this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2026
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Efficient use of resources still matters in a service-driven model.
The service in this case is to provide electricity - if other alternatives can provide the same system of electricity while using less resources in the process, then it is clearly preferable.
Externalized costs are a thing though. For instance, a coal plant spewing smoke (and radiation) costs everyone else money. A nuclear plant OTOH is usually responsible for dealing with all of its own shit. So it's not always an apples to apples comparison to consider just the profitability of a project.
Absolutely. I don't know that anyone is arguing for coal, except for Trump, but he's also completely deranged.
Wind and solar have very little externalities, however. I'd even call their externalities trivial.
Water vapor from the cooling tower is also a greenhouse gas but all heat exchange power plants at such scale emit it, and it condenses quickly (and increases albedo if the cloud is visible). Plus the nuclear waste, if not economical to recycle, may become its own long-term problem too. So the overall externalities of a nuclear power plant are small (it's the least deadly one!) but not zero.
It sure isn't apples to apples, but it's also not like nuclear plants actually dealt with their waste
You do realize that they made nuclear recycling illegal in the USA right?
Which is ironic because nuclear waste is 97% pure fuel and the remaining 3% has other uses in medicine or have half-lives measured in minutes/hours or are stable (like gold)
I don't know what this has to do with my post at all to be honest
It's relevant because the less-resource-efficient oil industry has lobbied to make nuclear power artificially inefficient so that their industry can continue to exist.
I don't think anyone is arguing for the oil industry.
Even if nuclear power plant byproducts were re-used at 100%, this would still decidedly not make nuclear energy more resource efficient than solar and wind.
Solar and wind are nuclear powered. It is just very inefficiently being collected from the massive inefficient fusion reactor in the sky.
Maybe true only at small scale.