54
Not a single one (thelemmy.club)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/science_memes@mander.xyz
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[–] 268 points 3 months ago* (44 children)

Well yeah, it's a service. Expecting profit from necessary services is stupid and counter-productive but it makes a few people rich so of course it happens then you get memes like this.

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  • [–] 45 points 3 months ago (12 children)

    Efficient use of resources still matters in a service-driven model.

    The service in this case is to provide electricity - if other alternatives can provide the same system of electricity while using less resources in the process, then it is clearly preferable.

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  • [–] 90 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    Externalized costs are a thing though. For instance, a coal plant spewing smoke (and radiation) costs everyone else money. A nuclear plant OTOH is usually responsible for dealing with all of its own shit. So it's not always an apples to apples comparison to consider just the profitability of a project.

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  • [–] 15 points 3 months ago

    Absolutely. I don't know that anyone is arguing for coal, except for Trump, but he's also completely deranged.

    Wind and solar have very little externalities, however. I'd even call their externalities trivial.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago*

    Water vapor from the cooling tower is also a greenhouse gas but all heat exchange power plants at such scale emit it, and it condenses quickly (and increases albedo if the cloud is visible). Plus the nuclear waste, if not economical to recycle, may become its own long-term problem too. So the overall externalities of a nuclear power plant are small (it's the least deadly one!) but not zero.

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  • [–] -2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    It sure isn't apples to apples, but it's also not like nuclear plants actually dealt with their waste

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  • [–] 16 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Are you talking about current nuclear plants or the first generation ones built in the 50’s. Because that’s like using steam train safety to negate the use of modern trains.

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  • [+] -9 points 3 months ago

    Oh, I must've missed the point where nuclear plants started turning their fuel into mere satisfaction. Good thing the waste from the 50s is still around, I'm sure they can take care of it!

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  • [+] 16 points 3 months ago (5 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 0 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    I don't know what this has to do with my post at all to be honest

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  • [–] 13 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    It's relevant because the less-resource-efficient oil industry has lobbied to make nuclear power artificially inefficient so that their industry can continue to exist.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (2 children)

    I don't think anyone is arguing for the oil industry.

    Even if nuclear power plant byproducts were re-used at 100%, this would still decidedly not make nuclear energy more resource efficient than solar and wind.

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  • [–] -2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    The things are very much run as private companies under the pretense of being profitable. The whole purpose of nukes (other than providing weapons grade material) is shoveling public money into private pockets.

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  • [+] [S] -10 points 3 months ago* (18 children)

    Well you could just like, put all that tax money into decentralized renewable energy sources...that would also be profitable.

    While not causing waste that cant be touched for the next million years.

    While also lessening your dependence on nuclear fuel imports from political less than optimal nations or sources where the mining of it causes radio active dust to contaminate the population (Russia/USA and Australia).

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  • [–] 17 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Million year really , so you talk about the EXTREMELY small portion of nuclear waste ? Also why not both , why not nuclear AND solar / wind / hydro electricity? Because all those renewable energy sources are either limited (hydro electricity) or intermittent (solar / wind) And I know you dont care but Yes we can bury nuclear waste if we do it properly, there already were natural nuclear reactor on earth way before humanity and it didnt kill everything where they were.

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  • [+] [S] -6 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    here already were natural nuclear reactor on earth way before humanity and it didnt kill everything where they were.

    Uhm, a river flowing thru low grade non enriched uranium deposit isnt a reactor in the way we build em today, like not even close.

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  • [+] 9 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] [S] -5 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    That said I think the part concerning waste from nuclear usines is a weak argument. It’s a relatively low volume, compared with the amount of electricity generated by those usines; and mining operations will be always a mess, no matter if you’re mining uranium (for nuclear), neodymium (for wind) or gallium and iridium (for solar).

    Yes, but i would argue that when you mine neodymium or gallium once you then can recycle them for ever, while the same cant be said for uranium, in the long term that does make a big difference.

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  • [+] 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 child)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] [S] -2 points 3 months ago

    Yeah you can reprocess nuclear fuel, but latest information i have on that is that its nowhere close making sense cost wise and mostly theoretical, i may be wrong on that tho.

    When i yeet a solar cell or electric motor into a furnace its possible to refine basically everything, sure here and there a motor in a hair dryer will hit the landfill, but for industrial Motors/Generators is very very low.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago

    I whole heartedly agree. And to anyone who complains about dunkelflaute, if we wouldn't immediately burn our biogas, and instead stored it where we currently store our fossil gas, we would have a way more comfortable safety margin. Also a stronger European powergrid would be sufficient for almost all usual cases throughout the year.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (7 children)

    No, you couldn't. You need base load. Countries like Denmark and Germany freeload on the base load of France, Sweden and Finland. And the moronic EU laws that currently enable this will eventually change to charge them for that.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    Baseload has always been bullshit, see e.g. https://www.ceem.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/migration_files/ceem/publication-documents/MarkBaseloadFallacyANZSEE.pdf

    It's even more irrelevant now that battery storage can level out multi-day variability.

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  • [–] 10 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    Great. Fucking build it then. Go ahead and build your non-hydro non-nuclear baseload, and I'll shut the fuck up. Until then, I'll call you out every time you say that nuclear and hydro is too expensive.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (2 children)
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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago

    The article is paywalled, but just from the first snippet I don't see how it's relevant. If you're replacing oil or coal based power generation with wind, then that's awesome. But my assertion is that you do actually need to supplement that with something that can be tuned on the fly to keep a stable frequency in the grid. So far the experimental designs to do so with massive "batteries" have not looked very promising to me.

    A rule of thumb is that you need a minimum of 20% of your grid to be tunable. That's a hard minimum.

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  • [–] [S] -5 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Tell me, how are the french nuclear plants dealt with the last heat wave?

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  • [–] 12 points 3 months ago

    You're deflecting because you don't have a real argument to come up with. It's true that global warming is having a negative impact on nuclear power in France, Switzerland and other places, but it doesn't change the fact that you need some way to keep a stable voltage and frequency over your grid.

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  • [+] -14 points 3 months ago (7 children)
    [removed by mod]
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  • [–] 17 points 3 months ago

    Maybe learn to write correctly

    Profitable wants to say it costs less to operate

    how dare they wanting tip earn money

    Did I miss something in the edited post, or are you just violating rule 1 out of spite?

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    In Canada nuclear power generation is more about creating jobs by rebuilding 50 year old reactors than it is about producing cheap energy.

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  • [–] [S] -5 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    those people could also build and maintain windmills tho

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    And where there’s no wind?

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