Profitability is so much not the point here and also, there’s no reason for different energy production sources (especially ones that are base power vs incidental power) to be in conflict. Do both of them.
Yeah exactly. None of it is profitable if you can’t meet instant demand changes at any time of day. Build the nukes to meet full demand needs and supplement them with “more profitable” options for redundancy.
That’s not difficult. Nuclear is extremely expensive.
With renewables you just sell it to the grid for whatever gas generated electricity is going for. Which is currently still a fucking lot. Thanks Russia.
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K, but this isn’t about profits. This is about not destroying the environment, which nuclear can help with (you know if nobody bombs the plant)
But it’s also about cost. Nuclear is far more expensive upfront, more expensive to maintain, and more expensive to decommission. Cheap, agile renewables will be an easier option for the vast majority of the planet
Everything is about profits. Otherwise we wouldn’t even be in this mess.
Ah, yes, love my last vacations in chernobyl
Nuclear is the future. Stop trying to deny it. We should all be running it by now this shit was made like 60 years ago. But no, we’ll just eat smog I guess. Damn my feeds are kind of depressing today.
Fission is today. Fusion is the future.
It blows my mind we are avoiding this? You want jobs? Clean stable energy? Its fucken here dude. Just build some plants. They only need to be properly maintained to avoid disaster. If we truly are an intelligent species that should be easy as hell.
They only need to be properly maintained
And there is the issue.
Well, it comes at a cost, though: https://apnews.com/article/georgia-power-vogtle-nuclear-plant-bills-rates-9b9481bc44f6a4c985ab7702a553e21e
No its not, anyone thats actually gone over the basic numbers knows this. Nuclear power is expensive to build, takes decades to start and takes a lot of highly skilled workers. Wind is cheaper per MW, more profitable, buildable in 6 months, can be put in even remote areas, does not require highly skilled workers for normal operation and is more carbon efficient.
Gotta love anti nuclear activists getting more and more desperate. You’re being decarbonised. Please do not resist.
Decarbonised by a stagnant and expensive industry that’s friends with coal? Unlikely.
https://i.imgur.com/4z837gc.png
nuclear energy is stagnant and decaying.
nuclear energy is stagnant and decaying.
Do you think you may be confusing the cause with the effect?
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Ecofanatics just deny any source that says nuclear is good anyway, especially RTE. You make a good sum up though.
Its a relatively recent development however since the panels and turbines got quite a bit cheaper. Nowadays solar/wind ends up fairly similar and Nuclear is about 3x the price (with gas being more and coal being nearly 7x more). That is only some of the story as you need some storage as well but it doesn’t end up in favour of Nuclear. 15 years ago Nuclear was a clear win, its just not anymore the price of Solar come down fast.
If you include the full costs of the nuclear programs including the various subsidies, wind has been cheaper for decades, possibly since before nuclear was a thing.
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Who fucking cares about profit, our planet is dying.
I care. I care that we don’t make a rash decision for a potential short term solution. Why not ramp up solar / wind and other alternatives?
Storage, we have less Lithium than you seem to think, and pumped hydro is not a solution – not that it’s not a universal solution, it’s simply not a solution. Implementation costs more than a nuclear reactor and maintenance and security costs are way, way higher than a nuclear reactor. We, unless you want to adopt a powerless overnight lifestyle, need on-demand power generation. Nuclear is the best, safest, cleanest, most feasible option for that until we remove all precious metals from energy storage technology.
The planet is fine, and will be fine after we’ve gone, much like it was fine after the other mass extinctions. What’s dying is the environment that supports human life. Less snappy, granted, but I feel like emphasising that this is our problem and not something we should do for others might be worthwhile.
Do you never get tired of being pointlessly pedantic? Yes, the planet, as in the big rock floating in space, will continue to exist. Thanks.
There’s a point to my pedantry here. Did you read my whole post or just the first few words?
If we measured the amount of destruction to our environment that fossil fuels cost long-term I bet they’d stop being profitable really quick.
If we had an energy system owned by the people and not ran for profits, nuclear would be a viable, and probably even the preferred, option. We do not. We’re probably going to have to fix that to get a practical and reliable clean energy grid.
No, it would just bankrupt the state. Just because something is state owned, doesn’t mean the cost vanishes.
Infrastructure in this country is already so heavily subsidized by the federal government (and state, if you live somewhere that actually cares about your well-being) that we’re already pretty much paying for it all.
Profits are what is earned after expenses. It wouldn’t bankrupt a state to run energy infrastructure at cost.
You are, of course, correct.
But even so, costs are costs. It doesn’t matter if you’ve achieved communism, and are in a moneyless, stateless existance, you need labor and materials to build nuclear, and labor and materials to maintain it.
And, I’m not anti-nuclear; it does make sense to use sometimes, in some amounts.
But frankly, even only accounting for current tech, wide spread nuclear just doesn’t make that much sense compared to renewables + storage and large grids interconnects.
What do you do with the waste in that scenario? Who pays for that? Or for insurance?
Profit doesn’t equal good. Renewables take a lot of materials and fabrication to upkeep. Im sure theres more money to be made in renewable than there is in nuclear, that doesn’t imply one is better than the other.
Everyone seems to be focused on electricity production, but ammonia production (ie nitrogen fixation) for fertilizer is often overlooked. Right now it is accomplished mostly with natural gas. If we’re supposed to do it instead with wind and solar, we’re going to have to rely on simple and inefficient electrolysis of water to generate the hydrogen needed for the Haber process. Nuclear power plants have the advange of producing very high temperature steam, which allows for high temperature electrolysis, which is more efficient.
When you consider our fertilizer needs, it becomes clearer that nuclear power will have to play the predominant role in the transition away from fossil fuels.
No on all fronts.
The only reactor designs with any sort of history don’t produce steam at high enough temperature for the sulfur cycle and haber process.
The steam they do produce costs more per kWh thermal than a kWh electric from renewables with firming so is more economic to produce with a resistor.
Mirrors exist. Point one at a rock somewhere sunny and you have a source of high temperature heat.
Direct nitrogen electrolysis is better than all these options.
Using fertilizer at all has a huge emissions footprint (much bigger than producing it). The correct path here is regenerative agriculture, precision fermentation and reducing the amount of farmland needed by stopping beef.
One way or another, I’m pretty sure that we need fertilizer. What is the source of GHG if the fertilizer is produced without natural gas or other fossil fuels?
Yes, we’re definitely going to have to set up more nuclear power plants specifically to make fertilizer. Nuclear heads are literally brain dead
Fertilizer which they can’t make because the steam isn’t hot enough.
Every single pro nuclear argument is a fractal of terrible ideas and gaslighting.
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This is such a weird thing to research because a government (or governments) can directly or almost directly control what is profitable in a society based upon what is needed.
not really, while the government can do stuff like incentivize this only shifts the cost somewhere else
Check out the farm bill, or ethanol in gasoline, or various other things. They also can disincentivize things, outright ban things, and add untold cost to competing stuff in order to make yours more profitable than theirs.
The research done here had to be within the existing regulatory environment, which is not a fixed constraint at all but rather a product of government and industry actors.
And all of that is just talking about more indirect controls commonly applied in neoliberal leaning countries, some countries directly control how much things cost and how much overhead there is.
