Comment by macspoofing | Hacker News Reader

Comment by macspoofing | Hacker News Reader

We're going to have to build up our Nuclear infrastructure eventually because outside of fossil fuels, geothermal and hydro (both of which need particular geography so they can never be the final answer) there is nothing else.

Unfortunately the cultural push is for wind and solar, so it looks like we're going to have to give wind and solar the 'old college try' and lose precious decades before we realize we need nuclear.

It would have been nice to invest in Nuclear in the 70s to the same level as France, for example, and thereby prevent trillions of tons of CO2 that were emitted between the 70s and today from being emitted, and the trillions more between now and whenever we wake up to the fact that wind and solar just can't scale. I suspect future generations will take a dim view of the anti-nuke environmental movement.

Worse, though wind and solar collectors may reduce CO2 emissions they are incredibly environmentally destructive in other ways. Let's keep mind that global warming is only one aspect of environmental destruction. The other is regular habitat and ecosystem collapse due support of human civilization (cities, agriculture, transportation etc.). Solar and wind collectors have horrendous land-use requirements (land-use around mining for necessary materials, deployment of the collectors, and finally land-fill once out of use). So when it comes to ecosystem destruction, solar and wind make it worse on all counts.

I have no fuckin clue what environmentalists think will happen to the environment when we increase Solar and Wind collectors by several orders of magnitude (which would be necessary to support 7-10 billion people move partially from fossil fuels). Pure Insanity.

Oh well. It is what it is.

Your post reads oddly anti-renewables. You can't genuinely discuss energy and renewables in 2021 without mentioning battery storage -- so many procurements now are packaged solar/batteries. No one suggests pure wind/solar, but rather batteries as a 3-4 day short-term storage system. Yes, long term storage is needed, that is an acknowledged sticking point that many companies are looking at. There is in fact evidence that solar is beneficial to some ecosystems it's installed in, and it certainly adds value to homeowner's houses too. But with batteries, you unlock the next level for renewables.

With these batteries in hand, you don't need new base-load nuclear power, it's much slower and harder to build, in terms of regulatory and complexity issues, and it's going to cost you a lot more -- see the debacle in South Carolina and their wasted money on a failed nuclear plant. The only place really building new nuclear is China, but why would the US when electricity demand growth is largely flat in recent years and only smaller bits of incremental additions are needed to replace retiring or dirtier plants? Where do you see nuclear fitting in, which design to be used, and how will it be funded?

Compared to solar/wind/batteries, there's simply nothing as cost-effective at stopping climate change.

There's very little doubt that investments in wind and solar are beneficial. It may not get to the point that it takes the place of everything else but it is definitely a good ancillary source. As in the solar panels on your house might not be enough to subvert traditional power sources, but it will take some of the stress off the grid. It may not be helpful to the current situation in Texas, but it definitely helps a place like Texas in the summer.

>As in the solar panels on your house might not be enough to subvert traditional power sources, but it will take some of the stress off the grid

Sure, except that's not really a problem we are trying to solve.

That solar and wind have niche application, sure, I agree. There will always be applications and settings where solar and wind make sense. The argument that is made is that solar and wind can replace fossil-fuel generated power. And sometimes the argument is made that solar and wind can replace fossil-fuel generated power AND nuclear power. That's crazy talk but like I said, as a society we already made the choice to give it a try. We'll lose decades on top the decades we already lost, but it is what it is.

Citation needed.

Citation for which part? That solar and wind have huge land-use requirements compared to nuclear (and even other generation sources)? That we need to increase production of solar and wind collectors by several orders of magnitude to fully replace fossil fuel generated power, and by extension need to increase mineral extraction (rare-earth or otherwise) to build them? That every single collector we build today will need to be land-filled at some point in the future and replaced by another one we have yet to build? That there is no battery technology today that can bridge the intermittency issues of solar and wind in order for that technology to actually power the economy without fossil fuel backup? That global warming is not the only environmental problem we are dealing with?

Those are all statements of fact.

Those doesn't look like facts at all but your opinions but feel free to prove otherwise.

Let's start with a simple one:

>solar and wind have huge land-use requirements compared to nuclear

Can you build nuclear in the oceans, safely, like offshore wind turbines? Or on hillsides and in desert hundreds of kilometres from the nearest town (and get people to work there without disrupting the local ecology with local housing etc.) using only land no one wants? Land is not something we have unlimited amounts of and in many places it is only better if it is somewhere else or smaller than what is there now.

Can we build a nuclear plant that is safe? Not according to you or a talking head but to the people who have to live close to it. If you won't you clearly don't believe in it your self so, would you rather live close beside its perimeters with your children in an earthquake, tsunami or hurricane compared to windmills?

>global warming is not the only environmental problem we are dealing with

No, one of the big ones is that the rich countries who have polluted for decades wants everyone to now live up to their rules today which is not going to happen. So before anything else all of us that live in the richest parts of the world have to pay for everyone who doesn't to get environmentally friendly electricity. The problem is global and the people who are being lifted out of poverty today have as much right to use old coal technicology today as we had 50 years ago unless we pay the difference in cost for them.

Will you help pay for electricity in places that need it more than you to save the planet? Because that is the biggest problem we need to solve - not if Sweden use nuclear or Texas upgrade its grid. Those are close to irrelevant unlike the costs of environmentally safe power plants in India, Africa, China, etc.

>Can you build nuclear in the oceans, safely, like offshore wind turbines? Or on hillsides and in desert hundreds of kilometres from the nearest town (and get people to work there without disrupting the local ecology with local housing etc.) using only land no one wants? Land is not something we have unlimited amounts of and in many places it is only better if it is somewhere else or smaller than what is there now.

I don't know how you can say that it is merely an opinion and not fact that, land-use requirements of solar and wind are high.

Also, every square meter of Earth is part of some ecosystem that is already under tremendous stress due to human activity. That includes areas that are deemed 'undesirable' to human life, like deserts and oceans and hillsides. And by the way, those are not the only regions that are used for wind and solar farms. You only need to look at how wind and solar are being deployed today to see that all kinds of tracks of land are allocated for wind and solar farms, and we will have to scale that by several orders of magnitude in order to make a dent in getting rid of fossil fuels.

>Not according to you or a talking head but to the people who have to live close to it.

I lived within 10 km of a nuclear plant all my life, as did millions in my city.

>No, one of the big ones is that the rich countries who have polluted for decades wants everyone to now live up to their rules today which is not going to happen. So before anything else all of us that live in the richest parts of the world have to pay for everyone who doesn't to get environmentally friendly electricity.

I don't understand what that has to do with anything.

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