Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by hi-v-rocknroll 764 days ago
Blinky, the three-eyed fish, disagrees. ,:) There's no point bothering with an inherently riskier and more expensive technology when cleaner, safer, and cheaper alternatives exist.

Gas also becomes obsolete with peaking-capable renewables with battery and/or PES.
1 comments
chickenbig 763 days ago
> There's no point bothering with an inherently riskier and more expensive technology when cleaner, safer, and cheaper alternatives exist.

Not sure how to simultaneously maximise the three metrics. How many tonnes of CO2 is equal to one life or 1M USD?

https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/impacts-of-energy-sourc...

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/cost-of-e...

link
hi-v-rocknroll 763 days ago
The tipping point for solar and wind being cheaper (LCOE) and cleaner to deploy and maintain rapidly overtook all other forms of energy (coal, gas, nuclear, and hydro) in more and more markets over time thanks to the economies-of-scale of more deployments and improved manufacturing processes. There are some markets where coal or gas is the cheaper and expedient solution for now where local LCOEs are different, but not for long.

https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth

link
frankharv 763 days ago
How nasty is producing Solar Panels? Have you looked at the etchants used?

I don't think we have a full account of the cost of the chemicals involved in semi-conductor construction.

I know its an inconvenient fact....

We all want to hate nuclear power but have no good storage plans for these new variable green power sources.

Nuclear may take a long time to spin up but it is constant and reliable.

Electrify the economy they say....

They forget wind and solar are part time producers.

link
kriops 763 days ago
How about the cost in wild-life and nature? The required area and kill count of enough wind mills to replace a single nuclear plant is absolute insanity. And idk where you live, but we just had a university leader here who had to go because the wind lobby paid her scientists off to falsify reports in favour of wind. Wind and solar have their places sure, but the future is nuclear.
link