Yes.
Comment on New clean energy comes out. *look inside* It’s just boiling water again…
woelkchen@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Uranium is clean?
grue@lemmy.world 3 months ago
rumba@lemmy.zip 3 months ago
Relatively, yes, and not to mean somewhat. For the amount of power generated, the spent fuel/water is really not that significant.
Nothing is purely clean. Making solar panels and batteries isn’t clean; it’s just that coal and natural gas are extremely dirty on a mass scale, environmentally speaking.
If we could get the ‘big scare’ concept of Nuclear under control, we could make some systems that are even cleaner. There’s no apetite for that though.
woelkchen@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Relatively, yes, and not to mean somewhat. For the amount of power generated, the spent fuel/water is really not that significant.
Absolutely speaking, controlling nuclear waste for hundreds of thousands of years is impossible and any rationalization when cheaper and regenerative options exist is idiotic.
rumba@lemmy.zip 3 months ago
controlling nuclear waste for hundreds of thousands of years is impossible
Purchase 10 sq miles iround a mine Fill below any water table, fill with concrete
Deep drill past aquifers drop waste in hole.
Not cheap, but you can really do that.
any rationalization when cheaper and regenerative options exist is idiotic.
Ignoring options with the benefits of 24x7 steady state generation is far more idiotic.
woelkchen@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Purchase 10 sq miles iround a mine Fill below any water table, fill with concrete
And that concrete is 100% carbon neutral and will never be affected by earthquakes.
Deep drill
When drilling is suddenly OK, then forego the nuclear reactor and go straight to geothermal.
Ignoring options with the benefits of 24x7 steady state generation is far more idiotic.
Tell that to you nuclear waste buddies who oppose geothermal.
chaogomu@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Extremely.
Even adding in construction and mining, it has the lowest carbon per KWh out of any option. Even Hydro comes out worse, due to the years of carbon and methane emissions from the decaying plant matter at the bottom of the newly formed lake.
Wind and solar are down there, but the mining costs and the low output per unit tend to bump the numbers.
Noted, that’s just the carbon released. There are other metrics, and nuclear tends to meet most all of them because it’s very heavily regulated.
Zagorath@quokk.au 3 months ago
This page’s “Life cycle CO2 equivalent (including albedo effect)” page says Nuclear is just a hair worse than onshore wind in the median case, significantly worse than both on- and offshore wind in the worst case (worst for both types), and slightly better in the best case. In best case, hydro actually beats nuclear.
Also, TIL tidal power isn’t commercially in use. I swear we were learning about it in school 20 years ago, and were not even told then that it wasn’t viable.
Including the effects of albedo seems rather straightforward and worth doing. Of course it neglects some more complicated factors, like opportunity cost of staying on fossil fuels in the meantime for the 20+ years it takes to build nuclear. A convenient part of the reason that the biggest proponents of nuclear tend to be those politicians and special interests who also support fossil fuels.
chaogomu@lemmy.world 3 months ago
You don’t need giant 20 year plants.
Small Modular Reactors can be built and deployed much faster.
You don’t need to power an entire state with a single plant. You can scale it down to powering a single town. That’s the current push, mass production of SMRs.
ricdeh@lemmy.world 3 months ago
That’s one hell of a claim. In fact such an outrageously bold one that you shouldn’t be able to post a comment like that without citing a reputable source.
SmoothOperator@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Not OP but
Image
ourworldindata.org/nuclear-energy
Holytimes@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
It’s not that bold or outrageous… It’s been common knowledge for over 40 years.
Basically since the dawn of nuclear power plants we knew it was the cleanest form of energy generation. That was literally its selling point.
The problem was the fear of radiation if shit went wrong.
oce@jlai.lu 3 months ago
The consequence of this legitimate fear is crazy security and the cost of it. To the point where the cost of nee nuclear now struggles to compete with renewables. The new generation plants EPR are catastrophic in terms of budget and schedule.
fullsquare@awful.systems 3 months ago
Coal ash (from some mines) contains so much uranium that if emissions like this were detected near NPP all hell would break loose, but nobody cares. Energy content of that uranium can be higher than what was released during coal combustion
woelkchen@lemmy.world 3 months ago
“coal ash is worse” doesn’t make nuclear waste clean and non toxic. Both are dirty, just different kinds of dirt. Geothermal is an excellent “boil water” technology independent of weather and without toxic waste.
chaogomu@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Coal ash is dumped into a retaining pond by the ton.
Nuclear waster is highly controlled and produced by the pound and sealed into giant casks that can be struck by a full speed train without beaching.
fullsquare@awful.systems 3 months ago
there are still coal powerplants around and any replacement is better. geothermal doesn’t work everywhere
woelkchen@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Radioactivity isn’t clean.
cynar@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Coal plants put out more radioactive material than even the bomb factories they call nuclear power plants. Newer plant designs are FAR more fail safe too, and some can actually ‘eat’ the waste from older plants.
New nuclear is right up there with renewables, with the added bonus of being great for baseloads. The only problem is we needed to be building it 20 years ago, since it takes a long time to design, permit and build them properly. If we try to rely on them now, it will be too late.
0x0@lemmy.zip 3 months ago
That’s been rigged by design due to… interests… it doesn’t take that long to build one.
woelkchen@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Class A whataboutism. Both are dirty, neither is clean.
CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
Humanity’s relationship with producing energy continually blows my mind, and it’s one of the main things that makes me think that maybe we do live in a simulation.
We discovered fossil fuel energy, which was fine for a bit to kick off the industrial revolution, but obviously is super harmful in the long term. Then just as it was starting to become a problem, the universe went “okay, here’s this magic rock that just gives off energy, you can use that to generate massive amounts of power with no carbon.” And we just went “nah.”
So then, the universe is like, “alright then, how about this: you can just get it from the sun, the air and water. Again no carbon and it’s infinite free energy forever, you’re welcome.” And again, we were like “no we want to just burn fossils.” Even now at the ecosystem is visibly collapsing around us we’re adopting it somewhat, but still dragging ass on it like crazy.
It’s like whoever’s running the simulation keeps dropping the difficulty level to help us not die, and we just won’t accept it. I fully expect in the next century or so we’ll figure out cold fusion, build like two plants and humanity will just collectively go “BORING” and dig up more coal again.
Horse@lemmygrad.ml 3 months ago
it isn’t “humanity” who stands in the way of moving on from fossil fuels, it’s a few hundred extremely wealthy assholes who own the fossil fuel industry
Rainbowblite@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
The Nuclear industry actually makes an effort to clean up after itself. Coal wouldn’t be such a big deal if they captured the carbon before it hit the atmosphere.
chaogomu@lemmy.world 3 months ago
It would take far more than just capturing carbon to make coal clean.