[nickelcitymario]

Don't disagree with anything you said here, however:

> and they have the old coal plants to fill in the gaps

...this is the problem with solar and most renewables. They have gaps.

The question, it seems to me, is are we in a fight for the survival of our species, or not? If we are, then we should pull all the stops. I want my grandchildren and their grandchildren to have a liveable planet. I'll pay the bloody premium to make that happen.

[SiempreViernes]

Get more hydro then as it's faster at adapting to changing loads than nuclear.

[nickelcitymario]

Hydro is damaging to the local ecosystem and has a long history of fucking over small communities, in particular indigenous communities who somehow never factor into these decisions.

Show me a powerful river than can be dammed with minimal to no impact to the ecology or the communities up- or down-stream of it, and you will have my support.

[SiempreViernes]

Oh, so "we should pull all the stops" turns out to be "please don't impact local ecology and communities"? Concerns about local ecology seems like a bit of climb down from "I'll pay the bloody premium"

[saagarjha]

Hydropower has environmental issues and the number of places with sufficient hydraulic head and no dam there already is not all that large.

[SiempreViernes]

Sure, but if you say things like "I'll pay the bloody premium" I expect you're willing to take the environment and political issues for the sake of clean, reliable, and fast power.

[bilbo0s]

>If we are, then we should pull all the stops...

But is coal not one of the stops?

I guess you should help me understand. Why should we use nuclear instead of coal to fill the gaps? They both pollute. With wind providing the lion's share of the energy, the use of coal is drawn down considerably in any case. And coal is far less expensive than nuclear, even with the onerous regulations that have been slapped on it recently. So how are you going to sell nuclear to your consumers when your competitor may be selling a wind/coal package?

And as to the question of the long term, clearly that is using pumped hydro storage and other such technologies along with more efficient wind turbines. Both lowering the duration of gaps, and providing more power during gaps. So your nuclear or coal plant is, even in the optimistic case, transitional. Who's gonna put up money like that for a transitional technology without some kind of draconian government guarantees?

[manfredo]

> Why should we use nuclear instead of coal to fill the gaps? They both pollute.

The idea that nuclear waste disposal is even remotely comparable to fossil fuel pollution is intellectually dishonest in the extreme. Coal plants pump toxic, carcinogenic, and radioactive waste directly into the atmosphere. Nuclear plants produce waste that can be sealed up and buried in a remote area. The hypothetical situations in which nuclear waste disposal could result in poisoning humans are borderline fantasy, usually involving societal collapse to such an extent that all records of the disposal sites are lost and some future civilization digs a mile deep in rural Finland for no conceivable reason.

[ekimekim]

> They both pollute.

In this "pulling out all the stops" scenario to stop climate change, only one of them pollute in ways that matter.

Unless you mean the CO2 emissions resulting from construction, etc. I admittedly don't know the numbers there, and I'd imagine a nuclear plant uses a LOT of concrete - but it's also very long lived, which means it should amortize and come out ahead of coal which produces CO2 in operation even if it produces more upfront.

[nickelcitymario]

^this. This was going to be my response.

All energy production creates pollution in construction. Nuclear is the only source I know of that can produce consistent and reliable energy without creating any emissions from operation.

[Qwertystop]

To my understanding, while nuclear and coal do both pollute, nuclear pollutes in a less environmentally harmful and more containable way - pollutants that stay in boxes instead of going up in smoke.