watduhdamhell

watduhdamhell t1_j9khzyl wrote

Sorry but we'll just have to disagree here.

And no, the oil and gas industry is not pushing for nuclear. They have astroturfed/bankrolled the largest anti nuclear "environmental" groups for decades in an attempt to kill off nuclear (like the dipshits in Germany) and force the necessity of more fossil fuel base load plants (again, like the dipshits in Germany).

The bottom line is there is no form of energy on earth with the combination of desirable traits (clean/virtual zero emissions, energy capacity and energy density, capacity factor, and safety) that can compare to nuclear. Literally only solar is safer, and not by much per TWh.

If there is going to be a realistic net zero future, you're going to need nuclear base load plants supplemented by renewables and their overcapacity as replacement for peaker plants. Renewables as a total replacement for base load via overcapacity and batteries is totally infeasible, given the space requirements one would need for overcapacity is so great that energy storage is no longer an issue.

It's also worth noting that radioactive waste, all of which produced to this point couldn't even fill a single football field at two casks high, is able to be processed and reused, with 96% reclamation rate, with the half life being reduced from 10k years to a few hundred. This tech has existed since the late 80s, along with melt-down-proof reactors, but was cancelled due to ignorance and politics. Luckily, the climate crisis is causing people to dig it up and develop new tech inspired by it, like the new liquid sodium SMRs that are being proposed.

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watduhdamhell t1_j9k89h4 wrote

The Germans are typically very smart people.

But the decision to close down nukes in favor of fucking coal plants was one of the dumbest decisions a country has ever made (visible to the world stage) and its economic and environmental cost continues to this very day.

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