Remix.run Logo
amarant 4 hours ago

Your not wrong, but you seem to be missing one significant detail: we have altered the biosphere even more by not engaging in nuclear activity, instead opting for less-scary-but-worse alternatives like coal, oil and gas.

Kon5ole an hour ago | parent | next [-]

>we have altered the biosphere even more by not engaging in nuclear activity

You imply that we could have made enough nuclear plants to replace coal, oil and gas and that would have prevented the effects of fossil fuel consumption.

That's not the case. It would have been entirely impossible to make enough plants to even replace coal and oil fast enough, and even if we did, electricity is only 25% of emissions.

kmoser 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You're not wrong, but you seem to be missing one significant detail: if we had invested in renewable energy resources like solar and wind to begin with, we wouldn't have needed (as much) assistance from nuclear, coal, oil, and gas.

antonvs 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Historically, yes. We have good alternatives now, though. What’s stopping us moving off carbon fuel is not the viability of alternatives.

loeg 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Unless by "viability" you're completely ignoring price, I disagree (I would argue that excessively expensive solutions aren't viable). We don't have good alternatives to gas (carbon fuel) peakers yet. Nor is winter generation a solved problem. Non-nuclear carbon-free generation needs a tremendous amount of battery storage to get to 0% carbon-emitting.

Schiendelman 3 hours ago | parent [-]

That is much, much cheaper than nuclear at today's prices.

loeg 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Up to how many hours of battery capacity?

Schiendelman an hour ago | parent [-]

I'm not sure I understand the question. It's always cheaper.

UltraSane 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

a 100% wind solar storage grid really isn't viable.

microgpt 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This could be a convincing argument 70 years ago but we have other options now - mostly batteries and renewables.

"But what about the cobalt mines?" - that damage is limited in both space and time