[rayiner]

Renewables are a dead end if we want to keep evolving society. Imagine what possibilities there would be with 10x or 100x the available energy. Renewables are not even at the point where they can currently replace the existing electric grid. (Energy storage isn’t advanced enough to take traditional baseload offline.) You certainly can’t build a Star Trek world with wind mills. You’re not going to factories on Mars or asteroid belt mining operations with solar.

[breeny592]

Imagine what possibilities there would be if humanity finds a way to power all its current and future needs that produces no harmful side effects rather than trying to equate science fiction with reality.

> (Energy storage isn’t advanced enough to take traditional baseload offline

Because traditional baseload isn't a concept in a fully renewable grid - distributed storage and production naturally evens out demand and production, and also makes the grid more resilient to freak weather events (the kind we see more and more thanks to climate change)

> You’re not going to factories on Mars or asteroid belt mining operations with solar.

You're not doing them with anything at the moment so whats the point of conjecture. You really think that energy is the biggest concern over, you know, the colonisation of space?

[buzzkillington]

>Imagine what possibilities there would be if humanity finds a way to power all its current and future needs that produces no harmful side effects rather than trying to equate science fiction with reality.

So when do we turn off the giant nuclear reactor in the sky we don't understand and might evaporate the planet if something goes wrong?

There is no such thing as 'no harmful side effects'. We can put our head in the sand and pretend that the universe is a friendly place for life and go extinct in the next 100k years or so. Or we can acknowledge that there is no such thing as 'nature' and make the universe fit for us.

[nl]

Energy storage isn’t advanced enough to take traditional baseload offline.

Right now reliable baseload can be provided by renewables plus gas fired turbines for intermittent supply much cheaper than nuclear.

http://www.energyscience.org.au/BP16%20BaseLoad.pdf

If the argument is that we want nuclear power on Mars, then sure, that seems a reasonable position to take.

[0xy]

Gas-fired turbines are extremely bad for the environment.

Why would you compare nuclear, which is 100% green, to 'renewables + gas + batteries' which is far from green energy?

[nl]

Gas isn't great, but it isn't terrible (especially in a world where gas plume burn-offs is a thing).

It's much better than coal, and can be migrated to incrementally (which is much easier than the huge up front investment in nuclear).