US production has resumed, according to Wikipedia, as Cobalt 60 is coproduced and useful for medical sterilization.
As an aside: There are some people who are very skeptical of both atoms and space exploration. I'm not sure what their motives are but given the amount of steel necessary to produce wind turbines, I'm unconvinced that "renewable" is actually "greener."
"over 20 years, a three-megawatt wind turbine can
deliver 80 times more energy than is used in its production and maintenance." [0]
Beyond that, Steel is 100% recyclable^, and that accounts for over 65% of US steel production. Recycled steel can be done in arc furnaces, requiring no coal coke. [1]
Downvote me if you like but our fuel mix in this country is still ~40% combustion and the calculations on wind power say that at current power requirements civilization will harvest enough energy from the air currents to change the climate again. Maybe it stops hurricanes, I have no idea.
Also, steel, like atomic fuel, is toxic to produce and reprocess!
I know it is much-despised by but I am curious as to the lifetime energy footprint of a fission reactor facility with onsite fuel-reprocessing and waste transmutation. And then? Tokamak. Won't even need a turbine!!
Parts of that system don't even exist yet but me I believe one day there will be clean atoms, fission or fusion, and they will require even less energy to produce and maintain than the wind and solar grid.
But then, I have lived among the fission reactors my entire life. Perhaps I am "mad from the rads" ;)
> the calculations on wind power say that at current power requirements civilization will harvest enough energy from the air currents to change the climate again
?
Wind doesn't circulate through the atmosphere forever with perfect efficiency, it eventually dumps its energy into the ground via friction.
There's no difference between slowing wind down with a wind turbine and slowing it down with a tree, they both end up as heat eventually.
As an aside: There are some people who are very skeptical of both atoms and space exploration. I'm not sure what their motives are but given the amount of steel necessary to produce wind turbines, I'm unconvinced that "renewable" is actually "greener."