• @Womble
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      1 year ago

      if you want to be like that nothing is. Solar requires vast amounts of rare earths to be mined and wind requires huge amount of unrecylable blades and generators to be produced. On total lifecyle damage to the environment all three are very low but non zero.

            • @Womble
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              1 year ago

              Data isnt milk, it doesnt go bad just because its old. This was on the front of a well maintained wiki article and is from a credible source. If you have more recent data from a credible source showing something fundamentally different please share it.

          • @schroedingershat
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            11 year ago

            Because renewables don’t change at all in a decade, and the ever-decreasing quality of uranium ore doesn’t involve higher emissions than the benchmark of ranger and cigar lake from 2014. /s

        • @Womble
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          -31 year ago

          Huh, i thought they did require rare earths in construction, but apparently not. They do require silicon wafers boron and phosporus, and small instalations typically come with large li-ion bateries which clearly do require lithium. But the panels themselves dont. Still my point stand that ANY method of generation requires industrial activity which has downsides, pretending nuear is unique in this is dishonest.

          Please dont call people trolls just because you disagree with them, this isnt reddit.

          • @schroedingershat
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            21 year ago

            Lithiun is also not a rare earth, and is not required (doubly so in sweden). Even if you do choose to use it, you need it in significantly smaller quantities than uranium, and mining it is significantly lower impact.

            The mining impact of PV and onshore wind is acceptably small (although should still be reduced further), the orders of magnitude worse impact of digging up or leeching uranium ore with lower energy density than coal, poisoning indiginous communities with the milling waste and then never cleaning it up is not.

            You’re sharing praeger U propaganda talking points. This is trolling.

          • Aesthesiaphilia
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            11 year ago

            iirc earlier solar panel construction required rare earths

            In the last 10-15 years they’ve moved to more abundant materials

    • @[email protected]
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      41 year ago

      When considering these externalities for nuclear, you have to do the same for renewables as well. i.e. scrap turbine blades, concrete in dams, weathered PV panels, land use taken up by panels and turbines.

      Remember that the materials used in most renewable generation are also shipped around the world and many have very dirty refining processes.

      I’m a firm renewable energy supporter but you have to be fair to both processes.

      • @schroedingershat
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        1 year ago

        Okay.

        Make a PV system out of a strict subset of the materials in the reactor.

        Put the PV system over top of Inkai mine.

        Get more power than the uranium from the mine would produce for longer.

        The 40 year guaranteed lifetime of the panels is longer than the 30 year lifetime of the average nuclear plant at shutdown.

        Your materials can be recycled after.

        The ground around the mine isn’t poisoned with heavy metals permanently,

        This all assuming everything goes perfectly for the nuclear plant and waste disposal.

    • @schroedingershat
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      11 year ago

      The emissions from nuclear are primarily from mining (this is huge in some cases, enough to not consider it as low carbon, or negligible in others), enrichment, conversion, and fuel fabrication (these last three have no trustworthy data, but from the few steps that are public knowledge, are enough to put it higher than PV or wind).

      Transport, and the building are negligible enough they’re not worth considering.

      In either case, it’s largely irrelevant. The main harm is to the local environment of the mines (this is devistating) as well as the main reason the astroturfers come out in force, which is that it delays decarbonization due to being an ineffective use of resources.

        • nicman24
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          11 year ago

          how did they got there is my point. to build anything there are emissions.

          • @schroedingershat
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            11 year ago

            Incredibly well quantified emissions that are in total lower than the emissions from mining uranium (except for two or three cherry picked mines which are supposed to be representative), or the emissions from building and decomissioning a nuke if you take real lifetimes and load factors.

            • nicman24
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              11 year ago

              wait per energy output? that seems wrong. also what about nukes?

              • @schroedingershat
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                1 year ago

                Most uranium ore is lower energy density than low grade coal. Digging it up with diesel equipment after removing twice as much overburden with explosives in a coal powered country and then milling it with 10s to 100s of litres of sulfuric acid is incredibly dirty. All of the “representative” lifecycle studies use Ranger (which used a specific much cleaner more expensive process only suitable for some specific ores on ore 30-70x as concentrated) or Cigar lake which is 1000-2500x as concentrated.

                Even after that nuclear is still relatively low carbon, but about 10x a modern wind turbine. It is largely irrelevant (the best llw carbon technology is the one that deploys soonest), but that doesn’t stop the shills constantly lying to try and delay decarbonisation.

    • Aesthesiaphilia
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      01 year ago

      Most of those costs are similar for renewables…rather than a building it’s the production and installation of fields of solar panels, for example.

      In both cases I’m pretty sure it’s a negligible fraction of the lifecycle emissions compared to energy generated.

        • @Testnummer37
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          31 year ago

          Might be a problem for landlocked countries like Switzerland or so but all swedish reactors are cooled with sea water which is not in short supply any time soon.

            • JasSmith
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              41 year ago

              Fukushima had structural risks and wasn’t compliant with international standards. Modern reactors don’t carry runaway reaction risks. They just shut down in the event of a power loss. There is zero risk of another Chernobyl with modern reactors.

            • @Testnummer37
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              -11 year ago

              Easily solved by building them one meter above expected future sea level 😂

              And wind turbines have the problem of needing backup power plants when the wind is not blowing. The whole reason for the energy crisis that europe have right now is because germanys backup plants can’t run as their supplier have their hand full trying to murder their neighbour.

              Wind and solar are great stuff. Puting solar cells on every south facing roff is a no brainer. Hydro- and geothermal powerplants only work where the geography allows it and are in these places also no brainers. But wind is a whole different beast. If you have a good way to save the excess power generated when they are runing then they are super. But right now, outside of repumping back water in to hydro dams, there are no good ways of utilizing it. That leaves at best 50% of a normal country’s power demand to be covered by either fossil fuels or nuclear. Unless you are a climate change denier then that choice is pretty simple. Nuclear is the only viable option if you want to keep the lights on.

        • Aesthesiaphilia
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          21 year ago

          Sweden?

          Drought?

          Anyway I’m not a civil engineer or geologist or renewable energy engineer or anything, so I won’t pretend to know what the best path is. I’m just hoping they did their studies correctly and are picking the best option.

          But even if they’re not, it’s good they’re moving away from fossil fuels, whichever direction they move in.

          • @schroedingershat
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            11 year ago

            Well no, that’s the thing. They’ve replaced moving away from fossil fuels now with promising they’re going to in 2045

    • @bouh
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      -31 year ago

      Oh so exactly like renewables that actually produce more co2 during their life cycle?

    • @Aux
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      -31 year ago

      Renewables need all of that too plus they generate SHITLOADS of waste.