I don’t know anything about the ones in France, but it’s worth noting that the second biggest nuclear power plant in the US is in Phoenix. They work in the heat, you just have to be prepared for that.

Idk who thought it was a good idea to put a nuclear power plant, which needs water both for cooling and for steam generation, in the middle of a desert, but there totally is one. It uses wastewater from Phoenix for both and has to remove radionuclides twice (going in, it’s from people’s pee!)

I’m nuclear industry adjacent, and I work in public safety. My thoughts, which are only my own:

1. Renewables are the future. Nuclear power is expensive and takes a long time to build, mostly because people don’t like the idea of a reactor near them. While that’s also true of things like wind farms, the lawsuits on those don’t take as long, I guess.
2. Small modular reactors may have a place in our future energy landscape, but the specifics remain to be seen. SMRs are (obviously) smaller, so they have less fuel in them, generate less waste, and would be easier to build (like modular homes, they’d be all made basically the same in a factory and shipped to their site). They are in a race against good enough battery technology to carry the base load. Who will win? Well, nuclear is getting a lot of extra support currently, but still, who knows?
3. Nuclear power is so much safer than people assume. Nuclear reactors have reactor buildings which are big thick concrete monstrosities (part of the reason they’re so dang expensive to build). It’s quite hard for them to leak, so releases will end up being little amounts out of limited area. Yes, even Fukushima, which while very bad and very expensive to clean up, wasn’t the thing killing people. One person officially died, years later from lung cancer. Cancer he might have gotten anyway; we can’t know. In the US at least, a lot of money goes into emergency preparation at nuclear power plants, trying to mitigate the impacts of any kind of event, but the concern is cancer, not radiation poisoning. 3.5 interestingly, SMRs will probably not get big thick concrete structures around them, or at least not as big or as thick. It’s because the risk is lower in those designs but also because there’s just not as much material that could be flung around. This may have changed though (this is not my specific area, just something I hear a lot about). Maybe it will be more akin to naval reactors or something. Those are very small, and very very safe.
4. Nuclear waste storage is a political problem. The nuclear industry has been paying for a long-term storage solution for decades and recently sued the US government over it. We absolutely built a house without a toilet, but we could change that with enough political will. Until then, the waste sits at the plant under guard. It’s not great but none of the plants are going to run out of room or anything.
5. The US government is going away from certain standards that are generally recognized as being the safest approach to radiological exposure. This, quite frankly, may be disastrous, but likely not immediately. Eventually I could see it leading to eroded safety culture and that could be a problem long term. But I’m a notorious pessimist, so…
6. Renewables are the future. Anyone telling you anything different is selling something. Probably stock in an SMR company.

It would have to be a pretty big bomb. After 9/11 they did a bunch of research and it turns out a reactor building can take a hit from a 747.

Renewables are absolutely the future, but people really don’t get how the nuclear industry handles safety. If we could regulate every industry as well as the nuclear industry has been since 1980 (which the current administration is trying to strip away, of course) we would eliminate a heckuva lotta risk in our society.

We’ll never eliminate the human factor, but nuclear power plants now all come with big concrete buildings around them just in case.

You mean there’s a sucker reborn every day!

I suppose that is true of everything in the world though. Cars jump to mind pretty quickly.

I’m curious how SMRs will end up affecting overall cost of nuclear as well. Once we get into a unit that can be mass produced rather than tailor making each site, I could see the line going down at least a bit and would also allow us to keep pushing those boundaries.

You are definitely being downvoted here by men who realize that they’ve used females as a noun and don’t want to admit why that was wrong. I’m sure I will be downvoted too, so let’s be friends!

I’m sorry, but I this just isn’t true. Calling women females is definitely an incel thing (although admittedly has come more into mainstream (male) lexicon because of the algorithms).

Female/male is an adjective. Woman/man is a noun. A woman is female (not in a TERF way, lol), but she isn’t a female any more than she is a short.

While I’ve not done a deep dive into the origins, incels pushed the female thing it seems largely because they don’t see women as human and want to make them sound like they’re a different species. It might have even started off from incels calling women “the female species” because that’s a term I’ve definitely seen before in those communities.

I’m not sure he misses out on sexual relationships at all though. Strap ons are a thing, and can be very effective (ask a lesbian, or a trans man!) and there are LOTS of ways to have sex that don’t involve the traditional act people tend to reduce it down to.

Also, disabled people also have sex. The idea that they don’t is ableist AF.

I’m in this boat too. Most of my online friends I only really get to talk to via discord. Not sure what I’m gonna do, because they won’t end up budging.

I love pineapple on pizza and I almost reflexively down voted this… I should probably look at that in myself.

Wait - that’s a monthly cost? Are you in the US? $35/month is definitely not possible in any US state unless you’re supplementing with another food source. Even if all you eat is a box of pasta and can of sauce a day I’d be shocked if you could stay at $35 and definitely that’s nutritionally questionable.

I started learning violin almost 3 years ago. I take lessons. I still suck a lot but I keep going because I do enjoy learning, even if it’s often frustrating. I have absolutely no musical background and was actively encouraged not to pursue an instrument when I was young because of the expense, so I guess it’s also a way to reclaim my childhood.

Much easier for men to blame women than acknowledge that patriarchy is bad for them too

Several people mentioned chickens but I think bees are also a good choice, especially if you are growing food. Honey is already an expensive item, and I feel like you could barter with it pretty easily since everyone else will have chickens. Sweet treats during a depression are hard to come by.

Community is definitely the correct answer. Realistically, the end of the world won’t be the end of the world forever. Get to know your neighbors and diversify what you can provide based on what they can provide. If they’ve got chickens, focus on something else you can provide, like veggies or woodworking. Rugged individualism isn’t all it’s cut out to be.

This is also good advice for non-end of the world stuff. Maybe a tornado leaves you without power for a week. Interconnected communities recover faster.

This is such an important distinction, tbh

Woah, hey now. I doubt she’s got the depth or the warmth to be called that!

I can only speak for my own experience, but here’s what I’ve been doing.

I have had an interest in the violin since I was in middle school. Back then my parents couldn’t afford to get me one, much less lessons. I tried twice as a adult to pick it up on my own (renting an instrument and watching videos on YouTube) but both times I couldn’t stick with it and ended up returning the instrument. I eventually bought one secondhand and told myself I’d learn at some point. But after the times with the rental I couldn’t bring myself to try. I knew how bad I’d been at it before. Then, about 2.5 years ago, I got a raise at work and decided I’d try again, paying for lessons this time. My instructor and I worked out a system for me. I never ever touch the violin when I don’t want to. I’m still not good at playing it! But I still LOVE playing it when I do. Over the last two years I learned that it was never the fact that I sucked that tore me away from the violin. It was that I had framed it as a task I HAD to do to get better. And I would grow to hate picking it up and so eventually just give up. Now though, I practice just about every day that I’m home for, but if I look at it and feel dread, I just don’t. I circle back a few hours later and try again. Usually it’s passed, sometime not. I don’t question it any more.

Honestly I’m at the point now where I could probably stop frequent lessons and still grow and learn from YouTube and the occasional one off lesson, but I like the motivation my teacher gives me. I still have an insane amount of way to go to be what I’d call good at playing, but it’s still fun!

Over the last couple years I’ve been trying this with all my interests. I sew now! I’m getting marginally better with every dumb project. When I look at it and I feel dread (real dread, not indifference) then I pass it over for the hour, or day. If I’m indifferent, I push myself to do 3 minutes of something. 3 minutes is a good start. No timer though. Just not the time on my phone and start. I’ve never even looked at my phone within those 3 minutes. And usually after getting started I am invested in continuing.

The hard part about all this is that is requires you to be disciplined and honest with yourself. Some days you’ll fail at that (I certainly do!) but it does get easier over the long term (although you’ll fall off after months of solid progress and have to get back to it after, and that will suck). Most people don’t take the time to really think about their own emotional state and this requires (not recommends, REQUIRES) you to do that.

Good luck. You’re going to have good days and bad days, but as long as you keep working, your skills (for your hobby and for your understanding of yourself) will grow and grow! I hate to prove all those therapists out there right, but it actually is kinda rewarding.