4 ms·

What is the price of fossil fuels contributing to climate change? Has that been factored into the calculation?

hetspookjee 5y ago
As if that has ever been the case. Cruise ships would be prohibitively expensive, and flying would be too. Almost all products would be twice or thrice the price, if not more, except for a lot of manually laboured locally crafted stuff. Sometimes I wouldn’t be surprised if wooden ships would be coming back again, especially now with all the modern technology.
- shlurpy 5y ago
  Why not make the sailboats out of modern materials?
pydry 5y ago
Why would it make a difference if you're comparing solar/wind/battery/pumped storage to nuclear?
- dTal 5y ago
  You can't directly compare them, because taken individually none of those can replace "base load" fossil fuels by themselves. How much does a solar installation that can reliably output a gigawatt of power, night and day, rain or shine cost? Can't do pumped storage everywhere either - how many batteries do you need? Nuclear starts to look cheap.
  - pydry 5y ago
    There are plenty of pumped storage locations, low wind tends to correspond to sunny days and vice versa. Battery costs have also plunged to a level where Hawaii pairs them with solar farms to provide baseload. The extreme low cost of all of these technologies is largely why nuclear power is dying out. It struggles to compete. The consistency just isnt that much of an advantage. Take away the insurance subsidy so that the taxpayer funded $800 billion cleanup costs for Fukushima are privatized and nuclear moves from struggles to compete to eye wateringly expensive. It can share some of the costs with nuclear arsenal maintenance though, so some governments will continue to push it on their populace.
    - ineedasername 5y ago
      I'd argue that, given the downside of not moving quickly, cost is a secondary consideration. If a basket of mixed sources, including nuclear, get us there sooner than renewables alone then cost should not be the main driver of the discussion.
      - pydry 5y ago
        A fine attitude to take. However, you should probably account for solar farms and battery installations taking 6 months to plan, execute and deploy. Offshore wind farms are a couple of years. Large pumped storage projects can take up to 4. Meanwhile Hinkley point C will be completed in 2026 after being kicked off all the way back in 2010 and will provide power that is "only" 3x the price. I'd argue that nuclear has really expensive and slick PR.
        ineedasername 5y ago
        It seems like we need a bunch of crash projects working at once. Heck, the COVID pandemic showed we're still capable of such projects, given the will to do so. I know, entrenched interest & their lobbying of politicians gets in the way. Well, pay them off! A few quick searches show that the top oil companies had a combined profit of roughly $200 Billion last year. Move off fossil fuels but give them the $200B to stay out of the way! In exchange, they take that to invest in retooling & retraining their workforce for the new methods. Heck, their drilling knowledge base alone makes them great candidates to take the lead on that aspect of geothermal. I think I'm only half serious about this. Payoffs (well, "subsidies" in political language) might be an awful idea. It's a realpolitik viewpoint, maybe not a good one. But maybe it could get us around the roadblocks.
        pydry 5y ago
        I'd argue more or less the same. Level the playing field amongst green energy (i.e. eliminate free nuclear insurance) hand offer the same level of subsidy to all of them. It would either mean no new nuclear plants or somebody comes up with a genuinely cheap, safe version that theyd be willing to put their money behind. That isnt what the propaganda is demanding though. It wants the perpetuation of free insurance for nuclear and to be given massive subsidies on top of that that solar, wind and pumped storage will never be granted. to produce less electricity for more money. It wants the market contorted out of all recognition to allow this and the only reason I can think of why is because the military needs it.

As if that has ever been the case. Cruise ships would be prohibitively expensive, and flying would be too. Almost all products would be twice or thrice the price, if not more, except for a lot of manually laboured locally crafted stuff. Sometimes I wouldn’t be surprised if wooden ships would be coming back again, especially now with all the modern technology.

shlurpy 5y ago
Why not make the sailboats out of modern materials?

pydry 5y ago

Why would it make a difference if you're comparing solar/wind/battery/pumped storage to nuclear?

dTal 5y ago
You can't directly compare them, because taken individually none of those can replace "base load" fossil fuels by themselves. How much does a solar installation that can reliably output a gigawatt of power, night and day, rain or shine cost? Can't do pumped storage everywhere either - how many batteries do you need? Nuclear starts to look cheap.
- pydry 5y ago
  There are plenty of pumped storage locations, low wind tends to correspond to sunny days and vice versa. Battery costs have also plunged to a level where Hawaii pairs them with solar farms to provide baseload. The extreme low cost of all of these technologies is largely why nuclear power is dying out. It struggles to compete. The consistency just isnt that much of an advantage. Take away the insurance subsidy so that the taxpayer funded $800 billion cleanup costs for Fukushima are privatized and nuclear moves from struggles to compete to eye wateringly expensive. It can share some of the costs with nuclear arsenal maintenance though, so some governments will continue to push it on their populace.
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    I'd argue that, given the downside of not moving quickly, cost is a secondary consideration. If a basket of mixed sources, including nuclear, get us there sooner than renewables alone then cost should not be the main driver of the discussion.
    - pydry 5y ago
      A fine attitude to take. However, you should probably account for solar farms and battery installations taking 6 months to plan, execute and deploy. Offshore wind farms are a couple of years. Large pumped storage projects can take up to 4. Meanwhile Hinkley point C will be completed in 2026 after being kicked off all the way back in 2010 and will provide power that is "only" 3x the price. I'd argue that nuclear has really expensive and slick PR.
      - ineedasername 5y ago
        It seems like we need a bunch of crash projects working at once. Heck, the COVID pandemic showed we're still capable of such projects, given the will to do so. I know, entrenched interest & their lobbying of politicians gets in the way. Well, pay them off! A few quick searches show that the top oil companies had a combined profit of roughly $200 Billion last year. Move off fossil fuels but give them the $200B to stay out of the way! In exchange, they take that to invest in retooling & retraining their workforce for the new methods. Heck, their drilling knowledge base alone makes them great candidates to take the lead on that aspect of geothermal. I think I'm only half serious about this. Payoffs (well, "subsidies" in political language) might be an awful idea. It's a realpolitik viewpoint, maybe not a good one. But maybe it could get us around the roadblocks.
        pydry 5y ago
        I'd argue more or less the same. Level the playing field amongst green energy (i.e. eliminate free nuclear insurance) hand offer the same level of subsidy to all of them. It would either mean no new nuclear plants or somebody comes up with a genuinely cheap, safe version that theyd be willing to put their money behind. That isnt what the propaganda is demanding though. It wants the perpetuation of free insurance for nuclear and to be given massive subsidies on top of that that solar, wind and pumped storage will never be granted. to produce less electricity for more money. It wants the market contorted out of all recognition to allow this and the only reason I can think of why is because the military needs it.