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The greenwashing behind "renewable" energy seems to be working! Meanwhile, thorium gets zero attention. We people are always pulled by the nose by those with co

The greenwashing behind "renewable" energy seems to be working! Meanwhile, thorium gets zero attention. We people are always pulled by the nose by those with commercial interest!

fnordpiglet 3y ago
I’m unclear why you’re double quoting this. How is wind energy not renewable? Solar? Both can be refurbished at the end of their usable life spans. Thorium and other nuclear energy processes get plenty of news, and certainly on HN. But the problem is the regulatory landscape makes it neigh impossible in the US at least. Thorium also doesn’t have a lot of practical research behind it. AFAIK there are only reactors in India still operating with some in the EU next year (iirc). However “renewables” are commercially practical right now, which is probably where the commercial interest and nose pulling comes from. It’s hard to have a commercial interest in something that’s not practical to deploy in the present.
- nikolay 3y ago
  How are the propellers of wind turbines "renewable"? How are the solar panels "renewable"? How is the storage of this energy "renewable"? There's nothing renewable! With everybody being focused on "renewable" energy, we stopped the development of renewable nuclear technologies! Technologies like Radiant [0] get almost no attention! Not to mention the visual pollution and the waste of farmland with the "renewable" energy sources! [0]: https://www.radiantnuclear.com/ https://www.radiantnuclear.com/
  - mock-possum 3y ago
    “Renewable” energy is commonly understood to refer to the fuel source
    - nikolay 3y ago
      Yeah, we're again and again victims of oversimplifications, marketing gimmicks, and pseudoscience. Energy cannot be "renewable" and we're creating mountains of stuff that's not recyclable at the moment! Yeah, let the future generations worry about all this - we want to be wasteful today and fund questionable schemes like "carbon offsets!"
  - fnordpiglet 3y ago
    Turbines can be reconditioned. Solar panels retain about 80-90% of their efficiency after 25 years. The majority of materials in a solar panel (aluminum, glass, semiconductor materials) can be reclaimed and recycled. We haven’t stopped anything in the nuclear space. Small nuclear and other novel technologies get reasonable funding given their maturity and regulatory friction. Nuclear won’t take off until we get past the regulatory burden. We can’t sit around burning dinosaur juice hoping the government will modernize nuclear regulation. But we absolutely can pursue every avenue at once.

The greenwashing behind "renewable" energy seems to be working! Meanwhile, thorium gets zero attention. We people are always pulled by the nose by those with commercial interest!

fnordpiglet 3y ago

I’m unclear why you’re double quoting this. How is wind energy not renewable? Solar? Both can be refurbished at the end of their usable life spans. Thorium and other nuclear energy processes get plenty of news, and certainly on HN. But the problem is the regulatory landscape makes it neigh impossible in the US at least. Thorium also doesn’t have a lot of practical research behind it. AFAIK there are only reactors in India still operating with some in the EU next year (iirc). However “renewables” are commercially practical right now, which is probably where the commercial interest and nose pulling comes from. It’s hard to have a commercial interest in something that’s not practical to deploy in the present.

nikolay 3y ago
How are the propellers of wind turbines "renewable"? How are the solar panels "renewable"? How is the storage of this energy "renewable"? There's nothing renewable! With everybody being focused on "renewable" energy, we stopped the development of renewable nuclear technologies! Technologies like Radiant [0] get almost no attention! Not to mention the visual pollution and the waste of farmland with the "renewable" energy sources! [0]: https://www.radiantnuclear.com/ https://www.radiantnuclear.com/
- mock-possum 3y ago
  “Renewable” energy is commonly understood to refer to the fuel source
  - nikolay 3y ago
    Yeah, we're again and again victims of oversimplifications, marketing gimmicks, and pseudoscience. Energy cannot be "renewable" and we're creating mountains of stuff that's not recyclable at the moment! Yeah, let the future generations worry about all this - we want to be wasteful today and fund questionable schemes like "carbon offsets!"
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  Turbines can be reconditioned. Solar panels retain about 80-90% of their efficiency after 25 years. The majority of materials in a solar panel (aluminum, glass, semiconductor materials) can be reclaimed and recycled. We haven’t stopped anything in the nuclear space. Small nuclear and other novel technologies get reasonable funding given their maturity and regulatory friction. Nuclear won’t take off until we get past the regulatory burden. We can’t sit around burning dinosaur juice hoping the government will modernize nuclear regulation. But we absolutely can pursue every avenue at once.