For me it's not an engineering problem but a human one. Since the waste from a single power plant during one year of operation is enough to kill hundreds of millions of people we have to ensure no madmen get their hands on the waste for thousands of years after we have spent all the watt-hours the waste has produced.
We're leaving that problem to hundreds of generations to come, who will get no benefit from it, just so we can have cheap energy today. That seems unfair. It's equivalent to Julius Caesar building the aqueducts using some technology that France would still have to pay for today.
I think investing in energy storage - hydrogen, ammonia, pumped storage to mention a few - would be vastly better. Solar and wind already generate more electricity in Germany than nuclear ever did, if it could be stored during the proverbial cloudy days, the problem is solved permanently and in a much better way than with nuclear power plants.
"waste from a single power plant during one year of operation is enough to kill hundreds of millions of people"
You know what else can kill millions of people? Pesticides, and anyone can buy them.
Bhopal disaster killed thousands of people and left 500,000 with debilitating injuries when a pesticide factory operated by Union Carbide Limited had a leak due to lack of maintenance. The CEO is wanted man in India, but has fled to the US and theybare refusing to extradite.
> Since the waste from a single power plant during one year of operation is enough to kill hundreds of millions of people
Chances of that happening is minuscule and if left uncheck, global warming will kill more than that.
> who will get no benefit from it, just so we can have cheap energy today
Or they figure out better ways to use it that don’t involve killing people.
> proverbial cloudy days
According to this website[0], Germany had about half a years worth of sunny days in 2020. 50% is a long shot from proverbial and according to tfa it’s being bridged by other EU nations and coal.
We're leaving that problem to hundreds of generations to come, who will get no benefit from it, just so we can have cheap energy today. That seems unfair. It's equivalent to Julius Caesar building the aqueducts using some technology that France would still have to pay for today.
I think investing in energy storage - hydrogen, ammonia, pumped storage to mention a few - would be vastly better. Solar and wind already generate more electricity in Germany than nuclear ever did, if it could be stored during the proverbial cloudy days, the problem is solved permanently and in a much better way than with nuclear power plants.