I worked with Rio Tinto (mining corporation) for some time, and happened to know a few people in management positions at the Ranger Uranium Mine. I can assure you it was one of the most environmentally conscious operations the group was managing, and super-senior management seemed to take the whole thing very seriously. It was a source of much frustration, because as a company we had a good grasp of what acceptable mining practice looks like and Ranger was beyond the standard of reasonable. I dunno, what can you do? Follow the Environmental Management Plan.
Anyway, any comparison is a bit academic, because we can exhaustively list everything that has ever gone wrong in the nuclear industry but the renewables are too diverse for there to be a fair comparison. Which is why I suspect the environmental damage done by renewables is being glossed over.
Ranger may well be run to the highest standards...now. However it was not always the case [0].
I used to work for Western Mining Corp (early 90s), and am familiar with how 'patchy' adherence to environmental principles can be across a large organisation. I'm not implying malfeasance (or any other explicit cause).
A few other instances where Rio's failed to hold itself (or its subsidiaries) to the highest standards: Lassing, Austria [1]; Panguna, PNG [2].
This is what I love about HN, instant access to experts in the field, so we don't have to argue our assumptions.
I guess it's unsurprising that uranium operations run a lot cleaner than fossil fuel extraction, given the politics involved.
I'm not against fission power itself, but being in California makes me kind of a NIMBY on the issue. All you need is somewhere with water and without active fault lines, and nope, not seeing a good spot. The evacuation plans for San Onofre involved moving one to eight million people, or about eight million ways something could go wrong.
"I'm not against fission power itself, but being in California makes me kind of a NIMBY on the issue. All you need is somewhere with water and without active fault lines, and nope, not seeing a good spot."
The TerraPower design, and many other of the next-gen designs, don't require water cooling. That greatly expands siting options.
You could have the plants out in the desert, or on other less desirable real estate.
"The evacuation plans for San Onofre involved moving one to eight million people, or about eight million ways something could go wrong."
I'm originally from the area, and was sad to hear of San Onofre closing. However, its siting was terrible.
Given California's stance on climate issues, it should be the world's largest promoter of next-gen nuclear power.
Several very interesting designs are being pursued, I'm hopeful the government will eventually adopt a better policy stance. Bill Gates looks to be helping a lot there!
Possibly hopeful, but the energy market in California is kind of a mess right now between the Community Choice Energy collectives, PG&E declaring bankruptcy, and SoCal Edison being snafu as usual. You need a lot of capital for nuclear, and with a fractured market, I don't know how it comes together. The only CCA with enough credit rating to attempt it is Marin Clean Energy, and I'm not trusting an area with that high of an anti-vaxxer population to consider nuclear rationally.
In other ways, the Democratic coalition in California is so big that they can afford to annoy one end of the base. But at the same time, pro-nuclear is not a natural stance for an administration trying to balance environment and housing development.
My perspective is as as a former meteorologist and climate scientist, and currently involved in the Democratic party. We're in such an oil town that the high school colors are black and gold, the birthplace of Unocal -- but people are so anti-oil here now that we'd love to make a switch. You know, as long as gas prices at the pump don't increase.
I've talked to enough people that I think the politics is doable but hard, but the capital man, I dunno. Maybe that comes from Bill Gates.
Uranium vs fossil fuel exploitation is also a density & economics issue. Since the energy density of uranium is several orders of magnitude higher than for any fossil fuel, one can afford to be much more pedantic about uranium mining without wrecking the economics.
I worked with Rio Tinto (mining corporation) for some time, and happened to know a few people in management positions at the Ranger Uranium Mine. I can assure you it was one of the most environmentally conscious operations the group was managing, and super-senior management seemed to take the whole thing very seriously. It was a source of much frustration, because as a company we had a good grasp of what acceptable mining practice looks like and Ranger was beyond the standard of reasonable. I dunno, what can you do? Follow the Environmental Management Plan.
Anyway, any comparison is a bit academic, because we can exhaustively list everything that has ever gone wrong in the nuclear industry but the renewables are too diverse for there to be a fair comparison. Which is why I suspect the environmental damage done by renewables is being glossed over.