Does Nuclear count as Green Energy? I feel like it should, since it doesn’t really pollute and lasts a lot.
You have to differentiate between fusion and fission, the first one is no doubt, while looking at the time spans these projects took previously it will not save the global Energy supply in the short term. Fission is difficult to tell, since the reactors have lots of concrete to build (that creates CO2) and humanity has not found any way to get rid of the waste and contaminated building materials. It might be “greenish” but probably not sustainable (also there is a limited amount of and political problems with digging up the needed radioactive materials)
CJOtheReal@ani.social 11 months ago
Fusion is definitely green if it works, because it would come to a similar factor of energy as solar, but fission is not, the stuff you need is extremely harmful to the environment itself and mining it as well, also you need to build a gigantic structure for it wich is also a shit load of CO2. And then you have to store the waste for basically eternity…
MrSpArkle@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
Debating whether or not fission is green has given the fossil fuel industry free rein over energy production for the last 60 years.
We could have a Fukushima every year and a Chernobyl every 5 and it would pale in comparison to the loss of life and habitable land we’d be giving up to climate change.
keepthepace@slrpnk.net 11 months ago
We could have a Chernobyl every 5 years and losing less lives than we do through the lung diseases caused by the air pollution or oil vehicles. There was a study in France showing that (every 5 years is a low estimate, actual numbers hinted at 2-3 years).
CJOtheReal@ani.social 11 months ago
Bro. Nuclear fission isn’t green and its shit in so many other ways as well, most importantly, its not economic without massive government fundings.
Fossile is pushing for nuclear because they fear actually green energy. Wich is way faster to expand than nuclear btw.
senseamidmadness@beehaw.org 11 months ago
Thorium-salt breeder reactors have been effectively ignored by most major nuclear energy players for 60 years now, and they solve most of these problems…but nobody is building them. Likely the fossil fuel industry is behind that.
Counterpoint: every nuclear disaster in history, and all the waste nuclear power has ever produced, is absolutely miniscule compared to the damage burning fossil fuels has already done and will continue to do in the coming decades.
Every oil spill, every mountain ripped open to pull out coal, every jet airplane, every bunker-fueled container ship, every single ICE automobile, all combining to make the atmosphere worse and worse…the oceans are rising and getting more acidic. Wild species are going extinct by the thousands. Weather has gotten worse and more extreme. The damage may literally be incalculable. Millions of people have already died from the cancers and natural disasters fossil fuels have caused. The death toll of nuclear energy? Thousands at most.
Nuclear energy may not be perfect but it is a far better alternative.
CJOtheReal@ani.social 11 months ago
Bro the alternative is actually green energy, the entire fucking world agreed that fossil is not good. And no, nuclear isn’t green, it isn’t safe (given the toxicity of the waste and the storage problem, and overlooking potential risks in operational errors and natural Desasters) it takes a fucking decade and longer to build a reactor also its absolutely not economical and makes countries dependent on others again (mainly Russia, wich is also the main exporter of fission material)
We can build more actually green energy in the same time and that energy is basically free.
DarkThoughts@kbin.social 11 months ago
And the thorium bros are in the Fediverse now too... Great...