this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
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For waste, yeah it has to be taken care of. However, nuclear is the only energy resource that we require to do this. All others tend to just let the public (or others in the area) deal with it. Solar also creates waste through mining. Wind is pretty good, but not perfect and the turbines aren't yet recyclable, and you can bet they aren't having to pay for their storage. They also will require some form of energy storage that nuclear won't need, which will likely partially include chemical batteries, which are not environmentally friendly to produce, but again won't be rolled into their cost.
The anti-nuke movement is largely funded by existing energy companies who don't want to compete on even ground. They've had so many laws passed that increase costs. There are countries where nuclear is much cheaper, which shows that a large part of the cost is regulations, not fundamental costs. Even in the US it's competitive with offshore wind and coal for cost though, which we still build both of.
Most nuclear waste does not need to be stored for tens of thousands of years either, like you imply. Some does, but not much. Yeah, we still need a solution for that small amount, but those solutions already exist, they just need to be implemented. Again, no other energy gets waste handling rolled into their cost. They just become negative externalities someone else has to deal with. Nuclear is just easy to capture the waste, so they store it. This should be a positive, not a negative.
It's also ridiculously clean and safe. Even including nuclear accidents (which become less likely each time, and are now almost impossible), it's next to the safest energy source. The only thing safer is solar, by a tiny amount.
https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/charted-safest-and-deadliest-energy-sources/
It is a great baseline power source we should be relying on. Obviously I agree, it shouldn't be everything. Solar and wind are ideal to make up the majority of the grid, but as a safe and reliable supply of power, nuclear should support them. It perfectly fills the gap left by them that otherwise requires massive amount of power storage, which is far from ideal. We should remove the regulations that have kneecapped them to protect traditional dirty energy and provide solutions for permanent waste disposal so it doesn't artificially increase their costs.
The IPCC report lists higher lifecycle emissions for nuclear than your numbers. We probably need to take all of that with a grain of salt. But it's about comparable to some of the renewables.
And even if you want to use nuclear for baseline power, you're going to have a problem in like 40 years once uranium mining gets harder as we're depleating the resources.
And I mean "theoretically" having storage is kind of a joke, since we're not generating the waste in theory, but in practice. So we also need the solution to actually exist. And as far as I know it might be a hoax anyways and there might be a good reason why we struggle actually implementing it. Usally people claim the waste can be put somewhere underneath the earth. In an old salt mine or something like that. And the geologists I asked said it's true that a salt reservoir underneath the earth is stable for 100.000s of years... Unless someone tampers with it. For example breaches it by digging into it, taking the salt out and putting waste inside. Then it'll become unstable. And we have precedent for that.
So. I've heard the same things about long term storage. But it seems to me there is more to it. Until now nobody was able to build a proper one. Sure they claim in theory it's easy, still they didn't do it. And geologists have some doubt it'll work on that timescale in the first place. And looking into the past we also weren't very successful with putting waste into old mines. A good amount of them has become leaky. Or something happened with the groundwater that wasn't expected to happen... And I'd rather not have toxic waste mix with groundwater anywhere close to where I live...
I mean that's just one concern. Mainly I'd like to know what's the actual cost of containing a large amount of waste for a shorter timespan, and containing a smaller amount of waste for tens of thousands of years. All the maintenance, cost to handle incidents and making sure it doesn't escape into the environment with close to absolute certainty. Added up for the necessary timescale.
I'd really like to force them (Google in this instance) to pay for it. And as we need a renewable alternative anyways, I'd also on top like to invest in finding solutions to for example recycling of wind turbine parts. At some point we need it anyways, and the sooner we begin, the earlier it pays off.