The big issue that in practical no power plant whether it’s using renewable methods or fossil fuel burning methods are gonna be pollution free. Once we do away with capitalist influences on power production then we might have a chance to wrangle the negative externalities but pretending they don’t exist as some seem to want to do here especially with renewables is something that’s irksome to say the least. It’s really not something that anyone should discount. This is capitalism’s end results after all. We literally had people making fake milk out of sheep brains and chalk not too long ago (around 80 years ago iirc). So imagining a seemingly green power plant having the worse pollution effects wrt to its byproducts or maintenance isn’t something we should ignore.
Hydro increases water temperatures in rivers. Rivers flow into the ocean. Warmer rivers overgenerate plumes of algea (which sounds good) which die off and create dead zones (thus are actually bad). Hydro also blocks fish passage for migratory species like salmon, sturgeon and striped bass. As it turns out, those species are linchpins in the health of temperate forests hundreds of miles inland that are the 2nd largest carbon sinks in the world.
Not that hydro is worse than fossil fuels, but it’s not without impact.
I wasn’t saying that it wasn’t. He was just putting out questions in a way that’s usually designed to derail discussion. I was just saying that the information is readily available with some quick searches. I didn’t want ambiguous questions of their impacts to go unanswered because we do know the impacts already. I’m not lending any distinction as it being a problem with capitalism (although it most probably is). You two are the ones bringing meaning to my comments when they weren’t there in the first place. I was just answering a simple question.
Wow, with that sarcasm we should stick to coal and natural gas, rather than develop more efficient solar panels and wind turbines as well as batteries to store that power. Or work on other solutions like using the sea to power turbines, or more practical geo thermal. And forget developing crops which would reduce methane emissions from cattle or cleaner engines, just stick to the ones we already have. 
I have been looking for proof that the idea of Thorium reactors being either a pipe dream and not actually work the way proponents say they would. Thus far I have been unable to find anything against them other than the massive start up cost. And by cost, we would actually be paying people for the labor and materials, so that money goes into the economy, not just up in smoke. But no solution is going to be with out cost. Even if we go with just the standard reactors we have now, I don’t think nuclear should be off the table. If the most pressing problem is needing to dramatically reduce emissions, nuclear is a viable solution, IMO, while developing alternatives in parallel.
Have you seen a red line that the GOP hasn’t been willing to slither over?
the same lubricants are used in nuclear power generation. It’s just steam power after all. Ergo, lubricants are a moot issue.
There are toxic isotopes of iodine such as 129 that have a 15+ million year toxic half life. Both thermal and fast reactors produce it as a waste product. So it’s created by the thermal reactor and then again by the fast reactor. Fast reactors actually make the problem worse. I129 is long lived, environmentally mobile, and toxic as hell.
it is such a problem that there is an entire field of study about how to deal with it via nuclear transmutation though no practical solution has yet proven viable.
Let me ask you a question… why support a power source that’s already killing people to the point where the elderly are volunteering to die in an effort to clean it up? I mean, from my point of view it seems like an inhumane way to look at power generation.
THAT WAS IN THE PAST
there will never be another nuclear accident and if there is it certainly won’t be my fault
Yeah, that’s exactly what I was saying. /s
Except I don’t see anyone claiming that solar and wind are problem-free. (Maybe they did before they were implemented, but…) Nuclear power in particular has a history of wildly optimistic predictions coupled with serious unforeseen problems, and one has to be skeptical of rosy predictions about a particular new technology that hasn’t even been implemented yet. The thing that doesn’t exist will always lack the problems that things that exist have. That doesn’t mean the new tech won’t turn out to be better, but acting like it’s definitely going to be entirely problem-free (this time for sure!) needs to be viewed with some skepticism.
Well it is hard to tell what you’re saying because it was a sarcastic quip. But “The technology you haven’t actually put into practice is always better than the ones you have.”, unless there was an error that jumbled up the meaning, makes no sense no matter what we’re talking about.
I never said nuclear power nor Thorium reactors were problem free, indeed when it comes to Thorium, even though we know it works, it would require some new innovation to make it a reality. Just like pretty much everything outlined within the green new deal requires some new but doable innovations to make it reality.
I don’t think we can solve all the problems we face with current technology. Even if we are limiting our selves to current, tested technology, then certainly traditional nuclear power should still be on the table.
Waste IS an issue that IS managable, but keeps getting kicked down the road as an issue. We were supposed to be making a centeral depository deep in the ground away from everything where it can’t hurt anything, but we haven’t actually committed the time and money to make it a reality.
When the wind doesn’t blow you don’t watch television that night.
I am convinced that he thinks energy supply works that way.
Austria has the safest nuclear power plant in the world.
Maybe a model to follow.
Do you have a method of storing something such as that securely for even ‘a few centuries’?
If so, there’s a lot of money waiting for you. 
Well, that’s because no one actually knows how to do it. It’s not even as easy as dig a big hole and put the stuff in it (which is in fact itself very hard).
There’s a whole bunch of ‘test sites’ around the world trying out various things.
So far as I know none of them have yet been declared to be the answer and most of them have already required expensive remediation because something went wrong.
But it’s not all chocolates and roses as you want to paint with respect to renewables. Why are you trying to downplay this?
Because it’s energy dense, we have lots of fuel out of the ground already, and it’s the lowest CO2 footprint of all energy generation sources? It seems you really want to insist on emotionally loaded questions for these things as if I’m magically some cartoon villain here. The reality is that nuclear isn’t likely to get a second chance thanks to capitalist and political idiots who made the critical mistakes of Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island (the first being probably the most dangerous one of the bunch). So I really don’t see why you’re so emotionally invested in this matter which it’s purely hypothetical whether or not we’ll see another play at that (economically and politically speaking).
Compared to the tens of thousands who’ve died from coal mining, coal plant emissions, and the like (not counting early industrial revolution deaths from coal here)? We’re talking probably less than a few hundred in the entire run of nuclear power. I think nuclear power has the better track record despite all the false assertions otherwise. Sorry for being snarky, but I think we have a bunch of pearl clutchers that demand no one entertain alternatives. I didn’t say “no solar/wind,” I rather said we should think about using nuclear as well. I’m more for solar and wind generally but if you want to replace high load sources guess what? That means you have to look at something like nuclear or fusion or some kind of storage solution that actually can handle high loads without offering similar environmental impacts (any kind of mining isn’t exactly clean). So in the end, trying to take an option off the table like nuclear isn’t logical.
How can you forget about the continual omnishambles that is Windscale/Sellafield?
It’s a byproduct of Xenu’s hydrogen bombs.
