Memes

Correct, but don't forget that renewables is an umbrella term.

If you use solar, wind, hydropower, geothermal and bioenenergy, you're diversified and it's all renewable. Add in storage and there's not much of an issue anymore.

We already have 30% nukes. Right now we need more solar and wind. I’m not saying shut down nukes. They are good. They are just a waste of money and time to build new when we have cheaper and easier to produce alternatives.

This, this should be common sense, and I don't understand why it's not.

Okay, so, say I need some energy that's pretty dense in terms of the space that it takes up, say I need a large amount of constant energy draw, and say that I need a form of energy that's going to be pretty stable and not prone to variation in weather events. I.e. I seek to power a city. This isn't even really a far-fetched hypothetical, this is a pretty common situation. What energy source seems like the best for that? Basically, we're looking at hydropower, which generally has long term environmental problems itself, and is contextually dependant, or nuclear.

Solar also makes sense, wind energy also makes sense, for certain use cases. Say I have a very spread out population or I have a place where space is really not at a premium, as is the case with much of america, and america's startling lack of population density, that might be the case. But then, I kind of worry that said lack of population density in general is kind of it's own ongoing environmental crisis, and makes things much, much harder than they'd otherwise need to be.

I think the best metaphor for nuclear that I have is the shinkansen. I dunno what solar would be, in this metaphor, maybe bicycles or something. So, the shinkansen, when it was constructed, costed almost double it's expected cost and took longer then anyone thought it would and everybody fucking hated it, on paper. In practice, everybody loves that shit now, it goes super fast, and even though it should be incredibly dangerous because the trains are super light and have super powerful motors and no crash safety to speak of, they're pretty well-protected because the safety standards are well in place. It's something that's gone from being a kind of, theoretical idiot solution, to being something that actually worked out very well in practice.

If you were to propose a high speed rail corridor in the US, you would probably get the same problems brought up, as you might if you were to plan a nuclear site. Oh, NIMBYs are never gonna let you, it's too expensive, we lack the generational knowledge to build it, and we can patch everything up with this smaller solution in e-bikes and micromobility anyways. Then people don't pay attention to that singular, big encompassing solution, and the micromobility gets privatized to shit and ends up as a bunch of shitty electric rental scooters dumped in rivers and a bunch of rideshare apps that destroy taxi business. These issues which we bring up strike me as purely being political issues, rather than real problems. So, we lack generational knowledge, why not import some chinese guys to build some reactors, since they can do it so fast? Or, if we're not willing to deal with them, south korean?

I'm not saying we can't also do solar and renewables as well, sure, those also have political issues that we would need to deal with, and I am perfectly willing to deal with them as they come up and as it makes sense. If you actually want a sober analysis, though, we're going to need to look at all the different use cases and then come up with whichever one actually makes sense, instead of making some blanket statement and then kind of, poo-pooing on everything else as though we can just come up with some kind of one size fits all solution, which is what I view as really being the thing which got us into this mess. Oooh, oil is so energy dense, oooh, plastic is so highly performing and so cheap and we don't even have to set up any recycling or buyback schemes, ~~oooh, let's become the richest nation on the planet by controlling the purchasing of oil~~. We got lulled into a one size fits all solution that looked good at the time and was in hindsight was a large part in perhaps a civilization ending and ecologically costly mistake.

Global leader in nuclear is also China. They are actually building the reactors that cannot meltdown, but you also can't make weapons from them, and they can run on the nuclear waste we have already produced with the crappy cheap reactors we use. We designed the reactors that China is now building 60 fucking years ago, and just shelved the design.

dude I say nuke when I microwave things

That's the fun part about being in a place where you can hold a discussion. Some people don't agree with you, but they can still see the benefits of the option you are talking about or even agree that they are a great solution for now.

In the US we already have something like 30% which alleviates pretty much all the storage concerns. For our dollar right now, solar and wind are the best place to invest.

Ok so, realistically, if we all agree on this today, when would new nuclear power plants begin generating electricity? With all the regulations which are in place today?

If you're going to do that, then also consider the co2 output of all the concrete needed for nuclear power plants.

No, you just pay out the nose up front.

If I had money to invest in the energy sector, I don't know why I should pick nuclear. It's going to double its budget and take 10 years before I see a dime of return. Possibly none if it can't secure funding for the budget overrun, as all my initial investment will be spent.

A solar or wind farm will take 6-12 months and likely come in at or close to its budget. Why the hell would I choose nuclear?

I’m curious how you think adding nukes have an advantage here. You understand that nukes are not easily shut down? If we have a problem with an over abundance of energy, adding nukes to the grid only makes that problem worse.

... it's currently not possible to store the renewables anywhere

Every time someone argues this, it's immediately obvious they haven't actually paid attention how the storage market has been progressing.

Next, you'll probably talk about problems with lithium, as if it's the only storage technology.