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And that’s basically it!
That headline is a bait and switch.
One of the major nuclear research facilities belonging to the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO)’s is installing a major rooftop solar system that will save $2 million.
To be honest even if it was a power plant... they're already in the business of generating power. If generating more clean power in the same space is an option, that sounds great
Power plants still need power to operate and even your own supply is not free.
Loop?
That’s how we got Chernobyl, and part of why Fukushima melted (because the backup generation was under the tsunami).
Yeah, and nuclear reactors use a lot of electrical power anyway. When they're first starting they need to draw a lot from the grid and they all have powerful backup generators and battery banks to keep the systems online in the event they need to suddenly shutdown the reactor.
The implausible thing would actually be getting approval to put the panels up, since reactors have high standards for checking the consequences of different materials being used on-site.
It's free real estate ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Although, why the fuck are we not plastering those giant nuclear vent thingies (the technical term) with solar panels? Or really any surface that can support them?
Because solar panel efficiency is already pretty low so it's best to put them in the areas and in the orientation in which they will receive the most light
At least here in Australia, we believe in the right for a select group of billionaires to make money off the land in the form of coal mining, and renewable energy threatens that right.
Now that the world is turning away from coal as much as possible, we're now pivoting to allow a select group of billionaires to make money off the land in the form of uranium mining, and renewable energy also threatens that.
It sounds very dangerous to have a solar system that close to a nuclear facility, much less that close to Earth.
Why is this posted in c/NotTheOnion?
Because you can't have two different sources of energy! It's antithetical to existence! Only one thing can ever exist or chaos reigns.
In bavaria they made exactly this. You have a "Vorzugsgebiet" (loosely translated area of favourited power accumulation) for either wind or solar. Some people then had the outrageous idea of setting up a wind turbine in the middle of a solar park. Guess what happened? It wasn't approved because it was only allowed to build a solar park there. You can't make this stuff up. That's German bureaucracy for you.
For context, the conservative party here in Aus is pushing hard for a transition to nuclear power, rather than renewables.