this post was submitted on 17 May 2024
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Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.

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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world. About 1C of total warming. Second chart: about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability. Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases. About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:

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Five Things the “Nuclear Bros” Don’t Want You to Know About Small Modular Reactors (blog.ucsusa.org)
submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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A realistic understanding of their costs and risks is critical.

What are SMRs?

  1. SMRs are not more economical than large reactors.

  2. SMRs are not generally safer or more secure than large light-water reactors.

  3. SMRs will not reduce the problem of what to do with radioactive waste.

  4. SMRs cannot be counted on to provide reliable and resilient off-the-grid power for facilities, such as data centers, bitcoin mining, hydrogen or petrochemical production.

  5. SMRs do not use fuel more efficiently than large reactors.

[Edit: If people have links that contradict any the above, could you please share in the comment section?]

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (1 children)

At temperate latitudes, you can actually get something like 95% of the way there using wind, solar, and reasonable amounts of storage in addition to existing hydropower.

This leaves a fairly small chunk which needs either long-duration storage or firm generation. Nuclear might be able to fill part of that, but only if it comes in at a lower price than currently seems likely. Other technologies, such as induced geothermal and sodium-ion flow batteries are a lot more likely-looking right now.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Yes, exactly! Err, but I'm not sure where the 'actually' comes in. It looks like we're agreeing. Am I misunderstanding? I can try to be a little bit more belligerent if that would help! This is internet commenting, we're supposed to be at each other's throats by this point in the comment chain....

While battery technology is making grand strides, it's my understanding that we're not to a point where we can even speculate on how to renovate our entire grid with them for a vast host of reasons. Using them to cover while switching to other higher-capacity ESSs seems to be the role they are best suited for, and outside of a few experimental exceptions that looks like the role they're stepping into in the current industry. I have high hopes for the future, but we still have a long way to go, especially in longevity. I'm not advocating for SMRs nor expansion of nuclear, solar or wind, just that we should not limit ourselves to considering a subset of our options because of ideological beliefs.

(And I'm sorry, but I have no idea what induced geothermal is. Sounds potentially volcano-y though, so that's always a plus in my book.)

(I don't really see any possible downsides to giving IBM a small nuclear reactor. They seem so nice.)