An independent assessment of Japan’s plan to release treated radioactive wastewater into the Pacific Ocean, nearly 12 years after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, finds it safe and reasonable.
It’s quite a rabbithole. My “favorite” is the fearmongering around reactor waste products. People resist nuclear because we “need to store the waste”, even though we can reprocess it back into fissable fuel. But also we “can’t” do that, because that process can potentially be hijacked to produce nuclear materiel.
Both are valid concerns, but it shouldn’t be an impossible problem to solve. Especially these days, knowing how destructive some of our other common fuel sources are.
For now we have enough uranium for several centuries just in the existing, recyclable nuclear waste that we have in storage. There’s no immediate need to switch away from uranium. There is a very pressing need to switch away from fossil carbon ASAP, and the amount of batteries we’d need to go 100% renewable right now isn’t quite doable yet.
In the long term, 100% renewable is the way to go.
In the very long term, let’s say millions of years, I’d say we should build a dyson swarm. Does that count as renewable or nuclear?
Battery technology is advancing at high speed. Currently the main objective is to switch off carbon heavy industry, however its often “replaced” with nuclear, wich has a loooong build time.
Instead there should be more renewables to replace coal etc. Right now.
It’s quite a rabbithole. My “favorite” is the fearmongering around reactor waste products. People resist nuclear because we “need to store the waste”, even though we can reprocess it back into fissable fuel. But also we “can’t” do that, because that process can potentially be hijacked to produce nuclear materiel.
Both are valid concerns, but it shouldn’t be an impossible problem to solve. Especially these days, knowing how destructive some of our other common fuel sources are.
I mean in the end the goal should be 100% renewables anyway.
For now we have enough uranium for several centuries just in the existing, recyclable nuclear waste that we have in storage. There’s no immediate need to switch away from uranium. There is a very pressing need to switch away from fossil carbon ASAP, and the amount of batteries we’d need to go 100% renewable right now isn’t quite doable yet.
In the long term, 100% renewable is the way to go.
In the very long term, let’s say millions of years, I’d say we should build a dyson swarm. Does that count as renewable or nuclear?
Battery technology is advancing at high speed. Currently the main objective is to switch off carbon heavy industry, however its often “replaced” with nuclear, wich has a loooong build time.
Instead there should be more renewables to replace coal etc. Right now.