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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

#321

Post by dragonwriter »

wallace_f wrote: post #241
dragonwriter wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Libya never had nukes to give up.

Quote from the article: >The lessons that we learned out of Libya giving up its nukes … is, unfortunately: If you had nukes, never give them up. If you don’t have them, get them.” This quotr misled me. What I found from another source is that they had a nuclear weapons program according to another source 'likely to develop a nuke in 3-7 years'

Yeah, there is a huge difference between nukes, which have a deterrent capacity, and a nuke program, which is pretty much an anti-deterrent, especially when it comes to US action.

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

#322

Post by learnstats2 »

coddingtonbear wrote: post #224
justatdotin wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At home, some of my excess power is syphoned off to neighbours, but I'm also using an amazing energy storage technology called batteries. Our government has just announced a number of new large-scale battery farms, as already deployed in neighbouring states.

I hear people say this sort of thing all the time, "All we need is bigger batteries", but I think the thing folks don't realize is really how small even the worlds biggest batteries are when faced with the actual amount of electricity we use. One of the worlds biggest batteries (currently under construction nearby LA) stores the huge-sounding amount of 400MWh of energy. What isn't clear to folks who don't do the math…

what I took from what you just said is that batteries would already work fine for periods of peak load, i.e. they work when they are needed.

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

#323

Post by learnstats2 »

javagram wrote: post #108
learnstats2 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear power is way slower than current generation renewables.

The energy storage problem isn’t solved for current generation renewables as far as I know. Laying out a ton of solar panels everywhere is great but if we have rolling blackouts when it’s too cloudy for a while people will be very upset.

Given that Costa Rica, Uruguay, Iceland, Norway, Paraguay, and Tajikistan already run on 100% renewables (and Tokelau runs on 100% solar + batteries): I would judge this to be extremely solved.

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

#324

Post by borgel »

philsnow wrote: post #86
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.…

> budget instability California recently voted to shut down the last remaining nuclear power facility in California, Diablo Canyon: https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-diablo-canyon-nuclear... but I don't think it has anything to do with budgets and more to do with the public's perception of safety of fission and officials not wanting to have a meltdown event happen while they're in office.

Right next to my university! A bunch of the buildings were marked as rad shelters.

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

#325

Post by darkerside »

marcosdumay wrote: post #299
darkerside wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point is, you don't know how devilish the random one is. As bad as global warming will be, we know the risks and we can prepare for them. Whether we'll actually do that is another matter..

Getting concrete now, specifically about nuclear power, we know exactly how bad it can be. We have a very large amount of certainty about how the worst case looks like, we know very well how to prepare for some of it, and we know very well what to do to avoid the rest of it. We know those to a much higher certainty than we know the consequences of global warming. It's not a blind choice. The only thing we don't know…

Basing decisions on known ignorance is not crazy. In fact, I'd call it appropriate humility. It's just that the smart decision is more likely to be a "not yet / need more information" than a flat no.

Basing decisions on limited understandings is also not crazy. I've heard the rough US Army guideline is to act when you have 70% of the information. If you wait too long, there's often no right answer.

Anyway, my whole point is probably one level meta from what you're talking about. I find many disagreements turn out to be simply two different simultaneous discussions.

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

#326

Post by joe_the_user »

belorn wrote: post #304
joe_the_user wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, fossil fuels are an ongoing disaster, one that in the form of global warming has a capacity to possibly make the planet unlivable. But all the disasters of fossil fuels are invisible and thus provoke little reaction in the public - and moreover, fossil fuels have vast vested interests protecting them. We need to come up with an alternative to this. Nuclear in the ideal could be that. But nuclear's track record i…

It would be ideal if we could replace fossil fueled power plants with solar and wind, but it is not currently technically possible and as they provide different forms of services. Fossil fueled power plants generate power based on demand. Solar and wind generate power based on weather. With current technology we really only have two distinct options. We can use solar and wind when the weather allows for it and then b…

The other option is nuclear which has the huge upfront cost and nuclear waste, but with minimal global warming.

I don't see why the various battery types aren't practical today. Unlike nuclear, there's no huge political resistance and once solar and wind are online, investment in energy storage becomes online energy fairly quickly. Moreover, the huge energy include huge uncertainties, uncertainties whether the plant will shutdown early, especially.

Remember, the huge upfront costs of nuclear includes energy expenditure and as you're pointing out, expending more energy means more global warming until we have fully replaced fossil fuel.

Long ago, solar and wind advocates were derided for contrasting hypothetical ideals with current realities. Nuclear proponents now seem much closer to doing that.

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

#327

Post by abootstrapper »

gnulinux wrote: post #311
abootstrapper wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What if he gets a second term?

We continue to fight against “the wall” until he’s out of office. It’s nothing more than a campaign promise to rally his base and it dies with Trumps tenure.

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

#328

Post by Tiktaalik »

Havoc wrote: post #163

Pretty crazy that one person has the power to unilaterally commit a billion and credibly promise another billion in funding. Sure doesn't sound like a lot in the context of ~trillion market cap companies...but this is a billion un-encumbrered. No lawyers...just one person deciding this is happening.

Yep.

We should be taxing the ultra rich more, and then the public instead of the ultra rich would be the one being able to decide what to do with this money.

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

#329

Post by justatdotin »

666lumberjack wrote: post #194
justatdotin wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ah yes, those theoretical reactors are so much better than real ones.

Like the theoretical super-cheap batteries needed to make renewables actually practical as a comprehensive replacement for fossil fuel energy?

I'll admit the battery story has a way to go yet - I'm not relying totally on batteries yet. But battery farms are already playing a role around here.

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

#330

Post by ip26 »

darkerside wrote: post #298
ip26 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See, this is why we shouldn't have banned trans fats. Sure they were killing people, and sure we knew it, but the devil you know ...

The substitute for trans fats was returning to butter and other natural fats, which we originally left because we thought they were so bad for us that products like margarine must certainly be better! Thanks for making my point.

Sorry, butter is still widely (unfairly) considered evil. We replaced trans fats with rapeseed oil, soybean oil, and palm oil, which are hardly the foods our grandparents ate.
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