When green energy harms the enviroment

[Creed of Heresy]

Yeah, on this I'm not being a pessimist, I'm just being a realist; nuclear power is, currently, the best of both worlds compromising. Wind power is a pain in the ass and not very space-efficient, and its power production is pretty low. Solar power is subject to the whims of cloud cover, not to mention the expense and difficulty in manufacturing photovoltaic cells, and since they are plastics-heavy, manufacturing them isn't very clean, either, and they DO need to be replaced fairly consistently. Hydroelectric power is great...you know, for regions that have large, rapid-flowing rivers. For those that don't, it's as useful as an asshole on your elbow. Geothermal energy is very expensive to start up; you're drilling miles into the ground to set up turbines there and fuck knows what'll happen if the tectonic plates shift there...probably nothing good. Biofuels still blast CO2 into the sky, and tidal energy...man, I have no fucking clue how they're gonna manage that shit. If they can, though, good on 'em. Still doesn't power anything in-land though and you'll have to devour coasts just to power their regions which I think the beachgoers will be pretty pissed off about...

Nuclear power can get us to fusion power and from there we can start to look at more waste-free and more sustainable long-term methods for powering stuff.

[Something completely different]

@ German "The waste" is a problem for any energy producing technology (solar is dirty, so is wind and tidal and geo and bio.......), Imma go out on a limb and say "the waste" from nuclear has thusfar not presented quite the problem tht the waste from fossil fuels has, nor is it actually so difficult to successfully sequester that waste. You just keep it dry and keep it deep. You know, in places like the place we purpose built for nuclear waste but decided to defund not for technical or safety reasons...but for political ones.......
:hangs head in shame for america:

You cannot equate one evil with another.
Sure nuclear energy doesnt cause waste that harms the climate.
And I am unaware of the waste which wind and solar causes.

Point is, nuclear energy is not an alternative to fossil fuels because it produces nuclear waste and has proven to have catastophic consequences when accidents occure.

Plus. To simply "keep it cold and dry" is not "simple".
The ground is a constantly moving and not always dry thing.
Adding to that, one has to store the waste for a million year.
Maybe big numbers have turned to seem little with todays value of money and ecetera, but let me make it clear: A million years is a long time!
Who will pay the costs of storing the stuff? who will give the guarantee of safety? where can it be stored safely and if nowhere how can it be put out of storage and repositioned?

Do you have any idea what a logistical mastery that would require?
Not to mention the enormous amounts of money one would need to spend.

And who would pay that money? The energy companies? - Do you even believe that these will exist for the upcoming 1 000 000 years???

Nope, nuclear power is simply not worth the risk.

[KichigaiNeko]

And just WHY are we sending our sewerage into the ocean?

Well.

You are


I know that it is illegal here to do it per legislation from the EU parlament.
To be fair it was made to prohibit France from dumping it`s nuclear waste into the ocean.
Yet it prohibts dumping any kind of waste into the ocean on a state and corporate scale.

I'm busy doing PA/EA stuff ....,..

but will check on Australia's sewerage outflows and just exactly WTF we ARE pumping into our international waters.

[pocaracas]

TGAC, the half-life of plutonium is something of he order of 10000 years, not a million.
And current state of the art fission power plants, as well as the future ones, are capable of burning these old wastes, so as to return as little as possible radioactivity to waste facilities.

Fusion is an alternative, but the reactor's inner walls become activated and need to be replaced every 10 or so years, while their activation takes some 100 years to dissipate (radioactive half-life of about 100 years), and then can be put back into the reactor. Studies are underway to develop new materials which yield lower activation thus requiring less downtime, but it's going at "research pace".

You did raise an interesting point, there... perhaps unknowingly.
Transport of radioactive material from reactor to waste processing facility is probably the most hazardous moment for these materials.
Leaks are more probable, because mobile containers are less efficient than buildings with tons and tons of concrete.
Theft is a possibility, that's why these transport vessels have a lot of police escort.... but even so, they're still a juicy target.
Ol'fashioned terrorism - it's much simpler to blow up a truck on the road than a heavily guarded building.

[Creed of Heresy]

Poc: Just to point out, a friend of my brother drives a truck for a company that handles nuclear waste from nuclear reactors. I asked him about the shipping methods and he tells me that the trucks themselves are lead-lined and hardened so that even in the case of a full-on crash with another semi, the transport housing won't be breached. They also do not stick to a particular schedule or route, so good luck to the terrorists trying to predict where they will be and when, especially since the trucks are unmarked. It's not like they're just tossing these barrels in a random semi and waving toodle-oo to it at the same time every day. There's actually a metric fuckton of regulations in the US for nuclear waste disposal and the handling methods.

---

TGAC: I respectfully disagree. It is a VERY viable alternative to fossil fuels, for all the reasons so far listed. As has been pointed out, almost every 4G reactor basically consumes its own waste for additional power. Plus we're not talking about using this indefinitely for a a million years. Or even 1000 years. Maybe a hundred at most. Even if the waste DID last a million years, I'm pretty sure that we'd devise a way to deal with it at some point in that incredibly epic time-frame. I mean, hell, as has been pointed out, current reactors already consume the radioactive decay of the toxic waste produced. Might want to take a few steps outside of the Radical Green Zone for a few minutes and think sensibility rather than just screaming "NO!!" Facts support nuclear power, all there is to it.

[Something completely different]

TGAC, the half-life of plutonium is something of he order of 10000 years, not a million.
And current state of the art fission power plants, as well as the future ones, are capable of burning these old wastes, so as to return as little as possible radioactivity to waste facilities.

Fusion is an alternative, but the reactor's inner walls become activated and need to be replaced every 10 or so years, while their activation takes some 100 years to dissipate (radioactive half-life of about 100 years), and then can be put back into the reactor. Studies are underway to develop new materials which yield lower activation thus requiring less downtime, but it's going at "research pace".

You did raise an interesting point, there... perhaps unknowingly.
Transport of radioactive material from reactor to waste processing facility is probably the most hazardous moment for these materials.
Leaks are more probable, because mobile containers are less efficient than buildings with tons and tons of concrete.
Theft is a possibility, that's why these transport vessels have a lot of police escort.... but even so, they're still a juicy target.
Ol'fashioned terrorism - it's much simpler to blow up a truck on the road than a heavily guarded building.

10 000 years is still a long ass time and a technology which is being researched is still a technology not commonly available.
Other than that one thing you havent adressed is the super gau scenario and the risk of nuclear catastrophy.

In the end, I have to say that it no longer matters to me since the "energy change" - the change from nuclear and fossil fuels to clean energy has been amended to our constitution and is more or less unavoidable since only the liberterians opose it and they will never get enought votes to have it cut out.

[pocaracas]

One of the problems of "green energy" is often the rare earth materials required in the making.
The unaccounted trash in manufacturing silicon thin films, and all the technology required just to keep the power humming, aka, batteries and smart grid.
I'm not saying it's a bad investment... I'm saying it's an investment no one is willing to do, right now... unless governments supply the required extra moolah.

[Creed of Heresy]

Actually Germans, we already talked about the toxic waste issue and explained its minimal impact, and we already told you that new nuclear reactors are all but impossible to melt down or cause disasters. Read the posts, Germani.

[Ashendant]

Actually Germans, we already talked about the toxic waste issue and explained its minimal impact, and we already told you that new nuclear reactors are all but impossible to melt down or cause disasters. Read the posts, Germani.

Your solution was to store them and not really dealing with them, which is quite dangerous idea.

[Autumnlicious]

Anyone who thinks existing Gen I-II reactors is a good idea are certifiable morons.

Uranium reactors only consume half a percent of fissionable material (IE it's burning platinum, and not even getting any real benefits other than nuclear weapons material in breeder reactors).

MSRs and LFTRs are the only reactors that are truly safe and truly environmentally friendly.

Shame our own Nuclear Industry is so obsessed with not changing that China is building LFTRs instead!