@tomtrottel @Emil @Tylerdurdon
Well, there we are at the divide between facts and opinion, and that between a civil discussion and ad hominem attacks.
Fact: nobody was ever harmed by spent nuclear fuel. Really. Look it up wherever you like.
Fact: that is not by chance, but by engineering.
Fact: the total amount of all the world's spent nuclear fuel ever, in the shape of a cube, would have a side length of about 35 m (before recycling).
Fact: I have no money invested in nuclear energy.
@tomtrottel @Emil @Tylerdurdon No, it is a classification.
It's like saying »human feces is a huge problem« — well, yes, but that's why we have toilets and sewage plants and so on — it's solved.
As is nuclear waste.
@Brownboy13 @Emil Not perfect, but definitely better in every way than oil.
@Emil You know, in a sane world, moving a handful of effectively harmless concrete blocks around wouldn't be newsworthy.
But even in our world, I think that the message should focus more on how little that actually is, how it is all there is, and how obviously it can be successfully done.
Leave some burns on fear-mongers while you're at it.
@Emil OK, it's a start. Once regulatory and economic processes are in place, there will be an option to become much more ambitious here, depending on how other plans turn out. Good.
@Emil This sounds like a sensible, level-headed approach. #Australia, take note!
@breadsmasher @Emil Yellowcake is not very dangerous, but it's not safe to eat either.
@ajsadauskas @australianpolitics
What would »grid scale solar & storage« cost, and how long would it take?
This is the competition:
No one in the whole world has ever built (2). There is no mature industry, and no technology even matching the only grid scale storage we have so far (pumped hydro).
For (1), there are several international players with established designs.
I wouldn't stop either one.
@Emil From a pure technical view, it is almost always more reassuring to use the »original«. And that is all this one argues.
But there are other considerations, such as political security for Europe. And diversification of supply is practically always a win for the consumer.
I think Europe should pay a research grant or something like that to whoever develops replacement fuel units.
@Emil This sentence somehow seems wrong: »They are highly radioactive and have long half-lives.«
Halflife and decay rate (and thus radiation intensity) are inversely proportional to each other, and there is the halflife gap in fission products above Strontium-90 and Cesium-137 quite clearly separating »high radioactivity/short halflife« and »low radioactivity/long halflife«.
@MattMastodon @Sodis Again: that demand is lower at night is already factored in. Roughly 40% of demand can be directly met by volatile sources. You may think nuclear is slow to deploy, but it's still much faster than anything that doesn't exist.
The gap is 60%. Gas is a fossil fuel. Varying use is mostly a euphemism. If you hurt industry, you won't have the industry to build clean energy sources.
@Emil Funny thing, the onboard reactor probably produces more power than the gas it carries could.
But anyway, yes, again, nuclear propulsion for ships is quite obviously a very good match.