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Comment by Lev1a | Hacker News Reader

> nobody knows x about fusion

That's why research is needed otherwise researching will take the research duration plus the delay imposed by people saying it won't be here anytime soon anyway.

> perfectly viable power sources like solar, wind, solar-thermal etc.

Until humanity has figured viable massively scalable long term power storage solutions we will always be at the mercy of natural phenomena (time of day, wind speed and direction etc). Additionally AFAIK "renewable power sources" don't have the necessary power density to make them viable as humanity's exclusive power source.

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> Until humanity has figured viable massively scalable long term power storage solutions we will always be at the mercy of natural phenomena (time of day, wind speed and direction etc).

I would argue we just need to make sure ongoing power needs are met - ie we can always turn the lights on. This doesn't need "scalable long term" storage - although pumped hydro, batteries, thermal salt all work well - it just needs sensible grid design so the needs at any one time are met by available power sources.

This above is obviously a "harder" problem than to just have a few big power plants you can throttle on or off but not that much harder and we already have the technology and knowledge - if not the political will - to do it.

> Additionally AFAIK "renewable power sources" don't have the necessary power density to make them viable as humanity's exclusive power source.

This is flat out wrong. many communities already exist exclusively on renewables.

> This is flat out wrong. many communities already exist exclusively on renewables.

"Communities" maybe but what about (heavy) industry like the the one required to e.g. manufacture more wind/water turbines and parts, (continue) to research more efficient technologies in the future, to sustain the growing population etc. ?

Iceland seems to do pretty well on almost exclusively renewables. And this includes Aluminium smelters which are amongst the most power-intensive heavy industries.

Iceland uses plenty of geothermal power. That doesn't say anything about what's feasible with wind/solar.

Wind/solar and hydro/geothermal really should be described by different words. Using "renewables" for both causes a lot of confusion.

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