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Far, far less than normal nuclear reactors. But the real reason I'm replying is to ask why the waste factor is only ever brought up for nuclear, and not for co
by agent327 5y ago
Far, far less than normal nuclear reactors.
But the real reason I'm replying is to ask why the waste factor is only ever brought up for nuclear, and not for coal (which also emits radiation into the atmosphere), wind (do you know how old turbine blades are disposed?), gas (where does the CO2 go?), etc.
Nuclear waste is such an overblown risk. If something is highly radioactive, it won't be radioactive for long. If it is lowly radioactive, it isn't a big problem to begin with. Conflating these two things so that people think that waste is both highly radioactive and radioactive forever was a fantastic trick by the environmental lobby, and one that has almost certainly doomed the ecosphere since instead of relying on clean nuclear power, we continued to rely on fossil fuels, adding decades of emissions to the atmosphere. Talk about a Pyrrhic victory...
- gefhfff 5y agoI follow along regarding CO2, because it has the most massive cost. However, I am not convinced that the blades are near the problems regarding nuclear waste The question is how long do you have to deal with that waste and how much it costs for that entire duration.
- agent327 5y agoNo, that's not the question at all. You are lumping together all forms of nuclear waste, and applying the long-term storage requirement of the least dangerous waste to the dangerous waste that is only radioactive for a few decades. Pretending that there is even a need to securely store material for millennia when equally radioactive products are found everywhere in the Earth's crust is disingenuous. Below a certain level it isn't any more dangerous than loads of other chemicals we have lying around that nobody cares about.