Comment on Solar + Battery (covering 97% of demand) is now cheaper than coal and nuclear
grabonex@lemmy.ml 3 days agoDo you have a source for that claim? Genuine question.
My intuition is that the types of impact are widely different, so hard to reduce to a single number that can be compared.
He is probably referring to the small amount of nuclear waste that is actually produced per watt of power, it is a lot more dangerous if you are in direct contact, but it is surprisingly easy to store safely, and remove all environmental impact. The biggest environmental issue with nuclear is the mining and enriching, both of which are realistically too small to factor in.
I found this article going into more depth nuclear waste .
No, none of that has much to do with CO2 output besides transportation.
Nuclear power needs a lot of concrete. Concrete releases a lot of CO2 during production. It does eventually reabsorb it as it cures over a decade or two. IIRC, it might even be CO2 net negative eventually.
FurryMemesAccount@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 days ago
docs.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/80580.pdf
I’m using table 1.
PV panels alone produce 43g/kWh, batteries 33.
Nuclear (light-water or pressurized) are at 12.
We’re talking complete life cycle analyses.
Rakonat@lemmy.world 3 days ago
To tack onto that: www.google.com/search?udm=2&q=land+use+per+meter+…
When you account for land use in the entire life cycle from mining resources to disposal at end of life cycle, nuclear uses a quarter of the land of rooftop cadmium panels and a tenth of silicon panels.
Offshore wind is the only thing that gets close and even that has ecological and commercial concerns.
If you’re pro-stable and sustainable ecological systems, nuclear based power grid is a no brainer.
FurryMemesAccount@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 days ago
Even for offshore wind, you gotta add the necessary battery capacity for a reliable power grid…
LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Yet breeder plants would be even more sustainable in theory, yet if anyone tries to research them right now and doesn’t already have nuclear bombs they may fall into the same situation Iran just did.
Less fuel use, Less waste. Requires more technological improvements long term, but everyone is worried about people weaponizing higher enrichment uranium from an outside perspective… I could be wrong
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 3 days ago
yeah at a certain point it becomes a trade-off between “no geopolitical dependence on uranium” and “no geopolitical dependence on something that is currently produced in china, but could be produced anywhere if we tried hard enough”