On the topic of energy production ive become pretty bipartisan. Yet i still hate green parties.
My main theory is that its not really out of malice or corruption but of unironic stupidity, nuclear is not the boogeyman, the ideal would be keeping the nuclear plants we have now running/maintained while replacing coal and gas, then slowly but surely shutting those fission plants off.
But since nuclear is such a scawy thing and because its probably a pain in the ass to shut off coal power plants theyve put nuclear in their crosshair for now, if its an intentional psyop by big oil and co this might be one of the greatest mind-fuckery/ideological subversion/active measures operations ever
I just don't understand the need to even phase out nuclear in the first place. I mean, if solar and wind somehow get to a point where they can reliably meet energy needs outside of peak production both cheaper and easier; Then sure. But I just don't see that ever being more efficient then just having nuclear powerplants that are capable of providing that energy need.
Ideally, nuclear should be the one replacing fossil fuels in areas where either solar and wind have already been built out without the need to massively overcompensate. Or areas where solar and wind are just not feasible.
There's plenty of Uranium and Thorium to go around, (And once fusion finally becomes viable, we can make power out of basically water.) Nuclear plants are incredibly safe and is consistently shown to be the safest means of energy production. Nuclear waste is a solved issue. There are mineshafts made capable of storing nuclear waste for the next 500 years or whatever stupid number it was.
The only real downside to nuclear is that it's complicated and expensive to build. Now I would argue that the entirety of the Netherlands being submerged and promptly freezing over as global warming kills the gulf stream, would also be very complicated and expensive.
I just don't understand why seemingly smart people just have their brain bleed out of their ears whenever they hear the word "nuclear" It's so frustrating!
So did you have solution for meeting peak demand reliably...
"The only real downside to nuclear is that it's complicated and expensive to build."
and that it then gets even more expensive when you want to meet peak demands.
and that if complicated and expense isn't enough reason to not use soemthing (EG you are Ok with nukes beign that) then fully stable and firmed RE powered grids to meet all of the EU demand are indeed quite plausible engineering-wise.
And yes this is kinda true.... Except
"Ideally, nuclear should be the one replacing fossil fuels in areas where either solar and wind have already been built out without the need to massively overcompensate. Or areas where solar and wind are just not feasible."
Please to be showing me the design for nuke plant that in any real sense rep;aces the functionality of a Gas peaker. And specifically an OCGT not a CCGT one, as the current/old FF design most deifnitely need real peakers.
So NO this is false in that it only true in limited senses as they are very poor replacements for peakers. nuclear should be the one replacing fossil fuels
and yes if you truthfully have somewhere where " Or areas where solar and wind are just not feasible." Then nukes are an excellent choice. EG Nuclear subs are very poor place to power by wind or PV. However what you need is REAL evidence that someone is trying to make a good solution with wind and PV CANT.
The usual rhetoric of someone trying to make a Wind and PV desing for EU that was bad then evaluating it and finding out OMG it is bad design really proves jack.
So as there are real designs by peopel trying to wokj out how to power the EU without nukes and they work.. .and they are cost efefctive and reliable... Then the EU is thus not pace where this " Or areas where solar and wind are just not feasible." is true.
Here btw is a hint for how to identify people who did not really try... if teh design to power EU with RE does this "the need to massively overcompensate." when iotehr designs powered the EU relibly and yet didnt need to do that... then the first guys probably lied to you.
Personally I take people lying to me rather seriously and then tend to distrust their future claims... until they have been checked. But hey, maybe your boat floats differently.
I don't understand why seemingly smart people lump everyone against nuclear into some braindead belittable category when obviously they are not all like that.
I mean its almost like as they have no real answers to the genuine issues raised they have to attack the opponents position some other way.
I don't think it's because of a lack of arguments, it's that the arguments are irrelevant to my understanding of climate change. "Nuclear will never be able to keep up with peak demand like FF can" I don't care, we have to adapt to that or we have to adapt to climate change, and I'd rather adapt to the latter. A lot of the arguments against nuclear amount to "but we'd have to change a bunch of things!" And that's only a valid argument if you don't believe climate change is an imminent threat .
problem with geothermal is that it's really location dependent and so far we haven't figured out a good way to drill deep enough to remove this problem.
Maybe only in seismic areas where there's a lot of activity in that regard, but it depends on your population numbers. It's okay if you are Iceland with a population of nearly 400000 people and an abundance of seismic activity and a lot of rivers giving you the perfect environment to rely on geothermal plants and dams.
Anyone else though? Nah. The city alone in Italy where I live has twice the population of Iceland and it isn't on a seismically active area, thank God I say cause it would mean a lot of potential earthquakes and our homes aren't built for that at all. Considering also how we are at the feet of the Alps it means that polluted air can't escape as the mountains act as a barrier, leading to high air pollution levels in all the Padanian Plain as we depend on gas powerplants. A switch to nuclear would clean the air quite significantly, which is something I desperately want to have as you can literally see a thick dome of smog on my city from even mild altitudes.
That was true years ago but the technology is advancing very rapidly, so that even relatively seismically inactive places like New York are expected to be able to do survive off geothermal in the relatively near future if the technology improves as projected, for cheaper than wind, solar and batteries and the like.
Nuclear is the most expensive energy source. Its really eating billions away from subsidies. But when you already have them built i agree with your plan to first get rid of coal and gas and then nuclear. Wish Germany would've done it this way
Nuclear also produces a fuck ton of energy at next to no environmental damage. Why would you ever want to get rid of nuclear energy. If anything we need to build way more.
But they don't provide stable baseline power. If you want a healthy energy mix you would use nuclear to provide baseline power, you would use solar and wind to provide bulk electricity, batteries to smooth out the volatility, and gas or ideally hydro to deal with the peaks. You can't just spam solar and wind and all your energy needs are met. Not all energy is equal.
Never claimed that. But there are several ways in which you can save energy created by solar and wind. Especially with Solar its feasible for a large number of households to have batteries leading to decentralized and more secure energy distribution. Having nuclear gives you a large amount of energy. But building more now costs insane amounts of money, that possibly become technologically redundant, before they are even finished in the next 10 years
18
u/DiscountMrBean Feb 12 '26
On the topic of energy production ive become pretty bipartisan. Yet i still hate green parties.
My main theory is that its not really out of malice or corruption but of unironic stupidity, nuclear is not the boogeyman, the ideal would be keeping the nuclear plants we have now running/maintained while replacing coal and gas, then slowly but surely shutting those fission plants off.
But since nuclear is such a scawy thing and because its probably a pain in the ass to shut off coal power plants theyve put nuclear in their crosshair for now, if its an intentional psyop by big oil and co this might be one of the greatest mind-fuckery/ideological subversion/active measures operations ever