Anon questions our energy sector - eviltoast
  • InputZero@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    21
    arrow-down
    8
    ·
    1 month ago

    Anon isn’t dumb, just simple. Nuclear energy can be the best solution for certain situations. While renewables are the better choice in every way, they’re effectiveness isn’t equally distributed. There are places where there just isn’t enough available renewable energy sources year round to supply the people living there. When energy storage and transmission methods are also not up to the task, nuclear becomes the best answer. It shouldn’t be the first answer people look to but it is an answer. An expensive answer but sometimes the best one.

    Also nuclear waste doesn’t have to be a problem. If anyone was willing to cover the cost of burning it in a breeder reactor for power or burry it forever. It just is because it’s expensive.

    • Aufgehtsabgehts@feddit.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      14
      arrow-down
      10
      ·
      1 month ago

      Also nuclear waste doesn’t have to be a problem. If anyone was willing to cover the cost of burning it in a breeder reactor for power or burry it forever. It just is because it’s expensive.

      But it is a problem. Finding a place that can contain radioactive waste for millions of years is incredible difficult. If you read up on it, you get disillusioned pretty fast.

    • drake@lemmy.sdf.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      arrow-down
      12
      ·
      1 month ago

      When energy storage and transmission methods are also not up to the task, nuclear becomes the best answer.

      Obviously, the best answer is to improve energy storage and transmission infrastructure. Why would we waste hundreds of millions on a stupid toy power plant when we could spend 10% of that money on just running decent underground cables.

      • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        1 month ago

        You do realize that all that is also expensive, and limited? We haven’t invented room temperature superconductors yet, and battery technology is far from perfect. There is only so much lithium and cobalt in the entire world. Yes we can now use things like sodium, but that’s a technology that’s still young and needs more research before it’s full potential is realized. There is also a reason we have overground cables and not underground. Digging up all that earth is hella expensive.

      • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        1 month ago

        You really don’t understand how expensive underground cables are. You know those big, huge steel transmission towers that you see lined up, hundreds in a row?

        Those towers costs hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars each. And the reason they’re used is because that’s way cheaper than underground.

        Shit - just the cable is a couple million per mile per cable.

        • drake@lemmy.sdf.org
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          arrow-down
          14
          ·
          1 month ago

          Are you fucking serious? Nuclear power plants cost way fucking more than some cables. You people are fundamentally so unserious. Pull your head out of a reactor for ten seconds and take reality as it exists

          • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            8
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            1 month ago

            Yes. They cost more than some cables. But we aren’t talking about wiring a stereo.

            A new nuclear unit (4 billion-ish) costs about as much as 2,000 miles of transmission-grade cable (about 2 million per mile). Considering that there’s about 30 cables on a tower run, you’re looking at around 65 miles’ worth of cable for the cost of a nuclear unit.

            And that’s just the cost of the wire. No towers, no conduit, no substations, no land acquisition (aerial easement and underground are very different things), no labor.

            • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 month ago

              A new nuclear unit (4 billion-ish)

              In the USA the most recent two reactors (2 added to a plant that already had 2 existing) cost $34 billion just for the two new ones. source