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Young climate activist tells Greenpeace to drop ‘old-fashioned’ anti-nuclear stance
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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One thing I don't see a lot of people talking about is how nuclear is probably better for the environment due to how you don't have to cut down a Forrest to generate a viable amount of electricity meanwhile nuclear only requires two factory sised buildings to generate more than enough electricity to be viable and that's assuming you have a sister breeder reactor to generate power from the waste
Nuclear plants are the same size as coal and oil based generation plants... Just use the ALREADY decommissioned locations. No extra space needed at all. Rahabing the old facilities is a cost though.
I'm no expert, but from my understanding aside from the land being reused, nothing really from a former coal/natural gas plant could really be reused. The DOE regulations and requirements would require all infrastructure to be built for the reactors. The security requirements are also significantly more than a fossil fuel plant. However, the connections to the grid could be reused and upgraded and former plant personnel could be retrained. The biggest issue is cost unfortunately, the Vogel plant in Georgia has been like a decade behind schedule and significantly over budget. Part of that is due to how long we went from building plants in the 70s, to the nuclear scare to now building again. So much knowledge has been lost from crafts people who were experts in things like the specific types of welding needing, concrete mixtures etc. I think the future in the US at least will be the new prefabricated small scall reactors.
Nuclear is great. A while back I came across a company that had developed a simple geothermal reactor (no pumps, cooling towers etc) that seemed neat but was probably just a VC bid.
They supposedly had a goal of building some tests in Idaho or something. They should have deployed it in PR after that hurricane. Would have made a great test site.
If course it's old tech.. I don't remember which one but a Japanese company developed something similar.. it was smaller than a typical Telco or isp pop is (or roughly 3x the size of your typical residential AC condenser) and could provide power for an entire community.
Funny how that stuff never materalizes.
Small scale modular reactors make perfect sense.. sorry I don't have any sources but you can search the above term and find all the pipe dreams i saw 10 years ago. Oil, gas, etc is just still too profitable.
Your own comment has the answer
There's a lot of money in these SMR reactors and the first one was just had it's design approved by the DoE which is one of the biggest hurdles. Prior to that the only real testing in the US could be done in national labs (like in the Idaho one).
.....and how long does it take for a nuclear power plant to be zoned, and constructed? ...and where's the fuel coming from? It isn't thin air.
Nuclear fuel is necessary to run those plants, forests are often cut down and turned into wastelands for open pit mining of that fuel. Are you omitting these basic facts on purpose or out of ignorance?
100%. And what about the water requirements for managing and controlling the nuclear reactor?
there's no such thing as water requirements, the water that's used in the core is in a closed loop, and the one that gets used to generate the steam is then put back into where it was taken (river etc)
not to mention that's what all power plants do, electricity generation has always been about the best way to heat up water
That's still a water requirement and that water is bathing in isotopes. And solar and wind don't require steam for power generation.
The water that's being used to generate power isn't touching the core at all
as for solar and wind, you are right, but don't underestimate how many solar panels and wind turbines you should have to put to completely replace all power production, that's an immense land requirement, not to mention the immense material cost
But hey, if we can manage to get enough renewables I'm completely on board
And what about the water requirements for mining lithium?
Definitely a concern. But fortunately, batteries are >90% recyclable and chemistry is changing all the times to reduce the dependence upon finite minerals.