3 ms·

Safety concerns are moot when the coal alternative will kill orders of magnitude more people.

topspin 5y ago
All of the above is politically moot as long as leaders and parties can get away with bandying around fantasy land policies of running major industrial economies exclusively on renewables. Perhaps this story is a tiny glimmer of hope that one day it won't be possible to get away with that cop out. We've wasted a lot of decades just to get this far though.
CyanBird 5y ago
But your own point is itself moot, given that we are not comparing nuclear to the dirtiest most lethal of fossil fuels, but nuclear to composite solutions of renewables+batteries/electricity storage or renewables+natural gas
- armada651 5y ago
  When Germany closed nuclear power plants after Fukushima much of it was replaced with coal power plants.[1] So I don't think his point is moot at all, it's actually quite a reasonable argument to make here. [1] https://www.nber.org/papers/w26598 https://www.nber.org/papers/w26598
  - CyanBird 5y ago
    > it's actually quite a reasonable argument *to make here*. Yeah, but as you know Germany, and German discussions do not encompass the whole world, so you can certainly bring me points from specific countries, France or US could be other ones, but they also have their own idiosyncrasies But as I was saying, the core argument for Nuclear decommissioning is not to compare it to the absolute worst energy generation scheme that exists, by that metric then I could mention that using PeatBog for energy generation is "not that bad an idea" compared to Coal.... Which is of course, an awful idea by itself....
    - armada651 5y ago
      > Yeah, but as you know Germany, and German discussions do not encompass the whole world I never pretended to be arguing for the entire world, the article is about closing existing nuclear power plants in Germany and my argument is limited to that. > But as I was saying, the core argument for Nuclear decommissioning is not to compare it to the absolute worst energy generation scheme that exists, by that metric then I could mention that using PeatBog for energy generation is "not that bad an idea" compared to Coal.... Which is of course, an awful idea by itself.... But we're not simply comparing it to coal because it's the worst energy generation scheme. We're comparing it to coal because that is what replaced nuclear last time Germany decommissioned its plants.
- lamp987 5y ago
  Its either coal or nuclear. Solar is not even remotely a competitor. Gas and renewables are still carbon.

All of the above is politically moot as long as leaders and parties can get away with bandying around fantasy land policies of running major industrial economies exclusively on renewables. Perhaps this story is a tiny glimmer of hope that one day it won't be possible to get away with that cop out. We've wasted a lot of decades just to get this far though.

CyanBird 5y ago

But your own point is itself moot, given that we are not comparing nuclear to the dirtiest most lethal of fossil fuels, but nuclear to composite solutions of renewables+batteries/electricity storage or renewables+natural gas

armada651 5y ago
When Germany closed nuclear power plants after Fukushima much of it was replaced with coal power plants.[1] So I don't think his point is moot at all, it's actually quite a reasonable argument to make here. [1] https://www.nber.org/papers/w26598 https://www.nber.org/papers/w26598
- CyanBird 5y ago
  > it's actually quite a reasonable argument *to make here*. Yeah, but as you know Germany, and German discussions do not encompass the whole world, so you can certainly bring me points from specific countries, France or US could be other ones, but they also have their own idiosyncrasies But as I was saying, the core argument for Nuclear decommissioning is not to compare it to the absolute worst energy generation scheme that exists, by that metric then I could mention that using PeatBog for energy generation is "not that bad an idea" compared to Coal.... Which is of course, an awful idea by itself....
  - armada651 5y ago
    > Yeah, but as you know Germany, and German discussions do not encompass the whole world I never pretended to be arguing for the entire world, the article is about closing existing nuclear power plants in Germany and my argument is limited to that. > But as I was saying, the core argument for Nuclear decommissioning is not to compare it to the absolute worst energy generation scheme that exists, by that metric then I could mention that using PeatBog for energy generation is "not that bad an idea" compared to Coal.... Which is of course, an awful idea by itself.... But we're not simply comparing it to coal because it's the worst energy generation scheme. We're comparing it to coal because that is what replaced nuclear last time Germany decommissioned its plants.
lamp987 5y ago
Its either coal or nuclear. Solar is not even remotely a competitor. Gas and renewables are still carbon.