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Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

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Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#71

Post by partiallypro »

darawk wrote: post #32
hristov wrote: post #12

Bad idea. We have plenty of much cheaper sources of green energy. And lets face it nuclear is far from green. Offshore wind energy is so successful that it is now negatively affecting solar as well as nuclear and fossil fuels. Furthermore, the greatest current innovation vis-a-vis energy is energy saving which is much cheaper than building new reactors. I should add that there is such an energy glut in the world nowa…

> Bad idea. We have plenty of much cheaper sources of green energy. Gates basically has dedicated his life to thinking about issues like this. He funds and promotes all the other sources of green energy as well. It's clearly his considered opinion that nuclear energy is going to be an important component, over and above other sources of green energy to actually achieve our goals in an amount of time and at a scale to…

Not to mention we are now finding that some "green" power is actually harmful, such as hydroelectric dams. Nuclear power has known risks, from disposal to potential meltdowns. Some of our other green technologies have things we don't even know the consequences of yet.

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#72

Post by TomK32 »

abootstrapper wrote: post #35

Ya know, I feel like renewables are the future, but we’re kinda running out of runway here. I think a nuclear + renewables strategy is a great way to get us past fossil fuels quickly. Once we’re over fossil fuels we can tackle replacing nuclear with something better.

You ignore the time it takes to get a nuclear power plant online. Let alone all the permissions for it.

Know what would work today? Reducing our energy consumption.

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#73

Post by eBombzor »

pjc50 wrote: post #59

Three serious problems with nuclear, globally: - too slow. Break ground now and you'll be producing energy by 2030. - political instability. Hands up who supports the switch of Iran and Saudi Arabia to nuclear? It would reduce a lot of carbon emissions. Let's not overlook Ukraine either: https://www.neimagazine.com/features/featurenuclear-plants-i... - budget instability: Wylfa has stopped https://www.independent.co.…

Also mining for radioactive materials takes a huge toll on the environment. Also, how are they going to get rid of radioactive waste? There doesn't seem to be a good solution to this at all.

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#74

Post by abootstrapper »

raz32dust wrote: post #53

I think they'll do it if he redirects that $2b for the wall. Not even kidding.

To hell with the monument to white nationalism. Trump will be out of office soon enough and we can move on and forget about the damn wall.

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#75

Post by simplecomplex »

We already have enough land to power the entire US with solar.

The future is renewables not pushing the can down the road with Nuclear, ignoring all of its negative externalities.

Bill Gates doesn’t need government to build solar either.

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#76

Post by 27182818284 »

noobermin wrote: post #30

I'm pro-nuclear fission (full disclosure, I work on fusion related research, but I don't care about who wins more than I want society to win), but I think talking to any random person in the public who are already skeptical about fusion, to them fission has not had a great track record. Make as many arguments you want to make about fukushima facing a natural disaster, w/e, and how the field has advanced since three-m…

>public who are already skeptical about fusion, to them fission has not had a great track record.

Branding problem. Hell if "clean coal" can start to get inroads then something like "Direct Helium Solar" or something can be used as re-branded nuclear fusion.

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#78

Post by learnstats2 »

abootstrapper wrote: post #35

Ya know, I feel like renewables are the future, but we’re kinda running out of runway here. I think a nuclear + renewables strategy is a great way to get us past fossil fuels quickly. Once we’re over fossil fuels we can tackle replacing nuclear with something better.

Nuclear power is way slower than current generation renewables.

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#79

Post by jkravitz61 »

smsm42 wrote: post #63
jkravitz61 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear has such a terrible reputation, and rightfully,people will always have legitimate complaints about it. We can never fully guarantee that a plant is free from the potential of catastrophe, not to mention we still don’t have a great solution to nuclear waste other than bury it in a mountain. It’s definitely a lot better than slowly suffocating ourselves by injecting hydrocarbons into the air, but we really need…

Nothing is ever free of a potential for trouble. Solar panel could fall from the roof and hit someone over the head, and I'm sure that happened already, but nobody makes a huge deal out of it. Nuclear incidents are made huge deal of. It's a fight between Jane Fonda and Edward Teller, and Fonda is winning because a movie actress is apparently more trustworthy in a questions of nuclear energy than actual nuclear physic…

Sure, but a very bad nuclear incident (accidental or not) could more or less kill millions of people pretty quickly. Obviously hydrocarbons will kill more than that, but the optics of a nuclear catastrophe are in my opinion far worse than global warming which to many people is pretty abstract.

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#80

Post by avar »

est31 wrote: post #56
noobermin wrote: post #30

I'm pro-nuclear fission (full disclosure, I work on fusion related research, but I don't care about who wins more than I want society to win), but I think talking to any random person in the public who are already skeptical about fusion, to them fission has not had a great track record. Make as many arguments you want to make about fukushima facing a natural disaster, w/e, and how the field has advanced since three-m…

I'm one of those fission sceptics. The main problems I have with fission isn't technological issues, it's human issues. E.g. in Fukushima, people were forced to move back into their homes, without giving them an option to get compensated instead. Furthermore, engineers pointed out that there were issues with the way Fukushima was built but their concerns were discarded. Human issue again. Fission plants should be bui…

What we've got right now is on the order of a million people dying prematurely every year because of the human issue of people worrying too much about concentrated risk (nuclear) and not understanding the diffuse risk (coal).

Sure, we can improve fission in various ways, but this sort of skepticism is way riskier in the aggregate as it translates into public policy.

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