Not all reactors use uranium.
Comment on Solar + Battery (covering 97% of demand) is now cheaper than coal and nuclear
humanspiral@lemmy.ca 3 weeks agoabsurd. Uranium mines need huge exclusion zones. In fact the biggest ones have large enough exclusion zones that more solar energy could be harvested than the energy content of the uranium underneath.
0x0@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
FurryMemesAccount@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
What’s the exclusion zone of rare earth mines ? Of the terrible chemicals required to extract those products ? Same question with the batteries. What’s the impact of the shade on agriculture ? How about all the steel, concrete and composites on the environment, how do they degrade ? Is it in micro plastics ?
I didn’t say nuclear energy was good, just that solar panels are worse. The perfect energy source doesn’t exist but currently all the data I’ve come across points to the direction that nuclear is significantly better than all other renewables and don’t require significant battery storage.
Also if anti-science ecologists hadn’t blocked so many fast neutron reactors, we’d be further along to a tech that can burn existing thorium stockpiles for 8000 years without further mining and while producing significantly less dangerous waste than current reactors. I guess we’ll just buy the design from China and Russia who didn’t stop the research and have currently operating reactors right now.
humanspiral@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
solar panels don’t use rare earths. They use sand. Rare earths and lithium are not radioactive. Thorium is more expensive than Uranium processing and molten salt reactors have never lasted long.