Comparing to renewables
In: Physics
There are two forms of nuclear energy; one is using the same process that powers stars (fusion) and the other exploits the energy from past star explosions (fission). Both involve liberating energy from the nucleus of atoms and are *extremely* powerful. However, they’re basically “one way” energy processes…once you fuse or split (fission) atoms, you can’t recover them without putting in more energy than you got out in the first place.
“Renewables” refers to energy sources that are, at least from the point of view of Earth, self-regenerating. If we dam a river and use that to power a hydroelectric dam, as long as we don’t let more water out each year than the river refils, it lasts “forever”. Similarly, wind, tidal, or solar don’t “use up” anything that doesn’t get automatically get replaced at regular intervals.
All renewable power sources we know about rely on the sun as their ultimate source so they don’t literally last “forever” but they’ll last so long that it’s functionally forever to us.
However, nuclear power is so energetic that even the supplies of uranium (fission) and hydrogen (fusion) that we know about are also functionally “forever” so it’s kind of a wash in that sense when compare to coal or oil or gas, which are most definitely finite over realistic timelines.
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