#nuclearpowerclimate — Public Fediverse posts

The nuclear industry manges to mine and ship millions of tons of uranium and meticulously care for all the radioactive waste without emitting greenhouse-gases. It's magic!!

They mine and ship millions of tons without using Fossil Fuels I guess. How do they do it? (The answer is probably in that Tom Waits song that uses commercial jingles: "How do we do it! How do we do it! Volume! Volume! turn up the volume! Step Right Up!" )

Maybe the magic of avoiding fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions while mining and transporting millions of tons of dangerous ore makes up for the rivers' worth of water the nuclear plants heat up 7C and send back into local waters, destroying the ecology. Nukes are so delicate, often shut down because of climate: not enough water, or too-warm water for cooling the reactors so they don't explode and require heavy machinery to try and mitigate the disaster. I wonder how much extra greenhouse gas is being emitted while handling radiation from the Fukushima DaiIchi fiasco... Nukes are surprisingly delicate: Even when a plan is providing energy 24/7: there needs to be ingenious ways to deal with the excess night-time electricity. One ingenious way is a pump storage dam which manages to cost more and be worse for the environment than a regular dam. But the pump storage dam does get rid of 30% of that extra night-time electricity...

I guess you have to be Miss America or a titan of industry to see how nukes are good for the environment.

.> The industry may be at a turning point as it comes into the chance of obtaining billions of dollars in federal funding through the climate-focused Inflation Reduction Act, the 2021 infrastructure law and government-backed loans for new projects because of its ability to provide 24-7 power without greenhouse-gas emissions.