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My criticism of solarpunk is its emphasis on hydro, wind and solar energy instead of more efficient sources like nuclear. But I appreciate the futurist optimism

by nis0s 2y ago

My criticism of solarpunk is its emphasis on hydro, wind and solar energy instead of more efficient sources like nuclear. But I appreciate the futurist optimism and self-reliance ethos of solarpunk. I am not interested in aspects of solarpunk which sacrifice individuation and individual liberties—I think it’s possible for innovative solutions to respect both individual liberties and the systems which sustain us all.

michaelhoney 2y ago
> more efficient sources like nuclear thing is, nuclear is not punk. It requires large-nation-scale financing. A community cannot build a nuclear power station.
- bluefirebrand 2y ago
  A community cannot manufacture solar panels or high capacity batteries either. Like it or not, these things require large supply chains to manufacture in volume
  - lukan 2y ago
    Well, you can make even solar panels at home. https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Build-Use-A-Dye-Sensitized-Solar-Cell-DS/ https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Build-Use-A-Dye-Sensiti... Same with batteries, but just not in a way to compete with the large scale industrial processes. A wind turbine is far easier here. Still, with improvement of tools, I can see a future, where even small communities have the capacity to practically make their own solar panels and their own batteries. But also buying it from the next industrial center makes sense to me (not at odds with the solarpunk idea to me). I also do see small nuclear reactors a possibilitiy for those small communities, but I really don't see humanity advanced enough, to handle so much distributed radioactive material, without having dirty bombs or improvised nuclear bombs going off regulary.
    - bluefirebrand 2y ago
      > Well, you can make even solar panels at home. If you have access to a supply chain that digs up the materials you need from the ground and manufactures fancy glass panes and circuitry and such for you, then sure. You can assemble a solar panel at home
  - lm28469 2y ago
    You can do a lot with very little if you have realistic goals. Of course if the goal is to keep everything the same you're utterly fucked from the get go. It's much easier to be sustainable in a small well built rectangular passive house than in the average texan mcmansion atrocity (bad insulation, insanely inefficient shapes, &c.) for example
Deprogrammer9 2y ago
It's called SOLARpunk not ATOMpunk,sorry.
- selimthegrim 2y ago
  Atompunk nein danke?
sien 2y ago
Nuclear low emissions is too realistic. It's just France. There is a thing called 'Atom Punk' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk_derivatives#Atompunk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk_derivatives#Atompunk But it has a different emphasis.
- lukan 2y ago
  "But it has a different emphasis." Seems like it. The only picture there has "Atomic war!" as the caption.
  - volemo 2y ago
    Hehe: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Orthodoxy https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Orthodoxy
    - lukan 2y ago
      "Nuclear Orthodoxy is focused on ensuring that the Holy Spirit is received by Russians, that demons are exorcised from Russia, and that Russia is prepared to maintain the Holy Rus' in preparation of the Second Coming, and that nuclear weapons will defend Russia from the forces of Satan" "Putin has continued to invoke Nuclear Orthodoxy on various occasions, such as a 2018 claim that Russians would "go to heaven as martyrs" and foreigners would "simply drop dead."" Thank you very much for this new utopic information.
daemonologist 2y ago
I'm surprised to hear of the "aspects [...] which sacrifice individuation and individual liberties" - my experience is that the solarpunk aesthetic is often combined with anarchic political views and if anything is too individualistic for my taste. Could you elaborate a little bit on what you're referring to?
- nis0s 2y ago
  From what I can tell, some intellectual circles would like solarpunk to be “Communism with solar panels”, which I find uninspiring. I also find that some thinkers in this movement have misguided notions on social justice (like open border policies), which I worry will result in the same cultural pushback we’re currently observing. I think political extremism is the root cause for why any futurist vision turns dystopian.
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    Are they suggesting authoritarian communism or some sort of sci-fi anarchist communism? (which would be pretty pro-individual-liberty). Open borders seem pretty pro-liberty as well. What’s more authoritarian than a government telling you there’s a magic invisible line on the ground and if you cross it, that’s crime?
    - Wickedflickr 2y ago
      Solarpunk is firmly rooted in the anti-authoritarian camp. It's fundamentally inspired by Murray Bookchin's books on ecological anarchism.
    - xvokcarts 2y ago
      It's not magic and it's not invisible. And if it's a government for the people, then it's the people that are being authoritarian. Maybe a high-liberties society can only prosper if it protects itself from the outside.
      - sdenton4 2y ago
Wickedflickr 2y ago
The reason solarpunk aren't hopped up on nuclear is that nuclear is an incredibly slow process that requires governments to fund it, corporations only run it if it's profitable (the Vermont Yankee power plant was shut down due to not being competitive with the price of natural gas even though it was emission free), and there's just too much red tape and delays and lack of public goodwill in comparison to Solar, which in comparison scales down to where individuals can afford it and make a difference RIGHT NOW, without waiting for the stars to align with government funding or cost overruns, licensing, etc. Solar with battery storage is the cheapest, quickest, and most effective source of power currently on the market, and it can reduce our emissions when time is of the essence. That's not to say solarpunk would advocate to shut down existing nuclear plants or stop construction of ones already underway, but most in the movement have decided solar and wind as the most expedient and decentralized way of achieving energy independence and emissions reduction.
benrutter 2y ago
Just adding some context here that I think a lot of other comments miss, but the envivonmental movement is often anti-nuclear because it's seen as not progressing passed our system's current extraction based economy. Naomi Klein's "This Changes Everything" probably makes this case most clearly, arguing nuclear uses finite resources, creates waste and is damaging to mine. I'm not arguing for this case here, but that view is very popular in environmentalist circles and probably explains why nuclear is absent from solarpunk literature.
derduff 2y ago
Nuclear is neither more cost efficient, nor environmentally better than renewable energy resources.
- grumpy-de-sre 2y ago
  Yeh let's completely ignore the impact of yellowcake mining, enrichment, reprocessing, long term storage, and limited deposits. Nuclear is low carbon, but it's far from an environmental panacea and it's about as far from decentralized production (punk) as you can get.
ViewTrick1002 2y ago
Not sure how you can call nuclear power more efficient? It is extremely expensive, boasts a 30% thermal efficiency and uses more raw materials than wind and in line with solar when factoring in the uranium supply chain. Yes, if we ignore everything but the uranium in the fuel road we can call it efficient. But that would be like measuring solar efficiency based on the weight of the photons.

by nis0s 2y ago

michaelhoney 2y ago

> more efficient sources like nuclear thing is, nuclear is not punk. It requires large-nation-scale financing. A community cannot build a nuclear power station.

bluefirebrand 2y ago
A community cannot manufacture solar panels or high capacity batteries either. Like it or not, these things require large supply chains to manufacture in volume
- lukan 2y ago
  Well, you can make even solar panels at home. https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Build-Use-A-Dye-Sensitized-Solar-Cell-DS/ https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Build-Use-A-Dye-Sensiti... Same with batteries, but just not in a way to compete with the large scale industrial processes. A wind turbine is far easier here. Still, with improvement of tools, I can see a future, where even small communities have the capacity to practically make their own solar panels and their own batteries. But also buying it from the next industrial center makes sense to me (not at odds with the solarpunk idea to me). I also do see small nuclear reactors a possibilitiy for those small communities, but I really don't see humanity advanced enough, to handle so much distributed radioactive material, without having dirty bombs or improvised nuclear bombs going off regulary.
  - bluefirebrand 2y ago
    > Well, you can make even solar panels at home. If you have access to a supply chain that digs up the materials you need from the ground and manufactures fancy glass panes and circuitry and such for you, then sure. You can assemble a solar panel at home
- lm28469 2y ago
  You can do a lot with very little if you have realistic goals. Of course if the goal is to keep everything the same you're utterly fucked from the get go. It's much easier to be sustainable in a small well built rectangular passive house than in the average texan mcmansion atrocity (bad insulation, insanely inefficient shapes, &c.) for example

Deprogrammer9 2y ago

It's called SOLARpunk not ATOMpunk,sorry.

selimthegrim 2y ago
Atompunk nein danke?

sien 2y ago

Nuclear low emissions is too realistic. It's just France. There is a thing called 'Atom Punk' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk_derivatives#Atompunk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk_derivatives#Atompunk But it has a different emphasis.

lukan 2y ago
"But it has a different emphasis." Seems like it. The only picture there has "Atomic war!" as the caption.
- volemo 2y ago
  Hehe: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Orthodoxy https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Orthodoxy
  - lukan 2y ago
    "Nuclear Orthodoxy is focused on ensuring that the Holy Spirit is received by Russians, that demons are exorcised from Russia, and that Russia is prepared to maintain the Holy Rus' in preparation of the Second Coming, and that nuclear weapons will defend Russia from the forces of Satan" "Putin has continued to invoke Nuclear Orthodoxy on various occasions, such as a 2018 claim that Russians would "go to heaven as martyrs" and foreigners would "simply drop dead."" Thank you very much for this new utopic information.

daemonologist 2y ago

I'm surprised to hear of the "aspects [...] which sacrifice individuation and individual liberties" - my experience is that the solarpunk aesthetic is often combined with anarchic political views and if anything is too individualistic for my taste. Could you elaborate a little bit on what you're referring to?

nis0s 2y ago
From what I can tell, some intellectual circles would like solarpunk to be “Communism with solar panels”, which I find uninspiring. I also find that some thinkers in this movement have misguided notions on social justice (like open border policies), which I worry will result in the same cultural pushback we’re currently observing. I think political extremism is the root cause for why any futurist vision turns dystopian.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  Are they suggesting authoritarian communism or some sort of sci-fi anarchist communism? (which would be pretty pro-individual-liberty). Open borders seem pretty pro-liberty as well. What’s more authoritarian than a government telling you there’s a magic invisible line on the ground and if you cross it, that’s crime?
  - Wickedflickr 2y ago
    Solarpunk is firmly rooted in the anti-authoritarian camp. It's fundamentally inspired by Murray Bookchin's books on ecological anarchism.
  - xvokcarts 2y ago
    It's not magic and it's not invisible. And if it's a government for the people, then it's the people that are being authoritarian. Maybe a high-liberties society can only prosper if it protects itself from the outside.
    - sdenton4 2y ago

Wickedflickr 2y ago

The reason solarpunk aren't hopped up on nuclear is that nuclear is an incredibly slow process that requires governments to fund it, corporations only run it if it's profitable (the Vermont Yankee power plant was shut down due to not being competitive with the price of natural gas even though it was emission free), and there's just too much red tape and delays and lack of public goodwill in comparison to Solar, which in comparison scales down to where individuals can afford it and make a difference RIGHT NOW, without waiting for the stars to align with government funding or cost overruns, licensing, etc. Solar with battery storage is the cheapest, quickest, and most effective source of power currently on the market, and it can reduce our emissions when time is of the essence. That's not to say solarpunk would advocate to shut down existing nuclear plants or stop construction of ones already underway, but most in the movement have decided solar and wind as the most expedient and decentralized way of achieving energy independence and emissions reduction.

benrutter 2y ago

Just adding some context here that I think a lot of other comments miss, but the envivonmental movement is often anti-nuclear because it's seen as not progressing passed our system's current extraction based economy. Naomi Klein's "This Changes Everything" probably makes this case most clearly, arguing nuclear uses finite resources, creates waste and is damaging to mine. I'm not arguing for this case here, but that view is very popular in environmentalist circles and probably explains why nuclear is absent from solarpunk literature.

derduff 2y ago

Nuclear is neither more cost efficient, nor environmentally better than renewable energy resources.

grumpy-de-sre 2y ago
Yeh let's completely ignore the impact of yellowcake mining, enrichment, reprocessing, long term storage, and limited deposits. Nuclear is low carbon, but it's far from an environmental panacea and it's about as far from decentralized production (punk) as you can get.

ViewTrick1002 2y ago

Not sure how you can call nuclear power more efficient? It is extremely expensive, boasts a 30% thermal efficiency and uses more raw materials than wind and in line with solar when factoring in the uranium supply chain. Yes, if we ignore everything but the uranium in the fuel road we can call it efficient. But that would be like measuring solar efficiency based on the weight of the photons.