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Re:Costa Rica has run on 100% renewable energy for 300 days by Ericson2314 on Friday July 12, 2019 @02:02PM (#20422879)
Nuclear doesn't ravage fish and watersheds either!
Re:Costa Rica has run on 100% renewable energy for 300 days by throwaway5752 on Friday July 12, 2019 @02:59PM (#20423382)
Nuclear has well known downsides. As I mentioned, it's not renewable so isn't a permanent path forward for human civilization. But additionally it currently has unpriced externalities in long term waste storage, looks less attractive when fuel & plant are full amortized over lifecycle, complex relationship with arms proliferation, limited deployment options because of large cooling requirements, requires permanent and expensive security and expertise over the life of a plant, and others.

It's not the harmless cure-all that it's made out to be here at times.

edit: that said, CO2 levels are an immediate planetary crisis and nuclear is a tool we can and should use to mitigate it.

Re:Costa Rica has run on 100% renewable energy for 300 days by jki275 on Friday July 12, 2019 @03:04PM (#20423425)
Nuclear isn't renewable precisely, but the amount of fuel available is extremely large and not being decreased by any appreciable amount.

Waste storage can be handled quite easily by reprocessing fuel, the waste is very small in comparison to other types of energy. There's little to no relationship to arms proliferation, that's only a very specific type of reactor and fuel that's not in general use for nuclear power.

And finally there's a lot of water on the planet. Cooling isn't a difficult problem.

The bigger problem is that reactor research has essentially been stopped due to nimby problems, so we don't even know how much better we could make nuclear power.

Re:Costa Rica has run on 100% renewable energy for 300 days by imtringued on Friday July 12, 2019 @03:57PM (#20423908)
I think I'm missing some sarcasm here. Nuclear power plants need water for cooling. If a fish gets stuck in the cooling system then it gets ravaged. The hot water gets dumped back into the river. If the water gets too hot then everything that lives inside the river dies.
Re:Costa Rica has run on 100% renewable energy for 300 days by jnellis on Friday July 12, 2019 @02:26PM (#20423097)
Re:Costa Rica has run on 100% renewable energy for 300 days by derblitzmann on Friday July 12, 2019 @02:51PM (#20423309)
Hanford isn't a power plant, it was a nuclear production facility for weapons grade nuclear material.
Re:Costa Rica has run on 100% renewable energy for 300 days by jnellis on Friday July 12, 2019 @04:16PM (#20424088)
"The last reactor, N Reactor, continued to operate as a dual-purpose reactor, being both a power reactor used to feed the civilian electrical grid via the Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS)"

"Hanford also hosts a commercial nuclear power plant, the Columbia Generating Station, and various centers for scientific research and development, such as the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the LIGO Hanford Observatory. "