The cleanup for fossil fuels is an order of magnitude more expensive, and an order of magnitude more difficult. It also impacts so many things that its true cost is impossible to calculate.
I’m aware of the issues with nuclear, but for a lot of places it’s the only low/zero emission tech we can do until we have a serious improvement in batteries.
Very few countries can have a large stable base load of renewable energy. Not every country has the geography for dams (which have their own massive ecological and environmental impacts) or geothermal energy.
Seriously, we need to cut emissions now. So what’s the option that anti-nuclear people want? Continue to use fossil fuels and hope battery tech gets good enough, then expand renewables? That will take decades. Probably 30+ years at the minimum.
Nuclear should only be done by the state. Any commercial company doing nuclear HAS TO CARE FOR THE WASTE. It has to be in the calculation, but no on ecan guarantee 10000 years of anything. Same with fossils… execute the fossil fuel industry. They destroyed so much, they don’t deserve to earn a single cent.
That funky startup is producing waste. Imagine a startup selling Asbestos as the new hot shit in 2024.
We’re talking 11 years for 7 “small” reactors. The first decade just to establish a business, but no real difference in the overall picture. How many years, decades after that to make a noticeable difference?
Meanwhile we’re building out more power generation in renewables every year. Renewables are already well developed, can be deployed quickly, and are already scaling up, renewables make a difference NOW.
Renewables cannot provide a reliable base load. Not unless you can have your solar panels in space where it always shines, we figure out tidal power, or you’re lucky in terms of geography and either hydroelectric or geothermal work for you.
Solar power doesn’t produce energy at night, wind doesn’t always blow. You know the drill.
You completely sidestepped the entire crux of my comment.
We need a base load of energy to fill that gap, because batteries currently can’t, and likely won’t be for decades. Here are the options we have available:
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nuclear power, which produces a waste that while trivial to store far away from people, will be radioactive for hundreds of years.
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fossil fuels, which cause massive damage not only to the local environment, but to the planet, and cleanup is effectively impossible.
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we put society on unpredictable energy curfews. At night the population can’t use much energy. When there’s a drop in wind or solar production, we cut people’s energy off. Both political parties must commit wholeheartedly to this in order to make it viable. Our lives would become worse, but we’d not have either of the above problems.
Of those 3 options, I’d rather go with nuclear. What’s your choice?
More renewables.
We’re at the beginnings of having useful levels of storage and can keep building out renewables while we develop storage. At the current rates of adoption, we’ll need true grid storage in about ten years.
However, note that one option for “grid” storage is a battery in every home. Another is a battery in every vehicle. Neither is the best option but those are options we already know and just need to scale up
Right but how about actually addressing the question?
What about base load then. It’s all well and good building shit tons of solar panels and wind farms but sometimes you need energy and the sun isn’t shining and it isn’t windy. What do you do then?
That’s why we need base load and I’d rather the base load came from nuclear than from fossil fuels, as I’m sure you would too, but you seem to be anti-nuclear as well, so what do you want?
I’m so sick of you eco warrior types with absolutely no understanding of the problem. It’s not as if the internet doesn’t exist it’s not as if you couldn’t educate yourself if you wanted to. People are out here trying to educate you all about it, and you cope by ignoring them.
Base load? Oh you mean the kind of power only the industry needs but wouldn’t be able to pay for if it wouldn’t be shifted towards the public? Don’t try to fool people by just not talking about this little fact.
Solar and small scale power buffering could easily be decentralized for the publics overall power need, including charging and utilizing cars as buffers. A private person isn’t “the base load”… but we all pay for “the base load”.
Base load err… educate yourself nuclear boy.
Apart from that: Your arguments didn’t change, they are still wrong, that’s why “we” stopped listening. You reproduce Industry talking points without checking. (e.g. “bAsE loAD”) like an angry little LLM.
Who needs the power needs to pay for it. Including the waste. I don’t see why I should clean up Google’s micro nuclear waste.
You are totally ignoring their arguments. Not every place can do wind or solar or hydro. Like it’s simply not an option.
