[vrganj]

This is happening all across Europe right now - Romania, France too.

https://www.euronews.com/business/2026/07/13/france-shuts-do...

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/hungarys-paks-nuclea...

We keep having folks here argue that nuclear, not renewables are the path to take to get rid of fossil fuels. I have strong doubts - it feels like that doesn't account for the sad realities of climate change.

[cinntaile]

People arguing for one alternative over the other are usually politically motivated. I feel like you are doing the same. Sometimes nuclear is a good fit, sometimes renewables is a good fit, sometimes fossil fuels are a good fit. Most of the time a mix is the best fit. It depends on what you are optimizing for and what is geographically, (geo)politically and economically possible. All these systems are then built using assumptions, sometimes those assumptions no longer make sense after a certain period of time and sometimes you just temporarily or permanently have to adapt to the changes in the environment. This is an unusual but expected scenario for the nuclear plants along the Danube.

[seszett]

> sometimes fossil fuels are a good fit

There is simply NO safe level of fossil fuel use.

[ben_w]

Disagree, it's just that the safe level is around 0.1% of current use (though I don't just mean use of fossil fuels for electricity, I mean *everything*).

[danw1979]

There’s applications that we still have no alternative for though - e.g. aviation - so we’ll have to accept the burning of hydrocarbons there.

Not fossil hydrocarbons forever, of course, but synthetic kerosene might be a thing soon enough.

[acdha]

Yes: the way we should think about that is that we do things like switch to trains and BEVs so we can afford to continue running airplanes while synthetic fuels are being put into production.

[cinntaile]

I don't know what you mean with "no safe level of fossil fuel use". It doesn't mean anything without contextualizing that statement.

[arbitrary_name]

i thought it was pretty clear, personally.

[cinntaile]

It's unsafe so it's never a good fit? That kind of reasoning is just noise. Unsafe for what? Compared to what? What alternatives, given the constraints, exist?

[acdha]

Finding something ideologically inconvenient doesn’t make it noise. There is simply no level of new carbon emissions which isn’t guaranteed to cause expensive problems around the world. That doesn’t mean we can’t switch everything instantly but that means we shouldn’t be building anything new which has a safe alternative — and in the case of electric power generation or cars, that’s especially clear because burning fossil fuels for that is more expensive so you’re paying extra to pollute more.

[hamper653]

There is already too much carbon in the atmosphere.

[cinntaile]

It's not going to reduce any time soon. Either way the reality is that sometimes fossil fuel power plants make sense, that's why they're still being built.

[stavros]

Agreed, whenever I hear someone say "we need more/less nuclear and less/more solar/wind", I hear "let's burn more fossil fuels while we uselessly split hairs".

[otherme123]

Unless the scenario is totally different where you live, pro-nuclears are mainly "we need more nuclear, less rerewables, don't care about fossils, just guaranteed production", while pro-renewables are mainly "we need more renewables, less or no fossils and as few nuclear as possible".

If someone is getting wiped from the mix because of renewables, it is coal and fuel, not nuclear.

[hamper653]

What about Germany?

[vrganj]

I'm not really opposed to nuclear power politically. I just think it's a non-starter given the much higher cost, complexity of buildout and lack of reliability.

[deepsummer]

In countries with dark winters and without enough hydro power, the only reliable alternative are fossil fuels...

[comrade1234]

Iceland has no nuclear power plants.

[defrost]

Iceland is a small area, small population outlier literally sitting on two plates rubbing up against each other and a relative excess of active volcanism and large lava fields.

  About 85 percent of the total primary energy supply in Iceland is derived from domestically produced renewable energy sources. Use of abundant hydroelectric and geothermal power has made Iceland the world's largest electricity producer per capita.

~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceland

What works for Iceland works in few other places to the same degree (New Zealand, Yellowstone, places with thin crust and feisty caldera's).

[number6]

Germany also has potential for 85% geothermal energy.

There are some interesting spots here but it's generally enough through the country to do it everywhere.

Munich gets quite a lot of it's energy from geothermal sources

[deepsummer]

Countries like UK, Ireland, Germany, Danmark, Netherland, Poland also have dark winters. Solar in winter is only about a fifth of production in summer months.

Iceland has geothermal, which is amazing, but won't help central Europe.

[ben_w]

Those places also have a huge wind resource in the form of the North Sea, for Ireland whatever the other bits of that submerged continental shelf are called, and for Poland the Baltic: https://globalwindatlas.info/en/

This is important because wind season anti-correlates with PV season.

Plus, it's not like north-south power lines are beyond the wit of mankind. The US western interconnection includes both Canada and Mexico: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NERC-map-en.svg

[chermi]

He/she said no reliable alternatives.

[oblio]

Wind + storage, geothermal.

[deepsummer]

Storage of energy in the dimensions required for weeks with almost no wind is an unsolved problem. Right now, we can't store enough to make it through a single night without using fossil fuels. Most countries don't even have the capacity to store the energy for a single hour.

[RandomLensman]

As we can store fossil fuels for weeks of demand, we can store the required energy in chemical form, no? Germany has huge natural gas storage, for ezample.

[emsign]

Geothermal and storage is worth investing in, investing in nuclear is not. NPPs are simply too expensive and you won't find investors unless you heavily subsidize it with tax money. Only compnies willing to invest in NPPs are those with virtually free money: the handful of AI big tech giants.

[dudefeliciano]

The point they are making is that climate change will further push these conditions, so are we willing to build more nuclear power plants, knowing that by the time they are ready to go online this problem will be worse? Or better to invest in renewables which can be implemented today and will alleviate this problem? A mix of both with heavy majority of renewables and nuclear/fossil only to guarantee baseloads seems like the best idea to me.

[ThePowerOfFuet]

>sometimes fossil fuels are a good fit.

Oh come on.

[blitzar]

Your at the north pole ... its dark all day long (and cold) ... you need some heat and some power

[peterashford]

Scott base in Antarctica (NZ's scientific research base) is installing wind turbines and batteries and getting rid of diesel generators.

[cozzyd]

Yes but the South Pole burns jet fuel. Not much wind and 6 months of darkness.

The hut point peninsula is consistently windy though and the turbines are pretty! https://photos.app.goo.gl/goDVb7KuiKr6soHT6

[paganel]

Everyone is politically motivated on this subject, and that's a good thing, because this is a political decision by default, where the "political" is comprised of is, the voting citizens. We can't let decisions like these be taken by unelected technocrats alone.

[gib444]

I'm not filled with joy about my chav ("redneck") neighbours weighing in on nuclear vs solar and climate change and national and international energy markets and power distribution...

I don't have a clue either. Don't ask for my vote on how to power a country. Take my taxes and use them to listen to experts

[dudefeliciano]

Plot twist, the experts are lobbyists and they convince our politicians to start fracking and massively increase the use of "clean coal"

[vablings]

I would be willing to bet on a board of PHDS of varying sciences they would determine that coal is dumb and a waste of money

[dudefeliciano]

there are plenty of PHDs out there who have been bought and are in the pockets of industry...

[cucumber3732842]

>and that's a good thing, because this is a political decision by default,

Why is it a good thing that everyone and their brother seeks to apply state violence to micromanage what should be a fairly arcane technical issue?

>We can't let decisions like these be taken by unelected technocrats alone.

Do you feel the same way about topics where your opinion differs substantially from the local majority?

[andor]

Very few things are purely technical decisions. In this case, it’s about centralized vs. distributed electricity generation (or freedom vs. dependence if you want to state it that way). One of these options makes it much easier for the billionaire class to continue extracting money out of the people.

Edit: I don’t understand how you get from „political decision“ to „state violence“. Politics are at play at all levels of civilization where actors have different goals, from your dinner table and your company Slack to democratic institutions.

[roenxi]

> One of these options makes it much easier for the billionaire class to continue extracting money out of the people.

I almost hesitate to ask, do you think that is the centralised or decentralised option?

And, more directly, that is a bad theory. The billionaires will make money either way. It doesn't make a lot of difference to them as a class. They'll have an inclination to the cheaper form of energy because more energy -> more economy -> more money for them.

[cucumber3732842]

>In this case, it’s about centralized vs. distributed electricity generation (or freedom vs. dependence if you want to state it that way).

The venn diagram between people who act like renewables are "freeing" (which make no mistake, they absolutely could be) and the people who advocate nonstop for government management of how they are deployed is too close to a circle for me to take such commentary seriously.

>One of these options makes it much easier for the billionaire class to continue extracting money out of the people.

Ah, yes, billionares. Famous for not getting a cut when I buy a plug in solar panel from my preferred e-commerce site or big box store. /s

The billionares have their money in everything. They get a cut of everything. You're just changing who gets the cut. And even if no billionaire is getting a cut, a publicly traded/owned investment bank or other corporate interest that would replace them is not really any less evil.

>: I don’t understand how you get from „political decision“ to „state violence“. Politics are at play at all levels of civilization where actors have different goals,

By not gaslighting myself into thinking politics is anything other than the process of deciding where, when and how state violence is applied.

What backs up all those decisions other than credible threat of violence?

[dudefeliciano]

> people who act like renewables are "freeing" ... and the people who advocate nonstop for government management

Where did the person you are replying to even hint at that? I think this may be your own prejudice spilling out here.

> The billionares have their money in everything. They get a cut of everything. You're just changing who gets the cut.

Oh ok, I guess let's just accept this as is forever. Any attempt to try to improve this situation is futile and stupid (for example, as said, making it more difficult for them)

>What backs up all those decisions other than credible threat of violence?

I don't know, do you only act in fear of the threat of violence from the state? In democracies politicians are legitimized by their voters, what you are describing sounds more like an autocracy.

[Krasnol]

> People arguing for one alternative over the other are usually politically motivated.

If you can spend a Dollar only once, you might end up with renewables. People can be economically motivated too. No reason to draw politics in an already heated discussion.

[cinntaile]

> It depends on what you are optimizing for and what is geographically, (geo)politically and economically possible.

I mentioned all of this in my message. What was unclear about it or did you perhaps not read past the first sentence?

[themaninthedark]

I have not seen anyone arguing only nuclear to get rid of fossil fuels, what I see is people arguing that we need nuclear to supplement renewables to remove fossil fuel and the other side saying renewables and batteries(and maybe the occasional gas peaker plant or two...) or bust.

[acdha]

There are people who advocate for an all nuclear strategy but other than the ones whose non-profit gets fossil fuel industry contributions it seems to be much less common than a decade ago because the economics are undeniable now.

[1970-01-01]

For this we can just use our old friend uptime. Solar downtime is always daily unless you're in the arctic. Nuclear power will be at least 2 nines. Battery and solar, that is the hardest variable to measure.

[Cthulhu_]

It can be, but you need water, just like for solar you need sunlight and storage and for wind power you need, well, wind. Coal and gas rely on natural resources, which can be disrupted through geopolitical tension, like Russia's gas supplies into Europe getting cut off / sanctioned.

Every power source has their tradeoffs, and I don't think anyone is denying that.

What I do think is that people are making up arguments or statements that Other People have and call them out on it.

[eecc]

It’s the second of third year in a row that this happens.

At some point it will be the new normal.

[d1sxeyes]

https://telex.hu/belfold/2026/07/31/energia-krizishelyzet-ho...

[xinayder]

High temperatures also severely affect solar panel efficiency.

[acdha]

That’s like 0.3-5% per C° so even at extreme temperatures you’re talking like -15% — and that’s happening when it’s extremely sunny so you’re talking 85% or better, not a 15 point reduction off of an already limited panel. Nuclear costs so much more that renewables and batteries can be overprovisioned to compensate and still be massively cheaper, not to mention online a decade or more earlier.

[stefan_]

This is a technical problem with technical solutions. You can just fix things, you don't need to throw out 30% of your power generation to pay billions for climate change vagueposting.

[Cthulhu_]

Kind of? I'm sure you can change a nuclear power plant so it doesn't rely on river or sea water but that's not something that can be done overnight.

Restoring river water levels can't be done through technical solutions though, they rely on the weather and we can't control that. The European river levels are largely influenced by inland rain, snowfall, and glacier forming/melting; snowfall and rain has been meagre this year, glaciers have been melting and receding for decades now.

[emsign]

Electricity costs by nuclear power is heavily subsidized by tax money in France, so the French are paying the higher costs anyway. Just saying. Maybe there's a technical solution involving nuclear but it's really expensive compared to the much cheaper technical solution: renewable energy.

[flr03]

Different reasons though, France has nothing to do with water level or availability. It's for environment protection.

[emsign]

Not true at all. It's both in France and increasingly because the rivers run dry in the summer. Besides killing rivers for electricity and for "saving CO2" is as stupid as burning coal to keep HVACs running becauae the summers are getting hotter and hotter each year.