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Ultimately, this is about money. For aging nuclear power plants, keeping them running becomes more and more costly. So the question becomes, if we need to inve
by phicoh 5y ago
Ultimately, this is about money.
For aging nuclear power plants, keeping them running becomes more and more costly. So the question becomes, if we need to invest a big chunk of money, what should we invest in to reduce CO2 emissions the most.
And the answer is that building out wind/solar and insulating buildings is at the moment way more effective than keeping old nuclear power plants running.
- fsflover 5y ago> what should we invest in to reduce CO2 emissions the most. > And the answer is that building out wind/solar Proofs?
- phicoh 5y agoThe proof is that nobody is investing in keeping old nuclear power plants open. All over Europe. When those plants stay open it is governments paying for it. In contrast, companies are now paying money to rent a piece of sea to put a wind farm in.
- fsflover 5y agoThis is because nuclear can't fight with cheap coal and anti-nuclear propaganda: https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html.
- kzrdude 5y ago> And the answer is that building out wind/solar and insulating buildings is at the moment way more effective than keeping old nuclear power plants running. This is already what we have been doing, and that's including that we can "make do" with energy savings. It just doesn't close the gap. Nordics/northern europe need nuclear or equivalent power source to close the gap, or a revolution in energy storage. I think we need more energy in the future, for all the green technology, not less. Energy is the currency, even more so than already, of the future economy.
- phicoh 5y agoThe problem we have is that in the past decade fossil fuel was way to cheap. This has now changed, but ramping up production of solar and wind takes a while. Fossil fuels are still way too cheap compared to storage of electricity. So there are lots of ways we could store electricity. But if you can't compete with a gas powered plant next door, it is not going to be built. At the same time, if you look at power consumption of data centers, it is amazing that so much of that can be ad supported.
- throwawayffffas 5y ago> Ultimately, this is about money. Well, it's not really, if it was just about money all the research that went into renewables could be invested in other things and we could just keep burning cheap available coal. It's about stopping CO2 emissions and we need every drop of capacity we can get if we are to shutdown fossil fuel plants. Trying to eliminate both fossil fuel usage and nuclear at the same time is insane, and we are going to miss our already lax emission targets because we are taking on a handicap for no reason.
- KptMarchewa 5y ago>keeping them running becomes more and more costly That's very unsourced meme. Surry Nuclear Power Plant will be running till 2050s - for 80 years without significant costs.