7 ms·

Ya know, I feel like renewables are the future, but we’re kinda running out of runway here. I think a nuclear + renewables strategy is a great way to get us pas

Ya know, I feel like renewables are the future, but we’re kinda running out of runway here. I think a nuclear + renewables strategy is a great way to get us past fossil fuels quickly. Once we’re over fossil fuels we can tackle replacing nuclear with something better.

chiefalchemist 8y ago
At this point it's fairly obvious that the continued use of fossil fuels will lead us to danger than fission. Perhaps we're trading one devil for another, but the devil we know is not sustainable. We'' just have to figure out how to deal with the fission devil until we get fusion. Hopefully, fusion isn't too far off.
- darkerside 8y ago
  > Perhaps we're trading one devil for another, but the devil we know is not sustainable Trading the devil you know for the one you don't is wisely considered a bad idea
  - marcosdumay 8y ago
    That certainly depends on how devilish are the one you know and a random one. Any advice on that level of generality is useless and better trashed.
    - darkerside 8y ago
      The whole point is, you don't know how devilish the random one is. As bad as global warming will be, we know the risks and we can prepare for them. Whether we'll actually do that is another matter..
      - marcosdumay 8y ago
        Getting concrete now, specifically about nuclear power, we know exactly how bad it can be. We have a very large amount of certainty about how the worst case looks like, we know very well how to prepare for some of it, and we know very well what to do to avoid the rest of it. We know those to a much higher certainty than we know the consequences of global warming. It's not a blind choice. The only thing we don't know well is how much improvement current technology brings. We have an idea, but there are probably flaws on our estimative. I don't think nuclear will help, mostly because it's too late. But basing decisions on ignorance is crazy.
        darkerside 8y ago
        Basing decisions on known ignorance is not crazy. In fact, I'd call it appropriate humility. It's just that the smart decision is more likely to be a "not yet / need more information" than a flat no. Basing decisions on limited understandings is also not crazy. I've heard the rough US Army guideline is to act when you have 70% of the information. If you wait too long, there's often no right answer. Anyway, my whole point is probably one level meta from what you're talking about. I find many disagreements turn out to be simply two different simultaneous discussions.
  - chiefalchemist 8y ago
    Note: I didn't say we don't know the fusion devil. We do. Just perhaps not as well as the fossil fuel devil.
  - ip26 8y ago
    See, this is why we shouldn't have banned trans fats. Sure they were killing people, and sure we knew it, but the devil you know...
    - darkerside 8y ago
      The substitute for trans fats was returning to butter and other natural fats, which we originally left because we thought they were so bad for us that products like margarine must certainly be better! Thanks for making my point.
      - ip26 8y ago
        Sorry, butter is still widely (unfairly) considered evil. We replaced trans fats with rapeseed oil, soybean oil, and palm oil, which are hardly the foods our grandparents ate.
TomMckenny 8y ago
Aside from urgency, it's also likely that wind, solar and hydro, even if deployed maximally, might not be able to meet the total peak demand every where. Renewable are obviously superior but for that gaps, we will need fission anyway. Fission plants have a finite lifespan anyway so if fusion or space laser or whatever appear, openings will be appearing constantly.
- captainbland 8y ago
  It might just be right that if renewables can't meet current demand, prices go that bit higher to keep usage in line. It's not a given that we must consume as much as we do (or more) forever given the finite nature of the planet and everything.
  - gwbas1c 8y ago
    That really hurts the crowd that lives paycheck to paycheck. Price goes up: someone goes without.
    - fyfy18 8y ago
      What is electricity prices went up with usage? So you get X kWh per month for one price, then after that it's 1.5x the rate. You could just do this on residential rates only so businesses aren't affected.
      - frankietwenty9 8y ago
        why remove the incentive for businesses to optimize their energy usage? They have as much if not more external costs as a residential home.
        captainbland 8y ago
        If anything it is most important to apply this to businesses. Most consumer choice related emissions, as it's often framed, is taken through the proxy of a business that hasn't optimised their energy output to this extent. This is all the more relevant when you consider that consumers often don't have visibility over the practices of the business that they're interacting with, and particularly that of the supply chain further down the line. Like are all these lit up signs really necessary for any businesses to function, do you think? Or are they just trying to stay visible in a sea of neon?
TomK32 8y ago
You ignore the time it takes to get a nuclear power plant online. Let alone all the permissions for it. Know what would work today? Reducing our energy consumption.
- abootstrapper 8y ago
  Reducing our energy consumption and building alternatives to fossil fuels are not mutually exclusive. Let’s do both.
  - XorNot 8y ago
    Also western nations have been doing this for the last 30 years. The house you live in today has appliances that are 3x or more efficient then it did 30 years ago. It's better insulated, it's more recyclable etc. It also doesn't make a damn bit of difference of base load power comes from coal.
learnstats2 8y ago
Nuclear power is way slower than current generation renewables.
- javagram 8y ago
  The energy storage problem isn’t solved for current generation renewables as far as I know. Laying out a ton of solar panels everywhere is great but if we have rolling blackouts when it’s too cloudy for a while people will be very upset.
  - opportune 8y ago
    I’ve read gravity hydro storage is one of most effective per unit cost but that has significant constraints and potential environmental impacts. But in a region with a lot of waterways hydro is an awesome tool to provide renewable on-demand energy and store excess
    - monetus 8y ago
      I've heard saltwater batteries make sense for this, they just need a lot of space.
  - justatdotin 8y ago
    At home, some of my excess power is syphoned off to neighbours, but I'm also using an amazing energy storage technology called batteries. Our government has just announced a number of new large-scale battery farms, as already deployed in neighbouring states.
    - coddingtonbear 8y ago
      I hear people say this sort of thing all the time, "All we need is bigger batteries", but I think the thing folks don't realize is really how small even the worlds biggest batteries are when faced with the actual amount of electricity we use. One of the worlds biggest batteries (currently under construction nearby LA) stores the huge-sounding amount of 400MWh of energy. What isn't clear to folks who don't do the math is that battery is really only big enough to help out with peak load periods. The peak consumption of LA has reached as high as 6,393 MW (about double their average peak). At that rate, that battery -- literally one of the biggest ones in the whole world -- will last just 3.8 minutes.
justatdotin 8y ago
couldnt be morong. nuclear is very slow to deploy and limited in capacity. the industry suffers from significant latency and tight bottlenecks. the 2018 world nuclear outlook, a dubiously bullish and optimistic predictor of industry trends, shows that the most ambitious likelihoods for capacity growth will struggle to match total global demand growth - and that's assuming most plants up for (or past) retirement get license extensions. Nuclear is just too slow to make a meaningful dent in carbon-fueled power, and that's even before we consider cost. renewables are our future, but also my present. My home produces more power than i need; half the houses in my street have their own solar panels; the shopping centre and church down the road are plastered in them. And although the local power company is 99% gas, they're buiding a medium-scale solar farm down the hiway; nearby small towns are fully solar already; and the next-largest city is building a battery farm to enable them to be more than 50% renewable within 10 years.
- ShorsHammer 8y ago
  Small modular reactors in the US are already in the licensing/regulatory phase.[0] They are portable and have reasonable prospects of providing baseload where renewables/batteries can't. Many have very safe failure modes also, not requiring power/pumping. It's going to a niche future for nuclear though. Cost-wise renewables are already winning in many parts of Earth and viable efficient storage has become the main problem. Batteries are great for quick on-demand grid balancing, but are environmentally damaging and lose large amounts of capacity within half a decade. Supercapacitors hold great promise, but like fusion always seem 20 years away. On a $/Ah scale they are useless today, but don't suffer from any of the flaws of batteries apart from weight/volume issues. Gravity storage [1] seems the most promising, pumped hydro isn't that efficient and very site-dependant, rail or crane weight systems seem to outperform and hopefully they gain some traction [0] https://www.nuscalepower.com/technology/technology-overview https://www.nuscalepower.com/technology/technology-overview [1] https://www.aresnorthamerica.com/grid-scale-energy-storage https://www.aresnorthamerica.com/grid-scale-energy-storage [1] https://energyvault.ch/ https://energyvault.ch/

chiefalchemist 8y ago

At this point it's fairly obvious that the continued use of fossil fuels will lead us to danger than fission. Perhaps we're trading one devil for another, but the devil we know is not sustainable. We'' just have to figure out how to deal with the fission devil until we get fusion. Hopefully, fusion isn't too far off.

darkerside 8y ago
> Perhaps we're trading one devil for another, but the devil we know is not sustainable Trading the devil you know for the one you don't is wisely considered a bad idea
- marcosdumay 8y ago
  That certainly depends on how devilish are the one you know and a random one. Any advice on that level of generality is useless and better trashed.
  - darkerside 8y ago
    The whole point is, you don't know how devilish the random one is. As bad as global warming will be, we know the risks and we can prepare for them. Whether we'll actually do that is another matter..
    - marcosdumay 8y ago
      Getting concrete now, specifically about nuclear power, we know exactly how bad it can be. We have a very large amount of certainty about how the worst case looks like, we know very well how to prepare for some of it, and we know very well what to do to avoid the rest of it. We know those to a much higher certainty than we know the consequences of global warming. It's not a blind choice. The only thing we don't know well is how much improvement current technology brings. We have an idea, but there are probably flaws on our estimative. I don't think nuclear will help, mostly because it's too late. But basing decisions on ignorance is crazy.
      - darkerside 8y ago
        Basing decisions on known ignorance is not crazy. In fact, I'd call it appropriate humility. It's just that the smart decision is more likely to be a "not yet / need more information" than a flat no. Basing decisions on limited understandings is also not crazy. I've heard the rough US Army guideline is to act when you have 70% of the information. If you wait too long, there's often no right answer. Anyway, my whole point is probably one level meta from what you're talking about. I find many disagreements turn out to be simply two different simultaneous discussions.
- chiefalchemist 8y ago
  Note: I didn't say we don't know the fusion devil. We do. Just perhaps not as well as the fossil fuel devil.
- ip26 8y ago
  See, this is why we shouldn't have banned trans fats. Sure they were killing people, and sure we knew it, but the devil you know...
  - darkerside 8y ago
    The substitute for trans fats was returning to butter and other natural fats, which we originally left because we thought they were so bad for us that products like margarine must certainly be better! Thanks for making my point.
    - ip26 8y ago
      Sorry, butter is still widely (unfairly) considered evil. We replaced trans fats with rapeseed oil, soybean oil, and palm oil, which are hardly the foods our grandparents ate.

TomMckenny 8y ago

Aside from urgency, it's also likely that wind, solar and hydro, even if deployed maximally, might not be able to meet the total peak demand every where. Renewable are obviously superior but for that gaps, we will need fission anyway. Fission plants have a finite lifespan anyway so if fusion or space laser or whatever appear, openings will be appearing constantly.

captainbland 8y ago
It might just be right that if renewables can't meet current demand, prices go that bit higher to keep usage in line. It's not a given that we must consume as much as we do (or more) forever given the finite nature of the planet and everything.
- gwbas1c 8y ago
  That really hurts the crowd that lives paycheck to paycheck. Price goes up: someone goes without.
  - fyfy18 8y ago
    What is electricity prices went up with usage? So you get X kWh per month for one price, then after that it's 1.5x the rate. You could just do this on residential rates only so businesses aren't affected.
    - frankietwenty9 8y ago
      why remove the incentive for businesses to optimize their energy usage? They have as much if not more external costs as a residential home.
      - captainbland 8y ago
        If anything it is most important to apply this to businesses. Most consumer choice related emissions, as it's often framed, is taken through the proxy of a business that hasn't optimised their energy output to this extent. This is all the more relevant when you consider that consumers often don't have visibility over the practices of the business that they're interacting with, and particularly that of the supply chain further down the line. Like are all these lit up signs really necessary for any businesses to function, do you think? Or are they just trying to stay visible in a sea of neon?

TomK32 8y ago

You ignore the time it takes to get a nuclear power plant online. Let alone all the permissions for it. Know what would work today? Reducing our energy consumption.

abootstrapper 8y ago
Reducing our energy consumption and building alternatives to fossil fuels are not mutually exclusive. Let’s do both.
- XorNot 8y ago
  Also western nations have been doing this for the last 30 years. The house you live in today has appliances that are 3x or more efficient then it did 30 years ago. It's better insulated, it's more recyclable etc. It also doesn't make a damn bit of difference of base load power comes from coal.

learnstats2 8y ago

Nuclear power is way slower than current generation renewables.

javagram 8y ago
The energy storage problem isn’t solved for current generation renewables as far as I know. Laying out a ton of solar panels everywhere is great but if we have rolling blackouts when it’s too cloudy for a while people will be very upset.
- opportune 8y ago
  I’ve read gravity hydro storage is one of most effective per unit cost but that has significant constraints and potential environmental impacts. But in a region with a lot of waterways hydro is an awesome tool to provide renewable on-demand energy and store excess
  - monetus 8y ago
    I've heard saltwater batteries make sense for this, they just need a lot of space.
- justatdotin 8y ago
  At home, some of my excess power is syphoned off to neighbours, but I'm also using an amazing energy storage technology called batteries. Our government has just announced a number of new large-scale battery farms, as already deployed in neighbouring states.
  - coddingtonbear 8y ago
    I hear people say this sort of thing all the time, "All we need is bigger batteries", but I think the thing folks don't realize is really how small even the worlds biggest batteries are when faced with the actual amount of electricity we use. One of the worlds biggest batteries (currently under construction nearby LA) stores the huge-sounding amount of 400MWh of energy. What isn't clear to folks who don't do the math is that battery is really only big enough to help out with peak load periods. The peak consumption of LA has reached as high as 6,393 MW (about double their average peak). At that rate, that battery -- literally one of the biggest ones in the whole world -- will last just 3.8 minutes.

justatdotin 8y ago

couldnt be morong. nuclear is very slow to deploy and limited in capacity. the industry suffers from significant latency and tight bottlenecks. the 2018 world nuclear outlook, a dubiously bullish and optimistic predictor of industry trends, shows that the most ambitious likelihoods for capacity growth will struggle to match total global demand growth - and that's assuming most plants up for (or past) retirement get license extensions. Nuclear is just too slow to make a meaningful dent in carbon-fueled power, and that's even before we consider cost. renewables are our future, but also my present. My home produces more power than i need; half the houses in my street have their own solar panels; the shopping centre and church down the road are plastered in them. And although the local power company is 99% gas, they're buiding a medium-scale solar farm down the hiway; nearby small towns are fully solar already; and the next-largest city is building a battery farm to enable them to be more than 50% renewable within 10 years.

ShorsHammer 8y ago
Small modular reactors in the US are already in the licensing/regulatory phase.[0] They are portable and have reasonable prospects of providing baseload where renewables/batteries can't. Many have very safe failure modes also, not requiring power/pumping. It's going to a niche future for nuclear though. Cost-wise renewables are already winning in many parts of Earth and viable efficient storage has become the main problem. Batteries are great for quick on-demand grid balancing, but are environmentally damaging and lose large amounts of capacity within half a decade. Supercapacitors hold great promise, but like fusion always seem 20 years away. On a $/Ah scale they are useless today, but don't suffer from any of the flaws of batteries apart from weight/volume issues. Gravity storage [1] seems the most promising, pumped hydro isn't that efficient and very site-dependant, rail or crane weight systems seem to outperform and hopefully they gain some traction [0] https://www.nuscalepower.com/technology/technology-overview https://www.nuscalepower.com/technology/technology-overview [1] https://www.aresnorthamerica.com/grid-scale-energy-storage https://www.aresnorthamerica.com/grid-scale-energy-storage [1] https://energyvault.ch/ https://energyvault.ch/