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The fact that currently available renewable energy technologies can't produce enough energy for currently existing industrial societies.

by oytis 5y ago

ZeroGravitas 5y ago
Okay so we agree on that fact. I think we need to build lots more renewables, and every government in the world has plans to do so, which is a good thing. It seems a weird stance to take though, since existing nuclear also can't do that and would similarly need built out. Are you sure you're trying to support nuclear? Because that sounds like an argument for the fossil fuel status quo.
- oytis 5y ago
  I mean technologies, not capacities. Yes, we'll need to build more nuclear plants to cover the needs of the society, but the technology used would be roughly the same. But the same trick will not work with renewables to my best knowledge. We can't realistically place enough wind turbines or solar panels, say, in Germany or in France to cover their energy consumption.
  - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
    Oh, right I misunderstood. So no, we don't agree on that then. Renewables and related tech is more than capable of powering a modern civilization. In fact it's better at doing that than any other option, including a nuclear heavy mix. Ironically, the bits that I'm most fuzzy about renewables working well for (because they're not the low hanging fruit that we can immediately do) would also need to be done to move to a mostly nuclear powered civilization since it's basically about electrification of fossil-carbon-based process. You don't hear much talk about it because absolutely no-one, especially the people who bang on about it on internet forums, thinks there's any chance at all of nuclear being a potential replacement for all fossil fuels, so it would be a waste of time to even draw up such plans. Luckily, you can just take all the renewable plans drawn up by the actual governments for their actual plans and then just scale up the nuclear element and scale down the renewables to get some idea if it would work. And it would work, at much greater cost in money, carbon, time and blood than doing it with renewables. Which people seem to know on some level, but argue about trivialities and gotchas as if they didn't. If you have any specific concern about what renewables can't do, I'll happily provide some sources to show why you're misinformed, and why a heavily nuclear grid will hit the same issues at a greater cost.

The fact that currently available renewable energy technologies can't produce enough energy for currently existing industrial societies.

by oytis 5y ago

The fact that currently available renewable energy technologies can't produce enough energy for currently existing industrial societies.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

Okay so we agree on that fact. I think we need to build lots more renewables, and every government in the world has plans to do so, which is a good thing. It seems a weird stance to take though, since existing nuclear also can't do that and would similarly need built out. Are you sure you're trying to support nuclear? Because that sounds like an argument for the fossil fuel status quo.

oytis 5y ago
I mean technologies, not capacities. Yes, we'll need to build more nuclear plants to cover the needs of the society, but the technology used would be roughly the same. But the same trick will not work with renewables to my best knowledge. We can't realistically place enough wind turbines or solar panels, say, in Germany or in France to cover their energy consumption.
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  Oh, right I misunderstood. So no, we don't agree on that then. Renewables and related tech is more than capable of powering a modern civilization. In fact it's better at doing that than any other option, including a nuclear heavy mix. Ironically, the bits that I'm most fuzzy about renewables working well for (because they're not the low hanging fruit that we can immediately do) would also need to be done to move to a mostly nuclear powered civilization since it's basically about electrification of fossil-carbon-based process. You don't hear much talk about it because absolutely no-one, especially the people who bang on about it on internet forums, thinks there's any chance at all of nuclear being a potential replacement for all fossil fuels, so it would be a waste of time to even draw up such plans. Luckily, you can just take all the renewable plans drawn up by the actual governments for their actual plans and then just scale up the nuclear element and scale down the renewables to get some idea if it would work. And it would work, at much greater cost in money, carbon, time and blood than doing it with renewables. Which people seem to know on some level, but argue about trivialities and gotchas as if they didn't. If you have any specific concern about what renewables can't do, I'll happily provide some sources to show why you're misinformed, and why a heavily nuclear grid will hit the same issues at a greater cost.