Sellafield, Europe’s most hazardous nuclear site, has a worsening leak from a huge silo of radioactive waste that could pose a risk to the public, the Guardian can reveal.
Concerns over safety at the crumbling building, as well as cracks in a reservoir of toxic sludge known as B30, have caused diplomatic tensions with countries including the US, Norway and Ireland, which fear Sellafield has failed to get a grip of the problems.
I don’t think it’s one or the other. Nuclear is part of a comprehensive green energy plan. That’s because nuclear is the only thing that can currently fill the gap left by coal or gas. Solar and wind need extensive battery infrastructure to be effective in this regard. Mass battery plants will also cause some form of generational waste. Coal and gas cause massive generational waste and coal ash is radioactive.
Obviously solar and wind are going to be safer but nuclear being safe and dangerously radioactive is both true and depends on how well the plant is managed and how old it is. Nuclear accidents rightfully get a lot of coverage but a well run reactor is pretty clean. How does the environmental damage stack up in kW/damage vs coal and oil?
Hydro is pretty great though. And I guess fusion if that ever goes anywhere.
Nuclear Reactors have a certain Limit on Powercycles. While you can power up an down with up to 10%/min that puts a huge amount of stress on all parts which leads to cracks and leaks. So you can’t actually replace the flexibility of gas powerplants with nuclear, because the risk associated with leaks is so much worse.
That’s fair, I was kinda thinking base power generation by nuclear and solar/wind for peaks. But the solar and wind probably wouldn’t be reliable enough so would still need some gas in the mix.
The reliability issue of regenerative energy can be lessend with better grids, because somwhere is always wind or sun. And then adding different storage technologies like battery, pressurised air or thermal storage should get us to a reliable power supply without emissions in the next decades.
Hydro is kinda devastating to any environment it touches if the scale is large enough. I think that it’s usually pretty good on a micro scale that doesn’t have to throttle waterways and flood others.
For this reason, tidal hydro is great. All of the benefits of hydro, none of the environmental ruin of dams.
They are obviously gonna be much less efficient than dams but there’s so much coast line to be taken advantage of.
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/hydropower/tidal-power.php