Nuclear energy over solar- and wind energy

in #science7 years ago

In this post I would like to explore the positives and negatives of nuclear and green energy and see which one would be better for now.

  • Extraction
  • Co2-output
  • ease of use and dangers
  • construction
  • amount of energy

-Extraction

  • Nuclear energy:                                                                                                                                                                       The extraction for the main materials of nuclear energy is pretty straight forward. We either look for Uranium or Thorium. Thorium is much easier to mine from the ground because when mining uranium it releases deadly radon gas so mining companies have to set up ventilation systems which obviously cost money.                    Thorium also has a higher concentration in it's ore so you get more than from uranium. There is also more thorium in the ground than uranium.
  • Green energy:                                                                                                                                                                                  As for the various metals solar panels are made out of the extraction doesn't seem that hard but there are a lot of metals required. (corrections are probably needed here).

-Co2-output:

  • Nuclear energy:                                                                                                                                                                                             creating the energy doesn't produce any C02 because they're basicly glorified steam generators. the construction of the plant and the extraction of the ore does produce C02 but that's it.
  • Green energy:                                                                                                                                                                                       Green energy obviously doesn't produce any Co2 while creating energy just like nuclear energy. but the production of the solar cells and extraction of the metals does. But solar panels require caustic chemicals and water which do create different greenhouse gasses which negates the use of solar panels to reduce the amount of environmental toxins.

-Ease of use and dangers:

  • Nuclear energy:                                                                                                                                                                          Thorium is quite easy to use compared to uranium from which you have to refine it which results in uranium 238 and 235, 235 is the useful one which we use to create energy compared to thorium which is 100% usable for energy production. Thorium is also a lot safer because it needs a helper material to create energy which is uselly plutonium and when something happens you just flow the liquid thorium away from the plutonium and nothing can happen, while with uranium when something happens it won't just cool down and is very dangerous in that regard. (see Chernobyl). Thorium doesn't have that much waste in comparison to uranium because it is a lot purer than uranium.
  • Green energy:                                                                                                                                                                                  Solar panels and wind turbines require a lot of space to produce a decent amount of energy which does effect them negatively because we only have so much space on the planet and not a lot of that space is very useful for solar panels. But with solar panels people can put them on their roofs to create some energy for themselves but not many people do that due to the price is quite steep and the return in profit is very small.

-Construction:                                                                                                                                                        

  • Nuclear energy:                                                                                                                                                                              The construction of the power plant needs to be done very precisely and not many mistakes may happen. there are a lot of different types of reactors and I won't go in detail here but probably the most useful one is the "Liquid Fuel Thorium Reactor". (see sources for more information).
  • Green energy:                                                                                                                                                                                                   As stated before the solar panels themselves depend on various metals and chemicals but the construction of the factory really doesn't. there isn't much else to say here.

-Amount of energy:

  • Nuclear energy:                                                                                                                                                                               Nuclear energy provides a lot of power and according to estimates 1 ton of thorium produces as much power as about 100 tonnes of uranium which is equal to about 3.5 million tonnes of coal.
  • Green energy:                                                                                                                                                                               It isn't that easy to measure how much energy a solar panel or a wind turbine will produce but there are estimates. It also depends on the region: is there a lot of wind, a lot of clouds, a lot of sunlight. these restrict the places solar panels and wind turbines can be placed to be as efficient as possible. Solar panels also aren't that efficient yet with the best commercial sunlight conversion rate is about 21.5%.

-Final Notes: 

As for this is my first post on Steemit and I would like to keep doing these kinds of things. I defenently see solar power as a superior energy source for the future but now there are more efficient sources such as nuclear energy which are equally as clean and produce more power. There are some ways solar panels could be used to full efficiency but that would mean orbiting around the sun which also means that it would cost a lot of money but hey maybe somewhere in the future. 

Thanks for reading this and i would like to hear your opinions about nuclear and solar energy and improvements that could be made in this post.

-Sources that I used:

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoriumreactor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power#World_sources_of_thorium

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_panel#Production

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystalline_silicon

https://steemit.com/sience/@yannis/are-solar-panels-that-green

               

                

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