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Say I have US$10,000. What's the best use of that money if my goal is to stop climate change? (feddit.cl)

submitted 4 days ago by fixmycode@feddit.cl to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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[–] hungrybread@hexbear.net 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

From what I understand nuclear in general is (at least now) a dead end as a climate change solution.

From planning time to turning on the reactor is something like 15 - 20 years (note, that's longer than the global average of 7 years for construction, because construction is not the whole picture)
It's difficult to have more than 1 plant project ongoing simultaneously due to the scale and complexity
Nuclear plants take a lot of C02 to construct and maintain. The fuel has to be mined, resulting in emissions, and the amount of concrete required massive. 1 ton of concrete creates .8-.9 tons of C02, and a nuclear power plant has hundreds of thousands of tons of concrete in it.
We still don't have a good answer for handling nuclear waste.

Maybe at some point in the past nuclear could have resolved many climate change issues, but between project time, initial emission cost, and waste, it just doesn't seem viable anymore.

[–] xia@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I think the "shipyard guys" are trying to tackle 1 & 2 (as well as lessening the concrete on #3). Though, I would be surprised if your numbers for #3 are right... it seems odd to me that a ton of concrete would produce about a ton of CO2 (but maybe it's just one of those counter-intuitive things!). Thorium is interesting for #3/mining because it is produced (unrefined) by rare-earth mines (unlike special-purpose uranium mines). As for #4, I would argue simply that it is "better than coal" insomuch as we have neither found a good way of dealing with the fly-ash and soot-ash from coal power plants (yet they operate); i.e. ash ponds & coal ash impoundments.

[–] hungrybread@hexbear.net 2 points 3 days ago

I gotta say, the C02 number seems very high to me too, just got that from a quick search and saw that a couple of times. I haven't investigated it closely tbh.

I wasn't aware of the mining differences between uranium and thorium, that is encouraging.

Regarding the waste, that's a fair point as well. Thanks for the response! Interesting points.

I used to be very pro nuclear energy. Besides the waste and the occasional meltdown it seemed like a no brainer as a renewable supplement. After learning a little more about it though it just seems like we have more runway for positive growth with wind and solar than nuclear, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong.