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Nuclear is super good. Yes, radioactive waste is a problem. But literally every other energy production and storage also has problems. Hydroelectric causes huge ecological issues and isn't valid everywhere. Wind works when there's wind but you can't power a country on it, not to mention the huge swathes of land that have to be built on to scale the technology out. Solar is great but you still have to take up the space and you have to mine the materials for it. Let's not even get started on battery technology and how dirty the production of that is. Please tell me how you're going to power an entire country on geothermal without causing serious ecological damage. Literally any complaint people have about nuclear (it's dirty, we need land for it, it's unsafe, it's not sustainable) can be applied to ANY OTHER source of power, and in every single instance, those other sources are going to be worse. Worried about us dumping on indigenous land? Of course, that's a valid issue...so let's just not dump it there. Do you think for a second that all these sunny plains we relegated our natives to won't be sold off again to solar power companies? There are giant systemic issues with regards to power generation generally but NONE of them apply to nuclear and nuclear alone.
Nuclear causes some nasty waste but you get a massive amount of power for that waste, and that waste is solvable; put it in a thick container and bury that shit. With enough research we can find a way to use that too; we already can use some of that in breeder reactors. There must be improvements that can be made there. The energy density per unit waste and land is higher with nuclear than with any other source of power. The only reason ours is so dirty is because we purposely do it in an inefficient way to make bombs out of it. That's not a mandatory part of nuclear power generation.
Leftists are insane for being against nuclear. It's such an easy opportunity to impact global warming and we refuse to be for it because of some weird perceived notions about how it's somehow murdering your family.
Hear me out, unionized public nuclear industry.
Physicist - unionized
Engineers - unionized
Maintenance staff -unionized
Janitors - unionized
Construction crews - unionized
Uranium miners - unionized
Transportation - unionized
Waste disposal staff - unionized.
I can't tell if you're saying union-ized, or un-ionized
The amount of handwaving that you put into "just put it in a box and bury the box" solution to nuclear waste is astounding. You can't just compare it so blithely to other forms of energy waste. Nuclear waste has a half life of 24,000 years. You cannot build something that won't leak for twice as long as there's been civilization. It will get into the ground water, and it will kill people. Nuclear waste has the ability to render entire regions completely unlivable if it were to seep into an important aquifer, which it WILL eventually do. And not to mention the fact that any place that's been selected for some kind of waste management always affects those least able to fight against a nuclear waste bunker being built in their back yard, like native americans.
So pile it up in one place that doesn't have a water table beneath it and leave it alone. Build a wall around it and make Exxon pay for it. It's easily solvable. It's not like it grows legs and spreads all across the world like the radioactive waste fossil fuel power is constantly doing every single day all across the world. The problem of "destroying one tiny part of the ecosystem" is much more solvable than the problem of "we're destroying literally the entire ecosystem". Break it into smaller chunks and solve those. Nuclear takes many of these big problems and breaks them down into one much smaller one. Your other options are "do nothing" or "become a luddite". We're going to use power, so it's time we minimize the impact of that as absolutely much as possible, as fast as possible. Nuclear is that ticket.
t’s not like it grows legs and spreads all across the world
Its literally 100% pure unadultered radiation! That's what radiation does to shit, it makes it mutate. Who's to say that in 24,000 years it won't mutate a box enough to have it growing working appendages
lol just bury it 4head
it would be so easy to remove toxic waste from an entire region after it got into the water system. Just use the de-nuclearizer or whatever 4head
It's amazing how fast people here turn into the same kind of morons that kiss Elon Musk's ass when it comes to nuclear power. "Stop bringing up the problems that are inconvenient to my fanboying of this technology!"
Know what's super easy? Removing greenhouse gasses that are quite literally destroying the entire planet today. That's really easy. Know what else is easy? Fixing the massive amounts of toxic waste that are destroying entire countries who are mining lithium and producing batteries. I also find that reversing an earthquake caused by hydroelectric is extraordinarily easy. It's way easier to clean an entire planet than it is to just cordon off one small piece of it and put all of the problem over there. Super smart, why didn't I think of that?
You know, it's almost like I actually already said that literally EVERY SINGLE WAY of generating power causes massive problems. Including nuclear. It's almost like I actually already said that nuclear power takes existing problems, which are happening today, and condenses them into a much smaller problem. Interesting.
You don't know anything about the engineering nightmare of nuclear waste containment. You just hope to kick the can of ecological disaster down the road and hope that technology finally comes to rescue humanity. And yeah buddy, getting CO2 out of the atmosphere, or toxic stuff from mine leakage IS actually easier than decontaminating nuclear waste.
People here have decided nuclear is the best energy source and work back from that conclusion in their arguments. It's inane.
I guarantee you it has failed because there is absolutely no profit incentive in creating and building proper storage. Proper storage technology is absolutely solvable but since there's no profit in it, it hasn't been done yet. Again we're just taking existing systemic problems and ascribing them to nuclear like it's some sort of special thing. It's not. Any problem with nuclear is systemic to power generation period.
I actually have read some interesting articles about that. I think the most compelling one was to essentially use folklore to do it. By creating some story about the "magic death mountain" or something. Folks would learn a passed down story about the magic death mountain, and evidence of people visiting said death mountain and dying would reinforce the story to the point that future societies actually believe the story and just stay away from it altogether. The paper was around how to pre-seed said folklore so it doesn't take a future disaster for a post-cataclysm society to create it themselves. Put in the right spot, away from things like giant freshwater lakes or massive underground aquifers, this issue wouldn't be one that kills huge portions of humanity. It would be like a minefield...it sometimes kills people but mostly they stay away from it. This is not ideal, but compared to the scope of the problem that nuclear sets out to solve, it's manageable. The cool thing is that folks do recognize this and are trying to solve it, which tells me that if we funded the research it's solvable too.
That particular problem is only actually a problem if you assume two other giant points though. First being that humanity has some cataclysmic problem by which we lose all of our historical and cultural memory, and the other being that said cataclysmic problem doesn't just end humanity outright. Again, global warming being the absolute most pressing of those...if we continue as we are without any course correction, there won't be any humans left for us to worry about them finding a pile of waste 5000 years in the future.
Using the plot of a post-apocalyptic fantasy novel to make my energy solution sound reasonable
IIRC, Soviet storage technology was based around vitrification, turning shit into glass to prevent leaking. Of course, before they managed to do it reliably, there were some fuckups.
there is absolutely no profit incentive in creating and building proper storage. Proper storage technology is absolutely solvable but since there’s no profit in it, it hasn’t been done yet. Again we’re just taking existing systemic problems and ascribing them to nuclear like it’s some sort of special thing.
But it is ESPECIALLY prescient of the issues with nuclear more than any other green energy source. Which is why it is a choice to be avoided.
I note people aren't equally concerned about preventing, say, the toxic slag from solar panel construction seeping into the oceans.
The toxicity issues with nuclear waste are way more serious than the radiation issues (which are a non issue, really. You could lick a depleted fuel rod and if you get ill it wont be the radiation.)
So unless you are concerned with the sum total of all industrial production waste (and you should be), most more dangerous than nuclear, your irrational fear of "radiation" is getting the better of you.
the radiation issues (which are a non issue, really. You could lick a depleted fuel rod and if you get ill it wont be the radiation.)
What the fuck are you talking about. Go to Fallujah and tell me that all the depleted uranium we filled that city full of isn't dangerous.
Miss me with that accusation of hypocrisy because I'm not simultaneously railing against all forms of environmental waste in a thread about nuclear power on chapo.chat
I'm just really tired of nuclear advocates acting like we can either A) just like bury it lol how hard could it be or B) acting like we can just wait for some magical technology to be invented to make it a non-issue
It's dangerous, sure. Its just probably not in the top 10 dangerous ordinance remnants in Fallujah. And its danger is mostly its chemical toxicity as a heavy metal. Again, safer than a bar of, say, cadmium.
Turns out heavy metals in civilian areas is bad, who knew?
Seriously, actually have had jobs working in enviromental soil testing here.
probably get more radiation from a cigarette than spending a day there
I've always loved this idea except it's kinda hard to launch anything into the sun, and also if there's a malfunction, now we actually DO have radioactive waste just...floating around the atmosphere. Which is explicitly what we're trying to avoid. It's a cool idea but if it goes wrong, it goes too wrong.
All well and good until the rocket it's on explodes on launch and throws nuclear waste across the whole of Florida.
Someone explain to me why or if this is a bad idea. IDK how much mass of waste nuclear produces, so if it's not like massive coal ash ponds or some shit then surely throwing away a rocket now and then is worth it to prevent irradiating aquifers
Oh, just posted before I saw your post, but the very short answer is that if the rocket malfunctions and explodes, you now have exploding radioactive rocket issues instead of just "we have a pile of this bad shit we don't know what to do with". Much, MUCH bigger problem. Keep that shit squarely on the ground and move it slowly and safely.
People on this site: "train good car bad"
Also people on this site "whats wrong with putting dense rocks in a rocket idk"
"Let's put it off until later" has never come back to bite humanity in the ass before, Nuclear Ho!
so let’s just not dump it there
I mean, doesn't this seem easier to say than to expect any government or corporation under capitalism to do?
There's less risk of it even happening with infrastructure for renewable sources of energy.
The only reason ours is so dirty is because we purposely do it in an inefficient way to make bombs out of it. That’s not a mandatory part of nuclear power generation.
But we live in a nation dominated by a MIC, and that's not an issue we're going to be able to solve any time soon. Pushing for an energy source that can and will be used for more weapons to ravage the entire world with seems shortsighted in exchange for more power now, rather than developing the sources that don't provide the opportunity for perversion in the future.
Can't wait to see the thousands and thousands of nuclear plants that definitely will not ever have a nuclear accident
And there have been 3 accidents in the histoy of Nuclear Power Generation.
Look at Chernobyl for an example of how hard it is to make a nuclear reactor fail. Not only is no other reactor capable of failing like that, they also had to disable every safety system.
You can literally bomb a nuclear reactor and it won't blow up.
whenever I talk to a greenpeace activist I feel like they are literally shaking me down for money. One was all like "how much you make a month? I know you can contribute at least 2% of that." Like fuck off liberal until you run your org on the basis of democratic centralism don't you dare think I'm giving you my limited resources because you'll probably blow it on something idiotic.
Because democratic centralism never winds up doing idiotic things....
at least I'd get to vote on it, rather than some unknown lanyard getting to do god knows what with the budget, then there is at least some accountability for the idiotic decisions (virgin lands campaign ect..)
anybody questioning this should factor in that a recent report found ~9 million deaths a year from fossil fuel air pollution
Solar and wind can be scaled up faster, cheaper, and more safely than nuclear
No they can't. They're radically less efficient and both cost more and kill more per unit power produced. They're also more extractive for the same reason.
Wind and solar get less effective as you scale them up. In the windiest places, wind is effective, but then you have to go to places with less wind.
Nuclear power is completely independent of weather. Flexible in location. High, consistent yield.
and even in those windy places, turbines have to shut off when it gets too windy or else they break
At the current moment renewables are the way to go, especially since nuclear takes a while to build. But more nuclear plants a few decades back, while renewables were in their infancy, might've meant less fossil fuel related deaths.
Greenpeace is dogshit. They've been grifting "Save the Seals" for decades at the expense of Inuit livelihoods because it makes them money. Seals aren't even endangered.
Seals aren’t even endangered
Way to talk out of your ass. 10 of the 34 seal species are classified as threatened with some having less than 500 individuals left.
Should have been more clear. I'm specifically referring to the Harp seal, which is the seal used by Greenpeace in their marketing and the one affected by the EU seal hunting ban. As of 2018 their population was a little under 8 million, around 8x their population at the end of the 70s. Inuit communities have been decimated as a result of the harp seal hunting ban thanks to perceptions by dipshit Westerners of them as "the eskimo in the igloo", removed from the global economy. Watch the documentary "Angry Inuk", it's a good insight into the way that animal rights activism is often coopted into a grift at the expense of Indigenous communities.
White libs getting mad about the Inuit seal hunt is basically the equivalent of said same white libs getting mad at like a Pacific Northwest Indigenous people cutting down an old tree to build canoes, houses, clothing, household objects, and various other things. They've been sustainably living off the land for far longer than the existence of nation-states. Exactly right, much of this conservation posturing puts Indigenous livelihoods in the crosshairs when it's clearly the whites overfishimg to their heart's content. Greenpeace mfs need to get their seal pity the fuck outta here.
We need to return to the time where they killed/coexisted/assimilated the Viking colonizers in Greenland. Good times.
dismantling all cars to make solar panels
we can undo the mistakes of our forefathers and put the rail lines back where highways now eat up like 10x the land, lay solar panels on the ones in good areas where they'll get enough light. sign me up
the more I think about it, the more convinced I become that there are little downsides to the idea besides the initial costs of solar panel production, dismantling a significant portion of the existing highway infrastructure in the US, and then actually laying the rail lines (building stations as well, I guess) and the panels.
Like, what you spend in funding, time, and manpower you make up for with reduced emissions, significantly increased public access to transportation, more green spaces in urban/rural areas where highways cut through them, etc etc. goddamn
I like "car bad" more than "ban cars". It's less hardline and focuses on systemic issues more than personal ones.
if the cars were banned, that would solve the systemic issue. "car bad" simply pushes it into an individual moral failing
I'm always disappointed how little steam power tends to figure in these conversations.
isnt that what most power already is? Steam turbines to create electricity from burning coal/oil/whatever really.
Right right, those are more correctly referred to as coal/NG/whatever. I'm talking about clean, naturally derived steam from water.
Yeah ok and how are we heating the water to make steam if not coal? what? wood? Still releases CO2.
No no no, I'm talking about using steam, not heating water. You know like in all those speculative fictions with the goggles and dirigibles.
Isnt there usually some sort of magic crystal or something thats heating the steampunk water up?
No they're powered by steam not water or diesel those are distinct punks.
In this essay, I will explore the utilization of the Heart of Lorkhan as an metaphor for nuclear power as informed by the pervasive culture milieu during the primordial stages of lore development.
Just in case you’re interested in their shit take.
https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/global-warming/issues/nuclear/
E: what a fucking shitlib organization. “Nuclear weapons are illegal.” Who enforces this law? https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/nuclear-weapons-are-illegal-at-last/
I think geothermal power is even better. The technology needs to be matured for areas that don't have a lot of heat near the surface, but if you can dig deep enough, the earth has enough heat at any location to boil a working fluid and turn a turbine. Free energy for as long as the earth's core is hot. And zero waste as well.
I, too, enjoy disregarding indigenous people's repeated environmental demands and ignoring long term problems
edit: "long term problems? what about global warming, idiot?" you can scale up solar and wind faster, cheaper, and more safely than nuclear
lol aren't solar panels like 99% silicon, which is literally the most abundant crust mineral? Its rocks, its literally rocks. Rocks are what silicon makes up. Will we ever run out of roc ks?
And so-called "Rare Earth Elements" aren't exactly rare... They just aren't specially concentrated anywhere. You could probably take a Hoe through your Backyard and wind up with a few mg of rare earth elements.
This is such a dumb take, all rocks are not the same. They are not equally effective for silicon extraction. The extraction process itself takes a lot of energy and solar panels are absolutely not 99% silicon, I don't know which crack case you got that idea from. Not to mention that there is an environmental cost of strip mining and scraping the earth for rare minerals.
The real killer though the batteries to store this energy (since we aren’t generating a steady stream of it) which require cobalt, lithium, and manganese. Wind turbines are even worse.
There's alternatives. For example, there's always thermal solar plants and even if the tech isn't all the way here yet, its probably because hardly any research has gone into it since its viewed as less efficient.
And lots of indigenous communities would jump for the chance to open a valuable rare mineral mine that would generate a ton of wealth for their community. A lot of posts here keep bringing up indigenous communities in what I feel is a really disingenuous and tokenizing way, as if they all hm together in common other that having been historically fucked with by colonizers at practically ever opportunity given. Going forward I'd hope that wouldn't continue, its not like a mine automatically has to be built by some outsider who plan on screwing over the community living for their the profit of their investors.
The real killer though the batteries to store this energy (since we aren’t generating a steady stream of it) which require cobalt, lithium, and manganese.
You can replace batteries with hydrogen.
The current natural resource problem with renewables is that we need batteries to level out the supply.
You don't have that problem if you store the energy that's produced at peak moments in hydrogen.
Rn fuel cells are only 40-60% efficient
That just means you need to use more of them. At this point, I only care about reducing emissions (and not using to much other recources).
If we'd start using that technology on a large scale, it would evolve to higher efficiency very fast btw.
you didn’t have to store some funky rocks in a mountain for a while
Holy shit what a statement in bad faith
but you really can’t say that scaling up renewable energy is less environmentally impacting than finding a place to store spent waste when you have to destroy entire habitats to fuel the material needs of solar panels.
Why? Why can't you say this?
Nothing you've said up to this point indicates any expertise here, just parroting pop-science propaganda from the pro-nuclear crowd.
Nuclear waste, waste that does not degrade on a human timescale, waste that will seep into the waterways and poison both people (the poorest first) and the environment is arguably on-par for damaging our ecosystem as oil has been. It's not just funky rocks, it's poisonous material we don't currently, and have no prospects for a feasible way to safely contain.
In the same way we kicked the threat of CO2 and plastics down the line for a future generation to solve, banking on nuclear with no possible solution is a dangerous choice.
nuclear means disregarding indigenous people and the more you do the more nuclear it is
It's scientifically impossible for nuclear waste to be stored on anywhere other than indigenous land. Also there is no possible case in which indigenous land would be exploited to build solar and wind farms.
It’s scientifically impossible for nuclear waste to be stored on anywhere other than indigenous land.
Because all land is indigenous land o7
Yeah, i'm sure they prefer dumping oil in their lakes and destroying their forests.
You can scale up solar and wind faster, cheaper, and more safely than nuclear as a replacement to fossil fuels
Yes, i'd absolutely love that since I live in a place that would produce tons of energy with the wind.
But nuclear produces way more.
Sorry, but i'm a centrist in this issue.
Between the four main renewable energy sources of solar, wind, geothermal, and hydro, you have way more power available than nuclear. Especially from solar.
Nuclear power is by far the least extractive power source due to its efficiency. Literally every kind of power requires mining or drilling, and nuclear requires the least of it. Are we going to just pretend that the coup in Bolivia didn't happen and that indigenous lands aren't under threat from increasing demand for renewables?
Funny, the only people in my country arguing pro-nuclear are the right-wingers.
On the internet, it's always muricans who have these galaxy brain takes on nuclear energy. Did they show you all a documentary about the "benefits" of nuclear energy when you were in 5th grade?
We're talking about toxic waste that can make entire regions uninhabitable for millennia, where our current containment procedure has proven to be insufficient, and you want more of this shit? 200 years ago europeans were still shitting from a plank, and you trust the energy industry of all people to have a secure plan for 20k years?
Nah, thanks, I'd rather take my chances with renewables.
Did they show you all a documentary about the “benefits” of nuclear energy when you were in 5th grade?
Nah. American culture is nuclear-phobic, people don't understand it and fear it. Americans posting are reacting against the anti-nuclear stuff one normally hears.
We’re talking about toxic waste that can make entire regions uninhabitable for millennia
Also true for fossil fuels, especially if you compare area contaminated per energy generated.
And fossil fuels are currently on course to make the whole planet less habitable for millennia. So even if nuclear contamination occurs (and it is preventable with very basic safety procedures), a few new deserts are preferable to the whole Earth on fire.
you trust the energy industry
No one here trusts any industry to not kill you if you turn your back to them. But nuclear works better than fossil, whether under neoliberalism or socialism.
Nah, thanks, I’d rather take my chances with renewables.
Practically no one prefers nuclear to renewables. The problem is renewables are more expensive (less efficient) and don't work as well in every climate. There's a reason only a few rich countries have really invested in them (and they're still a small fraction of the energy sector).
A, we have rules against debate-bro bullshit that includes splitting posts into segments, and B, then stop using so much power if we can't afford it.
Renewables create enough energy, it's mostly a matter of energy storage and lack of investment/research atm, due to the energy lobby actively undermining funding as actual green energy would cut into their profits.
The lower efficiency may be an argument for dirt poor countries, but it's a non-argument for any western country, yet these countries also use your line of argumentation. If you're not from a developing nation, it's just privileged nonsense.
then stop using so much power if we can’t afford it.
Then we need degrowth. While it might be interesting to debate that as an academic issue, I don't believe it's possible to convince the broader public that we need to intentionally shrink our economy.
Dear Comrade Hog of House Wild,
I do not mean to debate you (at least not for the sake of debating) - I believe we are here to practice mutual enlightenment. For example, you asked if Americans got nuclear propaganda in school - and I answered.
Try as I might (checking the Code of Conduct, TOS ), I cannot find any rules against "debate-bro bullshit" generally or "splitting posts into segments" particularly. (I've avoided doing so here to be polite to you.) If such rules exist, please be so kind as to link me to them. I get that debate-broism can be problematic, but I do need it defined for me because the line between discussion and debate is naturally vague.
I split your post up for clarity, so you can tell what I am replying to. It also makes reading easier, because each point stands on its own and you don't have to read the full thing if you don't want to. I did not mean to cherry-pick anything you said or attack any of your points. Rather - you disagreed with OP's perspective, I expanded on what that perspective is. If you have a problem with the way I said anything in particular - please point it out so I may learn and grow.
You are right that power consumption should be cut back generally. Under capitalism, consumption is cut through the regressive mechanism of pricing poor people out, while it's really the rich and middle class in the developed world that consume too much, but the general principle of cutting consumption is great.
However, the real question is how to generate the power that we can't forego. "Dirt-poor countries" is where most people live, and Western countries actively prevent them from developing nuclear industries, sometimes using fears of nuclear energy as arguments. In the medium term, they must be allowed to keep using fossil fuels because it's most economic and because the developed world owes them a debt for both exploitation and historic pollution. (This puts even greater pressure on the developed world to switch to non-fossil-fuel energy sources, whichever are available the fastest, without relying on the assumption that new technologies will solve existing issues.) Additionally, the change to renewables requires the closing of old power plants - and the anti-nuclear groups counter-productively wish to see nuclear plants closed before fossil fuel ones (which means more CO2 emissions). So it's a valid topic of conversation wherever you live.
Neither OP nor I advocate investing in nuclear energy instead of renewable energy when one is free to make that choice. The reason for saying "nuclear is good" is to reverse the misconceptions about it and to highlight how much worse fossil fuels are despite escaping the same stigma.
I hope I've expressed myself in a manner to your liking even if we still disagree. I respect your position 100% - I am simply interested in describing my own.
Sincerely and with warm regards, Your Comrade Audeamus
Funny, the US government accidentally dropped a nuke that didn't explode in a lake near a city in my country and people still leave there.
Nuclear waste can be treated and is way cleaner and efficient than what we have now. Also, stop exporting the politics of your country to the entire world.
On the internet, it’s always muricans who have these galaxy brain takes on nuclear energy.
:this:
We’re talking about toxic waste that can make entire regions uninhabitable for millennia,
Mining for coal similarly destroys areas right?
same shit applies for any energy source. they mine indigenous land for components of solar and wind energy, hydropower has sunk indigenous land
maybe the problem is how power is structured, not the end technology extracted materials end up in
I mean isn't all land technically someone's indiginous land?
this is probably just me being stupid but why don't we like put it in a rocket and launch it towards the sun
we're talking about 250,000 tons of nuclear waste. It takes takes about $15,000 per kilogram to get something to even low earth orbit (getting something to the sun takes about 3 times more energy). So at this calculation, in order to get all current nuclear waste just out to space where it doesnt fall on our heads, you're looking at a cost of $3.4 trillion. And that's not even talking about how sending a rocket to space every time you need to change the rods in your reactor is probably not part of the "environmentally friendly" angle that people tout about going nuclear
Isn't there something called like a Mulching Reactor that ends up eating its own spent fuel?
edit: Breeder reactor, no idea where I got "Mulching" from, maybe because thats what some lawnmowers do to get rid of their waste?
One of the two ever commercial breeder reactors in the US melted down outside Detroit, which might have something to do with there not being any more.
But the breeder reactor thing seems to be bizarre Reddit lore that has almost no connection to reality. The hype is based on a non-breeder research reactor that showed that it's theoretically possible to build a reactor with a breeder cycle that transmutes some the waste with the longest half-life into waste with a shorter half-life. As far as I know, no such reactor has been designed, proposed, or built.
In real life, there are only two reasons why a breeder reactor has ever been built:
- To reprocess weapons-grade plutonium into nuclear fuel as part of an arms control treaty
- To supplement expensive enriched uranium fuel with cheap depleted uranium (which was prevalent due to the massive production of nuclear weapons that would later necessitate #1)
That's the price of a rocket right now, I have no doubt that earth to space transportations can get safer and cheaper. We don't have to send nuclear waste at this present moment, we can wait.
You can't invent around how much energy it takes to get something to space. I'll concede that maybe a space elevator would do the trick, but I'd rather not hang my hopes on science fiction becoming true to make an energy proposal work
Rather than saying that we will find a way to reduce the energy needed, I meant that we'll find a better vehicle with which to bring shit into space. Be it a space elevator, a better space shuttle, reusable rockets and/or better fuel. You can reduce the launch cost without decreasing the energy cost.
I don't know how much you're just playing Devil's Advocate here, but at some point you have to realize you're just spitballing utopian futurist ideas to solve the problems that your real-life ideas are causing
i mean that's fair but it'd probably be the best fireworks show ever
hottest take (literally): Nuclear is good for the environment because when the plants inevitably start 'sploding, they create wonderful nature no-man-go-lands like in Pripyat, where wildlife has seen massive comebacks
Nuclear is the only power source that has rewilding as a side effect.
If I were prone to paranoia, I'd be convinced that opposition to nuclear from an environmentalist, leftist-adjacent perspective is a fossil fuel industry op.
Hydrogen fusion good
Thorium fission good
Uranium fission every kind of bad, all at the same time
