3 ms·

I've had a look to the other answers parallel to mine, and it looks like I'm not the only one who thinks the affirmation I've reacted to has no ground in any sc

• palata 3y ago
  > you seem strangely only interested to criticize renewables while not accepting any of the problems of the nuclear side Probably my fault, but I was answering to comments that did sound to me like "we don't need nuclear, renewable is the silver bullet". To which I say "I think it is extremely dangerous to think like this, because we are not in a position where we can make mistakes for another few decades, and nobody has deployed renewables at scale yet". If I look at Germany for instance, they pushed a lot for renewables, which was great for the fossil business (e.g. coal and NLG) because renewables are apparently not enough on their own (e.g. when there is no wind and no sun). And that's only for their current electricity needs, we're not talking about replacing fossil fuels in any way (rather they seem to have replaced nuclear with renewables + more fossil). My experience as an engineer is that it's easy to say "yup we made a small prototype, it will most definitely work at scale, just give us the money!". Then you start doing it at scale, and you realize it's a whole new problem. I feel like in HN too many people make a quick calculation ("with a fraction of Earth covered with solar panels, we're good for a thousand years") and forget that in practice, you can't just throw solar panels in the desert and call it a day. Where I come from, solar farms are used at a fraction of their capacity because the electrical infrastructure cannot get their full production. It was just not built like that. But the people working in solar of course did not say it upfront (or did not even know it, I don't know?). Of course there are issues with nuclear plants. But there are countries (e.g. France) who did it at a scale that renewables haven't reached yet. Again, I don't mean that renewables don't work at all. I just think that it is very risky to just hope that all the fundamental problems of renewables (e.g. storage) will be solved in the near future because unlike autonomous cars or AGI it's not just meant to convince VCs: in this case it matters.
  • cauch 3y ago
    You are saying that you are worried about botched conclusions based on superficial observations, and then you do exactly that. There were a lot of mistakes in the way Germany exited nuclear. Concluding from that "not exiting nuclear is a silver bullet" is as stupid as saying "renewable is the silver bullet". There are plenty of ways of exiting nuclear, the way used by Germany was bad and we are learning for their mistakes. Concluding that all way of exiting nuclear is bad based on that is not true and demonstrated incorrect by plenty of examples where renewables are doing their job very well. Same with France: the way they have deployed nuclear is very bad, they sold electricity way too cheap and don't have accumulated enough money to pay for renewing or dismantling the plants. You were saying that some idiots are just thinking "the prototype works, it will work at scale", and you are behaving exactly the same way by looking very superficially at France. The peope who reacted to are demonstrating less naivety and botched conclusions than you. They don't really say "renewable is the silver bullet", they just say something that is true "renewables is way more promising than nuclear", which is just a conclusion that experts are reaching, not because there are prototypes, but because they've studied the simulation from beginning to end, with renewables and nuclear, and it is what the math is telling them.