4 ms·

Nuclear was the first kind of energy production without externalized costs (mostly). Solar seems pretty good, but i think the manufacturing is pretty toxic. I g

• legulere 11y ago
  Nuclear waste management is a partly externalized cost (nuclear waste will outlive the companies that produced them). Sometimes decomissioning is externalized (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300#Decommissioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300#Decommissioning). The effects of Uranium mining are externalized (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wismut_(mining_company)#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wismut_(mining_company)#Histor...). The effects of Chernobyl and Fukushima were externalized. E.g. many boars are still too radioactive for human consumption in Germany.
• nickpsecurity 11y ago
  Are these things you're comparing nuclear to guaranteed to be a problem for thousands of years? Or are they just chemicals that we might recombine or destroy in various ways? I'm pretty sure they're the latter. I'm not aware of anything that turns radioactive waste into non-radioactive waste. Far as toxic waste, we could always build more of these maybe: http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/energy/plasma-converter.htm http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/energy/plasma... Even that article mentions a specific type of waste as an exception that can cause fire or explosions in the equipment. Even mighty plasma has trouble with it. What hope is there for other methods? ;)
  • pdkl95 11y ago
    > I'm not aware of anything that turns radioactive waste into non-radioactive waste. You use a breeder reactor. Some of the designs for thorium breeders, for example, can be used to process existing waste from other reactors. > guaranteed to be a problem for thousands of years? Note that it gets safer over time as it decays, and in general the radiation danger of an isotope goes down the longer the half-life. Once you get into the particularly long lived isotopes, the radiation danger becomes very small. Also, the amount of waste is trivial; nuclear power only makes a millionth the waste as traditional power, because of the vast difference in usable energy density. Even if you consider the waste that stays around for "thousands of years", that's a short time compared to some types of chemical waste that doesn't decay. How many Superfund sites already exist?[1] There are quite a few in Silicon Valley[2]. [1] http://toxmap-classic.nlm.nih.gov/toxmap/combo/mapControls.do http://toxmap-classic.nlm.nih.gov/toxmap/combo/mapControls.d... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites_in_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites_in_Cal...
    • nickpsecurity 11y ago
      "Even if you consider the waste that stays around for "thousands of years", that's a short time compared to some types of chemical waste that doesn't decay." I did mention a plasma converter and the possibility of chemical options coming up down the line. Not many possibilities like that for nuclear.
      • pdkl95 11y ago
        > I did mention a plasma converter and the possibility of chemical options coming up down the line. Yes, you did. You also (correctly) suggest we aren't actually going to solve all chemical pollutant problems with plasma converters. That's an interesting tech that should be useful in some areas, but even then chemical pollution is still a far bigger problem than the nuclear power industry ever will be. > Not many possibilities like that for nuclear. I did mention a breeder reactor and that nuclear power converts a microscopic[1] amount of fuel into waster for the same energy. Not only is nuclear waste a solved problem, it's utterly ridiculous to compare such trivial amounts of waste to what other industries produce. [1] literally micro- as in 1/1,000,000 (because we get much more energy[2] from U or Th) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Energy_densities_of_common_energy_storage_materials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Energy_densitie...