LadyButterfly she/herFeb 6
HIDEOUS
Show threadAlberatFeb 6
okay but also, those are nuclear cooling towers in the foreground, right? that’s another renewable energy source. like, id be fine with the stuff coming out of the cooling towers bc it’s water. don’t care if it ruins the skyline.
Show threadSenshiFeb 6

Nuclear fission is not renewable. It relies on mined uranium, which is rather limited.

Also, cooling towers are not seen exclusively with nuclear power plants. Many chemical refineries need lots of process heat and need to get rid of that as well. Evaporating water to steam is a great way to disperse excess heat.

Any kind of heat power plant also needs some way to expel excess steam, so oil and gas plants have them as well, just usually different designs.

Show threadexasperationFeb 6

Nuclear fission is not renewable. It relies on mined uranium, which is rather limited.

The uranium is gonna continue to undergo fission, whether we mine it or not, whether we enrich/refine it or not. At that point it’s like collecting energy from our surroundings, really functionally no different than harvesting geothermal, wind, solar, hydro, etc.

Show threadRamRabbitFeb 6

Exactly, nuclear is no less renewable than solar. Where does everyone think solar energy comes from? Nuclear.

We might as well capture the uranium decay, as you said, it will release the energy whether we collect it or not.

Show threadDalvoron

That’s such a disingenuous presentation of the facts. Of course there is no such thing as truly renewable energy, but there is a difference in kind between a supply of energy that is practically inexhaustible on the timescale of human civilisation (what people mean when they say renewable) and energy produced from a limited fuel supply on earth (non renewable).

Solar (and its byproduct energies wind, hydro, biomass), tidal, geothermal are not in the same category as fission of rare heavy metals.

I say all this as someone pro-nuclear who agrees that we should use it while it is still fissionable.

Feb 6 at 5:42pmWeb
Show threadRamRabbitFeb 6

We are talking about dozens of millennia of uranium supply on Earth. Other fuel types and nuclear technologies look to extend that into billions of years. For all functional purposes, it’s infinite. Just as solar energy is functionally infinite.

a supply of energy that is practically inexhaustible on the timescale of human civilisation (what people mean when they say renewable)

As I said: Nuclear is Renewable, in the exact same way everyone uses the term.

How long will the world's uranium supplies last?

Steve Fetter, dean of the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy, supplies an answer

Scientific American
Show threadJcbAzPxFeb 16
That timespan is only calculating current usage. If we scale up to using it to completely replace fossil fuel usage, we would cut that time several orders of magnitude.