this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
171 points (96.2% liked)

Today I Learned

17329 readers
981 users here now

What did you learn today? Share it with us!

We learn something new every day. This is a community dedicated to informing each other and helping to spread knowledge.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must begin with TIL. Linking to a source of info is optional, but highly recommended as it helps to spark discussion.

** Posts must be about an actual fact that you have learned, but it doesn't matter if you learned it today. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.**



Rule 2- Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding non-TIL posts.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-TIL posts using the [META] tag on your post title.



Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.

If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.

For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.

Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.



Partnered Communities

You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.

Community Moderation

For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 21 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Spent nuclear fuel is absolutely an environmental hazard, but nuclear power is kinda the least-worst option for managing base load right now.

Practical fusion is decades away still, and while solar and wind are great, electrical grids don't function unless they can exactly meet electrical demand 100% of the time. You need something that can rapidly scale up and down on demand, regardless of time of day or inclement weather, otherwise one good winter storm and everyone loses their heating (assuming you've managed to transition off gas and on to electrical heating). If nuclear is out then your other options are hydro (required very specific geography and has its own environmental impact) or gas/oil/coal.

You can make solar/wind more practical by using grid-scale storage, but the amount of grid storage required to fully decarbonise the grid world-wide just isn't practical unless you can generate significant amounts of power through other means.

Personally, my hope is for a zero-carbon electrical grid in my lifetime. Ideally that won't involve nuclear, but if the choice is nuclear or carbon I'll take nuclear.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

if the choice is nuclear or carbon I’ll take nuclear

I'm totally with you on that.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

Ah, baseload, the old saw. Worked really well in France last year, didn't it? Do you think there will be fewer droughts in the future?