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by Schroedingersat 1201 days ago
> A fuel rod assembly with 500kg of uranium produces about 200,000,000 kwH over its lifetime (https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/publications/magazi...), which comes out to 400k kw per kilogram of uranium, or 400 kw per gram.

You can't even distinguish between energy and power, now you're mixing kw and kWh. A reactor with about 100t of fuel rods produces around 1GW and refuels every 3-6 years. Ergo 100g of refined uranium (plus zirconium and gadolinium, then caesium indium and silver for control rods).

The toxic slurry in a uranium mine is waste from producing energy. It outmasses everything else you are talking about combined by orders of magnitude and is rarely dealt with in any permanent or safe way, see the Indian village of Kadapa or any of the mines in Niger or Uzbekistan for examples.

Then bringing up the most abundant element on earth as if mining it is a relevant impact is another huge stretch. Quartz mining doesn't even need the same grade of sand as concrete. What an utterly intellectually bankrupt claim.

You're the one trying to concern troll over the space and minerals used by PV. Demonstrate that the total land use and mining impact of the entire supply chain is actually higher.

I also note you've cherry picked a report that talks largely about vehicle batteries but tangentially mentions thin film panels (an obsolete technology being abandoned) rather than monocrystalline, and then doesn't quantify it per MW (hint: the numbers in it are nowhere near your claimed 4t/MW). Where is all this copper supposed to be? You're claiming that there's 100kg of copper hiding in this photo https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/wp-content/uploads/201...

You're very narrowly trying to compare SNF with the entire solar module, ignoring the reactor, the upstream fuel supply, the low level waste, and the waste containment. The sheer stupidity of thinking you have a coherent enough lie is mind boggling.