Coal has been rejected, nuclear power has been shunned, and we are digging up Lithium (and Cobalt, other elements) in trace amounts while scarring the Earth all in the name of ‘Environmentalism.’ It is just crazy. Germany is returning to nuclear power, and likely coal. It is gloomy and overcast for more than half of the year there, at least where I was, so Solar is out of the question.
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From my wanderings, the greenies/climate crap pushers actually like nuke power plants because “clean” ie no smoke I guess. Nuke power is one the evillest inventions ever. Totally expensive, governments have to underwrite; dangers as hell, no place to put the spent fuel which is hot for eternity practically.
Most of us are familiar with the destructive power of Nukes, but there is of course another side to it all. The typhoon which hit Japan several years back (2010 I think) and the Chernobyl event are episodes to arouse concern, but truthfully, if we are unwilling to attempt new endeavors in harvesting energy sources, we are unlikely to see sustainable progress for posterity.
I am of course skeptical more than ever regarding the Chicken Little ‘sky is falling’ mantras of these imbeciles protesting everything, in every conceivable media outlet.
Not if you go the molten salt thorium reactor route...
Nor is the uranium route if you reprocess the spent, but Carter (IIRC) executive order banned reprocessing which is why the massive amounts of spent fuel sit in water pools at reactor sites waiting for someone to stuxnet the pump management systems...
Back in 2003, my boy was involved in a tank explosion in Iraq. The tank was destroyed, though nobody was actually physically injured at the time. The projectile that destroyed the tank consisted of depleted Uranium. The armor of the tank was made of depleted uranium. There was depleted Uranium dust all over the site. Those kids inhaled that shit for hours.
I freaked. I looked into it rather deeply. Now I am not the sort of ‘Digger’ that you are, but I found reports. I was frightened indeed, but almost 20 years later I have yet to see or hear of evidence regarding health issues of those Troops. It may come, but so far so good.
Meanwhile, my boy is about my age now as I was then. He has lost more friends and ‘coworkers’ in his life than I likely have in mine.
I cannot fret about not cleaned up radioactive waste. There are all sorts of threats about us. Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been rebuilt, even as Detroit has been effectively leveled. The memes are everywhere demonstrating that truism.
Posting from cell here right now. Lots of corrections and spell problems. I will address them when I get to a real device.
“no place to put the spent fuel which is hot for eternity practically”
You can send the fuel to a nuclear reprocessing facility and reuse it practically forever until it is all consumed.
There are also reactor designs that consume the spent fuel from standard reactors.
We don’t have either of those because the commies won’t let us have them.
We get our dam electricity the Ol fashioned way:
Hydroelectric