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Can't help but observe on how incapable are human societies to make long term critical rational decisions. It never really made sense to say "we are going to p
by 627467 4y ago
Can't help but observe on how incapable are human societies to make long term critical rational decisions.
It never really made sense to say "we are going to phase out nuclear entirely" instead of "we'll focus on how to build safer, cheaper and more efficient nuclear".
The decision to go off nuclear was capricious and it seems that the speed with which sentiment is changing only proves this.
- LatteLazy 4y agoNuclear requires exactly the sort of long term rational decision making you decry the lack of. That's the nice thing about other energy sources, they don't require 1000 years of self discipline and self denial...
- galacticaactual 4y agoReally? Because self denial and lack of self discipline is how western society got to a point where the majority of its raw material supply chain and processing capability for green energy hardware (like solar panels) is dependent on an autocratic and genocidal communist country.
- mccorrinall 4y agoExactly. Why did holes into the earth to store toxic waste when you have literally infinite energy right above your head (sun and wind)?
- theshrike79 4y agoInfinite AND intermittent. Renewables don't work for base load yet.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- adrianN 4y agoThere is currently almost no financial incentive to build storage, because we haven't built enough generation capacity yet. Germany for example gets 40-50% of its electricity from renewables on average and only 1-2% are lost because we don't know what to do with it during times of overproduction. So any storage system would mostly be filled with fossil power right now.
- panick21_ 4y agoYou don't actually need a whole in the earth. With actual modern technology you only need to store it for 300 years and you can store it on a single football field in a desert or field without issue. But we can't have nice apparently. We rather waste billions on some dumb geological storage rather then just use basic logic. Misinformation and politics are the only reason for these deep geological repositories.
- panick21_ 4y agoBy literally any rational calculation, starting in 1970s any strategy other then 100% nuclear is insane. Nuclear wins in every first principle analysis, it requires the least amount of mining, the least amount of land, and produces the least amount of damage to the atmosphere and to local air quality. That it did not happen is a failure in planning. Eisenhower over-promised when he said energy to cheap to meter, but the technology certainty has and had amazing potential. In the 1960s they developed so many amazing reactors in such a short time, and then starting in the 1970 basically all progress stopped. The NASA Kilopower was the first new reactor in the US for like 40+ years. Nuclear unfortunately was invented in WW2 and has been dominate by the military both in terms of access and in terms of usage. The only reason we have PWRs for civilian production is because PWR make sense for submarines and was commercialized based on that investment.