The production of the uranium fuel, the gigantic building itself, the transport (the fule gets shipped around the world), the storage after its depleted.
Its definitely better than any Combustion fuels, but not at all better than actual renewables.
how did they got there is my point. to build anything there are emissions.
The emissions from nuclear are primarily from mining (this is huge in some cases, enough to not consider it as low carbon, or negligible in others), enrichment, conversion, and fuel fabrication (these last three have no trustworthy data, but from the few steps that are public knowledge, are enough to put it higher than PV or wind).
Transport, and the building are negligible enough they’re not worth considering.
In either case, it’s largely irrelevant. The main harm is to the local environment of the mines (this is devistating) as well as the main reason the astroturfers come out in force, which is that it delays decarbonization due to being an ineffective use of resources.
When considering these externalities for nuclear, you have to do the same for renewables as well. i.e. scrap turbine blades, concrete in dams, weathered PV panels, land use taken up by panels and turbines.
Remember that the materials used in most renewable generation are also shipped around the world and many have very dirty refining processes.
I’m a firm renewable energy supporter but you have to be fair to both processes.
Okay.
Make a PV system out of a strict subset of the materials in the reactor.
Put the PV system over top of Inkai mine.
Get more power than the uranium from the mine would produce for longer.
The 40 year guaranteed lifetime of the panels is longer than the 30 year lifetime of the average nuclear plant at shutdown.
Your materials can be recycled after.
The ground around the mine isn’t poisoned with heavy metals permanently,
This all assuming everything goes perfectly for the nuclear plant and waste disposal.
You neglect the problem that the stuff from a nuclear reactor is literally unusable forever and becomes Special waste while the remains of renewables are recyclable, yes even turbine blades, there is just not enough market for it to attract a business so far, that will change of course with time, also the stuff is not toxic or radioactive…
Remember that the materials used in most renewable generation are also shipped around the world and many have very dirty refining processes.
Depends, newer version of the stuff don’t need rare earths, or much less, meaning the dirtiest of it falls out of the equation.
I am fair, nuclear is just not future proof for large scale usage. It also takes to long to be “effective” 10 years to build one powerplant, and is waaaay to expensive. you could build more actually renewables for less money in the same time and the electricity from it is basically free as there are almost no operational costs.
if you want to be like that nothing is. Solar requires vast amounts of rare earths to be mined and wind requires huge amount of unrecylable blades and generators to be produced. On total lifecyle damage to the environment all three are very low but non zero.
Solar requires vast amounts of rare earths to be mined
Not true, the newest solar panels don’t need rare earths at that scale.
and wind requires huge amount of unrecylable blades and generators to be produced.
Both are recyclable and even if they were not they are not radioactive, poisonous or otherwise hazardous… The blades are from a Artificial resin And glas fiber and the generators are from normal industrial materials like iron aluminum and copper.
Over all actual renewables are much more environmentally friendly and have less emissions. But yes they are also not absolutely zero emission (even though that being possible)
these things are easy to look up, eg this is from the ipcc https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CO2_Emissions_from_Electricity_Production_IPCC.png nuclear is on a par or better than most renewable sources.
Huh, i thought they did require rare earths in construction, but apparently not. They do require silicon wafers boron and phosporus, and small instalations typically come with large li-ion bateries which clearly do require lithium. But the panels themselves dont. Still my point stand that ANY method of generation requires industrial activity which has downsides, pretending nuear is unique in this is dishonest.
Please dont call people trolls just because you disagree with them, this isnt reddit.
Most of those costs are similar for renewables…rather than a building it’s the production and installation of fields of solar panels, for example.
In both cases I’m pretty sure it’s a negligible fraction of the lifecycle emissions compared to energy generated.
The problem is reliability, Europe sees more and more droughts building energy facilities that turn useful water into useless steam makes little sens when there are other options.
Also nuclear makes Sweden dependant on a country thaz exports nuclear fule.
And for solar the costs are shrinking and shrinking, the newest and most efficient panels don’t even need rare earths anymore and are recyclable. Btw Sweeden would be better suited for Hydroelectric dams and Wind wich have even less such problems.
Might be a problem for landlocked countries like Switzerland or so but all swedish reactors are cooled with sea water which is not in short supply any time soon.
Sweden?
Drought?
Anyway I’m not a civil engineer or geologist or renewable energy engineer or anything, so I won’t pretend to know what the best path is. I’m just hoping they did their studies correctly and are picking the best option.
But even if they’re not, it’s good they’re moving away from fossil fuels, whichever direction they move in.
