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So nuclear energy is too dangerous but apparently this is okay? The biggest danger I see here is that we won't reduce emissions, we'll just carry on business a

So nuclear energy is too dangerous but apparently this is okay? The biggest danger I see here is that we won't reduce emissions, we'll just carry on business as usual and pump up aerosols to compensate. And then if one day we can't pump up enough aerosols and they begin to dissipate there will be intense warming. It's a band-aid. Nuclear power is the best solution we have for a sustainable and prosperous society.

cgeier 4y ago
We still will need to take care of CO2, as it -- among other things -- acidifies the oceans (which totally fucks up that eco system).
coffeeblack 4y ago
Or if one day we discover that those aerosols have side effects we didn’t think of. A better way would be to build a large mirror at a Lagrange point between earth and sun. With the huge reduction in launch cost by Starship this would become possible. And it’d be “easily” reversible. But nothing of this will get done, because there are way simpler solutions.
pfdietz 4y ago
This solution, for all its problems, has the advantage that it can be imposed on unwilling countries. Short of coercion tantamount to war, you can't make the unwilling stop burning fossil fuels and use non-fossil alternatives instead. Nuclear also isn't the best solution in any case, for multiple reasons that have been explained here over and over.
- extheat 4y ago
  There is no singular best answer. Nuclear fission for the foreseeable future will remain one of the solutions. There is the caveat that it’s not technically “sustainable” or “renewable”, but practically no source of energy is fully.
ChrisRR 4y ago
I'll never understand how 1. People think a non-renewable resource is somehow a permanent solution 2. There is only ever one solution and not a combination of multiple solutions all working towards a common goal
- hackerlight 4y ago
  > 1. People think a non-renewable resource is somehow a permanent solution They usually think solar and wind isn't good enough due to variability. Most haven't looked into it, and are adopting a plausible-sounding line they've heard someone else say. Probably someone who aligns with them politically, given how politically charged and partisan the topic is.
  - schnitzelstoat 4y ago
    It isn't good enough due to variability. We don't have efficient energy storage so that means you have to build massive overcapacity, like 5x as much. We should have some renewables but we can't base the entire energy supply on them.
    - fundatus 4y ago
      > It isn't good enough due to variability. We don't have efficient energy storage so that means you have to build massive overcapacity, like 5x as much. That's a problem already solved: Storage. Germany alone has 3.4 GWh of home-battery storage installed as of today. And it's constantly increasing. Averaged over a year, renewable energy sources operate at about 30% of their capacity. So even in a worst-case scenario with no storage whatsoever you would need to build 3x "overcapacity". > We should have some renewables but we can't base the entire energy supply on them. We surely can and will! Mark my words.
      - iggldiggl 4y ago
        > Averaged over a year, renewable energy sources operate at about 30% of their capacity. So even in a worst-case scenario with no storage whatsoever you would need to build 3x "overcapacity". I don't think that calculation is valid. Even assuming perfectly sunny days solar power e.g. runs at less than 100 % of its capacity simply due to the day-night-cycle. However that doesn't mean that overbuilding solar by just "1 divided by average capacity utilisation %" will be enough to get you round-the-clock-power – in fact no amount of overbuilding will get you any solar power at all at night. What you'd actually have to look at is define a desired reliability factor for your electric grid, calculate the minimum guaranteed power output for that reliability factor (so to remain with the solar power example – even during the daytime you need to calculate the likelihood and impact of cloudy weather, but in any case as soon you as you want more reliability than there are even theoretical sunshine hours in a day, guaranteed power output drops to zero – unless of course you finally attempt to include some storage) and then overbuild according to that calculation.
hackerlight 4y ago
> Nuclear power is the best solution we have for a sustainable and prosperous society. Nuclear or hydro or solar+wind. These are all good solutions. Nuclear is far more expensive, but it can provide 100% of needs by itself. Solar+wind is far cheaper, but the variability means that we can only get about 70-80% of the grid that way (no storage needed), with the remaining 20-30% made up by cheap storage or gas.
o_1 4y ago
Yeah building nuclear plants should be priority one. There is no replacement for the quality(variability) and quantity of power produced by them. It's obviously political, there's no money in building nuke plants for the current ruling class, only in "renewables".
- fundatus 4y ago
  Nuclear is an energy source of the past. It's too expensive and therefore rejected by the markets. Modern, emmission-free energy-sources like solar or wind (accompanied by storage in homes, districts and some larger-scale storage facilities) became so cheap in the past decade that you can now build more than 10 times the capacity in renewables for the price of a nuclear reactor. It's simple economics why nuclear is dying a slow death.
  - wolfram74 4y ago
    The price argument feels like a very lazy one to me since regulatory environment plays such a large role.
- daxelrod 4y ago
  Perhaps I misunderstood your point, but building nuclear plants can't be priority one because we don't have time to wait around for them to be built. We should be building them in parallel with more immediate initiatives that can buy us time.

cgeier 4y ago

We still will need to take care of CO2, as it -- among other things -- acidifies the oceans (which totally fucks up that eco system).

coffeeblack 4y ago

Or if one day we discover that those aerosols have side effects we didn’t think of. A better way would be to build a large mirror at a Lagrange point between earth and sun. With the huge reduction in launch cost by Starship this would become possible. And it’d be “easily” reversible. But nothing of this will get done, because there are way simpler solutions.

pfdietz 4y ago

This solution, for all its problems, has the advantage that it can be imposed on unwilling countries. Short of coercion tantamount to war, you can't make the unwilling stop burning fossil fuels and use non-fossil alternatives instead. Nuclear also isn't the best solution in any case, for multiple reasons that have been explained here over and over.

extheat 4y ago
There is no singular best answer. Nuclear fission for the foreseeable future will remain one of the solutions. There is the caveat that it’s not technically “sustainable” or “renewable”, but practically no source of energy is fully.

ChrisRR 4y ago

I'll never understand how 1. People think a non-renewable resource is somehow a permanent solution 2. There is only ever one solution and not a combination of multiple solutions all working towards a common goal

hackerlight 4y ago
> 1. People think a non-renewable resource is somehow a permanent solution They usually think solar and wind isn't good enough due to variability. Most haven't looked into it, and are adopting a plausible-sounding line they've heard someone else say. Probably someone who aligns with them politically, given how politically charged and partisan the topic is.
- schnitzelstoat 4y ago
  It isn't good enough due to variability. We don't have efficient energy storage so that means you have to build massive overcapacity, like 5x as much. We should have some renewables but we can't base the entire energy supply on them.
  - fundatus 4y ago
    > It isn't good enough due to variability. We don't have efficient energy storage so that means you have to build massive overcapacity, like 5x as much. That's a problem already solved: Storage. Germany alone has 3.4 GWh of home-battery storage installed as of today. And it's constantly increasing. Averaged over a year, renewable energy sources operate at about 30% of their capacity. So even in a worst-case scenario with no storage whatsoever you would need to build 3x "overcapacity". > We should have some renewables but we can't base the entire energy supply on them. We surely can and will! Mark my words.
    - iggldiggl 4y ago
      > Averaged over a year, renewable energy sources operate at about 30% of their capacity. So even in a worst-case scenario with no storage whatsoever you would need to build 3x "overcapacity". I don't think that calculation is valid. Even assuming perfectly sunny days solar power e.g. runs at less than 100 % of its capacity simply due to the day-night-cycle. However that doesn't mean that overbuilding solar by just "1 divided by average capacity utilisation %" will be enough to get you round-the-clock-power – in fact no amount of overbuilding will get you any solar power at all at night. What you'd actually have to look at is define a desired reliability factor for your electric grid, calculate the minimum guaranteed power output for that reliability factor (so to remain with the solar power example – even during the daytime you need to calculate the likelihood and impact of cloudy weather, but in any case as soon you as you want more reliability than there are even theoretical sunshine hours in a day, guaranteed power output drops to zero – unless of course you finally attempt to include some storage) and then overbuild according to that calculation.

hackerlight 4y ago

> Nuclear power is the best solution we have for a sustainable and prosperous society. Nuclear or hydro or solar+wind. These are all good solutions. Nuclear is far more expensive, but it can provide 100% of needs by itself. Solar+wind is far cheaper, but the variability means that we can only get about 70-80% of the grid that way (no storage needed), with the remaining 20-30% made up by cheap storage or gas.

o_1 4y ago

Yeah building nuclear plants should be priority one. There is no replacement for the quality(variability) and quantity of power produced by them. It's obviously political, there's no money in building nuke plants for the current ruling class, only in "renewables".

fundatus 4y ago
Nuclear is an energy source of the past. It's too expensive and therefore rejected by the markets. Modern, emmission-free energy-sources like solar or wind (accompanied by storage in homes, districts and some larger-scale storage facilities) became so cheap in the past decade that you can now build more than 10 times the capacity in renewables for the price of a nuclear reactor. It's simple economics why nuclear is dying a slow death.
- wolfram74 4y ago
  The price argument feels like a very lazy one to me since regulatory environment plays such a large role.
daxelrod 4y ago
Perhaps I misunderstood your point, but building nuclear plants can't be priority one because we don't have time to wait around for them to be built. We should be building them in parallel with more immediate initiatives that can buy us time.