More people need to be made aware of information like this, so they can understand it’s not all doom and gloom.
Every time I see news about renewable energy expanding, I don’t feel uplifted because I know how much ewaste photovolatic cells create. We should be investing more heavily in nuclear fission and retrofitting those plants for fusion later.
Retrofitting a nuclear fission plant for fusion? There’s no way that’s even remotely feasible, the two are radically different in construction.
This isn’t a binary choice. We can do both, whilst we wait for governments to sort out nuclear or fusion. I’d prefer we do what we can to reduce our emissions via renewables now, rather than doing nothing whilst waiting for some potential solution in the future.
Also, ewaste from renewables can be recycled
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10668-023-02925-7
Why create exceptional amounts of trash when you don’t need to? It’s not a binary choice but it should be. It makes absolutely zero sense to waste so many resources when it can be focused into a solution that doesn’t do that.
Yeah we can keep burning gas in cars or we could transition to EVs. Transitioning to solar and wind respectively is creating more electronic waste. That’s the reason not to use it in the meantime. It’s a different kind of pollutant but still a potent one. We’re literally shipping garbage to third world countries.
Focus on the best solution, now, not a better solution and then figure it out later. Nuclear. Now.
OK, so whilst we wait the 7 years for the reactor to be built we should, what? hope that coal and gas stops polluting in the interim? Or should we continue to use the tech that, whilst not perfect, is better than the currently most widely used alternatives?
Nuclear is expensive, slow to deploy and has a inherent risk that renewables do not:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-020-00696-3
https://eu.boell.org/en/2021/04/26/7-reasons-why-nuclear-energy-not-answer-solve-climate-change
Plus the ewaste renewables produce can be recycled easily, cheaply and with far less risk than the waste for nuclear. Is the process perfect? No, so lets concentrate on improving the circular economy around recycling panels, turbines etc. Spend the money and effort on improving the tech that is already proven to be cheaper, more effective and ready now.
And seven years seems quite optimistic considering how effectively local governments and committees of concerned NIMBYS have been blocking any new nuclear construction for like, my entire lifetime, at least in the US. Apparently nobody wants a nuclear power plant going up near them and they find a lot of creative ways to jam up the works. I’m not sure we have the time to try to ram dozens of nuclear power plants through those folks while the world is burning.
Definitely. That 7 years was just the construction phase. All in the average nuclear plant takes about 14 years to build from planning to switch on.
Lmao no the fuck it doesn’t. From start to finish the time to build has been set by Japan at 3 years. Stop fucking commenting on shit you don’t even try to learn about.
