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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Nobody here is suggesting it is. It's simply a viable option that at least needs to be looked at rather than summarily dismissed. Especially given that the problem is such that we don't really have the luxury to throw out options.
Edited by M84 on Sep 6th 2019 at 1:58:20 AM
Disgusted, but not surprisedAt the risk of playing the electability card, politicians do have to weigh what unpopular policies they're willing to ram down the throats of voters who don't want them. If they don't get elected, they don't get anywhere.
So yeah, politicians have to be conscious of what the people want to buy in terms of a government.
Your talking a whole order of magnitude difference, the Tesla one cant even supply a fraction of a city for an hour.... New York alone consumes 150 Gigawatts of power an hour.... and The megawatt power storage facilities look like this for 235 megawatt hours
◊ and have operational capacities that are a mere fraction of a single reactor, in fact they are only in couple dozen megawatts for a discharge rate.
To satisfy New York alone, you would need four and a half thousand of those monstrosities.
Oh and as a bonus, they use Sodium–sulfur which while it has a very long life, is very problematic when you go to dispose of the cells at the end of there life... as they are highly corrosive.
...
Note, that one in the picture was operated by us when we attempted to ditch Nuclear.... it didn't cover the gap.
Gigawatt power storage is NOT feasible with current technology, That's like saying because you have a Pentium II your 1997 computer can play Crysis, after all that's already 450mhz how much difference can 4ghz be.
Better batteries are needed before nuclear can be ditched, its not a process we can work too and hope the batteries improve along the way, because each nuclear plant lost is one that most of the time does not come back.
Except she is, much like her tax plan is illegal, some of her more recent plans have relied on burying things in a pile of words to hide the fact that they cant be done like that... and as others have mentioned, she isn't even doing that.... She is just buying whole sale into anti-nuclear paranoia.
Especially since renewable have issues themselfs and need something to supplement them to cover for said issues.... your other option of which is fossil fuels, which are demonstrability much worse.
Edited by Imca on Sep 6th 2019 at 12:20:16 PM
I feel like this thread has been moving in a "nuclear might be worth considering actually" circle for several pages now.
I dunno how many times I have to keep saying this, but we can explore nuclear power after, following generations on education and pop culture deprogramming, the public has been sold on the idea. Until then, we simply need to accept the idea that as long as it has no public support, nuclear power just isn't on the books, instead of repetitive whinging about candidates not advocating a widely unpopular idea in the most crucial election year in recent American history.
i'm tired, my friend![]()
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And by then its going to be way too late to undo the damage caused by pollution, if it isn't already, the point is that renewable alone just cant manage a grid... The issue isn't so much "Nuclear good, we need more of it" so much as "Nuclear is the only other option to subsidize your grid if your writing off fossil fuels, so its needed whether we like it or not"
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Personally I find maintaining a functioning electrical grid and economy, while trying to keep humanity from gassing itself off the planet to be an issue of incredible importance.
But I will agree the topic has gone on for a while.
Edited by Imca on Sep 6th 2019 at 12:28:14 PM
It really isn't. This is just, as has been said before, letting perfect be the enemy of good.
If you support nuclear power, fine, but acting like literally any other solution to the climate change crisis is an inherent nonstarter is just bullheaded stubbornness.
Edited by PhysicalStamina on Sep 6th 2019 at 3:31:36 PM
i'm tired, my friendNo, its being realistic, without nuclear you can reduce fossils but you cant eliminate them, its basically asking to make a car work without an engine. Its not "Perfect, being the enemy of good" its "We need this to work at all"
Imca, it is an open question whether a 100% renewable energy grid is feasible - check out Wikipedia and Google Scholar, they mention some research on the question and also some examples. I would not categorically say it's impossible unless you have some proof at hand.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman![]()
Mind linking some then?, because a quick browse all seems consistent with what I have been saying... that for large demand storage, the only option is hydro of which is not something you can just make happen, it requires existing natural formations... and while others are in development nuclear is needed to subsidize the grid, with all renewable grids in existence either being of small scale, or with a significant chunk hydro... the largest one without a dam for power currently in existence is only at 1,000,000 people.
The British are experimenting with hydrogen which seems promising, but its not ready yet.
Edited by Imca on Sep 6th 2019 at 1:13:41 AM
People have been publishing white-papers and think pieces saying 100% wind and solar is completely doable for fifty years. For fifty years, it has been vapor-ware in the service of fossil fuels. Heck, near as I can tell the entire Anti nuclear movement started out as fossil fuel astro-turf.
It appears to have grown roots and become self-sustaining - that is, today the anti-nuclear orgs that publish their donors run on donations from people who are True Believers, but if you dig into the history, the first wave was all "Gas and oil money trying to strangle a competitor in the crib". And there are some goddess accursed horrific recent examples.
German nuclear phaseout, for example? That was Gerhard Schroders baby, and he left the chancellorship to go directly to work for gasprom building the north-stream pipeline.
Edited by Izeinsummer on Sep 6th 2019 at 1:24:52 AM
Guys, uranium is, like, so C20th. Thorium is the new hotness (and it produces significantly less waste, while being far more plentiful, available in more geographic regions and a lot easier to make safe reactors for).
Just saying.
Also, why does my autocorrect not like thorium?
Edited by Euodiachloris on Sep 6th 2019 at 9:35:16 AM
Wikipedia has a bunch of links and the fact that some almost all renewable places exist is an argument in and of itself, don't you think?
And nuclear power cannot be easily switched up or down, either, so the storage issue isn't an argument in favour of it. Wind power does not generally need storage, finally, solar does.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanWe are always going to need a mixed grid. Without fossil fuels, we need a solid outputter of some description that's not subject to 1) spikes in use (I'm British — I'm aware of kettles and teabreaks being hard on the grid), 2) drops in output (wind doesn't blow hard enough all the time, tides aren't always in your favour, the clouds won't always listen to your solar needs and hydroelectric has storage issues.
Face it: fission may have to fill the gaps and spikes. And, yes, it can do spikes without blowing up. Chernobyl was special in its systemic awfulness. Also thorium can do increases and decreases in output in ways far easier to handle than uranium can or does.
Edited by Euodiachloris on Sep 6th 2019 at 9:43:23 AM
Reducing fossil fuels has kinda been one of our biggest goals for years, one, and two, would be a massive improvement over our dependence on it at current, and acting like it's basically nothing just because it's not nuclear is nonsensical.
i'm tired, my friendImca's point is that renewables alone will not be able to fill in the gap left behind by fossil fuels. If you want to go 0% fossil fuels, you're gonna need some nuclear. More than what we've got right now at any rate.
I kind of agree that we should move on now.
538: Why Warren Can’t Count On A ‘Women’s Vote’
But it also suggests that both Warren’s gender and her ambitious menu of policies to help women may not do much to help her broaden her coalition where she needs it most — particularly among black and Hispanic Democrats, who are largely sticking with Biden so far. “Warren might be able to chip away at Biden’s lead — but I wouldn’t expect it to be primarily driven by female voters,” Hayes said.
Also from 538: Don’t Let Crowd Sizes Mislead You
The short answer is: No. While the ability to generate big crowds is certainly nice — it may signal enthusiasm among highly engaged voters or produce favorable media coverage — you should ignore any candidate, surrogate or media outlet that tells you that large crowd sizes mean that the polls are underestimating a candidate’s support. It’s just spin; polls are much more accurate at forecasting elections than crowd-size estimates, which don’t tell us all that much.
Edited by M84 on Sep 6th 2019 at 6:20:26 PM
Disgusted, but not surprisedWikipedia is where I started after you mentioned that and didn't provide links.... and small isn't the same as a large scale, I can power my home on solar, but its not feasible to power all of new york on solar.... Things I do with my friends tend to govern themselfs by anarchy but anarchy isn't a viable system of government for a nation, things simply break down as the scale gets bigger.
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See
that.
Your acting like I want an all nuclear grid when I don't, I want less fossil fuels, but to do that you cant subside on just renewable alone, a mixed grid is a necessity you need methods to fill in the gaps.
Hell an all nuclear grid runs into its own issues starting with how non-adjustable the output of non-molten salt reactors is, and how such a system would waste large amounts of overflow power since it would always have to be tuned to peak demand... You need to mix power sources because there is no one size fits all answer, and discarding one entirely (like say I dont know fossil fuels which need to go) puts a huge burden on the remaining ones because they wont be able to match its capabilities completely no mater what you donote , a problem which compounds itself the more you try to remove, but this topic has gone on more then long enough.
Edited by Imca on Sep 6th 2019 at 3:33:44 AM
One alternative might be to continue research on the fossil fuel end. Coal isn't going to run out in the forecast lifetime of our civilization, so consider whether it might be possible that a combination of much higher efficiency and carbon sequestration methods might allow for clean coal plants. Author Ben Bova suggested something of the like - I don't have the science background to know how well his design would actually work, but I assume his theory is at least potentially sound.
Of course, the problem with this is that we really have to change our power production now, so while a reintroduction of coal might make sense in a future phase, it doesn't make sense for the changes we need to make right this minute.
This, I think is a key point that a lot of people who are disappointed by the lack of nuclear power in the debate might have missed; most of the candidates are talking about trying to hit ambitious goals quite quickly to mitigate Climate Change as much as possible, with many of them saying they want to cut carbon emissions drastically by 2030 to 2035. That means very quick action to put it in place, and the momentum for quick implementation, at least on the side of power production, is on the side of renewables.
By comparison it takes a long time to get a nuclear plant up and running. It can be up to five years from when construction begins on a new plant to when it is ready to run, and that's not counting all the red tape that has to be done before construction starts. If you're trying to hit those goals that quickly, nuclear isn't going to be the biggest feature just because of that alone.
Furthermore, a lot of he potential new nuclear technologies to really cut down on waste, which is something they played a clip of Corey Booker talking about his research into, are technologies that we've failed to put a lot of money or energy into in the past, and need their own time to develop that's not going to be ready on the sort of schedule a lot of the candidates would prefer.
So that may be part of the reason nuclear didn't get as much attention as some would have liked.
| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |It's starting to feel like this argument is demanding either 100% renewable or 100% nuclear by next Thursday.
I am 100% okay with using as much renewable as possible, filling the gap with nuclear, and then working on shifting the ratio in favor of more renewable as an ongoing project.
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On my end, I think people are believing nuclear power is a magic bullet and it's not.
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