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And how is it better when those assholes kill tens of thousands with coal every year instead? If we lynched a few of them every time a nuclear reactor blew up

And how is it better when those assholes kill tens of thousands with coal every year instead? If we lynched a few of them every time a nuclear reactor blew up we'd have a lot fewer energy related deaths and the market would eventually self correct.

ncmncm 4y ago
Coal is on its way out. It is now cheaper to build a new solar farm to replace a coal plant than just to operate the already built coal plant. It is as cheap to build renewables as to operate an already built and paid for nuke. Renewables cost is still in free fall. In ten years, renewables will be so cheap that overbuilding 10x, 20x, will be cheaper than operating a nuke.
- thrown_22 4y ago
  Ok, we replaced a coal plant with solar panels. What do we do at night? Build storage for the solar plant? That's more expensive than a nuclear plant of the same capacity. Build long range high voltage power lines? Again, more expensive than building a nuclear power plant of the same capacity. People have been spoiled by the incredible energy ROI, portability and responsiveness of fossil fuels and think everything has the same capacity. It doesn't.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Storage is cheap and getting cheaper even faster than solar or wind. By the time we need storage (after enough renewable generation is built to charge it from) storage will be very cheap. It will not be made of lithium batteries.
    - thrown_22 4y ago
      By the time storage is ready we won't need electricity because climate change will have made industrial civilization impossible.
      - ncmncm 4y ago
        This is the "civilization will collapse before we can get around to reducing our CO2 output enough" argument. Wasting time and money building reactors instead of spending that on renewables brings collapse nearer. If we can't beat the deadline with renewables, we can't beat it at all. Beating the deadline might not be possible, but we will not know until we do, or collapse. Choosing collapse is always wrong. Storage is easy. It is just now an overwhelmingly better use of capital to build generating capacity, to displace carbon combustion, than to build storage. It is only after you have more than enough to displace almost all your carbon combustion that storage is a very useful at all.
        thrown_22 4y ago
        >If we can't beat the deadline with renewables, we can't beat it at all. Reactors have been ready for 80 years. We keep putting them off because nuclear is scary and vaporware tech will save us. Here we are, yet again, 10 years away from the green nirvana that was promised every 10 years since the 80s. Meanwhile Germany is building coal plants again and Britain has melted. I am not committing suicide because of your fetish for solar panels and wind turbines. >It is only after you have more than enough to displace almost all your carbon combustion that storage is a very useful at all. I guess we can just turn society off at night.
        ncmncm 4y ago
        To dwell on might-have-beens is to choose collapse. Fact is, to have built your nukes would have given us rashes of Chernobyls and Fukushimas, every year or two instead of every decade or two. Germany is not, in fact, building coal plants. Germany is building wind and solar farms. Until you have enough renewables to charge your storage, you burn NG at night. It would be stupid to burn NG to charge up storage, as stupid as to burn NG when you have storage charged and ready.
        thrown_22 4y ago
        >To dwell on might-have-beens is to choose collapse. Sounds good. Let's build nuclear reactors until we replace all energy generation with them. Dwelling on might-have-beens is to choose collapse after all.
    - dmitriid 4y ago
      > By the time we need storage We already need it. During summer we have an overabundance of energy. It would be so nice to have it stored and used in winter, wouldn't it? Oh wait. "Cheap storage" in no way, shape or form translate into efficient storage. You might have to cover half of Europe in batteries to store just a few weeks worth of energy.
      - pfdietz 4y ago
        Using batteries to store weeks worth of energy would be foolish. Batteries are too expensive per unit of energy storage capacity. They're suited for diurnal storage. Long term storage doesn't need to be efficient, because the number of charge/discharge cycles is small and the "cost of inefficiency" is proportional to the number of such cycles.
downrightmike 4y ago
Assholes are just that. But the issue is that if nuclear fucks up, that land is useless, and since those assholes run it, it has a high likely hood of happening. Half life of plutonium is 24k years, so it is much worse than coal, because it will kill for generations and last far longer. IE _everything_ in that area DIES for hundreds of thousands of years.

ncmncm 4y ago

Coal is on its way out. It is now cheaper to build a new solar farm to replace a coal plant than just to operate the already built coal plant. It is as cheap to build renewables as to operate an already built and paid for nuke. Renewables cost is still in free fall. In ten years, renewables will be so cheap that overbuilding 10x, 20x, will be cheaper than operating a nuke.

thrown_22 4y ago
Ok, we replaced a coal plant with solar panels. What do we do at night? Build storage for the solar plant? That's more expensive than a nuclear plant of the same capacity. Build long range high voltage power lines? Again, more expensive than building a nuclear power plant of the same capacity. People have been spoiled by the incredible energy ROI, portability and responsiveness of fossil fuels and think everything has the same capacity. It doesn't.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Storage is cheap and getting cheaper even faster than solar or wind. By the time we need storage (after enough renewable generation is built to charge it from) storage will be very cheap. It will not be made of lithium batteries.
  - thrown_22 4y ago
    By the time storage is ready we won't need electricity because climate change will have made industrial civilization impossible.
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      This is the "civilization will collapse before we can get around to reducing our CO2 output enough" argument. Wasting time and money building reactors instead of spending that on renewables brings collapse nearer. If we can't beat the deadline with renewables, we can't beat it at all. Beating the deadline might not be possible, but we will not know until we do, or collapse. Choosing collapse is always wrong. Storage is easy. It is just now an overwhelmingly better use of capital to build generating capacity, to displace carbon combustion, than to build storage. It is only after you have more than enough to displace almost all your carbon combustion that storage is a very useful at all.
      - thrown_22 4y ago
        >If we can't beat the deadline with renewables, we can't beat it at all. Reactors have been ready for 80 years. We keep putting them off because nuclear is scary and vaporware tech will save us. Here we are, yet again, 10 years away from the green nirvana that was promised every 10 years since the 80s. Meanwhile Germany is building coal plants again and Britain has melted. I am not committing suicide because of your fetish for solar panels and wind turbines. >It is only after you have more than enough to displace almost all your carbon combustion that storage is a very useful at all. I guess we can just turn society off at night.
        ncmncm 4y ago
        To dwell on might-have-beens is to choose collapse. Fact is, to have built your nukes would have given us rashes of Chernobyls and Fukushimas, every year or two instead of every decade or two. Germany is not, in fact, building coal plants. Germany is building wind and solar farms. Until you have enough renewables to charge your storage, you burn NG at night. It would be stupid to burn NG to charge up storage, as stupid as to burn NG when you have storage charged and ready.
        thrown_22 4y ago
        >To dwell on might-have-beens is to choose collapse. Sounds good. Let's build nuclear reactors until we replace all energy generation with them. Dwelling on might-have-beens is to choose collapse after all.
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    > By the time we need storage We already need it. During summer we have an overabundance of energy. It would be so nice to have it stored and used in winter, wouldn't it? Oh wait. "Cheap storage" in no way, shape or form translate into efficient storage. You might have to cover half of Europe in batteries to store just a few weeks worth of energy.
    - pfdietz 4y ago
      Using batteries to store weeks worth of energy would be foolish. Batteries are too expensive per unit of energy storage capacity. They're suited for diurnal storage. Long term storage doesn't need to be efficient, because the number of charge/discharge cycles is small and the "cost of inefficiency" is proportional to the number of such cycles.

downrightmike 4y ago

Assholes are just that. But the issue is that if nuclear fucks up, that land is useless, and since those assholes run it, it has a high likely hood of happening. Half life of plutonium is 24k years, so it is much worse than coal, because it will kill for generations and last far longer. IE _everything_ in that area DIES for hundreds of thousands of years.