It just seems counterproductive because waste has to be stored, so why are we still using it?
In: Chemistry
1. The waste is small and easily stored and controlled indefinitely. It only becomes problematic when you start thinking about long term storage.
2. The cost of the fuel is the same now as it was in 1960. The cost of the plant has grown, but operating costs of a plant already in existence are stable and predictable and low.
3. It is incredible safe. More people die every year mining coal than have ever died in a nuclear accident. By any reasonable measure not involving hypothetical situations that haven’t happened, nuclear is safe.
4. Nuclear produces huge amounts of stable baseline power with no carbon, no smog, no chemical pollution that leaves the plant, every day, rain or shine, wind blowing or not. Because it reliably produces power under all conditions with low and predictable operating costs, its competition is not wind or solar power. Those types of power are suitable in situations where nuclear is not. Nuclear is an alternative to coal and natural gas. And against those, it is infinitely cleaner, has a radically lower environmental impact, and its costs are much more predictable and low. The only reason we use coal and natural gas is simple greed – the startup costs are low. In a world driven by logic, the last fossil fuel power plant in the world would have been built in 1975, decades before wind or solar would have been practical alternatives to nuclear power.
5. The waste is smaller than you think it is. Smaller than you likely have ever imagined it to be. 1 pound of uranium produces the same amount of power as 1,000,000 pounds of coal. Imagine the amount of ash that would be left behind or blown up a chimney by burning 1,000,000 pounds of coal – and that ash is filled with heavy metals and dangerous chemicals. Contrast that with a small block of metal, that has not moved and can be easily stored away. It didn’t blow up a chimney, it was not reduced to a powder. It isn’t wafting through the air in the town beside the plant giving children asma and lung cancer. It is still a block of metal.
Many environmentalists think there is no way to get to carbon zero without a massive increase in nuclear power. Certainly, with today’s technology, it will require nuclear (though granted, there is a huge increase in the practicality and efficiency of solar power coming).
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