AbsolutelyNotABot

joined 1 year ago

The current market saturation of recycling isn't the amount of a panel that can be recycled.

The current market for nuclear reprocessing isn't the amount reprocessable either. But to adhere to your argument, it's the probability for a given panel to be recycled; if there isn't an economic rationale, because recycled materials from panels is more expensive than vergin materials, then it's called being out of market, not market saturation.

In reality we aren't recycling solar panels.

No reactor has ever prodiced the same material it ran on

This happen routinely even in non breeder reactors, industrial nuclear nuclear reprocessing is a thing and many reactors in the world run on MOX fuel with plutonium extracted from spent LWR fuel. You only need a breeding ratio higher than 1 because otherwise fissile content will keep diminishing. Arguably there's no more base research needed, both breeding and nuclear reprocessing are time tested process. What we need is industrial scale up, which is a little bit further than a proof of concept

[–] AbsolutelyNotABot@lemmy.world 24 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Well people also complain on expansion of agriculture land so I don't think consideration on land usage will disappear.

Real problem is that many people want the energy source which is clean, cheap, invisible, safe, doesn't consume any land or resources and of course has a easy to understand functioning. What could possibly go wrong ?

[–] AbsolutelyNotABot@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Could you back your claims up?

Because in Europe and US the recycling rate if solar panels is around 10% and that without considering we might being miscalculating their real impact

Otherwise, first fast reactor has been built in 1946, we're basically done and there's absolutely no more industrial research needed as it happened at least once /s

[–] AbsolutelyNotABot@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago (4 children)

With the same argument calling solar and wind renewables just because, hypothetically someone somewhere can fully recycle turbines and panels without having to extract new raw materials is an absurd and ridiculous lie (?)

[–] AbsolutelyNotABot@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Nuclear fission is actually by definition the least renewable energy source

But if you go according the strict physical principle every energy source is non-renewable

The sun fuses a finire amount of hydrogen, earth has a finire amount of latent heat, the moon a finire amount of gravitational inertia etc.

And there's a little paradox if you think about it, how can fusion be non-renewable but solar, that use radiation from the sun fusion, be renewable?

[–] AbsolutelyNotABot@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago (8 children)

It's a little bit complicated and I don't want to write a wall of text but: Waste fuel can be recycled, if your reactor has a breeding ratio higher than 1 then it has net positive production of fissile materials. Potentially all uranium and thorium of the planet could be used.

The argument being, if you consider the word "renewable" in the strictest sense, no energy source is renewable, entropy can only increases: solar depends by the sun burning a finire amount of hydrogen, geothermy depends by earth inner heat which is a finire amount ecc.ecc. The common usage of renewable is along the line of "immensely big proportional to human consumption" and in this sense there's a strong argument to consider nuclear renewable.