Young climate activist tells Greenpeace to drop ‘old-fashioned’ anti-nuclear stance
Young climate activist tells Greenpeace to drop ‘old-fashioned’ anti-nuclear stance
Swedish teenager Ia Anstoot says group’s ‘unscientific’ opposition to EU nuclear power serves fossil fuel interests
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One thing I don't see a lot of people talking about is how nuclear is probably better for the environment due to how you don't have to cut down a Forrest to generate a viable amount of electricity meanwhile nuclear only requires two factory sised buildings to generate more than enough electricity to be viable and that's assuming you have a sister breeder reactor to generate power from the waste
Nuclear plants are the same size as coal and oil based generation plants... Just use the ALREADY decommissioned locations. No extra space needed at all. Rahabing the old facilities is a cost though.
I'm no expert, but from my understanding aside from the land being reused, nothing really from a former coal/natural gas plant could really be reused. The DOE regulations and requirements would require all infrastructure to be built for the reactors. The security requirements are also significantly more than a fossil fuel plant. However, the connections to the grid could be reused and upgraded and former plant personnel could be retrained. The biggest issue is cost unfortunately, the Vogel plant in Georgia has been like a decade behind schedule and significantly over budget. Part of that is due to how long we went from building plants in the 70s, to the nuclear scare to now building again. So much knowledge has been lost from crafts people who were experts in things like the specific types of welding needing, concrete mixtures etc. I think the future in the US at least will be the new prefabricated small scall reactors.
.....and how long does it take for a nuclear power plant to be zoned, and constructed? ...and where's the fuel coming from? It isn't thin air.
Nuclear is great. A while back I came across a company that had developed a simple geothermal reactor (no pumps, cooling towers etc) that seemed neat but was probably just a VC bid.
They supposedly had a goal of building some tests in Idaho or something. They should have deployed it in PR after that hurricane. Would have made a great test site.
If course it's old tech.. I don't remember which one but a Japanese company developed something similar.. it was smaller than a typical Telco or isp pop is (or roughly 3x the size of your typical residential AC condenser) and could provide power for an entire community.
Funny how that stuff never materalizes.
Small scale modular reactors make perfect sense.. sorry I don't have any sources but you can search the above term and find all the pipe dreams i saw 10 years ago. Oil, gas, etc is just still too profitable.
There's a lot of money in these SMR reactors and the first one was just had it's design approved by the DoE which is one of the biggest hurdles. Prior to that the only real testing in the US could be done in national labs (like in the Idaho one).
but was probably just a VC bid... Funny how that stuff never materalizes.
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