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Comment by medlazik

16 hours ago

>What do you mean?

I mean it's not clean

>one of the lowest impact mining of resources we have

Not the point. It's not clean, it shouldn't be called clean end of the story.

Nuclear power uses around 1/10th the resources of intermittent renewables per kWh of electricity produced.

So if nuclear isn't clean, renewables are downright filthy.

  • Citation needed.

    I will save you the trouble because I already know where your numbers come from: the Quadrennial Technology Review by the US Department of Energy from around 10 years ago. These numbers have been thoroughly debunked [1]. They are simply wrong, likely out of laziness more than malice.

    But the people that spread this around do it out of malice to dupe people and influence opinions. You've been duped.

    [1] https://xcancel.com/simonahac/status/1318711842907123712

    • > I already know where your numbers come from: the Quadrennial Technology Review by the US Department of Energy from around 10 years ago.

      That turns out not to be the case.

      Even if it were the case: an official study by the DOE was "thoroughly debunked", in your esteemed opinion, because some random Australian twitter user claims to have talked to a friend.

      Right.

Ok, well by this definition, all human development activity is unclean. This is a perfectly valid point of view but is pretty distinct from the modern definition of clean.

  • > all human development activity is unclean

    of course

    > modern definition of clean

    clean is clean. no need to lie or modernize word definitions to fit your agenda of promoting nuclear energy all day every day for a decade

    • The problem in my mind with a "clean is clean" litmus test is that it eliminates the word "clean"'s ability to differentiate between sustainable and unsustainable human development.

      Using systematic metrics to annoint something as clean so it can get clean energy credits so that people can invest in activities considered cleaner is valuable and useful even if none of the options are 100% perfectly in impactful to the natural world.

    • OK, but then by that logic, solar and and wind shouldn't be categorized as clean energy either. Clearly it's a matter of degrees and meant as a useful segmentation for taxation, etc.

      1 reply →

Are you saying it's less clean than mining for the materials that make up solar panels and wind turbines?