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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Nuclear is the only optimistic energy solution—I.e. one that could enable continually increasing human prosperity, rather than rationing. Forget simply replacing today’s energy generation. That’s sad. What does the future look like when we have 10 times as energy available? Moreover, technology that will “level up” civilization is almost certainly going to be an outgrowth of nuclear development, or something similarly energetic, rather than windmills or solar.

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After having read the IPCC report, no. A mix of energy is a very viable solution. And if states would not cater to the needs of the nuclear industry, we would have zero plants right now because the price of electricity was never high enough to get the plants insured. Which might change if the price for power climbs, but with renewables on the rise, a limit to that rise or even decline is to be expected.

And for some reason, mainstream social media loves nuclear, so I do question if there is a bias for a technology that every spacefaring state, except for india and china (AFAICT?), has botched at some catastrophic event so far.

>What does the future look like when we have 10 times as energy available?

What does the future look like when we have 10 times the efficency on energy use? This is the right question/goal.

Denemark (IIRC) has sometimes reached the 100% solar/wind coverage, sure in a sunny day and low demand situation, but 10 years ago this was unthinkable. This appear the true way of prosperity, not the growt of availability/consumption.

> This is the right question/goal.

No. I have seen the effects of this "goal" at scale in my personal life. Semi-non-effective HVAC systems that I now have to run 24/7/365, LED lights with weird flicker that perpetually antagonize me everywhere, vehicles with obnoxious start/stop mechanisms that absolutely induce premature wear (causing much more serious waste than otherwise). Oh yeah - my washing machine doesn't really fill up with water all the way, so I run FOUR cycles just to make sure everything is properly rinsed. This one isn't even directly about energy (someone was trying to save water), but it consumes more energy as a consequence. Is this what the environmentalists were going for with the fake "deep fill" selector knob on my ultra-high "efficiency" machine?

The people pushing "efficiency at any cost" are either completely blind to the idea of 2nd order+ consequences or are evil/anti-human. I cannot fathom a different set of options. Do you realize that you have to live on this damn planet with all these side-effects too?

I am completely over it. Let's figure out how to make energy carbon free and infinite. Let's stop fucking over the user experience in every possible way just so we can feel like we are doing something to "help".

The water saving thing is truly obnoxious because water is a very regional issue. Why are people in regions with more than ample fresh water made to use inferior toilets designed to use little fresh water? Because activists from dry places think their regional water problems are universal and try to foist their water-saving nonsense onto everybody else. They're coming for high-flow shower-heads too; it takes me three times as long to rinse out my hair with those shower-heads so the water savings don't even exist. I think it's probably only a matter of time before they start making shower heads with built-in timers that force everybody to take navy showers.

> I think it's probably only a matter of time before they start making shower heads with built-in timers that force everybody to take navy showers.

Moen already has a "smart" shower.

https://www.moen.com/smart-home/smart-shower

i solidarize with you about the madnees of this "over-everything", but maybe marketing department at the higher floors are to blame, more than environmentalist, usually they are not sitting in the executive boards...

> What does the future look like when we have 10 times the efficency on energy use

Energy efficiency improvements of that magnitude don’t exist. In most industries, getting a 10% efficiency improvement would be groundbreaking. These are limits dictated by physics.

True, an overall 10% improvement is a big number, one order of magnitude is SF now. But for single technologies, more than 10% is possible, internal combustion engines vs electric, incandescent light vs led.. So reasoning on the global efficiency (resource and energy use, recycling of materials, capture of wasted energy, ) is the mainline to go. IN nature photosynthesis is around 100% efficient.

> photosynthesis is around 100% efficient.

It's closer to 2% efficient:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetic_efficiency#Plan...

> IN nature photosynthesis is around 100% efficient.

If your measure of efficiency of photosynthesis is how much sunlight is turned into chemical energy, its in the low single digit percentages. C4 photosynthesis is something like ~4% efficient, C3 is lower still.

Ops, true, overall photosynthesis is low, i remembered some higher capture eff. at some wavelenghts.. (just retina photon conversion is about 50% IIRC)

It exists for some segments, it happened for household lighting.

And it happened for computing across huge orders of magnitude.

Having excess energy is great!

We can use it for alot of useful stuff. For example to:

- Recycle waste products. Most (not all) things are recyclable you just need the energy.

- Grow food vertically so more land can be nature.

- Siphon greenhouse gasses out of the atmosphere.

- Desalinate Water

Many of those extra things can be intermittent and shut down when excess power isn’t available. Which means can overbuild solar and wind to satisfy everything but the worst case, and use the excess most of the time.

The result is that don’t need seasonal storage only daily storage. It is likely better to build more capacity than long-term storage. Although, generated fuels like hydrogen might work well for long-term storage.

Production facilities idleing is not free. Intermittent production means the equipment isn't generating any money while costing the owner money. Wheter this is significant depends on the cost of the facility, economic yield from production and if costs are energy dominant or not.

About this i absolutely agree.. if there is an equal amount of wisdom.

I fear this sort of argument will fall on deaf ears here. This is a forum where tons of people believe rural/suburban people should be coerced into a car-less urban lifestyle. It works for them, so it should work for everybody else.. Getting people to live in dense urban housing and be dependent on public transit is considered a desirable outcome, not a regrettable but necessary consequence of reducing emissions. Talk of reducing emissions is used as a justification, but isn't the root motivation for these urbanization advocates. Offering up technical solutions that reduce the environmental toll of the present social order isn't met with enthusiasm because it misses the point, which is to change up the social order.

If you find a way to explain how nuclear reactors will get more people riding buses and bicycles in cities, then you'll have their attention.

> This is a forum where tons of people believe rural/suburban people should be coerced into a car-less urban lifestyle.

This is a forum where a few people believe rural/suburban people should be coerced into a car-less urban lifestyle, and say so very vocally. Don't mistake that for a consensus. It's not. You can find a lot of other viewpoints here as well.

Okay fair, but they make sure to over-represent themselves in every HN conversation concerning power generation, cities, cars or bicycles.

I think the style of argument rayiner is employing is essentially preaching to the choir; it won't land with people who derive their anti-nuclear stance from a pro-urbanization goal. And this seems to be the primary motivation of anti-nuclear people on HN specifically. In the general public, earnest if misguided concern for safety is more common than a pro-urbanization motive, but HN isn't representative of the general public.

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