this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2024
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Even if we started to build nuclear plants like crazy right now, it would be decades for them to make a real impact. Building a single nuclear plant is very expensive and time consuming. Building up the necessary supply chain to build a lot of them would take much longer. In the meantime, you can build huge amounts of renewables in just a few years for a fraction of the cost, even if you factor in storage.
Not only that but the cost of renewables and storage is still coming down rapidly. You'd better hope that you're not priced out of the energy market before your construction time plus payback period is up if you start building nuclear.
Lemmy most of the time: Makes fun of people always bringin up "the economy" as if that's what's really important
Also Lemmy when it comes to nuclear: "But the economy!"
What happens in case of a sudden abnormal weather event that blocks out most of the sunlight? Picture a super volcano eruption covering the sky in ashes for thousands of miles. Or think back to the extinction of dinosaurs, where after a meteorite crashed into earth the sun was blocked by dust for several years. Or just think about northern European countries that barely get any light in winter; Portugal is a very sunny country, we have invested a lot into solar, and sometimes we still get energy from Spain (who use nuclear btw).
Also, I've been hearing this whole "it takes too long to build nuclear plants" since at least early 2010s; imagine where we'd be if we'd just started building plants then. I can picture the same thing being said in 2035-2040, while fossil fuels still have not been completely dropped.
I'm not sure what kind of sudden weather event covers all the sun for Australia. Seems a little farcical
I already mentioned 2.
Here's a quote from the wiki on super volcanos:
Also, you wouldn't need it to cover all of Australia to be disastrous, just enough to block a significant amount of solar farms.
If you're talking about an extinction level event like that which caused the death of the dinosaurs then I think we have bigger problems.
There are historical accounts of volcanic activity blocking the sky, I think in Europe, for a few years. For all we know it was the whole planet. That would definitely disrupt solar energy collection without being an extinction level event.
Diversity is a genuine factor of fossil fuel free energy generation.
Literally no sun for years would mean no crops which means everyone and all their animals would be dead
Yea, it would be pretty rough.
Mildly annoying
Ultimately good for the environment, though.
How do you determine what is good or bad for the environment?
The environment is just the result of many interactive factors. People need to reverse the perspective and ask is the environment good for us?
It was more of a lighthearted, fun joke about how I think that humans dying out works be a good thing for biodiversity, on balance.
Care to point them out? As I've said, and expect to be common knowledge on a (I would expect) scientifically leaning community, the dinosaurs weren't killed by the meteor, their death was caused by the blacking out of the sun. You have access to energy, you can make air filters, grow food, purify water. If you don't have energy, then you die.
Regardless, this is a deflection from the main point, that was merely an extreme example, even volcanic eruptions could cause huge disruptions if you depend too much on solar power.
Care to point them out? The fact all our crops would die is a big one
You don't need sunlight to grow crops, you just need energy; which in this scenario would require an energy source that is not the sun.
Yeah, that's hardly going to be a global solution. But whatevs this discussion is devolving into the rediculous
I think if a planet killer asteroid hits it won't exactly matter our solar panels don't work mate
sight
The meteor didn't kill the dinosaurs, it was the dust cloud that did so by blacking out the sun. If you have sources of energy that are not reliant on the sun, it is very much possible to survive it. You can use artificial light to make grow food, and you can even make air processors if plants start dying. But you can't do that if you have no power.
no shit. and if it happened now, the dust cloud would essentially kill our civilisation as we know it. a small percentage of people would survive, and it wouldn't matter if they had nuclear power or not, there are other power sources other than solar. arguing for nuclear in case a planet killer blankets us in dust for decades might be the worst argument I've heard in favour of nuclear
And you've said absolutely nothing of substance while misconstructing what I'm saying and engaging in the type anti-science behavior that were it to come from climate deniers this community would rip on.
Firstly, the "planet killer" example, was just an extreme example to demonstrate how an unexpected climate event can render solar panels completely useless. Another example I gave you was ashes from volcanic eruptions. This is simple deflection and bad faith argumentation. Secondly, let's continue on "planet killer event" anyway:
And if it happened in 20, 50, or 100 years? Is your argument "I think if it happens now we're fucked, so it's pointless to prepare for the eventuality of it"?
How would it kill civilization as we know it? Define "civilization", and tell me what it would look like in that scenario, and why it's not worth to try to minimize its destruction. And what leads you to believe only a small percent of the population would survive? And are they not worth preserving? Because even a small percentage can't eat or breathe dust, and as I said, with enough power you can grow food, have clean water, and make breathable air. And what other power sources are you referring to? Nuclear is the second safest energy source after solar by a distant margin, and except for maybe wind and solar, it's also the most environmentally friendly - which is important given these power sources would have to be setup in advance of the events in question, which could take hundreds or thousands of years to happen.
I'm tired of arguing this, especially with someone who doesn't seem interested in arguing in good faith and is quite stubborn in remaining unscientific, so I'll be leaving it at this.
because I'm.not bothering to engage someone who goes herpaderp there's no solar when the sun doesn't shine herpaderp. it's obvious when someone has already made up their mind and has no idea what they are rambling about so there's no value in discussing anything.
didnt read past first sentence
I don't think anyone mentioned the economy here in this thread, so I'm not sure what the relevance of that is unless I'm misunderstanding your criticism there.
For my comment specifically I'm not worried about the economy, but the unit cost of energy. Simply put if nuclear has a higher unit cost that means we can't replace as much fossil fuel generation vs other lower unit cost sources of energy for the same price.
I agree with your criticism of folks complaining about the build time, back in 2010 it was probably worth building nuclear. That's no longer the case and the fact that people (imo incorrectly) used this criticism in 2010 doesn't mean that it's invalid now in the mid 2020s.
Disasters is an interesting perspective to take and to be honest I haven't really thought much about it before. You have, however, picked a very specific and unlikely event here and I'm wondering why you went with that. There are a great many potential disasters that can impact a power grid from earthquakes, extreme weather and even deliberate attacks or acts of sabotage. I think for most of these, having a more distributed grid is likely more resilient and these are much more realistic scenarios than a civilization ending level event like you described.
At the end of the day, we need to decarbonise immediately using the whatever technology is at hand. My criticism of nuclear is that it's no longer the cheapest or fastest way to achieve that, but I'm open to being wrong. Your disaster scenario wasn't particularly convincing though at least for me.
I'll put it another way so you might better understand my point: what would you have said 10 or 15 years ago when someone mentions that solar is a bad idea because it would cost more? Because up until recently it did cost more, and people did use it as an argument against it. And now your (and other people's) main criticism of nuclear is that it's not as cheap as an energy source that we've been heavily investing into for a decade.
I showed several examples. The ones you mentioned, such as earthquakes, are not likely to affect one source more than another, but events which block out the sun obviously disproportionately affect the production of solar energy.
Neither was solar when we started to invest in it, as I mentioned earlier. That came from improving and investing in the technology - which also bumped solar into the safest energy source, right after nuclear, which used to be the safest.
I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at here to be honest. When nuclear was the fastest, cheapest option we should have been deploying that. Now that it's not, we should still be deploying the fastest cheapest thing. Solar, wind and batteries continue to be on a rapidly declining cost curve, even back in 2010 but it was still too early to roll them out at huge scale. It's unlikely nuclear will be catching up any time soon barring major breakthroughs like fusion.
I also strongly disagree with your statement that disasters would impact nuclear and renewables equally. One of these things is certainly much harder to clean up and recover than the other if there is significant damage from an environmental disaster.
We should be rolling out the best available technology at the current time and continuing to improve our generation technologies, including nuclear, as we always do. I'm not sure why we would do anything else.
I think I understand what he is getting at.
Your argument is that we should build the fastest, cheapest option.
Up until recently, fossil fuels were the fastest, cheapest option. He is getting at the point that by your logic, we never should have moved off of coal and gas and started investing in solar because it wasn't fast and cheap.
People didn't follow your logic and instead heavily invested in solar and wind until it actually became the fastest, cheapest option that it is today.
Nuclear could have a similar rise in fiscal efficiency if we invested in it.
But his original point is that you are focusing on "the fastest and cheapest" (i.e. what is best for "the economy") which is the entire reason we are in this mess to begin with, because everyone wanted what was best for "the economy" and always kept the profitability of the energy companies as a high priority. This is the same thing you are repeating now.
We should not care what is the fastest and cheapest. We should be spending a metric fuck ton of all of our collective money to switch 100% over to green energy both in nuclear AND renewables . The worst thing that will happen with that plan is we overbuild and energy becomes very cheap and energy companies don't get their precious profits. Again, "oh no the economy." Nationalize energy. It doesn't need to make a great profit, it needs to be severely regulated and it is a basic human utility in the modern day.
As for nuclear disasters, I would watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzfpyo-q-RM&t=545s How many nuclear disasters has France had who has run on 70-90% nuclear power for many decades? As for spent nuclear fuel, spent coal ash is literally radioactive for longer than spent nuclear fuel and per unit energy it produces more radioactive waste and we have no qualms about that. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Kn2l3MoisDs We don't even test for radioactivity around the extreme majority of coal plants in the world.
Oh yeah I see what you mean, that's my bad then for not being clear. We should build the fastest, cheapest green option. Yes we should keep investing in nuclear generation research, if it becomes the best option in the future we should build it. Right now it's not so we should build the best thing right now, is basically my view for the previously mentioned points.
I agree nuclear is safe, I'm not worried about that. The only reason we were discussing disasters was because it was brought up against solar. I think nuclear is a clean, safe option that should be on the table but it's not the best option anymore.
We now have the technology to alter the trajectories of asteroids (tested on the DART mission), and have a fairly comprehensive catalogue of the big ones. I don't expect this to be an issue.
The neighbor has sun then. Buy it there. Or store the power.
Always the same old platitudes.
Australia doesn't have neighbors...
Exactly. Sure, shutting down existing plants is dumb af (looking at you, Germany). But building new plants now with the aim of having an impact on climate change just isn't the most effective decision.
Most of those were very old. I'm glad we're not the ones who will find out how long you can really run one if those things before it fails.
That's not precise. A nuclear plant can be built in like 5 years. And the supply chain is not the issue when you have lots of orders. But there are not many. It's also not precise to say you can build huge amounts of renewables instead. Probably Spain doesn't need nuclear, since it's got plenty of sun. On the other hand many countries don't have areas that have enough sun and consistent wind.
Id also say that the part you said that cost of renewables combined with storage would be a fraction of the cost, that is completely false.
Can you point to any nuclear plant in a Western country that was built in five years in the past thirty years or so?
Seriously? Building reactor vessels is a very specialized task that only few suppliers are even capable of. Add to that uranium mining, fuel rod production, fuel logistics and a host of other components - and all that will just fall from the sky once enough orders are signed?
Germany is already at over 50%, many other countries are far ahead of that. Your point has no factual basis.
Here's a source
what about the rogue boyscout one
Use this one weird trick to get free energy from your old smoke detectors!
why did you specify in the west :)? You know why you did that, because nuclear plants do get built in 5 years elsewhere.
emm, yes very much so. Like you said, they're are even a few suppliers who can do that. They just need enough orders for it to make sense.
you should check that data again. Renewables are great, but some countries have better access than others. Right now Germany is building gas plants and burning coal and there is no end in sight for that.
I might check that file later thanks, but what I'm taking about is just plain physics. You can not store enough energy today to make a big difference at any cost. And the cost is really high and can not be close to what a power plant can generate on the fly. It's just can't. Especially if you are taking lithium batteries.
yup, and no waste issues that have to be held on site in cooling pools for decades (assuming a final storage point is ever resolved in your country).
we already know that we must improve transmission infrastructure across the board, if we're going to have to do that either way, might as well embrace grid storage and go with as much renewable generation. AU, your Great Australian desert could power most of the southern pacific if you want to get wild :D
This boggle my mind. We turn out about one or two nuclear subs a year. It really shouldn't take that long.