There is a discussion on Hacker News, but feel free to comment here as well.
Hey, a climate activist with some common sense!
The way I see it, we either get cleaner energy with some safer nuclear energy, or it’s still catastrophic and we all just die faster anyway. I’m down for nuclear lol
As it stands. Nuclear (fission) is the cleanest and safest form of energy available at the moment. When we get to fusion it’ll get even cheaper without even the miniscule amount of (stored)waste fission produces.
It is not the “cleanest” it is the most “climate friendly”. Commitment to nuclear waste is a thousand year long process of monitoring and processing waste products and our record on a short term commitment of like 50 years to climate change is not a good record. Its not clean and in the long term not likely cheap.
However its certainly not as destructive to the world as gas is right now so relieving climate change before some other catastrophic milestone occurs is probably a good idea. Folks saying “its too late” misunderstand climate change; there’s always another level bad we can hit and nuclear provides stable, reliable power.
It really isn’t a thousand year long process though. The containers they have for them are very long lasting. Bury it in a large containment facility deep in the mountains (Norway is making a large underground system specifically for this iirc) and just seal it up. Maintenance will be minimal.
Aren’t you able to recycle spent fuel for additional fuel and a lower amount of waste?
Awesome! I always wondered when those voiced would get louder.
I agree with the sentiment. I would caution people that nuclear waste can last something like 10k years but swapping the current climate crisis for a future radioactive waste storage crisis is probably good trade at the moment.
Hope she told Greenpeace as well where to leave the nuclear waste and how to archive costs similar to renewables. Because that’s a question I don’t know the answer to.
Long-term nuclear waste doesn’t take up huge amounts of space in the grand scheme of things. And while renewables are essential, having a nuclear backbone in the mix is going to be needed for times of lower output. Otherwise you’d need huge amounts of batteries which would drive up the cost again and slow down the move to zero fossil fuels.
I am from Germany. We have been looking for an “Endlager” (place to store the waste up to a million years safely) since the beginning of using nuclear energy and we haven’t found one. No one wants to have one in ones vicinity and the place where we are storing it now (Asse) is leaking. Times when the sun does not shine and there are no winds are rare and there are more options to store energy than batteries. What we need are better power grids to meet demands during those difficult times and harvest the renewable energy more efficient.
Plus, where does the uranium come from, that for example France uses? Russia (dictatorship), Kazakhstan and Niger (military coup). The sun and the wind don’t attack sovereign nations, don’t write an invoice and cannot pressure you to do a moral limbo when it comes to your energy resources.
It’s stupid because here in Australia we have the size of Western Europe as desert that won’t ever be used for anything. We already have ports and roads in and nuclear testing has already taken place in the desert.
Nuclear waste can be buried deep inside the ground in stable rock in specially made canisters, not possible everywhere in the world but it’s a good way to store it long term where it’s possible.
While other renewables might beat nuclear in costs they cant produce electricity when the sun doesnt shine or wind doesnt blow etc. So when also accounting for the energy storage to smooth out the spikes nuclear is considerably cheaper