We didn't "fix" Three Mile Island, the containment that was built to keep the effects of a meltdown from getting into the environment worked.
That's a straw man; you're putting words in my mouth. All I said about non-nuclear sources was that they're problematic and cannot support our full energy load as they are right now, and probably won't be able to for years.
Covering large amounts of land or ocean with any of these technologies is going to be bad for the local wildlife, even if it's an ecosystem that humans don't feel bad about disturbing. I don't think we should consign desert biomes to significant meddling when we don't have to, just because there's nothing cute and fluffy in them that we'd feel guilty for messing with.
The radioactive products with the longest half-lives are also the ones that are emitting radioactivity at the slowest rate, which means they're not going to give off their full energy load rapidly and can probably be safely contained till we have the technology to deal with them. Thorium produces much less radioactive material. It uses and produces much less uranium, and its reaction can actually consume some of the waste we're currently storing now. It will not continue reacting if humans onsite fuck up.
We're dribbling and drabbling more and more radiation into our environment now; coal as mined has a lot of little bits of radioactive elements in it, which are dumped into our air when the coal is burned completely unmonitored. With our current level of sophistication, I think the risks are justified and can be largely compensated for.
no subject
That's a straw man; you're putting words in my mouth. All I said about non-nuclear sources was that they're problematic and cannot support our full energy load as they are right now, and probably won't be able to for years.
Covering large amounts of land or ocean with any of these technologies is going to be bad for the local wildlife, even if it's an ecosystem that humans don't feel bad about disturbing. I don't think we should consign desert biomes to significant meddling when we don't have to, just because there's nothing cute and fluffy in them that we'd feel guilty for messing with.
The radioactive products with the longest half-lives are also the ones that are emitting radioactivity at the slowest rate, which means they're not going to give off their full energy load rapidly and can probably be safely contained till we have the technology to deal with them. Thorium produces much less radioactive material. It uses and produces much less uranium, and its reaction can actually consume some of the waste we're currently storing now. It will not continue reacting if humans onsite fuck up.
We're dribbling and drabbling more and more radiation into our environment now; coal as mined has a lot of little bits of radioactive elements in it, which are dumped into our air when the coal is burned completely unmonitored. With our current level of sophistication, I think the risks are justified and can be largely compensated for.