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by popey456963 3348 days ago
To be fair, you need _significantly_ less[0] uranium compared with the amount of coal you mine. For every million mountains destroyed by coal mining, you'd only have to destroy a couple of mountains. Not to mention I don't think uranium is usually mined from mountains but rather pit-mined, makes it far better than the alternatives.

Personally however, still support solar. Especially solar house tiles, they look good, pay for themselves after a few years and can be placed on every house.

[0] https://xkcd.com/1162/

3 comments

Not every house has solar resource. If your house is in the middle of the woods it's not going to work unless you clear-cut the surrounding woods and then you're not in the middle of the woods anymore. Same if you are in the shadow of a couple of mid-rises. etc. etc. Even if there is solar resource it may not replace more than a fraction of usage. Roof-top solar is great where the resource exists, but it's a partial solution at best. There's still a need for the utility grid and something needs to fuel that. It could be utility-scale solar, but it's not onsite rooftop solar.
You realize that most houses are not in the middle of the woods? If I look around here in Berlin, almost all houses would qualify for rooftop solar. There is of course still the storage problem.
You do know that a significant amount of coal is mined without the destruction of mountains, right?
Reminds me of this chart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI99A08Y83E&t=13m45s (if you want to skip to the punch line, it's just after 15:00), but this one is still in log scale.