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> and grouping it together with fossil sources makes people dismiss one of the more effective ways at generating power in climate-protecting way. To play devil
by cesarb 7y ago
> and grouping it together with fossil sources makes people dismiss one of the more effective ways at generating power in climate-protecting way.
To play devil's advocate, there's a good reason to group nuclear together with fossil fuel sources: both are thermal power plants, they only differ in the source of the heat. In terms of power generation, nuclear is much closer to coal and gas than it is to solar and wind.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoThat's fair, but if you want to go this way, you'll end up grouping them together with wind, hydro and concentrated solar, as they're all based on spinning coils around magnets (or the other way around). While this categorization may be useful for some specialized engineering discussions, it's useless when talking about environmental issues. When talking climate, we care about pollution and emissions - both of which put nuclear in the same group as renewables. (The one potential environmental aspect where "thermal plants" as a category is useful is that thermal plants need a heat sink to operate, which usually means a river or a pond. On the scale of climate issues, however, this is a negligible point that I haven't even seen brought up once by anyone.)