[kulahan]

I honestly figured it’d be one of the first. That being said, France, UK, and USA are all moving towards more nuclear power. It might be at the point where it’s no longer possible to pretend we care about solar/wind, and can no longer realistically ignore climate change.

I’ve been saying for years that we’d know when governments were finally getting scared of climate change because we’d see real, very fast moves to install nuclear and, if possible, enhanced geothermal.

[OKRainbowKid]

I don't understand why acknowledgment of climate change would lead to nuclear over solar/wind.

[qball]

Because it's the one green solution that actually works as base load (other than hydroelectricity, but that's terrain-dependent), works 24/7 without any other affordances, and doesn't open you up to dependence on other nations to anywhere near the same degree.

Solar and wind are only cheap because a foreign nation makes the parts (if they were made domestically they wouldn't be cost-competitive, obviously). So in 20 years, when your PV panels are degrading and your turbines are wearing out, that foreign country's going to be able to charge you a lot more to replace it.

And if you want to see the results of cheap industrial inputs becoming expensive one only need look at the post-Nordstream German/European economic forecast. Even the poor should be able to afford to keep the lights on and the A/C running once the sun has set.

[bruce511]

One minor counterpoint;

Solar panels won't start degrading in 20 years. Their degrading is linear and starts when you install them. As a very rough guide you can think of it as 1% per year.

The 20-year horizon therefore is not fixed. It's just a round number. There's a point at which it makes sense to add panels (or replace them if you are space constrained.)

Once large numbers of panels start getting replaced you may see them reused in space-available places, or potentially 'reconditioned' to extend their life. Think of it as similar to second-hand cars.

Of course if the price keeps dropping these avenues are less attractive. And if you are space constrained there are already space improvements that may make changing desirable well before 20 years.

Finally, lots of things we use are made elsewhere. And we make things others use. By trading our excess for their excess we create a trading relationship where both sides operate in good faith because it is in their advantage to do so.

The current climate, where the US operates in bad faith, and seems intent on damaging trade relationships, does not encourage other countries to behave well in the future (regardless of the motivations you (project? expect?) from them in the future.

[kulahan]

Because solar and wind are extremely inefficient and dangerous when compared with nuclear. Nuclear and enhanced geothermal are both closing in on their dream forms (fusion and supercritical fluids), and are already sufficient as they are.

It’s not necessarily “over” them, it’s that it will get tons of attention because that level of power generation would take wayyyyy too long to build out and take wayyyy too much space before even getting into the fact that neither solution can work anywhere at any time.

Nuclear got a bad rap, but it is way too essential to ignore in this problem we’re facing. When the focus shifts, you can tell people are getting serious. Simple as that.

Edit: I did not realize this had somehow become a conservative viewpoint? I am a leftist.

[OKRainbowKid]

Can you elaborate why you think nuclear is more efficient and safer than solar and wind? As far as I'm aware, the opposite is true: Nuclear energy is far more expensive than e.g. solar, for which costs continue to go down. While I understand that nuclear reactors are safe (if handled correctly), history has proven that freak accidents can and do happen. Also, waste storage mustn't be ignored either. How are solar and wind more dangerous?

[physicles]

Gave you an upvote not because I necessarily agree, but to counter the downvotes.

I agree that it’s clear we need more nuclear, but could you explain why solar and wind are dangerous compared to nuclear? Did you mean that all the attention on solar and wind, which can’t be scaled fast enough and must be paired with grid storage, has screwed us when it comes to addressing climate change?

Also, calling solar and wind inefficient isn’t precise enough. By what metric are you judging them to be inefficient?

[kulahan]

Appreciated.

When I say more dangerous, it’s just a pretty simple calculation - per watt of energy, how many people have been injured/killed when producing energy via a given source. Coal is incredibly dangerous, as is gas by this metric. Nuclear is far and above the safest when calculating in this specific way.

Solar and wind are inefficient, by my definition, because they require large portions of land and cannot run with highly predictable outputs at all times. As a result, you need other solutions to complete the story - larger farms, more farms, large batteries, grids that easily transfer energy long distances, etc.

Nuclear is able to sidestep all of those problems, especially with the relatively recent advent of small modular reactors (SMRs).

[PaulDavisThe1st]

There are no "unsolved problems" for nuclear (because the safe storage of fissile waste for 10k years isn't a problem we need to solve, apparently). By contrast, getting solar+wind fully up and running requires totally solving the storage problem. Plus the libs love it. Hence ... nuclear.

[lesuorac]

> because the safe storage of fissile waste for 10k years isn't a problem we need to solve, apparently

We never solved it for the other material that we dug up and burned (coal). So coal ends up emitting a ton of radioactive waste because uh when you dig up the ground you also dig up radioactive uranium (there's no 100% pure carbon deposits).

It's also only a self-inflicted problem. You can technically re-use the waste until it only needs to be stored for ~300 years before it decays to "normal" levels. The US doesn't allow you to do that though while say France does.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> We never solved it for the other material that we dug up and burned (coal).

Oh yes. Having fucked up this badly with long chain hydrocarbon combustion, lets do it all over again with fission, because ... well, we did it once already, right?

[lesuorac]

> lets do it all over again with fission

You can look at it this way.

Or you could can look at it as we reduced radioactive emissions by switching to nuclear from coal.

Everything has trade-offs. It's not like solar has no side-effects.

[tnecio]

The orders of magnitude are different here. Replacing something that becomes a huge problem within two hundred years with something that (potentially) becomes a problem in a few thousand years -- really is better than spending valuable time on developing an "ideal" solution

[Krssst]

Nuclear waste is a local problem. They're solid not gaseous. GHGs are a worldwide problem.

Years don't matter if climate change puts an end to human civilization.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Neither you, nor I, nor anyone else has any truly authoritative knowledge on when (or if) fissile waste will become a problem, and if it does, just how large (time, space, populations, ecosystems) of a problem it will be.

[AnthonyMouse]

> because the safe storage of fissile waste for 10k years isn't a problem we need to solve, apparently

It literally isn't. There are two known solutions already. The stupid way, which is to put it in a dry hole in a geologically stable desert, and the smart way, which is to use it as fuel because it isn't actually waste anyway.

Neither of these things are currently happening for only one very specific reason: The global fossil fuel industry (including Russia) lobbies against them because they want to retain a piece of political rhetoric to argue against replacing fossil fuels with nuclear.

But that's a self-solving problem, because if you actually do replace fossil fuels with nuclear then the fossil fuel industry goes away, stops lobbying against anything, and then you can use either of the known solutions. Which means we'd only have to store the material for a few decades until that happens. The solution to that is what we're already doing at existing reactors, which is largely to keep the spent fuel rods at the power plant.

It may also give you some indication of the scale of the problem to realize that you can hold all of the spent fuel ever generated by a reactor that has been in operation for decades on the site of the reactor itself.

[Krssst]

Climate change is a decades-order problem. Worst case is end of human civilization.

Waste storage is a problem for once climate change is solved. Worst case is local degradation of environment.

A grid powered almost-fully by nuclear and water is proven feasible by France. A grid almost-fully powered by renewables for a full year in an industrialized country is yet to be seen. Renewables do work well when combined to fossil fuels, but we need to get off them.

The Republicans programs for electricity is completely insane and renewables is a much better alternative than drilling more fossil fuels. Nuclear is more realistic but the political will is not there unfortunately.

> Plus the libs love it. Hence ... nuclear.

One can be supportive of Democrats and liberals while not agreeing with one policy point.

[defrost]

* Renewable energy sources collectively produced 81% of Denmark's electricity generation in 2022, and are expected to provide 100% of national electric power production from 2030.

* Renewable energy sources collectively produced 75% of South Australia's electricity generation in 2023, and are expected to provide 100% of state electric power production from 2027.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Denmark

- https://reneweconomy.com.au/from-zero-to-100-pct-renewables-...

[bluefirebrand]

These are very likely misleading stats

> Renewable energy sources collectively produced 81% of Denmark's electricity generation in 2022, and are expected to provide 100% of national electric power production from 2030.

This doesn't say anything about how much of Denmark's consumption this covers, only their production

It turns out they import a bunch of their electricity from neighbors

This is a sneaky way to pretend you don't consume fossil fuels

[defrost]

These are locations heading for 100% renewable supply in the very near future.

The capital of South Australia is some distance from the border, even further from the Victorian capital (Melbourne) and is weakly linked compared to EU countries.

  In South Australia, the current connection to Victoria allows for just 25 per cent of its maximum demand to imported or exported.

  “So what that means for South Australia is we have to be a lot more self reliant. And ultimately, South Australia is the test lab for the whole NEM (National Electricity Market,”

Or exported .. SA actually exports a great deal of peak renewable energy, it over produces in the daylight and uses that to charge a battery farm or to feed to the neighbouring state.

The stats are no more misleading than the GP claim this is in response to, namely "A grid powered almost-fully by nuclear and water is proven feasible by France."

  France derives about 70% of its electricity from nuclear energy, due to a long-standing policy based on energy security.

~ https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil...

[sanderjd]

The "unsolved problem" for nuclear is doing it time- and cost- competitively with solar.

[ars]

There is no storage problem.

A breeder reactor plus reprocessing means there is no waste in the first place, and also gives us 100 to 1000 times as much usable uranium.

[matthewdgreen]

There seems to be a delusional part of the Internet that is convinced that nuclear is the only future, and solar and wind aren’t. To settle this, you basically need to look at what China is doing —- which is to build a lot of nuclear and then exponentially more solar and wind. We’re a huge percentage of the way down the slide to a mostly renewable world with storage, and some nuclear at the edges.

But it isn’t a competition. I’d be just as happy if things were going the other way. Having a clear mental model of the world is just useful. https://cleantechnica.com/2024/01/12/nuclear-continues-to-la...

[xaldir]

>look at what China is doing

China needs everything it can build and more. It's not much the what but rather where, when and how much that is crucial.

[zamadatix]

I don't get all that either, though I don't mind if nuclear is the future we'd just need to let go of the brakes on it. The other thing to look at is overall growth of each type - China is going ham on wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear yet they've still had to increase the total amount of power generated by coal, oil, and gas anyways. Graphs always predict something like https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/images/2017.09.27/main.png but we really always end up with https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/18/Ch...

Whatever the cheapest (clean) option deployable is people should be wanting to throw it in as fast as we can until we actually hit a technology limit with its usability instead of worrying it won't be able to get us to 100% or not. Instead, the conversation tends to read like we've already succeeded in deploying clean energy fast enough and we should stop looking or that we are still looking for a technology which can cut our current emissions and waiting for an answer. Neither are true, we're still burning more fossil fuels during the day. The US at least managed to hit break even growth in electricity generation https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/US_Elect... even after stalling nuclear outputs but there's still a lot to go there all the same. I'm not as familiar with Europe.

About the only stances I've been able to make sense of (even though I don't personally agree with them) are the concern nuclear is a step back rather than a step forward and that's why we shouldn't deploy it and the people that just want the cheapest power regardless of source. Everyone else doesn't seem to have a reason to worry about "what" as much as "how to deploy more" for the moment. The dirtier power tends to be the one that's easier to spin up/down very rapidly anyways - "keep the capacity for now and just run it less when you can" is still a great thing.

[matthewdgreen]

I'm not sure what you're arguing that's different than what I'm arguing. What I'm arguing is that renewables are being deployed on an exponential (S-)curve and nuclear is not. Given the relatively short time frame we have to solve this issue, any viable solution must exhibit this exponential deployment increase.

(This does not mean we'll succeed. Maybe we're all doomed anyway. But any approach that doesn't have this shape is a disaster.)

If you actually care about this problem, the actual question is: how do we get nuclear onto that same exponential pathway that renewables are on? Fiddling around with our existing legacy nuclear plants is so inadequate to our emissions pathways right now that it's equivalent to surrender.

[cyberax]

> There seems to be a delusional part of the Internet that is convinced that nuclear is the only future, and solar and wind aren’t.

"Exponentially more" means literally nothing. 1 is also an exponent.

China is building literally everything. It's also a geographically diverse country, with wide ranges of different climates. Solar is appropriate for Hainan, but makes little sense for Harbin.

[tfourb]

Have a Look at the statistics, before nitpicking. Solar and wind dwarfs nuclear in China and increasingly so.

[ForOldHack]

"Once again, China's nuclear program barely added any capacity, only 1.2 GW, while wind and solar between them added about 278 GW."

Dwarfs is the most apt description. (~250x)

[cyberax]

Nope. The devil is in the details.

You're looking at the nameplate capacity. However, for solar the actual capacity factor can be anywhere from 10-25% of that. So you're looking anywhere from ~25-70GW of the average capacity. Nuclear reactors can operate at 90-95% capacity factors.

And the unsolved problem is storage. Right now, solar can partially replace natural gas and, to a lesser extent, coal.

[timewizard]

I don't understand why people think a diversity of power generation options is somehow not something you would desperately want in the first world.

Your fashion sense is awesome; however, this is engineering, and we need as many options as we can get. There is zero sense in playing favorites here.

[renewiltord]

One of the best things to come out of destroying environmentalism is that we can finally get working on renewable energy instead of being blocked by suicidal environmentalists who find wind farms too ugly.

[rob74]

I think you're confusing environmentalists with NIMBYs who use (among others) environmental arguments to argue against projects they don't like.

[renewiltord]

Scratch an environmentalist and a NIMBY bleeds. I think we’ve seen the effect in America in general and California in particular. The Sierra Club is against infill housing to protect views.

[acdha]

Environmentalists have been pushing wind, solar, etc. for the last half century. There are a few shortsighted people who oppose wind farms but they represent a large, complex multinational movement in the same way that any one of us represents the tech industry, which is to say not at all.

In many cases, if you look at the complainants it’s also reasonable to question whether they’re fully honest about their motivations. For example, the big Martha’s Vineyard project was backed by the biggest environmental group in the area but by the opposition were people like commercial fishermen and various rich cranks like RFK Jr. and the Kochs who thought the change in view would affect their property values but do not otherwise live lives full of obvious strong environmentalist views.

[renewiltord]

Environmentalists push renewables the way homelessness activists push housing: It’s a great idea if it is near no one, hurts no one’s views, impacts zero birds, affects zero animals, and is not built for profit by the rich.

I suppose I could use their terminology, though: responsibly sited, balancing conservation priorities, and protecting local communities.

I recall, in my college years, being told how Real Communism hadn’t been tried yet. It seems that Real Communism never did get tried and no matter who tries Communism they never try the good Real variety. After years of watching top environmental organizations repeatedly oppose nuclear power as a whole and renewables often, I think I have to say: Real Environmentalism Hasn’t Been Tried Yet. No True Environmentalist Would Do What These Guys Do.

[tfourb]

I am an „environmentalist“ and I’m in full and public Sport of the hundreds of windmills in clear view of my town and the solar on every new residential development, including my own house. As are all other „environmentalists“ I know.

[renewiltord]

I’m comfortable restricting my position to the US. Things may be different elsewhere, even in Canada.

[acdha]

If you’re going to make that kind of sweeping claim representing many different people and groups, I’m going to need to see some data. What you’re describing sounds more like the mechanism I described, where rich people use the language of environmentalism to make their NIMBY activities sound less venal but that’s saying that those specific people are hypocrites rather than a general commentary on the entire field.

[renewiltord]

What evidence would convince you? If I know the bar, I can see if it can be met.

[acdha]

Anything specific? You started with this claim that environmentalists are blocking wind farms for aesthetic reasons, where are some example projects and who’s blocking them? I gave one (Martha’s vineyard) but in that case the major environmental groups backed it while the opposition was either not in the field (e.g. commercial fishermen) or rich people using environmental language but pretty transparently arguing based on real estate values or politics, so my first question would be how large the overall environmental movement is and how representative these people are within it. If, say, you have Greenpeace pro and RFK Jr. and the Kochs con, it’s hard to say that environmentalists as a whole oppose it.

[codr7]

Have you ever lived near wind turbines?

They take quite a toll on both wild life and people living in the area.

And are often abandoned as soon as they don't generate enough profits/are too expensive to maintain, with no one wanting to pay for cleaning up the area.

[throwaway2037]

    > They take quite a toll on ... people living in the area.

How?

[casper14]

Honestly, it's the sound. If you live close enough, it will drive you insane.

[jmb99]

A buddy of mine has two on his property, one within a stones’ throw of his house and barns. Not only does the sound not drive him insane, I couldn’t hear it (at all), nor any of the other ~600 in the area.

[codr7]

It depends a lot on geography and (obviously) winds in the area.

I can assure you that it's very real, and very harmful on a daily basis.

[acdha]

No, it won’t. This myth was started in the 2000s by Nina Pierpont who was looking for reasons to oppose wind farms near her property but it’s been studied repeatedly and there’s no credible evidence of any significant impact. Roads are at least as noisy, and have other forms of pollution, but I’ve never seen the same people call for banning cars.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-025-04645-x

[codr7]

Right, so people who claim to have this experience are lying, for no good reason.

While people who have a lot to gain from hiding problems with wind turbines are telling the truth.

Isn't that always how it works?

[johnisgood]

I moved to a house that has the main road on my side. I do not wish it to anyone. I cannot stand noise, and I hear cars 24/7, ambulance at least 10 times a day if not more, and they turn on the siren even at 3 am when there is no traffic because of some specific laws.

I also got a cat (against my will, but gotta take care of her) who wakes me up around 4:30-06:00. :|

I cannot stand the noise pollution. It makes me want to live by the countryside even more.

[bee_rider]

How close were you? I’ve been on a campus with a wind turbine, don’t recall any sound. But I didn’t get directly under the thing.

[wingworks]

I used to live down the hill from 1, and 99% of the time could hear nothing. But on a lucky day when the wind was in the right direction and right strength, you could just hear a faint woosh woosh woosh.

Personally I liked the sound. But we only had 1, so maybe different with many more. Though never heard the wind farms I've stopped by.