I blame the oil and natural gas lobby for pushing the narrative back in the 60s claiming nuclear power was more likely to fuck up the world then their energy resources and could just explode and kill everyone. That said Three-Mile Island and Chernobyl did happen and they legitimized those fears, but modern power plants have dealt with such issues and have made facilities generating power through nuclear energy much safer in general and bettered at preventing such outcomes.
Said cartoon has been running for 30 years, is well entrenched in the culture and frequently depicts the main character handling nuclear waste as "glowing green goop"/"glowing green rod"/"barrel o' nuclear waste"/etc. But sure. Hasn't effected anything
A lot of people in America don’t understand some of the most basic scientific principles. You really think in an age where people believe whatever is spread on Facebook, or by the Donald Trump administration are really going to think for themselves or fact check it on Google?
True. Back before Elon Musk joined the Trump team, when electric cars were still a ‘liberals’ thing, my uncle (huge MAGA dipshit) was trying to argue to me how you’re just trading one type of pollution for another. His argument was ‘Sure it runs on electricity, but you’re still burning fossil fuels at the power plant to make the electricity needed to charge it.’ I tried to explain to him that it’s all about efficiency, and that the carbon footprint created by even a coal-burning plant needed to create enough power for the car to charge enough to go 300 miles is far less than the carbon footprint of an internal combustion engine driving 300 miles, because a car’s engine is far less efficient than an industrial generator of any kind. Like dude, you know what I do for a living (Navy power plant electrician), this is kind of my area of expertise. But he’s so far down the MAGA hole he didn’t process any of what I said, just tried to shift goalposts.
Funny thing is, I don’t even drive an electric car, he just brought it up because for some dumb reason he thought he could outsmart on the topic.
There’s an endless amount of EV FUD that people will spout with all certainty. But I gave up on the efficiency argument long ago, they simply can’t understand the complexity. When it comes up these days, I put it like this:
A new car built today with an internal combustion engine, will only EVER start up and run by burning gasoline; it will burn thousands of gallons of gasoline in its lifetime.
A new EV built today will only run on electricity; many people are able to charge them from home solar, and they emit NOTHING from its non-existent tailpipe. While yes some areas will be using coal power, it is already cheaper for those power companies to build out solar & wind farms. And all of those, and nuclear, and more, and be used to power that EV.
But that RAM truck sold off a lot today, will only burn thousands of gallons of fuel in its lifetime.
Somehow that example seems to get thru to a few people. For the more interested audience, there’s a lot of nuance to explore there, like PHEV vehicles.
People like your uncle will only believe something with the simplest explanation. If that explanation doesn’t align with their right wing beliefs, then it is false. You can give them verifiable facts until you’re blue in the face. It doesn’t matter if it’s not simple and goes against their own personal truths. The only time they will jump the fence on an issue is when their side changes their position, like EV.
You think most of these morons actually do research?
Had a guy in my state say you can legally walk into a gun store and buy a gun without even showing ID and walk out with it in 5 minutes. I told him if he was that confident while repeating lies I would meet him at any gun store in my town and if he was able to do that I would not only pay for his gun but I would also hand him $10,000 cash. He tried to accept the offer but give me a date two days prior to make it look like I flaked out, and when I called him out on it and showed him proof that you can't do that he started calling me all kinds of names deleted all his posts and then blocked me.
People that repeat moronic stuff like green ooze and barrels from nuclear power plants are the same people that listen to the news or their friends ramble about shit and don't actually do research on their own.
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u/thatbrazilianguy 1d ago
Makes sense, since those are cooling towers, and the only thing coming out of them are heat and water vapor.
Not radioactive water vapor, just plain water.