>Now compare this to: if we got all our electricity from coal and natural gas..
But we don't use only those, so you are argument is moot.
You are ignoring my one point, storage is not working /right now/.
Yet you seem to think that it's viable to put more of the worst waste humankind has ever produced into a failing system.
Your link to thorium reactors are all "in the future", in planning or in test mode. Also, if all power is derived from thorium reactors (your quote says the waste is lowered by a factor of 2) then it's 19.75 grams of nuclear waste every year.
That is almost 7,000 /TONS/ [0] of nuclear waste every year, just from the US alone.
Consider how much this will be for India:
27,057 t (metric tons) every year. [1]
That number is mind boggling huge, and that waste /will/ pile up.
And how good is India's record on public safety? Every single year, growing and growing. Nuclear waste will kill the planet before anything else does.
Where will all the nuclear pollution be? In a giant pile waiting for storms, earthquakes, terrorists, corrosion, you name it... and then entire sections of the world will become unlivable.
Nuclear power is a dead end. It's a corporations wet dream for making money, not for saving the planet.
> Yet you seem to think that it's viable to put more of the worst waste humankind has ever produced into a failing system.
With this I would like to end the discussion here. There is no point in repeating myself. This is not at all what I suggested. I suggested this: stop using old, obsolete, known-to-fail technologies when there are better (safer, cleaner, more efficient) ones! I acknowledge that most of our current reactors are shit, but we can build much better ones, and indeed they are under construction. Do you think that your preferred source of energy just appears out of thin air? Things need to be built. It takes time. Change does not happen overnight.
Nuclear power; specifically nuclear fusion is definitely not a dead end.
> Furthermore, a fusion reactor would produce virtually no CO2 or atmospheric pollutants, and its radioactive waste products would mostly be very short-lived compared to those produced by conventional nuclear reactors (fission reactors).[1]
It definitely has a future. You are being unnecessarily dramatic especially considering that fusion reactors would produce virtually no CO2 or atmospheric pollutants, and its radioactive waste products would mostly be very short-lived. Follow the progress of construction of ITER here: https://twitter.com/iterorg
If I might respectfully ask, please, stop spreading FUD. Feel free to read the relevant articles I posted, and compare their efficiency, environmental impact, and so forth to your preferred technology. At this point, keep me out of it. Thank you.
Did you really say that? Could you quote yourself verbatim? I must have missed that, if I did, I apologize.
I was reacting to "Nuclear power is a dead end. It's a corporations wet dream for making money, not for saving the planet.". Fusion power is "Nuclear fusion".
I did address the issue, it does not have to be perfect. I was not aiming for perfection. I was aiming for a significant and positive change. Renewable energies are not perfect either, they have their own drawbacks in the form of inefficiency and environmental impacts. If all reactors were replaced with the ones I suggested, we would be much better off. The thing is, we still have not thrown away old and bound-to-fail reactors. I find it a problem.
But we don't use only those, so you are argument is moot.
You are ignoring my one point, storage is not working /right now/.
Yet you seem to think that it's viable to put more of the worst waste humankind has ever produced into a failing system.
Your link to thorium reactors are all "in the future", in planning or in test mode. Also, if all power is derived from thorium reactors (your quote says the waste is lowered by a factor of 2) then it's 19.75 grams of nuclear waste every year.
That is almost 7,000 /TONS/ [0] of nuclear waste every year, just from the US alone.
Consider how much this will be for India:
27,057 t (metric tons) every year. [1]
That number is mind boggling huge, and that waste /will/ pile up.
And how good is India's record on public safety? Every single year, growing and growing. Nuclear waste will kill the planet before anything else does.
Where will all the nuclear pollution be? In a giant pile waiting for storms, earthquakes, terrorists, corrosion, you name it... and then entire sections of the world will become unlivable.
Nuclear power is a dead end. It's a corporations wet dream for making money, not for saving the planet.
[0] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=19.75+grams+*+350+mill...
[1] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=19.75+grams+x+1.37+bil...