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Comment by colordrops | Hacker News Reader

More solar and wind and energy conversion and storage mechanisms can also keep our current level of society. Why can't we subsidize renewable forms of energy for trillions of dollars if our lives are truly at risk? Will these take any longer to spin up than nuclear?

And are you suggesting that solar plants really create more toxins to dispose of than nuclear? Really?

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We shouldn’t subsidize anything, the government is bad at picking winners. We should tax carbon, let the market figure out the rest.

Don't get hung up on the word "subsidize". Market forces clearly did not solve our problem, so shifting the incentives won't solve it either. Many do not believe that nuclear is the answer, and a carbon tax wouldn't address that. It is indisputable that solar and wind are far cleaner than nuclear and coal, so the question is whether they can be made to work for most of our energy needs, and I've never seen a good reason why not.

It is certainly not indisputable thar solar and wind are far cleaner than nuclear, if you include their externalities such as manufacturing and disposal. Nuclear is cleaner by far than coal or gas. It’s cleaner than solar or wind, though not by a lot. We have the death counts to prove this. I would so much prefer a few nuclear plants to a million acres of windmills. Where are we going to put them when they wear out. In what landfill will they fit?

Yes. The Swiss have safely encapsulated their waste into a building smaller than Norte Dame stadium. It will safely house their waste for centuries to come. The US doesn’t recycle its waste because the Democrats were afraid brown people would get nuclear material in transit and build dirty bombs. Europeans knew that was stupid and both recycle and store their waste reasonably.

Further if we spend money on thorium you don’t have much waste at all. In fact you can use your current waste as the medium to kickstart the thorium reaction.

Solar and chemical storage requires poisonous materials that will leech into the ground water.

> Solar and chemical storage requires poisonous materials that will leech into the ground water.

Nobody is willing to acknowledge the elephant in the room

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