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These public freak outs is also why we don't have abundant nuclear energy. The climate activists of the 60s-90s stopped us from building more reactors, one of
by billy99k 11mo ago
These public freak outs is also why we don't have abundant nuclear energy.
The climate activists of the 60s-90s stopped us from building more reactors, one of the cleanest sources of energy ever known.
- cogman10 11mo agoClimate activists backed and propagandized by the fossil fuel industry and the KGB. And now that there are a number of barriers to creating new nuclear, the propaganda has flipped with fossil fuel companies supporting nuclear because they know it'll be decades before anything real can happen. I have nothing against nuclear and if it can be built I'm for it. But at the moment, solar + battery is quick to deploy and about as cheap as you can get.
- simianparrot 11mo agoOk but what about when it’s night time or cloudy?
- goodcanadian 11mo agoThat's where the battery comes in. Yes, I am over-simplifying the very complex problem of grid management, but so are you.
- ldoughty 11mo agoMolten salt solar power doesn't care. It remains hot. Advancements in solar also are improving with clouds. Also, you know, batteries. When someone makes it cost effective to install a device to sell your car battery power on the grid we'll also have a better time managing the grid during spikes... Would be nice if that also did home battery backup in blackouts... 70 kWh would get me through most of the ones I've experienced.
- lazide 11mo agoMolten salt absolutely does care, keeping it molten controls how much power can be withdrawn. It’s a form of thermal battery (and an inefficient one). If the sun is shining vs not (and if further withdrawal will freeze the salt) absolutely controls power output.
- sgerenser 11mo agoMolten salt solar power plants are completely obsolete. See for ex. Ivanpah being shut down early because the power its generating is too expensive compared to Solar PV: https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/solar/once-an-engineering-marvel-two-thirds-of-this-concentrated-solar-power-plant-will-shut-down-after-a-california-utility-pulled-two-of-its-ppas/ https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/solar/once-an-engineeri...
- dgacmu 11mo agoSolar + battery + wind actually do pretty well. There's a bit of a de-correlation between solar and wind that makes the mix more resilient than either alone. We can't do 100% in most places yet, but it's pretty straightforward to move to a much higher percentage of them in our grid mix than we have now, California possibly excepting. (But even in California you see battery starting to extend how much we can do with solar as prices continue to drop.) And the plummeting price of solar modules makes it more cost effective to over provision for the case of clouds, and/or to mount solar panels to optimize for morning and evening production as well.
- xp84 11mo agoCalifornia has energy costs more than double most other states so it’s probably not the best argument for “it’s so easy to go mostly renewable.” A lot of things are feasible if you’re willing to [force everyone in the state to] spend 2x. Whatever California is trying to do in the past 20 years has been extraordinarily regressive.
- throwup238 11mo agoOur energy costs are due to the distribution network and the massive amount of deferred maintenance on it that has come due in the last decade, accelerated by the Camp fire court case. There was a two year period a few years ago where power went out at least once a week while SDGE replaced every power pole in the rural east county by flying them in on helicopters. That's largely what we're paying for.
- dgacmu 11mo agoAs the above poster said. Generation costs are a small part of most consumers' bills, but particularly in CA. If you look at the location marginal pricing map from CA ISO: https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/prices https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/prices You'll see that right now (before solar has really kicked in), The price for the next megawatt hour of generation is $49 -- i.e., under 5c per kWh. That's comparable to the average price in PJM (east coast) at the same time: https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/prices https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/prices vs https://pjm.com/ https://pjm.com/ The big problem for California is that cheap generation via solar doesn't move the needle as much on consumer bills because of the transmission and distribution costs. In San Francisco, for example the distribution fee is over $0.20/kWh. That's twice what mine is in Pittsburgh. In contrast, the generation pricing is only about $0.04/kWh more than mine: https://www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/tariffbook/ELEC_SCHEDS_A-1.pdf https://www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/tariffbook/ELEC_SCHED... though this pricing does favor behind the meter generation such as residential solar.
- StopDisinfo910 11mo ago> But at the moment, solar + battery is quick to deploy and about as cheap as you can get. The actual equation is solar + battery + gas fired power plant. That’s the dirty secret behind intermittent power sources and why fossil fuel companies are all investing in solar and wind. Batteries are simply not enough to face the long term intermittence. It’s purely an intra-day solution at the moment and nobody knows how to actually run a large grid on purely intermittent sources. Even China is actually aggressively pursuing nuclear at the same time it builds an insane amount of solar and gas fired power plants.
- Workaccount2 11mo agoThe actual actual problem is energy per acre of land per year. Solar is king in places like west Texas and Nevada. Massive sunny flat sprawling landscapes where the land is practically free. It's a different story in places like Massachusetts or New York, where land is expensive and the sun is mildly sunny. Gas becomes much more competitive because you only need 5 acres instead of 500, and the energy is 24/7.
- zekrioca 11mo agoLong distant transmission lines would help with that. Also, I want to point out we need to decarbonize, so I don’t think gas considers all externalities that it causes, like air pollution.
- Workaccount2 11mo agoThe problem is that people don't really want to pay for it. When you compare the rates at which people recognize the need to decarbonize, to the rates at which people are willing to pay 20-50% more for green energy, an obvious and expected trend arises.... people overwhelming don't want to put their money where there mouth is. Or they want someone elses money to go where there mouth is. It needs to be understood that almost all those "green energy is cheaper than fossil fuels" studies use the best case scenario to calculate those values. To put that another way, gas meets it's ideal pretty much everywhere, whereas green energy meets it's ideal in small, often far from society, spots. Transmission can bridge the gap to a degree, but it's then a cost multiplier. A carbon tax is a good way to balance this, but man, people vote hard to not have to spend more of their own money. (I don't want to pay for it/I only want it if billionaires pay for it)
- rayiner 11mo ago> Climate activists backed and propagandized by the fossil fuel industry and the KGB Who are the current generation of climate activists backed and propagandized by?
- galangalalgol 11mo agoI don't know about activists, vut the US green party was influenced by russia for years. There is evidence of influence with Jill Stein for instance. But if you pick a political organization anywhere in the world that doesn't show signs of Russian influence, that would almost be more suspicious.
- ghurtado 11mo agoTo pretend that the US "green party" has anything to do whatsoever with the environment is beyond naive, it's completely disconnected from reality. Neither their policies nor their electorate support the idea that people like Jill Stein are in any way looked at as authorities in any "green" subject. I don't think that someone that had national relevance for roughly half an election cycle, and who got less than half of one percent of the vote (at the peak of her popularity) has had any influence shaping nuclear opinions. She's not even on record stating her position, that's how utterly unimportant this issue to Putin / Russia. I'm not even sure how you think Russia would benefit from less nuclear power plants an entire continent away
- AnthonyMouse 11mo ago> I don't think that someone that had national relevance for roughly half an election cycle, and who got less than half of one percent of the vote (at the peak of her popularity) has had any influence shaping nuclear opinions. It's not about any one person. You still see this now, where people suggest regulatory reform for the process of building new nuclear plants in the US to lower construction costs, people appear to tell you that nuclear costs too much and should be abandoned, i.e. they use circular logic to present the existence of the problem you're trying to solve as a reason not to try to address it. The current line of reasoning is something like "solar plus storage is cheaper than nuclear so nuclear must never be attempted", which ignores both any possibility of improving the cost efficiency of nuclear and that the cost comparison they're using is for intra-day storage whereas nuclear also reduces the need for multi-day storage which is significantly more expensive. > I'm not even sure how you think Russia would benefit from less nuclear power plants an entire continent away Russia is a petroleum exporting country and petroleum is a global commodity. If the US (or anyone else) uses nuclear instead of fossil fuels then global demand for fossil fuels declines, US natural gas or coal producers instead sell to foreign customers who might have bought gas from Russia, etc. Notice that the US oil industry has the same incentive. Exxon is very much aligned with Putin on this one and they have lobbyists too.
- buckle8017 11mo ago> solar + battery is quick to deploy and about as cheap as you can get Solar production is seasonal, batteries to carry over seasons are beyond expensive. Otherwise 10x your dinner solar to get winter solar and now it's not cheap.
- ThatMedicIsASpy 11mo agoI also really enjoy privatizing profits and let the public deal with the aftermath.
- zekrioca 11mo agoExactly. It is amazing how certain people really don’t care about others’ money, and above all, health.
- SonOfKyuss 11mo agoThe activists of the 60s-90s were witnesses to the nuclear bombing of Japan, domestic nuclear accidents, as well as a nuclear arms race that threatened to wipe out all of humanity. It is unfortunate that we threw the baby out with the bathwater when it came to nuclear power generation, but the people who had issues with nuclear in that era did have good reasons to be afraid.
- bell-cot 11mo agoYep. Also, the pro-nuclear techno-utopians of that era promised that nuclear electricity would be too cheap too meter, nuclear-powered cars would be common, and quite a few other things. If the public doesn't understand complex new thing X, and advocates for X have obviously told them all sorts of lies - yeah. Don't be surprised if the public becomes extremely skeptical about X.
- MassiveQuasar 11mo agoWere they good reasons or did they just fell victim to their feelings? Not creating nuclear power plants because you're afraid of some bombs is good reasoning? What about the millions of deaths to fossil fuels every year? Are they better than the nuclear accidents we had? I don't think good reasoning is why they felt that nuclear power was bad.
- SonOfKyuss 11mo agoHow about understandable reasons then?
- 7bit 11mo agoIt is. And also because of Chernobyl and Fukushima. But you don't care do you
- mr_toad 11mo agoWe’re going to look back and realise that the destruction wrought by global warming was far worse in every way than at Chernobyl.
- rayiner 11mo agoIf the entire developed world had followed the same energy usage and nuclearization path as france, we’d be able to accommodate the entire developing world increasing carbon footprint up to the French level within the same overall carbon footprint we have today.
- speed_spread 11mo agoWhen you read about how incidents and accidents at research and commercial nuclear facilities have been denied, covered up, downplayed and fumbled sometimes for years and years you realize the problem is not nuclear technology but the people who manage it. Nuclear technology may have progressed but our ability to handle it ethically surely hasn't.
- amanaplanacanal 11mo agoAlmost nobody knew or cared about the coming global warming in the 60s-90s.
- 7bit 11mo agoAsk the Ukrainian how clean Chernobyl is. I hear it became a very touristic place with people dying to get housing there, because the air is so clean.
- 7bit 11mo ago1. Mining and processing are destructive Uranium mining leaves behind contaminated soil, groundwater problems, tailings, and long-term ecological damage. “Yellow Cake” shows this clearly. These impacts last far longer than any economic benefit. 2. Operation is low-CO₂, but not low-risk Severe accidents are rare, but the consequences are catastrophic when they do occur. Chernobyl and Fukushima are obvious examples. The U.S. history is full of near misses, leaks, hardware failures, and human-factor problems. Calling such a technology “safe” glosses over systemic vulnerability. 3. Waste cannot be neutralised High-level waste remains hazardous for tens of thousands of years. No human institution has ever maintained stable responsibility for anything even close to that timeframe. Most countries still rely on interim storage because final repositories are politically and technically unresolved. 4. Long-term burdens are externalised The benefits (electricity, profits, political narratives) are short-term and local. The harms (contamination, risk, millennia of monitoring) are long-term and imposed on future generations who cannot consent. 5. “Clean” becomes a marketing word In lifecycle terms—mining, fuel fabrication, plant construction, decommissioning, and waste storage—nuclear energy cannot be “clean” in any holistic sense. It is at best low-carbon but high-burden. This doesn’t mean nobody can argue for nuclear energy, but it does mean that calling it clean is a simplification that hides very real costs and risks
- parineum 11mo agoFuture generations can't consent to anything, even fields of solar panels and mining for battery materials.
- zekrioca 11mo agoCertain lobbyists like hiding the end-to-end aspects of nuclear and focus mostly on “energy density”, “clean operations” etc, because they take advantage of the fact most people think short term (because, well, it is simpler). It is like the fossil fuel lobbyists that say gas is cheaper but never mention the externalities caused by e.g., the air pollution causing health issues to those living nearby LNG plants, who end up paying for the costs, just not at the moment of operationalization. Of course none of these proponents live near these infrastructures. This is the very same old 60-90’s stories with the tobacco industry saying smoking have health benefits.
- 1970-01-01 11mo agoNuclear accidents were common back then. Activists not only had good intentions they had actual accidents occuring with cover-ups. I think you're only seeing the worst parts here. They didn't follow the science as well as they should but they did get dumping sorted and held the industry liable.
- parineum 11mo ago> Nuclear accidents were common back then Name them
- 1970-01-01 11mo agoWikipedia has a chart: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_and_incidents#List_of_nuclear_plant_accidents_and_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accident...
- lofaszvanitt 11mo agoExactly like Asimov wrote about it in the Foundation. Different way, same purpose.