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fosforus ,

“Deutschlandfunk” sounds way cooler than it probably is.

Decompose ,

Have fun paying more for electricity and more fun with inflation, and even more fun with the ECB enslaving you further with their new restrictions on cash and “travel rule” becoming less than 1000 Euros.

People who voted this moron in are paying for their decision. I can’t enjoy this enough! Every time I see inflation news in Germany I laugh. Good for me I left that shit hole.

Until you vote in someone who promises you economic strength, instead of hippy objectives, you’ll get nowhere. But what do I know? I’m the guy who left you to die because I’m sick and tired of the stupidity of average Germans.

Enjoy your fall! At least I am enjoying it.

HellAwaits ,

Show me on the doll how they hurt you.

sounddrill ,

Tfw you find the doll spontaneously combust

Sidyctism ,

lol

yogthos ,
@yogthos@lemmy.ml avatar

That’s right, better keep doubling down on coal euobserver.com/green-economy/157364

PeoplesRepublicOfNewEngland ,

Don’t worry by 2030 it will all be burned in Poland so it won’t count

Comment105 ,

Unironically the German position right now. They’re hardcore coal fans, they’re the Appalachia of Europe.

DragonTypeWyvern ,

For largely the same reasons. It’s a hard sell to a mining town to stop being a mining town.

PeoplesRepublicOfNewEngland ,

Guy could not need to worry about dependence on the Failed States of America or Russia ever again but instead

Sad!

books ,

Lemmy loves nuclear power and they will shove it down your throat.

optissima ,

No everyone pronuclear here is very exact about where to put it, though critics are quick to wrongly claim that we shove it in people’s throats.

Ooops ,
@Ooops@kbin.social avatar

Yes, what you are missing is reality.

You can either build renewables to replace fossil fuels in the next years (and if the build-up doesn't work as fast as you want to then it will takes a a few years more to reach zero), getting less and less every day. Or you can build new nuclear reactors and just keep burning coal full steam for 5 years, 10, 15, probably 20. And then you reactors are finally online, but electricity demand has increased by +100% (and further increasing...) so you burn more coal for another 5, 10, 15, or 20 years...

The exact same thing happens btw right now in basically every single European country that promotes nuclear. Because nobody is building enough capacities to actually cover the minimal required base load in 2-3 decades (electricity demand until 2050 will raise by a factor of 2,5 at least - because most countries today only cover 20-25% of their primary energy demand with electricity but will need to raise that to close to 100% to decarbonize other sectors; so we are talking about about a factor of 4-5, minus savings because electricity can be more efficient). They just build some and pretend to do something construtive, while in reality this is for show and they have basically given up on finding a solution that isn't let's hope the bigger countries in Europe save us.

For reference: France -so the country with optimal conditions given their laws and regulations favoring nuclear power and having a domestic production of nuclear reactors- announced 6 new reactors with an option for up to 8 additional ones and that they would also build up some renewables as a short-term solution to bridge the time until those reactors are ready. That's a lie. They need the full set of 14 just for covering their base load for their projected electricity demand in 2050 and that's just ~35% of ther production with the remaining 65% being massive amounts of renewables (see RTE -France' grid provider- study in 2021). Is this doable? Sure. It will be hard work and cost a lot of money but might be viable... But already today the country with good pre-conditions and in-house production of nuclear reactors and with a population highly supportive of nuclear can't tell it's own people the truth about the actually needed investments into nuclear (and renewables!), because it's just that expensive. (Another fun fact: The only reason why their models of nuclear power vs. full renewables are economically viable is because they also planned to integrate huge amounts of hydrogen production for industry, time-independent export (all other countries will have lower production and higher demand at the same time by then) and as storage. So the exact same thing the usual nuclear cult here categorically declares as unviable when it's about renewables.)

lntl OP ,

is it true that in reality we can only build renewables OR nuclear? i feel like that’s not reality.

I’m reality, the world is burning and both techs will mitigate. instead of resisting nuclear, renewable advocates ought to go after fossil fuel subsidies

dmrzl ,

In reality we can’t build nuclear at all since we will have no water. Ask the French if you need details…

yogthos ,
@yogthos@lemmy.ml avatar

Maybe if you beg China really hard they’ll sell you molten salt reactors scmp.com/…/china-gives-green-light-nuclear-reacto…

Snowpix ,
@Snowpix@lemmy.ca avatar

Really the entire goal should be both renewables and nuclear. Nuclear provides a reliable baseline that isn’t dependent on weather conditions, is incredibly safe, and will last a long time at the cost of large upfront construction costs. Renewables are great for main power generation and can be used for small scale or large scale power generation and built quickly, but they need the weather to be optimal to generate optimal power. They also need to be mantained and replaced more often, which can be covered by that baseline nuclear provides. Since we don’t have advanced enough power storage to use renewables exclusively due to their drawbacks, nuclear would be great for replacing coal and oil power plants to supply it when the renewables aren’t able to do all of the work.

cedeho ,

at the cost of large upfront construction costs

You forgot the large costs of operating, the large costs of maintaining, the large costs of nuclear waste disposal and the large costs of deconstruction of nuclear plants.

Yeah, other than that it’s a great viable way for few very large companies to make great guaranteed profits as the tax payer will take care of the risks.

lntl OP ,

I honestly thought operational/maintenance costs were lower per unit of power in nuclear than wind/solar. Is that incorrect?

mayo ,

No that claim isn’t backed up by any sources I could find. Sounds fringe attitude to me. It’s a good thing that people study this as their job and advise the legislative branch because it’s complicated. When I looked up the levelized* cost of energy I had a hard time finding sources that agreed with each other. In particular, the nuclear societies were skewing the data, but the same with certain German think tanks claiming the exact opposite. Debate all around. Hydro FTW.

large.stanford.edu/courses/2018/ph241/wang-k2/

www.eia.gov/…/electricity_generation.pdf

en.wikipedia.org/…/Economics_of_nuclear_power_pla…

Ooops ,
@Ooops@kbin.social avatar

I would love to say we can build renewables and nuclear. But let's look at the actual reality: Not only are most countries with a nuclear plan lacking proper amounts of renewables (because for more than a decade an anti-renewable streak was part of nuclear lobbyism - see the amount of people here or anywhere else hallucinating about "expensive renewables" when their own model of electrity generation needs those renewables (and even some storage) to be viable), it's even worse. Most of these countries aren't even able to build nuclear on the proper scale they would need.

So no, there is no technical reason we can't build both.

But real-world experience right now shows us that most can't even get the proper build-up of nuclear alone done. Explaining to their heavily desinformed voters why they need to build massive capacities and also need to build even bigger amounts of renewables seems to be indeed impossible right now.

The other thing is time frame. If the already agreed upon climate goals give you a remaining co2 budget for another 6 or so years, you can indeed not start building nuclear now. That would have been a wonderful idea a decade or even longer ago.

There is actually only one undisputable thing we need to do right now: build up renewables and massively so. To stretch out the remaining budget (via constantly reducing CO2 emission quickly) to 1-2 decades and use that time to a) either build up storage and infrastructure or nuclear base load. The difference is that the infrastructure and storage can be build in steps alongside renewables while the nuclear base load would need to start today. And most countries seem unable to do it, with the deciding factor being costs. Costs they would also mostly need to pay now in advance.

UlrikHD ,
@UlrikHD@programming.dev avatar

Nothing you said other than expenses is an argument against nuclear. If anything, the take from you argument is that we should construct even more nuclear, not less.

Ooops , (edited )
@Ooops@kbin.social avatar

If that's your take why is exactly nobody doing it? Oh, yeah. Because nobody has a clue how to actually pay the massive (and mostly paid in advance) costs.

Yet a lot of countries are proudly planning to build nuclear soon™ instead of those silly renewables, when what they actually would need to do is building much more nuclear than they are planning right now while also building massive amounts of renewables.

You are not actually wrong. Building more nuclear right now is an option. Building-up storage and infrastructure instead is the other viable one. Building massive amounts of renewables is needed in both cases.

The moment you show me countries starting nuclear in proper amounts right now, while also building and planning the needed increase in renewables alongside I will cheer for them. (For reference: energy demand increasing by a factor of at least 2,5 with ~35% production capacity needed for a solid base load means your minimal goal for nuclear capacities right now should be ~100% of todays demand...)

But as basically no country seems to be able to manage that investment the only option is storage and infrastructure. Is it costing the same in the end? Maybe? Probably? We don't know actually as decade long predictions for evolving technologies are not that precise (just look at the cost development of solar in the last decade for example). We know however that this is a constant investment over the same time renewables are build up to provide 100% coverage (PS: the actual numbers would be 115% to 125% btw... based on (regional) diversification of renewables and calculating losses through long-term storage).

Again: I'm not against building nuclear (and renewables!) right now, if that's your plan. I am however very much about the bullshit that is going on right now, where it's more important to show how smart you are by building some nuclear capacity (with the math not adding up at all) while laughing about others building renewables and spouting bullshit how it's just a scam to burn fossil fues forever.

Contrary to the popular narrative between building up renewables and storage and building just some nuclear capacities and some token renewables -if at all- it's not the former countries that are running on ideology with no actual real world plan.

As already said above: I totally support France' plan for 14 new reactors build until 2050, with a lot of renewable build-up at the same time. Because that's a workable plan. But that they already have problems publically justifying the bare minimum requirement of 14 reactors and the renewable up-build is a symptom of a larger problem. And basically every other country planning new nuclear power right now isn't even close to this scale and just living in a fairy tale world... or just providing an token effort while hoping for other bigger countries to solve the issue for them in the end.

buzziebee ,

I completely agree that more countries should be following France’s lead in simultaneously building lots of renewables and nuclear plants. Unfortunately the anti nuclear crowd are very vocal in a lot of countries so everyone spends all their time arguing about whether to invest in nuclear or not instead of just getting on with it.

Ooops ,
@Ooops@kbin.social avatar

Funny how you completely ignore basically my whole comment.

Countries being anti-nuclear and going for a storage solution are not the problem as they have a workable plan.

Countries like France are not the problem as the same applies there.

The problem is there are basically no pro-nuclear countries like France. Only ones trying to bullshit their way out of the issue with talk about their nuclear plans when those plans are completely insuffcient. It feels like nuclear nowadays is the new homeopathy - just do a little bit of symbolic action and then firmly believe in it and all will be well. And to confirm your believe for everyone to see talk shit about renewables as they are "obviously just a scam for ideologically damaged idiots fearing nuclear"...

snake ,

Yes, nuclear taking too long to build is not argument, it just means we should have started building them already.

theKalash ,

Yeah, that’s one of the most funny things to me in this debate. People are calling of all kind of radical measures to combat climate change, but when it comes to nuclear power somehow “too expensive” is a valid argument.

Dulusa ,

And the worst, is all the other decisions in Germany lately. They stopped nuclear completely and replaced it by coal. Right now they are tearing down wind turbines, to mine for coal in that spot etc.

So all the arguments talking about “nUcLeAr iS eXpEnSiVe” are missing the point in Germany by a magnitude that is hard to grasp…

RickyRigatoni ,
@RickyRigatoni@lemmy.ml avatar

You literally have no idea what you’re saying.

kurogane ,
@kurogane@lm.helilot.com avatar

This is an interesting take, and I learnt from it. Would you mind sharing one or two of your references?
I had a heated discussion the other day on this topic, and I wish to know more.
On the other hand, I don’t really understand your statement that nobody is seriously building reactor lately.
China has started building new reactors. They are not planning but effectively doing it. Am I missing something?
cnbc.com/…/how-china-became-king-of-new-nuclear-p…

Quacksalber ,

China is building new nuclear plants, but they are building way more coal plants as well.

theguardian.com/…/china-coal-plants-climate-goals…

m3m3lord ,

Ontario Canada constructed 20 reactor units between 1965 and 1994. While the CANDU units are no doubt different from the designs used by France, 14 in 26 years is certainly achievable. This does not mean renewables should be disregarded, but both options should be pursued.

qevlarr ,
@qevlarr@lemmy.world avatar

We must do both. I don’t see why people keep claiming they are mutually exclusive. Let’s build nuclear. Let’s build wind, solar, hydro. We should protest increases in fossil fuels, but it’s irrelevant specifically what green energy people are betting on to replace it

gringo_papi ,

deleted_by_moderator

    •
    UnfortunateShort ,

    “Growth is slowing”

    proceeds to show graph where it increased just last year

    infinipurple ,

    Growth is slowing. That doesn’t mean total availability is not increasing, but that it’s increasing at a lesser rate.

    Do they not teach reading comprehension anymore?

    UnfortunateShort ,

    Huh, interesting how you resort to low key insult me right away - I guess they didn’t teach you any manners.

    At any rate, “look at the past X years trend” is not a useful metric when the current trend is different. In fact, a bunch of laws was just passed to accelerate the further installation of wind turbines. And moreover, what this graphic shows how the capacities have tripled in 14 years. So instead of meming let me make my point clear: I think OP is missing somthing.

    Summzashi ,

    What do you think growth is slowing means?

    lntl OP ,

    c/confidentlyincorrect

    Wooki ,

    Confidentlyincorrect

    Nacktmull ,

    Fuck nuclear - decentralized renewables are the future!

    bilboswaggings ,

    Tbf it’s starting to be too late, even if they were pro nuclear it’s going to take like 20 years

    sugarcake ,

    Better start now than wait then.

    tryptaminev ,

    Yes pouring down money on a technology, that at best can help us mitigate emissions in 20 years, instead of investing it in a scaleable and cheaper technology now (wind, solar) is a great and reasonable strategy…

    And that is entirely ignoring the debate abou the safety and waste issue of nuclear power.

    Wooki ,

    100% renewables is a fiction. That’s a fact. No one is doing it. Instead we are rolling out new Gas and new Coal power plants. I hope you like gas and coal.

    EddoWagt ,

    It’s always too late, might as well not try

    Sh3Rm4n ,

    You could also channel the effort into renewable energy and the the reward would be greater and faster achieved.

    matlag ,

    By the time countries that could have built nuclear power plants would complete them, they will have collectively burnt enough coal and gas to doom humankind.

    So: indeed, the world leaders didn’t try seriously.

    Ooops ,
    @Ooops@kbin.social avatar

    Yes, that is exactly the nuclear motto: It's too late to match any climate goal with nuclear power not already starting counstruction many years ago... so let's say "fuck climate goals and stop trying" and start building nuclear anyway, because it's really cool and in 20-30 years it might solve our 10 year problem of remaining co2 budgets.

    UnfortunateShort ,

    It is too late. You’d have to rebuild an entire industry. There is no trained personnel for this, no suplly chains, no plans or up-to-date regulations, nothing. It will cost billions over billions and take at least decade before you even have your first new powerplants.

    You can install many times their capacity in renewables for cheaper and without the riscs and dependencies attached in that time span. That’s a fact and you can hate it and would be right, but that doesn’t change it. Nuclear is over for Germany and the cries to reinstate it are nothing but populism.

    Aux ,

    That’s a bad take. Germany is saying it’s too late for decades. If not for people like you, they would already have nuclear up and running.

    UnfortunateShort ,

    This “people like me” here hasn’t voted for not putting perfectly fine power plants to good use and especially not for using coal instead.

    I’m also not aware of people claiming it’s too late because of practical reasons “for decades”. On the one hand I don’t think the narrative was centered around practicality, but ideology. The opponents of nuclear didn’t want to take the risks and didn’t want the responsibility of nuclear waste. There was also a lot of fearmongering which had nothing to do with practicality either. On the other hand the fate of nuclear in Germany was only sealed when Fukushima happened, that’s not even one decade ago iirc. There was a chance of returning to nuclear, at least with emerging technologies, up until that point. But when it happened, the last opposition to ending nuclear capitulated (and probably filled their pockets with money from the coal lobby).

    This whole debate about nuclear in Germany was brought up again by populists. The damage is done and it will not be undone. It will take years to even reactivate the usable power plants we have right now and there is zero interest by companies to build new ones. You’d have to state-fund it pretty much 100%, which no one will support. And even if you did, renewables are still cheaper. The people who have maintained these plants are retired or have new jobs by now. There will be mass protest basically for sure if you change course now. It won’t happen and doesn’t make sense.

    Aux ,

    You just said the same shit again.

    UnfortunateShort ,

    Because you don’t seem to understand that you are wrong on plain facts and also rudely overgeneralizing. To make it so clear even people like you can understand: If you presented me the facts 10 years ago and asked whether we should use nuclear, I would probably have said yes.

    Aux ,

    Lol ook

    lntl OP ,

    China has a supply chain for nuclear. it’s doable.

    (China and nuclear in the same comment, here they come)

    UnfortunateShort ,

    Sure, the country that might straight up ban Chinese hardware in networks because of security concerns and that wants to reduce its dependency on China is going to let China build their power grid. Not that I like this fascist dictatorship better or less than any other, but if anything like this where to happen we would 100% turn to US companies. And this would only solves one of the many issues - supply. I mean, if you really want to anything is possible, but then you might as well go straight for renewables like other countries successfully did.

    theKalash ,

    The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is right now.

    _s10e ,

    Scholz is right that nuclear is dead in German. Nuclear is always political and there’s no stable political majority pro nuclear. This has nothing to do with the technology. It just won’t happen.

    Most entreprises, energy or else, are privately run and financed. Capitalism. Nuclear is private on paper, but no one is going to build reactors without governent support. Many industries are regulated, like banking, but they are still driven by profit motives, private interest. At least in Germany, there’s no entrepreneurial mindset behind nuclear. Rent seeking business people and lobbyists, sure. But not risk takers. The businesses lobbying pro nuclear are lead by ex-politicians and similar types who secretly want a safe government job.

    Nuclear is dead and it’s not the biggest problem. The much bigger elephant in the room is that we mostly talk about renewables. Sure, renewals grow, but nowhere near the rate needed. Everyone can see this, the data is available, and we just don’t give a shit.

    And don’t get me started on hydrogen. Doesn’t make sense to even consider hydrogen unless you have a huge surplus on (preferably renewable) energy.

    doom_and_gloom , (edited )
    @doom_and_gloom@lemmy.ml avatar

    deleted_by_author

    •
    _s10e ,

    Exactly

    AlteredStateBlob ,
    @AlteredStateBlob@kbin.social avatar

    All this debate and nobody brings up that, thanks to climate change, cooling nuclear power plants will become a roll of the dice? Same as it already happened in France?

    Droughts are really, really bad for nuclear power. Solar and wind don't give a shit.

    Doesn't even matter much which technology is better on any other point. If you cannot run it, it's worthless. Especially at times with increased power demand for example due to AC usage spiking thanks to the same heat that just poofed your cooling solution into oblivion.

    Jagermo ,

    Thank you. The nuclear fanboyism is crazy here and on reddit. Looking back, almost all nuclear power planta in Germany had to shut down over the last summers, because the cooling water Was either not enough or too hot. That technology has run it’s course and every potential investment is better routed towards renewable, battery capacity or green hydrogen.

    In addition, the european pricing for power is defined by the most expensive source - and nuclear as well as coal are power sources that are getting more expensive, raising the cost for users. Supporting both sources for energy is madness.

    https://feddit.de/pictrs/image/7e1622e7-b386-4617-ba9f-f42aab8a1b3d.jpeg

    And yes, tearing down windfarms for coal is fucking stupid, as is hoping that russia will keep selling us gas. Europe needs it’s own power infrastructure and has enough potential for it.

    ReversalHatchery ,

    I see it here too… did you read the comments on that post? Those turbines were to be dismantled in one way or another due to their age, and the permit to mine coal in that place was given 15 years ago.

    Jagermo ,

    Yeah, I know, it still is a bad look, and unnecessary destruction

    hoshikarakitaridia ,

    So what about nuclear waste? I am opposed to nuclear energy because of all the reasons you pointed out, but also because we collectively decided to dump the waste somewhere underground where they will go on radiating for a few eternities more. Do you know if this bullshit or if that’s a true concern?

    infinipurple ,

    So, nuclear waste is undeniably a problem,but the reality is that most of it is low-level and not that difficult to dispose of.

    Other industries have much worse by-products that are more costly and challenging to dispose of. Many mineral extraction chains produce far more toxic hazardous waste than nuclear power does. Heavy industry deals with chemicals significantly more toxic and dangerous to humans.

    It’s easy to be scared and to drum up fear of nuclear waste due to its longevity. That fear shouldn’t be dismissed, we do need secure facilities for high-level nuclear waste—but that type accounts for about 3% of all nuclear waste and is currently being safely disposed of in deep-level purpose-built facilities.

    A far greater risk of exposure and contamination exists from any number of ongoing industrial processes—a single processing plant failure (on almost any production chain) is liable to release more toxic material into the environment and result in a greater impact on human and animal life than any risk from nuclear waste.

    tryptaminev ,

    but that type accounts for about 3% of all nuclear waste and is currently being safely disposed of in deep-level purpose-built facilities.

    Sorry, but that is just false. The only european country, that is on the track to build and operate such a facility is Finland. Their facility will be finished in a hundred years and only contain the waste of a single Nuclear power plant of a country of 5 million people. Also it is sheduled to cost around a billion Euro. en.wikipedia.org/…/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo…

    In Germany there is the plan to designate a spot to build a facility by 2040, but it is entirely uncertain, as the most likely feasible geological formations for that are in Bavaria. The state that is a strong proponent of nucelar power, but rejects to store any of its waste. It is NIMBYism by the pro nuclear faction par excellence. So we dont know, if by 2040 we will just have found a spot for a facility and can begin the planning process for it.

    All storage facilities in Germany that were supposed to be long term, have been subject to deterioation, unsafe handling of nuclear waste and water entry with the potential to leak nuclear waste into the groundwater.

    In central Europe, where 200 Million people are living in one of the most densely populated regions of the globe the issue of storing the radioactive waste is neither solved politically, nor technologically, nor is the funding secured with certainty.

    It is still very much hypothetical, if, when and how the radioactive waste, that is waiting in “intermediate” storage facilities since 50 years will actually end up in a feasible permanent storage. Proponents of nuclear energy and in this case you specifically distort the facts tremendously, by saying the issue of storage is solved or even close to being solved

    Also it is absurd, to claim to know the costs and challenges would be less than for other industrial wastes, because the fucking technology doesn’t exist in any larger scale implementation

    infinipurple ,

    Okay, so, I appreciate the discussion, but I have to address your comment as it is plainly disingenuous.

    • Finland is, indeed, the only country with an currently operational deep-level storage facility. But several other such facilities are in active development across the globe. These are long-term storage facilities and their design and installation naturally takes time. Nuclear is still young, but the solutions are being worked on—the only thing hindering it is people like you who attempt to sabotage the industry and then claim it isn’t up to scratch.
    • You claim “the facility will be finished in a hundred years and only contain the waste of a single Nuclear (sic) power plant”. This is a carefully-worded lie. The facility will begin storing nuclear waste this year and continue to store waste from all five of Finland’s nuclear reactors for the entire length of their life cycles, which is indeed about 100 years.
    • The cost is a difficult one and can only be assessed in the context of all ongoing costs to produce nuclear power. However, the International Energy Agency’s ongoing assessment of the Levellised Costs Of Electricity—which takes into account all cost inputs for power generation of any type, from mineral extraction to ongoing maintenance, to waste storage—shows that nuclear is the low-carbon technology with the lowest costs overall.
    • The reason that Germany doesn’t have concrete plans for long-term nuclear waste storage is due to years of undermining attacks on the technology from fossil fuel lobbies and oddly similar ‘Green Party’ voices. To say that a technology cannot work or isn’t viable because the opponents of said technology have successfully sabotaged it is incredibly disingenuous and deeply malicious.
    • You cannot claim that the issues of any sector of energy generation are “solved politically”, nor can you claim that their “funding is secured with certainty”. Again, to claim a technology isn’t viable because you don’t want it to be and you’re helping to undermine its development isn’t a good argument. Nuclear power technology continues to advance at a rapid rate and will continue to do so providing it receives the necessary support and funding. The same goes for any emergent technology.

    Your entire comment is full of the things you claim that the proponents of nuclear energy put forward. You are skewing the facts in an attempt to favour a sensationalist argument that convinces those less educated in the technology that it is scary and dangerous—which extensive research demonstrates to be untrue.

    The reality is that renewable energy is unpredictable and best suited to flexible generation. Please do not misunderstand me, I fully support the development of all renewable technologies. However, when we wean ourselves of fossil fuels, we will need new baseload power plants. Nuclear is currently the best option to provide stable baseload generation.

    derGottesknecht ,

    The reality is that renewable energy is unpredictable and best suited to flexible generation. Please do not misunderstand me, I fully support the development of all renewable technologies. However, when we wean ourselves of fossil fuels, we will need new baseload power plants. Nuclear is currently the best option to provide stable baseload generation.

    Do you have a source for this?

    Because grids already deal with changing demand and if the generation is geographically distributed this issue could probably be solved with less storage than electrc cars are using. See this paper

    hoshikarakitaridia ,

    I know this is odd but thank you for this discussion, I’m learning a lot of things from knowledgeable people here and not just propaganda or parrots.

    Aux ,

    We get nuclear fuel from the ground and then bury it in the same ground. Nothing changes. Or are you one of those who believe that nuclear fuel is made out of thin air? There are literally no problems with nuclear waste. Even if you forget that coal power plants pump much more radioactive shit straight into the air you breathe.

    Jagermo ,

    Yes, that too.

    UlrikHD , (edited )
    @UlrikHD@programming.dev avatar

    U.S. commercial reactors have generated about 90,000 metric tons of spent fuel since the 1950s. If all of it were able to be stacked together, it could fit on a single football field at a depth of less than 10 yards.Nuclear waste is solid, it’s not that difficult to store it. We get more nuclear waste leaked into our nature from coal plants.

    As a reference, here is the room that Switzerland stores their nuclear waste.

    ParsnipWitch ,

    I also wonder about the nuclear fanboyism. Is it because techbros? Is it astroturfing? Or do really so many people fall for the various websites of the nuclear industry you find online? I don’t know what it is, but it is suspicious. There seem to be many more (vocal) fans of nuclear reactors than fans for renewable energy sources.

    Contend6248 ,

    People really believe them this time when the

    ! LOBBY !

    tells them everything’s safe now, some people just can’t get behind the idea that nothing can make this technology safe, there will always be one edge-case where the stars align and we have another meltdown.

    I already know how the lobby is telling the people the wrong price per Kw/h ignoring any other costs involved, so i can get the idea how they handle security concerns.

    Fuck them

    hh93 , (edited )

    Not to mention that building new plants can take a decade and costs a fortune - if you invest that money into renewables and power storages you have working power much faster.

    Also OPs graphic is a real problem but it only goes until last year where we just got rid of Merkel. Her party was actively working on making it as hard as possible to work wind turbines while investing into gas from russia so with the new government the speed should finally pick up again

    Of course shutting down existing nuclear reactors is a bad idea (which also happened because of Merkel) but that decision was made so long ago that the companies running those plants prepared for them to shut down for a decade and have stopped hiring people, the ones working there are on retirement contracts and they didn’t invest into future proofing the plants anymore so they were kind of falling apart

    tooLikeTheNope ,

    I’ve seen another video article instead that basically says sure nuclear is good on paper if:

    • power plans should be 4th gen… which are non-existent at the moment (if not at the prototype stage only) and which construction in case will take decades and which costs are huge and also hard to estimates, even for France who has built a lot of nuclear power plans along the years and has probably the better know-how resources on the matter
    • not everyone should go nuclear at the same time, because if everyone does:
      • fuel material market price will increasingly raise due to its demand making nuclear energy production inherently less convenient as time passes and the fuel stock gets depleted, in turns shrinking the offer
      • all known stock of fuel material at the current usage are estimated to run dry in 120 yrs (so immagine if you wanted to convert today a country to full nuclear power it will probably require 50 yrs and last only 70 at best), but the remaining stock will surely last a lot less if suddenly everyone should convert to nuclear energy production

    The article and the video are in Italian, so I’m afraid at best you can only translate the written article to your language of choice
    corriere.it/…/f9d58b1c-b200-11ed-8c7f-0f02d700e67…

    Chup ,

    Great post and nice to see those 4th gen plants mentioned including the current project development state. Those plants were always a top comment as ‘the solution’ in discussions on Reddit. Just build 4th gen or molten salt or fusion - energy problems solved with just a few keystrokes.

    Posts explaining the problems or the current state of those projects often ended up in flames.

    Matthew ,

    Honest questions:

    What’s the difference in water usage between nuclear and, Germany’s favored energy source, coal?

    Hope much is drought a concern for Europe?

    hillbicks ,

    It is not our favorite energy source anymore, the plan is to get rid of themynot build more of them. Yes, there was an increase last year, but that was related to the gas situation with russia.

    Northrine Westphalia just dumped the minium required distance for wind turbines, so we will see a huge boost of them (hopefully)

    Drought is not as much a problem in Germany as it is on the southern states like France and Spain, but groundwater is going down. Everywhere. And like OP said, France had to limit the output of their reactors due to water shortages.

    bloomberg.com/…/france-cuts-nuclear-output-as-hea…

    Wind and solar has to be the main focus as long as nuclear power is reliant on clean and sufficient water.

    Of you want to know more, there is a separate wiki article just related to the European drought of 2023.

    en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_European_drought

    AlteredStateBlob ,
    @AlteredStateBlob@kbin.social avatar

    I have no idea and coal sucks and is the result of intense lobbying and corrupt politicians being bought for pennies on the dollar for the last 25 years.

    The point isn't the water usage of nuclear power, since most of it is evaporated and returned to the cycle, so I'd be surprised if it's worse than coal in terms of actual consumption. However you need water in large quantities and the correct temperatures to be able to use it for cooling on nuclear.

    If there is no water or not enough water of sufficient temperatures, then you can't cool the plant. It's simple as that.

    Droughts overall are horrible for Europe just as much as anywhere else. We're losing tons of valuable topsoil, forrests are dying contributing to the continual errosion. All this could lead to salination and eventual death of farmland. Crop yields are unpredictable. No country on this planet can exist for any prolonged period of time with droughts, unless it can import everything it can't produce itself from elsewhere.

    Water usage is generally a huge issue in Germany. Farmers take out far, far more than they're allotted already and there's almost no oversight. Large cities like Frankfurt am Main are pulling in water from surrounding areas, leaving them dry. And this isn't even touching on the basically free use of water for our industries at large. It's a really bad situation.

    The only point where renewables would "rely" on water beyond their construction processes is either water generated power itself or energy storage (which comes down to the same).

    tryptaminev , (edited )

    Coal power plants have about 45% energy efficency. Liginte about 30-35%, Nuclear plants also about 30-35%. All the other energy ends up using water to cool it away.

    So a 1 GW nuclear plant is putting about 2 GW of heat into the water. A lignite plant the same. A 1 GW coal power plant is only putting about 1.25 GW of heat into water.

    But again the problem is the false comparison being made here. The alternative to nuclear isnt coal. the alternative is renewables in conjunction with storage technologies and smarter grid management with demand sheduling.

    Edit: wow nuclear shills now downvoting basic physics.

    CosmoNova ,

    Besides, all that Russian propaganda of „German energy policies bad“ has done nothing but spreading discord and allowing France to fuel their economy with ukrainan blood because „French energy policies are so based!!1“. Their nuclear power plants are already failing left and right due to low water levels and they want to build more as if this situation won’t get worse year by year. What’s the point of emission free power plants when they just stand around for lack of cooling water? All the while their gas imports from Russia explode to new heights, fueling Putin‘s war machine.

    Aux ,

    Wut? Your delusion is incredible!

    BastingChemina ,

    Sure, because wind and solar are totally immune to the climate.

    Getting enough wind and solar to supply the electric consumption is a roll of dice EVERY DAY.

    I’m not saying that drought and heatwave don’t have a negative impact on nuclear but it would be dishonest to say that runs and solar are a more reliable solution in this regard.

    mineapple ,

    So you think the weather is always the same in all of Europe? Because it doesn’t matter, if it is cloudy or snowy in one part of the continent, if other regions have sunshine and wind at the same time. On such a scale, wheatger is not that much of a deal. Especially if you have storage mediums and other sources like gas.

    ThatWeirdGuy1001 ,
    @ThatWeirdGuy1001@lemmy.world avatar

    Almost like we should’ve invested in nuclear power when it was first discovered instead of being blinded by oil propaganda saying it was extremely dangerous despite oil causing more deaths than any nuclear event in history combined, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki

    luckyhunter ,

    You gotta give them a thumbs up for their long track record of sticking to their guns on bad policy.

    library_napper ,
    @library_napper@monyet.cc avatar

    Are you intentionally omitting the amount of wind being added by other countirss around Germany? There is massive increase of renewables being added to the North Sea, for example

    ReversalHatchery ,

    Isn’t this article specifically about Germany?

    library_napper ,
    @library_napper@monyet.cc avatar

    And Germany can buy renewable energy from the Danish in thr North Sea

    ReversalHatchery ,

    Yes but that’s an entirely different topic

    Zippy ,

    North sea wind is ones of the most expensive energy options and now some major companies with fully operational production are suggesting they may go into bankruptcy.

    Silverseren ,

    Yes, basically. Germany completely folded on nuclear to appease pretend environmental groups that actually know nothing about the environment and then went all in on coal again while pretending they were going all in on renewables. But now that even the renewables numbers are flat-lining, they have to keep up the charade by continuing to make negative comments about nuclear.

    They're helped along by idiots like Blake elsewhere in this comment section. Because, sure, new nuclear is expensive, but that's not the problem here. The problem was shutting down all the nuclear they already had.

    Blake ,

    Compared to nuclear, renewables are:

    • Cheaper
    • Lower emissions
    • Faster to provision
    • Less environmentally damaging
    • Not reliant on continuous consumption of fuel
    • Decentralised
    • Much, much safer
    • Much easier to maintain
    • More reliable
    • Much more responsive to changes in energy demands

    Why would anyone waste money on the worse option? An analogy: you need lunch and you can choose between a nutritious and tasty $5 sandwich from an independent deli or a $10 expensive mass-produced sandwich from a chain. The independent deli is tastier, cheaper, more filling, and healthier, and it’s easier for you to get since it’s on your way to work. Why would you ever get the $10 sandwich?

    According to you, I’m an idiot, and yet no one has debunked a single one of my arguments. No one has even tried to, they immediately crumple like a tissue as soon as they’re asked directly to disprove the FACT that nuclear is more expensive, slower to provision and more environmentally damaging than renewables. If I’m so stupid it should be pretty easy to correct my errors?

    Either that or you can loftily declare yourself above this argument, state that I am somehow moving the goalposts, say that “there’s no point, I’ll never change your mind” or just somehow express some amount of increduiity at my absolutely abhorrent behaviour by asking you such a straightforward question? You may also choose “that’s not the question I want to talk about, we should answer MY questions instead!”

    lntl OP , (edited )

    Silverseren: Germany made a foolish choice shutting down their nukes

    Blake: Renewables are a deli sandwich

    The room: …?

    Blake ,

    Sorry if the analogy was too hard for you. Feel free to ignore it and address the remaining 90% of the comment which was not an analogy.

    lntl OP ,

    Why would I do that? You’ve made it clear that you don’t read people’s comments. Instead of reading and responding, you copy paste from thead to thread the same disjointed bullet points.

    Blake ,

    I have read absolutely every single word you have written and responded to them in kind. After your last comment, I went back over the thread from beginning to end and my conversation with you was lucid and coherent the entire way through.

    I do appreciate the attempt at gaslighting, though. It’s a good feeling knowing that I’m having such a strong impact that you’re willing to try and psychologically manipulate someone.

    Anyways, look, drop me a line, if you’ll send some of that sweet sweet nuclear lobby money my way I’m sure it would be a very worthwhile investment for your company or think tank or what-not. I have reasonable rates and give good results!

    derGottesknecht ,

    Are you hallucinating? What part of your comments do you think was ignored?

    Because it certainly seems like you got your ass handed to you in this thread by someone who had the knowledge and could back it up with sources.

    And your general framing of the issue, ommitance of the stong uptick in new renewables after the new government took power pisses me off as a german.

    lntl OP ,

    I’m taking about another thread in this post.

    tex ,

    Tell me how much energy it provides during night and during winter. Thats’s why. Coal plant produces more radioactive waste than nuclear power plant. And that feared CO2 too.

    EtzBetz ,

    We need to change how power distribution works. That’s just the point. There are easy ways to store power that’s generated by day. And since we don’t just focus on one single renewable energy source, it’s not even half as bad as you’re drawing the picture here.

    Edit: since this is my only comment in here, I also want to point out that the chart is rising last year, I think/hope that it will continue rising. (Until CDU steps in again because people think “Hey there last years were so terrible, everything got more pricy and so on, that’s definitely on SPD, green, FDP, not just a random situation in the Ukraine” and vote for them…)

    Ooops , (edited )
    @Ooops@kbin.social avatar

    Coal plant produces more radioactive waste than nuclear power plant.

    Tell me you are totally brain-washed without telling me you are totally brain-washed.

    The correct take: Coal plants without any environmental requirements 50-60 years ago release more radiation into the area in the form of fly ash (containing natural amounts of radiation like all earth around you) than the radiation escaping from a modern nuclear power plant through it's massive concrete hull.

    Or in other worlds: If nothing goes wrong and we completely ignore the actual radioactive waste produced (of which a coal plant obviously produces zero) then the radiation levels in the area around the plant are miniscule and it's really safe. So safe indeed that just the redistribtion of natural radiation via ash when coal is burned has a slightly stronger effect.

    That's it. That's the actual gist of the study that is from the 1970s (referencing even older data).

    Just the fact that this fairy tale about coal power producing radioactive waste based on some (already then criticised and flawed) old study is still going around shows how lobbyists have damaged your brains.

    Iceblade02 ,

    The criticism is extraordinarily simple and justified.

    Which is better, Renewables and Nuclear or Renewables and Fossil Fuels?

    Germany could have had an almost entirely fossil free grid by now, but instead they chose renewables & fossil fuels.

    Blake ,

    Please provide a source for your claim that 100% renewable energy is not possible.

    Actually you can save yourself the time, because here’s two sources which show it is possible.

    www.sciencedirect.com/…/S0306261920316639?via%3Di…

    link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-05843-2

    Ooops ,
    @Ooops@kbin.social avatar

    Or (as this is in the context of Germany) one of the studies even modeling different acceptance levels of renewable energy in the transitioning until 2050:

    https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/publications/studies/paths-to-a-climate-neutral-energy-system.html

    Iceblade02 ,

    I think you replied to the wrong comment by accident lol

    Blake ,

    No, I didn’t. You claimed that the choice was between either renewables and coal or renewables and nuclear. I am asking you to prove your claim that renewables are not a stand-alone option.

    Iceblade02 ,

    I am asking you to prove your claim that renewables are not a stand-alone option.

    I did not claim that, I suspect that you misunderstood something.

    I’ll clarify what I meant for your benefit. Germany has constructed a lot of new renewable power in the past two decades, which is great, but they prioritized shutting down nuclear power plants instead of fossil fuelled power. Because of this, they still get ~50% of their electricity from fossil fuels, which is not so great.

    If they instead had prioritized phasing out fossil fuelled power plants, that number would’ve been more like 20-30%, and more crucially, they could’ve phased out their entire fleet of coal power plants. Ergo, criticism of German energy policy is entirely justified.

    Blake ,

    You replied to my comment. My comment simply stated that investing in building nuclear power plants is a waste of money that is better spent on renewables. You said that criticism of my comment was justified because Germany could choose between either renewables and coal, or renewables in Nuclear. I am asking you to support your claim. I am not inviting you to move the goalposts. If you replied to my comment and said criticism of my comment was justified and then started talking about something else unrelated to my comment then I don’t really know what to tell you?

    Iceblade02 , (edited )

    …and your comment replied to one criticising German energy policy, hence the context of “the criticism being justified”. The bad policy decisions have already been made (from 2005-current) and it does seem like Germany will be stuck with coal power for quite some time because of their poor policymaking.

    The question was not about the price of building new nuclear power, but of maintaining old plants, and existing nuclear) power provides incredibly cheap, green energy. Simply put, my “claim” as you want to put it, Germany could have rid themselves of coal power with the help of the VRE they invested ln, but instead shut down their old nucler plants. The “proof” is no more difficult than studying their energy profile for the past 20 yrs.

    In hindsight, the OC was somewhat rude towards you in particular, which I don’t agree with, but alas.

    Anyway, you seem to want to discuss future electricity solutions rather than the existing one, and I’d happily have a separate discussion on what mix of green energy sources ought to be used, if you’d like.

    IMO based on what I have read over the years, optimal green energy mixes land on 40-70% VRE depending on regional climate factors, with the rest filled out by dispatchable sources such as hydropower, geothermal, biomass and nuclear power plants.

    Blake ,

    My comment was a response to someone calling me stupid for saying that nuclear power spending was a waste of money. Because it is a waste of money.

    What you’ve read over the years is almost right, if you take “nuclear” out of the sentence you’ve pretty much got it.

    Iceblade02 ,

    The reason they were annoyed is that they were referring to keeping old nuclear plants running, and you are pointing to the costs of new nuclear.

    -and the reason that nuclear is in the sentence is that access to the energy sources within it depends on geography. Filling up those last 30-60% of the energy mix with hydropower, geothermal and biomass is simply not possible in some areas, which is where nuclear comes in, regardless of whether we look at the most pessimistic cost estimates (which you are doing).

    Blake ,

    The article is called “German Chancellor Scholz speaks out against new nuclear power“, not “ German Chancellor Scholz speaks out against keeping old nuclear plants running”, so no, this is just shifting the goalposts.

    And nope, you’re wrong, 100% renewable power across the entire planet is absolutely viable and would be much cheaper than involving nuclear. I have proven this again and again and again in this thread, but here’s a starting point for you:

    The majority of studies show that a global transition to 100% renewable energy across all sectors – power, heat, transport and industry – is feasible and economically viable.

    en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy

    There are other sources all throughout this thread to back up this claim, and no one has posted any sources to dispute it.

    We’re done here. Have a pleasant evening.

    Iceblade02 , (edited )

    The article is called “German Chancellor Scholz speaks out against new nuclear power“, not “ German Chancellor Scholz speaks out against keeping old nuclear plants running”, so no, this is just shifting the goalposts.

    It is not, the past and current failures of German energy policy is a very good basis for criticism, especially when they seem to have a continued reliance on fossil fuel power. But, as I said, we seem to have starkly different opinions on German electricity policy, and you seem to have a specific idea of the existence of “goal posts” in that particular discussion, and what they are, which many of us disagree with. Let us put that discussion to rest. It is clear to me that it will go nowhere.

    –

    Now, on the topic of new power, I fully understand where you’re coming from with your frustration, because I’ve been there, many many times, discussing with folks who refuse to give any background to their claims. So, I’ve called upon a reddit comment from past me (ca. 2021) for some reliable sources and updated the meat of the text a little to be more suitable to you. Hence, below follows the wall’o’text you have been so sorely missing out on, because I was a lazy boy posting from me phone yesterday, properly addressing each of the arguments in your original comment and backing up my previous statements.

    So, where to start? Perhaps the costs of 100% renewable systems in practice, as the portion of electricity sourced from variable renewable energy (henceforth VRE) approaches 100%. I’ll start by addressing your wikipedia source, all of the examples of “near 100% renewable” there rely almost entirely on hydropower (which is highly geography dependent) or are very small grids (thousands or tens of thousands of people). This makes their significance for this discussion debatable, as our scope is rather in the size of millions or tens of millions of people.

    A key problem with examining these scenarios is that the number of data points where VRE exceed ~45% are incredibly few, and additionally these few systems still have significant portions of electricity generated by cheap, dispatchable fossil fuelled power plants. This means their statements regarding cost are a lot less relevant for a scenario where we want a clean energy grid and VRE portions start approaching higher levels. I’d really love to see if you can refer me some sources which examine such grids.

    Following along this path, comparing the LCOE of VRE to other dispatchable plants is not particularly straightforward. Here is some critique towards a study made by Lazard, which highlights the fact that renewables can effectively outsource their system costs in grids with a high degree of dispatchable power generators (hence creating hidden costs for the systems). This method of using only LCOE without accounting for system costs is prevalent in many studies on the costs of new electricity production, and thus skews the available data. This skewing is not necessarily a problem when adding a small amount of VRE to a system, but becomes a severe issue when they start representing a plurality of electricity produced.

    We can follow up by examining this study by the oecd which calculates estimations on grid level system costs comparing VRE and nuclear. It’s very interesting, but also like… 200 pages, so I haven’t read the entire thing, but below you’ll find a few very short take-homes from what I did have time to read.

    The integration of large shares of intermittent renewable electricity is a major challenge for the electricity systems of OECD countries and for dispatchable generators such as nuclear. Grid-level system costs for intermittent renewables are large ($8-$50/MWh) but depend on country, context and technology (onshore wind < offshore wind < solar PV). Nuclear related system costs are $1-3/MWh.

    They make several very interesting observations regarding how improper implementation of VRE in a system leads to an economic environment that favors fossil fuel peaker plants to solve intermittency problems, due to their low capital costs and ability to ramp up and down with relative ease. Unlike green solutions such as pumped hydro storage, other energy storage solutions and nuclear power. The closer our goal approaches 0% fossil fuel energy production, the more nuclear power makes sense.

    Now, based on the above and a few other sources, I will deconstruct the arguments you made in your original comment. I’ll use hydropower as comparison for a lot of these points. It is often considered the holy grail of renewable energy.

    Cheaper - See above. A system which uses some mix of nuclear power and renewables is often a cheaper system than one that demands 100% renewables.

    Lower emissions - Nuclear emissions are comparable to hydropower, and entirely from infrastructure & supply chain emissions, something expected to disappear in a 0% fossil fuel economy.

    Faster to provision - Individually, yes, but a construction time of 5-15 years is still reasonably fast for the huge amount of power that a single NPP adds to the grid (consider constructed MW/time). Additionally, construction times are expected to go down if the nuclear industry is revitalized.

    Less environmentally damaging - Debatable, renewables in general have huge land usage, and affect the ecosystems in which they are built to a significant degree.

    Not reliant on continuous consumption of fuel - Yeah, a benefit, but also not problem for nuclear. Known supplies of Uranium can supply the entire world for some 70 years, which is longer than known oil supplies will last us. That’s not accounting for improvements in utilization, newly discovered resources or other nuclear fuels. Besides, renewables use lots of other resources such as copper. Our limited supplies of these are a far more pressing problem in our clean energy efforts.

    Decentralised - I don’t see how this is relevant. The benefits and costs of decentralized power are situational. It is useful in areas with spotty infrastructure (large parts of Africa and Asia), but creates system level costs in developed countries, where most of our electricity consumption is centralized.

    Much, much safer - Not really. Casualties and damages from nuclear power are far lower than those from hydropower, and depending on your data source and opinions, even on par with wind power.

    Much easier to maintain - I don’t have any good sources of the top of my head here, but many of the nuclear power plants running today are pushing past their designed life spans due to the maintenance being worth it. Closures are more often related to political decisions than actual end-of-life status.

    More reliable - not really

    Much more responsive to changes in energy demands - not really

    Hope this is more to your liking :)

    P.S, apologies if there are any typos, didn’t have time to proofread this time around.

    tooLikeTheNope ,

    Decentralised

    I was rummaging this is probably the main reason for which they are pushed back in an excessively popular narrative in favour of nuclear: of course it is way harder to exercise capitalism when you can’t centralize power and control, with renewables instead it could probably only exist a form of cooperative enterprise with the business of managing the energy production, immagine the loath of some individuals even acknowledging some utterly leftist term such as “cooperative” even exists, let alone even works. Better.

    790 ,

    (I am German, so please excuse my grammar mistakes. If you are a German, too, the humanist party has a great position paper on nuclear energy: www.pdh.eu/programmatik/kernenergie/)

    While reading your list, several points stood out for me.

    • Cheaper

    I assume you are talking about the inherent costs of the technology, but that is not where the costs come from. Nuclear power plants are not mass produced and there is constantly changing regulation. The petrol lobby is partly to blame for that, as they have a strong interest in making building nuclear power plants difficult and expensive. thebulletin.org/…/why-nuclear-power-plants-cost-s…progress.institute/nuclear-power-plant-constructi…

    • Faster to provision

    …com.au/…/nuclear-may-or-may-not-be-expensive-but…

    Additionally, the low hanging fruits (the places that can easily be used for windparks) were already picked in Germany. It’s becoming more and more difficult to find more places where windparks can be built.

    • Less environmentally damaging

    That stood out as especially weird. How did you come to that conclusion? If you are referring to nuclear waste: “Nuclear power causes least damage to the environment, finds systematic survey” techxplore.com/…/2023-04-nuclear-power-environmen…

    “Why I Don’t Worry About Nuclear Waste” archive.ph/ZJQCj or, if you prefer some informational tweets by the same author: twitter.com/MadiHilly/status/1550148385931513856.

    Last but not least, I highly recommend this book (I’ve read it, but it’s German): “Atommüll - Ungelöstes, unlösbares Problem ?: Technisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Aspekte der Endlagerung hochaktiven Atommülls. Ein Versuch zur Versachlichung der Debatte.” www.amazon.com/-/de/dp/B09JX2ZRB3/

    Also, take into account the land usage. https://lemmy.sdf.org/pictrs/image/716684de-2eeb-4369-9230-a0f7b94747b5.png

    • Not reliant on continuous consumption of fuel

    Non-issue. Nuclear fuel is virtually inexhaustible and will last us literally until the sun explodes. scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/…/1257

    whatisnuclear.com/nuclear-sustainability.html

    You might also be interested in the discussion on Hacker News: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36744699

    Nuclear engineer here. I did a similar write-up (gratuitously leveraging GNU Units) since most people don’t seem to know this fact about fission breeder reactors. I added some other references at the bottom of people pointing this out throughout nuclear fission’s history. whatisnuclear.com/nuclear-sustainability.htmlIn addition to the OP, it’s also worth mentioning that you can breed with slow (aka ‘thermal’) neutrons as well as fast ones, you just have to use the Thorium-Uranium fuel cycle to do so.

    • Decentralised

    Haven’t you heard about small modular reactors (SMR)? One prominent company is Oklo (named after the natural nuclear reactor), another is Nuscale www.nuscalepower.com.

    Also, we have vessels that are powered by nuclear reactors since several decades.

    • Much, much safer

    I assumed the data was well known: ourworldindata.org/…/death-rates-from-energy-prod…With newer designs (“walk-away safety”) the nuclear death rate will likely continue to fall. https://lemmy.sdf.org/pictrs/image/925e7d5b-3900-4dfd-9fd7-edb5b8fbd336.png

    • Much easier to maintain

    I tend to agree here. My main argument against nuclear power is the ongoing competence crisis. We need people that can maintain these plants for decades, but education and scientific literacy are in decline, while ideologies and social conflicts are on the rise. That is not a good environment for radioactive material with malicious use cases.

    • More reliable

    Could you elaborate?

    • Much more responsive to changes in energy demands

    How? Solar and wind have fluctuating production. One main challenge with solar is to get rid of excess electricity quickly, before it damages the grid. Germany already PAYS other countries to use their electric power on sunny days (i. e. the electricity cost becomes negative). That problem will become much worse. Plus, when it is sunny in Germany, it is likely sunny in surrounding countries, too, so they will have the same problem. There is a great talk by Hans-Werner Sinn touching this topic (www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5trsBP9Cn4, see 23:04). https://lemmy.sdf.org/pictrs/image/80a6adbf-1d0d-4f03-9d44-5e3d89156760.png

    I am not favoring nuclear energy, btw.

    PipedLinkBot ,

    Here is an alternative Piped link(s): piped.video/watch?v=z5trsBP9Cn4

    Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

    I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.

    Blake ,

    Thanks for the reply, it means a lot that you’re willing to engage with my actual arguments.

    When I say cheaper, I refer to a metric known as TCOE - total cost of electricity. It represents all of the various costs required to put a kWh of electrical energy onto the grid.

    Regulatory controls obviously are a major factor to the cost of nuclear, but we can’t just waive all regulation to get cheaper electricity, that would be incredibly dangerous.

    The thing is, with renewables, once they’re built, they continue to generate electricity for many, many years and require no fuel. Whereas nuclear power requires that a material be extracted from the ground, refined, handled and stored to very precise specifications, and then the waste products from that also have to be managed in a very particular (and expensive) way. You’re essentially arguing that nuclear could be cheaper than renewables if we removed ideological barriers to nuclear, but that’s just not true. Nuclear has very expensive costs associated with it that will mean it’s always more expensive than renewables. The gap will only widen with time as we get better at producing the renewables, too.

    For your faster to provision article, it’s truly mind-boggling what the author writes. Did you actually read it or did you just copy-paste links)? Do you actually agree with everything written in that article?

    The author has many cherry-picked examples, such as comparing how much electricity supply was added in a single year for various countries. That comparison obviously favours nuclear, because a nuclear power plant takes decades to build, but the year it comes online it provides a huge glut of (expensive) electrical supply. The obvious response to that graph is to divide each installation by the number of years needed to provision it. I checked that out manually for a few of the nuclear plants mentioned in the article and the energy gains essentially vanish into meaninglessness.

    Also, maybe it’s a bit of an unfair criticism but the line where he wrote “Why does a nuclear power plant need multiple coolers for the reactor? An aeroplane only has one!” was one of the dumbest things I have ever read in my life.

    it’s becoming more difficult to find places to build turbines

    No it isn’t. At present, 0.8% of German land area is used by wind farms and there are plans to increase that to 2%. For comparison, agricultural land uses over 50% of the land. Feel free to provide a source for your claim though.

    For less environmentally damaging - there are a lot of factors. The us bconcrete, the use of water, extraction of uranium, the biodiversity loss of clearing land for a power plant, the large amount of industrial processes and traffic to commission. Same to operate. Same to decommission. The handling of waste products. The irradiation of water. The co2e emissions of nuclear. I could go on and on.

    Your archive link didn’t work and I don’t use Twitter. But I’m not particularly interested in the biased opinion of individuals either way. The environmental impact of nuclear is a well known issue. If you want more information you can just look it up.

    I don’t speak German but I did Google around and found this, translated from the German wiki:

    The memorandum was partly criticized. According to the Green Party politician Hans-Josef Fell , the CO 2 savings potential is massively overestimated [26] , as the journalist Wolfgang Pomrehn calculates at Telepolis [27] , he only states a maximum initial savings potential of 4% of annual emissions . A publication by the IPPNW also accuses the authors of ignoring the study situation and market developments by claiming that there is only one alternative between fossil and nuclear power generation

    Your book is written by a guy employed by the nuclear industry. That isn’t going to be an unbiased view exactly, is it?

    nuclear matter is inexhaustible

    Nothing is infinite, so that’s a dumb claim right out the gate.

    “identified uranium resources [would last] roughly 230-year supply at today’s consumption rate in total”. Including undiscovered sources. I don’t need to tell you that todays current consumption of nuclear power is really, really low in comparison to other forms of energy, approximately 10%. If we used even 30%, that 240 years becomes 80 years.

    scientificamerican.com/…/how-long-will-global-ura…

    Breeder reactors aren’t available and can be dismissed the same way cold fusion is. Worth investing in research in case it’s useful in the future but for now it is not viable.

    For decentralisation - smaller reactors is more decentralised but even more expensive and higher environmental impact per kWh. And it’s still less decentralised than renewables.

    Even your own link shows that renewables are as safe or safer than nuclear, dude, what the fuck are you thinking about. Additionally, the sources of the data on fatalities caused by renewables are the most ridiculously cherry picked examples I have ever seen, you should look up the paper as it’s genuinely hilarious. And looking exclusively at death rates per kWh is not exactly the whole picture. When it comes to accidents, according to Benjamin Sovacool, nuclear power plants rank first in terms of their economic cost, accounting for 41 percent of all property damage, more than even fossil fuel plants. I couldn’t find information on the number of injuries but I’d bet any amount of money that nuclear causes more injuries than renewables.

    More reliable - it’s kind of a “sum of its parts” thing. The sun is always there, so is the wind and the waves and the oceans and geothermal energy. If we don’t have one of those then we’re all fucked anyways. Uranium is a resource which can run out, have shortages, have breakages in the supply chain, and so on. Fewer accidents, less of a target for people who want to disrupt it, if a bunch of them are destroyed in an earthquake then it wouldn’t cause huge disruption, and so on.

    And finally, responsiveness. It’s very easy to turn on and off wind and hydro generators on demand, for example. You can look up “smart grid” if you want to learn more. Nuclear is much, much slower than Solar to turn off and on, so Solar can be though of as baseline power and wind/hydro provide conditioning.

    …ieee.org/…/maintaining-power-quality-in-smart-gr…

    Final question: If you had the choice between buying magic power banks that fully charged your phone once a day for free, no questions asked, for $50 each, and you can buy one a day, or a regular one you have to buy uranium for to fill your phone with, which costs $150 and you can buy one every 10 years, which would you choose?

    theherk , (edited )

    How are renewables more responsive to changes in demand? I don’t know how to make the sun shine brighter or the wind blow harder. That seems like one of the weakest points for the case. And how much much safer are they as a function of unit of power generated?

    In any case the argument between renewables or nuclear baffles me. Both are, in my view at least, an improvement over our current primary fossil fuel power generation systems.

    Edit: I mistyped fossil as fissile, which while funny undercut my sentiment.

    Blake ,

    By angling the wind turbine blades, rotating the turbines, pitching the rotors, using breaks, gearboxes, etc.

    It doesn’t really matter how weak this point is, to be honest. It’s just a bonus. The ultimate trifecta of “renewables are cheaper, better for the environment and faster to build” mean that renewables always win.

    They’re both an improvement over fossil fuels, sure, but one is clearly the superior choice and resources are limited. It’s very important that we push for the right choices to be made to reduce the impact of climate change as quickly and effectively as possible. It’s literally one of the most important issues facing our species.

    Every $1 spent on nuclear power is basically stolen from renewables. $1 spent on renewables generates 150%-200% more power than nuclear and it does it safer and cheaper. Why invest in nuclear at all.

    theherk ,

    Well I suppose there is a lot to unpack there but I want to hold to the one point. Renewables are absolutely in no way more responsive to demand. I’m not sure where you got that, but it seems clear you don’t even want to defend it when challenged.

    It is in fact their Achilles heel, and regularly pointed out as the one reason why they are an incomplete solution requiring other solutions like batteries, or other storage and distribution.

    Simply pitching blades cannot increase power in accordance with demand spikes. One would expect the current brake, blade pitch, and other controls to be set for current maximum generation capability given the current wind.

    Blake ,

    It’s easy to turn off wind turbines. It’s much harder to turn off nuclear reactors. That’s what responsive to demand means.

    theherk ,

    Without disputing any of your other points, you’re just dead wrong about this one. Look up dispatchability. Turbine driven power can go from zero to full multimegawatt power and back in very little time since we control the fuel. You cannot turn up the wind, nor the sun at night.

    Nuclear power can be shut down very quickly, even more quickly in gen4. You have good points and you need not disrupt them by claiming renewables are good for demand response.

    To clarify, I mean steam turbines but the same is true of wind turbines. Like you said, easy to disconnect them from generation. The difference is maximum power is limited by fuel rather than nature.

    Blake ,

    Again, I am talking about NUCLEAR VS. RENEWABLES. If you bring up fossil fuels once more I will just block you.

    Nuclear power can be shut down very quickly

    Provide a source of a nuclear power plant in operation which is capable of going from 100% to 0% in seconds.

    theherk ,

    Threatening to block somebody for challenging your statement? Okay. I didn’t bring up fossil fuel there. Nuclear power requires fuel too. And I didn’t claim a reactor could be powered down in seconds, but quickly. In any case, generation can go to zero even more quickly as just like a wind turbine a steam turbine can be disconnected from the generator.

    The point is very simple though, nuclear can increase to full power when decided upon by plant operators. Renewable energy cannot; it can only increase to current maximum potential given natural conditions. I’m still pro renewable energy, I just don’t like misinformation.

    Blake ,

    No, a nuclear power plant turbine can’t just get disconnected and reconnected in seconds. Provide proof of your claim. The turbines are fucking huge and disengaging them is an extremely complex process that takes a lot of human intervention and a long time to do safely.

    I assumed you were talking about combined cycle turbines because I hadn’t considered that someone would make such a wild claim about nuclear power, so I apologise for overestimating you.

    Nuclear power plant energy output is controlled in a few ways - varying the amount of fissile material, varying the amount of control rods, adjusting coolant flow, and adjusting leakage. None of these processes can be safely performed quickly. Going by the most favourable estimates, modern reactors are able to respond at rates of around 0.3% to 2% per minute. So to go from 30% to 100% would take at least 45 minutes. Which is about 45 minutes slower than wind turbines.

    I remind you that my original claim was that wind power output can be lowered faster than nuclear power plant’s output is. That was my claim. You have completely misinterpreted what I wrote, wilfully or ignorantly, and you accuse me of spreading misinformation. Yet you continue to post falsehood after falsehood, just a bunch of absolute propaganda. I see right through the bullshit astroturfing.

    theherk ,

    Again, I have not made any claim about seconds. I have nevertheless almost certainly misunderstood, and likely as a result of ignorance. I apologize; I’ve been to hasty. You’re clearly well spoken on the topic, and I appreciate your sentiments. I found it a bit surprising that one of you primary claims was typically the only significant downside presented about renewable sources. In that way, I happen to think your stated value of 45 minute transition is still faster than we can make the wind blow harder.

    However, with further thought I suppose if you have enough renewable generation equipment to generate 100% demanded loaded even at minimum natural capacity, then you would indeed have a much better response to demand. I hadn’t thought of that before, but that is the dream and something for which we should strive.

    I’m not actually sure the specific numbers for gen4 reactors, but I feel until none of the pie graph is fossil fuel, all research for improved generation methods is a worthy endeavor. I was a bit accusatory, but I don’t think I’m alone there. I didn’t mean to spread propaganda, and I don’t think you have either. What I meant was strictly that the information seemed incorrect. I’m probably wrong; I often am.

    Blake ,

    I appreciate the apology but you’re still getting mixed up - I think we have a differing definitions of the word “responsive to demand”. You seem to have taken it as meaning, “we can scale up power generation when demand increases, and it’s dispatchable” which wasn’t what I meant - although I probably added to the confusion by improperly using the words “flexible”. I know that wind and solar PV aren’t dispatchable - solar thermal can be, same for solar electrochemical, but those are a bit oddball. For dispatchability, pumped storage really needs to be brought in to the picture, though I think hydrogen should be used much more for transport.

    All I meant was that wind turbines are better at reducing electrical output and managing power grid frequency response than nuclear is, not that a given wind turbine is better at producing electricity at any given moment that we need more of it. I think that with scale and distributed power grids, the disadvantage of the variability of renewables becomes less of an issue anyways, but yeah, with all of the options available, there’s really no reason at the moment to increase the installed base of commercial nuclear power plants, and that’s all I really care about - reducing co2eq emissions as quickly and cheaply as possible. Whichever technology achieves that has my full throated support.

    theherk ,

    I’m no longer mixed up. I mistook your meaning. You’re just right. Thank you for clarifying and helping me understand.

    Blake ,

    Also, happy to continue to peruse nuclear research and development, I agree that it’s worthwhile to try to improve the technology and to hope for breakthroughs in the field, I’m hopeful that nuclear fusion break-even and beyond can be achieved in my lifetime. But we need to take drastic action now to reduce fossil fuels and that means investing heavily in renewables asap.

    Aux ,

    That’s nothing but propaganda, sorry. All your points are completely wrong.

    Blake ,

    Go ahead and cite some sources that prove me wrong, unless you’re full of shit of course?

    Aux ,

    There are plenty of detailed replies below. I don’t see a point of copy pasting them.

    Blake ,

    Not a single one of them has addressed my claims in any way whatsoever.

    All you have to do to prove me wrong is show that nuclear is cheaper or better for the environment than renewables. It should be easy to do if I’m spreading propaganda.

    If you can’t or won’t do that, then your arguments can be dismissed. I have provided plentiful sources for my claims.

    Aux ,

    They did address. You just didn’t read. And that’s the issue with propagandists - you don’t want proofs that you’re wrong and you just ignore everything.

    Blake ,

    Okay, go ahead and quote the exact phrases posted by other users which address the core of my argument, which I remind you, is the fact that nuclear power is cheaper, more environmentally friendly and faster to provision, than nuclear power.

    Zuberi ,
    @Zuberi@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    Lemmy.world great arguing tactics as always

    Rooty ,

    You forgot:

    • Not able to provide energy during the night/calm days
    • Not energy dense - require enormous amount of land that can be put to better use
    • Rely on battery storage - huge fire and explosion hazard
    • Need to be replaced and serviced much more often - the lack of density means that repair and maintenance crew have a lot of ground to cover
    • Energy output wildly fluctuates due to weather conditions.

    Renewables have their place, but they cannot sustain the entire grid. At this point, going all in on renewables means either prolonging fossil fuel usage, or condemning vast swaths of the population to brownouts and energy poverty.

    Blake ,

    Look at all of these wrong arguments. It’s so thoughtful of you to bring them all together like this.

    1. It’s always day somewhere. Also there’s still wind, wave, geothermal, hydroelectric, etc. not to mention interconnectors. Additionally, energy demand during the night is very low. Peak energy usage is at the same time as peak solar generation. The idea is that if you spread renewables across a large enough area, natural shortages of wind/sun in one area is compensated for the wind/sun being in another area.
    2. It’s true that it isn’t energy dense, but it’s definitely not true that it can be “put to better use”. 5% of the US is covered in parking spaces, enough to provide 8 spaces for every car. If 10% of that land was allocated to solar power it would be enough to meet the electricity demand of the entire United States.
    3. Doesn’t rely on energy storage. Just build interconnectors. Electrical energy can be moved from where it is greatest in supply to where it is greatest in demand. Additionally, electrochemical batteries aren’t the only choice, there are countless ways to store electrical energy - pumped storage, thermal storage, etc.
    4. This is outright wrong. Source your claim that nuclear is easier and cheaper to maintain than renewables. I’ll wait.
    5. This is the same as your first point. See 1.

    You’re wrong. There are numerous studies which say a 100% renewable future is entirely possible with current technology. Since you’re incapable of googling this basic fact here’s a link for you. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy

    hh93 ,

    For #2 to add: you can just install them over a parking lot, too

    Makes people happy that their car isn’t exposed to the sun/rain anymore and not removing anything from NIMBYs that fear for their car-privileges

    vodnik ,
    @vodnik@lemmy.world avatar

    It’s always day somewhere

    Pretty obvious you have no idea what you are talking about. You can’t transfer power from the other side of the planet.

    Blake ,

    Nice, ignoring 99% of my comment to attack a strawman. The sun covers half the globe at any one time. I’m not suggesting that somewhere in midnight takes solar power from somewhere in midday. For example power can be moved across the US grid, which covers three timezones, which gives solar 3 hours more viability.

    PhantomPhanatic ,
    @PhantomPhanatic@lemmy.world avatar

    Not a strawman when you respond to “sometimes it’s night and solar doesn’t work” with “it’s daytime somewhere”. The natural assumption is that your intention was that day side power could be used on the night side.

    Do you have anything to back up your idea that the US grid can or does actually supply power across the entire nation?

    Blake ,

    Your assumption is mostly correct - “day side power can be used on the night side”. Say that you live in a city where the sun sets at 7pm. The largest synchronous power grid in the world is in Continental Europe - from east to west, it’s approximately 5600 km, and connects Portugal (UTC 0) all the way to Turkey (UTC +3), covering three time zones. That means when the sun sets in Portugal, solar panels in Turkey are still generating power at 75% efficiency.

    As you can understand, this is an entirely different claim from “we would get power from the other side of the world”. It’s a strawman because that’s the weakest possible version of the argument I made.

    As for the US power grid, no, you’re right, I was totally wrong about that. I had thought that the east and west power grids were connected, but it seems that they still haven’t sorted that out yet. Thanks for correcting me. It looks like they have a project in the planning stage to make it happen (Tres Amigas SuperStation) but it probably won’t be for a while. It’s absolutely achievable, though, and pretty easily.

    It would also be achievable to get a single planetary power grid, theoretically, but I think it’s practically impossible to achieve that at the moment. It would need a level of global cooperation far beyond what we have ever accomplished. Definitely a future goal for our species!

    PhantomPhanatic ,
    @PhantomPhanatic@lemmy.world avatar

    Transmission losses prevent most of what you are suggesting. Across a continent, even with high voltage low loss power lines, you lose 35% to resistance. This doesn’t count the added loss from stepping down the voltage at various substations and transformers along the way. You can expect another 8-15% more reduction from that.

    You’re suggesting that the amount of excess power from one side of the country could be enough to power the other side (while still meeting the demands locally) with 40-55% losses. Come on.

    Blake ,

    Absolute bullshit. HVDC cable power loss is between 0.3% and 1% per 100km. And when it comes to UHVDC, a typical loss for 800 kV lines is 2.6% over 800 km. Transformers and substations cause a power loss of around 0.5% to 2%.

    nationalgrid.com/…/13784-High Voltage Direct Curr…

    ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6761670

    By the way, even with your completely wrong, off by a factor of ten numbers, renewables with that transmission loss would still still cheaper than nuclear, safer than nuclear, and quicker to provision than nuclear. Sucks to suck.

    PhantomPhanatic ,
    @PhantomPhanatic@lemmy.world avatar

    It bothers me that you want to educate people but you are being so combative and smug. This isn’t the way to change people’s minds. All you are doing is making people feel personally attacked and driving them further away from having an open mind.

    This is the first I’ve heard of HVDC, my experience is with typical AC transmission that makes up most of the current grid. Not a lot of experience, but college physics level.

    US high voltage transmission is usually AC in one of the following voltages: 345 kV, 500 kV, or 765 kV. I used the 765 kV worst case losses of 1.1% per 100 miles (according to American Electric Power Transmission Facts Q12) which is over generous since most transmission would likely not be using only the high efficiency lines.

    Also, transmission range is affected by load and high load reduces line capability. https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/969cab6d-ef67-402c-9226-8cb5f9e5769f.jpeg

    We’re talking about moving a huge amount of power across 3000 miles. In my experience transmitting power across a nation as large as the US is unheard of.

    You also seemed to have missed my point about how much excess power would be required to power the opposite side of the country (in the dark) while basically at dusk. Let’s say 30% of the east coast’s power comes from solar. That would mean that the West Coast would need to provide that 30% excess on top of their current energy demands during a relatively high demand time period. It would also be a bit unfair for the West Coast to be the ones responsible for over-provisioning to accommodate the east coast.

    Is HVDC even installed and able to transmit across the US now?

    Rooty ,
    1. Power lines are not superconductive, there are always losses when electricity is moved long distance
    2. You sidestepped my point and went on a tangent
    3. Again, there are losses when electric energy is converted into other types - pumped storage requires large reservoirs, and you’re basically making ineffective hydro.
    4. I never stated that renewables are easier to maintain than nuclear, just that the monetary and enviromental cost of maintenance is swept under the rug by anti-nuclear zealots.
    5. Again, renewables have a reliabilty problem that cannot be handwaved by "just move the power somewhere else.

    Judging by your sneering tone, I doubt you’re going to be receptive to any further points.

    Blake ,
    1. Sure, but it’s so much cheaper than nuclear, that it’s nearly irrelevant. A typical loss for 800 kV lines is 2.6% over 800 km. That means it’s cheaper to generate renewable energy 16,000km away from the point of consumption. That’s almost half the circumference of the Earth.
    2. You claimed that renewables would take up too much space. I provided an explanation backed up by facts and figures which clearly demonstrate that claim was false. You clearly can’t refute my point or you would have done so.
    3. Again, yes, but again, it’s so much cheaper that it doesn’t matter. Even with a conservative estimate, pumped storage is 70% efficient. In reality, it’s closer to 80%. This means that it’s still much cheaper to generate electricity and store it with pumped storage than it is to directly produce electricity with nuclear sources. 99% of the world’s electrical storage is pumped storage. Do you think you know better than industry experts?
    4. Good, I’m glad you’re willing to walk back this argument. The fact of the matter is that renewables are the cleanest, cheapest, safest source of energy available to us, and so that is what we should be investing in. That’s all that matters. Everything else is propaganda and rhetoric.
    5. No, they don’t. Again, this is just the same argument as argument 1. There’s no point in arguing it twice. People need to eat food, we produce food all over the world. People need to power their homes? We should produce power all over the world. It’s not a hard concept.
    Zuberi ,
    @Zuberi@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    You didn’t provide any sources.

    If you’re trying to wave your dick around you better provide more sources than Blake did above. Moving electricity long distances isn’t really losing much anyway.

    PhantomPhanatic ,
    @PhantomPhanatic@lemmy.world avatar

    Why would anyone waste money on the worse option?

    Why do people have diverse stock portfolios?

    Hedging and diversification is important. Unforseen consequences and unknown future conditions can screw up your long term plans for 100% renewables. The more diverse our energy portfolio is, the unknowns become easier to weather.

    That is the answer for why we build and research something that is more expensive and may divert resources away from better options. To argue that there is literally no place for energy development other than purely renewable is a difficult position to defend.

    Your sandwich analogy is lacking because we’re talking about far future consequences of our decision. Maybe you plan to eat the sandwich a week from today. Which do you buy? You don’t have enough information to determine which will be better in a week. Do you pick the chain store’s because it’s full of preservatives? Do you decide to buy both in case one of them gets moldy just to make sure you have anything to eat?

    The consequences of developing or not developing potential viable solutions to energy requirements can be far reaching. Completely dismissing alternative options is just not rational.

    Blake ,

    I support continued research and development into nuclear power, but I oppose the construction of nuclear power plants for reasons beyond scientific research. My very first comment in my thread said as much. Perhaps you should read more closely?

    I agree that diversification is important. Luckily, when it comes to renewables, we have an absolute feast of options:

    • Solar photovoltaic (generating electricity directly)
    • Solar thermal (heating water)
    • Wind, onshore
    • Wind, offshore
    • Geothermal
    • Hydroelectic (dams, rivers, etc.)
    • Wave
    • Biomass & biofuel
    • Artificial photosynthesis
    • Infrared thermals
    • Water vapor hydrostatic charge

    You say that we should consider the long term implications of our decisions, and I wholeheartedly agree with you. That is another reason to favour renewable sources. The sun is the only thing we can be 100% sure that will always be there for humanity. If it’s gone, then so are we. Likewise for the wind - it’s guaranteed as long as the sun shines and that physics continues to work as expected.

    Meanwhile, nuclear fissile material is a limited resource with extremely complex supply chains involved, with huge disruptions potential at any point in the extraction, refinement, handling, shipping, use and disposal of the material. Not to mention all of the things that can go wrong with a nuclear power plant - mistakes in maintenance or operation can leave it inoperable in a way which is extremely expensive and complex to fix.

    Solar panels and wind turbines are so easy to install, maintain and repair that you could do it safely by having a high school level understanding of electronics and following a 20-minute YouTube tutorial.

    A thought experiment for you: Can you describe a scenario where either solar power or wind power are no longer viable sources of electrical supply, without a mass extinction event also occurring?

    PhantomPhanatic ,
    @PhantomPhanatic@lemmy.world avatar

    Why would we limit our hedging to non-world destroying scenarios? It seems we’re already on track for a mass extinction event anyway. The reason you hedge is exactly for the worst case.

    Blake ,

    Are you serious? The reason I said that is because if we’re all fucking dead it doesn’t really matter what power plant we have because no one will be around to use it…

    PhantomPhanatic ,
    @PhantomPhanatic@lemmy.world avatar

    Yes.

    Zuberi ,
    @Zuberi@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    Can I follow a particular user? I just want Blake energy in my life.

    Blake ,

    Hahah, that’s sweet of you to say, thanks - I’m not usually so self-assured, but I do have a lot of opinions. Usually they’re just opinions rather than provable scientific facts though, so I don’t go quite as hard. As to your question, genuinely, I don’t know, but you can probably do something with an RSS feed? You can also add me on Discord if you want, DM me if you want my username.

    byzerium ,

    Germany is burning less coal this year in comparison to last year.https://i.imgur.com/W0iGpMH.jpg

    FuckyWucky ,

    Yes Germany, keep destroying wind farms for coal.

    Ooops ,
    @Ooops@kbin.social avatar

    Yes, keep believing in lies they tell you so you are distracted when they tell you even more lies about how they will totally save the environment any minu... look there, Germay did something again!

    PeoplesRepublicOfNewEngland , (edited )

    There seems to be consensus across the entire political spectrum to keep getting ripped off by Joe Biden for LNG transported at huge economic and environmental expense across the ocean by ship instead of the one way (edit: ok at one point there was another way that wasn’t exactly carbon neutral, at one point Germany and Russia consented though but also there was someone they forgot to ask) of actually solving the problem.

    The power of Failed States of America propaganda is staggering

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