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.”
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… 🤷🏼♂️
Doesn’t need to reach the sun.
Even exploding on launch is enough.
That said, such an explosion would that be more or less scary than the sun?
Not as scary as people think.
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.
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I’m beginning to think this Musk guy isn’t as smart as he lets on…
You’d already know that if you hear him talk about something you have knowledge about. He is spewing bullshit so confidently, only a layman would think it sounds logical.
But to hammer it home.
Elon has a degree in Economics. He tried to go for Physics as well but he wasn’t smart enough.
Only 2 year after he left school did he get a degree, when the school received a big donation. He just bought his degree.
Didn’t stop him from claiming he got the degree during those 2 years either. He even got sued for that.
Fuck, it’s always worse than you already knew. What a phoney.
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.
exactly. it isn’t that they’re unsafe, its that there’s more effective options that aren’t oil.
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?).
I think it would make the most sense at high latitudes. Where they don’t get enough sun for solar and maintenance on iced-up turbine blades would be a pain in the ass.
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.
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.
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.
I remember an early 2000 game called Who wants to Beat Up a Millionaire
Which was a quiz and if you got the right answer, you get to beat up your millionaire opponents until they aren’t millionaires any more. Even getting some weapons.
Ah, good times.
Just needs updated to billionaire.
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MBFC: Left-Center - Credibility: Medium - Factual Reporting: Mixed - United Kingdom
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https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/elon-musk-japan-nuclear-attacks-b2595497.html
I only recently learned of this:
This and Grave of the Fireflies are the two depictions of Japanese tragedy during WWII that I always think of
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.
How fast would the disintegration in zone 5 (fireball) happen? Would the nervous system even register it?
Wouldn’t feel a thing. At minimum the blast would travel at the speed of sound ~343m/s. Nerve conduction velocity is on the range of 120m/s. Your nerves would be vapor before the signal reached its destination.
Okay then. I call shotgun for zone 5
Sounds good. I’ll choose zone 0. Or whatever is outside the blast radius. Good luck.
This is both comforting and incredibly morbid. Idk how to feel.
No need to feel
You wouldn’t feel it, that is the point
The absurd amount of radiation (thermal included) would get there even faster!
I figured. I was just sure the minimum would be speed of sound. Other than speed of light, I’ve no idea what the maximum would be.
I want to say the shock wave moves faster than the speed of sound, but yeah it’s hard to beat the speed of light.
The chain reaction happens super fast, so all that energy is dumped in a practical instant.
Somebody should let these geniuses know that nuclear weapons are now a thousand times stronger, and there are thousands of times as many spread all over the world.
Plus they’re doing the old people thing where they pretend the past was all great. Plus there’s probably some kind of bigoted/xenophobic undertone, because after all it didn’t happen to the people that matter to them. (Which is very few people honestly)
He’s gonna run for president some time in the future, mark my words. And he’s gonna be a lot worse than Trump.
He can’t right? Born in South-Africa, so he’s ineligible.
Wasn’t 44 born in Kenya or something?
Hawaii. Close enough for some though.
Wouldn’t matter if he was (he was born in Hawai’i). His mother was American and he automatically was. Elon’s father and mother are South African.
A bunch of racist assholes made that claim while Obama was in office, but they notably never produced even the tiniest shred of evidence that it was even a possibility.
So no. He wasn’t born in Kenya.
Oh, I see.
This is the problem with misinformation and low information voters. Shits been a decade and you still thought he was born in Kenya?
Do you actually follow any news sources at all?
Alright I’ll come clean: I knew he was born in Hawaii all along.
That would count on the Supreme Court not to mess with this for a Republican candidate.
Nuclear power needs rebranding
Elon: “TrumpX”
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.
My school offered a BA in physics. I never knew anyone who took it (I did the BS) but they claimed it was aimed at theater set- designers.
He didn’t graduate in Physics either. Only got his degree 2 years after he left school and the school received a “generous endowment”.
He bought his Physics “degree”
Can people stop trying Musk like he is some sort of “cool bro” idol?
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.
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.
I have an idea Elon - how about we bomb your house with you in it? I’m sure after a while some other people will build another house there and move in, so it’s all good, right?
Yea, it wouldn’t be as bad as he thinks.
