Nuclear power is usually not abandoned for being dangerous, but because it’s weirdly complex to keep it safe as compared to the alternatives [1]. This makes it one of the most expensive ways to produce energy (at least given European regulations).
Also, the raw material is expected to be quite rare relatively soon.
I guess this may be more about the way caveman made their fire… and the multi-billion cavedollar structure for holding the magic stone can be annoying.
[1] reading other comments, I feel like it is necessary to clarify that by alternatives, I do refer to green energy like wind, solar and water, plus energy storage.
I agree that atomic energy is preferable to fossil energy in almost all regards. The most convincing aspect for me is that you can see, pack and store your by-products, at least somehow, while CO₂ emissions can only insufficiently be handled using carbon capture and storage (CCS).
People tend to understand dangers with visible effects easier (impressive boom) than indirect effects like climate change (less impressive, slow motion, yet possibly apocalyptic boom).
Also, the raw material is expected to be quite rare relatively soon.
To be fair, this wouldn’t be nearly as true if we had persisted with our original plan which was to reprocess the spent fuel, more than 90% of which is still usable material. Once we found a couple huge deposits of Uranium, it became much cheaper to simply mine more of it and dispose of the spent fuel, so the recycling plans were scrapped. Sure, we can technically still pull the spent fuel back out again and recycle it, but we spent many years building reactors without building an equal capacity of reprocessing facilities (which are almost as hard to build safely as reactors), so that ship has more or less sailed.
Definitely. Also, one could get the impression that profit is not always helpful for sustainable use of resources. Better not open a thread on forestry, agriculture or … whatever really …
Nuclear power is usually not abandoned for being dangerous, but because it’s weirdly complex to keep it safe as compared to the alternatives [1]. This makes it one of the most expensive ways to produce energy (at least given European regulations). Also, the raw material is expected to be quite rare relatively soon.
I guess this may be more about the way caveman made their fire… and the multi-billion cavedollar structure for holding the magic stone can be annoying.
[1] reading other comments, I feel like it is necessary to clarify that by alternatives, I do refer to green energy like wind, solar and water, plus energy storage.
I agree that atomic energy is preferable to fossil energy in almost all regards. The most convincing aspect for me is that you can see, pack and store your by-products, at least somehow, while CO₂ emissions can only insufficiently be handled using carbon capture and storage (CCS).
People tend to understand dangers with visible effects easier (impressive boom) than indirect effects like climate change (less impressive, slow motion, yet possibly apocalyptic boom).
To be fair, this wouldn’t be nearly as true if we had persisted with our original plan which was to reprocess the spent fuel, more than 90% of which is still usable material. Once we found a couple huge deposits of Uranium, it became much cheaper to simply mine more of it and dispose of the spent fuel, so the recycling plans were scrapped. Sure, we can technically still pull the spent fuel back out again and recycle it, but we spent many years building reactors without building an equal capacity of reprocessing facilities (which are almost as hard to build safely as reactors), so that ship has more or less sailed.
Definitely. Also, one could get the impression that profit is not always helpful for sustainable use of resources. Better not open a thread on forestry, agriculture or … whatever really …