Technology

The IPCC report lists higher lifecycle emissions for nuclear than your numbers. We probably need to take all of that with a grain of salt. But it's about comparable to some of the renewables.

And even if you want to use nuclear for baseline power, you're going to have a problem in like 40-100 years once uranium mining gets harder as we're depleating the resources.

And I mean "theoretically" having storage is kind of a joke, since we're not generating the waste in theory, but in practice. So we also need the solution to actually exist. And as far as I know it might be a hoax anyways and there might be a good reason why we struggle actually implementing it. Usally people claim the waste can be put somewhere underneath the earth. In an old salt mine or something like that. And the geologists I asked said it's true that a salt reservoir underneath the earth is stable for 100.000s of years... Unless someone tampers with it. For example breaches it by digging into it, taking the salt out and putting waste inside. Then it'll become unstable. And we have precedent for that.

So. I've heard the same things about long term storage. But it seems to me there is more to it. Until now nobody was able to build a proper one. Sure they claim in theory it's easy, still they didn't do it. And geologists have some doubt it'll work on that timescale in the first place. And looking into the past we also weren't very successful with putting waste into old mines. A good amount of them has become leaky. Or something happened with the groundwater that wasn't expected to happen... And I'd rather not have toxic waste mix with groundwater anywhere close to where I live...

I mean that's just one concern. Mainly I'd like to know what's the actual cost of containing a large amount of waste for a shorter timespan, and containing a smaller amount of waste for tens of thousands of years. All the maintenance, cost to handle incidents and making sure it doesn't escape into the environment with close to absolute certainty. Added up for the necessary timescale. Just hoping our grandkids will figure out a way is the same mentality as burning oil and letting them deal with the consequences.

I'd really like to force them (Google in this instance) to pay for it. And as we need a renewable alternative anyways, I'd also on top like to invest in finding solutions to for example recycling of wind turbine parts. And a "smart" grid that handles electricity being not at 100% all the time. At some point we need it anyways, and the sooner we begin, the earlier it pays off.