46
Removing Carbon From the Air Enters Its Awkward Teen Years
(www.bloomberg.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
46 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
59205 readers
3133 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Fine. Apart from the drama of designing, managing the plant, disposal, storage and guarding of residue, waste of mining and preparing the fuel and being a constant target for assholes (e.g. ZNPP), I have no major problem with nuclear power.
Comparing with most sources today, it's one of the cleanest and most reliable, but it's not much cheaper than wind/solar if you account for the construction/maintenance/safety/insurance/dismantlement costs (last time I checked it was 0.06-0.15 per kWh).
Still, I placed it really far down in the list, because it's perfect for baseload power and should be the last of our concerns and the last option we ditch when addressing climate change (looking at you, Merkel).
PS: on second thought, everybody also vastly underestimates the massive cost of disposing and recycling wind turbines and solar panels...yea :/
Yeah if we want power at all there's a heavy carbon cost to it regardless where it comes from. Nuclear from what I understand is more compatible with our preexisting electricity networks because like coal it has big chunks of metal spinning to store energy giving the ability to react incredibly fast to changes in the network. Battery banks may be able to do this quick response, but the longevity of rare earth mineral based solutions although fancy has me concerned. Very little can degrade with a massive flywheel and the losses from nuclear to get it up and spinning would be far lower than say spinning it with motors as an energy store.
Long term I agree though, the complexities around nuclear don't paint it as our saviour. Maybe for now, and probably the next hundred years, leaning into nuclear is at least harm reduction