Well you could just like, put all that tax money into decentralized renewable energy sources…that would also be profitable.
While not causing waste that cant be touched for the next million years.
While also lessening your dependence on nuclear fuel imports from political less than optimal nations or sources where the mining of it causes radio active dust to contaminate the population (Russia/USA and Australia).
What you say about decentralisation is IMO a big deal that other users here are not paying attention to. You can’t have a nuclear usine in your backyard, but you can have a few solar panels here and there. It’s better to allow people to control their means of electrical generation than to have a government (or worse, a corporation) calling the shots.
Another important detail IMO is that “renewable energy” is a mixed bag of a lot of different approaches, each with its pros and cons. This means that if you’re going for renewables you can min-max the whole thing for less environmental and human impact, cheaper prices etc.
That said I think the part concerning waste from nuclear usines is a weak argument. It’s a relatively low volume, compared with the amount of electricity generated by those usines; and mining operations will be always a mess, no matter if you’re mining uranium (for nuclear), neodymium (for wind) or gallium and iridium (for solar).
That said I think the part concerning waste from nuclear usines is a weak argument. It’s a relatively low volume, compared with the amount of electricity generated by those usines; and mining operations will be always a mess, no matter if you’re mining uranium (for nuclear), neodymium (for wind) or gallium and iridium (for solar).
Yes, but i would argue that when you mine neodymium or gallium once you then can recycle them for ever, while the same cant be said for uranium, in the long term that does make a big difference.
Yes, but i would argue that when you mine neodymium or gallium once you then can recycle them for ever
In practice you can’t. There’s always going to be losses when gathering the used parts for reprocessing and during the reprocessing itself. So you’ll still need to keep production up.
In the meantime you can actually reprocess nuclear fuel. It won’t be forever, just like the above, but stuff like plutonium and the likes can be used for further energy production, plus this reduces the amount of high-level waste you need to deal with.
Yeah you can reprocess nuclear fuel, but latest information i have on that is that its nowhere close making sense cost wise and mostly theoretical, i may be wrong on that tho.
When i yeet a solar cell or electric motor into a furnace its possible to refine basically everything, sure here and there a motor in a hair dryer will hit the landfill, but for industrial Motors/Generators is very very low.
Million year really , so you talk about the EXTREMELY small portion of nuclear waste ? Also why not both , why not nuclear AND solar / wind / hydro electricity? Because all those renewable energy sources are either limited (hydro electricity) or intermittent (solar / wind)
And I know you dont care but Yes we can bury nuclear waste if we do it properly, there already were natural nuclear reactor on earth way before humanity and it didnt kill everything where they were.
No, you couldn’t. You need base load. Countries like Denmark and Germany freeload on the base load of France, Sweden and Finland. And the moronic EU laws that currently enable this will eventually change to charge them for that.
Great. Fucking build it then. Go ahead and build your non-hydro non-nuclear baseload, and I’ll shut the fuck up. Until then, I’ll call you out every time you say that nuclear and hydro is too expensive.
The article is paywalled, but just from the first snippet I don’t see how it’s relevant. If you’re replacing oil or coal based power generation with wind, then that’s awesome. But my assertion is that you do actually need to supplement that with something that can be tuned on the fly to keep a stable frequency in the grid. So far the experimental designs to do so with massive “batteries” have not looked very promising to me.
A rule of thumb is that you need a minimum of 20% of your grid to be tunable. That’s a hard minimum.
You’re deflecting because you don’t have a real argument to come up with. It’s true that global warming is having a negative impact on nuclear power in France, Switzerland and other places, but it doesn’t change the fact that you need some way to keep a stable voltage and frequency over your grid.
I whole heartedly agree. And to anyone who complains about dunkelflaute, if we wouldn’t immediately burn our biogas, and instead stored it where we currently store our fossil gas, we would have a way more comfortable safety margin. Also a stronger European powergrid would be sufficient for almost all usual cases throughout the year.
Well you could just like, put all that tax money into decentralized renewable energy sources…that would also be profitable.
While not causing waste that cant be touched for the next million years.
While also lessening your dependence on nuclear fuel imports from political less than optimal nations or sources where the mining of it causes radio active dust to contaminate the population (Russia/USA and Australia).
What you say about decentralisation is IMO a big deal that other users here are not paying attention to. You can’t have a nuclear usine in your backyard, but you can have a few solar panels here and there. It’s better to allow people to control their means of electrical generation than to have a government (or worse, a corporation) calling the shots.
Another important detail IMO is that “renewable energy” is a mixed bag of a lot of different approaches, each with its pros and cons. This means that if you’re going for renewables you can min-max the whole thing for less environmental and human impact, cheaper prices etc.
That said I think the part concerning waste from nuclear usines is a weak argument. It’s a relatively low volume, compared with the amount of electricity generated by those usines; and mining operations will be always a mess, no matter if you’re mining uranium (for nuclear), neodymium (for wind) or gallium and iridium (for solar).
Yes, but i would argue that when you mine neodymium or gallium once you then can recycle them for ever, while the same cant be said for uranium, in the long term that does make a big difference.
In practice you can’t. There’s always going to be losses when gathering the used parts for reprocessing and during the reprocessing itself. So you’ll still need to keep production up.
In the meantime you can actually reprocess nuclear fuel. It won’t be forever, just like the above, but stuff like plutonium and the likes can be used for further energy production, plus this reduces the amount of high-level waste you need to deal with.
Yeah you can reprocess nuclear fuel, but latest information i have on that is that its nowhere close making sense cost wise and mostly theoretical, i may be wrong on that tho.
When i yeet a solar cell or electric motor into a furnace its possible to refine basically everything, sure here and there a motor in a hair dryer will hit the landfill, but for industrial Motors/Generators is very very low.
Million year really , so you talk about the EXTREMELY small portion of nuclear waste ? Also why not both , why not nuclear AND solar / wind / hydro electricity? Because all those renewable energy sources are either limited (hydro electricity) or intermittent (solar / wind) And I know you dont care but Yes we can bury nuclear waste if we do it properly, there already were natural nuclear reactor on earth way before humanity and it didnt kill everything where they were.
Uhm, a river flowing thru low grade non enriched uranium deposit isnt a reactor in the way we build em today, like not even close.
“it’s not exactly the same, so the waste and radiation it produced naturally is irrelevant to this
cherry pickeddiscussion”But that would enrich the oligarchy slightly more slowly! Won’t anybody think of the poor oligarchs?
No, you couldn’t. You need base load. Countries like Denmark and Germany freeload on the base load of France, Sweden and Finland. And the moronic EU laws that currently enable this will eventually change to charge them for that.
Baseload has always been bullshit, see e.g. https://www.ceem.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/migration_files/ceem/publication-documents/MarkBaseloadFallacyANZSEE.pdf
It’s even more irrelevant now that battery storage can level out multi-day variability.
Great. Fucking build it then. Go ahead and build your non-hydro non-nuclear baseload, and I’ll shut the fuck up. Until then, I’ll call you out every time you say that nuclear and hydro is too expensive.
I’m in Australia, it’s already happening… https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/green-energy-is-shielding-australia-from-a-global-power-price-shock-20260608-p604sc.html
The article is paywalled, but just from the first snippet I don’t see how it’s relevant. If you’re replacing oil or coal based power generation with wind, then that’s awesome. But my assertion is that you do actually need to supplement that with something that can be tuned on the fly to keep a stable frequency in the grid. So far the experimental designs to do so with massive “batteries” have not looked very promising to me.
A rule of thumb is that you need a minimum of 20% of your grid to be tunable. That’s a hard minimum.
We’re literally about to turn on snowy hydro 2.0 for base load AND storage
Tell me, how are the french nuclear plants dealt with the last heat wave?
You’re deflecting because you don’t have a real argument to come up with. It’s true that global warming is having a negative impact on nuclear power in France, Switzerland and other places, but it doesn’t change the fact that you need some way to keep a stable voltage and frequency over your grid.
I whole heartedly agree. And to anyone who complains about dunkelflaute, if we wouldn’t immediately burn our biogas, and instead stored it where we currently store our fossil gas, we would have a way more comfortable safety margin. Also a stronger European powergrid would be sufficient for almost all usual cases throughout the year.
This has got to be the single silliest take I have seen so far on this website, like holy shit this is pants-on-head silly