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

    Have you tried capturing gas? As difficult as radioactive waste tombs are, they're easier than containing a specific type of air lol.

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  • [+] -6 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Read about breathing if you want to know how to capture gas. Also, about photosynthesis.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    If you want to buy the land to plant a second Amazon, be my guest. And breathing does the exact opposite of what we want.

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

    I'd rather fill land with trees than with radioactive wastes.

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

    You need a lot, lot more trees. Like several orders of magnitude. And growing trees takes longer than even building a nuclear power plant.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    To be specific, growing the types of trees we would want for such a thing in such an amount that it would deal with the problems we have, assuming we stop growth of CO2 and assuming we stop burning the Amazon, would take around a hundred years.

    https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/how-to-erase-100-years-carbon-emissions-plant-trees

    "It could take more than a hundred years to add enough mature forest to get sufficient levels of carbon reduction. Meanwhile 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) from burning fossil fuels are being added to the atmosphere every year, said Glen Peters, research director at Norway’s Center for International Climate Research."

    And need an area the size of the United States. I wasn't joking about a second Amazon.

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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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