Scientists in California make a significant step in what could one day be an important solution to the global climate crisis, driven primarily by burning fossil fuels.
Does Nuclear count as Green Energy? I feel like it should, since it doesn’t really pollute and lasts a lot.
Debating whether or not fission is green has given the fossil fuel industry free rein over energy production for the last 60 years.
We could have a Fukushima every year and a Chernobyl every 5 and it would pale in comparison to the loss of life and habitable land we’d be giving up to climate change.
We could have a Chernobyl every 5 years and losing less lives than we do through the lung diseases caused by the air pollution or oil vehicles. There was a study in France showing that (every 5 years is a low estimate, actual numbers hinted at 2-3 years).
If we had gone full nuclear and full electric in the 90s (like we could have) we would not have a climate crisis right now (and the Iraq war, and petro-monarchies with an abusive amount of power). Nuclear has its problem, but CO2 is not one of them and the others are much easier to solve.
Thorium-salt breeder reactors have been effectively ignored by most major nuclear energy players for 60 years now, and they solve most of these problems…but nobody is building them. Likely the fossil fuel industry is behind that.
Counterpoint: every nuclear disaster in history, and all the waste nuclear power has ever produced, is absolutely miniscule compared to the damage burning fossil fuels has already done and will continue to do in the coming decades.
Every oil spill, every mountain ripped open to pull out coal, every jet airplane, every bunker-fueled container ship, every single ICE automobile, all combining to make the atmosphere worse and worse…the oceans are rising and getting more acidic. Wild species are going extinct by the thousands. Weather has gotten worse and more extreme.
The damage may literally be incalculable. Millions of people have already died from the cancers and natural disasters fossil fuels have caused.
The death toll of nuclear energy? Thousands at most.
Nuclear energy may not be perfect but it is a far better alternative.
Nuclear is absolutely green! The reason that nuclear energy is popular is that it’s remarkably easy to convert an old coal power plant into a nuclear one, all you need to do is strip out the insides, maybe modify some stuff, but the overall structure can remain pretty much the same. Thorium reactors are also much greener than the existing Uranium/Plutonium ones, with Thorium being ~3x as plentiful in earth’s crust compared to uranium. Additionally, it doesn’t require much of the very expensive ventilation equipment for mines as it doesn’t produce radon gas when it decays. And the best part is that Thorium reactors are meltdown-proof. The thorium can’t fission on its own, it needs a helper material like Plutonium, meaning you can basically just flush the thorium away and it immediately stops the reaction.
If they take ten years to build, start now. Nuclear plants offset 400 million tons of CO2 a year in the US alone. All the waste produced since the 1950’s would fit just over 9 meters deep on a single football field. Yes there’s mining, it’s not great, guess what? Solar panels and wind turbines also require mining. The open pit sort, the sort with wastewater containing the ever-perfidious radioactive elements. All in all, for each ton of rare earth elements extracted, about 2,000 tons of toxic waste is produced, 1-1.4 tons of which are radioactive, usually thorium and uranium funnily enough. A point of interest on the waste, the tailing dam of the Bayan OBO mine in China, responsible for only half the world’s rare earth elements, is around 70 million m3, the nuclear waste I previously mentioned comes in at 49,000 m3, or 0.07% of the volume of a single mine.
All this to say, let’s build solar panels, wind turbines and nuclear reactors, because we’re in the harm reduction phase, and nuclear reactors are a fantastic tool even if they have downsides, just like everything else.
Hi! So the other person completely demolished you, which is fine and none of my business, but it’s never a good idea to insult the person you’re debating against if you’re trying to change their opinion.
Nuclear is not the same as fossil fuels but it is, per dollar spent and per megawatt made and by waste produced, the best solution we have right this instant. Nuclear reactors last 30+ years when built and nothing in current green energy technology has that kind of longevity as far as I know.
Green energy has peaks and valleys over a given day and current electrical grids are not built for that kind of short-term storage. Nuclear solves that problem.
Battery-powered devices like electric cars also depend on mining, you know. Don’t solar panels also have electrical circuits that require mined minerals?
I know the United States had a working thorium-salt reactor, running inside a flying airplane, back in the 60’s. It was abandoned because uranium was already in steady supply from nuclear weapons development.
What’s the problem? It’s a perfectly viable technology and has been proven to work at least once. I have heard China has been experimenting with them in recent years but haven’t looked into it.
deleted by creator
Debating whether or not fission is green has given the fossil fuel industry free rein over energy production for the last 60 years.
We could have a Fukushima every year and a Chernobyl every 5 and it would pale in comparison to the loss of life and habitable land we’d be giving up to climate change.
We could have a Chernobyl every 5 years and losing less lives than we do through the lung diseases caused by the air pollution or oil vehicles. There was a study in France showing that (every 5 years is a low estimate, actual numbers hinted at 2-3 years).
deleted by creator
If you repeat it enough time it will become true…
If we had gone full nuclear and full electric in the 90s (like we could have) we would not have a climate crisis right now (and the Iraq war, and petro-monarchies with an abusive amount of power). Nuclear has its problem, but CO2 is not one of them and the others are much easier to solve.
deleted by creator
Best argument ever.
Thorium-salt breeder reactors have been effectively ignored by most major nuclear energy players for 60 years now, and they solve most of these problems…but nobody is building them. Likely the fossil fuel industry is behind that.
Counterpoint: every nuclear disaster in history, and all the waste nuclear power has ever produced, is absolutely miniscule compared to the damage burning fossil fuels has already done and will continue to do in the coming decades.
Every oil spill, every mountain ripped open to pull out coal, every jet airplane, every bunker-fueled container ship, every single ICE automobile, all combining to make the atmosphere worse and worse…the oceans are rising and getting more acidic. Wild species are going extinct by the thousands. Weather has gotten worse and more extreme. The damage may literally be incalculable. Millions of people have already died from the cancers and natural disasters fossil fuels have caused. The death toll of nuclear energy? Thousands at most.
Nuclear energy may not be perfect but it is a far better alternative.
deleted by creator
Nuclear is absolutely green! The reason that nuclear energy is popular is that it’s remarkably easy to convert an old coal power plant into a nuclear one, all you need to do is strip out the insides, maybe modify some stuff, but the overall structure can remain pretty much the same. Thorium reactors are also much greener than the existing Uranium/Plutonium ones, with Thorium being ~3x as plentiful in earth’s crust compared to uranium. Additionally, it doesn’t require much of the very expensive ventilation equipment for mines as it doesn’t produce radon gas when it decays. And the best part is that Thorium reactors are meltdown-proof. The thorium can’t fission on its own, it needs a helper material like Plutonium, meaning you can basically just flush the thorium away and it immediately stops the reaction.
deleted by creator
If they take ten years to build, start now. Nuclear plants offset 400 million tons of CO2 a year in the US alone. All the waste produced since the 1950’s would fit just over 9 meters deep on a single football field. Yes there’s mining, it’s not great, guess what? Solar panels and wind turbines also require mining. The open pit sort, the sort with wastewater containing the ever-perfidious radioactive elements. All in all, for each ton of rare earth elements extracted, about 2,000 tons of toxic waste is produced, 1-1.4 tons of which are radioactive, usually thorium and uranium funnily enough. A point of interest on the waste, the tailing dam of the Bayan OBO mine in China, responsible for only half the world’s rare earth elements, is around 70 million m3, the nuclear waste I previously mentioned comes in at 49,000 m3, or 0.07% of the volume of a single mine.
All this to say, let’s build solar panels, wind turbines and nuclear reactors, because we’re in the harm reduction phase, and nuclear reactors are a fantastic tool even if they have downsides, just like everything else.
deleted by creator
Oh, apologies, I assumed you could read. Never mind.
Hi! So the other person completely demolished you, which is fine and none of my business, but it’s never a good idea to insult the person you’re debating against if you’re trying to change their opinion.
Maybe you need to calm down.
Nuclear is not the same as fossil fuels but it is, per dollar spent and per megawatt made and by waste produced, the best solution we have right this instant. Nuclear reactors last 30+ years when built and nothing in current green energy technology has that kind of longevity as far as I know. Green energy has peaks and valleys over a given day and current electrical grids are not built for that kind of short-term storage. Nuclear solves that problem. Battery-powered devices like electric cars also depend on mining, you know. Don’t solar panels also have electrical circuits that require mined minerals?
And the thorium bros are in the Fediverse now too… Great…
I know the United States had a working thorium-salt reactor, running inside a flying airplane, back in the 60’s. It was abandoned because uranium was already in steady supply from nuclear weapons development.
What’s the problem? It’s a perfectly viable technology and has been proven to work at least once. I have heard China has been experimenting with them in recent years but haven’t looked into it.