this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
244 points (87.2% liked)

World News

32079 readers
830 users here now

News from around the world!

Rules:

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Growth in german wind capacity is slowing. Soo... then the plan is to keep on with lignite and gas? Am I missing something?

Installed Wind Capacty - Germany

German Wind Capacity

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Why would we waste money on nuclear when we could build renewables instead? It makes NO sense. Renewables are cheaper and cleaner.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Because nuclear is pretty cool whereas renewables are less awesome. Think about it, the nuclear symbol ☢️ is much more interesting and cooler than the renewable ♻️ symbol. We all know this is what really matters.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well now you're back to arguing about new construction instead of keeping existing plants running.

Also, we can build both. Surely you appreciate that there are other factors slowing the speed of the energy transition besides the availability of capital, and that while nuclear has its own roadblocks, many of them are different from + don't overlap or compete with those standing in the way of renewables.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Capital (money) and capital (political) are the only roadblocks between us and a 100% renewable future. So no, there's no value to wasting either of those on nuclear when they could be more wisely proportioned to renewables. Pretty much the only resource that nuclear consumes that isn't consumed by most renewables would be uranium. I'm willing to just go ahead and say we can leave that one in the ground.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They’re really not, and if you think that then you need to read more. And “political capital” isn’t some big fungible pool of quatloos, it’s a lot of little tiny stupid slow fights.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Okay, go ahead and list the resources used for building nuclear reactors that isn't used for building other renewables.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago
  1. Uranium.

And thats about it.