and conservation.  Money and resources are finite. >

Deceptive engineering fanboy tripe for aspiring fanboys, and it's packed with obvious stilted bias and hyperbole, like where she calls solar generation "paltry".
Might as well ask the Klan for a report on which race is supreme. >

Do you have any substantive points at all, or do you just resort to name calling? None of what you've said is supported with evidence. Either provide some or grow up.
Edit: ah yes, the classic reply and block when you know you have no good answers. Honestly seems like a plant from fossil fuel companies to make people who support renewable energy look bad. >

I've already made many.  You're just regurgitating obvious false propaganda and being in denial of the facts I've provided.
You telling anyone else to "grow up" is naked projection given how immature your behavior is. >


“The Fukushima disaster is not over yet and the government seems to have already forgotten what happened.”

The wording of this is so incredibly stupid. The "fukushima disaster" was the result of a unique combination of a very powerful earthquake with a nearby epicenter and a tsunami following, that's it. 
It's not the fault of nuclear power and there aren't any "fukushima disaster" survivors because that isn't an event that lead to the loss of life - that was the quake and tsunami. There have been no deaths as a result of Fukushima's plant.
Nuclear power shouldn't be shunned because of one spectacular case of bad luck. Chernobyl it was not. >

nono, it's even more unlikely than that
it was caused by a tsunami+earthquake combo, which flooded the basements and disabled the generators
so there was the quake, the tsunami and the human factor
two worked, the latter failed but has since been accounted for >

Part of the problem is the lack of funding because of fear. And while I agree with this fear… unless people are gonna put their phones down and stop driving around and whatnot, we risk global destabilization if we don’t get away from fossil fuels soon enough.
In which case meltdowns will promptly be the LEAST of our nuclear fears. >

So let's do something that's actually proven to work  and is safer and cleaner and is actually financially viable: renewables and conservation. >

so nuclear. >

Nuclear is disqualified for being toxic, unsafe and financially non-viable.

dz4505 said:
So much misinformation here about nuclear

Indeed, reddit is a hotbed for false nuclear industry propaganda.  They know it's packed with angry, vocal aspiring techbros, so they seed the misinformation here and hope those individuals embellish and amplify it.  And you can see the evidence of the tactics right here. >

So much misinformation here about nuclear. >

Anti-nuclear people are childish and arguably played a large part historically in sabotaging a quicker move to a less polluted future. >

Yup, i consider them worse than climate change deniers. They're just fighting to keep their current standard of living. Nuclear would provide that, the green movement has actively done more to hamstring a credible response to climate change. >

They sound so much like climate change deniers it's hard to think it's just a coincidence. It's as tho the left was the first victim of fossil fuel misinformation. At the very least fossil fuel interests saw how successfully they irrationally killed nuclear that they just plagiarized it for clean energy, even when it's comically inapplicable. "wind causes cancer!!" >

It's honestly demoralizing, I see countries like France and surely they're energy policy isn't perfect, but if that was our baseline and we were working on adding things like solar panels to individuals houses, we'd be in a better place. We could actually work on fusion energy and spend less time worrying about climate change. I had a debate with an anti nuclear guy and straight up asked him after the bullshit waste argument if he feels nuclear power is more dangerous than climate change. He admitted that it was. It absolutely broke my heart because it was then that I realized we where fighting a two front war.
A lot of the greens I feel are misanthropists, they want the only solution to be less humans and natural energy. It's been this way since the Ehrlich days. Even after the book was debunked they still think it was accurate. You hear their phrases along the lines of " humanity is a plague" as if human progress has to come at the detriment of nature. I don't believe this, I think more energy for clean sources can have us break free from the cycle of hurting nature and use the excess energy to do thinks like farm indoors or remove plastic from the ocean.
Sorry for the long rant, it's just truly upsetting.
Tl:Dr malthusian misanthrope makes me feel bad >

Good. Its fucking stupid that we have this solution to our energy and environmental issues right here and we are all too chickenshit to use it. >

Nuclear power is the most sensible solution if the goal is to reduce the CO2 emissions. Just compare France and Germany: the first is currently at 53 gCO2/kWh, the latter at 527. >

There's that one image from 2014 or so which showed Germany's and France's carbon emission per GWh over the year. France is a steady line at the bottom while Germany is a varied mess at a higher amount of carbon even at the lowest point that seems to spike during night time hours and bad weather. Go figure. >

This is what Germany should have done too... You can't be anti carbon and anti nuclear in the early 21st century. If you desire low carbon energy nuclear is the answer >

A lot of the early green and anti-nuclear movements were directly funded by the coal industry.  Useful idiots for a pro-fossil fuel astroturf movement. >

Have they strengthened sea walls and moved backup generators above sea level yet? >

They removed the responsibility to check if the plants followed legal regulations from private hands. Fukushima was not built the way it should have been. >

This is good. Nuclear energy is the future. >

Countries have different needs, Nuclear makes the most sense for Japan. >

Not sure why the downvotes. Nuclear power works for many nations, and definitely makes sense for fuel resource starved Japan. >

Good decision by Japan to support clean and low-carbon nuclear energy at scale. Energy security and reliability is important. 👍 >

GOOD. nuclear isn’t to be feared; but take sensible precautions and plan for shit like tsunamis in an earthquake zone. 
(Not saying they didn’t before; but they need to plan for bigger quakes clearly) >

Quake resistant buildings are Japan's forte thankfully. Even during that disaster it took the quake without issues, the problem was the tsunami which should be solved with a higher sea wall. The Onagawa NPP was actually closer to the epicenter and was unscathed since it had a higher tsunami wall and even housed people during the disaster and continued to provide power to the area. >

IIRC the facility was built to withstand a “500 year” tsunami but this was basically a “1000 year” one. 
I guess I’m saying yeah - build to higher standards. That’s all. >

We need more nuclear power, all the he hysteria is insane. >

Nuclear is the only way to a net zero emission world.