this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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[–] [email protected] 55 points 1 year ago (42 children)

Honestly, anyone paying attention saw this coming since 2010.

We had twenty years to avoid this: by massively switching to nuclear power in the 90s and 00s.

We missed that exit ramp. By 2010 it was clear that 2 degrees was unavoidable.

The choice now is, do we limit it to 2-3 degrees warming, or do we go straight to 4-5 degrees?

It will take at least two decades to transform our industrial world economy.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (28 children)

"Nuclear power scares me"

Welcome to the result. It's sad, because nuclear power was the way, but instead we propegandized against it and continued to use it as a boogie man.

Ignoring the fact that coal and natural gas still hurt and kill people daily, ignoring there's over 400 nuclear power reactors that are still active, 93 in America... But no.. "Chernobyl" and the discussion ends.

Also Chernobyl was a 50 year old design, and happened 40 years ago, involved multiple human errors ... nah can't consider things have changed since then.

Now we have people using another nuclear plant in Ukraine as an example, and again the fear rises. They're trying to weaponize the plant, but somehow it's "Nuclear power" and not the fact some fuckheads are planning to destroy it in a destructive fashion that's the problem.

Somehow dams that would be devistating to destroy are given a pass, but hey Nuclear power, so scary.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (13 children)

Chernobyl was a 50 year old design, and happened 40 years ago, involved multiple human errors ... nah can't consider things have changed since then.

Things have indeed changed, now construction regulations are far tighter. This is good because the risk of a Chernobyl event is far lower, but at the price of extreme cost overruns and project delays

Ignoring the fact that coal and natural gas still hurt and kill people daily

So is it better to start a nuclear project and hope it can start reducing coal & NG emissions 10 years from now? Or is it better to add solar and wind capacity constantly and at a fraction of the price per MWh?

There was a time when nuclear was the right choice, but now it is just not cost effective nor can it be brought online fast enough to make a dent in our problems

Somehow Dams that would be devistating to destroy are given a pass, but hey Nuclear power, so scary.

I think you're forgetting that once the waters from a dam break dry up you can rebuild....a nuclear accident has the potential to poison the land for generations

[–] matlag 5 points 1 year ago

So is it better to start a nuclear project and hope it can start reducing coal & NG emissions 10 years from now? Or is it better to add solar and wind capacity constantly and at a fraction of the price per MWh?

It's better to do both!!

Nuclear is not more expensive than solar and wind. And today's paradox is solar and wind are cheap because oil is cheap...

Besides, comparing the 2 is totally misleading. One is a controllable source of electricity, the other is by nature an unstable source, therefore you need a backup source. Most of the time, that backup is a gas plant (more fossil fuel...), and some other time it's mega-batteries projects that need tons of lithium... that we also wanted for our phones, cars, trucks etc. Right now, every sector is accounting lithium resources as if they were the only sector that will use it...

And then you have Germany, that shut down all its nuclear reactor, in favor of burning coal, with a "plan" to replace the coal with gas, but "one day", they'll replace that gas with "clean hydrogen" and suddenly have clean energy.

There was a time when nuclear was the right choice, but now it is just not cost effective nor can it be brought online fast enough to make a dent in our problems

So we'll have very very exactly the same conversation 10 years from now, when we'll be 100% renewable but we'll have very frequent power outages. People will say "we don't have time to build nuclear power plan, we need to do «clean gas/hydrogen/other wishful thing to burn»". And at that time, someone will mention that we will never produce enough of these clean fuel but ... How many times do we want to shoot ourselves in the foot??

I think you’re forgetting that once the waters from a dam break dry up you can rebuild…a nuclear accident has the potential to poison the land for generations

In the years to come, we're going to lose much more land just because it won't be suitable for human survival, and that will be on a longer scale than a nuclear disaster. Eliminating fossil fuel should be the sole absolute priority, and nuclear is one tool to achieve it.

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