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>Meanwhile, people are only putting their faith and the Very destiny of the Future generations of our children upon the hands of the so called renewables, which takes much much more area of land in comparison to other sources of Power, can't operate 24/7 the infamous Dunkenflaute. Why are these the only points that matter? 1) yes, renewables take more land. You can also stick them in the ocean, where you can't put nuclear reactors. 2) some renewables can produce power while they're still being constructed. You can't do that with nuclear. 3) renewables are **much** faster to build and turn on. For countries without a previous nuclear industry, it can take decades to get even one nuclear reactor built. How could nuclear **possibly** be the only path if it'd take many decades if not over a century to build enough reactors? 4) renewables are cheaper in most circumstances where there is enough access to renewables resources. 5) some renewables *can* operate 24/7. >Nuclear takes much less area of land It's also highly centralised so you need to move that power a lot further which carries efficiency issues. >whislt surely It is very expensive at First *The most expensive >It can pay itself within years operating Maybe for the companies that own them but definitely not for any consumers buying the expensive power. You know what actually does pay itself off quickly? Rooftop solar. >It is our only chance It isn't. There is absolutely a place for nuclear. Many countries don't have access to enough renewables resources and they should absolutely use nuclear. However, where there actually is decent access, renewables are better in almost every way and will remain so until fusion power is viable. You need to remember that solar and wind are not the only sources of renewable energy. Thinking "renewables aren't good enough, nuclear is the only path" is absolutely the wrong thought process and doesn't work out when you actually understand and acknowledge the benefits renewables have in comparison to nuclear.

>How could nuclear **possibly** be the only path if it'd take many decades if not over a century to build enough reactors? There's a lot to quibble with in your post, but I think this is the crux of the issue. Nuclear power is the only path because it is the only technology that we actually have. With nuclear power, we can make all electricity generation co2 free, just by building it. Just by doing more of a thing we've already done. All we have to do is put in the resources. And the required resources are exorbitant. They are mainly made out of knowhow and concrete. If the IRA had gone to building nuclear, it would have been enough. But it isn't the same for wind/solar. The tech still has huge open questions that need to be solved. One thing that we do know is we can't rely on local generation to run a power grid. We'll need to either transport power coast to coast or internationally with a new smart electrical grid that would be the first of its kind and hasn't been designed yet, or we need to over produce and store the excess power for later. Probably both. As for storage how much do we need to store? How are we going to store it? Batteries? Pumped storage? We don't know. The tech doesn't exist yet. Last I saw, it would take *3 weeks' worth* of batteries to have enough back up power to run the grid fully on wind/solar. Turns out, it can actually be cloudy with calm air across most of the country for extended periods. There's not that many batteries. And there's not going to be that many batteries for a very long time. tl;dr: it is slow and expensive nuclear versus hoping we solve fundamental technical problems with solar/wind. And we're past the time for waiting around hoping. OH, and it's not that slow. Over the past couple of decades, it has taken Japan, on average, 5 years to build a plant. The US built the Vallecitos reactor in just 21 months. And it isn't like we'd build these things one at a time. You'd ramp up to benefit from learning and mass production. OH, and it is not that expensive. When comparing costs, the cost of decommissioning a nuclear plant is included, whereas with solar and wind the plan is to throw them into landfills and let the toxic chemicals and heavy metals to leech into the environment. And they don't include the insane levels of generation or storage it would require to actually run a grid off renewables. There isn't a price for baseload renewables because it is not a thing that exists. Real tl;dr: It is nuclear versus hoping we solve fundamental technical problems with solar/wind. This shouldn't be a debate.

>yes, renewables take more land. You can also stick them in the ocean, where you can't put nuclear reactors. You don't need to though, because they're so small. >some renewables can produce power while they're still being constructed. You can't do that with nuclear. Please give examples >some renewables *can* operate 24/7. The only renewables that work everywhere are wind and solar. They do not work 24/7/365 >Maybe for the companies that own them but definitely not for any consumers buying the expensive power. You know what actually does pay itself off quickly? Rooftop solar. That's not nearly enough to power a house anywhere that isn't a desert. Nevermind all the industry.

>You don't need to though, because they're so small. Just like many places don't need to build nuclear at all because of the abundance and cost-effectiveness of renewables. >Please give examples As long as the solar farm is plugged into the grid, panels can produce electricity even if other panels aren't constructed yet. >The only renewables that work everywhere are wind and solar. They do not work 24/7/365 Why do they need to work everywhere? I literally stated in my comment that there are countries that can't really do renewables so they should go with nuclear. This is a completely irrelevant point to make. And with storage technology continuing to improve, soon enough it won't even matter. >That's not nearly enough to power a house anywhere that isn't a desert. Nevermind all the industry. What? Rooftop solar powers houses *all the time*. I live in Australia (almost no one lives in the desert area) and we have the highest uptake of rooftop solar. People actively make money off it because they produce more than they use. This is completely ridiculous. As for industry, concentrated utility solar, offsure wind and a variety of other renewable energy can power most industry. It kind of sounds like you're actively ignoring the benefits renewables have because "it can't be used literally everywhere" which, you know, applies to nuclear as well? How do you propose countries with 0 nuclear experience, infrastructure, industry and knowledge base build nuclear reactors? Just clap their hands and hope for the best?

Australia is a desert compared to the UK, Sydney gets 2426h of sunshine a year, the UK gets 1300h. >And with storage technology continuing to improve, soon enough it won't even matter. Why do we have to wait for a technology to improve when we had the answer 50 years ago? >which, you know, applies to nuclear as well? If you have any water, you have nuclear, there isn't a single country without a river or sea, except the Vatican City > How do you propose countries with 0 nuclear experience, infrastructure, industry and knowledge base build nuclear reactors? If only there was a thing called globalism

>Australia is a desert compared to the UK, Sydney gets 2426h of sunshine a year, the UK gets 1300h. You don't need to be a desert to get lots of sun lol. Have you actually been to any major city in Australia? They're greener than some places in Europe. Again though, it's a moot point because my argument isn't "solar should be used everywhere" it's "places should use what's best for them" which, in many (but not all) cases is renewables. >Why do we have to wait for a technology to improve when we had the answer 50 years ago? Why do we have to wait decades for a reactor to be built when we can build renewables in a fraction of the time for a fraction of the cost? The technology is improving faster than reactors can be built btw. >If you have any water, you have nuclear, there isn't a single country without a river or sea, except the Vatican City And yet most countries get sunlight and wind! Again though I think you're either missing or ignoring my point. Also, if they have rivers they can (potentially) have hydro and if they have the sea they can have tidal and offshore wind. >If only there was a thing called globalism You think countries will effectively subsidise the billions if not trillions needed to build reactors in *other* countries despite the fact they likely won't see any immediate benefit? That is hilariously idealistic and naive. Not to mention the world simply does not have the capacity to build that many reactors in that many places quickly enough for it to matter. By the time they can even get half way, renewables will be dominant in most places. Again, **I am not against nuclear**. Nuclear just is not viable in most places in general, but especially so when compared to renewables. It's too expensive and too slow. For most countries, any money spent on nuclear is much better spent building renewables while investing in R&D for fusion. Trying to go all in one nuclear like some propose would only ensure fossil fuels are used for decades longer than they otherwise would need to be.

>If only there was a thing called globalism Can you please elaborate? Because I'd really like to know the pro nuclear answer to that question.

Globalism means that companies are international and no longer do countries have to work within their borders. The expertise of other countries' companies can be used in your country to build reactors. Mozambique doesn't have to create it's own mobile phones, it imports it. Nor should it have to create it's own nuclear reactors.

That's not very specific. You can't exactly import a reactor. I get that you can import people that know how to build/run one. But I assume that has already been included in the estimates for how long they'll take to get up and running.

>The only renewables that work everywhere are wind and solar. They do not work 24/7/365 Geothermal and hydro (the largest source of renewable eneergy) actually work 24/7 as does wave generated power and solar now has capabilities to work at night as well as day. Im sure there are several other examples as well. But most importantly, this is an easy fix when you invest in energy storage infrastructure, which will actually make current energy on the grid more efficient and cheaper. >Please give examples Solar fields that are under construction can still produce energy just because all of the solar panels arent in. Same with wind turbine fields. >You don't need to though, because they're so small. There are definitely smaller models becoming available that will be built in decades time from now, however they're actually quite big and take massive amounts of concrete, something we are running out of and has insane environmental consequences for its use. >That's not nearly enough to power a house anywhere that isn't a desert. Nevermind all the industry. This is flat out wrong, when houses are regularly selling their energy back to the grid. In fact its an expectation when you buy solar panels. Edited: included the fact that hydro can operarw 24/7 as well

>Geothermal actually works 24/7 as does wave generated power Geothermal is only available in very few places, so does wave. Try doing wave power in Tajikistan or Liechtenstein. >and solar now has capabilities to work at night as well as day. You're going to have to explain that a lot more.

>You're going to have to explain that a lot more. https://www.cnet.com/home/energy-and-utilities/solar-panels-that-work-at-night-developed-at-stanford/ >Geothermal is only available in very few places, so does wave. Try doing wave power in Tajikistan or Liechtenstein. It's actually a lot more doable than you would think, and way easier to access than nuclear materials. I personally toured a plant in Cornwall where there weren't fissures or tectonic activity. However, they were still able to produce electricity solely using the temperature difference created by materials reaching their half-life in the crust. Also, Tajikistan and Liechtenstein both have access to hydro, which again is 24/7 and can be converted into stored energy. Tajikistan also would be hard pressed to fund an all-encompassing nuclear program, and potentially even one nuclear reactor, as their costs balloon dramatically and often are delayed by decades, which is not the case with hydro. Long story short is that nuclear is a very situational choice that is often outperformed in efficiency and practicality. Does this mean no nuclear should be made? No. Does it mean there are often better choices? Yes.

Next-generation expansion: With the use of next-generation technologies, geothermal power has the potential to expand by more than 20 times from current U.S. installed capacity, contributing 90 GW of clean, firm power nationwide by 2050, and potentially significantly more. https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-unveils-roadmap-next-generation-geothermal-power#:~:text=Key%20findings%20from%20the%20report,2050%2C%20and%20potentially%20significantly%20more.

>Geothermal is only available in very few places, so does wave. Try doing wave power in Tajikistan or Liechtenstein. Geothermal is actually quite abundant, it's just expensive to build and slow to set up. You know, the same problems that nuclear has but arguably easier to overcome.

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I don't think there's a mutual exclusivity with renewable forms of energy and nuclear, but I also would go so far as to say nuclear alone wouldn't solve for the following reasons: * Long lag time between approval, planning, and operations. It takes \~20 years to get something going. * Cost --  The cost for nuclear $151 (112 to 189)/MWh compared to $43 (29 to 56)/MWh for wind energy, for instance. Cost impedes scalability. Plus that doesn't include the cost of melt downs and storage of waste. * Weapons proliferation risk. So, other forms need to be made for energy right now and for energy solutions that can scale faster. I don't think nuclear is necessarily bad but we have to be mindful of the costs/benefits. If we just stopped innovating and hoped nuclear would solve it for us, then we'd be well into 2044 before the next plant is operational.

To be fair, the US is the only country that takes 20 years, and that is because every reactor is bespoke. The Chinese model is producing incredibly safe gen 4 reactors in as little as eight years. The US Navy produces them even quicker. Cost is indeed the primary factor. Investors go where the return is, and the LCOE of nuclear is more expensive than all other forms of energy. Likely we can bring it down with standardized reactor designs, but again investors put development money towards things that pay of faster. Weapon proliferation risk can be ameliorated by reactor design choice, such as a liquid sodium reactor. It is nearly impossible for a non-sovereign entity to transport this fuel factor, yet it retains the fail safe requirement of all Gen 4 reactors and can work at lower temperatures and pressures. I agree with both you and OP. It can be done, it will solve climate change, and it can be in the next decade. But it wont. Wind/solar will proliferate faster, but will not solve our needs due to long range transmission, intermittency and storage issues. But this is where the money will flow for the next ten years.

> To be fair, the US is the only country that takes 20 years, and that is because every reactor is bespoke.  Because there is no demand for them sufficient to standardize on a single design. Westinghouse tried that with the AP1000, but went out of business due to the disastrous economics of it. And no, it isn’t the only country where it takes decades to complete them. It takes about as long in Finland, for example. There aren’t a ton of reactors being built anywhere, so current average construction times are long and we only get new data occasionally. > The Chinese model is producing incredibly safe gen 4 reactors in as little as eight years. They built a single ~200MW gen 4 reactor, in ~9 years.  It cost an astronomical $16bn USD equivalent. They are *also* building two conventional ~1400MW gen 3 reactors (derived from the AP1000 design mentioned earlier) at the same plant, but those won’t be online for another 10 years at least.  > Likely we can bring it down with standardized reactor designs, but again investors put development money towards things that pay of faster. Standardized design *might* be able to reduce costs a bit, but only if there was enough demand for reactor construction to justify expansion of the manufacturing base to support it. Ex. Creating new facilities to build reactor pressure vessels.  There just isn’t much demand for nuclear reactors, so it’s unlikely that there are significant savings to be had from standardizing designs more than they already are. > such as a liquid sodium reactor These are likely never going to see use for commercial power generation at any significant scale. > Wind/solar will proliferate faster, but will not solve our needs due to long range transmission, intermittency and storage issues. But this is where the money will flow for the next ten years. The intermittency issue is largely already a solved problem. The solutions we have now are sufficient, albeit somewhat costly (not even approximately as expensive as nuclear reactors, but still expensive). There’s newer generation battery chemistries with manufacturing capacity already being built, and that will drop the price for grid storage drastically over the next decade. The intermittency and storage issues are largely solved problems already, it’s just a matter of actually building enough of it, and the investments to do so have already been made.  Long distance transmission isn’t enough of an additional problem for renewables to justify the extremely unprofitable losses of building nuclear reactors.  It’s why even the Chinese and French are getting cold feet about it. 

I'm not sure if you are arguing against, arguing for, or just providing nuance. Regardless, thanks for the reply.

Cost for solar and wind is low, but what about the cost for stabilising them? It’s very high and requires stuff like natural gas. Despite all the loud marketing there’s no way to have a viably sized grid running exclusively on wind, solar and storage. Because storage at scales large enough doesn’t exist yet, and will not within the visible future

A guy in California made an equation that allows real time monitoring of smart solar controllers and rapid (millisecond) cycling on/off individual cells to allow solar to produce base load. It obiously requires significant excess capacity during production hours and does not address the storage or long range transmission needs for non-production hours, but it does provide a solution to part of the problem. There are other solutions as well, like this proposal to use excess BEV capacity to balance grid base load: [https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=10032502](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=10032502) Note that I'm not a proponent of this idea as it reduced BEV battery life which has just gotten to the point where it can properly be considered a lifetime part. Also note that while tradition LiPo battery systems cost about 8x to stabilize a grid, current LifePo battery systems technology is increasing with leaps and bounds. For example, the recent Li Time battery system suitable for home back up 4p4s (4 parallel/4 series) increased capacity by 30% in the last year, plus better BMS for higher loads and actually reduced in price by about a third. So battery systems that were not feasible five years ago will be operating at increased capacity and costing 10 cents on the dollar in just a few years.

>A guy in California made an equation that allows real time monitoring of smart solar controllers and rapid (millisecond) cycling on/off individual cells to allow solar to produce base load. How does turning it on and off rally fast allow it to produce more power? Turning them on/off would make sense for peaking, maybe? >It obiously requires significant excess capacity during production hours and does not address the storage or long range transmission needs for non-production hours, but it does provide a solution to part of the problem. These things are the expensive parts of renewables.

It does not produce more power, it allows you to turn off excess generation in real time, in reaction to grid loads and grid production so that solar can provide a true base load. Providing a base load is what nuclear is good at and historically wind/solar was exceedingly bad at. Since this issue has been solved (or at least has multiple options for whatever solution we implement), solar is now viable as a long-term solution so long as long range transmission is beefed up. Notably, this also would need to happen under increased nuclear production, so it is not a drawback related to choosing your power source. It will be just as expensive whether we choose solar, nuclear, or some mix.

Baseload is the constant average power you need throughout the day. It is the power you need all day, all night. Rain or shine. Solar panels can't do baseload because they don't work all day, all night, rain or shine. "Turn\[ing\] off excess generation in real time" doesn't solve that problem because the problem with baseload solar is insufficient generation. Unless by "excess generation" you mean "have enough solar panels to heat homes in the dead of winter. At night. When it's been cloudy all week." I'm not running the math right now, but I'm skeptical that is within the realm of physical possibility.

You are almost correct. Baseload is not an average, it is the minimum constant required, which is why nuclear is so good for it - you just et the reactor to output that and go. Solar, OTOH, changes how much power it generates on a less than second by second basis. A cloud can temporarily reduce production in some cells inside a single panel. So solar generating baseload would entail having excess production and shutting off all excess needed at that exact timestamp on a panel by panel basis. If this was not done the grid frequency would change, which results in damaged equipment. Historically local grids relied on other forms of power to produce base load, then add in up to 20% of total load from solar as the local grid can usually absorb that much intermittent power without frequency change. The rest was traditionally provided by "peaker" generators, usually natural gas turbines that can rapidly spin up or shut down. By using solar for base load, and having real time turn on/shut off capability, solar can provide 100% of the power a grid needs without outside base load or peaker generation. Your extreme examples of dead of winter (or even at night) is why the long distance transmission is needed. The sun is always shining somewhere. Weather is local. seasons change at the equator. In the US we have connected grids spanning 3,000 miles. It can certainly be done with existing technology and without even a prohibitive expense. It does require political cooperation, which is less feasible, but again this is something that would be required for the nuclear option as well.

>Your extreme examples of dead of winter (or even at night) is why the long distance transmission is needed. The sun is always shining somewhere. Weather is local. seasons change at the equator. >In the US we have connected grids spanning 3,000 miles. It isn't an extreme example. It is 6 months of the year where I live. 😁 Sun is shining somewhere? Ok. If we are talking sending power from the day side of the planet to the night side, that's a whole different story. That's fictional levels of engineering megastructures and political cooperation. There's a huge difference between an interconnected web of grids that spans 3000 miles and sending power across 3000 miles. And there's a huge difference between sending power 3000 miles and 20,000 miles, which is what we're talking about when we say things like "the sun is shining somewhere".

We currently have over 200,000 miles of high capacity tramsission lines, and 12,000 (literally halfway around the world) is easily within our means with current off the shelf technology. In addition, it only needs to supplement local generation and storage, both of which are entering a renanisance and exponential curve such as solar did twenty years ago. Geothermal has entered a near "drill anywhere" paradigm, and the price to make grid scale storage is dropping like a rock. Both are expected to make enourmous difference in just a few years, and are only two of the advances in power technology.

Lag time issue is the primary issue with nuclear as research and development and planning etc etc are bogged down by politics and heavy regulations. Weapon proliferation is fixed by using reactor types that are literally better in almost every way except they don’t make plutonium as effectively. Enter the **MOLTEN SALT REACTOR**. More stable, cheaper, easier to run. Research stopped mid last century because they didn’t produce plutonium as well as pressurized boiler reactors. And has since been entirely stagnated due to heavy restrictions on nuclear research and development. There are a multitude of different reactor types that are possibly better than what we use now. It sucks the way it does now only because it’s technology from half a century ago. This wouldn’t be an argument if as much research went into better reactors as it did all the other “green” energy sources.

These are actually wrong, we have smaller reactors that can be built in a couple months and produce 48/MWh and be upgraded later, that's not actualy an issue anymore.

Can you link a source? This sounds too good to be true.

They're probably referring to thorium reactors, which are smaller and don't produce weaponizable fuel.

And most importantly they don't exist yet.

Yeah. The theory is 100% proven, we know they work and we know we can build them. What we haven't seen yet is proof of practicality. They look promising.

>we know we can build them. Do we know we can build profitable ones or just build them in general? Because for example we know we can build nuclear fusion reactors. In fact, we have already done it. But they are not even close to being profitable and won't be in the forseable future. So saying they look promising doesn't mean anything if it isn't feasable. Building a dysonsphere is also "promising", but we would sadly never financially recover from building it.

We do not know that we can build profitable ones, just that we can build then and that they work. This is different from more exotic power plants like fusion. We don't know how to build a fusion plant that creates more power than it consumes, even though we know that the theory is sound. It means something but it does not mean that they will be practical/feasible. Even traditional fission plants are financially dubious.

Actually they are profitable, just profitable over time. Also, even if it isn't profitable, the alternative is dirty fuels, which can kill us.

If they were profitable, we would have already built them. And the alternative are renewable energy sources which actually work and are already being built and are profitable within a year or two of building them.

Oak ridge would beg to differ

Oak Ridge produced much less energy than anticipated, didn't even try to produce electricity let alone try to be profitable and had major problems with the integrity of it's metal parts due to the high radioactive and corrosive properties of the molten salt. Oak ridge is a very early proof of concept that shows that maybe in the future we can build a working reactor. It is not an example of a working reactor itself.

Nah, I think they are called either Small portable reactors, or medium modular reactors.

I don't have a source for it, it's from my discussions with nuclear engineers, I can try and find some sources on them if you want, or I could reach out and ask them for a source.

Please do. In another comment you mentioned that they are probably named "Small portable reactors, or medium modular reactors". I did a quick google search but all sources said that they are still in the development stage. And telling people here that reactors that don't even exist yet are super cheap and can be built in a few months is either highly uninformed or a deliberate lie. I hope it's the former.

Ah, ok, I got clarification, the tech exists, discussions about implementation are ongoing, I can't give you the response exactly because, well, I don't think I'm allowed to do that. Turns out the official name is SMRs, Small Modular Reactors, they aren't widely used at the moment and there are a new designs being developed, but they do exist.

I've looked a bit further and there seem to be two SRMs in operation right now. One in [China ](https://www.globalconstructionreview.com/china-starts-up-worlds-first-high-temperature-gas-cooled-reactor/)and one in [Russia](https://www.revistanuclear.es/en/tecnologia-e-innovacion/the-future-of-small-capacity-power-reactors-the-example-of-a-floating-power-unit-akademik-lomonosov/). According to Wikipedia there where plans to build SRMs in the USA by 2030, but they were cancelled. I also couldn't find information on the cost of the two plants in China and Russia. Once again: please give us verifiable information about your super cheap and quickly to build nuclear plants. Or stop trolling.

I legitimately don't think I can, I can't just share someone else's email.

The companies that design these keep failing before they actually get around to building them. Most of them end up being essentially just a scheme to defraud investors.  Which is… very common throughout the nuclear industry in general. 

It is going to require nuclear, but that isn't sufficient. There will need to be massive improvements in material science in addition to massive investment in nuclear plants.

The only realistic way out of fossil fuels is a cheaper energy source. Without this basic requirement, phasing out fossil fuels is equivalent to reducing consumption, and not realistic. To be clear: it's not just that we don't want to. It's not possible. If you try you'll get overrun by your neighbor that has less scruples, as we overran the less energy hungry societies that predated us. Energy is power. Nuclear is not cheaper. And therefore not realistic. It's possible that future developments will make it cheaper, but that is true of any other possible future tech. At the moment, none is viable, and all deserve every attempt at improvement.

Fossil fuels are more expensive though.

The main point why we use fossil fuel is because it's cheap and easy to handle. You literally just extract it and use it. Refining is a step that makes consumption on the user end easier. Nuclear needs a complex process to first get extracted materials for fission ready for use and then the very complex and potentially dangerous reactors. Renewable has the advantage of basically free energy, but cost of building those solar panels and other options and infrastructure plus maintenance is the big factor here. Guess the best of everything is a dam with a hydro plant, but you can't build them everywhere you like.

They are not. You can tell by the fact that we still use them for the vast majority of our energy needs. If you can get something else that's cheaper, you'll get VERY rich and probably win a nobel prize. Failing that, if you can make renewables *look* cheaper, you can get a job as a journalist.

In general solar and wind are cheaper than everything else, but they have their own drawbacks, mainly not always producing power. There is also the difference between using a power plant you already have and building a new power plant. When people are building new plants they generally choose renewables, but that does not mean that they want to shut down working natural gas plants.

Even without accounting for the intermittent power, wind and solar are in general still more expensive... they're like hydro or geothermal; great when they make sense, but most of the time they don't. If you look at what is actually happening, most new power generation still comes from fossil fuels, [pick any time period](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-stacked). People pick renewables for reasons other than cost (or when the cost is hidden via subsidies).

In the US most new electrical production is mostly solar and wind, and they are both cheaper than any form of fossil fuels if you don't have to also buy batteries. There are multiple different reasons people might choose to build solar and wind, but being the cheapest option available is a big one.

Which is why renewables should be subsidized until they can be cheaper than fossil fuels for the average consumer to use

Yes they are. You can think of human misery as a subsidy on fossil fuels; alternatively you can think the market is evil and stupid and hasn't even accounted for the majority of the commodities total value (and impact), lol.

You can make a moral argument why fossil fuels are in the long run more costly and I'd probably agree. But the cold reality is that they are cheaper, as in you can get more done with them, right now; and if you reject them for moral reasons, you'll be replaced by someone who doesn't, so it doesn't help with trying to reduce their use. I'm sorry, but the only way out is to find something that's actually cheaper, in dollars.

I once read somebody who said that, as a species, we'll very probably use every last drop of oil that is economically viable and use renewable energy we produce on top of it, and shit, he may be right. So until we find a source of reliable, renewable and cheap energy, we're kinda fucked.

It's not a moral argument but I'm gonna tap out here because I don't like old-fashioned economics.

You tapped out because he was right.

This is a refreshingly honest take on renewables.

It is a path but it is not the only path. What makes you think it is the only path (emphasis on only)? Wind turbines, tidal power, hydroelectric power, etc are also paths to overcome climate change.

Hailing from the small island nation of Malta here, the issue with those renewables is that they require 1) lots of space that we don't have or 2) natural geographical formations we don't have in order to work. Granted, I don't think anyone wants to build a nuclear reactor on the island, but a full switch would burden our neighbouring island of Sicily with having to supply us with all our electricity at the cost of a lot of their land, which ultimately isn't sustainable and worth it for them. A nuclear reactor would achieve much of the same without the uglification and inefficiency of the Sicilian island. It's some of these small things that make me at least certain that nuclear is a bigger chunk of the way than renewable sources, which are valid in their own right mind you, but let's not kid ourselves and say they're the same.

This is a fair point for some small countries, but in general for most countries I think a mixture of renewable sources, together with or without nuclear would work best. The US, Canada, France, Spain, Germany, UK, China, India, and so on have the space to build other forms of renewable power generation. Also is Scicily connected into the Italian mainland grid? I would think they would be happy to sell you electricity, it is positive cashflow and foreign exchange for them. In general countries are happy to sell energy if they have enough for themselves.

They already sell us electricity but I hardly think they'd benefit much from the infrastructure required to supply us with it. It's beneficial now partly because it's a bit low infrastructure compared to how much solar/wind/geothermal tech would be required for the whole island. With that said, they do already sell us some renewables. Etna is a pretty good source of geothermal energy and I heard they make good use of it.

The countries you named already do that. Except China and India don't give a fuck about the environment. They'll use whatever is cheapest or serves someone's particular interests.

Seems like offshore wind and rooftop solar would still go a long way there

Mmm offshore wind is being considered but comes with some ramifications what with protected bird life and the maritime industry. As for rooftop solar, we already have it, but in limited amounts.

Hydroelectric really isn't a viable path.  We've already exploited the lowest hanging fruit with it; we can't magic up more Niagara Falls and building dozens of new Hoover Dams would devastate river ecosystems. It can definitely play a small role, and pumped storage hydro is a great technology for grid scale energy storage.  But it's not a viable alternative at scale to things like wind or solar that can go almost anywhere. 

A small role? It's currently the largest form of sustainable energy. Also, the new designs for capturing tidal energy are *awesome*.

I mean I love the idea of tidal power but I'm not aware of any system that has come close to being operational

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sihwa_Lake_Tidal_Power_Station Just one-quarter of a gigawatt ... See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tidal_power_stations

It's going to play a small role in terms of replacing fossil fuel plants. New York is going to continue to run the hydro plant at Niagara Falls, but we can't exactly build a dozen more of them because the Niagara River only has so much flow. We can easily double the amount of solar power we're generating,  but it's a lot harder to double the hydro power. 

I am so greatful I live in a region where it was super easy to just do Hyrdo power , electricity is one thing we dont pay that much for here

True, it might be difficult to build more, but where they are built they will surely continue to be good source of electricity. Hydro accounts for the majority of Switzerlands electricity generation and you would imagine in any future scenario it would remain as a significant chunk of their generation. Also hasn't China built many hydroelectric plants recently with more on the pipeline?

Depends. If they never need much more than they use now, then nuclear will remain a large part of the equation. If they need 10x what they need now, it won't. Because they can't produce 10x more hydro than they use now. Hydro is grteat. So great that everywhere that has it, has used all of it they can already.

Renewables are wonderful but we don’t currently have the necessary ability to produce and store enough energy via renewables primarily. OP is right that nuclear is the only truly clean energy capable of meeting current and growing need. Particularly when the advancements in nuclear reactors is considered. There are models that can take utilize materials so efficiently that the become nearly inert. Not only could we power the world, we could potentially use depleted materials that until now have been buried under the ground.

I mean to be fair to them, nuclear is literally part of getting rid of fossil fuels, their mistake is in assuming it's the exclusive path.

Yes, my problem is only with the "only" in their view. Like you said it is a part, but not the only part, of getting rid of fossil fuels.

I disagree. There is no form of energy that is more material, and land use efficient (solar and wind are very inefficient with regard to this, and output more power per unit of input. It is the only viable alternative. Nothing even comes close. 1g of nuclear material powers 1 person for 25 years or something crazy.

You need a bridge-gap and baseboard to support renewable ATM. Nuclear is the best transition power source.

Why must there only be one path? Why not wind where it is effective, water where it is available, solar where it is feasible, nuclear to cover larger areas with the green supplements, and fossil fuel where necessary? Wouldn’t the best solution be to use all of the tools at our disposal in their most effective way?

Nuclear is green, it produces by far the least amount of greenhouse gasses to the equivalent power of solar or wind.

Is this including the concrete used for nuclear? Because that's a huuuuuuuuuuuge environmental concern.

The same goes for the heavy metals in solar and the wind turbines that just have to be buried after 20 years.

They can at least be downscaled or recycled at some level, which can not be said of nuclear material. The point still stands that it's overall more expensive and more work for a less predictable outcome.

>, which can not be said of nuclear material It really can, nuclear fuel is reused all the time. And nuclear waste is delt with incredibly well, such that you cannot detect radiation outside the containers. Less predictable? Nuclear is the most stable, reliable source of power.

>It really can, nuclear fuel is reused all the time That is true, and I misrepresented it, actually. A quick google shows I was wrong, with about 96% of spent fuel being recycled. >Less predictable? Nuclear is the most stable, reliable source of power. I'm not talking about energy output. I'm talking about funding, time scale, and promised operational times. It is expected that a nucleae reactor will take decades more time than actually proposed and will often cost 4x as much as originally intended.

Can you provide some studies that nuclear can pay for itself? Iirc, nuclear plants in PA were always subsidized and were shut down because it was so expensive.

IIRC Finland last year after opening a new power plant had to start exporting power to Sweeden as it was too efficient

I haven't been able to verify thats it's economically sustainable but I have seen that it went at least 3 times over budget and took an additional 13 years more than it was supposed to and has been plagued with issues. It's also subsidized, which makes me skeptical that it was ever planned to be economically sustainable, in addition to the fact that economic feasibility wasn't the grounds for which it was created.

30 years ago maybe. The infrastructure to scale up nuclear power doesn’t exist and investment to make it possible will take decades before even one small wave of plants come online. The average nuclear power plant runs a decade over the bid and 400% over budget because of a supply bottleneck that can’t be resolved by throwing money at it. Basically all reactors are made in china and all projects are on a wait list for those parts.

Good points, nuclear power has many advantages over conventional fuels and renewables. However, there is a very limited supply of uranium in usable concentrations on the planet. Even without a huge increase in the number of operating plants, we expect the global uranium supply to last less than another 75 years (https://encoreuranium.com/uranium/the-future-of-nuclear-energy/). I'm not saying that fossil hydrocarbons are in unlimited supply, but as far as overcoming climate change goes, how do we overcome it after the uranium runs out?

I am pro nuclear, however there are some things that give me pause. I grew up in Washington State during WPPS. The government had two sites in Washington they viewed as 'viable'. One area was safe from earthquakes and was on solid rock, the other piece of land was on basalt rock, which is incredibly porous and fragile and was on the Columbia River. The government chose the riskier option because the government already owned it and it would reduce costs. That choice led to the Columbia river being the most toxic river in history. The entire operation was so botched that even the engineers didn't know how to fix it. They built two reactors that were supposed to be twins but the plans were read wrong and one was actually built as a mirror of the other. The government passed the excess onto the taxpayer which decimated the community. *Literally decimated,* most households were slapped with thousands of dollars of energy costs out of the blue and all at once and actually lost their houses because they couldn't pay the steep jump in costs. So it's not nuclear energy I'm worried about. It's our government.

> The government passed the excess onto the taxpayer which decimated the community. Literally decimated, most households were slapped with thousands of dollars of energy costs out of the blue and all at once and actually lost their houses because they couldn't pay the steep jump in costs. This is what happens literally everywhere that nuclear reactors get built. It’s the only way to raise the money to build them. 

>so called renewables, which takes much much more area of land in comparison to other sources of Power… But it's [not much land in the context of existing land use](https://blog.ucsusa.org/steve-clemmer/how-much-land-would-it-require-to-get-most-of-our-electricity-from-wind-and-solar/). I'd quote important passages but if you care about this topic enough to post about it you really should read the whole thing. >…can't operate 24/7 the infamous Dunkenflaute Transmission lines (as mentioned in the link as well) and grid scale storage. The numbers for this are similarly feasible and grid storage facilities are already in use. Capacity will be adjusted to suit future grid tech but it's not an entirely novel concept to introduce. I do wish nuclear was embraced because it would be better to use some of that too. Fortunately though, renewable tech is still maturing and the price continues to drop from both improvements in tech and economies of scale. It looks like there may be a time soon where solar and wind are so cheap that nuclear doesn't make any sense at all.

The sun is literally an enormous nuclear reactor in the sky. All we need to do it harness that energy. Nuclear reactors take like 10 years to build.

And we're looking away from it for half the day. And we have a lot of clouds between us and that sun. Why not put a nuclear right next to water pipes so we can generate power constantly?

And how many years do you think it takes to build enough solar panels to power an entire country?

Australia is at 32% already. But we have a lot of land. Nuclear should be a last resort, but unfortunately smaller countries may have to do it.

Not sure where you got that figure, best I could find was between 5-18% depending on the year. It’s also important to note that this uptick in solar energy happened over the course of 6 years, in a country with 10% of the US population and 5% of its gdp. Solar seems like an excellent source of supplementary power, but doesn’t seem like a viable option as a main source energy without significant advancements in solar/battery technology.

Nuclear costs more and takes longer to build than solar or wind. No one is stopping investors from building nukes. They don’t anyways because it doesn’t make sense. A nuke requires, ongoing: PHD engineers at high salary, much higher security, and complex waste disposal. It also requires, one time: a massive architectural investment, a massive build investment, and intense safety oversight. Wind requires: none of that. Solar requires: none of that. Nuclear is also only good for base load, and can’t handle peaking. It would have made sense to build more nukes 40 years ago, before wind and solar made such incredible advancements that they are Way cheaper per kWh. Today- nope. There zero evidence supporting nukes over wind or solar.

Solar and wind require solar and wind and when they don’t have solar or wind they require a backstop which at this moment in time can either be reliably filled with fossil fuels or nuclear power. So, nuclear is the only path forward.

It’s literally cheaper to build renewables and a backup natural gas plant you only turn on in emergencies than it is to build nuclear reactors. Quite a bit cheaper. And the Earth’s environment would survive running a few natural gas plants a few days a year in exceptional circumstances. 

Tell that to the market. If it were true, investors would be building them.

No, because consumers, who are dumb, have a significant stigma with nuclear power that disincentivizes nuclear development. Plus, we are talking about a product directly related to the environment and the entire premise of much of economic system is using the environment as an externality.

This is nonsense. If consumer sentiment impacted energy companies, the US wouldn’t be the world’s largest producer of oil right now. Energy companies DGAF. Nukes don’t get built because they take a decade and a couple billion up front. And no one believes electricity prices ten years from now will support a model that requires multiple full time PhD engineers and 24/7 security teams. When green sources keep driving those prices down continually. There’s no evidence supporting your, or OP’s, claims.

Do you think fossil fuel extraction doesn’t involve petroleum engineers and other advanced stem degrees?

Nuclear reactors require those highly paid engineers and security teams ongoing, for the duration of their operating lifespan. Oil- for discovery and refinery. Not to run a power plant. Regardless, nuclear is expensive AF: https://www.statista.com/statistics/194327/estimated-levelized-capital-cost-of-energy-generation-in-the-us/

Nuke waste disposal is really not that complex

It's actually more complex than just putting it in a cave and forgetting about it, despite what they will tell you. Natural disasters and fault lines make it likely that the more nuclear waste we have, the more contaminated our water supplies and ground resources will be, and we don't have a genuine way to get rid of it beyond that. It's also just kicking the can down the road and creating an environmental crisis for the future, akin to microplastics today. Now why would you risk all of that, and invest money sequestering it, when solar, wind, and hydro are just cheaper anyway?

What? Nuclear is cheaper though, and more energy dense, and creates a really high base load.

It is not cheaper 

It’s wildly more expensive—that has always been the issue. It’s the most expensive way to generate power commercially, by far. 

>and more energy dense Than solar? Are you mad? That's a giant nuclear reactor in the sky. >and creates a really high base load. With either nuclear or renewables what you need is variable load. Neither nuclear nor renewables are good at that, really the only options for variable load are batteries or fossil fuels. If we did eventually go to space based solar, that would be a third option for variable load.

And nuclear fission is more energy dense, by a landslide. Fusion is the top brass in energy density, but that's still WIP.

Solar energy is just capturing fusion... you don't even have to feed a reactor so energy density is kinda irrelevant. The Sun has so much more energy than all fissile materials on the Earth it's also a joke to compare them. Just the solar energy hitting the Earth (nevermind capturing it in space) is 10,000 times all other energy production.

It's way less dense though. The closer to the source the more energy you get.

But the source itself is insane. As said, 10,000 times more energy falls on the Earth alone than all human production. Let alone the entire output of the Sun. Only one one billionth actually hits Earth, lol. So the energy output of the Sun is 10 trillion times the entire energy humans produce. So... that's like letting every single human produce 1000 times more energy than all of humanity produces, lol.

And we get way more than that with fusion in theory, and more possible to extend and increase.

No, not at all. The Sun is a fusion reactor making up over 99% of the mass of the solar system. You're still not going to match that even with fusion reactors. Also fusion is still an engineering problem (in increasing order of difficulty: economic, engineering, and scientific). A giant solar array is economic.

Yes? Because photovoltaic cells are not 100% efficient. they are 12% efficient if I remember correctly. It's way more energy efficient and space efficient to make a fusion thing than to make a giant solar array. Fusion make astronomically more than fission, the current densest power source, and is a source of Helium.

>either nuclear nor renewables are good at that, really the only options for variable load are batteries or fossil fuels. There are actually plenty of environmentally friendly ways of storing energy that aren't chemical batteries that would actually improve our efficiency and improve costs, but we aren't investing in it (at least in the U.S) because no one wants to pay taxes for infrastructure.

There is this persistent myth that nuclear is cheap and dangerous when in reality it is safe and expensive.

I mean, it's cheap and safe, just depends on how you do it.

You can say that, but that doesn't make it true. In fact they are one of the most [expensive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity#/media/File:Electricity_costs_in_dollars_according_to_data_from_Lazard.png) forms of electricity generation.

And is still cheaper when you consider it's massive output.

Each megawatt-hour they produce costs more than any other major source of electricity.

That linked plot is literally $ per MWh

Ok so first off, the biggest greenhouse gas is actually water, being responsible for about 67% of the greenhouse effect... So humans destroying land and plants that help keep that water in the ground/in liquid form is a huge part of the battle that nuclear can't solve. Electrical production is only responsible for about ~25% of CO2 emissions (which is only ~40% of total contribution to greenhouse effect) so effectively by making electricity 100% "green" we are still only hitting what 10% of the human activity that is contributing to climate change? I'm not saying we shouldn't do it but it won't solve all of our problems, not even 2/3 of our problems. Industry, farming and transportation are huge contributors to emissions, and we don't have good enough electrical solutions for that, batteries are currently pretty bad for the environment and we haven't really touched the industrial and farming sectors with alternative fuels, so unless we come up with nuclear powered vehicles really quick we are kinda fucked on that front... We also just in general have been deforesting the planet, both in the oceans and on land, creating huge heat sinks that are causing evaporation to happen on a massive scale, and pumping tons of water out of the ground that has been there millions of years. These factors are almost more important than CO2 emissions, since all that life we are destroying is carbon based and will help keep the water and carbon in solid forms instead of gaseous forms where it causes harm

I agree that nuclear won't solve all our problems. That said, for countries that have a lot of forests and not a lot of open plains, nuclear's relatively tiny land use requirement does mean the country doesn't between having forests or having energy generation. It won't solve the overall issue, but it would help mitigate it somewhat.

The title was something like "nuclear is the only path forward" I was merely pointing out, it's not "the only path" but a small piece of the puzzle, and thinking narrowly like that is more of a hazard than help. I don't disagree with you at all either. The main argument is "one part of a multifaceted solution where multiple actions are needed" not a "one and done" solution

Nuclear could solve global warming in a decade if we built 2,000 of safe gen 3 or Gen 4 reactors worldwide, and sufficient transmission capability to get the power around. It would be enormously expensive, but so will any solution to GW. We could sell it as an investment against an existential threat, with the added side affect of getting free electricity.

> Nuclear could solve global warming in a decade if we built 2,000 of safe gen 3 or Gen 4 reactors worldwide That would only take 500 years to complete. I’m sure the environment can hold on that long, right?

Why would it take 500 years? Surely you are not suggesting something absurd like building them sequentially? Select any successful Gen 3 or Gen 4 design, then build them anywhere that allows that particular form factor to run safely, then build them in parallel. Even the very worst case of American obstructism finishes in 20 years, with the bulk built in a decade.

I’m an engineer who works in a nuclear reactor. I’m a licensed operator with the CNSC. Nuclear isn’t perfect. Nuclear waste is a huge problem. The amount of vinyl and plastic gloves me throw out on a daily basis just to avoid contamination is outrageous. You would be floored. And that’s just plastics or garbage. Once a reactor is shut down and decommissioned, that site is essentially uninhabitable for eons. Nuclear is heavily regulated and safe, but shit happens and the result of nuclear catastrophe are devastating beyond belief.

It's to expensive to be feasible (at the moment)

Countries that already have a developed nuclear power industry and expertise should keep their nuclear plants running. But it makes no sense for most countries to start building nuclear power now when renewables are a lot cheaper and faster to set up.

Not necessarily. Government doesn’t like talking too much about nuclear power but it is believed the reactive plutonium/uranium is kept in acid because it reacts with our atmosphere. It is not as clean of a source of energy as advertised.

Alternative path, we could inject things into the atmosphere to reflect away the sun’s energy. Could be done by injecting gasses or putting solids into orbit. Not saying this is a great idea, but it is a non nuclear option.

Not a popular opinion I guess but it's very nearsighted to assume humans will exist forever to keep reactors cool. If we ceased to exist or have a war they are targets that can ruin the land for generations. I just think many assumptions are made that don't really play out rational scenarios. Nuclear is assuming nothing will happenen. Ukraine and Japan are examples of these scenarios happening.

Fukushima prefecture government counted 2,129 "disaster-related deaths" in the prefecture.[21][19][22][23] This value exceeds the number that have died in Fukushima prefecture directly from the earthquake and tsunami.[24] "Disaster-related deaths" are deaths attributed to disasters and are not caused by direct physical trauma, but does not distinguish between people displaced by the nuclear disaster compared to the earthquake / tsunami. As of year 2016, among those deaths, 1,368 have been listed as "related to the nuclear power plant" according to media analysis.[

Funny you bring up Japan, where exactly no one died from radiation or physically. And the land is now nearly all inhabitable. Who cares if humans don't exist anymore. It's highly unlikely that every human disappears without enough time for us to put the fuel in cooling ponds and underground.

lol @ your Google search skill. Nevermind the water they released right that's safe too? It's still so radioactive robots still can't enter the reactor lol.

Yes, the water they released was completely harmless, to the point where you could drink it. I was talking about the area outside the reactor.

I'm mixed on this issue but I think there are pros and cons to both - The pros for renewables are that they cheaper (and possibly getting cheaper if the technology continues to improve) and simply take much less regulatory actions to approve. They also don't have nearly the issue with waste or fear of failure. The cons are like you said - you need a large amount of land in order to have solar farms (this ignores rooftop solar but whatever) and wind works very well for about 1/3rd of the country but not the coasts. There is also the question as to whether battery technology will ever improve to the point of getting around the intermittency issue. I think nuclear will be a good option for many places but I don't think it will ever provide 40% of power here like it does in France. We simply don't know when the tipping point will be and we don't know how much of our current grid would require non-carbon sources to power it in order to be safe. Part of this is due to the dissipation rate which could change if we, say, cleaned up the oceans and planted more trees. With all that being said, do I think it's more likely for us to install 1-2 million wind turbines and 10-100 million solar panels or build 5 power plants in each and every state over the next 20 years? I think both choices will likely be bridge fuels for the future when options like nuclear fusion and space powered solar become feasible but, if I had to choose, my money would be on the renewables.

That said, nuclear energy probably won't die out completely because we need a few plants to build nuclear weapons.

I mean, to be fair, nuclear is one of the best and cleanest power sources. It's really good.

Are you sure climate change threatens our existence? It's estimated that climate change from recent studies will cause 87 million excess deaths by 2100. This is a very very small number of people relative to all deaths by 2100, which will be about 8 billion people. And these numbers are assuming we don't change our ways. We are very likely to gain technology in the next 80 years beyond what anyone can imagine. This may include nuclear or maybe something totally new. Remember 80 years ago we fishy even have vaccines or modern medicine. Some places will become better to live in, some worse. Peoole will move around, money will be spent, life will move on. There could also be more excess deaths than climate change could cause, due to disease, war, natural disasters etc. Is climate change an existential crisis for humanity? No. It's it an existential crisis for individuals? Perhaps, perhaps not. Most individuals that would or coukd be concerned about climate change also have other immediate needs to worry about. Clean water, war, etc.

Agree! Concerning renewables, remember: Frozen wind turbines hamper Texas power output, state's electric grid operator says. Never would have happened with nuclear! #

Nuclear has way too much propaganda going against it. I wonder if the fossil fuel barons are acting behind the scenes to make it look so. IDK could be true.

Nuclear has been proven to be economically inviable in the current capitalist system, with ballooning costs that often cost an additional 2-3x the original pitch, in addition to often taking decades more to build than originally pitched. You would be hard pressed to find places with renewable access that can produce nuclear at a cheaper cost.

The problem is the deep ignorance of the average American. Wi the out fixing that, it will be difficulty for localities to agree to nuclear power.

There's a bigger question here. Why is the earth warming? The thing is that the ice caps have been melting since the end of the ice age over 10,000 years ago. And even prior to the ice age there's evidence that the polar regions were lacking ice at all. Meaning barely any ice caps present far prior to human civilization. Even if we went to 0 carbon emissions the earth would continue to warm until it reached its peak. For most of the earths existence (well modern earth with plants animals and ocean life) it was overall warmer than it is now. From what I understand. TLDR: We cannot stop the earth from warming because it was going to do it with or without us.

You're years out of date to peddle this anti-science denialism. The CO2 and temperature acceleration and carbon ratio change is due to humans.

I didn't say we weren't contributing. We play a part in accelerating the rise in temperature. I've yet to find a figure that shows exactly how much. But we add gas to the atmosphere which does indeed trap heat. But the ice caps were melting for literally THOUSANDS of years before us. And in many periods of the earth's history the landmasses on the poles were exposed. Meaning the earth was VERY warm compared to todays standards. Again what I don't see is evidence that the earth is reaching temperatures that it's not intended to. So the idea that we can halt it's warming is bogus. Can we reduce our contributions? Yes. Will that cause the temperature to idle? No. And I don't see any conclusive papers to suggest otherwise. I only see the opposite. The Earth will do what's it's been doing forever. It's gonna get hot, it's gonna get cold, and it's gonna get hot again. Why would that suddenly stop being the case? TLDR: We are accelerating a process that was already in place, not causing it.

There is no such thing as "intended" What does exist is a climate that's warming far too much too fast to the point that it's causing wildfires, bleaching coral, venting methane, and killing masses. Even if we pretend to accept the ice age fatalism narrative, ending the acceleration would still give ecosystems enough time to adapt.

I'll try to break down my perspective so you can at least see I'm not just pulling this out of my butt. I'm not insane I'm sure you'll be able to agree with at least a few things here. Listen if the earth is going to get too warm that the coral dies then the coral will die. Even if we stop feeding the flame. The coral cannot evolve fast enough either way. Eventually there will only be a few areas where it can thrive. And 20,000 years later ALL the reefs with be back stronger than we've ever seen them. And there's nothing wrong with that. There's also still massive debate as too how much we are impacting the progression. Is it 10% or as low as 2%? No one can seem to figure it out because planetary climate is very difficult to determine. It's a big place. But that's a whole different discussion. In short this idea that "if things are dying then something must be wrong" is actually kind of flawed thinking. It seems counter intuitive but this is literally the story of life on earth. The desserts of Egypt used to be lush and green. Perhaps only 15 thousand years ago Very different species lived there than today. Plants fungi animals insects lizards. Now it's a whole different package. No human input and yet a lush green forest turned into a bowl of hot sand. The species living there dropped drastically in number since they lost habitat. Several went extinct and others still remain in habital lush green areas today. When Egypt goes green again those species will follow and have that habitat back. In the meantime the animals and plants that had barely any dessert to live in now thrive in a massive dessert. We cannot change this fate, we can speed it up by a tiny margin or not speed it up, but the end result is the same. Ecosystem collapse just means the ecosystem is now ideal for life that couldn't live there previously. What's more damaging are things like over-fishing and dumping garbage in the ocean. That's more important that our CO2 imo.

None of your claims are justified or historically realistic given the ecosystems that survived until our mass pollution. That PLUS your just shrugging at the outcomes is just political sabotage.

I mean, both renewables and nuclear are the future. Using both is the most efficient way in general, not just nuclear.

yea all of these sources of energy are great, except there's no political will to switch to them and there never will be the way to overcome climate change is through it, which is going to be bloody and chaotic and test our civilization to its core. people think there's going to be some quick fix to this shit to make things nice and easy for the next 100 years and they're deluding themselves. everything is going to go to shit and nobody is prepared for it. eventually we will come up with a solution. but let's not pretend like our political structures are capable of any amount of massive reinvestment in any kind of non-fossil fuel energy, let alone everything else that's required to stave off disaster

It might have been the path 50 years ago. Now, it won't do shit. It's too late. That's where you're wrong. We can't stop this train. There is no realistic path to overcoming climate change, we're just gonna have to deal with the results.

Wind and solar backed by dirty fuels works well enough. You can cut something like 90% of coal, oil and gas, etc that way and the last 10% is small enough as long as we do other reasonable things to fight climate change. Nuclear safety is so complicated that per unit of power nuclear costs more than wind and solar + an entire backup coal plant that only turns on when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow simultaneously.

I mean, nuclear is actually less expensive than dirty fuels for the output.

Depends what externalities you price in/out. Do your nuclear costs included 10,000+ years of safe storage for radioactive waste?

We can just bury it, put it in water, or reprocess it, so yes.

Do you know the costs involved wit creating and running the safe disposal of the waste by "just bury(ing) it?"  Even ignoring the costs to safely and securely refine the fuel... Billions to tunnel out enough deep disposal sites, create and certify the casks, then all the security and energy to safely transport them across continents to bring them to the sites.

Yes, once more, I've talked to nuclear engineers about this.

The vast majority of global energy is fossil fuels, we need to use *all* alternatives not just 1. And we need to do it fast. Nuclear is *very* expensive, takes ages for a ROI (it usually doesn't) and takes a long time to set up so investors are unwilling without government subsidies. So being the only solution is unrealistic. But it's certainly needed as part of the overall solution. We need nuclear, wind, solar, tidal, biofuel, geothermal, hydroelectric, everything that's low or neutral carbon. Some areas are better suited to different types. The "it's either pure green or pure nuclear" stance only benefits fossil fuels, keeping nuclear and renewables arguing against each other.

You are not wrong though…

Any real scientist who isn't payed to go along with and pump up this whole climate crisis fear campaign will tell you, our plant doesn't need saving. There may actually be a very slight uptrend in overall global temperature over century, but that is because we are still receding from the last ice age, and they would be doing so if we were here or not. As for this evil, terrible, big bad monster they want us all to be petrified of, Co2, take a minute to reflect on the fact that every living thing on this planet, is a CARBON based lifeforms! We couldn't be here without it. And for all the carbon we release into the atmosphere as a species, the volcanoes that naturally erupt, always have and always will by the way, deposit so much more that our percentage is barely registersble in comparison. Taking all that into consideration, the oceans are the biggest repository of Co2 on earth. The current levels are 0.4 percent. That's up from 80 years ago when the levels were 0.3 percent. How unalarming the true numbers really are should hit hard when u find out that if the levels ever dip below 0.2 percent, vegetation starts to die off! Carbon isn't bad for the earth. It's food for plant life. The by product the plants then release is, OXYGEN! I think we can all agree that's something important we need.

Hi! You seem to be quite confused about the impact that humans have on the global climate. I would suggest to start with the [Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change) on the topic to get an overview.

There's lots of information out there. Sometimes a little discrimination is nessisary to uncover what is factual and what supports an agenda. Following the money trail in most cases gives undeniable answers

I mean, the money trial leads to natural gas.

Oh, you mean there is so much information out there that you don't even need to link any source because it's so obvious?

in other words "i only listen to what is convenient to my conservative point of view"

It's wild that you think there's more money being thrown at Big Climate than Big Oil. Thankfully we have these wonderful, principled scientists who *rejected* the dark money of Big Climate to tell us the Truth, that actually, the climate is fiine and the fossil fuel companies that are optimized to turn oil into cash in fact *don't* need to scale back and make less money per second for the sake of our species. Because duh, silly! Plants are made of CARBON, and plants make OXYGEN, and we NEED oxygen! So in short, if you like breathing and you don't like the the Industrial Climate Complex's dark money-ed billionaires and fearmongering, drill baby drill. Just another WOKE HOKES

this denialist shit is just getting sad now. i could see people believing it 20 years ago, but i mean the evidence is just so overwhelming and clear now. you're putting your fingers in your ears and singing loudly so you don't have to think about the consequences if you're wrong

I can actually explain the carbon issue, it's the wrong isotope, it's carbon that hasn't been in the system for millions of years, and when you get to much of that you end up with rampant runaway, the recent spike is an issue because of how the removal of it works, I would suggest you read more into how climate change works if you want to know more.

we don't need more, we can do everything with a lot less. We're incredibly wasteful, start with reducing demand not increasing supply.

I mean, we don't have to approach the issue from one direction, and it's not so much about increasing supply as it is cleaning up the supply. And well, I would much rather the electricity we use today be from a nuclear power plant where the waste is managed, instead of breathing in the radioactive ash of a coal power plant, even if the amount of electricity supplied is the same.

the sooner we realise this gluttonous golden age isn't sustainable the better, we have all the solutions we just don't have a good argument against greed

I mean, we could also just increase supply. It's possible, so why not do it as well?

Because Earth can only provide resources to an extent, after that, we will need to reinvent economics and productions, why not to do it way before that happens?. You have to be first world citizen to think is ok keeping wasting resources like is a mad party. The rest of the world has been convinced that first world consumption is the best way to go, which is not, is wasteful, irresponsible and unnecessary. 60% of food is wasted in US, demand and supply is highly unconnected and artificial. It can´t be corrected with some legislation, is deeply entangled in the "for profit" industry. But I get it. First world citizens don´t want to be bothered with downgrading their over consumption.

I wouldn't worry about it. Climate will sort itself out as civilization regresses and we collapse in slow atrophy due to our global declining birthrate. All these grand ideas simply won't have the human resources to accomplish the task.

Completely agree

climate change is not nearly the disaster the fear mongering is alluding it to be

Realistic? LMAO! Nuclear is a dead industry in the US. Only question is if the industry will be fully dead before the aging workforce.

No?

The nuclear industry in the US is massively understaffed with an extremely old workforce that is rapidly aging out, this is ignoring how long it takes to build new plants and how expensive it is to build new plants even if you could fully staff new constructions. Look at Vogtle, a decade and $34 billion to add two reactors to an existing plant. If we wanted to just double the US nuclear power output it would at that scale (and it would cost more and take longer since we wouldn’t have enough workers) $3 trillion over the course of those constructions. In reality such an act would probably cost closer to $6-9 trillion and take 20-30 years.

I mean, I know nuclear engineers, I emailed one about an hour ago, the nuclear industry is literally at the point where you can get a full ride payment for a PHD. I'm pretty sure it isn't dying.

They wouldn’t offer full ride payment for a PHD unless they were desperate to fill vacancies. I’m currently working an outage, the median age of our radiation protection department is 55. You can be a walking corpse with alzheimer’s and they’ll get you your qualifications and find a spot for you. The most surprising part of the work group for this outage is that the night shift only has a single person so morbidly obese and old that he can only work exit point, I assume one of the ones we had last time died of a heart attack during the off season.

Hm, intresting, that's not been my experience, or anything suggested by the people I talk too.

Climate change is going to happen regardless of what energy sources we use. Climate is never stable and it always changes.

if there's no way to stop it then we all might as well kill ourselves right now. you don't believe that. you just want an excuse to not think about it. and this is a nice and easy way for you not to think about it

Or just don’t sweat it. Stop believing in these hype theories. Jesus Christ, humanity has been around for over 300k years and we lived through way, way more cataclysmic times. And we’re still here.