this post was submitted on 17 May 2024
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Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.

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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world. About 1C of total warming. Second chart: about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability. Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases. About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:

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Five Things the “Nuclear Bros” Don’t Want You to Know About Small Modular Reactors (blog.ucsusa.org)
submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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A realistic understanding of their costs and risks is critical.

What are SMRs?

  1. SMRs are not more economical than large reactors.

  2. SMRs are not generally safer or more secure than large light-water reactors.

  3. SMRs will not reduce the problem of what to do with radioactive waste.

  4. SMRs cannot be counted on to provide reliable and resilient off-the-grid power for facilities, such as data centers, bitcoin mining, hydrogen or petrochemical production.

  5. SMRs do not use fuel more efficiently than large reactors.

[Edit: If people have links that contradict any the above, could you please share in the comment section?]

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

I though the use case was that these reactors can be mass produced in a factory and not require large scale infrastructure projects?

The mass production takes time to build up. It takes time to get experience. I've read various articles around SMRs. For at least the first 9 there will not be any mass production. It'll be very costly.

Usually production improves as more is produced. Possibly it improves by the experience gained, possibly by a new factory.

It'll not be immediately cheap and mass produced. While that is often claimed for SMRs.

As small ones aren't as efficient, it'll be more costly per kWh. That it'll be cheaper than regular nuclear power seems mostly wishful thinking.