7 ms·

Totally different type of waste.

sparkie 6y ago
Both are toxic waste, but one often ends up in landfill or flytipped, and the other is safely contained underground because its developers are legally obliged to plan for its disposal and long-term storage as part of the design process. The cost of disposal is often ignored when pricing solar (PV). https://stopthesethings.com/2020/10/10/lingering-legacy-millions-of-toxic-solar-panels-that-cant-be-recycled-destined-for-landfills/amp/ https://stopthesethings.com/2020/10/10/lingering-legacy-mill...
arcticbull 6y ago
Indeed, one is the kind of waste you can drop a few oil drums of into Yucca Mountain and never have to worry about it again. On the other hand wind requires huge quantities of rare earth metals mined in open-air hellscapes in the far western reaches of China -- devastating the environment [1, 2]. So, why is it all mined in China you might ask, knowing rare earths are distributed all over the world? Specifically because developed nations are not interested in bearing the ecological burden. Solar panels frequently contain cadmium and tellurium, which both have to be mined (see above) and then leech out into the environment [3]. Then there's the human toll. Nuclear energy ends up with about 1/4 as many deaths per TWh generated as wind, 1/10 as many as rooftop solar, and 1/2 as many as industrial solar. [4] [edit] The nice thing about nuclear waste is that radiation is easy to detect. All you need is a Geiger counter and some lead underpants. Cadmium, tellurium, the run-off from refining rare earths? That's what I'm really scared of. [1] https://earth.org/rare-earth-mining-has-devastated-chinas-environment/ https://earth.org/rare-earth-mining-has-devastated-chinas-en... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/aug/07/china-rare-earth-village-pollution https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/aug/07/china-ra... [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5607867/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5607867/ [4] https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
- Klinky 6y ago
  Yucca Mountain waste depot doesn't actually exist. You put it in holding pools indefinitely and wait for the DoE to superfund the site. Nuclear fuel does not have to be mined or go through costly and toxic refinement processes? Reprocessing waste creates even larger amounts of radioactive and toxic wastes. Nuclear is far far far away from being clean. It does allow for potentially better containment and concentration of the waste, but then you have the eternal political problem of where to put that waste.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    Well sure, so long as anti-nuclear campaigners continue to prevent the construction of Yucca Mountain, they can then continue to point to why we can't have nuclear because "where would we put the waste?" The only reason Yucca Mountain doesn't exist is because of anti-nuclear campaigners. It was funded and shovel-ready until 2010. Of course nuclear fuel has to be refined and mined, however the ecological impact is relatively minuscule because of the sheer energy density of uranium as compared to the neodymium magnets used in wind generation. Nuclear power plants last 40+ years, while wind turbines have to be replaced every 20 or when damaged.
    - ebalit 6y ago
      There are research on extracting uranium from seawater instead of mining it [0]. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6g5pj9QfMg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6g5pj9QfMg
    - Klinky 6y ago
      NIMBYism is everywhere, even for solar and wind. Maybe it's a flaw of Nuclear that you have to stuff its waste in a giant pit inside a mountain. Uranium mining often uses leeching techniques, similar concerns to fracking and groundwater contamination, along with general mining hazards. Additionally rare-earth minerals are needed for a variety of things, even including components within a nuclear plant. I highly doubt a Nuclear plant could be built "rare earth metals free". Fuel rods also may contain a mix of rare earth metals. Rare-earth metal mining and refinement practices need to improve, but they will never go away.
- jka 6y ago
  Thanks for providing references - there's some subtlety in the analysis you link to (on ourworldindata.org) about the human impact of nuclear energy production. While it does state that nuclear and renewables are both comparatively much safer for humans than other forms of energy generation, it does contain two different harm rates for nuclear. You're quoting a little selectively by stating that nuclear is safer; that corresponds with the 2016 study. The other study, published in 2007, states that renewables are safer. Relevant snippet from the explainer section in the footer drop-down in the article: "The largest differentiator here is the period which the Sovacool et al. (2016) estimates cover. They report normalized death rates over the limited period from 1990 to 2013. This means the 1986 Chernobyl accident was not included. Sovacool et al. (2016) only include deaths from the Fukushima accident, with 573 attributed deaths. It is useful to note here that not all deaths were a direct result of the accident: for Fukushima, there were no direct deaths from the disaster; one confirmed death from radiation exposure; and the rest noted as premature deaths from evacuation and displacement of populations in the surrounding area."
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    Ah, you know, I actually didn't catch that until after I posted. I used to use an older source that didn't make that distinction ([1]) but I had trouble finding it and dropped in the newer one after a cursory read-through. I appreciate you adding the clarifying analysis! I think the newer one provides a more balanced take. I will say it seems disingenuous to include the death toll of the tsunami towards nuclear energy -- except of course the one individual who died of radiation exposure; I can't help but suspect the same ~500-ish people would have died had the plant been coal or oil. [1] https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-ener...
    - jka 6y ago
      No probs, thanks for the clarification! I tend to be in the camp of "nuclear power generation risks are extremely low when well-operated and maintained by responsible and effective governance". Meanwhile I'm also in the camp of "governance and maintenance tend to degrade once systems are widespread enough that people begin to be less accountable and become more complacent", which means I'm skeptical about whether scaling nuclear energy generation is a good idea.
- barney54 6y ago
  Not all generators in wind turbines require permanent magnets (which are made from rare earths). In fact most generators in wind turbines in the US do not have rare earths. But it should be said that generators with rare earths are more efficient.
- sampo 6y ago
  > https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy For some reason, the largest hydropower accident [1], 100 000 – 200 000 deaths, is always left out when calculating safety statistics for hydro. It would make hydro 100–200 more dangerous, by number of deaths. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure
- pvaldes 6y ago
  I wonder why they needed to borrow 1500 millions of euro just to make urgently a concrete tomb to enclose this kind of waste when we could just dump a few oil drums somewhere instead. Or just, ehem... dump it illegally in the sea for free.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    Uh what? One's a disaster site, which needs expensive remediation. One's steady state generation of waste in a well-run reactor.

Both are toxic waste, but one often ends up in landfill or flytipped, and the other is safely contained underground because its developers are legally obliged to plan for its disposal and long-term storage as part of the design process. The cost of disposal is often ignored when pricing solar (PV). https://stopthesethings.com/2020/10/10/lingering-legacy-millions-of-toxic-solar-panels-that-cant-be-recycled-destined-for-landfills/amp/ https://stopthesethings.com/2020/10/10/lingering-legacy-mill...

arcticbull 6y ago

Indeed, one is the kind of waste you can drop a few oil drums of into Yucca Mountain and never have to worry about it again. On the other hand wind requires huge quantities of rare earth metals mined in open-air hellscapes in the far western reaches of China -- devastating the environment [1, 2]. So, why is it all mined in China you might ask, knowing rare earths are distributed all over the world? Specifically because developed nations are not interested in bearing the ecological burden. Solar panels frequently contain cadmium and tellurium, which both have to be mined (see above) and then leech out into the environment [3]. Then there's the human toll. Nuclear energy ends up with about 1/4 as many deaths per TWh generated as wind, 1/10 as many as rooftop solar, and 1/2 as many as industrial solar. [4] [edit] The nice thing about nuclear waste is that radiation is easy to detect. All you need is a Geiger counter and some lead underpants. Cadmium, tellurium, the run-off from refining rare earths? That's what I'm really scared of. [1] https://earth.org/rare-earth-mining-has-devastated-chinas-environment/ https://earth.org/rare-earth-mining-has-devastated-chinas-en... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/aug/07/china-rare-earth-village-pollution https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/aug/07/china-ra... [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5607867/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5607867/ [4] https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

Klinky 6y ago
Yucca Mountain waste depot doesn't actually exist. You put it in holding pools indefinitely and wait for the DoE to superfund the site. Nuclear fuel does not have to be mined or go through costly and toxic refinement processes? Reprocessing waste creates even larger amounts of radioactive and toxic wastes. Nuclear is far far far away from being clean. It does allow for potentially better containment and concentration of the waste, but then you have the eternal political problem of where to put that waste.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Well sure, so long as anti-nuclear campaigners continue to prevent the construction of Yucca Mountain, they can then continue to point to why we can't have nuclear because "where would we put the waste?" The only reason Yucca Mountain doesn't exist is because of anti-nuclear campaigners. It was funded and shovel-ready until 2010. Of course nuclear fuel has to be refined and mined, however the ecological impact is relatively minuscule because of the sheer energy density of uranium as compared to the neodymium magnets used in wind generation. Nuclear power plants last 40+ years, while wind turbines have to be replaced every 20 or when damaged.
  - ebalit 6y ago
    There are research on extracting uranium from seawater instead of mining it [0]. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6g5pj9QfMg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6g5pj9QfMg
  - Klinky 6y ago
    NIMBYism is everywhere, even for solar and wind. Maybe it's a flaw of Nuclear that you have to stuff its waste in a giant pit inside a mountain. Uranium mining often uses leeching techniques, similar concerns to fracking and groundwater contamination, along with general mining hazards. Additionally rare-earth minerals are needed for a variety of things, even including components within a nuclear plant. I highly doubt a Nuclear plant could be built "rare earth metals free". Fuel rods also may contain a mix of rare earth metals. Rare-earth metal mining and refinement practices need to improve, but they will never go away.
jka 6y ago
Thanks for providing references - there's some subtlety in the analysis you link to (on ourworldindata.org) about the human impact of nuclear energy production. While it does state that nuclear and renewables are both comparatively much safer for humans than other forms of energy generation, it does contain two different harm rates for nuclear. You're quoting a little selectively by stating that nuclear is safer; that corresponds with the 2016 study. The other study, published in 2007, states that renewables are safer. Relevant snippet from the explainer section in the footer drop-down in the article: "The largest differentiator here is the period which the Sovacool et al. (2016) estimates cover. They report normalized death rates over the limited period from 1990 to 2013. This means the 1986 Chernobyl accident was not included. Sovacool et al. (2016) only include deaths from the Fukushima accident, with 573 attributed deaths. It is useful to note here that not all deaths were a direct result of the accident: for Fukushima, there were no direct deaths from the disaster; one confirmed death from radiation exposure; and the rest noted as premature deaths from evacuation and displacement of populations in the surrounding area."
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Ah, you know, I actually didn't catch that until after I posted. I used to use an older source that didn't make that distinction ([1]) but I had trouble finding it and dropped in the newer one after a cursory read-through. I appreciate you adding the clarifying analysis! I think the newer one provides a more balanced take. I will say it seems disingenuous to include the death toll of the tsunami towards nuclear energy -- except of course the one individual who died of radiation exposure; I can't help but suspect the same ~500-ish people would have died had the plant been coal or oil. [1] https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-ener...
  - jka 6y ago
    No probs, thanks for the clarification! I tend to be in the camp of "nuclear power generation risks are extremely low when well-operated and maintained by responsible and effective governance". Meanwhile I'm also in the camp of "governance and maintenance tend to degrade once systems are widespread enough that people begin to be less accountable and become more complacent", which means I'm skeptical about whether scaling nuclear energy generation is a good idea.
barney54 6y ago
Not all generators in wind turbines require permanent magnets (which are made from rare earths). In fact most generators in wind turbines in the US do not have rare earths. But it should be said that generators with rare earths are more efficient.
sampo 6y ago
> https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy For some reason, the largest hydropower accident [1], 100 000 – 200 000 deaths, is always left out when calculating safety statistics for hydro. It would make hydro 100–200 more dangerous, by number of deaths. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure
pvaldes 6y ago
I wonder why they needed to borrow 1500 millions of euro just to make urgently a concrete tomb to enclose this kind of waste when we could just dump a few oil drums somewhere instead. Or just, ehem... dump it illegally in the sea for free.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Uh what? One's a disaster site, which needs expensive remediation. One's steady state generation of waste in a well-run reactor.