The US National Ignition Facility has achieved even higher energy yields since breaking even for the first time in 2022, but a practical fusion reactor is still a long way off
If companies can’t be trusted to dispose of coal waste properly, what’s the likelihood they’ll dispose of nuclear waste properly? And reactors that don’t produce dangerous waste, don’t produce enough energy to be worth the cost unless you add the cost of proper disposal of the waste. And since they don’t have to do that, they just store it in temporary storage pools indefinitely, the cost is much cheaper to stick with current tech. So fission will never be safe.
I don’t think companies can do that actually. It is very regulated area. Also I think there is a lot of nuclear scare going on. Nuclear is not at all dangerous as it most people think, it just sounds scary.
At present we have oil and coal companies that are responsible for a lot of deaths and burning the planet. Nuclear is in no way near ammount of damage coal and oil are making right now. So even with nuclear accidents(sounds scary yea) it’s better than coal and oil.
If you think companies care, you haven’t been paying attention. Nuclear waste will continue to pile up and will exist until the Earth is gone. You think we’ll store it safely that long? Keep replacing the containers. Protect it from natural disasters or wars. There is not safe place to put it that won’t eventually end up in the ground water and eventually evaporate and become airborne except deep inside the earth and we don’t have the tech and even if we did it would be way more expensive than just investing in new battery tech and renewables.
It is oddly enough easier to store nuclear waste since it is very easy to contain. Coal waste is nearly impossible to do that. No matter how hot you burn or how much you scrub or what tricks you play with syngas/distillate you are still going to end up with CO2 in air.
But nuclear waste will be dangerous longer than any container could possibly survive. Plutonium 239 has a halflife of 24,000 years. Some uranium isotopes are as much as 4.5 billion years. And that’s half-life, not how long it will take to be not dangerous. That’s one reason Yucca Mountain was never completed and the US has zero permanent storage facilities. Eventually it WILL get into the ground water and it will be extremely difficult to clean up, if not impossible, before it contaminates a large area and possibly becomes airborne with evaporation. One earthquake, one change in the water tables that puts water in direct contact with the outside of the pools. One flood. One bomb. Maybe not in our lifetime, but it is inevitable. And if we end up with more power plants and acres and acres of temporary storage pools that will never find a place to put it, it’s going to be really bad. We can’t even get enough money to remove lead pipes or asbestos from most homes. How will we store something that will be dangerous until the sun goes nova.
I’m not saying to stick with coal. I’m saying why invest in using a dangerous energy source when renewables are plentiful? We just need better batteries to store the energy and release it more evenly.
If companies can’t be trusted to dispose of coal waste properly, what’s the likelihood they’ll dispose of nuclear waste properly? And reactors that don’t produce dangerous waste, don’t produce enough energy to be worth the cost unless you add the cost of proper disposal of the waste. And since they don’t have to do that, they just store it in temporary storage pools indefinitely, the cost is much cheaper to stick with current tech. So fission will never be safe.
I don’t think companies can do that actually. It is very regulated area. Also I think there is a lot of nuclear scare going on. Nuclear is not at all dangerous as it most people think, it just sounds scary.
At present we have oil and coal companies that are responsible for a lot of deaths and burning the planet. Nuclear is in no way near ammount of damage coal and oil are making right now. So even with nuclear accidents(sounds scary yea) it’s better than coal and oil.
If you think companies care, you haven’t been paying attention. Nuclear waste will continue to pile up and will exist until the Earth is gone. You think we’ll store it safely that long? Keep replacing the containers. Protect it from natural disasters or wars. There is not safe place to put it that won’t eventually end up in the ground water and eventually evaporate and become airborne except deep inside the earth and we don’t have the tech and even if we did it would be way more expensive than just investing in new battery tech and renewables.
It is oddly enough easier to store nuclear waste since it is very easy to contain. Coal waste is nearly impossible to do that. No matter how hot you burn or how much you scrub or what tricks you play with syngas/distillate you are still going to end up with CO2 in air.
But nuclear waste will be dangerous longer than any container could possibly survive. Plutonium 239 has a halflife of 24,000 years. Some uranium isotopes are as much as 4.5 billion years. And that’s half-life, not how long it will take to be not dangerous. That’s one reason Yucca Mountain was never completed and the US has zero permanent storage facilities. Eventually it WILL get into the ground water and it will be extremely difficult to clean up, if not impossible, before it contaminates a large area and possibly becomes airborne with evaporation. One earthquake, one change in the water tables that puts water in direct contact with the outside of the pools. One flood. One bomb. Maybe not in our lifetime, but it is inevitable. And if we end up with more power plants and acres and acres of temporary storage pools that will never find a place to put it, it’s going to be really bad. We can’t even get enough money to remove lead pipes or asbestos from most homes. How will we store something that will be dangerous until the sun goes nova.
I’m not saying to stick with coal. I’m saying why invest in using a dangerous energy source when renewables are plentiful? We just need better batteries to store the energy and release it more evenly.