• fanbois [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    9 months ago

    Nuclear power is literally more expensive at this point than renewables. No, you can’t keep using the shitty, cracking, deadly waste producing nuclear plants of the past, not even the power companies want that, and building new ones takes over 10 years, not counting all the planning and beaurocracy you have to go through. And to become CO2 neutral after all the excavation, construction and mining necessary takes another decade. Nuclear power plants are MASSIVE engineering undertakings.

    Meanwhile modern windmills can be mass-produced right now and take like 5 years depending on their placement to be both cost and CO2 neutral. After that it’s LITERALLY free energy for a good 30 years. And they become cheaper and bigger and more efficient every single year. And btw if you ever pull out an article or a calculation that is older than a year for any comparison, you are dealing with OLD data. They have become far more efficient and flexible in their placement and will likely continue to do so.

    The anti-nuclear protests were completely right. Stop playing the people who wanted a safer world without nuclear waste and incidents against the modern climate movement.

    TL;DR: Wheels on windmill go brrrr, nuclear power is not a short term solution and never has been.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
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      9 months ago

      Nuclear and renewables are complementary technologies, renewables are a much more volatile source of energy. Also, when people say renewables are cheaper they’re not counting the total lifecycle of things like wndmills and solar panels.

      • HexBroke [any, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        9 months ago

        when people say renewables are cheaper they’re not counting the total lifecycle of things like… solar panels.

        Yeah the LCOE of solar is likely ridiculously low because they still work decades after th started 25 year life used in levelised cost calculations

        Nuclear in the west is so tremendously expensive we may as give up until China makes SMRs cheap

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
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          9 months ago

          I mean China is already making all the solar panels at this point, so we might as well wait for them to role out nuclear globally.

            • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
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              9 months ago

              I do think it’s very likely that we’ll see fusion working within our lifetimes. If China manages to get a fusion plant online then that really will solve all the energy problems for the foreseeable future.