3 ms·

Power generation when it boils down to it, whatever method used, is the conversion of momentum into electricity. Nuclear power, while pretty ingenious, seems li

Power generation when it boils down to it, whatever method used, is the conversion of momentum into electricity. Nuclear power, while pretty ingenious, seems like an example of extreme overengineering to solve a problem. I know I'm simplifying here, but essentially, nuclear power is generated using the heat generated by the decay of radioactive material to boil water, to generate steam to spin a turbine. This creates many challenges and hazards and generally, costs a lot of money. There's a lot less extreme ways to generate motion and capture said motion into electricity. Motion is everywhere. All the time. As we get better at capturing and harnessing the natural motion around us, which is the basic idea behind actual renewable energy, there's going to be less and less need for such extreme things as generating motion through radioactive decay. Again, it's an ingenious idea and provides a lot of power in places that would otherwise be powered by fossil fuel, but it's still a short sighted solution with long term consequences that on the scale of centuries is not sustainable.

thehappypm 6y ago
Solar doesn't fit your paradigm at all.
- randomopining 6y ago
  How not lolz? Motion of the photons from the sun.
petertodd 6y ago
Think of it this way: the boiling water and spinning turbine part is the easy bit. All the hard engineering and tradeoffs in thermal/mechanical power generation, be it coal, natural gas, biofuels, hydro, or nuclear, are in dealing with the fuel/moving mass. Enormous amounts of engineering go into finding coal, digging it out of the ground, and dealing with the resulting combustion gasses and ash. The boilers and turbines - while impressive - are just one small part of that effort. Natural gas is no different: the turbines are pretty simple compared to the huge effort that goes into getting it out of the ground. Hydroelectricity again uses turbines. And again, they're relatively trivial devices compared to the huge engineering challenges of building and maintaining the dams themselves. Not to mention the complex tradeoffs around when and where to use them. If reliable high-energy motion really was everywhere, yes, this would be easy. But that simply isn't the case. The closest we have to that is hydroelectricity, and in most countries dams have already been built on most of the available sites.
randomopining 6y ago
Yeah I pretty much agree with what you say. Idk why you're downvoted. Essentially we want to make energy capture and efficient, clean, and safe as possible. Nuclear is clean until it isn't, and safe until it isn't. It makes sense though, because solar has only recently become efficient enough to become the next big move.
- asdff 6y ago
  That being said, even with the accidents, nuclear is cleaner and safer than something like coal or gas. I wouldn't be surprised if the same weren't true megawatt per megawatt for a solar cell with a 25 year life. More advanced facilities like Ivanpah rely on natural gas, presumably because batteries that could store power generated on site for this purpose are too costly, and I have no idea of Ivanpah's other consumables and their external costs to the environment. I feel like the reputation with nuclear power is a lot like the reputation with airline crashes: very few and far between events that are emblazoned in the public eye with the media spectacle. You have people today who have anxiety about flying, and no issues taking an uber to the airport for this reason, despite you being much more likely to die in a car crash than a plane crash. People don't understand nuclear power that well, nor do they understand what risk means statistically, so they lean into what they've heard or sentiment among their peers which comes from media coverage designed to engage viewers rather than dry research papers.

thehappypm 6y ago

Solar doesn't fit your paradigm at all.

randomopining 6y ago
How not lolz? Motion of the photons from the sun.

petertodd 6y ago

Think of it this way: the boiling water and spinning turbine part is the easy bit. All the hard engineering and tradeoffs in thermal/mechanical power generation, be it coal, natural gas, biofuels, hydro, or nuclear, are in dealing with the fuel/moving mass. Enormous amounts of engineering go into finding coal, digging it out of the ground, and dealing with the resulting combustion gasses and ash. The boilers and turbines - while impressive - are just one small part of that effort. Natural gas is no different: the turbines are pretty simple compared to the huge effort that goes into getting it out of the ground. Hydroelectricity again uses turbines. And again, they're relatively trivial devices compared to the huge engineering challenges of building and maintaining the dams themselves. Not to mention the complex tradeoffs around when and where to use them. If reliable high-energy motion really was everywhere, yes, this would be easy. But that simply isn't the case. The closest we have to that is hydroelectricity, and in most countries dams have already been built on most of the available sites.

randomopining 6y ago

Yeah I pretty much agree with what you say. Idk why you're downvoted. Essentially we want to make energy capture and efficient, clean, and safe as possible. Nuclear is clean until it isn't, and safe until it isn't. It makes sense though, because solar has only recently become efficient enough to become the next big move.

asdff 6y ago
That being said, even with the accidents, nuclear is cleaner and safer than something like coal or gas. I wouldn't be surprised if the same weren't true megawatt per megawatt for a solar cell with a 25 year life. More advanced facilities like Ivanpah rely on natural gas, presumably because batteries that could store power generated on site for this purpose are too costly, and I have no idea of Ivanpah's other consumables and their external costs to the environment. I feel like the reputation with nuclear power is a lot like the reputation with airline crashes: very few and far between events that are emblazoned in the public eye with the media spectacle. You have people today who have anxiety about flying, and no issues taking an uber to the airport for this reason, despite you being much more likely to die in a car crash than a plane crash. People don't understand nuclear power that well, nor do they understand what risk means statistically, so they lean into what they've heard or sentiment among their peers which comes from media coverage designed to engage viewers rather than dry research papers.