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> They have clear political motivation to continue to build nuclear power plants. If realizing what a terrible bet solar and wind are is political, then yes I
by orthecreedence 5y ago
> They have clear political motivation to continue to build nuclear power plants.
If realizing what a terrible bet solar and wind are is political, then yes I agree their motivation is political.
- ncmncm 5y agoStrange, then, that they are building more solar and wind than fission.
- orthecreedence 5y agoWhy not build both? Nuclear is great, and pound-for-pound is a much better energy source than solar, but you can build solar much more quickly than nuclear. I don't think your rebuttal is particularly damning. My points against solar I raised to you in another thread stand: to build the panels/batteries we need, it will create an extreme excess of carbon in the atmosphere. That's not to say we shouldn't build solar, but to pretend it can solely serve all of our collective energy needs is myopic give the constraints. To be clear, I'm all for covering the entire planet in solar panels...after we switch our production to be powered via fission.
- ncmncm 5y agoI.e., never. "What a terrible bet solar and wind are", as you claim immediately above, would be a reason not to build out solar and wind, if it were correct. But it's not, and they are. And, it is at best naive to believe that it takes more energy to produce a solar panel than it will generate. People mining and refining silicon, cadmium, and tellurium and making solar panels out of them do not get power for free. They pay open market prices for energy, which they pass directly on to customers all down the chain to the final buyer. When your panel's production output pays off its purchase cost, its output has (much more than) exceeded the energy used to produce it.
- orthecreedence 5y ago> as you claim immediately above The claim was regarding nuclear VS solar (either/or), in which case yet, solar is a terrible bet. I stand by that. > People mining and refining silicon, cadmium, and tellurium and making solar panels out of them do not get power for free And you say I'm being naive... Firstly, the price of the panels doesn't even match the price of production because of subsidies. Secondly, they do get power for free: the well-known, terrible cost of burning fossil fuels at their current scale is not incorporated into the price of fossil fuels. Capitalist markets are not capable of doing so. So my point is if you were to actually price fossil fuels according to their cost solar panel production would not be competitive with nuclear in any way. > When your panel's production output pays off its purchase cost, its output has (much more than) exceeded the energy used to produce it. Sure, it can pay off its purchase cost, but as above, that means absolutely nothing. A more interesting payment would be watts-in, watts-out, in which case I'd wager you get marginal gains. And if the watts-in are generated with fossil fuels, you're doing a lot more damage than you think. Regarding nuclear, sure it's expensive, but a lot of that is artificial, and a lot of the high comparative cost is due to the price/cost disparity in fossil fuels. And hey, as a bonus, it works at night and on cloudy days and you don't need to build an enormous battery which is another can of worms people love to gloss over.
- ncmncm 5y agoI see that you have completely abandoned rational argumentation and are just making shit up, so I leave this here.
- orthecreedence 5y agoGuess I struck a chord somewhere.
- ncmncm 5y agoStruck a rock.