5 ms·

It amazes me that climate activists never seem to push for nuclear, the most obvious solution.

by collyw 4y ago

lettergram 4y ago
It’s the tell. Lots of reports pointing out Russia funds environmental groups. China does the same - but more openly - advertising cheap solar and wind (neither function as well as nuclear). https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/596304-investigate-russias-covert-funding-of-us-anti-fossil-fuel-groups/ https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/596304-invest...
- mountainb 4y ago
  The Gulf countries do, too, such as when the UAE paid Matt Damon for an anti-fracking film https://www.cnbc.com/amp/id/49218229 https://www.cnbc.com/amp/id/49218229 I don’t blame them for playing the game well.
  - erlich 4y ago
    I don't think people realize that when you have a huge commodity income stream under threat of ceasing to exist, it's quite realistic to spend a huge percentage of this on lobbying to stretch it as far as it will go.
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      Such as by constantly filling the internet with lies about how the technologies that are eating 1% of your market share per year, and growing by 20-40% per year can't possibly solve the problem and we must divert all funding from it to a technology that costs 3x as much, has consistently gotten more expensive with time, and can't scale?
  - fakedang 4y ago
    Tbf, fracking does have proven issues with geological stability and soil contamination. But it would be very hypocritical of the UAE to go on an anti-nuclear tirade, since they themselves use nuclear energy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barakah_nuclear_power_plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barakah_nuclear_power_plant
- matthewdgreen 4y ago
  Right now wind and solar have dropped so much in price that they represent a serious threat to fossil fuels on a short time frame. Have all storage problems been worked out? No. But even moving 50% of our current fossil sources to renewables would have a huge impact on the profits of those industries and it’s now completely feasible in the short term and very cheap. If I was in the fossil fuel extraction industry I’d be throwing every astroturfing dollar into FUD calling for those plans to be abandoned because “only nuclear works.” PS I’m 100% supportive of a mix that includes cheap renewables and more costly nuclear baseload. It’s when you see comments promoting nuclear and renewables as somehow in opposition, that’s the tell.
  - lettergram 4y ago
    > Right now wind and solar have dropped so much in price that they represent a serious threat to fossil fuels on a short time frame. I recommend sitting down and calculating the input cost for solar / wind. It's being subsidized substantially. There aren't even enough materials currently mined to support the US switching to mostly (>50%) solar / wind. Silver/gold/copper/nickle prices would go up an order of magnitude, for instance. I'm for cheap energy - period. It's directly correlated with improvements in life. If solar / wind get us there, great. If nuclear improves it, let's do it. Right now natural gas is also very cheap, should be drilling as much as we can. The more we maximize growth and cheap energy now, the quicker we advance technology, innovation and automation.
    - matthewdgreen 4y ago
      Have you calculated the costs of nuclear without government subsidies? As best I understand, it’s completely unsupportable.
      - lettergram 4y ago
        It varies wildly by government and if you built at scale costs would drop dramatically as they did in the French and Russian build outs.
- EdwardCoffin 4y ago
  That article is an opinion piece written by a resident of the Institute for Policy Innovation, a far right think tank with ties to the Koch Brothers.
  - collyw 4y ago
    Oh no, "not far right"! Make sure you don't listen to that opinion!
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Tell me how nuclear can be more than 2% of the solution? Where does the Uranium come from?
brettermeier 4y ago
Why is it obvious to pollute the earth with ultra-deadly waste for the next couple million years?
- Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
  What people often don't understand about radioactivity, is that if you have short halflife, like weeks, the radiation is dangerous but doesn't last long. And if you have huge half life, like a million years, then radiation is basically non-existent and not dangerous at all. This lack of understanding is why people spread FUD about radioactive waste that will poison the planet for million years.
- Jyaif 4y ago
  It's dangerous for around 10 thousand years, not millions of years. And we know of places that are stable on a geological time scale (which is in fact million of years).
- kmeisthax 4y ago
  You mean like all the radioactive coal smog? No, seriously, coal burning released more radiation into the environment than actual nuclear waste. Long-term storage is a problem but it's still a better problem to have to solve than fossil fuel pollution.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    Well we could just do neither.
samatman 4y ago
They are, as a sibling comment demonstrates, deluded, after decades of being maliciously lied to by 'environmental' movements with ties to the fossil industry. Anyone against nuclear is a shill for petrochemical power, there are no exceptions. There are the deluded and the liars, that's it.
- myrmidon 4y ago
  Completely disagree. And I used to be strong nuclear proponent until 2015 or so. Nuclear power is no longer a viable pathway for a government to throw tax dollars at, and there are multiple reasons: 1) Nuclear power is not cost effective: Even right now, nuclear power is more expensive (LCOE) than solar or wind. 2) Nuclear power costs explode if the capacity factor of your plants decreases: Meaning that they are basically ONLY viable for baseload power (running at full tilt all the time), which makes them very unflexible and a really bad match with other renewables (=> which, again, are cheaper per MWh than the fission reactors). 3) Nuclear power failed to deliver on safety promises, mainly with the Fukushima incident: If a modern, technologically competent nation like Japan can not be expected to keep their reactors running incident-free, then how are you going to convince e.g. Italians, Indians or other nationalities with significant (perceived?) government corruption/incompetence that their government can be trusted with regulating nuclear tech?! 4) Building plants is slow, extremely expensive and a huge commitment: Considering how rapidly PV/wind/batteries decrease in cost currently, committing on nuclear power right now would be economically irresponsible, and also has huge latency on acutally delivering power, unlike PV or wind, which you can basically buy off the shelve, install and hook up within the year.
  - w1nst0nsm1th 4y ago
    Not to mention nuclear waste, which is still an unresolved issue at current level of nuclear energy production.
    - diordiderot 4y ago
      This is just false. Annual nuclear wast in the US in volume is "roughly equivalent to less than half the volume of an Olympic-sized swimming pool." With more modern plants you could recycle that material and cut it down to a fifth the size. Its a political problem, forced by dishonest actors
erlich 4y ago
I always thought this too. Just googled "how many nuclear reactors for all worlds energy needs". First result: "Why nuclear power will never supply the world's energy needs" [1]. Global energy needs at 15TW. Would need 15K nuclear plants total. Currently we have 440 @ 375GW total. It's an interesting read. But I agree that it is completely absurd that climate activists make such dire predictions of apocalyptic scenarios, and then won't consider a completely obvious stop-gap that would buy 100 years to get our act together. [1]: https://phys.org/news/2011-05-nuclear-power-world-energy.html#:~:text=Currently%2C%20the%20global%20nuclear%20power,need%20about%2015%2C000%20nuclear%20reactors https://phys.org/news/2011-05-nuclear-power-world-energy.htm....
- realusername 4y ago
  That calculation is like taking the consumption of a car from the 60s and multiplying by the known petrol capacity at the time, it just makes absolutely no sense to predict future capacity. It does not account in technology changes and discovery of more fuel sources. The reason it's not done yet is because the problem isn't the lack of fuel but the lack of plants.
vixen99 4y ago
It also amazes me that the government activists, those folk attending COP conferences, never suggest holding a video conference for COP as an example to us all. Instead an estimated 400 private jets have arrived in Egypt (where domestic climate protesters are locked up) along with 33,000 delegates though the largest emitters, India and China are not represented. Do all these people really believe that there's a climate emergency in terms of CO2 emissions? Their actions seem to belie it. Moreover not much results from these jamborees. Apparently, a private jet can emit two tonnes of carbon dioxide in an hour and is five to 14 times more polluting per passenger than a commercial plane.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
Obvious things are often wrong. It is not just uneconomical, but also physically impossible to replace fossil fuels with nuclear using known mineable uranium reserves.
imtringued 4y ago
The nuclear power I push for is still in development. It amazes me that you push for bad and unsafe designs combined with bad economics and management practices.

It amazes me that climate activists never seem to push for nuclear, the most obvious solution.

by collyw 4y ago

It amazes me that climate activists never seem to push for nuclear, the most obvious solution.

It’s the tell. Lots of reports pointing out Russia funds environmental groups. China does the same - but more openly - advertising cheap solar and wind (neither function as well as nuclear). https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/596304-investigate-russias-covert-funding-of-us-anti-fossil-fuel-groups/ https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/596304-invest...

mountainb 4y ago
The Gulf countries do, too, such as when the UAE paid Matt Damon for an anti-fracking film https://www.cnbc.com/amp/id/49218229 https://www.cnbc.com/amp/id/49218229 I don’t blame them for playing the game well.
- erlich 4y ago
  I don't think people realize that when you have a huge commodity income stream under threat of ceasing to exist, it's quite realistic to spend a huge percentage of this on lobbying to stretch it as far as it will go.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    Such as by constantly filling the internet with lies about how the technologies that are eating 1% of your market share per year, and growing by 20-40% per year can't possibly solve the problem and we must divert all funding from it to a technology that costs 3x as much, has consistently gotten more expensive with time, and can't scale?
- fakedang 4y ago
  Tbf, fracking does have proven issues with geological stability and soil contamination. But it would be very hypocritical of the UAE to go on an anti-nuclear tirade, since they themselves use nuclear energy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barakah_nuclear_power_plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barakah_nuclear_power_plant
matthewdgreen 4y ago
Right now wind and solar have dropped so much in price that they represent a serious threat to fossil fuels on a short time frame. Have all storage problems been worked out? No. But even moving 50% of our current fossil sources to renewables would have a huge impact on the profits of those industries and it’s now completely feasible in the short term and very cheap. If I was in the fossil fuel extraction industry I’d be throwing every astroturfing dollar into FUD calling for those plans to be abandoned because “only nuclear works.” PS I’m 100% supportive of a mix that includes cheap renewables and more costly nuclear baseload. It’s when you see comments promoting nuclear and renewables as somehow in opposition, that’s the tell.
- lettergram 4y ago
  > Right now wind and solar have dropped so much in price that they represent a serious threat to fossil fuels on a short time frame. I recommend sitting down and calculating the input cost for solar / wind. It's being subsidized substantially. There aren't even enough materials currently mined to support the US switching to mostly (>50%) solar / wind. Silver/gold/copper/nickle prices would go up an order of magnitude, for instance. I'm for cheap energy - period. It's directly correlated with improvements in life. If solar / wind get us there, great. If nuclear improves it, let's do it. Right now natural gas is also very cheap, should be drilling as much as we can. The more we maximize growth and cheap energy now, the quicker we advance technology, innovation and automation.
  - matthewdgreen 4y ago
    Have you calculated the costs of nuclear without government subsidies? As best I understand, it’s completely unsupportable.
    - lettergram 4y ago
      It varies wildly by government and if you built at scale costs would drop dramatically as they did in the French and Russian build outs.
EdwardCoffin 4y ago
That article is an opinion piece written by a resident of the Institute for Policy Innovation, a far right think tank with ties to the Koch Brothers.
- collyw 4y ago
  Oh no, "not far right"! Make sure you don't listen to that opinion!
Schroedingersat 4y ago
Tell me how nuclear can be more than 2% of the solution? Where does the Uranium come from?

brettermeier 4y ago

Why is it obvious to pollute the earth with ultra-deadly waste for the next couple million years?

Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
What people often don't understand about radioactivity, is that if you have short halflife, like weeks, the radiation is dangerous but doesn't last long. And if you have huge half life, like a million years, then radiation is basically non-existent and not dangerous at all. This lack of understanding is why people spread FUD about radioactive waste that will poison the planet for million years.
Jyaif 4y ago
It's dangerous for around 10 thousand years, not millions of years. And we know of places that are stable on a geological time scale (which is in fact million of years).
kmeisthax 4y ago
You mean like all the radioactive coal smog? No, seriously, coal burning released more radiation into the environment than actual nuclear waste. Long-term storage is a problem but it's still a better problem to have to solve than fossil fuel pollution.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Well we could just do neither.

samatman 4y ago

They are, as a sibling comment demonstrates, deluded, after decades of being maliciously lied to by 'environmental' movements with ties to the fossil industry. Anyone against nuclear is a shill for petrochemical power, there are no exceptions. There are the deluded and the liars, that's it.

myrmidon 4y ago
Completely disagree. And I used to be strong nuclear proponent until 2015 or so. Nuclear power is no longer a viable pathway for a government to throw tax dollars at, and there are multiple reasons: 1) Nuclear power is not cost effective: Even right now, nuclear power is more expensive (LCOE) than solar or wind. 2) Nuclear power costs explode if the capacity factor of your plants decreases: Meaning that they are basically ONLY viable for baseload power (running at full tilt all the time), which makes them very unflexible and a really bad match with other renewables (=> which, again, are cheaper per MWh than the fission reactors). 3) Nuclear power failed to deliver on safety promises, mainly with the Fukushima incident: If a modern, technologically competent nation like Japan can not be expected to keep their reactors running incident-free, then how are you going to convince e.g. Italians, Indians or other nationalities with significant (perceived?) government corruption/incompetence that their government can be trusted with regulating nuclear tech?! 4) Building plants is slow, extremely expensive and a huge commitment: Considering how rapidly PV/wind/batteries decrease in cost currently, committing on nuclear power right now would be economically irresponsible, and also has huge latency on acutally delivering power, unlike PV or wind, which you can basically buy off the shelve, install and hook up within the year.
- w1nst0nsm1th 4y ago
  Not to mention nuclear waste, which is still an unresolved issue at current level of nuclear energy production.
  - diordiderot 4y ago
    This is just false. Annual nuclear wast in the US in volume is "roughly equivalent to less than half the volume of an Olympic-sized swimming pool." With more modern plants you could recycle that material and cut it down to a fifth the size. Its a political problem, forced by dishonest actors

erlich 4y ago

I always thought this too. Just googled "how many nuclear reactors for all worlds energy needs". First result: "Why nuclear power will never supply the world's energy needs" [1]. Global energy needs at 15TW. Would need 15K nuclear plants total. Currently we have 440 @ 375GW total. It's an interesting read. But I agree that it is completely absurd that climate activists make such dire predictions of apocalyptic scenarios, and then won't consider a completely obvious stop-gap that would buy 100 years to get our act together. [1]: https://phys.org/news/2011-05-nuclear-power-world-energy.html#:~:text=Currently%2C%20the%20global%20nuclear%20power,need%20about%2015%2C000%20nuclear%20reactors https://phys.org/news/2011-05-nuclear-power-world-energy.htm....

realusername 4y ago
That calculation is like taking the consumption of a car from the 60s and multiplying by the known petrol capacity at the time, it just makes absolutely no sense to predict future capacity. It does not account in technology changes and discovery of more fuel sources. The reason it's not done yet is because the problem isn't the lack of fuel but the lack of plants.

vixen99 4y ago

It also amazes me that the government activists, those folk attending COP conferences, never suggest holding a video conference for COP as an example to us all. Instead an estimated 400 private jets have arrived in Egypt (where domestic climate protesters are locked up) along with 33,000 delegates though the largest emitters, India and China are not represented. Do all these people really believe that there's a climate emergency in terms of CO2 emissions? Their actions seem to belie it. Moreover not much results from these jamborees. Apparently, a private jet can emit two tonnes of carbon dioxide in an hour and is five to 14 times more polluting per passenger than a commercial plane.

Schroedingersat 4y ago

Obvious things are often wrong. It is not just uneconomical, but also physically impossible to replace fossil fuels with nuclear using known mineable uranium reserves.

imtringued 4y ago

The nuclear power I push for is still in development. It amazes me that you push for bad and unsafe designs combined with bad economics and management practices.