Comment by cinntaile
15 hours ago
People arguing for one alternative over the other are usually politically motivated. I feel like you are doing the same. Sometimes nuclear is a good fit, sometimes renewables is a good fit, sometimes fossil fuels are a good fit. Most of the time a mix is the best fit. It depends on what you are optimizing for and what is geographically, (geo)politically and economically possible. All these systems are then built using assumptions, sometimes those assumptions no longer make sense after a certain period of time and sometimes you just temporarily or permanently have to adapt to the changes in the environment. This is an unusual but expected scenario for the nuclear plants along the Danube.
> sometimes fossil fuels are a good fit
There is simply NO safe level of fossil fuel use.
Disagree, it's just that the safe level is around 0.1% of current use (though I don't just mean use of fossil fuels for electricity, I mean *everything*).
There’s applications that we still have no alternative for though - e.g. aviation - so we’ll have to accept the burning of hydrocarbons there.
Not fossil hydrocarbons forever, of course, but synthetic kerosene might be a thing soon enough.
I don't know what you mean with "no safe level of fossil fuel use". It doesn't mean anything without contextualizing that statement.
There is already too much carbon in the atmosphere.
Agreed, whenever I hear someone say "we need more/less nuclear and less/more solar/wind", I hear "let's burn more fossil fuels while we uselessly split hairs".
Unless the scenario is totally different where you live, pro-nuclears are mainly "we need more nuclear, less rerewables, don't care about fossils, just guaranteed production", while pro-renewables are mainly "we need more renewables, less or no fossils and as few nuclear as possible".
If someone is getting wiped from the mix because of renewables, it is coal and fuel, not nuclear.
What about Germany?
The point they are making is that climate change will further push these conditions, so are we willing to build more nuclear power plants, knowing that by the time they are ready to go online this problem will be worse? Or better to invest in renewables which can be implemented today and will alleviate this problem? A mix of both with heavy majority of renewables and nuclear/fossil only to guarantee baseloads seems like the best idea to me.
I'm not really opposed to nuclear power politically. I just think it's a non-starter given the much higher cost, complexity of buildout and lack of reliability.
In countries with dark winters and without enough hydro power, the only reliable alternative are fossil fuels...
Iceland has no nuclear power plants.
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Wind + storage, geothermal.
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>sometimes fossil fuels are a good fit.
Oh come on.
Everyone is politically motivated on this subject, and that's a good thing, because this is a political decision by default, where the "political" is comprised of is, the voting citizens. We can't let decisions like these be taken by unelected technocrats alone.
I'm not filled with joy about my chav ("redneck") neighbours weighing in on nuclear vs solar and climate change and national and international energy markets and power distribution...
I don't have a clue either. Don't ask for my vote on how to power a country. Take my taxes and use them to listen to experts
Plot twist, the experts are lobbyists and they convince our politicians to start fracking and massively increase the use of "clean coal"
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>and that's a good thing, because this is a political decision by default,
Why is it a good thing that everyone and their brother seeks to apply state violence to micromanage what should be a fairly arcane technical issue?
>We can't let decisions like these be taken by unelected technocrats alone.
Do you feel the same way about topics where your opinion differs substantially from the local majority?
Very few things are purely technical decisions. In this case, it’s about centralized vs. distributed electricity generation (or freedom vs. dependence if you want to state it that way). One of these options makes it much easier for the billionaire class to continue extracting money out of the people.
Edit: I don’t understand how you get from „political decision“ to „state violence“. Politics are at play at all levels of civilization where actors have different goals, from your dinner table and your company Slack to democratic institutions.
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> People arguing for one alternative over the other are usually politically motivated.
If you can spend a Dollar only once, you might end up with renewables. People can be economically motivated too. No reason to draw politics in an already heated discussion.
> It depends on what you are optimizing for and what is geographically, (geo)politically and economically possible.
I mentioned all of this in my message. What was unclear about it or did you perhaps not read past the first sentence?