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[–] 15 points 2 years ago (17 children)

Don’t push nuclear power like it’s the only option though.

Where I live we entirely provide energy from hydro power plants and nuclear energy is banned. We use no fossil fuels. We have a 35 year plan for future growth and it doesn’t include any fossil fuels. Nuclear power is just one of the options and it has many hurdles to implement, maintain and decommission.

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  • [–] 32 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    Honestly, if you can, hydro is brilliant. Not many places can though — both because of geography and politics. Nuclear is better than a lot of the alternatives and shouldn't be discounted.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (1 child)
  • [–] 12 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    Which each have their drawbacks. Just as an example, though not representative of the majority, what do you do about months of no sun in the Arctic Circle for solar power? There is no single solution to this problem. Nuclear is better than fossil fuels by far, and we should not just throw it away out of fear.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)
  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago

    And yet nuclear has killed less than even wind. Obviously death is not the only factor, which is why it should be a combination of both.

    Again, it's just an example. There are loads of situations where solar and wind just don't work — and they are both inconsistent, without battery technology nearly good enough to work on the order of days for an entire national grid, which could be potentially needed in the event of a storm.

    Nuclear waste is a problem, but one which is much more easily contained and much less dangerous than the CO2 that's constantly being spewed into our air.

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  • [–] -1 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    And what do YOU know about radioactive waste disposal?

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I know it's a damn lot easier than carbon recapture, if we're talking waste products. It's not ideal, but there is no such thing as perfect, and we shouldn't let that be the enemy of good. Nuclear fission power is part of a large group of methods to help us switch off fossil fuels.

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  • [–] -4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    "Easier"? Are you aware of the fact that radioactive waste tombs are meant to stand for millions of years? It requres a lot of territory, construction and servance charges, and lots of prays for nothing destructive happens with it in its "infinite" lifetime.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    We can bury it in the ground and it will literally turn into lead. How are you doing with carbon emissions? Got a fix?

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago*

    I think it's photosynthesis. 'Bury in the ground' is an extreme simplification btw. Also, I am finished with this topic scince long anough. It feels politically biased. If you'd like to reply, I'd hear it gladly. But I m not going to be involved into a discussion.

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  • [–] -3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Launch it into the sun or Florida

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Launching radioactive waste into space is a terrible idea, because rockets on occasion crash. Once that happens it becomes a nuclear disaster.

    Instead we can safely store it in depleted mines.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Mines fill up with water if they're not constantly pumped out. Even the salt mines which seemed like a solution were found to have this issue

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)
  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Dig a hole, anywhere, there's a chance it'll fill with water. Especially with climate change. We're seeing moisture getting dropped in areas at greater frequencies that didn't happen decades ago. There's no guarantee you can dig a hole anywhere on earth that wouldn't become apart of our aquifers as the water travels back to the ocean.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    There is no guarantee of anything.

    But if you're storing it hundreds of miles from the ocean, the risk is minimal.

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  • [–] -1 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    It isn't really minimal since the water cycle on earth is all connected.

    Water in the ocean evaporates. It's carries inland by Hadley cells that deposit the moisture inland. It gets dumped on the highest points which all run back the ocean and creating all our aquifers along the way. Those aquifers feed our great lakes and wells.

    But you're suggesting we bury toxic material that remains toxic for hundreds or thousands of years somewhere remote that would just be high up in that water cycle. In places where private companies would be out of the eyes of watchdog groups

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    Sealing a deep narrow borehole isn't a difficult problem. The Earth has contained oil and gas underground for millions of years.

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  • [–] -1 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Its contained it using geological features but once exposed how is it possible to recreate that. Its also not like this material is goo

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    The hole would be 0.5m wide and >1000m deep, backfilled with bentonite clay and concrete. At the bottom, the path curves back upward, so waste is not stored at the bottom.

    Even if geology doesn't collapse the hole, it's hard to imagine material climbing up through 1000m of clogged pipe.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    Big hole in the side of mountain in a desert, stick the waste in, full it with rubble and concrete, job done. If some primatives in a hundred thousand years stumble across it and dig it out, fuck em, who cares.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Dig a hole, anywhere, now leave. What will the hole eventually fill up with?

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

    It would be cool to see huge investments into battery storage. If we could create a battery that doesn't just leak energy from storing, we could generate power in one location and ship it out where it's needed. There could be remote energy production plants using geothermal or hydroelectric power that ship out these charged batteries to locations all over. It would let us better utilize resources instead of having to have cities anchored around these sources.

    Or we could generate a ton of power all at once, store it and use it as needed rather having to have on demand energy production

    Hell with better batteries even fossil fuels begin to be climate friendly since you could store the massive energy created and know you're using close to 100% of it.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    It would be cool to see huge investments into battery storage.

    Globally humanity already invests over 10 Billion dollars per year in advancing battery technology.

    If we could create a battery that doesn’t just leak energy from storing...

    In order to build what you are talking about will almost certainly require real room temperature super conductors. We can get close, maybe, with the next generation of Aluminum-Air or Iron-Air batteries but this is big pimping. It's incredibly complicated and difficult.

    It's like Fusion Power. We can see a future where we have it figured out and working but it's still some years, if not decades, away.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    Kind of an unconventional battery, but I've heard of solar and wind being used to pump water uphill into reservoirs and then released through a hydro plant when the sun/wind aren't shining/blowing. I'd be curious to know the amount of production lost from storing it this way.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    Moving batteries seems like a terribly inefficient way of replacing power lines.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago

    Power lines would still mean we need energy on demand though wouldn't it. And if we can transport energy from an area like a huge solar array in the Sahara to Kazakhstan or China it would be better. I was just raising it as an off thought like maybe theres more ways to think about solving this problem than just building plants. What level of storage ability could we have that would let us build a large solar array in the Sahara to power Africa and Europe vs just building more plants. I think our end goal will be energy storage and like you brought up transport/transmission. I think that because I think we have energy production pretty well solved

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