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Nuclear is a great energy source. My state (Illinois) generates over half of all its energy from nuclear. France is a great example of a country that maximizes the potential of nuclear energy. The waste is not a problem if it’s stored properly. The much bigger problem are carbon/methane emissions which are fucking our climate right now. Also, nuclear waste can be reprocessed to make it less volatile and radiotoxic, but that requires an advanced application of technology.

Batteries and solar absolutely yes, we need to be scaling up battery technology as fast as possible, particularly sodium-ion batteries for static energy storage from solar power. The biggest problems with wind/solar is the actual storage of the energy. No wind? No power. No sun? No power. That’s why you need batteries, and battery technology has only gotten good enough in the past couple years.

Scaling up hydrogen is very difficult, it’s extremely volatile, and can realistically only be used in large scale power plants because transporting hydrogen is extremely expensive. Fusion could be good, but it’s still being worked on, and who knows how long it’ll really take for us to have a practical implementation.

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MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
France only pushed for nuclear, because they need an excuse for the costs of their nukes and nuclear submarines. The disadvantages of high cost and nuclear waste remain.

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- AceOnTrack@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  France’s 80 years of nuclear waste takes about the space of an Olympic swimming pool and half.
  
  In a millena, it’ll be 150 swimming pools, and that’s assuming we haven’t found a way to repair/reuse/recycle it in 1000 years. Or not decided to just yeet it on the nearest inhospitable planet via railcannon or something.
  
  Nuclear waste is a non issue.
  
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  - brotundspiele@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    If it’s such a non issue, how come we still don’t have a single long term storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in the world? After more than 70 years of nuclear energy production.
    
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    AceOnTrack@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    “If it’s not an issue, how come we haven’t built a thing to solve it”
    
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    zalgotext@sh.itjust.works ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    We do, it’s called (really big hole)[en.wikipedia.org/…/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo…]
    
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_Cid_@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Yes battery + solar seem to have gotten good enough in recent years. So much so that it seems they are more cost effective than nuclear for newly build systems. Nuclear even seems to be the most expensive one. Link

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HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
We have an increasing number of windmills here. The wind never drops below 15mph (there are a few airfields taking advantage of that) so like, the one time I remember the wind stopping there was a tornado 30 miles away. Ages ago.

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EldenLord@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Did you read my comment. There already are ways to efficiently store electricity generated by solar and wind turbines. These methods use conservation of movement, gravity or hydrogen made through electrolysis to flatten out the fluctuations in sun and wind availability. That and nuclear fusion is the future, coal AND nuclear are outdated and we should get away from them as quickly as possible. No new nuclear power plants and no coal mining anymore.

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