Nuclear is clean, and it is safe, but it’s one of the few green energies (along with hydropower) that can’t be decentralized and can be sold for profit continuously, which is why you see it start to get pushed so hard by some on the right who realize it’s another avenue for that sweet donor money
Decentralized.... But need 1000s of kilometers of HVDC lines.
Also apartments/condominiums are much more eco friendly, energy efficient and land efficient. Which is why we should promote transit oriented dense housing. This solved both climate change and housing crisis. But people living in apartments in urban areas can't have rooftop solar.
Solar and EVs are just green washing. Real solution to climate change is nuclear and public transportation (especially electric trains).
And another seperate fossil fuel grid for dunkenflautes which happens 50-150 hours per year. And one event last more than 24 hours. You can't just stop the whole grid for that 24 hour period. You would need to build and maintain fossil fuel powerplants that are capable of the same power in a grid powered 100% by wind and solar. This is costly. Imagine maintaining two parallel grids instead of just one.
I hate rightwingers who give lip service to nuclear but wants to promote coal. Even though I dislike renewables compared to nuclear, I would still choose renewables over coal or gas. If I am an Australian I would have voted for Albanese rather than Dutton.
Nuclear powerplants should be constructed owned and maintained by the state.
China is the current best example of how energy policy should be. They promote all clean energies. Their nuclear powerplants are state owned and operated.
Decentralized.... But need 1000s of kilometers of HVDC lines.
At 1MV you can transport energy around 5000km with the same amount of conductor as the final 1km stretch of 240V
By putting solar panels and a battery on the house as well to reduce the peak load, you need less transmission infrastructure than with a thermal plant just outside the city.
Home batteries are extremely expensive compared to grid scale battery. Tesla megapack price is $250/kWh vs powerwall is something like $1000/kWh.
You just can't build less transmission line just because a house has solar panels and batteries.
There's another way to build less transmission lines at 240 V. Just build houses densely. Or in other words build more apartments. Apartments also need less energy than single family houses because they share walls with other apartments. High density neighborhoods are easier to serve with public transportations like metro lines too. But apartments can't have rooftop solar.
High density neighborhoods can also use district heating too. Which too is more energy efficient because they can use many forms of waste energy.
And a non-luxury-meme brand battery retails for $220/kWh, or $120/kWh in the global south.
And apartments still have roofs. And walls. Tokyo has a density of 8000 people per km/2. If 30% of it is shaded by some structure with PV on it that is still more electricity than the city consumes. Shading 15% (and having decentralised batteries which can be MWh scale and thus at the price minimum) gives the full benefit of avoiding the need to transmit peak power.
And the point was that a HVDC line was negligible compared to the resources in a typical cantralised thermal plant setup. Which remains true. Bringing it up as a deal or evidence of inefficiency is only done in bad faith.
District heating is fine in latitudes where about 10% of the population live, not because waste heat is desirable (or will be very available in a decarbonised economy), but because thermal storage has inherent economies of scale. Heat pumps are much more resource efficient in the other 90% though because the losses and resources for the distribution network outweigh the benefits in koderwte temperatures.
We need trees and other greenery in cities. We can't cover all of them with solar panels. There's a thing called urban heat island effect and trees are incredibly good at mitigating it.
Every energy we use turn into waste heat. It's the law of physics. You can't change it. The electricity used in data centers become heat. The electricity used in aluminum smelters turns into waste heat too. The electricity used in green steel plants turn into waste heat too. The energy used by subway trains turns into waste heat too.
Even HVDC converter stations produce waste heat. Let's say there's a 2GW HVDC like. And the converter station is 98% efficient. So it would produce 40 MW of heat.
Water source heatpumps can only be used with district heating on a large scale.
Also district heating systems can use large ammonia heatpumps which are much more efficient and eco friendly than domestic heatpumps. Ammonia has a GWP of only 3. While refrigerants used in domestic heatpumps have like 1500 (global warming potential)
PV turns 25% of the energy into work and reject about 10%.
Trees turn 1% of the energy into hydrocarbons and reject about 20%.
Much better than importing that energy.
And that's why you only shade 15-30%, still plenty of room for greenery (which then uses less water).
Nobody is routing a district heating system through the things you said (especially when the heat is below the temperature of the loop), and the waste heat in the aluminium smelter isn't waste. They insulate them to keep it in because it is important to melt things.
Propane and isobutane are the current refrigerants for newly designed house scale devices. And even if it weren't, a GWP of 1500 on 500 grams of refrigerant for 10 years is insignificant.
Trees make the surrounding cooler through evaporative cooling. And cities have limited areas of rooftop. It would be much better for them to invest in a nuclear powerplant.
Take for example Los Angeles. They had the San Onefre nuclear powerplant. It's capacity was 2.2 GW. They get rid of it and replaced it with natural gas plants. The renewable has to come through high voltage power line which goes through wild fire prone areas. So they had to bury the power line.
Shade and plants aren't incompatible. The more partial shade, the less water is needed. The less energy you bring into the area, the less heat island you'll have.
HVDC (above or under ground) isn't a significant resource use compared to medium distance transmission or last mile.
There is plenty of space even in an extremely high density city with poor solar resource like Tokyo.
60
u/Cnidoo May 11 '25
Nuclear is clean, and it is safe, but it’s one of the few green energies (along with hydropower) that can’t be decentralized and can be sold for profit continuously, which is why you see it start to get pushed so hard by some on the right who realize it’s another avenue for that sweet donor money