Oil and coal are literal fossils. This means 1) they must be burned, and thus must release carbon. It also means 2) our reserves are the capture of millennia of solar energy.
Uranium and friends solve 1) handily. They have no carbon to start, so they will not create CO2. Instead you get much worse material—in much smaller amounts, since nuclear energy is very, very dense.
They don’t deal with 2). Uranium is also finite…at least on Earth. But the aforementioned density helps a lot.
I should probably state that I'm well-aware of the advantages of nuclear--but I happen to see nuclear lumped in with fossil fuels, either from Republicans/conservatives defending it or it being treated as if it's just as bad as fossil fuels.
Look up the EU debate last year on declaring nuclear a "renewable" energy source for the purposes of regulation. It'll be entertaining even if it's not informative
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Notes -
It shouldn’t count.
Oil and coal are literal fossils. This means 1) they must be burned, and thus must release carbon. It also means 2) our reserves are the capture of millennia of solar energy.
Uranium and friends solve 1) handily. They have no carbon to start, so they will not create CO2. Instead you get much worse material—in much smaller amounts, since nuclear energy is very, very dense.
They don’t deal with 2). Uranium is also finite…at least on Earth. But the aforementioned density helps a lot.
I should probably state that I'm well-aware of the advantages of nuclear--but I happen to see nuclear lumped in with fossil fuels, either from Republicans/conservatives defending it or it being treated as if it's just as bad as fossil fuels.
Look up the EU debate last year on declaring nuclear a "renewable" energy source for the purposes of regulation. It'll be entertaining even if it's not informative
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