After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

Great, now come back to me with a plan to plant the trees required to offset carbon emissions. This is going to be challenging, because you'll need to reforest an area roughly the size of the continental United States to reduce atmospheric CO2 to levels from a century ago [1]. In order to actually do this, you'd need to desalinate massive amounts of water to feed trees in areas without vegetation. Generating the energy for desalination and pumping it inland would release massive amounts of carbon back into the atmosphere, necessitating more tress, necessitating more water, and so on. You'd probably have better chances sequestering carbon through an algae bloom in the oceans, but that too has drawbacks (namely, when the algae dies off it'll just release the carbon again).

By comparison we already have a nuclear waste facility built in the US, though it's use was cancelled by Congress (and it wouldn't make sense to put spent fuel there yet, since we would want it for reprocessing), and another site is under construction in Finland [3].

"Bury it underground, in an area with no aquifer" isn't hand wave. Storing nuclear waste really is that simple. The main concern for uranium is water contamination. It's actually a prevalent due to naturally occurring uranium [4]. Place the waste in an area with no aquifer and there is no risk of contamination even in the event that the containment vessels deteriorate.

1. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/07/how-t...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_r...

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...

4. https://www.kqed.org/stateofhealth/120396/uranium-contaminat....

I used to be an advocate for nuclear energy but over time I've become it has no future because:

1. Even if it's safer by any objective measure (deaths/kWh for example) the failure modes are much, much worse. A fossil fuel plant just can't make thousands of square miles uninhabitable for decades. This isn't an exaggeration. The Chernobyl absolute exclusion zone is currently 1000mi^2 [1]. This is like how people are afraid to fly but not drive when flying (on.commercial jets at least) is undeniably safer;

2. Processing of fuel creates waste we just don't have a good way of dealing with (eg UF6);

3. Spent fuel creates waste we just don't have a good way of dealing with;

4. Decommissioning nuclear power plants creates waste we just don't have a good way of dealing with;

5. The above three costs seem to be borne by governments. It's still unclear to me if companies who run nuclear power plants are paying the true costs;

5. I just don't trust companies to manage nuclear plants safely long term;

7. I don't trust most governments to manage nuclear plants long term; and

8. Many nuclear power advocates will bring up coal as the counterexample. That's a false dichotomy. Wind and solar costs continue to plummet. Natural gas, while still a fossil fuel, has way less negative externalities than coal.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Exclusion_Zone

Fukushima were BWRs, and older and far shittier than the PWR in TMI.

TMI is how such an accident "should" look like. And of course there are improvements on that in newer generations.

>> it seems like price is really driving renewable adoption at this point.

Another article fresh from Wired about the aging solar panel mess and the toxic waste they're leaving behind:

Solar panels are an increasingly important source of renewable power that will play an essential role in fighting climate change. They are also complex pieces of technology that become big, bulky sheets of electronic waste at the end of their lives—and right now, most of the world doesn’t have a plan for dealing with that.

But we’ll need to develop one soon, because the solar e-waste glut is coming. By 2050, the International Renewable Energy Agency projects that up to 78 million metric tons of solar panels will have reached the end of their life, and that the world will be generating about 6 million metric tons of new solar e-waste annually. While the latter number is a small fraction of the total e-waste humanity produces each year, standard electronics recycling methods don’t cut it for solar panels. Recovering the most valuable materials from one, including silver and silicon, requires bespoke recycling solutions. And if we fail to develop those solutions along with policies that support their widespread adoption, we already know what will happen.

https://www.wired.com/story/solar-panels-are-starting-to-die...

People seem to think solar and wind and electric power don't come with equally damaging aspects to the environment.

Remember in the 1970's and 80's when people thought plastic was the greatest thing on earth? We can save the trees now!! People started using plastic for everything. People stopped using paper bags at grocery stores. People opted for Tupperware instead of glass bowls and containers and on and on. We all thought we were saving the world by using plastic for everything.

Apparently we were dead wrong about plastic and not look at what we've sown? Huge plastic floating islands in the oceans. Plastic debris washing ashore on distant islands, killing the entire ecosystems.

Price is all good and fine, but the long term ramifications of renewable energy we still don't know about.

>Have coal or gas plants ever created a Chernobyl-style exclusion zone?

Coal extraction has created far more land where you can't drink the well water and probably would be unwise to eat any plants or animals raised on the land.