Yes, nuclear waste is a problem. One we’ll need to solve in the next few decades. Those few decades will buy us time to get off of fossil fuels and onto more permanent renewable solutions though.
In* the short term, I’d much rather see more nuclear plants opening up, even with the long term drawbacks around waste storage, rather than more gas or coal plants. It’s the lesser of the two evils by a long shot.
Beyond replacing fossil fuels plants, nuclear plants can also help power atmospheric decarbonization (with their excess baseband power) as well as desalination plants if close enough to a coast.
There’s a lot of projects that depend on cheap and abundant energy that can further help undo some of the damage from a century of fossil fuels usage.
While the design lifespan of nuclear plants might be 30-40 years, newer ones are designed for 40-60 years of operation right off the bat.
So it’s a bit of a sticker shock at first but even getting just 40 years of benefits from each plant is huge.
A big part of the problem is we don’t look at these longtime operation periods and we externalize (or just ignore) the CO2 emissions as costs of running cheaper gas and coal power plants.
Yes, nuclear waste is a problem. One we’ll need to solve in the next few decades. Those few decades will buy us time to get off of fossil fuels and onto more permanent renewable solutions though.
In* the short term, I’d much rather see more nuclear plants opening up, even with the long term drawbacks around waste storage, rather than more gas or coal plants. It’s the lesser of the two evils by a long shot.
That’s what they said in the 1970s. We still haven’t solved the problem fifty years later.
Sure, but I think there’s a ton of reasons for that, and most are not the fault of nuclear power itself.
Beyond replacing fossil fuels plants, nuclear plants can also help power atmospheric decarbonization (with their excess baseband power) as well as desalination plants if close enough to a coast.
There’s a lot of projects that depend on cheap and abundant energy that can further help undo some of the damage from a century of fossil fuels usage.
While the design lifespan of nuclear plants might be 30-40 years, newer ones are designed for 40-60 years of operation right off the bat.
So it’s a bit of a sticker shock at first but even getting just 40 years of benefits from each plant is huge.
A big part of the problem is we don’t look at these longtime operation periods and we externalize (or just ignore) the CO2 emissions as costs of running cheaper gas and coal power plants.