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by jonassalen
1609 days ago
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I think it's a fair and reasonable article, except the fact that it forgets to mention the one thing that is the most important about nuclear energy: it's waste. Nuclear energy is and will never be renewable, because it still - despite decades and millions of research - needs fuel and leaves waste. Sure, you can easily look at the most important problem at hand and only look at the co2 cost, but unfortunately that short term thinking is exactly what proved to be the cause of climate change. |
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste
Newer reactor designs would also make it possible to use most of the waste as fuel:
"...What is more important today is why fast reactors are fuel-efficient: because fast neutrons can fission or "burn out" all the transuranic waste (TRU) waste components (actinides: reactor-grade plutonium and minor actinides) many of which last tens of thousands of years or longer and make conventional nuclear waste disposal so problematic. Most of the radioactive fission products (FPs) the reactor produces have much shorter half-lives: they are intensely radioactive in the short term but decay quickly. The IFR extracts and recycles 99.9% of the uranium and Transuranium elements on each cycle and uses them to produce power; so its waste is just the fission products; in 300 years their radioactivity will fall below that of the original uranium "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_fast_reactor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor
While there are issues with nuclear power, the worry some people have about nuclear waste is greatly overblown to say the least. The US government has been taxing power generated by nuclear power for decades and has collected billions of dollars to cover any costs in the future.