Comment on New clean energy comes out. *look inside* It’s just boiling water again…
rumba@lemmy.zip 2 weeks agoRelatively, 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 2 weeks ago
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 2 weeks ago
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.
Ignoring options with the benefits of 24x7 steady state generation is far more idiotic.
woelkchen@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
And that concrete is 100% carbon neutral and will never be affected by earthquakes.
When drilling is suddenly OK, then forego the nuclear reactor and go straight to geothermal.
Tell that to you nuclear waste buddies who oppose geothermal.
rumba@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Geo is a great idea, sadly they have trouble getting it to scale, and locating hot enough pockets proves elusive. If you’re in volcanic areas, medium-sized geothermal is amazing. IIRC Iceland uses it to great effect but it doesn’t work just anywhere. We can’t drill so deep that it gets hot enough to make a difference; you need to find a spot where the crust is already thin.
Now that’s not to be confused with geothermal at the house level for heatpumps, that is straight up awesome but works on a very different concept and can’t really scale at all… well it would be nice if all these fucking datacenters would use that instead of evaporative loops. but that’s a different story.