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Comment by m_mueller | Hacker News Reader

FWIW I made a map this year about Non Fossil electricity usage around the world and the results are quite surprising actually, supporting the article for the most part. Btw. this was surprisingly quick to do with google spreadsheets.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16K4gNhy_AN8Eg4Ov3z7p...

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Nice work! It will be nice to have individual energy source percentage as well in the 3rd tab (Fossil <30% tab).

Thanks. See the update just now - tried to reduce it to first principles ;).

I hovered over Luxembourg and it told me they have -6.0% non-fossil-fuel electricity.

Strange entry. Looks like they pumped a lot of fossil fuel generated energy to hydroelectric storage, so they generated more than consumed in the year of this statistic.

Do they import 6%?

You can stand to it as you wish but by which means is nuclear power a renewable? (See France with 91%+ renewable with mostly nuclear power)

Edit: Or non-fossil, if that is a difference

After your edit, does your question really make sense to you still? Of course nuclear is non fossil?

And yes, whether we go full renewable or a mix of nuclear and renewable is IMO a second order question, the main focus should be carbon neutral to negative economy ASAP.

Well, only if you are pedantic with fossil meaning long dead organic (which is true, of course). But for energy it makes more sense to distinguish between sources that can be used or they are gone (sun shines on the planet and at some point the heat dissipates back into the universe) and those that are gone at some point because we have used them. So, yeah, point taken, but then I do not think it makes much sense to distinguish between fossil and non-fossil for the point you want make here, which is dependence on a time-limited resource.

I disagree on your last point. By far our biggest problem right now is to keep the climate stable enough. Earth's carbon absorption rate is the most critical resource we have, not the amount of non renewable energy resources that are left. The first problem we have to solve within 1-20 years max., the second is more like 100-500 years (Uranium/Thorium/Plutonium/Fossil Fuel that's available).

It's non-fossil because it isn't made from dead organic matter.

The same way that solar/wind power is renewable (i.e. not really).

What do you mean?

there is no renewable power. entropy in the universe must increase.

That is true, but wind and solar do not change because we do use them, they will occur anew. Nuclear material does not reappear (within our system on earth). So the entropy increases for wind and solar anyways, while much slower for uranium under normal circumstances.

Don't wind turbines have minor effects on climate because of the wind they slow down?

"Solar" is just nuclear on the sun.

> "Solar" is just nuclear on the sun.

Which comes with the desirable property of solving the problem of radioactive waste storage, as waste is stored in a very convenient place far away from any human dwelling.

Well, the "nuclear" process in the sun is fusion, which does not (AFAIK) generate any wastes dangerous to life/environment.

The containment system will become radioactive. Not as bad as the spent fuel from fission but not zero waste either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power#Waste_management

Good thing for this conversation that it can decrease locally.

(literally, otherwise life would not exist)

I don't think this is the argument tomp is making though.

Only if the universe is a closed system.

Hopefully it requires less energy to leave this universe for another than is available within the current universe.

very nicely put, I'll steal that if you don't mind.

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