this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
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Objectively not. Precious metal mining is more than a thousand times worse for the environment than Uranium or Thorium mining.
Sure, in the 1950s. Modern nuclear reactors can be built in existing Coal plants. Most reactor types don't require any additional shielding besides what is already present.
We have mined enough Uranium to power the entire world for the next 10,000 years; there is currently enough Uranium in just known mines for the next 1,000,000 years of current global power usage. And that's just Uranium. Thorium is a viable technology with the first reactors already online for commercial use.
No, it doesn't. This is just outright a lie, one I have no idea where you got. The internal loop never leaves the building, the external loop is never irradiated.
They have a smaller impact than solar or wind farms, by a factor of 100.
They produce less toxic waste than Coal power plants, and all of the world's projected nuclear waste for the next 100,000 years fits into existing facilities.
This is the exact same for renewables, worse, arguably, since wind farms have to be off shore to be efficient and cargo ships are more than a thousand times worse for the environment than any form of overland transport.
From the charts I've seen lately, offshore is much more expensive than onshore per kwhr for wind by a large margin. If that's the case, is offshore even valuable anymore?
Yes, given there is no 'empty land,' you are always destroying something if you create a windfarm on land. On the other end of this, offshore windfarms unironically create local ecosystems. If your goal is not just decarbonization, but decarbonization in order to better the health of the planet, which it should be, then offshore would be the best option.
See: Germany tearing down land wind farms in order to mine more coal. Those turbines aren't going to be repurposed, they're going to scrap yards.