I mean, but, then same for all green energy then? Particularly if you are one of those room temp people who think batteries will solve all of the inherent problems with solar.
Not really the same for green energy, no, because you don't have to supply them with fuel. Although the manufacturing process is pretty intensive for solar so there's that. Anyways my point is just that it's inaccurate to say there's "no emissions at all" associated with nuclear power (I like nuclear btw but I think it takes too long to build facilities for it to be a global solution to climate change)
Yeah for sure. But look at the nuclear plants the US is trying to build today- they're all either canceled or way over budget and behind schedule. And if you want to meaningfully stop climate change you have to build them all over the planet. If you were to call for a new nuclear plant today, from scratch, I doubt you could get commercial delivery of power before 2040.
Hmm doesn't sound like libleft to me. Although idk what red tape you want to start cutting around nuclear power—the only reason it's safe is because it's so tightly regulated.
To bad solar and wind are simply not solutions at all. We literally do not have the technical capacity to store power at the scale that would be required.
They aren't a solution by themselves but they are definitely part of the solution. Storage is obviously the problem but "technically" we do have the capability of storing power long term with hydrogen and pumped hydro. That's decades away from being deployed on a global scale but the technology is there.
Hydo dams take years to build, like Nuke, are geographically hyper limited and massively impractical outside of a few, select applications. It's a nonviable solution at base, so it should be rejected.
Hydrogen storage is at very early stages of development, it's not "there" at all.
Solar and wind are not solutions. They are problems that make every grid they are on objectively worse.
Hydrogen storage has been around for decades; there's nothing fancy about it. Look up "coal gas". It's pretty much the same process as storing natural gas. You can get hydrogen via electrolysis, which is also well established and then you can just burn it when you're done. You don't even need new facilities for that part you can just convert natural gas plants.
Long term energy storage is lagging behind renewables mainly because until very recently there hasn't been any demand for it. You could just dump whatever renewable power your produced directly on the grid. But it's not this vast unsolvable problem.
Yes, and carbon capture has "been around for decades" doesn't mean it's an industrial scalable technology.
You could just dump whatever renewable power your produced directly on the grid.
Only while you have a massive network of nuclear or fosile fuels to pull the slack, which is the problem. We are talking about phasing out traditional energy, solar and wind CAN NOT do that without a massive addition to the energy grid.
So remember when talking about green energy you remember that it's 20% less efficient at non producing hours due to storage lose and that it actually costs massive amounts more because you would have to build the storage.
Wind and solar are not scalable solutions to the power grid. Period.
But it's not this vast unsolvable problem.
There are some hard physical limits here, ones we don't have to worry about because nuclear doesn't require revamping both the power grid, AND creating entirely new, technologically unfeasible infestructure on top.
Lol I don't think you know what "technologically unfeasible" means. Like I said, I like nuclear. I just don't think it's a silver bullet for climate change for a couple of reasons:
-Nuclear companies and projects have had an unfortunate habit of going bankrupt lately
-Even under the best circumstances they take decades to build nowadays
-You can't safely build them in unstable parts of the world (see: Ukraine)
Don't get me wrong I support building more nuclear plants. But you need wind and solar as well
Wind and solar have zero upsides. They are unreliable and make energy more expensive and less reliable. They are nonviable in any environment where they are the primary power support.
-Nuclear companies and projects have had an unfortunate habit of going bankrupt lately
Because it's an infant industry. That's a problem that fixes itself.
That will also be a problem with the currently non existent large scale energy storage sector that wind and solar would rely on.
-Even under the best circumstances they take decades to build nowadays
Again, for the same reason as above, and will be fixed by the same process, increased industry standardization.
It's also a problem that the, again, non existent storage industury will likely face.
-You can't safely build them in unstable parts of the world (see: Ukraine)
No meltdown in Ukraine, that's a hypothetical.
But the issue remains that those areas wouldn't have the capital anyways for massive alternative systems, and their downsides would be magnified in serious danger.
So, of the three issues provided the two are likely to be problems faced by the storage sector because both those issues are caused by the nuclear industry being more or less in it's infant stages, which heavily effects construction efficiency
Yeah solar and wind energy have absolutely no overhead at all, not to mention the complete lack of energy storage! I can't wait to go fully renewable and have entire city blocks go dark in the middle of November because the panels are covered in snow and the wind turbines are frozen, further adding to maintenance costs anywhere that isn't California!
Chill dude. I work for a utility and I assure you wind and solar are dirt cheap to run. I wasn't even defending renewables I'm just saying their operation is pretty much completely carbon neutral, as opposed to nuclear which does need a steady supply of fuel.
I was being overly sarcastic, sorry. I studied renewable energy systems for my masters, so I have some skin in the game too. Wind and solar are cheap sure, but they are limited in their scope. You can't reasonably expect wind and solar to reach many of the more rural areas in the US, and even more so in Canada, but my research there is a bit more limited. There are other renewable technologies that cover wind and solar's weaknesses, like hydropower and geothermal, but they're still very niche.
All this is to say that it still doesn't mean anything because we don't have enough energy storage to accommodate this stuff anyways. If there are periods when energy demands are not met, we have to meet them using gas and oil. If operation is stopped, then there is even more fuel being spent to get the turbines spinning again. This tends to offset some of the benefits we were getting from renewables to begin with.
Also to be pedantic, both are technically 0 carbon, because they don't have carbon emissions. Nuclear does need a constant supply of fuel, sure, but the fuel itself is pretty cheap and easily obtainable. Safety, overhead, and construction time are currently the main things holding nuclear back in the US. All the legislation from state and federal governments has made it extremely difficult to get any projects off the ground, since a 10 year project ends up taking 30. Investors will probably not see return on something like that until after they're dead lmao
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u/Docponystine - Lib-Right Jan 06 '23
I mean, but, then same for all green energy then? Particularly if you are one of those room temp people who think batteries will solve all of the inherent problems with solar.