• mierdabird@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    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

    • Kinglink@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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

      And in ten years… it’ll be too long to add nuclear … And in ten years it’ll.

      Solar and wind works in some places, it doesn’t work in all places, and the goal is to start moving away from Coal and Natural gas, it’s a long process no matter which way you go, but starting to add more nuclear capactiy so in 10 years we can use it, isn’t a bad thing.

      “It’s too late” has also been a refrain about Nuclear, but hey, in 2010 if people started to go nuclear, we’d have that capacity today, instead it was too late then, and we can only go solar and Wind… and we’re still lacking.

    • matlag@sh.itjust.works
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      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.

    • alvvayson@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s people like you who present a false dichotomy that are the really evil people in the world today.

      We can do solar, wind and nuclear. One does not preclude the other, contrary to your false dichotomy.

      In fact, we must build out a minimum level of nuclear - it is the only mandatory technology required to stop climate change, because it works 24/7.

      We can add as much solar and wind to the system as we would like, as long as the grid can handle it.

      Grids with a lot of hydro will not require much nuclear, e.g. Iceland can do entirely without it and Sweden only needs a small amount. Grids with little hydro will need a lot of nuclear, like France.

      This was true in 1990. It is still true today and it will still be true in 2050.

      • mierdabird@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        Budgets are a real thing. If you tie up $28.5 billion constructing say, the Vogtle #3 and #4 reactors, you are taking away significant amounts of money that could have already produced working wind and solar installations that would produce far more power. Stating that reality doesn’t make me “evil,” get a grip.

        Additionally, with upgrades in high voltage transmission lines and grid-level storage systems the need for nuclear or fossil fuel baseload in the future is going to be far less than you expect

        • alvvayson@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Obviously, regulations must be changed to make nuclear affordable.

          But yes, misguided people like you and those who opposed nuclear in the 90s are causing a mass extinction even that is gearing up to become the biggest in the history of the planet.

          If that isn’t evil, then I don’t know what the term evil means anymore.