The competition is on for Eastern Europe’s #nuclear power market 🇨🇿 🇭🇺 🇪🇺 🇵🇱 🇦🇩
The long-term risks and costs of civilian nuclear power are too high.
France has the most nuclearised electricity:
* The cost of managing closed-down civilian nuclear reactors is huge: they produce no electricity but remain radioactive and must be permanently protected from tourists, thieves and terrorists.
* The plan of how to treat the most dangerous radioactive waste is still very uncertain; it *might* start at #Cigéo in 2025:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestion_des_d%C3%A9chets_radioactifs_en_France
Now, as I mention 2000 m3 of coal waste *per day,* the whole UK nuclear program just that amount over... 50 years! Nuclear plants produce really extremely tiny amount of waste, especially compared to the amount of energy they produce. And this waste can be easily packed, stored and over 100 years it loses 93% of its activity.
@kravietz @boud I do agree we should have way more nuclear power and the environmental impact is much lower compared to the land that has to be cleared for wind or solar, but there is still a significant impact that can't be ignored. Not to mention the tritium leaks TVA has tried to cover up at their breeder reactor at Wattsbar.
There are leaks and fuckups in each industry. PV leak cadmium, wind leaks gearbox oil, coal leaks ash and radioactive elements, gas and oil leak CO2 and methane... and radioactive elements etc etc.
So until we have nuclear fusion which shouldn't leak anything significant -- and if we want 24/7 electricity -- we need to focus at what leaks the least of everything per kilowatt-hour of energy.
Traditional reactors were not energy programs, they were an offshoot of the nuclear weapons industry. It's kind of not a surprise that they were dangerous and inefficient as their primary purpose was not to produce safe, cheap power, but rather to lock in a production pipeline for weapons grade fissile material that would not be subject to weapons treaties. It's the same reason why despotic regimes always have nuclear 'power' programs based around those same kinds of reactors.
It's simply a category mistake to blame their shortcomings on the nongovernmental nuclear power industry.
@kravietz @boud
I always encourage everyone talking about environmental impact of A to *compare* against X, Y, Z.
There's tons of misconceptions in this sphere, unfortunately created by environmental activism who in their effort to portray renewables as "clean" and nuclear as "dirty" simply resorts to utter nonsense.
The reality... this is what a photovoltaic panel is made of. Note what industry authored this advertisement... 😉
So at the end of the day what matters are objective comparisons of *lifecycle* usage of non-renewable resources. In case of energy sector I consider these as first priority:
* surface power density (how much land surface per unit of energy)
* greenhouse gas emissions (how much CO2)
* capacity factor (which makes any 1000 kWh of PV only 150 Wh in UK reality)
And then secondary metric:
* levelized cost of energy (LCOE, how much $$$ per unit of energy)
@kravietz @boud There isn't a lot of waste and the fuel is incredibly dense, but there is a massive environmental impact in mining fissile material. Massive amounts of raw yellow cake ore has to be refined in centrifuges. It's often mined in places like Australia and then gets transported in full to refinement facilities in the destination country. There is also an environmental impact mining uranium ore. The Yucca Mountain facility isn't even operational yet and there have been leaks in NV.