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Nuclear Power in Poland? Yes, please! Absolutely nobody disagrees! [73]
I'm against nuclear power too. A smart mix of renewable energies could cover the whole demand in a few decades if beeing promoted by goverment
"Smart mix of renewable energies" for now sounds like a smart way to fill someone's pocket with taxpayers' money.
There is NO viable alternative to nuclear (and thermonuclear in future) power generation, at least I do not see it.
How much Uranium can be found worldwide? Barely enough for sixty to eighty years of energy production.
Wrong. According to some studies I seen in the past, there is enough of 235U already extracted (including that is in military arsenals now) for 100+ years if regular "thermal neutron" reactors will be used. But, there is a huge stockpiles of 238U ("depleted uranium" that remains after 235U extraction from natural isotope mix), mostly in highly corrosive UF6 form, which is just stored for now (Russia starting to slowly convert their depleted UF6 stocks to uranium oxide that is much safer in storage and commercial grade HF - process may be speed up somewhat, but problem is that industry simply not need in so much HF now and storage of excess HF is not too much less expensive than storage of UF6). If we move to a breeder reactors, curent 238U stocks is more than enough for all energy needs during next 1000+ years (based on current trend in energy consumption growth). All we need to do that - new technologies to deal with irradiated nuclear fuel, to extract fissile 239Pu from them without so much liquid radioactive waste and strict control over extracted plutonium (as it is fissile and theoretically can be used for nuclear bomb - though reactor grade Pu is not very suitable for low-tech bombs).
There is at least one alternative to uranium - it is Thorium 232. There is MUCH more thorium on Earth (3 to 4 times), compared to Uranium. And there is no need in expensive processes of isotope separation, as it consist almost entirely of usable 232Th. One more positive thing - thorium is not fissile by itself, and absolutely useless for military, so you can deal with it as with any slightly radioactive metal, until it is irradiated in reactor.
WIth breeder type reactors, we may have tens of thousands years until all already known thorium deposits will be used up. And it is expected than energy from thorium reactors will be approx 10 times cheaper, compared to uranium reactors (including all safety measures to cost).
And there is some very interesting projects of sub-critical electro-nuclear reactors, that cannot explode at all under any circumstances - they produce energy only with external source of neutrons (external proton accelerator used for this purpose). Once you turn accelerator off or something went wrong with accelerator - reaction stops instantly.
India have litle uranium deposits, but have LOTS of monazite sands, that contains thorium along with other rare earth metals. So, Indian nuclear program already oriented to thorium fuel. Norway also nave huge deposits of thorium-containing minerals and expressed interest in thorium energy, but "greens" killed national research program in field of safe subcritical thorium reactors.
In those wasted eight years, and for the same amount of money, you could've built many more water-turbines, solar panels and windmills, which all have an 100% effectiveness, without needing any other additional resources than the materials needed to produce them.
Wrong again.
For now, by producing solar cells, you actually WASTE some energy. Just because full cycle of manufacture (from minerals in their natural deposits to solar battery ready to install) will consume more energy than it will be produced by that solar batery during all their useful life (I mean typical european climate, not some african desert). To me, whole "solar energy" project looks like two processes of moving - first one is moving taxpayers money to pockets of solar panels producers, and second is moving related waste from EU to China. I have few really obscene words for "greens" who promote all this crap.
For hydroenegetics you'll have to flood lots of precious lands to keep enough water for a summer and winter seasons. I never tried to calculate, how much energy you can get (in typical European climate) from these lands if it will be used to grow some oil-rich crops to produce biodiesel, but suspect that result will be not so good to those who blindly believe in hydro... Russia widely uses hydroenergetics, but there is a lot of convenient places to do so - and I do not see something similar in modern Poland or Germany.
Windmills..... Well, it is good idea somewhere near Gibraltar, where winds are almost constant and relatively strong. Try to get some weather statistics for your own territory and figure out how much windy days you have. In a most places whole idea will be useless.
