That's an inconvenient fact, but it's something that has to be considered.
Wind has the advantage that the only carbon costs are the building and (relatively) minimal maintenance costs. Once the blades are spinning, there's no carbon being generated. (Apart from the pile of dead birds at the base of every windmill, and the babies that windmills sneak out to eat at night. But anyway.)
I've never seen a complete carbon budget for a nuclear station, including everything from building, mining and fuel management, decommissioning, and spent fuel storage/reprocessing. Considering the amount of effort needed to keep spent fuel out of circulation - has the spent fuel problem been solved at all, for permanent, static and maintenance-free values of solved? - it's difficult to believe that the total carbon cost isn't significant.
Hydro has the problem that dammed areas of still water in warm climates tend to develop large areas of rotting vegetation.
Indeed. In fact, the carbon footprint is arguably the least of the problems with that large pile of rotting vegetation. Soil loss and disruption of river habitats are at least as serious. Quoting myself from upthread:
Incidentally, in much of Central Africa and the tropical parts of Latin America, you should think not once or twice but three times before building large hydro, on account of the fragility of the local biosphere and the risk of soil disruption caused by damming up a river.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
The waste issue has been solved. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
So far as I know, the UK is still storing most of its waste in ponds. Says the inevitable Wiki quote:
Radioactive waste - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In the United States alone, the Department of Energy states there are "millions of gallons of radioactive waste" as well as "thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel and material" and also "huge quantities of contaminated soil and water."[1] Despite copious quantities of waste, the DOE has stated a goal of cleaning all presently contaminated sites successfully by 2025.[1] The Fernald, Ohio site for example had "31 million pounds of uranium product", "2.5 billion pounds of waste", "2.75 million cubic yards of contaminated soil and debris", and a "223 acre portion of the underlying Great Miami Aquifer had uranium levels above drinking standards."[1] The United States has at least 108 sites designated as areas that are contaminated and unusable, sometimes many thousands of acres.[1][2] DOE wishes to clean or mitigate many or all by 2025, however the task can be difficult and it acknowledges that some may never be completely remediated. In just one of these 108 larger designations, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, there were for example at least "167 known contaminant release sites" in one of the three subdivisions of the 37,000-acre (150 km2) site.[1] Some of the U.S. sites were smaller in nature, however, cleanup issues were simpler to address, and DOE has successfully completed cleanup, or at least closure, of several sites.[1]
Admittedly these are pounds, not tons, but it's still a lot of trash to take out and bury.
As I've said before, the most telling argument against nuclear is political - you simply can't trust governments and market-run economies to build nukes sensibly with a mature safety culture, or to clean up after themselves.
The fact that this may be possible in Sweden doesn't necessarily mean the problem has been solved elsewhere.
The liquid waste on the other hand is often pretty radioactive or chemically toxic, but that generally originates from legacy weapons manufacture, not power generation. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
This would change by orders of magnitude if global nuclear capacity would be significantly expanded, necessitating the exploitation of to lower concentration uranium ore. (Then again, going for lower concentration uranium ore would also face problems similar to those ignored by Peak Oil sceptics arguing with oil shales and sands: the amount of reserves is one thing, running up the rate of production to a level similar to that from present high-grade ores is another.) *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Hm? Even you acknowledged that even the Swedish method has its questions -- not to speak of other countries (like Germany in that diary of mine). *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
and in that case if safety standards are lower in that sector of construction, why should there be any confidence in other parts of construction or operation? Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
*The way this number is calculated is absurd. A population of 9 billion people is assumed, as are cancer survival rates identical to todays. That is not a possible future - If we maintain a technological civilization, cancer is not going to kill anyone in 400 years. If we do not, the population will be rather a heck of a lot lower than nine billion, and the number of cancer cases will be correspondingly lower.
My focus lies not with uranium mining per se, but with the coal industry.
