• SoyViking [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    10 months ago

    Not just Germans btw. Danes are the same. Being anti-nuclear is considered a standard leftist view here and the fight against nuclear power was considere one of the 1980’s environmental movement’s greatest wins. Being pro-nuclear is coded as a right-wing message around here that you mostly have to trigger the left.

      • fanbois [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        10 months ago

        Nuclear power is literally more expensive at this point than renewables. No, you can’t keep using the shitty, cracking, deadly waste producing nuclear plants of the past, not even the power companies want that, and building new ones takes over 10 years, not counting all the planning and beaurocracy you have to go through. And to become CO2 neutral after all the excavation, construction and mining necessary takes another decade. Nuclear power plants are MASSIVE engineering undertakings.

        Meanwhile modern windmills can be mass-produced right now and take like 5 years depending on their placement to be both cost and CO2 neutral. After that it’s LITERALLY free energy for a good 30 years. And they become cheaper and bigger and more efficient every single year. And btw if you ever pull out an article or a calculation that is older than a year for any comparison, you are dealing with OLD data. They have become far more efficient and flexible in their placement and will likely continue to do so.

        The anti-nuclear protests were completely right. Stop playing the people who wanted a safer world without nuclear waste and incidents against the modern climate movement.

        TL;DR: Wheels on windmill go brrrr, nuclear power is not a short term solution and never has been.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
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          10 months ago

          Nuclear and renewables are complementary technologies, renewables are a much more volatile source of energy. Also, when people say renewables are cheaper they’re not counting the total lifecycle of things like wndmills and solar panels.

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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          10 months ago

          Jesus Christ you’re so uneducated it’s ridiculous.

          So you’ve got a point nuclear power is considerably more expensive than renewables but that was never the argument. It has always been more expensive than renewables, who possibly thought it wasn’t, that’s literally never not been the case, even 30 years ago.

          The reason to use nuclear power is a base load. Renewables cannot generate the necessary level of energy demand in their entirety with the reliability that we need. It’s called base load Google it.

          So you need something to provide constant reliable sources of energy, so you’ve got two options either we build a Dyson sphere and have solar panels all over it, or we have nuclear power stations. And I think you’ll agree that a dysons sphere might be a bit beyond us at this point.

          • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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            10 months ago

            If one thing is more expensive by some criteria guaranteeing something necessary and another thing cheaper by the same criteria not guaranteeing that, then the latter just doesn’t exist.

            So nuclear energy is cheaper than alternatives for the same purpose.

            Just like an active volcano may suddenly let out a lot of magma which is going to be quite warm, but one can’t just project as if that amount of heat is distributed over the average period between eruptions, while considering it for heating houses.

              • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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                10 months ago

                Statistics and even graphs in general are not applicable in the “look, I’m right and you are wrong” way.

                First, that LCOE likely doesn’t account for what I described. Because when wind turbines production is down (no wind), you don’t buy from the same source 10x the same price, you buy from another source, and because grids are centralized and have tariff agreements etc complex to just mix this way. It’s a bit like working with Soviet stats on Soviet economy - stats for centralized systems should be mixed carefully with what is intended to evaluate market mechanisms.

                Second, in any case your picture shows cost of nuclear growing significantly. This might be because, say, of quite a few big sites in construction which will return the expenses like 10-15 years later at best, a nuclear site is a long-term investment, which is fact. This might also be because of a few sites being shut down in Europe due to ignorant idiots.

                • smegforbrains@lemmy.ml
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                  10 months ago

                  Statistics and even graphs in general are not applicable in the “look, I’m right and you are wrong” way. I don’t think that’s right. Statistics are a very important tool in assessing the current situations anddrawing conclusion. Here’s an article about that: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5037948/

                  Here’s an article by dbresearch about the cost of energy production from different sources which IMHO clearly shows that nuclear power is already among the most cost intensive forms of energy production. And as I stated before it still completely neglects the cost of storing the nuclear waste for thousands of years to come. https://www.dbresearch.com/PROD/RPS_EN-PROD/Costs_of_electricity_generation%3A_System_costs_matt/RPS_EN_DOC_VIEW.calias?rwnode=PROD0000000000435629&ProdCollection=PROD0000000000528292

                  Can you cite a source or present research data to support your second point?

                  Please keep the discussion civil and cite sources instead of succumbing to personal attacks. Calling the opposition ignored idiots does in no way contribute to proving your points.

                  • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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                    10 months ago

                    I’m sick, so don’t have energy for this argument and otherwise I wouldn’t have time.

                    Here’s an article about that: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5037948/

                    I meant that referring to statistics just moves the argument to a lower level of what is the correct interpretation of the data.

                    https://www.dbresearch.com/PROD/RPS_EN-PROD/Costs_of_electricity_generation%3A_System_costs_matt/RPS_EN_DOC_VIEW.calias?rwnode=PROD0000000000435629&ProdCollection=PROD0000000000528292

                    The article depends on data which is not present there, so I can’t verify it, the rest is an almost lyrical text.

                    Can you cite a source or present research data to support your second point?

                    My second point is from me hearing of a few stations being currently built, some recently launched by Russia.

                    Which would be the data supporting it? A list of projects with estimated capacities, dates of turning operational, launch costs and expected returns? I don’t have it, but seems like a very small dataset.

                    Please keep the discussion civil and cite sources instead of succumbing to personal attacks. Calling the opposition ignored idiots does in no way contribute to proving your points.

                    On the contrary, you need a threshold for what is accepted opposition. You are never going to have the resources to listen to everyone and even to respect everyone. And even to to match every point in a checklist of “behaving correctly in a discussion” without losing the goal.

                    People replacing nuclear stations with coal\gas\etc supplied by authoritarian regimes and pretend that’s a moral decision are what I said.

              • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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                10 months ago

                Of course I’m literally looking at the same graph and as far as I can tell nuclear energy is equivalent in price to gas.

                • smegforbrains@lemmy.ml
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                  10 months ago

                  Can you also see the trend of the two graphs for nuclear and gas?

                  Did you see how much cheaper renewables are?

                  And do you think the cost for the long term storage of nuclear waste is included in the calculation?

                  • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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                    10 months ago

                    That trend is exactly what I’d use as an argument in favor of nuclear energy. It shows that cost depends on adoption and on political situation.

          • LoveSausage@lemmy.ml
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            10 months ago

            Pump water to height when it’s windy , let it down when it’s not. Load balanced. Not so hard eh?

            • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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              10 months ago

              Sure that would work in theory but you would struggle to get any kind of capacity with that system, and of course reservoirs are actually quite damaging to the environment, since you have to flood large areas of land.

            • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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              10 months ago

              Compare the cost of a new water reservoir and dam that can output the same as nuclear, with enough storage in the reservoir to store energy during renewable blackout periods.

              • LoveSausage@lemmy.ml
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                10 months ago

                More not bigger. This is economically viable in contrast to nuclear that only are making bank since they are funded by tax money. One of the reason he former is constructed. And there are no blackout periods. There is always production of renewable energy just more or less. Nuclear on the other hand goes down all the time.

                • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
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                  10 months ago

                  Nuclear has one of the highest capacity factors. Meaning it actually goes down less than fossil fuels and especially renewables.

                • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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                  10 months ago

                  A reservoir is only “economically viable” with government action. Nobody is going to be able to acquire all that land without using eminent domain to force people to sell.

        • Gabu@lemmy.ml
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          10 months ago

          After that it’s LITERALLY free energy for a good 30 years.

          If you ignore the other environmental costs, you mean. Just like solar, which causes untold damages from the disposal of mining refuse, but that gets conveniently ignored by first world nations, because most of the mining doesn’t happen where you live.

        • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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          10 months ago

          No, you can’t keep using the shitty, cracking,

          They can be safely renovated, just informing you.

          deadly waste producing nuclear plants of the past,

          Don’t think people are stupid. That deadly waste naturally becomes less deadly over time. There are procedures for nuclear waste processing and burial sites and when those can be reused. The cycle takes many years, but that’d be the same with keeping forests, for example.

          • smegforbrains@lemmy.ml
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            10 months ago

            I don’t think that’s true. We will have to store our nuclear waste safely for geological timescales: possibly millions of years. Currently only two working reprocessing plants exist in France and Russia and they can be employed to produce weapons-grade plutonium. In France currently only 10% is recycled.

            Sources: https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinero/2019/11/26/the-staggering-timescales-of-nuclear-waste-disposal/?sh=58d3d09f29cf

            https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing

            • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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              10 months ago

              Ah, I’ve just mixed up things a bit. I was thinking of fast-neutron reactors. Waste from these is less cumbersome, and the existing waste can be partially reused with them.

              • smegforbrains@lemmy.ml
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                10 months ago

                But they still do produce radiactive waste, which has to be taken care of. Its true that the amount and toxicity of long lived waste is reduced. But we still need to take care of the rest. And as there is no long-term storage facilty to safely deposit the waste, I do think the risk of storing nuclear waste on the surface is too high.

                I’m no expert on this topic, but reading this, it also sounds like the currently running Fast-Neutron Reactors do not recycle their fuel at this point in time.

                Fast-neutron reactors can potentially reduce the radiotoxicity of nuclear waste. Each commercial scale reactor would have an annual waste output of a little more than a ton of fission products, plus trace amounts of transuranics if the most highly radioactive components could be recycled.

                Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast-neutron_reactor

                • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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                  10 months ago

                  And as there is no long-term storage facilty to safely deposit the waste,

                  Yes, we don’t have things until we purchase or make or in this case build them.

                  but reading this, it also sounds like the currently running Fast-Neutron Reactors do not recycle their fuel at this point in time.

                  I’m not an expert either, what I meant is that waste from dirtier kinds can partially be used as fuel for these, and I think I’ve heard they already do that.

                  • smegforbrains@lemmy.ml
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                    10 months ago

                    But this is exactly the current problem in Germany: It is currently not feasible to create a long-term storage facility for nuclear waste. This is a extremely heated discussion with a lot of emtion going around. I do think we desperatley need such a facilty and we should have a process based on scientific evidence to find such a site. This is a work in progress by the German “Federal Office for the safety of Nuclear Waste Management”. But as long as we do not have such a site I think it’s iresponsible to produce more nuclear waste.

                    My second point is that this seems not be done currently as the vocabulary used is “could be used” and “has the potential”.

        • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
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          10 months ago

          The issue is battery storage. Our current battery technology is terrible both ecologically and in terms of what it does to the people mining it and living in those countries.

      • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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        10 months ago

        I have that little suspicion that it was intentionally (efficiency) planted by USSR when it had connections to western leftists (all those “progressive youth summits” and so on), via emotional association with possible devastation of nuclear war etc.

      • GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip
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        10 months ago

        Eh. Fission is in fact a terrible power source. Eternally deadly leftovers, critical failures have the potential to devastate whole regions of the planet for decades or more.

        Mining and refining the fuel is similarly harmful to the environment as processing coal. It is also not much cheaper than to go for the actually best solution called renewables. Wind and solar are both reasonably cheap at this point, and for example China was recently in my news feed for building an insane amount of solar in the last year (something like more than the U.S. in the last 10 years combined).

        Obviously this is the correct choice for the future, likely paired with fusion power, which when it eventually works, comes with all the advantages of nuclear fission and none of its drawbacks or dangers.

        • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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          10 months ago

          Eternally deadly leftovers,

          Somebody doesn’t know the bare basics of physics involved.

          • GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip
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            10 months ago

            Im sure we can argue semantics here about reprocessing the stuff, eternal not actually being eternal and so forth, doesn’t really change much.

            • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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              10 months ago

              It does change everything, when people fear nuclear waste, they talk about literally eternal. Otherwise we could say that reforestation is not possible, because it takes 70 years (if you are not just growing wood for fuel, furniture and mulch, but restoring a system).

              If it’s not literally eternal, then it’s a working cycle which can be used and be more efficient.

              EDIT: I’ve realized that the thing I’m remembering was written about fast-neutron reactors, which most are not, so you are right usually. It’s actually funny that Russia makes more ecologically clean reactors than USA. Stupid, but funny.

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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      10 months ago

      It’s sadly perceived emotionally by many people as those enormous concrete things with death inside. While burning something is more normal.

      • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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        10 months ago

        The biggest factor these days isn’t the fear of the energy type, it’s the fear of admitting your political rivals were right.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      10 months ago

      In the UK the Green Party are dead against nuclear power. I have absolutely no idea what the problem with it is supposed to be but they don’t like it.