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You can't replace most of air pollution with nuclear power. And increasing nuclear fuel and waste production to anywhere near the necessary levels should give

You can't replace most of air pollution with nuclear power. And increasing nuclear fuel and waste production to anywhere near the necessary levels should give any environmentalist nightmares. Things do go wrong, and it's ridiculous to believe the required scale up would be possible with the current high regulatory standards. Especially with some of the major polluters not being known for their absence of corruption...

otikik 5y ago
> You can't replace most of air pollution with nuclear power. It can replace most of coal-based electricity generators. It cannot replace everything. It needs solar, wind, and whatever else we can come up with (recycling, increases in efficiency, etc.) > And increasing nuclear fuel and waste production to anywhere near the necessary levels should give any environmentalist nightmares Waste is also discussed on the video, near the end. Coal's waste goes directly into the atmosphere, where it does harm and cannot be easily captured back. Things are already "going wrong" with that. When solar panels end in landfills, they bring a lot of heavy metals (like cadmium). If "things go wrong" those also are a nightmare. So, yeah: we are already on an environmentalist nightmare. The question is what do we do from here.
- bayesian_horse 5y ago
  Radioactive material in the ground water or food cycle would be much worse than anything related to coal burning. And there are several ways for it to get there unless there is an iron tight fist of regulation and compliance. Even then, it has happened. And your argument assumes replacing all fossil fuel with nuclear power, which means all the developing countries, all the dictatorships etc handling lots of radioactive material. I'm sure they'll all be responsible with it and not let anything spill over to other countries, right? And that's even assuming best intentions. I'm not a fan of fossil fuels. I'm grudgingly on board with my countries plan because nuclear power is no sustainable option for us. Both politically and technologically. We can get rid of coal plants a lot faster than we can decommission nuclear plants and store the waste...

otikik 5y ago

> You can't replace most of air pollution with nuclear power. It can replace most of coal-based electricity generators. It cannot replace everything. It needs solar, wind, and whatever else we can come up with (recycling, increases in efficiency, etc.) > And increasing nuclear fuel and waste production to anywhere near the necessary levels should give any environmentalist nightmares Waste is also discussed on the video, near the end. Coal's waste goes directly into the atmosphere, where it does harm and cannot be easily captured back. Things are already "going wrong" with that. When solar panels end in landfills, they bring a lot of heavy metals (like cadmium). If "things go wrong" those also are a nightmare. So, yeah: we are already on an environmentalist nightmare. The question is what do we do from here.

bayesian_horse 5y ago
Radioactive material in the ground water or food cycle would be much worse than anything related to coal burning. And there are several ways for it to get there unless there is an iron tight fist of regulation and compliance. Even then, it has happened. And your argument assumes replacing all fossil fuel with nuclear power, which means all the developing countries, all the dictatorships etc handling lots of radioactive material. I'm sure they'll all be responsible with it and not let anything spill over to other countries, right? And that's even assuming best intentions. I'm not a fan of fossil fuels. I'm grudgingly on board with my countries plan because nuclear power is no sustainable option for us. Both politically and technologically. We can get rid of coal plants a lot faster than we can decommission nuclear plants and store the waste...