this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2024
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Science Memes

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Anon questions our energy sector (slrpnk.net)
submitted 1 week ago by MataVatnik@lemmy.world to c/science_memes@mander.xyz
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[–] drake@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

There is a huge lobby of pro-nuclear think tanks who try to astroturf pro-nuclear shit onto social media. We, scientifically literate, rational people, need to counteract these harmful narratives with some facts.

FACT: Renewable sources of energy are as cheap or cheaper per kwh than nuclear.

FACT: Renewables are faster to provision than nuclear.

FACT: Renewables are as clean, or cleaner, than nuclear.

FACT: Renewables are much more flexible and responsive to energy fluctuations than nuclear.

FACT: Renewables will only get cheaper. Nuclear will only get more expensive, because uranium mining will get harder and harder as we deplete easily accessible sources.

[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Fact: renewables take more land, that could be used for other purposes.

Fact: renewables by themselves cannot, and I mean CANNOT, be used alone. Unless you are willing to have a ridiculous over-provision. They depend on weather and have massive seasonal divergences. You need a base line power production to have a rational generation scheme.

Fact: nuclear have a higher cap for total production than renewables. As humanity needs more and more and more energy renewables (even destroying all our usable land) won't be enough.

Fact: no everyone that doesn't share your opinion is an "astrosuftist lobby" some of us can also think by ourselves. And some of us can ever think above the dogma of our political school of choice.

[–] Lemmchen@feddit.org 1 points 1 week ago

As humanity needs more and more and more energy renewables (even destroying all our usable land) won't be enough.

I'm pretty sure the ICCC disagrees with that

[–] areyouevenreal@lemm.ee 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You don't actually need to mine more uranium though. You can run certain nuclear designs on Thorium, Plutonium from weapon stocks, or even waste from other reactors. Current generation nuclear designs are laughably inefficient at using the nuclear fuels we have available, and I fully understand why people don't support them.

Realistically though I don't ever expect nuclear fission to be as cheap as renewables in most areas. In some places nuclear or another power source is always going to be needed though just because renewables are not practical in certain conditions.

In the long term the answer is almost certainly going to be nuclear fusion or another future power source like neutrino voltaic. Solar and wind power are ultimately just offshoots of fusion, and so is fission if you think about where uranium, thorium and so on come from. In fact all power we know of seems to come from either gravity or some kind of nuclear reaction (inc. geothermal and fossil fuels).