621–630 of 672 posts
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I've asked for sources on OPs conspiracy. Not for even more conspiracies.
Wow. I guess energy markets competing is a conspiracy. Pretty low bar. Here you go: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31474041 Dig away
This is not what OP said.
Also: those "sources" are all right from the nuclear circle jerk...lol
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The rest of hackernews seems to have decided that plutonium is a step on the way to solve the waste problem. What's your take on that?
Which waste problem? And how does Pu solve it?
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> Ppl dont understand that we can build reactors that not only can be powered up bu old nuclear waste but also are physically impossible to explode. we would be able to yes, but we can't. not because it's technically impossible, but because people are stupid. fukushima did not happen because it wasn't safe, fukushima happend because people were stubborn. Tepco knew what will happen and dismissed it because they were…
Every grid needs a stable source of electricity. Wind and Solars are not stable sources of electricity. If its not windy -> turbines are useless. If its cloudy -> solars are almost useless. Nuclear Plant on the other hand produces stable amount of electricity everyday. And molten salt reactors are resistant to human stupidity. Its literally impossible to cause a disaster with this type of reactors. Its physically not…
the problem with the grid is that it's hard to support a wind/solar grid somewhere else.
nuclear is not as stable as you wish, just look at france the last months. they imported energy from germany, because a lot of their power plants were down.
> And molten salt reactors are resistant to human stupidity. Its literally impossible to cause a disaster with this type of reactors. Its physically not possible to do anything that will cause the core to meltdown.
there is no such thing. really not even in wind and solar. most deaths there were because of stupidity. and while it's physically impossible to do so when correctly built, people will always find the most stupid cost measures...
This is a solid write-up. I particularly like this part: > Most fusion concepts are just a more complicated way to heat water. It's kind of wild that our means of power production do ultimately mostly boil down (pun intended) to turning a turbine with steam and, as the article notes, this is an inherent cost problem whereas solar is a direct form of energy. I hadn't really thought about it in those terms but it's tru…
Because there isn't enough waste produced to make such a thing economical versus current storage method i.e. there isn't enough economy of scale.
> 5. I just don't trust humans, particularly within the corporate structure, to build and operate nuclear power plants safely
Fukushima was built despite studies warning of the dangers. At some higher level, there wasn't enough caution in the planning stage.
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> Hard to estimate that, when putting $10^x into nuclear for serious R&D may yield surprising results. It might however that money could spend making solar panel factories for enxt gen solar cells which yields real results. > Also, why not benchmark $10^x in nuclear vs. $10^x in coal or fossil fuels? You can do that comparison, however since coal is not competitive in that metric you will not learn anything about how…
Considering the current energy situation in Europe and America, I foresee $10^x going into coal/gas/fossil fuels soon.
A 10^x investment in solar & storage now will curb the need for 10^x being spend on fossile stuff over the next 10 years.
"Recently, places as diverse as Texas, California, Oklahoma/Iowa/Kansas/Nebraska (SPP), the UK, and Germany have rapidly decarbonized without nuclear." Uh...Germany's actually recarbonized by shutting down their nuclear [increasing coal and imported electricity to pick up the slack]. "The nuclear electricity production lost in Germany's phase-out was primarily replaced with coal electricity production and electricity…
The article on the site about solar is equally bad. Both are full of lots of good information but then have some key misunderstandings. The solar article doesn't acknowledge that installing a solar requires installing a gas peaker plant on the grid as well. [1] Although solar certainly reduces carbon emissions (the gas peaker plants only runs some of the time), the result is that the cost to the grid, rather than bei…
To summarize: we already have gas plants, and gas storage, leaving them turned off except as a fallback insurance is the sensible option. Even when building new plants, gas plants are the cheapest to build and simplest to run which matters a lot if they're mostly idle, which is why they get used as peakers.
https://austinvernon.site/blog/gasredemption.html
I don't agree with everything they write (they seem to think "virtue signaling“ is a real thing and that renewables had nothing to do with sensible government regulation but rather the free market which reveals a bias that runs through their conclusions) but the facts are fairly incontrovertible if you actually look at them so they come to the reasonable conclusions anyway.
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3 reasons, I suspect - if someone wants an enormous stockpile of uranium fuel they can probably do that. The volumes check out - uranium is very dense and so will not take up much space. I'm not sure if it has a shelf life, but being a rock I expect something can be sorted out. I can't pretend to know how feasible it is in practice, but long term strategic uranium stockpiles should be doable. Long enough to weather a…
I hope you noticed the news about Gazprom possibly intentionally keeping gas reserves in Germany low for months before the Russian invasion in preparation of said invasion. You can't make a strategic stockpile if your potential enemy is your supplier and preventively doesn't allow you make those stockpiles in the first place so that you didn't have this way out.
This doesn't work with natural gas because they needed a lot of it and moving it around is capital intensive. The situations are completely different. The energy densities here are wildly dissimilar, and that matters a lot for the economic of building a stockpile.
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You seem unacquainted with the expression "most places". Do you really need it explained how Iceland differs from most places? And, intermittency does not, in fact , require importation of fossil fuels, as has been explained to you numerous times before.
Intermittency requires the use of dispatchable energy sources. This can be delivered through hydroelectric power, for those regions that have hydroelectric potential. But for those that don't have the right geography for hydroelectricity, fossil fuels are the only dispatchable source. Energy storage could theoretically avoid the need for alternative energy sources during periods of non production. But storage solutio…
It has already been explained to you numerous times that spending on storage would be foolish until we have enough renewables built out to charge it while also meeting demand; for now, money is much better spent on generation capacity. When it does become useful, storage will be radically cheaper to build out than now, as its cost is falling very, very fast.
The gating condition has not been met since the last time it was explained to you. Be assured, you will know when it comes about. We will not require further such reminders in the meantime.
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> That makes no sense. The market (demand & supply) decides. The static model is long past. Indeed, the supply. And what is the very charateristic of Germany's renewable supply? That they do not have any inluence of it. They have to sell when the weather is sunny and windy, and have to buy or burn coal otherwise. > does not make the average German richer. That does not really matter, as the average German does not pa…
> And what is the very charateristic of Germany's renewable supply? That they do not have any inluence of it. There are more renewable energy sources than wind and sun. Buying electricity is also a good option. Retrieving stored electricity is another. > That does not really matter, as the average German does not pay for a nuke plant; the federal goverment does. The federal government does not pay for nuclear power p…
Is that supposed to be a good faith argument?
> Renewable is the only viable option.
A lot of words without arguments, isn't it?
Nuclear is still part of the UK's strategy and new nuclear is still being built.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_powe...