3 ms·

96% of the mass of nuclear "waste" is uranium 238. This can be fissioned when neutron are 1000 times faster. This occurs in fast reactors. Uranium 238 is unuse

• qiqitori 7y ago
  > Solar and Wind use ten times the cement and steel to generate the same power as nuclear. I'd be interested in a reference for this. My intuition goes like this: I can see wind using a lot of steel and cement for the towers (though masts built incorporating other materials do exist) and solar using just a small amount of cement and steel -- but solar doesn't produce much power for the same area compared to a nuclear power plant, so I can see that amounting to a lot of steel and cement if you build a bunch of solar in the same way you'd build nuclear power plants. However, solar power plants and some wind power are often not far away from where the power will be used, which means that less steel is used for the electrical masts and power lines. And solar is often mounted on roofs, which means that very little structural cement is needed. Plus... while the article says that solar and wind power needs to be replaced every 20-25 years (note: there are turbines in operation that are older than that), when you replace a wind turbine, you'll often keep the tower and just replace the turbine on the top, so it's not like you need to scrap the whole thing every 20-25 years.