this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
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It will slow when nuclear is the main energy source, especially in the United States (its currently ~47%)
Nuclear can also get recycled, and for the average American, the actual waste that can no longer be recycled is about a soda can (standard 12 ounce can)
Imo, the US needs to work toward nuclear usage being 90-95% instead of using coal. There's still a need for natural gas but it can be minimized
Why? Wind and solar are cheaper, faster to build and don't produce toxic waste. They can easily cover most of the energy needs. Or technically all of it, once you start using any overcapacity for hydrogen production (which is needed for carbon neutrality anyways).
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Here in Texas, we use wind and solar a lot. That's why in 2021 when it froze, we had zero power. The wind turbines were seized from the freeze and snow covered the solar panels. We had dropped our coal production until we had to suddenly go to 100% utilization.
And with it being texas and hardly snowing, we don't have infrastructure in place for the roads. There's no snow plows, road salt, tire chains, etc..
I think that was propaganda.
The shitty electrical grid and the gas plants that couldn't operate in winter failed. Wind power prevented worse blackouts as they kept working.
Fuel reprocessing through the purex process has never been economical and frankly doesn't make much sense. You'd want to increase the volume of those very nasty fission products for eventual storage through vitrification anyway (inverse square law gets very important for big gamma emitters) so you'd need a big site regardless. It's fine if you're recovering plutonium to make a bomb, but it seems to create a lot of chemical waste without much benefit otherwise.
The fuel is cheap. Itβs the reactors are consistently over budget. Westinghouse Electric is bankrupt because of the last nuke they built.