Another article from five days ago:
Nuclear energy too slow, too expensive to save climate: report
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower/nucle...
Fusion is even further out than fission.
Nuclear energy too slow, too expensive to save climate: report
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower/nucle...
Fusion is even further out than fission.
As the climate situation worsens, more and more nations will overlook that obstacle and roll out large scale nuclear. The only question is, will they be able to do it quickly enough.
I feel like I'm the only person in the room missing something when watching the world focus on 'renewable' technology when a much less resource/labour intensive and much higher energy dense power source is already available. And it's safer too. [1]
Why is renewable in quotes? Because we don't actually have a way to recycle solar and wind installations[2][3]. Nuclear is the only currently available large scale power source that doesn't require a large and continuous supply of mined materials.
Am I missing something? Am I an idiot? Why is everyone so anti nuclear and pro 'renewable' when nuclear is significantly better by every objective metric? Looks like the 'ban plastic straws' activism which ignored that straws make up an insignificant fraction of ocean waste and the vast majority of it is discarded fishing equipment. Inconsequential feel-good activism is a higher priority goal than more difficult but effective solutions?
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...
[2] https://recyclinginternational.com/editors-top-picks/critica...
[3] https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/waste-crisis-looms-a...
Your link number 1 is supposed to support nuclear being safer than renewables, and it simply doesn't do that.
There's a few links that regularly get shared, intending to make that point and they all don't actually make it.
The list of things that nuclear is safer than, is notably missing grid scale wind and solar. What a mysterious ommision from something that is trying to argue they are not safe.
Having read your link 2 and 3, I see they also don't support the point you are making (the first describes how to recycle turbine blades into concrete and is looking for more applications, the second says solar panels are 90% recyclable and just wants some government policies to ensure this happens), which makes me wonder if you're arguing in good faith here?
Are you disputing the article? My interpretation of it? The sources it cites? The error bounds on the estimates? What?
Why should we treat nuclear power differently and discard all of its advantages just because worst-case failures can render small land areas unusable, but smaller than other alternatives already do on a regular basis? I'm not even bringing up the fact that there exist modern reactor designs that are provably incapable of failing like this. The comparison is in favour of nuclear even when we're looking at currently rolled out explode'y reactors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_the_co...
You sound like you've watched too many Hollywood horror films. The only place to get a meaningful dose is inside the sarcophagus or to venture deep into buildings that contain dumped cleanup equipment. Both are fairly difficult to access to wildlife or civilians.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/wildlife-near-nuclear-reacto...
[2] https://www.tripadvisor.com.au/Restaurant_Review-g298058-d10...
[3] http://www.travelweekly.com.au/article/chernobyl-sees-touris...
I'm in contact with people from our nuclear physics faculty that are doing actual research on this, I don't need to read random articles from your generic newspapers. If I need to know something, I can just go down the hall and ask them. That the exclusion zone still has significant hot spots is what they told me.
[EDIT: Your article [1] says basically the same things that I did, most notably the "Nature flourishes when humans are removed from the equation, even after the world's worst nuclear accident" and "The Chernobyl exclusion zone is still considered an unsafe region for humans due to the high levels of radiation". Thanks for that corroboration.]
The stats are from 2012 and wind and solar have improved markedly since then, generating more per installed item.
I didn't notice this link includes wind, the others I see shared usually only have rooftop solar. I know the figures will be very out of date though.
Trying to find the source of these wind figures is interesting. The same author links in a later column to what I guess must be the source though he misquotes their global figures as UK only figures. It appears to include suicides by people who live near wind turbines. The totality of 17 deaths globally in 2012 appear to be 17 bus passengers who died in march 2012 in Brazil, but I can't find any trace of a news story to explain what actually happened to them. Basically, it appears to be made up nonsense and even then it only has 3 deaths worldwide last year for wind.
This gets amplified further in the retelling, the author of your link however quotes 14 deaths in England alone in one year. Which simply didn't happen. And even then it compare favourably with other sources.
The 90% recyclable figure refers to the materials that can be used in low grade applications. The remaining 10% are the rare earth minerals that actually make the panel work and need to be mined.
You’re not talking about recycling, you’re talking about downcycling to a nearly worthless product. It will be cheaper just to send the old panels to landfill. How are these power sources renewable if they are only possible if we keep mining our dwindling natural resources?
[1] says that "[the waste components] are crushed into granulates that can used to make new panels". Are new panels a "low grade application"?
> The remaining 10% are the rare earth minerals that actually make the panel work and need to be mined.
Excuse me, but what "rare earth minerals" are you talking about? There are none in solar panels, much less 10% of them. (That would be 2 kg per average panel, mind you!)
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-solar-recycling/europes-f...
LMGTFY
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a3mavb/we-dont-mine-enoug...
Refer to Fig. 11.1
If you need more help to identify REM or understand basic PV chemistry, get in touch with a local middle school chem tutor, they will help you out.
[EDIT: Even in wind turbines, they're not technically necessary, as, e.g., Enercon turbines such as https://www.enercon.de/en/products/ep-8/e-126/ with induction generators are demonstrating. But I'm glad we dispelled once and for all this with this nonsense that lanthanoids have anything to do with PV technology.]
We could even keep generating power with natural gas and just capture all of the carbon emissions at the powerplant. Nuclear is an improvement but you don't even need to go that far if you are serious about decarbonizing the power grid as quickly as possible.
https://www.power-technology.com/news/hinkley-point-c-nuclea...
the UK is building new fission plants. It costs more than renewables, and won't be ready for a decade.
Nuclear Fission might be too slow to build - at least that's what the report claims. That would not be a problem with Fusion - its energy output should be so high that building it should still be worth it. The 'slow' regarding Fusion is the time taking to research it.
IMHO, researching Fusion is worth it, but we can't rely on it at all for solving our problems, since it's unlikely to be available in time. We'll have to handle our climate problem with more ordinary means.