https://rewi.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/REWI-Solar-Energy-Wildlife-Interactions-Summary-2023.pdf Interesting read on fatalities in north america though they mention they could not find a root cause yet due to lack of data
https://sistinesolar.com/solar-panels-and-wildlife/
- Depending on the kind of setup, if a central tower is used to concentrate the light to boil water the concentrated light become a death trap to birds and insects
- These plants can appear as lakes due to the reflection and colors(Especially in deserts where these are build confusing wild life
- The floating solar power systems disrupt fish activity and affect water quality
- It also messes up migrations of birds(Wind turbines can do this too)
It is still infidelity better than carbon in the skies but if you put this against nuclear energy and treat the MAN MADE NUCLEAR DISASTERS for what they are MAN MADE then you can see that nuclear power in this day and age is very very safe because we have years of safety development.
People who do not understand this are still stuck in the past or follow a global anti Nuclear rethoric without putting in the time to actually understand the technology.
Meltdowns are a thing of the past when thorium salt reactors become mainstream because those reactions dont run away they halt the moment you remove the fuel, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-salt_reactor
MSRs eliminate the nuclear meltdown scenario present in water-cooled reactors because the fuel mixture is kept in a molten state. The fuel mixture is designed to drain without pumping from the core to a containment vessel in emergency scenarios, where the fuel solidifies, quenching the reaction. In addition, hydrogen evolution does not occur. This eliminates the risk of hydrogen explosions (as in the Fukushima nuclear disaster).[2] They operate at or close to atmospheric pressure, rather than the 75–150 times atmospheric pressure of a typical light-water reactor (LWR).
Nuclear power is really cool and i highly suggest you give it a chance at least in researching it, there are tons of awesome videos on YouTube to help with this which gave me a ton of insight and storage facilities like:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Power_Generation's_Deep_Geologic_Repository
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Waste_Management_Organization_(Canada)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schacht_Asse_II
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repository_for_radioactive_waste_Morsleben
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_dome_Gorleben
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schacht_Konrad
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolseong_Low_and_Intermediate_Level_Radioactive_waste_Disposal_Center
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_repository_for_short-lived_radioactive_waste
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Isolation_Pilot_Plant and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository to name a few give me hope that this nuclear waste has plenty of places to go to sit out their long half time by the end of it becomes inert
human error and human greed.Funny enough this is the exact thing working against nuclear energy, there is big money in Green Energy because it creates a ton of jobs, Nuclear energy is so efficient the surplus of energy would fuck over most fossil power companies thats human greed for you.I would rather live in a city that has a respected and well maintained nuclear power plant so there is more area for nature than to cut down a forest so we can win some power, Molten Salt reactors are the future and its going to be a whole different world compared to traditional reactors, China is ahead in this because they dont have anything blocking this development.
But with projects like ITER i am convinced its only a matter of time before nuclear is in again, Its going to be a combination of Tidal/Hydro, Solar/Wind and Geothermal plus nuclear to phase out fossil fuel, these cannot do that on their own, even nuclear power.
If we want to rid ourselves of the cancer that is gas/oil/coal then we have to embrace the alternatives not fight against them with a mindset from the 1980’s (Fukushima was engineered against twice the highest recorded tsunami, The sendai earthquake tsunami was a freak show) That said it was TEPCO that fucked up royally by sticking with General Electric design which placed the backup gens below sea level(The engineers of TEPCO warned against this vulnerability but TEPCO sided with GE instead) this is why those gens failed.
That said if they had a Molten Salt reactor(Thorium) the reaction would have halted on its own before triggering a meltdown which would have prevented:
I agree fully that traditional nuclear power has its dangerous if not handled correctly, The future will eliminate most of this danger and compared to other energy(non fossile) Hydro and Nuclear have to be the most mature oldest ones
Btw since you are an engineer too i highly recommend checking a few videos on Fukushima, their reactor design is super cool and has multiple failsafes which prevented the disaster from being worse such as the cooling ring / pool with steam vents to prevent over pressure or cool down fuel in case a meltdown is about to happen.
The movie Fukushima Daiichi is also super awesome and has some famous japanese actors in it, they sticked very close to the actual events, was a thrill to watch :D
Also thanks for keeping an open mind, i respect that