When I first read the titile, I thought that the US is going to have to build A LOT to triple global production. Then it occured to me that the author means the US is pledging to make deals and agreements which enable other countries to build their own. Sometimes I think the US thinks too much of itself and that’s also very much part of American branding.
Where are my renewable bros at? Tell me this is bad.
Anyone still worried about the safety of the method is an ignoramus. “Dying slowly to lung cancer and the environment cooking me alive is so much better than the one-in-a-billion chance of having to eat some prussian blue”
Waste removal is my biggest concern. Unless the plans to expand also come with ways to recycle the waste, we’re just setting ourselves up for giant exclusion zones throughout the globe, most likely in small countries where the plants are imposed on them by foreign economic powerhouses and then they’re told to figure the waste out themselves.
Not to mention “just bury it” is neither futureproof nor is it good for the non-human inhabitants of our planet; sure if those concrete containment cysts in the desert ever fail it will “only” be leaking radiation into the desert, but any desert is still home to hundreds of species of living things and its own complex ecosystem. “Desert” doesn’t actually mean “devoid of life”; there are no good locations to bury it and forget it.
Let’s talk about the absolute devastation mining rare materials does to ecosystems and the exploitation of third world countries that it’s led to. We’re already implicated in so much violence against the earth itself and colonialist exploitation, and I’m supposed to support gods know how much more of that for Uranium from Kazhakstan (45% of the worlds’ production in 2021)? That’s basically begging for more forever wars over energy resources in the middle east.
“We’ll figure out long term solutions after the infrastructure is put in place” is how we got to where we are with fossil fuels AND landfills.
I’ll fully support any plans to make a push toward nuclear, but the foremost concern of that push should be waste recycling. After that’s figured out, everything else is small potatoes. It would even make the long-term costs cheaper than fighting for new material and figuring out million-year half-life hazardous waste disposal. A nearly unlimited energy supply that doesn’t fuel wars and is safer than the current system? Sign me the fuck up.
Regarding waste; nuclear waste can be turned into diamond batteries.
If they manage to release, the idea is that small cell batteries can self-recharge themselves practically forever (20,000ish years?). Battery dead? Remove it, swap it, wait. Battery dead? Insert the one you removed previously, the Uranium inside replenished the charge.
Neat stuff given that it is made from waste byproduct.