> Cheap (and preferably clean) energy
This is the difficulty.
Right now, the only cheap and clean energy somewhat on the horizon is fusion, which is 50 years in the future for the past 50 years.
This is the difficulty.
Right now, the only cheap and clean energy somewhat on the horizon is fusion, which is 50 years in the future for the past 50 years.
Theoretically, we can put CO2 back in the bottle. Practically, we can do it now, just not with enough efficiency and scale to make it worth it.
Chernobyl isn't hypothetical. And neither is Fukushima. And those weren't as bad as they could have been.
And we still don't know what to do with all the waste we have.
Yes, nuclear power has problems. But even if it killed 24,000 people per year, blocking the replacement of coal by nuclear would still be a willful choice to cause the deaths of 1,000 people (it's getting really hard not to say murder).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalworker's_pneumoconiosis
There is no conceivable way of removing even daily worldwide human carbon waste from the atmosphere for that kind of money.
Sure the physical size of a spent fuel might be 'small' but this is not the only issue.
And the low level waste - of which there is approx 360000 tons? Would the Mariana Trench would be a good/safe place to place this? Based on what reckoning?
>> And the low level waste - of which there is approx 360000 tons? Would the Mariana Trench would be a good/safe place to place this? Based on what reckoning?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_...
Pushing for more silicon solar panels beyond what's possible as semiconductor industry byproduct is unsustainable, both economically and environmentally.
Solar panels seem to be one of the most inefficient clean energy solutions - so are they actually relevant here?
http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Industry/2007/05/22/...
"In 2006, for the first time, more than half the world's polysilicon was used to produce solar PV cells."
It's true that the intermediates in silicon refining like are quite hazardous, but in a well-run production facility those intermediates don't get released to the biosphere. They affect the toxicity of the end product no more than the intermediate use of acetic anhydride in aspirin production, or the intermediate use of uranium hexafluoride in nuclear fuel rod production. There was a famous story in 2008 about a Chinese silicon production facility that was illegally dumping SiCl4, but if you're going to pick the most horrifying Chinese examples you'd think that nothing at all can be made safely.
There are some interesting moral gymnastics required there, no? The Chinese lead the world in PV manufacturing right now. Is this PV-revolution necessarily built on dirty manufacturing? Would we still have a PV-revolution if we weren't so accepting of an environmental disaster that takes place in a distant country?
Silicon refiners in the US actually had lower production costs than Chinese refiners even with the extra labor and environmental costs in the US. Unfortunately, a few years ago China imposed punitive trade barriers against silicon imported from the US. It was in retaliation for trade barriers the US put up against imports of Chinese solar modules. Until both sides erected their dueling trade barriers, the value of US-to-China silicon exports just about balanced the value of China-to-US modules. It was like a textbook example of comparative advantage. Now Chinese manufacturers get higher priced silicon made with fewer environmental protections, and US buyers get higher priced modules :-/
Photovoltaics: scalable, green, economically sustainable (choose two).
Because of those catastrophic failure modes, nobody except governments want to assume the risk. And governments only do it because they have sovereign immunity from those whose interests they're supposedly representing.
I firmly believe that any interested parties who want to go nuclear, should, and reap those rewards. If you can't find an insurer, go find wealthy people who believe in your design to indemnify you.
Just don't pick my pocket to build it and then poison me.
That would be a fine if it was a level playing field.
Lots of things have catastrophic failure modes. Dams[1], supertankers[2], chemical plants[3], oil drilling rigs[4], coal mines[5], etc. To say nothing of climate change.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exxon_Valdez_oil_spill [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benxihu_Colliery
The reason those things have no trouble being built anyway is that they aren't required to carry billions of dollars in insurance coverage to begin with.
And maybe they should, but you can't single out nuclear for a requirement to carry that much insurance and then fault it for not being able to satisfy that requirement when its competitors don't.
Yet that's exactly what we're doing with coal and petroleum.
Let's remove the subsidies for those and then you can get back to me about the cost effectiveness of things like nuclear.
Only coal and petroleum is mined thousands of miles aways from me, and even if e.g. there's an oil spill, it won't kill thousands in hundreds miles radius.
In addition, in California, the radioactive sulfur in pollution from the coal burning plants in China SWAMPS the radiation release from Fukushima by several orders of magnitude.
I'm going to stop here, because any relevant adjective I would use to describe people like you would just get me banned.
The main word I'd use to describe "people like you", given the above, is rude.
The ad-hominem doesn't add anything to the case. And who would "people like me" be? Anybody that has concerns or might be against nuclear power? Because they are necessarily ignorant luddites, and only those for it are the level-headed ones, right?
Well, nuclear reactors and energy production is not science (the science part is done at the academic level), it is applied technology. And technology mingles with private interests, politics and bad actors all the time (e.g. constructors who don't install enough safety measures, governments who don't give a shit about global environmental treaties, loonies who might want to blow up reactors or get their hands to the by products, human errors, political ass-saving, tons of money to be made, higher profit margins by not properly taking care of by products, etc.),
Now to answer the specific points:
"Leak[ing] sulfur into the streams for the next 50 years" doesn't even compare to having to take care of radioactive materials for the next millennia, neither in the extend of time, nor to the potential impact.
Your answer also seems to imply that e.g. uranium mining doesn't have an environmental impact, and it's only coal that "rips entire mountains apart"...
>In addition, in California, the radioactive sulfur in pollution from the coal burning plants in China SWAMPS the radiation release from Fukushima by several orders of magnitude.
All caps "swamps" aside, this would be only relevant if Fukushima was the epitome of nuclear disaster and the "radiation release from Fukushima" was the highest level of tradition release possible (or close).
Isn't it? I thought what happened at Fukushima was the worst case scenario for a nuclear power plant of its type. What is the worst that could have happened?
Aren't new designs even safer than that?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_p...
Rough estimate of low level waste is 360000 tons