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.
If we play “I would rather”, I would rather have a nuclear waste facility than a copper, lithium or cobalt mine in my garden.
The transition to renewables energy will requires A LOT of mining and mines are awful for the environment.
At least with nuclear waste we can try to contain it, mining waste is just left in the open and pollute the land and water with heavy metals.
We don’t talk much about the environmental impact of mining because it mostly impact low income country and there is no clean mining, so the only way to reduce the impact of mining is to reduce our consumption, but no one wants to hear about that. Globally we prefer pretending that we can transform our consumption to be sustainable
The only clean energy is the one that we don’t use, after that there is just a list of less worse alternatives, nuclear, solar and wind are on the “less worse” category but they still have a terrible impact on the environment.