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Nuclear is hardly renewable. Every uranium pellet has to be mined (a carbon-intensive and highly polluting process) and none of the reprocessing methods we've t

Nuclear is hardly renewable. Every uranium pellet has to be mined (a carbon-intensive and highly polluting process) and none of the reprocessing methods we've tried so far are viable (which is why we don't try it anymore.) Hydro? We gave up on that in the US a long time ago because of the environmental impact of screwing with the water flow. I did see something a few years ago about a new type of hydro that worked in-line with the water flow using small turbines alongside a river. It put the water back into the river after spinning the turbines so as to minimize the environmental impact.

AmericanChopper 8y ago
>and none of the reprocessing methods we've tried so far are viable (which is why we don't try it anymore.) This is an outright lie. Fast reactors which produce negligible waste (and which can be fueled by existing stored waste) are proven to be viable, have been used in the past, and are currently in use now in some places. The reason they are not being widely developed is entirely political.
- mimixco 8y ago
  Here's what Wikipedia says (source quoted there): In 2010 the International Panel on Fissile Materials said "After six decades and the expenditure of the equivalent of tens of billions of dollars, the promise of breeder reactors remains largely unfulfilled and efforts to commercialize them have been steadily cut back in most countries". In Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, breeder reactor development programs have been abandoned. Is there some economically viable breeder reactor that you know of? Where is it? Even the base plants aren't economically self-sustaining. If governments didn't subsidize nuclear, no company would be involved at all.
  - AmericanChopper 8y ago
    Russia has two commercial operating ones. There are numerous experimental ones around the world, and India and China are both currently building them. They can also be used to recycle nuclear waste from normal thermal reactors. The only reason they’re not being widely developed is misguided political opposition to them, the same reason traditional thermal reactors are no longer being built.
    - mimixco 8y ago
      The two reasons new plants aren't being built are costs (in the US) and safety concerns (in the EU). Of course, these are the same issue. The industry doesn't like to have it pointed out that costs are out of control because of the attempts to make the plants safe.
      - AmericanChopper 8y ago
        The safety concerns are anti-scientific misinformation. Even presuming that absolutely no progress had been made in nuclear safety, and that accident rates would be identical to what they were in the 20th century, in perpetuity (which is obviously absurd), nuclear power poses orders of magnitude less risk to lives and the environment than fossil fuels do. Capital costs are higher for sure, but even taking that into account, the cost of production over the lifespan of a plant are quite competitive with other sources. Nuclear power can also be scaled more readily and reliably than solar, wind and hydro, and has far less operating costs than all of them. The primary barrier to adoption of nuclear power is public sentiment, which is based almost entirely upon misinformation and FUD.

AmericanChopper 8y ago

>and none of the reprocessing methods we've tried so far are viable (which is why we don't try it anymore.) This is an outright lie. Fast reactors which produce negligible waste (and which can be fueled by existing stored waste) are proven to be viable, have been used in the past, and are currently in use now in some places. The reason they are not being widely developed is entirely political.

mimixco 8y ago
Here's what Wikipedia says (source quoted there): In 2010 the International Panel on Fissile Materials said "After six decades and the expenditure of the equivalent of tens of billions of dollars, the promise of breeder reactors remains largely unfulfilled and efforts to commercialize them have been steadily cut back in most countries". In Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, breeder reactor development programs have been abandoned. Is there some economically viable breeder reactor that you know of? Where is it? Even the base plants aren't economically self-sustaining. If governments didn't subsidize nuclear, no company would be involved at all.
- AmericanChopper 8y ago
  Russia has two commercial operating ones. There are numerous experimental ones around the world, and India and China are both currently building them. They can also be used to recycle nuclear waste from normal thermal reactors. The only reason they’re not being widely developed is misguided political opposition to them, the same reason traditional thermal reactors are no longer being built.
  - mimixco 8y ago
    The two reasons new plants aren't being built are costs (in the US) and safety concerns (in the EU). Of course, these are the same issue. The industry doesn't like to have it pointed out that costs are out of control because of the attempts to make the plants safe.
    - AmericanChopper 8y ago
      The safety concerns are anti-scientific misinformation. Even presuming that absolutely no progress had been made in nuclear safety, and that accident rates would be identical to what they were in the 20th century, in perpetuity (which is obviously absurd), nuclear power poses orders of magnitude less risk to lives and the environment than fossil fuels do. Capital costs are higher for sure, but even taking that into account, the cost of production over the lifespan of a plant are quite competitive with other sources. Nuclear power can also be scaled more readily and reliably than solar, wind and hydro, and has far less operating costs than all of them. The primary barrier to adoption of nuclear power is public sentiment, which is based almost entirely upon misinformation and FUD.