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Like using more nuclear power ?

by dvhh 5y ago

lotsofpulp 5y ago
A simple tax on fossil fuels raising the price of fuel to $10 is $20 per gallon should do nicely. If not, keep going up. To prevent it affecting poor people disproportionately, give poorer people cash.
lucidguppy 5y ago
Nuclear power can't come online fast enough. We shouldn't needlessly decommission plants like Germany did. There's an opportunity cost here - we need to make "power plant factories" rather than just "power plants". So if we could make green energy factories and nuke plant factories, that would be better than making one off nuke plants that take so long to get approved.
- pclmulqdq 5y ago
  The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, but the second best time is today. By continuing to oppose low-carbon base load power that is politically unpopular, climate activists are showing the world that they don't really believe there's a crisis. Put another way, they are saying: "there's just enough of a crisis for us to take things from you, but not enough for us to sacrifice anything ourselves." Also, with investment in nuclear plants, the cost and time to build one will decrease, but someone needs to put up the money to make that happen.
  - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
    > By continuing to oppose low-carbon base load power that is politically unpopular, climate activists are showing the world that they don't really believe there's a crisis. That's okay, who cares if some old hippies don't believe in an obvious scientific fact. We all believe it's true, right? And that's what matters, yes? Because the people who deny that climate change would be a crisis if we don't stop emitting fossil carbon are absolute idiots, at least we can all agree on that much.
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  I would suggest (as is commonly accepted) that building new nuclear is a net-negative for climate change (due to high cost that could have been spent on renewables, efficiency or other related stuff that would have more impact) but I'm not against keeping nuclear plants open if they are within their lifetime. Having said that, I've never seen an actual solid argument that Germany rushed their nuclear phase-out. It usually ends at "they're phasing out nuclear, they still burn coal, they're idiots" yet if you look at a graph of their carbon intensity, it's going down at roughly the same speed as their neighbours and there's no obvious blip from the nuclear phase out. If anything, the fact that they still have coal means they've got a few easy wins left as they phase those out. (This holds true even when accounting for carbon imports/exports). But the whole "carbon tax" thing is about lots of small changes adding up to make an effective difference. Germany appears to be achieving this even with apparent oddities like nuclear and coal. Maybe those were the political cost of doing all the rest of the stuff.

Like using more nuclear power ?

by dvhh 5y ago

Like using more nuclear power ?

A simple tax on fossil fuels raising the price of fuel to $10 is $20 per gallon should do nicely. If not, keep going up. To prevent it affecting poor people disproportionately, give poorer people cash.

lucidguppy 5y ago

Nuclear power can't come online fast enough. We shouldn't needlessly decommission plants like Germany did. There's an opportunity cost here - we need to make "power plant factories" rather than just "power plants". So if we could make green energy factories and nuke plant factories, that would be better than making one off nuke plants that take so long to get approved.

pclmulqdq 5y ago
The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, but the second best time is today. By continuing to oppose low-carbon base load power that is politically unpopular, climate activists are showing the world that they don't really believe there's a crisis. Put another way, they are saying: "there's just enough of a crisis for us to take things from you, but not enough for us to sacrifice anything ourselves." Also, with investment in nuclear plants, the cost and time to build one will decrease, but someone needs to put up the money to make that happen.
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  > By continuing to oppose low-carbon base load power that is politically unpopular, climate activists are showing the world that they don't really believe there's a crisis. That's okay, who cares if some old hippies don't believe in an obvious scientific fact. We all believe it's true, right? And that's what matters, yes? Because the people who deny that climate change would be a crisis if we don't stop emitting fossil carbon are absolute idiots, at least we can all agree on that much.
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
I would suggest (as is commonly accepted) that building new nuclear is a net-negative for climate change (due to high cost that could have been spent on renewables, efficiency or other related stuff that would have more impact) but I'm not against keeping nuclear plants open if they are within their lifetime. Having said that, I've never seen an actual solid argument that Germany rushed their nuclear phase-out. It usually ends at "they're phasing out nuclear, they still burn coal, they're idiots" yet if you look at a graph of their carbon intensity, it's going down at roughly the same speed as their neighbours and there's no obvious blip from the nuclear phase out. If anything, the fact that they still have coal means they've got a few easy wins left as they phase those out. (This holds true even when accounting for carbon imports/exports). But the whole "carbon tax" thing is about lots of small changes adding up to make an effective difference. Germany appears to be achieving this even with apparent oddities like nuclear and coal. Maybe those were the political cost of doing all the rest of the stuff.