What Path to Energy Progress?

Uh... since when is nuclear waste not pollution?

Unless I missed the benevolent alien invasion where they gave us the technology to make fusion reactors...

and the ore mining, extraction and enrichment processes are similarly pollution free, don't forget

Nuclear waste...pollution? That is a typical ignorant response. France reproccesses their spent nuclear fuel. They don't throw it in a landfill. Putting fear, ignorance and paranoia aside, nuclear energy has a lower environmental impact than wind energy, is much cleaner than burning fossil fuels, creates a very stable grid and is clearly the most economical energy source. It's amazing that nuclear energy recieved such a bad rap after the Three Mile Island incident when no one even got hurt. It all stemmed from the fear of 'what it could have been'. Slowly the environmental groups that protested against nuclear energy in the past, are starting to come around and admit it may be the 'greenest' energy source we know.

Same with people going on about that Chernobyl thing - whingers.

BigBird here.

Would the guest(s) please identify themselves by joining CR4.

I suspect from the comments so far that there are at least 2 guests because the comments appear to contradict each other.

Cheers

BigBird

Uh... since when is nuclear waste not pollution?

Pollution, by definition, is when a toxic process byproduct enters the environment. Civilian spent fuel is in the form of ceramic pellets enclosed in zirconium rods. Whether it is placed in casks and entombed (as in the current Yucca Mountain design) or reprocessed with the transuranic going into new fuel and the short lived waste into borosilcate glass (as in the recycling process) the waste product never enters the environment, at least until it has decayed to a trivial level from a radiological viewpoint. It isn't pollution because it isn't released.

The only other methods for generating reliable baseload power emit tons of toxic material directly into the environment. There are no perfect solutions, but some are a lot better than others.

reduce demand

reduce demand.

It the same as saying the best birth control is abstinence.

"...uranium isn't considered a renewable resource..."

And until we can make it from scratch or mine it off-planet, it will remain non-renewable. It has it's upside, it has it's downside - oh, gee, it's just like all other man-made technologies, isn't it?!? My advice, get a...

You've obviously never been near a horse if you think they dont pollute the earth. Why not just eliminate people, then we wont have to worry about pollution. A nice war would settle that.

if the physics proffesser, who was working with ERDA in the 70's. as they were testing and working on developing my "earthtap" geo-thermal powerplant system, figures were correct; this system could supply electricity for all the world, and lose only one degree from the heat source over a period of 3 million years. that is more efficient than nuclear, and without the longlife waste ,a quarter million years is a long time to keep trash away from all living things!. the only exhaust from "earthtap" plants(otherthan a 100 gigawatts of electricity 24/365) is very clean steam, to form rainclouds that counter the ascid rain,of past decades, and give "distilled rainwater" to more of the cleanwater starved areas of the world. giving new meaning to that "rainwater fresh" commercial quote and reduced smog too. and clean white clouds reflect sunlight back up into space,Opps global cooling?. a fun thought, huh, chuck