The rush out of nuclear fission power still shocks me.
It's a miracle fuel. It really is wonderful. It solves climate change almost by itself, or it would have, had Chernobyl and Fukushima not been reported so irresponsibly.
It's a miracle fuel. It really is wonderful. It solves climate change almost by itself, or it would have, had Chernobyl and Fukushima not been reported so irresponsibly.
And please do not come up with future inventions that will magically remove that issue, that does not help.
Btw, it wasn't really a rush, it was started more than 30 years ago by not building new nuclear power plants. Many of the power plants are actually at the end of their lifetime anyway.
They do, though. That is where the “trash” is. They have become so adept at it, they made a museum out of one facility[0].
Two misconceptions that benefit from being clarified:
1. There is very little waste for the amount of energy produced. If we only used nuclear, it would amount for 40 grams per person per year[1].
2. The waste is not trash, it is extremely valuable. It was valuable in the ground, and it is still valuable out of the ground; just not for the particular reactor that it came from.
[0]: https://www.covra.nl/en/radioactive-waste/the-art-of-preserv...
From refinement to the reactor and spent fuel processing, the nuclear power industry generates a huge amount of trash that is low-grade radioactive and thus cannot be just dumped in a landfill.
The nuclear industry has had over seventy years to get their act together regarding fuel recycling. They'd rather just dump it into pools on-site because it's cheapest and makes it Someone Else's Problem. It's the same attitude of the chemical industry from the 1950's: dump it in a hole and let someone else deal with it after you've long since left.
Here's an idea: let's spend the money on wind turbine blade, battery, and solar panel repurposing and recycling instead.
The coal industry has convinced the ecologists to require titanic standards from literally every green energy source, especially the one with the most stable output.
> Here's an idea: let's spend the money on wind turbine blade, battery, and solar panel repurposing and recycling instead.
I am into doing that, AND the nuclear stuff. No need to tie an anchor to our ankle while we try to metaphorically swim back to the surface.
The two is not exclusive. You do need stable base energy production and none of the renewables solve it well. Hydro could do it, but the locations where it is appropriate are few and it has quite a big ecological impact in and of itself.
I think renewables are very important, but just this week was a comment about Netherlands (I think) where the comparison was 200sqm against 4400 wind turbines and somewhat 20sqkm if you compare nuclear vs. wind/solar.
If you take a look at Switzerland, I have no clue where to put 4k wind turbines. Hell, even 1000 won't have enough space (or you will waste so much forests or agrar or you'll put them into alps and waste the scenery, which will break tourism).
Storing waste so you don't have to look after it for thousands of years is admittedly more difficult. Then again, future generations are always impacted by the choices we make today and I'm pretty sure the kids 300 years from now would rather deal with the cleanup of our nuclear waste than with the consequence of global warming.
We know so well how to handle it that we are wondering how to keep people out of the storage places in the event of a civilization collapse. That is, where current languages are forgotten and we forget what nuclear is. That's how advanced in storage we are.
(Yes, I'm sure issues can be fixed. Point is, nuclear has an awful lot of practical problems for supposedly being miraculous.)
Source: https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/power-generation-energ...
Every energy source is the perfect energy source, if you choose to ignore its problems. Just like every operating system is the perfect operating system if you overlook its flaws.
Messing with atoms is better than burning fossil fuels, but let's not pretend that it's perfect.
not been reported so irresponsibly.
"Blame the messenger" is an ancient, and irresponsible game.
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/BN-800-running-o...
> BN-800 running on 60% MOX
> The reactor core itself was refuelled and is now using 60% mixed uranium-plutonium oxide fuel, supplied by TVEL and manufactured at its Zheleznogorsk site. The plutonium for this was produced from uranium during the operation of other nuclear power plants and recovered from the used fuel assemblies through reprocessing.