this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2024
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Just because it's safe doesn't mean it's the best we have right now.
A combination of solar, wind, wave, tidal, more traditional hydro and geothermal (most of the cost with this is digging the holes. We've got a lot of deep old mines that can be repurposed) can easily be built to over capacity and or alongside adequate storage is the best solution in the here and now.
The problem with these arguments and the focus of debates is that they are based on nuclear energy from uranium, not thorium. Thorium is ubiquitous in nature, power centers are much easier to set up and can be small and the waste, while initially (a bit) more radioactive than uranium waste, loses it's radiation level much faster
Edit:typo
The abundance of uranium and thorium is of the same magnitude. The thing is economics. Uranium is cheap, and as long it is, we use the sources we have. As the peice of uranium rises other sources get economical including sea water extraction which is effectively renewable.
Uranium is a much scarer source compared to thorium. Uranium can also be used to create nuclear weapons, that's why other countries have difficulties using the tech because foreign powers are afraid of these consequences