91–100 of 467 posts
What if we ban all cryptocurrencies mining in order to save energy ?
This is insane to me. Nuclear is the best long-term option for ecologically-friendly energy generation. This is absolutely a bad move, and the coal industry has done a great job of demonizing nuclear power.
> Germany intends to take all coal-fired generation offline by 2038 Good if they actually mean it maybe? > leading to a likely increase in renewable-power assets in the long term... Yet in the short term, coal is helping to bridge the supply gap. This just seems asinine. But what do I know... Is there something impassably / chronically dangerous about nuclear power or is it just public fear that pushes us away from i…
https://michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/netherlands-goes... Holland is building two new reactors, and 'Energy and electricity prices are at record levels due to Europe’s over-reliance on renewables, inadequate supplies of nuclear energy, and shortages of oil and gas due to under-investment in oil and gas exploration and production. Carbon emissions in Germany rose 25% in the first half of 2020 due in large part t…
Not sure whether I agree with the "over-reliance on renewables"-bit. Renewables are a relatively small part of EU energy production. The vast majority is fossil fuel (which is mostly imported from the Middle East or Russia). I can't speak for the rest of the EU, but energy policy in Belgium has been an absolute shitshow for decades now. No one wants to invest in anything. There's NIMBYism everywhere. No one wants any…
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And nuclear from France if I'm not mistaken.
"We no longer produce electricity with coal or nuclear! We just buy it from other countries and then browbeat them about environmental responsibility!" doesn't seem like a sustainable energy policy.
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This is an important point. People don't easily forget when they had to avoid fresh fruit, vegetables and meat for a year because it was radioactive.
And parents replacing the sand in their children's sandpits. There are parts of southern Germany where you are not supposed to collect mushrooms or hunt and eat game, because there is still enough residual nuclear contamination to be harmful to humans. Proponents of nuclear energy like to pretend that it is almost completely safe. But if we look beyond the, admittedly relatively low, confirmed number of immediate cas…
Contrast that with the damage that was done by decades of coal power plants polluting the air you breathe. Coal is more damaging each year than chernobyl was, it just gets much less attention.
The sentiment on HN on this topic has traditionally been negative, and comments that support the move get downvoted. The fear of nuclear energy is deeply rooted in Germany and cannot be simply ignored. The "Anti AKW" (anti nuclear power) movement was huge since the 80s, it predates the fear of global warming, and it was at the core of what became the Green party. And Merkel, who has a doctorate quantum chemistry, cam…
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52% of Germany's energy production in 2021 was from renewables [1], which are productive now, don't need decades of planning and construction, have zero costs for waste and a perfectly clear risk profile for the next centuries. I don't see how wind and solar don't make sense. [1] https://www.destatis.de/EN/Press/2021/09/PE21_429_43312.html
> I don't see how wind and solar don't make sense. Wind and solar make total sense. All we need to do is overbuild wind/solar generation + invest in energy storage capacity. This can be done relatively quickly, certainly much more quickly than building new nuclear plants.
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Or import ridiculous amounts of nuclear power from France.
People keep saying that but looking at https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/FR it seems reverse... That is probably happening in summer at nights...
Thanks for the website. It'll definitely come in handy.
Edit: With Germany shutting down their nukes, I'm curious if them being a net exporter remains true.
I am afraid this thread is going to be heavy on strongly held opinions and very light on facts and figures. In a futile attempt to compensate, here is the history of gross electricity production in Germany [1]. And here is the electricity import/export statistics [2]. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Energymi... [2] https://www.bmwi.de/Redaktion/DE/Infografiken/Energie/stroma...
Now imagine that nuclear power production would be greatly increased. How many years of uranium supply would we have left?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium