Blake

There really should be a law requiring companies which provide online services to be required to release self-hosted server software once they discontinue the provision of the service.

Won’t be a future unless we fund renewables instead of this junk.

Doesn’t bother me, just means there will be fewer fools arguing with me!

Nah, that wouldn’t work as well, because people wouldn’t necessarily click through into the thread, and also there’s often different context, depending on the specific article that I post it in.

IMO, the comment adds plenty of value whenever I share it and it certainly inspires plenty of engagement every time, so I see no reason to change what I do.

I’m ignoring fossil fuels because they’re obviously fucking terrible and both renewables and nuclear are an improvement over them, nobody questions that. The pro-nuclear lobby loves saying “it’s so much better than fossil fuels!” which is like explaining that a helicopter is faster than a car. Fossil fuels aren’t the competition for nuclear, renewables are.

I already discredited the “Germany swapped nuclear for coal!” argument in the other thread which I’m guessing you already found since you’re claiming I’m German, for some reason. It’s not really an honest claim.

Obviously, it’s bad that Germany is using coal, and nuclear would be better. You’ll get no argument from me about that. But when it comes to building new power plants there’s no good reason to use nuclear.

claiming there’s no downsides

Compared to nuclear? Yes, no downsides. In general? It’s not perfect of course but the best option we have.

having to invent solutions for the issue of production hours versus time of max useage

That’s like saying “nuclear has to invent solutions for the issues of meltdowns, and getting nuclear fuel, and dealing with waste material, and dealing with extremely high risk targets, and risks of earthquakes, and risks of flooding, and the need to have extremely highly qualified operators, and extreme building costs”…. I could go on.

Nuclear is the only reliable form of energy for humanity’s inevitable outward expansion

Ah yes, because nuclear fissile material is more ubiquitous in the galaxy than light.

The reason we haven’t invented a fusion plant that can pass the Q limit is because fusion never got funded for shit

Absolute nonsense, you just made that up completely. Post a source.

Calling nuclear wealthy is hilarious, neither group has oil & gas beat

“Calling a billionaire wealthy is hilarious, that’s not even in the top 500 richest people”

The nuclear industry is massively overfunded, they’ve consistently received billions in public money for years, and there’s basically nothing to show for it. It’s the carbon capture of electricity generation: cute idea, let’s keep researching it in hopes of a breakthrough, but in practice just a total waste of money at our current level of tech.

Lmfao are you serious? Supporting renewables makes me a shill for fossil fuel companies? You’re stretching so far you’re going to split.

Way more people and animals are harmed by it than by nuclear.

Absolute and complete bullshit. Even if you take the very, very low estimate for the number of deaths caused by nuclear accidents such as Chernobyl, wind and nuclear have a similar number of deaths, but when it comes to “people and animals harmed”, nuclear is HUGELY more harmful, it’s not even a contest.

Just look up all of the people with horrible health issues caused by nuclear.

But go ahead and source your claim lmfao.

Hahahahaha okay then

Of course it is, I'm not going to write it out anew every time, am I? That would be a big waste of time and would result in a less effective message. I think this is the fourth or maybe fifth incarnation - I have added to it every time someone has asked me about some specific issue, so it just gets progressively more and more complete.

I encourage everyone who wishes to argue against the wasteful deployment of nuclear power, please redistribute this comment as much as you'd like to.

When it comes to generating electricity, nuclear is hugely more expensive than renewables. Every 1000Wh of nuclear power could be 2000-3000 Wh solar or wind.

If you’ve been told “it’s not possible to have all power from renewable sources”, you have been a victim of disinformation from the fossil fuel industry. The majority of studies show that a global transition to 100% renewable energy across all sectors – power, heat, transport and industry – is feasible and economically viable.

This is all with current, modern day technology, not with some far-off dream or potential future tech such as nuclear fusion, thorium reactors or breeder reactors.

Compared to nuclear, renewables are:

• Cheaper
• As clean or cleaner, in terms of emissions
• Faster to provision
• Less environmentally damaging
• Not reliant on continuous consumption of fuel
• Decentralised
• Much, much safer
• Much easier to maintain
• More reliable
• Much more capable of being scaled down on demand to meet changes in energy demands

Nuclear power has promise as a future technology. But at present, while I’m all in favour of keeping the ones we have until the end of their useful life, building new nuclear power stations is a massive waste of money, resources, effort and political capital.

Nuclear energy should be funded only to conduct new research into potential future improvements and to construct experimental power stations. Any money that would be spent on building nuclear power plants should be spent on renewables instead.

Frequently asked questions:

• But it’s not always sunny or windy, how can we deal with that?

While a given spot in your country is going to have periods where it’s not sunny or rainy, with a mixture of energy distribution (modern interconnectors can transmit 800kV or more over 800km or more with less than 3% loss) non-electrical storage such as pumped storage, and diversified renewable sources, this problem is completely mitigated - we can generate wind, solar or hydro power over 2,000km away from where it is consumed for cheaper than we could generate nuclear electricity 20km away.

• Don’t renewables take up too much space?

The United States has enough land paved over for parking spaces to have 8 spaces per car - 5% of the land. If just 10% of that space was used to generate solar electricity - a mere 0.5% - that would generate enough solar power to provide electricity to the entire country. By comparison, around 50% of the land is agricultural. The amount of land used by renewable sources is not a real problem, it’s an argument used by the very wealthy pro-nuclear lobby to justify the huge amounts of funding that they currently receive.

• Isn’t Nuclear power cleaner than renewables?

No, they’re pretty comparable in terms of emissions, and renewables are cleaner in terms of other environmental impacts. You can look up total lifetime emissions for nuclear vs. renewables - this is the aggregated and equalised emissions caused per kWh for each energy source. It takes into account the energy used to extract raw materials, build the power plant, operate the plant, maintenance, the fuels needed to sustain it, the transport needed to service it, and so on. These numbers generally show that renewables tend to be as clean or cleaner in terms of total lifetime emissions, and in addition, since nuclear relies on fuel extraction (mining) and has lots of issues regarding waste, renewables is overall cleaner than nuclear.

• We need a baseline load, though, and that can only be nuclear or fossil fuels.

Not according to industry experts - the majority of studies show that a 100% renewable source of energy across all industries for all needs - electricity, heating, transport, and industry - is completely possible with current technology and is economically viable. If you disagree, don’t argue with me, take it up with the IEC. Here’s a Wikipedia article that you can use as a baseline for more information: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy

Fresh produce is extremely cheap, if we’re talking about the same thing - how much is it for you to buy 2kg of potatoes, carrots and onions from the supermarket, and how much food can you make from that amount of veggies?

Edit: Also, don’t go out of your way to avoid fat in the sauce, but avoiding dairy is a good idea. Using olive oil as part of a sauce for example, is perfectly healthy. Fats are good for slow release energy.