[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?