[aksss]

In April on phys.org:

"The growing demand for minerals and metals to build the electric vehicles, solar arrays, wind turbines and other renewable energy infrastructure necessary to meet the ambitious goals of the Paris Climate Agreement could outstrip current production rates for key metals by as early as 2022, according to new research by the UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures.

The study, commissioned and funded by U.S. non-profit organisation EarthWorks, shows that as demand for minerals such as lithium and rare earths skyrockets, the already significant environmental and human impacts of hardrock mining are likely to rise steeply as well."

https://phys.org/news/2019-04-exposes-extent-mineral-demand-...

More renewable infrastructure = more mining. I don't know if this is an example of the laws of thermodynamics, but nothing comes for free. I think it's relevant when comparing turbine, solar array and tide capture equipment to nuclear. Also relevant to policy decisions about domestic mining - preventing mining doesn't mean demand drops, it means we source minerals from other nations that may or may not respect clean and responsible mining techniques.

Just because we do less fossil fuel extraction doesn't mean we get away from natural resource development. It's a question of which is preferable, why, and how to do it in the most responsible fashion; but acknowledging the link between messy, ground-dwelling resource extraction and our electronics is not one that captures much public attention today.

And so I think more and more about nuclear power.

[phil248]

Yes, but one can make the same argument about nearly anything since nothing comes in to existence without some set of inputs. It's not some unique attribute of renewable energy infrastructure that it requires resources to build. That's just an attribute of anything, be it houses or cars or medical equipment or toilet paper. There is, however, a unique characteristic of renewable energy infrastructure that separates it from all the other crap we build on an global scale, and that is that if we don't built it we are essentially doomed.

[aksss]

Right, that's why I'm suggesting it's an element of comparison between nuclear and "renewables". I really don't know which has a greater burden of resource extraction. You need a lot of electronics to build a nuclear plant, but you need a lot of discrete electronic devices to build wind farms, solar arrays and the like. That's an interesting question of environmental cost to me, but either tech there is still resource extraction going on and I just think it's frequently a missing element of the discussion in the context of environmental policy. For instance, people protesting the approval of new mining projects in the US - okay, but where are you going to get the minerals that are in demand? A place where the regulatory oversight is lessened? Is that really the most responsible approach to resource development or just a NIMBY attitude?

[pmoriarty]

"More renewable infrastructure = more mining. I don't know if this is an example of the laws of thermodynamics, but nothing comes for free. I think it's relevant when comparing turbine, solar array and tide capture equipment to nuclear."

Uranium also has to be mined out of the earth.

Nuclear power has the additional problems of waste disposal and storage, nuclear weapons proliferation, and risks of massive accidents.

[maximente]

> Uranium also has to be mined out of the earth.

not if this is to be believed: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/07/01/uranium-s...

[pmoriarty]

Very interesting. But it sounds like the technology is still in the research phase and there not yet commercially available (especially not on a large enough scale to make a dent in the demand for uranium mining at the moment).

Contrast that with wind, solar and other renewable technologies which are widely available on large commercial scales right now.