Compared to ripping the tops of mountains in West Virginia and states nearby and filling in the beautiful valleys to strip mine coal, a huge win.
Or consider nuclear, which is much cleaner, safer and lower coast than all other energy sources
Personally however, still support solar. Especially solar house tiles, they look good, pay for themselves after a few years and can be placed on every house.
We have uranium, yes, but if happenstance is our only criteria we should also be building nuclear weapons and burning lots of coal. Sadly we're doing the latter with great alacrity.
We also don't have a good place to store the waste. I don't think there's (m)any places on the planet that could be good places to store waste of this nature. It's probably telling that people often refer to nuclear waste needing to be stored or managed, rather than recycled, rendered safe, disposed of, etc.
We've got tons of space to store the waste. The country is right in the middle of a tectonic plate, so little worry about earthquakes, and large swathes of the country are uninhabited by anyone, even mythical 'lost tribes'. Even if nowhere else, we could store waste in the giant area cordoned off for nuclear testing in the '50s.
In my opinion, it's hard to find somewhere better suited for storing nuclear waste than 'somewhere in Australia'. Stable, first-world government, a fair few places where we can put it where even leaks wouldn't be a problem, skilled populace, etc etc.
In any case, it looks like they're discussing it: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-08/should-south-australia...
This makes sense only if your starting position is that creating nuclear waste makes sense.
> Stable, first-world government, a fair few places where we can put it where even leaks wouldn't be a problem, skilled populace, etc etc.
How long does nuclear (fission) waste need to be managed?
How long do you believe that AU has had a stable, first-world government?
> This makes sense only if your starting position is that creating nuclear waste makes sense.
The waste is being created, regardless of whether or not you think it makes sense. You can pretend that there's some fantasy world where there's no nuclear waste, but in the meantime here in the real world, there is such stuff and it needs to be managed.
> How long does nuclear (fission) waste need to be managed?
> How long do you believe that AU has had a stable, first-world government?
Federation was (to a rounding error) a century ago. Some would argue that it's been stable since then -- I'd argue it hasn't, but the boom/bust left/right vacillation so common in western ersatz democracies evidently is what counts as stable these days.
It's kind of besides the point, though, since it's a comparative exercise.
How long does nuclear fission waste need to be managed, and how does that compare to 'around a hundred years'?
You also make a less than compelling case that we have no choice but to have waste from nuclear fission -- we have plenty of options that don't involve nuclear fission.
Consider, for example, the fact that Australia has no nuclear fission plants generating electricity.
But just because we have access to relatively cheap Uranium doesn't mean we should be digging it up and processing it.
One of the reasons I rail against the suggestion that AU has a 'stable long term government' (ie. that could be said to be sufficiently grown up to handle fissile waste) is that right now that same government is very publicly committed to fossil fuels, despite the leader of same being on record only a few years ago asserting - loud and wide - that green energy should be our priority, and we should be moving away from fossil fuels. Append usual concerns about the various people involved in getting us to, and then maintaining, this unfortunate situation.
Oh, give me a goddamn break. You've got how much desert that's sparsely inhabited?
Also, there's that "Not laying waste to huge areas and making them uninhabitable" thing.
Nukes would be fine for a species that was capable of acting intelligently and responsibly over long periods.
Humans are not (yet) that species.
https://engineering.stanford.edu/news/how-extract-uranium-se...
Typo or pun?
No, according to the US Energy Information Administration the levelized cost of nuclear has been comparable or less than coal (without the massive negative externalities of coal)
https://c1cleantechnicacom-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/files/201...
Also:
"not typically included in levelised cost of electricity assessments is the cost of decommissioning a reactor and disposing nuclear waste, says Roula Inglesi-Lotz an energy economist and associate professor at the University of Pretoria. This would further increase the price of nuclear energy. Even when these costs are not included in calculations, the cost of nuclear investment remains high."
https://africacheck.org/reports/is-nuclear-energy-really-the...
>..."not typically included in levelised cost of electricity assessments is the cost of decommissioning a reactor and disposing nuclear waste
Maybe in other countries, but not the US. Every nuclear power plant in the United States is required, by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as part of its licensing to set aside sufficient funds to decommission the plant when it reaches the end of its useful life.
>...(The USA is an exception, because the cost of decommissioning is included in the price of electricity, per the Nuclear Waste Policy Act),
Also there is a tax on electricity produced by nuclear power in the US to cover eventual long term waste disposal so it is priced into the cost - though ideally this high level waste will eventually be burned in a 4th gen reactor so the volume of waste will be a small fraction of what it would otherwise be.
scroll to the bottom image. Nuclear is the lowest cost along with hydro. If you want to argue against nuclear, you have to find another argument (which shouldn't be too hard).
https://c1cleantechnicacom-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/files/201...
Note that nuclear isn't getting any better, while other sources are improving every year. Would you rather plonk down a massive capital payment for a very average nuclear plant for the next 50-80 years, or gradually add more and more efficient sources of energy over that same time period?
Also:
"not typically included in levelised cost of electricity assessments is the cost of decommissioning a reactor and disposing nuclear waste, says Roula Inglesi-Lotz an energy economist and associate professor at the University of Pretoria. This would further increase the price of nuclear energy. Even when these costs are not included in calculations, the cost of nuclear investment remains high."
https://africacheck.org/reports/is-nuclear-energy-really-the...
Nuclear power is still the better cost/production method we have for now. It's safe (yes, the stats include deaths while building which puts wind/ocean at a disadvantage, but overall it is just as safe as renewable energy), it's efficient.
Just don't pull a Chernobyl and actually follow security measures.
Still not as bad as a plastic bottle on the ground.