Yeah. Because we didn't already have 60+ years of time with actual smart people trying to find a solution.
I am all in for nuclear and much more so for doing ground work and heavily investing in research on nuclear recyclability. But doing the math this will not get as anywhere.
We would non the less need to add 1GW of power to the grid nearly every day to fulfill projected demand over the next generation. So this would mean to add ~1 plant every day somewhere on this planet.
I am not sure on how much nuclear fuel would be needed to even do this. Then estimate the costs - and the amount of storage needed for the radwaste (not only the fuel, but also the material plants are build of and such.
So even being pro nuclear the math tells me, that this is at best a in between solution to buy us some more time until we figure out a better, longterm solution.
And no - I do not believe in the fusion singularity to come in my lifetime.
Storage and recycling of spend fuel rods are not a problem. We have not all that much waste, and plenty of places to put it. And breeder reactors seems to be able to convert part of it into usable fuel again.
I agree that it is a temporary solution, but it's the best we got until we figure out how to store energy efficiently, and generate truly renewable energy.
I'm sceptical of wind, because it produce a large amount of waste (rotorblade composite) that is only recently started to be recycled, and the question of what to do with the recycled material have to my knowledge not been answered yet.
Solar is still dependend on a few rare earth minerals, but some promesing alternatives are actively being researched.
I studied in a lot of detail the waste generated by dismantling wind turbine blades while working for a wind manufacturer.
If we were to recycle today all the blades of all the turbines in the world reaching 20 years of age, the weight would be equivalent to a few hours of household waste generated only in the UK. So the amount of waste is completely trivial (at this point), and it can be down-cycled easily (some companies turn it into plastics, cement, etc).
That sounds like appeles to oranges. The issue with rotorblades is that they're made of a composite that we at best can turn into a building material. We cannot currently break it down to it's components, nor can we do that with the down cycled material. That is in sharp contrast to the vast majority of household waste which we can break down and recycle, or just safely burn it.
I am all in for nuclear and much more so for doing ground work and heavily investing in research on nuclear recyclability. But doing the math this will not get as anywhere.
We would non the less need to add 1GW of power to the grid nearly every day to fulfill projected demand over the next generation. So this would mean to add ~1 plant every day somewhere on this planet.
I am not sure on how much nuclear fuel would be needed to even do this. Then estimate the costs - and the amount of storage needed for the radwaste (not only the fuel, but also the material plants are build of and such.
So even being pro nuclear the math tells me, that this is at best a in between solution to buy us some more time until we figure out a better, longterm solution.
And no - I do not believe in the fusion singularity to come in my lifetime.