Nuclear energy is not clean. Less CO2 intensive, maybe, but definitely not clean. It might be good in the short term but the long term looks grim regarding nuclear waste, among other issues.
It’s not magic, but it has advantages that are hard to beat in terms of resource usage. Renewables also have advantages, but you can’t handwave away their own problems and limitations anymore than you can do so for nuclear energy.
The US produces less than half the volume of an Olympic-sized swimming pool of nuclear waste per year in total, so it’s not exactly hard to manage. Wind and even solar take up a lot more space than nuclear for the same energy, even if we were to consider decades worth of nuclear waste storage. Nuclear power production has about 130x higher density than wind, and needs 34x less space than solar PV.
And that’s considering that the US doesn’t even use their used nuclear fuel efficiently like, say, France. 96% of French nuclear fuel is recycled by them, while the US doesn’t really recycle their nuclear fuel. Thanks to free market capitalism fuel recycling never got commercialized in the US, so the over of century of usable fuel we have in recyclable nuclear fuel is just wasted. It’s cheaper to just buy new fuel rather than recycle, so of course companies don’t recycle. American problems I guess.
If space were a big issue than nuclear would still win by a long shot even over the long-term. There’s very little of it produced, it doesn’t take up much space to properly and safely store for tens to hundreds of thousands of years, and the power production is extremely reliable so you don’t need miles upon miles of giant batteries to store excess power just in case.
I should say up to 90-96%. It depends on the methods and the type of fuel you use. Currently widely used nuclear technology is more like 30-50% recyclable. That number is able to be increased by using more recyclable fuel technology, which is available.
French nuclear waste in total is 0.0018 km³ (three olympic swimming pools) after 8 decades of using nuclear and primarily using nuclear for 4 decades, so I’m not so sure how you imply that the “state of nuclear waste” is bad. Even with the “inefficient” ways of using/recycling nuclear, there’s not a lot of waste produced in the first place.
Only ~10% of French waste is actually long-lived too, meaning after a few decades to 3 centuries, 90% of it will no longer have abnormal radioactivity. Meaning the radioactiveness of the waste just goes away on its own after a moderately short period of time and it basically just turns into a big rock.
And recycling is an abusive terminology for nuclear waste, since reusing waste creates again nuclear waste, waiting for “valorisation ultérieure” i.e. stored.
My argument is that we CAN manage nuclear waste. That facility shows that we CAN. Poland CAN build such a facility. Ergo we CAN.
More importantly we CANNOT manage CO2.
I asked if you were being intentionally obtuse because you tried to reframe my argument as we ARE managing nuclear waste in all places properly. Everyone knows we are not. But the good news is that we can.
Yes CO2 is the existential threat. Even in socialist countries CO2 is produced.
Economic systems and forms of production do not make energy sources clean. Socialist and capitalist countries both ought to and must fight against CO2 production.
Socialist countries? Of course definitions vary, so which ones are you referring to?
Also neo-libs don’t want any state interference on business, unless it involves bailing them out with tones of money. So which capitalist country will do otherwise with so much lobbying going on?
Considering that modern reactors seem to require well over a decade to be built, not really “short term”, and certainly “too late” for any sort of climate related purpose of emission curbing.
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They will need like 25 years for construction while not building any wind or solar farms
Nuclear energy is not clean. Less CO2 intensive, maybe, but definitely not clean. It might be good in the short term but the long term looks grim regarding nuclear waste, among other issues.
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That is my point.
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Yes and you didn’t bring up that oil is not clean either?
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What? No. I was merely putting in perspective that nuclear energy is not a magic thing that will solve everything.
It’s not magic, but it has advantages that are hard to beat in terms of resource usage. Renewables also have advantages, but you can’t handwave away their own problems and limitations anymore than you can do so for nuclear energy.
The US produces less than half the volume of an Olympic-sized swimming pool of nuclear waste per year in total, so it’s not exactly hard to manage. Wind and even solar take up a lot more space than nuclear for the same energy, even if we were to consider decades worth of nuclear waste storage. Nuclear power production has about 130x higher density than wind, and needs 34x less space than solar PV.
And that’s considering that the US doesn’t even use their used nuclear fuel efficiently like, say, France. 96% of French nuclear fuel is recycled by them, while the US doesn’t really recycle their nuclear fuel. Thanks to free market capitalism fuel recycling never got commercialized in the US, so the over of century of usable fuel we have in recyclable nuclear fuel is just wasted. It’s cheaper to just buy new fuel rather than recycle, so of course companies don’t recycle. American problems I guess.
If space were a big issue than nuclear would still win by a long shot even over the long-term. There’s very little of it produced, it doesn’t take up much space to properly and safely store for tens to hundreds of thousands of years, and the power production is extremely reliable so you don’t need miles upon miles of giant batteries to store excess power just in case.
Storing and monitoring that waste for 100’000 years is too expensive, even if we manage to do it.
Nuclear power is simply not cost-effective.
I am very well aware of the state of nuclear waste in France, and it’s not 96% recycled. This is absolutely laughable.
I should say up to 90-96%. It depends on the methods and the type of fuel you use. Currently widely used nuclear technology is more like 30-50% recyclable. That number is able to be increased by using more recyclable fuel technology, which is available.
French nuclear waste in total is 0.0018 km³ (three olympic swimming pools) after 8 decades of using nuclear and primarily using nuclear for 4 decades, so I’m not so sure how you imply that the “state of nuclear waste” is bad. Even with the “inefficient” ways of using/recycling nuclear, there’s not a lot of waste produced in the first place.
Only ~10% of French waste is actually long-lived too, meaning after a few decades to 3 centuries, 90% of it will no longer have abnormal radioactivity. Meaning the radioactiveness of the waste just goes away on its own after a moderately short period of time and it basically just turns into a big rock.
Right, and I am up to 90% made of Mars dust.
0.0018 km3 is an enormous volume for something so dangerous. And that doesn’t taken into account the waste created during extraction and transformation of nuclear fuel. Map of nuclear waste storage here https://reporterre.net/CARTE-EXCLUSIVE-Les-dechets-radioactifs-s-entassent-partout-en-France
And recycling is an abusive terminology for nuclear waste, since reusing waste creates again nuclear waste, waiting for “valorisation ultérieure” i.e. stored.
See source in Frenc https://inventaire.andra.fr/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/fr/andra_essentiels_2021_in_web.pdf
Yah but we can manage Nuclear waste. We can’t manage runaway climate change. CO2 is the enemy.
Really? How?
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Unless it’s a reprocessing plant, the waste is not managed.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository
But the important part is that we can not manage CO2, the existential threat.
Still mad that the visitor centre was closed when I stayed basically nextdoor to it.
Will the Polish waste be stored there? If not, it’s not managed.
Yes, we can. It called renaturalization. Has countless other benefits.
That’s the model. Poland and other countries can build similar projects. Are you being intentionally obtuse?
They don’t. Therefore it’s not managed.
Your need to lash out with personal attacks shows that you know that your argument holds no water.
My argument is that we CAN manage nuclear waste. That facility shows that we CAN. Poland CAN build such a facility. Ergo we CAN.
More importantly we CANNOT manage CO2.
I asked if you were being intentionally obtuse because you tried to reframe my argument as we ARE managing nuclear waste in all places properly. Everyone knows we are not. But the good news is that we can.
CO2 is not an existential threat, corporations and financial entities are because what we call polution, they call it life.
Yes CO2 is the existential threat. Even in socialist countries CO2 is produced.
Economic systems and forms of production do not make energy sources clean. Socialist and capitalist countries both ought to and must fight against CO2 production.
Socialist countries? Of course definitions vary, so which ones are you referring to?
Also neo-libs don’t want any state interference on business, unless it involves bailing them out with tones of money. So which capitalist country will do otherwise with so much lobbying going on?
Whatever ones exist now or have ever existed as defined by you.
We hide it under the carpet and future generations will deal with it. This strategy has worked superbly for climate change.
Considering that modern reactors seem to require well over a decade to be built, not really “short term”, and certainly “too late” for any sort of climate related purpose of emission curbing.