Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned

Re:Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto m... by newaccount74 on Saturday November 06, 2021 @04:49AM (#29128504)

Nuclear energy may not release CO2 into the atmosphere, but that doesn't make it clean and sustainable:

- you need to store radioactive waste for hundreds of years

- "safe" permanent storage sites often end up not not being actually safe 50 years later

- warming rivers by using the water for cooling may wreck local ecosystems

The only thing that is actually sustainable is not using all the energy in the first place. Bitcoin is the opposite of that.

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Re:Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto m... by skohan on Saturday November 06, 2021 @05:04AM (#29128609)

That all might be true, but there are ways to improve on those points. For instance thorium reactors are much more efficient in terms of waste, and they are much safer.

A lot of problems we have with Nuclear is because the tech most widely used was created with a side goal of advancing nuclear weapon production.

I'm by no means a nuclear maximalist, but I could see better nuclear being a component of a larger sustainable energy strategy.

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Re:Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto m... by gefhfff on Saturday November 06, 2021 @05:09AM (#29128642)

Thorium reactors are a castle in the air

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Re:Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto m... by skohan on Saturday November 06, 2021 @05:18AM (#29128707)

Everything is until it isn't right? Do you think there's a fundamental problem there, or is it just taking too long?

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Re:Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto m... by kitkat_new on Saturday November 06, 2021 @05:27AM (#29128755)

taking too long is a fundamental problem here

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Re:Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto m... by skohan on Saturday November 06, 2021 @05:39AM (#29128797)

Some problems are complex. If you asked me in 2012 if fuel cell cars would ever exist I would have called it a pipe-dream, but now you can buy one and use it as a real vehicle in California.

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Re:Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto m... by kitkat_new on Saturday November 06, 2021 @06:23AM (#29129025)

and when did we think we would have got fusion? We can't rely on pipe dreams when solving the climate crisis

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Re:Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto m... by skohan on Saturday November 06, 2021 @06:35AM (#29129074)

I'm not saying thorium is a solution to the climate crisis. But I think the balance is a bit far in the other direction: people rule out Nuclear unnecessarily as a part of a larger clean energy strategy because of bad associations with mushroom clouds and Chernobyl/Three Mile Island.

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Re:Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto m... by kitkat_new on Saturday November 06, 2021 @07:05AM (#29129191)

and waste

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Re:Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto m... by dcanelhas on Saturday November 06, 2021 @05:07AM (#29128629)

Readily fissile materials aren't just found lying around next to the reactor though. There is a non-negligible amount of CO2 emitted to get fuel, even for nuclear power.

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Re:Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto m... by DeusExMachina on Saturday November 06, 2021 @04:55AM (#29128549)

Nuclear waste is much safer than all other waste from energy production:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/06/19...

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