5 ms·

Because some people make billions by utilizing or selling "free" energy from fossil fuels? Companies extract these, they often don't pay for the energy (just th

Because some people make billions by utilizing or selling "free" energy from fossil fuels? Companies extract these, they often don't pay for the energy (just the cost of extraction) and can sell them at huge profits. The cost of pollution is then also not paid by them.

Muromec 3y ago
There is that and then there is Greenpeace campaining against nuclear non-stop because Choronobyl'.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  And three mile island and Fukushima. Nuclear has some serious concerns that are clearly not addressed enough. Usually this is when the low death toll is brought up but it's not just about deaths. It's about environmental destruction. And the potential to do so in the far future through its waste. I don't think we should move away from nuclear altogether but use it as a buffer only for the times when the real green sources are low (eg solar and wind). And we should find a permanent waste solution.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    And Windscale (whitewashed to 'Sellafield') and an endless series of near-catastrophes.
    - wkat4242 3y ago
      Oh yeah totally, they had a meltdown too. Though it was an idiotic operation at that time, with such a cavalier attitude to safety that I should hope will not be repeated in this day and age. They even opposed the air filters that were introduced anyway and reduced a lot of the contamination during the meltdown. I didn't remember to mention it because it was not an energy generation installation that melted down but a military one for nuclear weapon manufacturing. About those filters, a quote from wikipedia: > They became known as "Cockcroft's Folly" as many regarded the delay they caused and their great expense to be a needless waste. During the fire the filters trapped about 95% of the radioactive dust and arguably saved much of northern England from becoming a nuclear wasteland. Terence Price said "the word folly did not seem appropriate after the accident"
      - jacquesm 3y ago
        In NL we apparently almost had a major incident at Petten. https://www.trouw.nl/nieuws/bijna-meltdown-kernreactor-petten~b39ec894/ https://www.trouw.nl/nieuws/bijna-meltdown-kernreactor-pette... And that's the one that is public, there is at least one more that is still under wraps and possibly more than that. Nuclear is only as safe as the people running it and that is a major issue even before you bring in economics. You can't treat safety as a cost in installations like these and inevitably that's what happens. What I also find disingenuous is that in calculating the cost of electricity production from nuclear power capex required for the eventual dismantling isn't taken into account at all, and those costs are inevitably massive.
        wkat4242 3y ago
        Wow I had no idea of that one. I actually lived pretty close to there. Seems like the incidents happened in part because the operators couldn't see in the dark after a power outage, and the emergency torch had been taken by someone to fix their car... :X You can't make this stuff up.
        jacquesm 3y ago
        Yes, that's how it happened (I heard it from a person that was closer to the source). And because you can't make this stuff up I don't think it is possible to responsibly operate a nuclear reactor because the normalization of deviation is impossible to guard against over the career span of a typical human. Everywhere people work they make mistakes and do stupid stuff and over time this accumulates to the point where the 'experts' are themselves the danger but because they've done it for so long nobody can do a better job than they can in the short term. And then there is aging gear, embrittlement and a thousand other things that can (and do) go wrong. You can't fix human nature and that's the root cause of many of these problems. And because of that I'm very much against nuclear power, no matter what the short term advantages may seem to be. Sooner or later every plant needs to be de-commissioned, will have an incident or will end up as a target or a casualty of something or other. Multiply that by the number of power plants that you'd need to make the world reliant on nuclear power and the number of accidents would quickly rise above what is acceptable (if we're not already there). Nuclear proponents are quick to argue that this was all with old technology and newer designs are safer but people are still the same and even new technology resulting in working installations will eventually see those same installations age.
- pydry 3y ago
  Financial liability on nuclear plants for nuclear disasters is capped at ~0.5% of the cost of a cleanup like Fukushima/Chernobyl because sophisticated private insurers fully understand the risks and categorically refuse to shoulder them. Thats why the taxpayer is forced into providing free insurance for every nuclear power plant. The private sector would only ever build solar and wind and storage if externalities like this or CO2/coal pollution were fully priced in. Since the government has a vested (military) reason for wanting a thriving civilian nuclear industrial ecosystem, however, they provide lavish subsidies - some budgeted, while others (like this one) are not. There is a lot of PR sourced from profit driven pro nuclear lobbies telling us that "contrary to popular opinion" it's totally 110% safe now though - none of which acknowledge the private sector's categorical refusal to assume the financial risks, obviously. Presumably Greenpeace, who are apparently motivated purely by a desire to protect the environment and fully funded by donations from the environmentally conscious must be the ones who are misleading us. After all, "young climate activists" say it is being "old fashioned": https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/dear-greenpeace-nuclear-energy-1.6958765 https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/dear-greenpeace-nuclear...
hannob 3y ago
That is certainly true, but it's not a full explanation. I recently was at an information event from our local electricity provider about wind energy projects. And there are those people... There was a conversation going on like: "The people I talked to don't want these things." Event moderator: "What are the reasons?" Guy: "They simply don't want them." And I am pretty sure that was no fossil fuel lobbyist. It was just a guy who is against things. And there are plenty of those.
- lynx23 3y ago
  Yeah, its called free will, you know. I dont have to like everything, period.
  - svnt 3y ago
    Most thinking people move beyond this position. An arbitrary position is no position at all.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      A weak opinion, strongly hold. Or some such.
- throwaway60742 3y ago
  People don't want to pay for it. The cost of the wind/solar project itself is not the full story - you also need energy storage, and that's very expensive. You also need to rebuild the electrical grid to handle the peak power output to be able to store it. In EU countries, at least part of these very significant costs are paid for by everyone - not just the company operating the wind/solar projects who profit from it. Some people don't want to have higher taxes just so a business gets profit.
  - unglaublich 3y ago
    People pay billions in subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, so we can just move those and leave taxes as they are.
unglaublich 3y ago
The irony: we borrow money against our future selfs assuming endless economical growth. But when we extract finite natural resources and use up a finite pollution buffer, we do not pay our future selfs the opportunity costs.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
0xDEF 3y ago
On social media it's the conspiracy theorists and "compulsive contrarians" who oppose photovoltaics and EVs. They might be the useful idiots of the oil/gas industry but their stupidity is organic.
fodkodrasz 3y ago
> utilizing or selling "free" energy from fossil fuels? Companies extract these, they often don't pay for the energy (just the cost of extraction) Is solar or wind energy not "free" in the same sense? Also: are the balancing costs of the network paid by those people selling the "free" renewable energy? As I see they often don't pay for that (not to mention the pollution that causes, which is still not paid by any energy producer)

Muromec 3y ago

There is that and then there is Greenpeace campaining against nuclear non-stop because Choronobyl'.

wkat4242 3y ago
And three mile island and Fukushima. Nuclear has some serious concerns that are clearly not addressed enough. Usually this is when the low death toll is brought up but it's not just about deaths. It's about environmental destruction. And the potential to do so in the far future through its waste. I don't think we should move away from nuclear altogether but use it as a buffer only for the times when the real green sources are low (eg solar and wind). And we should find a permanent waste solution.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  And Windscale (whitewashed to 'Sellafield') and an endless series of near-catastrophes.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    Oh yeah totally, they had a meltdown too. Though it was an idiotic operation at that time, with such a cavalier attitude to safety that I should hope will not be repeated in this day and age. They even opposed the air filters that were introduced anyway and reduced a lot of the contamination during the meltdown. I didn't remember to mention it because it was not an energy generation installation that melted down but a military one for nuclear weapon manufacturing. About those filters, a quote from wikipedia: > They became known as "Cockcroft's Folly" as many regarded the delay they caused and their great expense to be a needless waste. During the fire the filters trapped about 95% of the radioactive dust and arguably saved much of northern England from becoming a nuclear wasteland. Terence Price said "the word folly did not seem appropriate after the accident"
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      In NL we apparently almost had a major incident at Petten. https://www.trouw.nl/nieuws/bijna-meltdown-kernreactor-petten~b39ec894/ https://www.trouw.nl/nieuws/bijna-meltdown-kernreactor-pette... And that's the one that is public, there is at least one more that is still under wraps and possibly more than that. Nuclear is only as safe as the people running it and that is a major issue even before you bring in economics. You can't treat safety as a cost in installations like these and inevitably that's what happens. What I also find disingenuous is that in calculating the cost of electricity production from nuclear power capex required for the eventual dismantling isn't taken into account at all, and those costs are inevitably massive.
      - wkat4242 3y ago
        Wow I had no idea of that one. I actually lived pretty close to there. Seems like the incidents happened in part because the operators couldn't see in the dark after a power outage, and the emergency torch had been taken by someone to fix their car... :X You can't make this stuff up.
        jacquesm 3y ago
        Yes, that's how it happened (I heard it from a person that was closer to the source). And because you can't make this stuff up I don't think it is possible to responsibly operate a nuclear reactor because the normalization of deviation is impossible to guard against over the career span of a typical human. Everywhere people work they make mistakes and do stupid stuff and over time this accumulates to the point where the 'experts' are themselves the danger but because they've done it for so long nobody can do a better job than they can in the short term. And then there is aging gear, embrittlement and a thousand other things that can (and do) go wrong. You can't fix human nature and that's the root cause of many of these problems. And because of that I'm very much against nuclear power, no matter what the short term advantages may seem to be. Sooner or later every plant needs to be de-commissioned, will have an incident or will end up as a target or a casualty of something or other. Multiply that by the number of power plants that you'd need to make the world reliant on nuclear power and the number of accidents would quickly rise above what is acceptable (if we're not already there). Nuclear proponents are quick to argue that this was all with old technology and newer designs are safer but people are still the same and even new technology resulting in working installations will eventually see those same installations age.
pydry 3y ago
Financial liability on nuclear plants for nuclear disasters is capped at ~0.5% of the cost of a cleanup like Fukushima/Chernobyl because sophisticated private insurers fully understand the risks and categorically refuse to shoulder them. Thats why the taxpayer is forced into providing free insurance for every nuclear power plant. The private sector would only ever build solar and wind and storage if externalities like this or CO2/coal pollution were fully priced in. Since the government has a vested (military) reason for wanting a thriving civilian nuclear industrial ecosystem, however, they provide lavish subsidies - some budgeted, while others (like this one) are not. There is a lot of PR sourced from profit driven pro nuclear lobbies telling us that "contrary to popular opinion" it's totally 110% safe now though - none of which acknowledge the private sector's categorical refusal to assume the financial risks, obviously. Presumably Greenpeace, who are apparently motivated purely by a desire to protect the environment and fully funded by donations from the environmentally conscious must be the ones who are misleading us. After all, "young climate activists" say it is being "old fashioned": https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/dear-greenpeace-nuclear-energy-1.6958765 https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/dear-greenpeace-nuclear...

hannob 3y ago

That is certainly true, but it's not a full explanation. I recently was at an information event from our local electricity provider about wind energy projects. And there are those people... There was a conversation going on like: "The people I talked to don't want these things." Event moderator: "What are the reasons?" Guy: "They simply don't want them." And I am pretty sure that was no fossil fuel lobbyist. It was just a guy who is against things. And there are plenty of those.

lynx23 3y ago
Yeah, its called free will, you know. I dont have to like everything, period.
- svnt 3y ago
  Most thinking people move beyond this position. An arbitrary position is no position at all.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    A weak opinion, strongly hold. Or some such.
throwaway60742 3y ago
People don't want to pay for it. The cost of the wind/solar project itself is not the full story - you also need energy storage, and that's very expensive. You also need to rebuild the electrical grid to handle the peak power output to be able to store it. In EU countries, at least part of these very significant costs are paid for by everyone - not just the company operating the wind/solar projects who profit from it. Some people don't want to have higher taxes just so a business gets profit.
- unglaublich 3y ago
  People pay billions in subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, so we can just move those and leave taxes as they are.

unglaublich 3y ago

The irony: we borrow money against our future selfs assuming endless economical growth. But when we extract finite natural resources and use up a finite pollution buffer, we do not pay our future selfs the opportunity costs.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

0xDEF 3y ago

On social media it's the conspiracy theorists and "compulsive contrarians" who oppose photovoltaics and EVs. They might be the useful idiots of the oil/gas industry but their stupidity is organic.

fodkodrasz 3y ago

> utilizing or selling "free" energy from fossil fuels? Companies extract these, they often don't pay for the energy (just the cost of extraction) Is solar or wind energy not "free" in the same sense? Also: are the balancing costs of the network paid by those people selling the "free" renewable energy? As I see they often don't pay for that (not to mention the pollution that causes, which is still not paid by any energy producer)