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Coal. Coal should be over as a fuel, no ifs ands or buts. Arguing for coal right now is like arguing that whale oil is still a viable fuel.
The US has been completely eclipsed by other countries who are now making more or less free electricity from wind and solar. All arguments against them have been debunked to hell, if they were at all true we wouldn't see China now mostly running of of renewables. While we listened to fossil fuel lobbyists push propaganda they were getting ahead.
I blame Santa.
If that guy would stop being so jolly and load the naughties up with the coal they deserve, supply would plummet, prices would skyrocket, and it wouldn't be a viable energy source why longer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_in_China
Germany has just ditched green energy.
What, no?
We didnt ditch it but Minister for Energy, Mrs. Reiche, is putting hard restrictions and obstacles in the way of revewable energies. Promoting coal and gas. She used to work for E-on in a high position. A gas energie provider. Saying "privat solar panels are detrimend and rival to the energie companies" for example
The entire conservative government is hellbend on undoing great green energie laws by the green minister Robert Habeck, of the last government.
Our government threw logic and the commitment to leave our children a world worth living out of the window. Because in the future the hydrogen fairy is coming and will provide us with cheap green hydrogen. Oh, and fusion will be viable.
Sometimes you have to wonder what they are smoking. But then again: ~~bribes~~ lobbying.
Op is kind of right in my opinion. We (our government) are about to ditch green energy/tech.
The issue with wind/solar is that they lack consistency, they are fantastic when the wind blows and it is sunny, but you can't count on the output.
Nuclear on the other hand is highly consistent and way more environmentally friendly, the waste storage is a solved problem, and far easier to manage than the ash from coal plants.
It is insane how energy dense uranium is, and while the waste is dangerous, it is a tiny amount when compared to the ash from coal plants.
So yeah, get rid of coal/oil/gas power generation, replace it with nuclear, use the interim period until nuclear material has run out to build out the wind/solar capacity, and add battery storage facilities to enable consistent output.
You can mostly solve the solar issue by building more solar, it generates power in virtually any weather, maybe less but then you just build more to account for it. And when it's not sunny it's normally windy.
Also grids normally span multiple areas, you don't build all your solar in the same spot, you spread it around so it's sunny somewhere.
Batteries or even pumped hydro also solve the problem of power being generated at a different time than needed.
Outside of the US, solar capacity is being added at speed because it has become so cheap.
Yeah, solar IS fantastic, but as someone who lives in northern Europe, when we need stable power, in the winter, there is very little sun.
I realize that I am probably projecting our climate onto the entire nuclear question world wide, and that is unfair.
I just want us to shut down fossil plants as soon as possible, while maintaining a supply for baseload, and the way I read it, the grid isn't ready for dispersed power generation yet, and while solar is very cheap, it isn't yet able to deal with a baseload in northern europe.
There is also a geopolitical question here, the vast majority of solar panels and wind powerplant components are made in China, until we can produce our own panels and components of similar quality/cost we are in a quite vulnerable position if we become dependant on China for everything needed for power generation.
Nuclear obviously have similar issues, but seems less so as Europe has the capability of building our own reactors, and the cost is less of an issue due to longer lifetimes.
Eh, I freely admit that I am quite tired of the anti nuclear crowd who for decades has been against nuclear power out of fear and not reason, and thus prevented closure of fossil plants earlier.
Who cares if most of the panels are made in China? Panels last for decades. If China decides to embargo the EU and cut off the supply of panels, it would be a decade before that embargo really started to hurt. Enough time for Europe to spin up and entire PV supply chain from scratch.
You can't apply the logic of petrostates to electrostates.
Remember when there was the thing about China possibly putting backdoors into telecoms equipment a few years back?
I would not put it past them to not do it with solar panels as well.
They're stupid simple devices though. There's not even any circuitry in a solar panel. There's nothing to slip a backdoor inside. There's caution, and then there's just xenophobic paranoia.
I was thinking about the inverter.
China alone is pushing the world into the renewables age. For the rest of us, we just follow the wave.
Nuclear does not have similar issues. Nuclear is a super long game that basically leaves a few states left to explore and invest in this area. Nuclear power is basically a bespoke option that needs to be developed like an art piece and an investment. Any nuclear power installation requires massive budgets, massive budget overruns, and over 10 years of development and installation which will overrun as well. By the time a nuclear project breaks ground, only the next generation will possibly enjoy whatever power is generated.
Nuclear also requires massive investments of teams of specialists. They basically need teams to operate over huge periods of time to retain the institutional knowledge of building, maintaining, and improving upon these installations. In that sense nuclear is similar to rail companies in that we want teams with over 100 years of experience in this business to maintain a certain level of competence.
Nuclear is fun to drop like in SimCity or Civilzation, but it is completely, seriously inaccessible for many.
You're right, but probably being downvoted because the wording you've used is the same as that used by conservatives to reject renewables all together.
Nuclear is not "the" solution, but it's part of the energy mix of the future, particularly as we transition away from petrol and diesel transport, and gas cooking and heating.
In some cases it just doesn't make sense. Australia for example has never had a nuclear industry and doesn't have the requisite population density. It would take thirty years to build a nuclear plant and in that time we could build the same capacity with solar and wind.
However, if you already have a nuclear industry and do have large dense population centres then it's a great alternative to coal.
Ah, that explains the weird response I got about lemmy.zip being fascist, thank you for explaining it!
You are absolutely right, nuclear is not the solution, it is an interim solution giving us 100-200 years of remarkably clean energy, if we designed a standard reactor that could be built inside existing fossil power plants, I think we could cut down on the build time by 80%, though that requires that we have approved designs.
I also believe that we in Sweden/Scandinavia should build large underground nuclear waste disposal sites, and offer to take care of nuclear waste from around the world, we have stable bedrock, our politics have been stable for decades. If would be a nice income stream while solving the issue for other countries. It has to be done, and we are well suited for it.
Solar plus battery is much cheaper than nuclear. And it adds immediately. Nuclear takes years and doesn’t come online til the project is finished. Solar comes online incrementally and can be anywhere.
True, however I live in northern Europe, even with huge batteries and large solar infrastructure, I have doubts that it will be enough during winters.
Also I am annoyed at the anti nuclear crowd who for decades prevented nuclear power from being built, and increased our use of fossils.
I shouldn't let it cloud my general judgement of solar however.
Iceland pretty much runs on thermal energy. You can also use hydroelectric dams, tidal energy and wind energy. And a lot of countries are using that instead of fossil fuel. Of course, there's lunatics like Merz, who wants to literally replace renewables with nuclear, but the less said about that b-st-rd the better.
Well planned hydroelectric dams are fantastic, but they do disrupt ecosystems quite badly.
The local environmental impacts are horrific, we really shouldn't build more hydroelectric dams if at all possible. (And should be actively transitioning away from and dismantling old ones, but that comes with lots of new problems) Yes it's great having consistent, reliable renewable energy but we're putting everything that relies on healthy salmon populations in danger of extinction.
Are you the only Lemmy user who missed Technology Connections recent video?
I don't really watch that channel, never got into it
Don't take this wrong, but you're repeating misinformation, and that's quite damaging to the acceptance of renewable energy that is necessary to reduce the magnitude of the upcoming ecological catastrophe.
That does it I’m filtering out that entire instance, fuck you Lemmy.zip, fascists mouthpiece fucks
What?
How does nuclear power equal fascism?
lol 😂
what does nuclear have to do with facism