this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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Personally, as it currently stands, no. But it could potentially be, given better waste treatment practices and far better regulation and consistently enforced safety requirements.
It's far greener than fossil fuels, when run carefully at least. But between the persistent issues with waste reclamation and harmful leakage, and the massive amount of damage that can be done when mistakes are made or safety is overlooked, I don't think it qualifies as "green".
So from a practical standpoint, I still think new resources are better spent developing infrastructure for solar, wind, geothermal, etc. But as we are phasing out other power sources, pretty much everything else should go before we start to decommission nuclear.
In addition to this, uranium mining and processing is done in places with low environmental regulation even if the countries that ultimately use it have their own deposits and processing facilities.
Has anywhere actually solved the issue of waste handling?
I think nuclear also benefits a centralized grid structure more than community-based energy production and use.
All power generation benefits a centralized grid structure most by definition. There are scaling laws involved and humans tend not to use power at 100% all of the time, so by centralizing production and storage reductions in cost and efficiency increases in production become possible.
Isn't the main beneficiary of centralized power generation industry and not the average citizen?
Well that depends on factors outside of the technology.
For example if a centralized power production facility was controlled by a community and used its excess capacity to produce Ammonia which was then used to provide fertilizer to increase crop yields to provide more free food to the community. Would that benefit the industry or the citizens more?
Scaling laws are real but we can collectively use them for our collective benefit or we can continue to allow a set of self-selecting few to continue to use them for their own personal gain.
When compared to something like a coal fired power station, they too can cause similar levels of unthinkable damage when things go wrong but with the added damage whilst they operate. Nothing feels ideal at this stage and not to say it classes them as green or clean, but the bar is pretty low for improvement as it stands.