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Comment by chrisco255 | Hacker News Reader

Everyone should agree that Nuclear energy (+solar and wind expansion) is an excellent way to solve our problems with CO2. China and India perhaps need it the most, as most of the CO2 growth is coming from those countries (U.S. and Europe have declined emissions in recent years)

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why should everyone agree with this?

i respectfully disagree. first, project drawdown considers nuclear[1] a "regret" solution, because we have no story for dealing with nuclear waste. in the US specifically, until i see some movement on the yucca mountain [2] political clusterf*ck[3], i won't see nuclear as worth considering.

also, energy generation is only 25% of "our problems with co2"[4]. agriculture and transit make up the bulk of the other 75%, and i don't think we're going to have nuclear trucks or cows any time soon.

[1]: https://www.drawdown.org/solutions/electricity-generation/nu...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_r...

[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwY2E0hjGuU

[4]: https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/My-plan-for-fighting-clima...

You can obviously power a Tesla with nuclear energy...

Gen 4 Nuclear reactors produce significantly less waste, cost less to produce, and are safer than current reactors, in some designs they're even able to consume nuclear waste to generate energy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor

The waste problem is regulatory. If the nuclear regulatory authorities allowed us to build breeder reactors and thorium reactors the waste situation would basically go away.

You're making the perfect the enemy of the good. You say nuclear power is "not worth considering" because of waste, but the current dominant methods of energy generation not only generate waste but evenly distribute it over the entire earth, to the extent that it threatens our way of life on a timescale of decades. Nuclear power is strictly better from a waste perspective - all the waste is in one place. Species don't go extinct from nuclear power.

France get's around 80% of its energy from nuclear and recycles the uranium so the half life of the fuel is in 100s of years instead of 1000s[0].

The chinese are going to leap frog the US in nuclear tech with their thorium reactor research[1].

The biggest issue with the US adopting nuclear is the cost and political will(less jobs). Natural gas, coal and other fuels sources are much cheaper up front costs.

[0]:https://www.heritage.org/environment/commentary/recycling-nu...

[1]:https://www.environmentalleader.com/2016/08/chinas-research-...

> because we have no story for dealing with nuclear waste.

We have no story for dealing with CO2 waste from fossil fuels, and so far we know that's destroyign the planet while nuclear waste isn't.

“India and China need it the most” - not true at all sir. Per capita usage is key.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_...

I would expect India and China's per capita consumption needs to continue to rise over the next century as their economies grow and improve. That's almost 3 billion people...almost half the world population. If you want to really make a mark, there's opportunity there. I know there's opportunity in the U.S...but U.S. has already reduced it's carbon output by 25% since 2005: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas_emissions_by_th...

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