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You are aware that nuclear power is not considered renewable by the majority of people correct? That puts Ontario at less than 50% renewable.
by hervature 6y ago
You are aware that nuclear power is not considered renewable by the majority of people correct? That puts Ontario at less than 50% renewable.
- yabones 6y agoYou're technically correct, and what I should have said was 'zero-carbon emitting sources' as was in the source. But for practical purposes there is so much Uranium on this planet that we'll most likely never even use 1% of it. Especially when you factor in newer or experimental reactor designs such as fast breeder reactors [1] that can generate even more power and use waste materials from current systems. So yes, it is technically not a renewable source of energy, but there is such abundance of fuel that it's not 'non-renewable' the way Coal or Gas is. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Fast_breeder_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Fast_breeder_r...
- marmaduke 6y agoAren’t waste disposal sites effectively non-renewable uses of natural space?
- ethanwillis 6y agoThe amount of all nuclear waste ever produced takes up about the space of a football field.
- objclxt 6y ago> The amount of all nuclear waste ever produced takes up about the space of a football field No. Let’s be generous and use a soccer field, which is bigger than a NFL field, at 7,100 m3. There is about 22,000 m3 of high level nuclear waste globally, according to the IAEA. That’s the really bad stuff. There’s 460,000 m3 of intermediate level (sludge, reactor cladding, etc), and 3,479,000 m3 of low level. So yeah, considerably more than the space of a football field. [source: https://nda.blog.gov.uk/2019/08/02/how-much-radioactive-waste-is-there-in-the-world/ https://nda.blog.gov.uk/2019/08/02/how-much-radioactive-wast...]
- daurnimator 6y agoHow are you going from size of a field (which should be square meters) to volume (meters cubed)? The MCG (an australian football field) is 25,000 square meters. The stadium holds approx 1,700,000 cubic metres. "Football field" is a highly regional term.... lets not measure things in them?
- ethanwillis 6y agoJust a quick clarification. My comment wasn't clear I wanted to talk about waste from reactors specifically, but yes there is more nuclear waste if you do include all sources. Why don't we talk about the difference between high level nuclear waste(HLW), intermediate level waste(ILW), and low level waste (LLW)? The volume breakdown for nuclear waste is roughly LLW 90% ILW 7% HLW 3% "Radioactivity" contribution breakdown is like so. LLW 1% ILW 4% HLW 95% [1] https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-wastes/radioactive-waste-management.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fu...
- swebs 6y ago>7,100 m3 You mean 7,100 m2. 22,000 cubic meters would fit in there if you stacked it just over 3 meters high.
- kobbe 6y agoThe same is true for solar that is not easily recyclable.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 6y agoIf we're speaking of reality as opposed to theory, "renewables" was coined by environmentalists, and their exclusion of nuclear power has simply become part of the commonly-understood definition of term, except in the State of Utah. And even though I get why one would believe that nuclear power should be included among Solar/Hydro/etc., it's slightly funny that proponents of nuclear power start start their pitch with "technically, nuclear is also..." when, technically, it clearly isn't.
- Akronymus 6y agoOn top of that, we are VERY likely gonna get either fusion or space based mining within the time we have left before exhausting the "easily" reached uranium.
- pfdietz 6y agoFusion is very questionable -- it has inherently poor features from an engineering/cost point of view, and space is a terrible place to mine uranium or thorium. Earth is actually the best place in the solar system to mine uranium, as the element is concentrated by something like three orders of magnitude in the continental crust over average chondritic abundance.
- tonyarkles 6y agoIf you replace “renewable” with “not based on burning hydrocarbons”, you’ve still got a dramatically better source of electricity than what most of the world uses.
- AngryData 6y agoIm not sure uranium or other radiological material is really rare enough to call it non-renewable. Technically it isn't, but technically the sun doesn't last forever either. Nuclear materials can be found basically everywhere with rock or dirt, and much of it is recyclable into other nuclear materials down to the tiniest little bits. Just because we currently only want the richest and cheapest and least power intensive mines doesn't mean that is all we have available. It is like worrying about running out of iron, technically yes but realistically no.
- rmason 6y agoThorium 'the green nuke' powered plants produce 1/1000 as much waste as uranium powered ones. They're also virtually impossible to melt down though to be fair they're more expensive to build. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power We already had thorium plants run by the TVA as late as the early seventies. Research would be needed to modernize those designs, money our government has refused to spend. China, India and other countries have thorium research projects. The Netherlands just brought the first thorium powered plant online since the fifties. https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/254692-new-molten-salt-thorium-reactor-first-time-decades https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/254692-new-molten-salt-t...
- dredmorbius 6y agoThorium plants also have the unfortunate characteristic of not existing in deployable commercial form (and only very barely in experimental form).
- arcticbull 6y agoCANDU reactors support mixed Uranium and Thorium fuel. "CANDU can also breed fuel from the more abundant thorium. This is being investigated by India to take advantage of its natural thorium reserves." [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor
- dredmorbius 6y agoThanks, noted.
- arcticbull 6y agoI think the reason they don't go the Thorium route is that Uranium is just so abundant -- and so incredibly energy dense -- there's not a hugely compelling reason to switch to Thorium.
- glogla 6y agoThat's one of the issues with current energy policy of most of the world - the terminology and thinking is stuck in the days when everyone thought the problem is we're going to run out of oil or coal or whatever. But that's not the problem humanity faces today - we will all die of climate change decades sooner than we run out of oil or gas or uranium. We should be focused on low/zero-carbon energy and not on renewability.