Hacker News Reader

Comment by StillBored | Hacker News Reader

Which is 10 years farther out than this car mandate.

I just wish people would read about France, which despite their current stupidity, rolled out 34 reactors in something like 10 years back in the 1970's. Thereby not only going energy independent, but nearly 0 emissions. Now during the past decade or so, not only are they one of the cleanest (if not the cleanest) countries in the world, they have some of the cheapest electricity in Europe, and are also the largest net exporter.

So, if anyone in politics actually had a brain about this, they would drive a similar mandate through with a < 10 year time-frame, so that rather than powering all those batteries with natural gas, they would be carbon free.

But, no, in the USA that wont happen until we get to the point that all the 1d10t politicians (and their supporters) start starving due to food production problems or massive wars.

View on HN

And the average age of a car on the road is 11.9 years, so all new cars are zero emission by 2035 and nearly half of the cars on the road are zero emission by 2045 when energy generation is 100% clean.

This sounds like exactly the right plan, get one of the biggest and most distributed users of dirty sources to electric, then worry about converting the highly concentrated (relative to cars) power producers to go to 100% clean energy.

I'm not sure how your measuring "dirty" but in many places, its the electric cars which are "dirty". Modern gas/petrol car's exhaust is only really adding CO2+H2O to the intake air. When you look at things like

https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/fossil-fuels/coal...

(which is slightly dated, but only a small portion of the coal has been replaced with NG, and the wind+solar is negligible) its not really a pretty picture.

So, yes, once all the power sources are C02 free, or at least lower than traditional petol, its a net win, but its a mistake to think that moving to electric cars by itself is anykind of win. Particularly, in the current climate where your just moving to NG for the majority of the additional load despite the claims of wind/etc.

Put another way, for every KW of wind/solar being installed your also getting a KW of NG. So best case if you live in a nuke/hydro/coal free area, your shifting to ~30% NG. Which isn't any way to solve the climate problem, its a feel good measure for ignorant people.

Good thing the last generation of nuclear plants is only ten years behind schedule (was supposed to be done in 5 years, now estimate is 15) and 5x over budget

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...

All nuclear problems tend to be political, not practical. Makes sense when every other energy source is afraid of losing to what would be the sole power source (besides some scattered wind farms, dams, and solar panels where practical) if properly done.

> France, which despite their current stupidity, rolled out 34 reactors in something like 10 years back in the 1970's

And those will (or already have) passed their design life. At some point those will need to be shut down too. Will you then change your stance and say they're stupid then? Would you rather these nuclear power plants continue to run at unsafe capacities and risk failures just to make you happy?

BTW, this human component of "just keep them running at all costs" is the main reason many are against nuclear, not because they think a well-running plant is dangerous.

From Wikipedia:

Électricité de France (EDF) – the country's main electricity generation and distribution company – manages the country's nuclear power plants. EDF is substantially owned by the French government, with around 85% of EDF shares in government hands. 78.9% of Areva shares are owned by the French public sector company CEA and are therefore in public ownership. EDF remains heavily in debt. Its profitability suffered during the recession which began in 2008. It made €3.9 billion in 2009, which fell to €1.02 billion in 2010, with provisions set aside amounting to €2.9 billion. The Nuclear industry has been accused of significant cost overruns and failing to cover the total costs of operation, including waste management and decommissioning.

There were a few pro-nuclear candidates this time around among the Democrats, but none of the prominent ones.

How can it be in the Democratic platform if nobody supports it? Is it not written by prominent people?

https://www.ans.org/news/article-463/after-48-years-democrat...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com