• Meowing Thing@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    There was lemmy in the 60s? /s

    But I do agree if we find some way to deal with the nuclear waste nuclear energy would be perfect. I’m really hopeful for fusion research lately.

    • DoctorSpocktopus@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      Nuclear waste is a largely solved issue. The volume of very radioactive waste is quite small, and safely contained with a variety of solutions.

      • frezik@midwest.social
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        9 months ago

        It’s solved if your government gets off its ass about it. Reprocessing waste for reactors is one of the few places where nuclear makes sense. Way better than burying it for thousands of years.

        Otherwise, the economics have ran past it. We have solutions without it; we just need to scale the up. There are a few other niches, like cargo ships, where they make sense. For general power use, no.

    • Shurimal@kbin.social
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      9 months ago

      TBH, nuclear waste is a political problem, not an engineering one. Finns figured it out, no reason other countries couldn’t.

      Fusion of course is better (though some small amount of radioactive waste will still be produced due to neutron activation of the materials used in the equipment), but it seems like it’s been 10 years away for the past 60 years. And we really shouldn’t let perfect be the enemy of good—we need to phase out fossil fuels yesterday and fission is good enough for answering the needs of the industry; solar and wind is good enough for distributed residential power and also a good choice for poorer countries who lack the knowhow or even stability for safe operation of nuclear.

        • frezik@midwest.social
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          9 months ago

          Fusion is all but guaranteed to work eventually. If a breakthrough was made today that makes it commercialy viable, it would be ten years before we see a reactor putting power on the grid.

          It’s not something we want to hang our hopes on. ITER will probably work if nothing else gets there first, but we need to look at other things long before that comes online. There’s no reason to wait and every reason to go full speed on what we have.

          • gnygnygny@lemm.ee
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            9 months ago

            ITER that thing is dead already. 1st estimation : 5 billions. Now : 19 billions. And Russians are involved. Delays are so huge that it will be over before to be born.