Germany Runs Up Against the Limits of Renewables

Re:Germany Runs Up Against the Limits of Renewables by mikeash on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @02:18PM (#11904074)

You can easily find millions of people with serious health problems due to coal waste. The problem is so bad that it's recommended that sensitive populations limit their intake of seafood because of the mercury in it, much of which comes from coal. How many can you find with serious health problems due to nuclear waste? How many large categories of food have cautions on them for children and pregnant women due to nuclear waste?

You can talk about possibilities all you want, but the fact is that as they are done coal waste is a lot more dangerous. So it's weird to put so much emphasis on closing nuclear plants first.

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Re:Germany Runs Up Against the Limits of Renewables by kuschku on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @02:40PM (#11904245)

We have solutions for clean coal.

Filter all the pollutants out, and use Compressed Carbon Storage for the CO2. We already are enforcing the first on all existing plants, and working on the second.

But long-term, renewables are the only solution.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Germany Runs Up Against the Limits of Renewables by mikeash on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @02:55PM (#11904382)

Nothing works 100%. How many nines does "all the pollutants" consist of? This is important because the amount of waste produced by coal is vast, many orders of magnitude more than nuclear, so even many nines can still result in more harm than from nuclear.

Also, how do you store the pollutants, and why doesn't that technique work for nuclear waste? I'm guessing that storing the pollutants consists of putting it in good, strong containers, which works fine for nuclear waste too. It's not perfect, but it doesn't really make much of a difference whether it's mercury or uranium leaking.

[ Parent | on HN ]