If we could summon the political will to do that we could already summon the political will to transfer subsidies that go to fossil fuels to renewables instead and that would mostly end the need for nuclear.
No, it wouldn't. Renewables are nice, but they are not enough by themselves to build the kind of global wealth we need to adapt to change. We need nuclear as an energy source for that.
Billions a year for the last hundred years (or whenever the technology became available). [1] This does not represent all of the subsidies, indirect and direct, nor the huge advantage that fossil fuel industry enjoys with millions to spend on lobbying and purchasing senators, that is, when the senators aren't already getting rich in the fossil fuel industry (see Joe Manchin and every 1 in 4 senators)[2].
Here's a recent one. Dumping some of the strategic oil reserve into the supply to artificially lower fuel costs, otherwise known as a subsidy (Monetary assistance granted by a government to a person or group in support of an enterprise regarded as being in the public interest).
> Today, the President is announcing that the Department of Energy will make available releases of 50 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to lower prices for Americans and address the mismatch between demand exiting the pandemic and supply.
How confident are you that if all the money that went to renewables would not have been better spent simply increasing our efficiencies with fossil fuels?
Do you feel like this is something we have the power to stop? I feel it is a runaway train, that will just run out of steam in a few hundred/thousand years.
I mean I don’t like to be wasteful, and we shouldn’t pollute the earth for the hell of it, but I’m just like what are we gonna do?
What if all those politicians selling the story of renewables, had lots of investments in those companies? Would you still trust that story, that this will somehow stop climate change, and not just pad their bank accounts?
Maybe I’m just cynical in this area, and it is easy to just look around and say I’m not as bad as most people, but I just can’t think politicians forcing renewables is a good thing.
Renewables are a feel-good hippy joke (the irony, since nuclear is more environmentally friendly). Including a random source in case you ask for it - there are also cost/energy comparisons available if you google around.
"System costs for nuclear power (as well as coal and gas-fired generation) are very much lower than for intermittent renewables."
I think renewables technology has gotten pretty damn amazing though. But that is expected given the massive amount of money funneled to its research.
I think the really cool thing that they allow is, imagine solar panels becoming so cheap but still efficient, and huge batteries like Tesla’s power wall, becoming better, you can have like whole small towns pretty easily behave as their own entire power grid pumping energy where it is needed.
It makes the idea of lots of small rural villages seem possible which I think is pretty cool.
We could probably see the world population double and yet keep similar urban densities.
renewables are not a joke. Please don't minimise their contributions in the past two decades.
The better way to characterise the problem is that renewables are intermittent - a problem for which we do not currently have a large-scale solution. One solution is to use a non-polluting technology that currently works - nuclear power - while we buy ourselves time to build out and develop renewable capacity.
Right - we don't have storage capacity. Batteries are another joke. So that basically leaves gravity-hydro reservoirs, late 19th century style. Nuclear uses far less resources (plastics, metals, etc) per unit of energy over lifetime.
Still, it's a good distinction to make for people who aren't familiar with the topic, so ty for that.
If we can get to a point of civilization where we have mini nuclear power plants that power like 20 houses, and mini sewage/water treatment plants for the same, now that would be cool.
I wish all the money that went towards renewables research instead went towards nuclear...
If nuclear can compete on price; sure why not. But it seems it has some issues with that. That's why the private sector is a bit hands off on this front. There is no shortage of alternatives with more lucrative returns on investment (i.e. non negative ones).
And plenty of those alternatives are doing great in terms of funding, growth, and cost. Hundreds of GW of wind and solar came online during the last two years or so. Most of the projections for this market from only a few years ago were completely wrong and this growth has caught more than a few governments by surprise and prompted quite a few of them to move forward earlier announced dates to clean up the grids in their country. E.g. the UK is now talking about 2030 for this. There might be one new nuclear plant coming online in that time frame and possibly a few more might get built. But it's peanuts compared to renewables. At this point it seems more like an expensive vanity project for politicians than a practical solution to supplying energy.
Most of the challenges are actually not adding capacity but balancing the grid and moving energy around. Energy storage and cables basically. Grid infrastructure is where public spending needs to happen. There are a lot of countries that are actually slowing down renewable energy deployments because their grids just can't keep up. Most of the time when you see a wind mill not spinning it's not because it's broken but because it's been turned off because the grid can't handle the over supply. Kind of embarrassing for the companies involved. All that expensive kit and they can't handle the output.
Expensive nuclear plants that you can't turn off and on on demand are part of the problem here; not the solution. Mostly the hard choice grid providers have to make is turning wind turbines off or shutting down e.g. a gas plant. They both cost money whether they produce or not. Some grid providers even have occasional negative rates because of this: they literally pay consumers to consume more electricity. It's preferable to temporarily reducing capacity at great cost. That's why grid batteries are so hot right now.
IMHO current generations of nuclear technology are a bit of a dead end in terms of cost. But maybe somebody figures out a 10x improvement. Worth some public spending. Fusion is actually getting some traction lately and it seems that is starting to attract some serious money and there have been some breakthroughs reported recently.
Nuclear can't compete on price because it's not subsidized and it's (deliberately or not) a legal and compliance nightmare, not to mention the NIMBY problems it brings.
But if nuclear was getting even a fraction of the money that fossil fuels receives, we would be carbon neutral right now.
You harp on costs, but energy is _always_ expensive, and there is nothing, not even renewables, that will provide the amount of energy that we will need in the coming years anywhere near quickly or efficiently enough.
Nuclear will get cheaper like every other industry does once we create the actual market for it. Right now, we just have decades old reactors on shoestring budgets and scientific studies because _we didn't properly fund it_.
Electric cars alone are predicted to nearly double our energy grid requirements in the next few decades[1]. We're not moving anywhere nearly fast enough with renewables to account for the growth from those vehicles alone.
My understanding is that most of the cost is driven by outdated and draconian compliance requirements (created by public/government agencies). For example, safety requirements that don't have a threshold but instead require reducing risk "as much as possible" which is equivalent to 0 profit.
Langdon Winner [1] argues that nuclear power is authoritarian in nature due to factors like requiring long-term, centralized planning to realize and is infeasible in democratic governments. He argues that solar power is more democratized and is more fitting to a democracy.
That this ultra simple thing to wear a mask meets such resistance really shook me up. It's a minority of people but it's a much bigger, louder, and powerful minority than I ever would have expected.
Still, I remain hopeful as to be otherwise would leave me in despair.
There's good reason to be hopeful. A democratic government is bound by duty to act in the interest of the common good. Just as there are clowns who refuse to wear masks, there are those who will oppose nuclear power.
A government building a nuclear power station is orders of magnitude more likely than an entire population complying with a mask mandate.
It is unfortunate that too many democratic governments are consumed by political bribery and pressure groups rather than doing what is in everyone's interest.
Oh I don’t know if it is a minority who “don’t want to wear a mask”. It is definitely a minority who just refuse to wear them, despite the government forcing them too. My guess is a majority of people would be glad to see mask mandates go away, and a minority is willing to speak. Though I’m weak and just wear a mask when asked though I don’t like it. I appreciate those who just refuse.
The strange minority is those who desire this awful hell we’ve enacted with our covid response.
>The strange minority is those who desire this awful hell we’ve enacted with our covid response.
Have you considered that rather than people wanting this "awful hell", that they believe mask mandates are our way out of this hell?
I don't know anyone who wants mandates, kids in and out of school, masks, etc. But I know plenty of people who are willing to inconvenience themselves temporarily for what they believe to be the greater good for all.
For what they believe to be the greater good is exactly what is the issue. I believe the greater good would’ve been to just advise people to be safe and stay home if sick. Acting like people have the plague when they have cold symptoms and most people will just experience minor cold symptoms (especially if they’re vaccinated or already had it), I don’t believe is good. Covid is novel, the common cold probably once was as well.
I’d argue a majority of people just don’t care. They don’t care they have to wear one, will stop wearing one as soon as they don’t have to.
>to just advise people to be safe and stay home if sick.
I'm not here to argue the medical science, as I am not a doctor and if you are, you have not disclosed it.
My point was you assume people are being sadistic and want all of this shit. No one wants everything going on, they just believe it is for the best. Or they don't care, as you pointed out. Neither of these is what you said at first; that people desire this "awful hell".
Not sure why you are getting down voted. What you said is absolutely the case. I wear a mask when I am asked or there is a mandate, but I find it annoying at the very least.
A public sector that requires a profit is not a public sector. To your point, we probably need democracy first, but the idea that money can’t be found without siphoning it from the essential workforce that drives to work (or drives for work) and increasingly lives pay check to pay check is just nonsense.
> idea that money can’t be found without siphoning it from the growing essential workforce that drives to work (or drives for work) and lives pay check to pay check is just nonsense.
I have to disagree. Rich people have money, working class people have productivity. Money doesn't create things, it just moves them around. Everything done by the government necessarily displaces productive resources from workers. If we take x% of the workforce and have them building reactors instead of Y, there will be less of Y to go around, and the rich will employ money to make sure their portion of Y is unaffected.
