Comment on Anon questions our energy sector
StrongHorseWeakNeigh@lemmy.world 1 day ago85% of used fuel rods can be recycled to new fuel rods. And there’s military uses for depleted uranium too. So, essentially every bit of the waste can be recycled. Can’t say the same for fossil fuels.
Ooops@feddit.org 1 day ago
“85% of used fuel rods can be recycled” is like “We can totally capture nearly all the carbon from burning fossil fuels and then remove the rest from the atmosphere by other means”.
In theory it’s correct. In reality it’s bullshit that will never happen because it’s completely uneconomical and it’s just used as an excuse to not use the affordable technology we already have available and keep burning fossil fuels.
StrongHorseWeakNeigh@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Yeah, you’re not making any sense. How is the recyclability of nuclear fuel rods an excuse to keep burning fossil fuels? That’s a massive leap in logic that demands an explanation.
Gullible@sh.itjust.works 23 hours ago
They’re saying that plausible uses don’t necessarily translate to real world use, in practice. I have no stake in this, just translating
GiveMemes@jlai.lu 23 hours ago
While I understand where they’re coming from, it should be noted that they’re likely basing their experience with recyclability on plastic recycling which is totally a shit show. The big difference comes in when you realize that plastic is cheap as shit whereas uranium fuel rods are not.
Ooops@feddit.org 7 hours ago
Fossil fuel lobbyists know very well that their business model is running into a dead end. So now their goal is to extend it as long as possible.
Today’s fossil fuel propaganda isn’t “Climate change from CO₂ isn’t real” anymore. It’s “We can totally fix this with carbon capturing later”, “Renewables are actually bad for the environment” and “Better don’t build renewables now as a much better solution will be available soon™ <insert SMRs or any other fairy tale how new reactor will totally be cheap and not producing waste here>”. Yet it’s not happening. Nuclear is uneconomically expensive and produces toxic waste we actually don’t know how to handle safely for the amounts of time it stays toxic.
Nuclear basically only has a very limited amount of fake arguments constantly used in variations of the same chain:
“Nuclear is perfectly safe!”
“That’s not the problem. The problems are the massive costs and the waste.”
“But we can recycle most of the waste. Also renewables produce so much waste, too.”
“But you actually don’t do it because it’s very expensive and makes nuclear power even less economicallly viable. Also how is recycling wind-turbine blades and solar-panels unrealistic but recycling nuclear waste is not?”
“But nuclear would be economically viable and so much cheaper if it wasn’t so over-regulated.”
“It’s only perfectly safe because it’s highly regulated.”
“<Inserts insults about you being brain-washed to fear nuclear power here>, also they will totally become much cheaper with SMRs any day now…”
In the end it’s always the same story. Nuclear might be safe but it is insanely expensive and produces radioactive waste. No, the fact that you can theoretically recycle the waste doesn’t matter, because you don’t do it. No, it will not become cheap magically soon. And no it is not expensive because it’s highly regulated because without those regulations we can start at the top again and talk about how safe it is.
There are only two reasons to pretend otherwise: you work in nuclear power and need to sell your product or you work in fossil fuels and need to keep the discussion up so people keep talking instead of actually working to get rid of them. And the nuclear industry and lobby is actually not that massive compared to the fossil fuel one. So it’s very clear where the vast majority of nuclear fan boys get their talking points. Have you ever thought about the fact why pro-nuclear is so massively over-represented on social media? 😉
marcos@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
Capturing all the extra carbon from the atmosphere is not as expensive as it sounds like. It can easily be done by a few rich countries in very few decades once we stop adding more there every day.
Recycling nuclear waste is one of those problems that should be easy but nobody knows what the easy way looks like. It’s impossible to tell if some breakthrough will make it viable tomorrow or if people will have to work for 200 years to get to it. But yeah, currently it’s best described as “impossible”.
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 20 hours ago
What?
For starters, carbon capture takes an insane amount of power. And to follow up: we couldn’t even build the facilities is “a few decades” even if we free power and infinite money.
marcos@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
Yep, “insane amounts” of power like you what you get by investing something like 1% of a few countries’ GDP in PV panels.