this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2024
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yes, but extremely toxic and radioactive waste tho.
thorium could be an option
fusion could be an option
or... ya know, we just continue expanding solar and wind energy until we have one of the above.
Yeah, no reason to ever think of alternate options. Just push one or two things until they magically work for everything somehow.
for sure, but nuclear fission like we are doing it right now is definetely not sustainable. we can do it for like a hundred more years, then the waste really starts piling up.
How about we build the reactors that can consume the extremely toxic waste so that we can get rid of it?
i think we would've done that.
We can. You can blame the "Greens" for it not happening.
Thorium fuel cycle is nearly the same as the uranium fuel cycle in regards to downsides. It just requires breeders, which you could use with uranium too. The only real benefit of thorium is that it's more plentiful, but the cost in nuclear power isn't in Uranium.
Toxic/Radioactive waste is obviously toxic and radioactive, but how bad that really is is kind of overblown especially if you compare it to the harm caused by popular existing methods like coal/etc. When adjusted based on energy produced, there's more than one study out there showing how Nuclear is significantly safer than coal by a very wide margin. Coal ash is also radioactive and coal plants have very limited requirements to prevent it from escaping to the environment.
Even 'Radioactive Waste' really only feels scary because all of the bad stuff is condensed into a much smaller package when you adjust based on energy produced again.