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Yes, the low hanging fruit is likely mostly gone. The main reason nuclear is "expensive" is regulation and environmental lawsuits, the same reason we can't buil

Yes, the low hanging fruit is likely mostly gone. The main reason nuclear is "expensive" is regulation and environmental lawsuits, the same reason we can't build a bridge or a skyscraper or anything any more in this country. As soon as renewables become an attractive target for these fraudulent lawsuits, they'll hit the same crazy cost increases.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
Hahah. Yeah maybe in the future there will be a spate of law suits about wind turbine sickness. Or someone will get hold of an exceptionally damaged wind turbine blade with no leading edge protection and the media will run a scare campaign about bpa. Or counties that have state laws that say they can't refuse fracking and the tap water is flammable will ban solar on the basis of non-existent cadmium somehow escaping from a sandwich of glass and poisoning the water. The renewable industry is definitely getting a free ride. Maybe it'll change after a solar panel falls off of a roof and renders an entire city uninhabitable, or when a ship stopping a military from destroying an atoll with worn out wind turbine blades for fun is blown up by state sponsored terrorists.
- defrost 4y ago
  I'm all in for renewables, our state and the state next door (W.Aus amd S.Aus) have already had week long runs of being in excess of 100% renewable (exporting the execess via grid) .. But .. > The renewable industry is definitely getting a free ride. is true. Maybe people will start to care about the by products of solar panel and battery construction (acres upon acres of toxic slag heap) or the new mines that will have to opened on indigenous and treaty lands to satisfy copper and other demands. Sure, realistically, probably not .. but renewables aren't all sunshine and kittens.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    > Maybe people will start to care about the by products of solar panel and battery construction (acres upon acres of toxic slag heap) or the new mines that will have to opened on indigenous and treaty lands to satisfy copper and other demands. Yeah, it's not as if these are bought up constantly and exaggerated in every single discussion on the subject, and every single report on the subject lies about it by using 10 year old data to make it seem worse than it is and to minimise the efforts being taken to reduce those impacts. And it's not as if those issues are being completely minimized or ignored for other generation technologies. And there is definitely no PV recycling legislation like the WEEE, or legislation enacting traceability and lifecycle impact labelling requirements. Things can definitely get better (and they should), but pretending that everything a concern troll or media scare campaign or fossil fuel lobbyist can possibly draw the faintest shred of a connection to reality with hasn't already been weaponised is ridiculous.
    - defrost 4y ago
      I note with interest (having personally spent several million line kilometres in the air doing low level continent wide geophysical sensing exploration work (and written a few million SLOC of related code)) that the option rarely talked about or seriously raised is consume less.
      - Schroedingersat 4y ago
        Yes. This is absolutely the main answer. But if you raise it to the people attacking renewables or prattling about a nuclear revival, they start screeching about malthusianism. Additionally, putting your life in the hands of a new energy oligopoly consisting of Urenco, Rosatom and Cameco isn't a great strategy for getting out from the thumb of an energy oligopoly with a history of causing suffering to increase consumption of their product.
        amalgamated_inc 4y ago
        The reason I don't like "consume less" is that it only works for people who already live in excess, i.e. rich westerners. Telling the several billion people who don't to "consume less" just seems really shitty. I think there's a level of consumption (be it energy or otherwise) where you're just being a mindless consumer and playing status games, and I personally am not interested in that. That's why I find it practical and ethical to limit my own consumption not in extreme ways, but also not to squander. But telling that to somebody who barely has access to electricity or can't afford a car to improve his economic opportunity to provide for his family...
        Schroedingersat 4y ago
        There it is. The world can get by and everyone can fluorish on about the current level of energy or maybe a little more if 1-10% of the population stops using 10-100x their share.
        amalgamated_inc 4y ago
  - amalgamated_inc 4y ago
    The problem is that if renewables can't always provide 100%, then we need to keep the same capacity around in either base load (nuclear) or something that can spin up quickly (natgas). So the marginal price of energy is still that of natgas. Plus, if we all have excess energy, it's actually extremely costly to get it out or you'll blow your grid up. So while "in excess of 100%" sounds cool, it's actually very dangerous.
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      Have you got a bingo card with obsolete reactionary arguments you're trying to fill out? In addition to all the storage options (which are also better than curtailment for inflexible high capital generation such as nuclear), you put the electrolyser for the steel and fertilizer and ships and big trucks between the generator and the grid connection. This solves both problems and the ammonia or hydrogen can burn in an emergency.
- amalgamated_inc 4y ago
  There is already a lot of complaining about wind turbine sickness, from the noise and the shadows and the glare and some people don't like that it kills birds.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    ..that's the joke.

Schroedingersat 4y ago

Hahah. Yeah maybe in the future there will be a spate of law suits about wind turbine sickness. Or someone will get hold of an exceptionally damaged wind turbine blade with no leading edge protection and the media will run a scare campaign about bpa. Or counties that have state laws that say they can't refuse fracking and the tap water is flammable will ban solar on the basis of non-existent cadmium somehow escaping from a sandwich of glass and poisoning the water. The renewable industry is definitely getting a free ride. Maybe it'll change after a solar panel falls off of a roof and renders an entire city uninhabitable, or when a ship stopping a military from destroying an atoll with worn out wind turbine blades for fun is blown up by state sponsored terrorists.

defrost 4y ago
I'm all in for renewables, our state and the state next door (W.Aus amd S.Aus) have already had week long runs of being in excess of 100% renewable (exporting the execess via grid) .. But .. > The renewable industry is definitely getting a free ride. is true. Maybe people will start to care about the by products of solar panel and battery construction (acres upon acres of toxic slag heap) or the new mines that will have to opened on indigenous and treaty lands to satisfy copper and other demands. Sure, realistically, probably not .. but renewables aren't all sunshine and kittens.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  > Maybe people will start to care about the by products of solar panel and battery construction (acres upon acres of toxic slag heap) or the new mines that will have to opened on indigenous and treaty lands to satisfy copper and other demands. Yeah, it's not as if these are bought up constantly and exaggerated in every single discussion on the subject, and every single report on the subject lies about it by using 10 year old data to make it seem worse than it is and to minimise the efforts being taken to reduce those impacts. And it's not as if those issues are being completely minimized or ignored for other generation technologies. And there is definitely no PV recycling legislation like the WEEE, or legislation enacting traceability and lifecycle impact labelling requirements. Things can definitely get better (and they should), but pretending that everything a concern troll or media scare campaign or fossil fuel lobbyist can possibly draw the faintest shred of a connection to reality with hasn't already been weaponised is ridiculous.
  - defrost 4y ago
    I note with interest (having personally spent several million line kilometres in the air doing low level continent wide geophysical sensing exploration work (and written a few million SLOC of related code)) that the option rarely talked about or seriously raised is consume less.
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      Yes. This is absolutely the main answer. But if you raise it to the people attacking renewables or prattling about a nuclear revival, they start screeching about malthusianism. Additionally, putting your life in the hands of a new energy oligopoly consisting of Urenco, Rosatom and Cameco isn't a great strategy for getting out from the thumb of an energy oligopoly with a history of causing suffering to increase consumption of their product.
      - amalgamated_inc 4y ago
        The reason I don't like "consume less" is that it only works for people who already live in excess, i.e. rich westerners. Telling the several billion people who don't to "consume less" just seems really shitty. I think there's a level of consumption (be it energy or otherwise) where you're just being a mindless consumer and playing status games, and I personally am not interested in that. That's why I find it practical and ethical to limit my own consumption not in extreme ways, but also not to squander. But telling that to somebody who barely has access to electricity or can't afford a car to improve his economic opportunity to provide for his family...
        Schroedingersat 4y ago
        There it is. The world can get by and everyone can fluorish on about the current level of energy or maybe a little more if 1-10% of the population stops using 10-100x their share.
        amalgamated_inc 4y ago
- amalgamated_inc 4y ago
  The problem is that if renewables can't always provide 100%, then we need to keep the same capacity around in either base load (nuclear) or something that can spin up quickly (natgas). So the marginal price of energy is still that of natgas. Plus, if we all have excess energy, it's actually extremely costly to get it out or you'll blow your grid up. So while "in excess of 100%" sounds cool, it's actually very dangerous.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    Have you got a bingo card with obsolete reactionary arguments you're trying to fill out? In addition to all the storage options (which are also better than curtailment for inflexible high capital generation such as nuclear), you put the electrolyser for the steel and fertilizer and ships and big trucks between the generator and the grid connection. This solves both problems and the ammonia or hydrogen can burn in an emergency.
amalgamated_inc 4y ago
There is already a lot of complaining about wind turbine sickness, from the noise and the shadows and the glare and some people don't like that it kills birds.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  ..that's the joke.