this post was submitted on 31 May 2024
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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.

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Georgia governor calls for even more nuclear power despite budget woes (grist.org)
submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You know what cost they never factor in? The cost of climate change. If they actually factored in the cost of emissions then nuclear power would be one of the cheapest forms of energy alongside solar.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Another thing a lot of people fail to mention about nuclear power, is the lifespan of a reactor. We have reactors from the 70s still running at full power, it's pretty insane. I'm wondering what the TCO per kWh is for a nuclear reactor compared to other sources of energy.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

A solar farm in Switzerland from 1982 is also still providing power at 80% of original spec. Even today solar companies give 25 year warranty on new panels.

So this is not really an advantage of nuclear. In fact after 50 years a lot of them become a lot less reliable. We recently saw that in France.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I don't remember, but nuclear is the highest operating cost of electricity, until the reactor is paid off by rates, in which it becomes very cheap. Natural gas is the cheapest starting and maintaining and is reaching better efficiencies. However, it's killing the environment.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Methane (natural gas) is cheap because they don't factor in the cost of climate change caused by methane emissions. Methane would be one of the most expensive if they factored in the leaks and its strong ability to trap heat in the atmosphere.