this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2024
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There are two main problems in my opinion, and they are both related to the "fuel". First, uranium is rare and you often need to buy it from other countries. For instance, Russia. Not great. Second, it is not renewable energy. We can't rely on nuclear fission in the long run. Then there's also the issue of waste, which despite not being as critical as some argue, is still a problem to consider
A big problem IMO is the generational responsibility of the waste as well. There needs to be decades of planning, monitoring and maintaince to ensure waste sites are safe and secure, this can be done but modern political climates can make it difficult.
Agreed, dealing with the waste is a thing. But for me a solvable problem and something that doesn't need to be solved right away. We currently store a lot of nuclear waste in holding locations till we figure out a way to either make it less radioactive or store it for long enough. The alternative however is having coal plants all over the world spew all their dust (including radioactive dust) and CO2 straight into the atmosphere. This to me is a far bigger issue to solve. It isn't contained in one location, but instead ends up all over the world. It ends up in people's homes and bodies, with a huge impact to their health. It ends up in the atmosphere, with climate change causing huge (and expensive) issues.
The amount of money we need to handle nuclear waste would be orders of magnitude lower than what we are going to have to pay to handle climate change. And that isn't even fixing the issue, just dealing with the consequences. I don't know how we are ever going to get all that carbon back out of the atmosphere, but it won't be cheap.
Uranium is not that rare. Doesn’t Canada have quite a bit of it? Portugal used to mine it too, as well as several countries in Africa
Yeah, countries obtaining uranium really isn't that big of an obstacle.
The mining is also usually a really polluting affair for the region, much more than the what power generation might suggest. And overall, in many countries there is a lot of subsidies going on for hidden costs, especially relating to the waste and initial construction. So it is not as cheap as a first look might suggest.
I'm not against it per se, it is better than fossil fuels, which simply is the more urgent matter, but it's never been the wonder technology it has been touted as ever since it first appeared.
One thing to remember about the mining issue is that coal mining is just as bad, and coal is often radioactive as well. More people have died from radiation poisoning due to coal power/mining than have died from radiation poisoning due to nuclear power, even when you include disasters like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.
Of course, we've also been mining and using coal a lot longer, but the radioactive coal dust and possibly radioactive particles in the smoke from coal plants is something that many people are unaware of.
But, like you said, the big thing is to move away from fossil fuels entirely, and nuclear power has its own issues. It doesn't so much matter what we go with so long as we do actually go with something, and renewables are getting better and better all the time.
Coal has caused more deaths this year than the entire history of nuclear anything has in total. This includes nuclear energy, nuclear research, nuclear medicine, nuclear irradiation (food storage), and too many orphan sources.
It'd be nice to prioritise it at least rather than tucking it away under the oil and gas rug. There is no real competition in energy output to a nuclear power plant. And despite its egregious up front cost, operating it is relatively low cost.
In regards to fuel, uranium is used often but there is options such as thorium that have been used with some success. I do agree it is unfortunate to have to purchase from other countries but I think it beats buying natural gas from wherever it may be sold.
Yeeeeah, I wouldn't worry about that. Sure we (Australia) are conservative with our fears of mining and exporting uranium, especially with the Cold War and reactor whoopsies around the world. But historically it doesn't take much for us to go down on an ally.
Just let us finish unloading all our coal off to the worst polluting nations first, then we'll crack the top-shelf stuff.
Is that supposed to convince me that there's plenty of uranium left? Because based on the numbers shown with reserve vs. historical usage it kinda seems like it would last for a few decades at best.
There are some reactor designs that run on waste of standard reactors. It would solve two of your points for at least some decades.
Buying uranium from Canada and Australia? Inconceivable!
Uranium isn't the only possible fuel. It's just the one we've been using (because it's the one that lets you make nuclear weapons).
Except that you don't need uranium for nuclear reactors. The reason it's used traditionally because it's also used for nuclear weapons. Thorium is a much better fuel that's more abundant. China has already started operating these types of reactors. The other advantage of this design is that they use molten salt instead of water for cooling. Molten salt reactors don't need to be built next to large bodies of water, and they are safer because salt becomes solid when it cools limiting the size of contamination in case of an accident.
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Operating-permit-issued-for-Chinese-molten-salt-re
That's why we need fusion, which will use a lot of the same tech.
I don't think it will. The large cost of a reactor will probably be shared, but fission plants don't deal with plasma, magnets, hydrogen/helium storage, lasers, or capacitors. And we don't even know the method by which a practical fusion plant will operate!
I am talking in the sense that the same companies are participating in fusion research, and pretty sure the methods you mentioned are utilized somewhat in nuclear plants. Like handling and filtering radioactive materials.
Radioactive waste maybe. Fusion plants are likely to create irradiated parts that degrade quickly, similar to fission plants. Fusion fuel on the other hand, is gaseous, and likes to escape. Hydrogen is explosive, while helium-3 is just expensive.