Hacker News Reader

Comment by hamilyon2 | Hacker News Reader

Just make sure we don't make same mistakes again, ending with a lot of non-recyclable non-reusable obsolete batteries no one cares about and wants 50 years later.

The last thing we need is a dumpster full of toxic waste... all in name of green and "renewable" energy generation!

View on HN

But isn't our current power infrastructure just pumping the toxic waste into the air (pseudo) invisibly?

For example, the reason we have smog laws is because we can see the results. I suspect if burning gasoline pumped low-level radioactivity into the air invisibly (like coal does), then smog laws wouldn't have taken off years ago.

At least lithium battery waste stays put.

>The last thing we need is a dumpster full of toxic waste... all in name of green and "renewable" energy generation!

that reminds me more of pushes to bring back nuclear power

A tiny bit of spent fuel, and billions of toxic and unrecyclable cells are far different problems.

Both the spent fuel and the cells are totally recyclable (where recyclable means transforming them into some amount of inert nontoxic stuff and some amount of useful stuff.) I would bet that recycling spent fuel rods is more expensive than recycling spent chemical batteries.

Also, the spent batteries, while toxic, don't require 24x7 armed security. Also the spent fuel recycling process potentially increases the need to secure the resultant materials, depending on what you're doing.

In what way does it remind you of pushes to bring back nuclear power? Can you elaborate? Genuinely curious.

If you had any idea how much nuclear power you can generate before you've filled a single dumpster with spent fuel...

are you including the exclusion zone around the radioactive waste?

The “exclusion zone” around the radioactive waste is either a few dozen feet to the surface of the water pool, or less than a feet of a container wall.

From memory, the exclusion zones around Fukushima and Chernobyl are somewhat larger. Humans err. And always will.

The willful ignorance here is not worth trying to disentangle.

Neither is your willful ignorance. See how little that adds to a discussion? Either make the effort, or don't bother to comment.

A container full of a large quantity of identical batteries is ideal for the recycling industry in comparison to other industries.

Agreed, that's why I'm more interested and excited about carbon-carbon batteries. Li-ion is the ugly wart on the face of green renewable technologies, we are just tolerating it for now because we don't have anything better yet. I hope it doesn't stay there

>non-recyclable non-reusable obsolete batteries

Which type of battery is that?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com