2167
Young climate activist tells Greenpeace to drop ‘old-fashioned’ anti-nuclear stance
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
2167 points (94.2% liked)
World News
39004 readers
2541 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News [email protected]
Politics [email protected]
World Politics [email protected]
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
That's an oversimplification to the point that it is wrong. Nuclear power is not the only form of clean energy like that at all. It can not be scaled in this situation to save us, because it takes too long to build them.
It takes 6 years on a fast paced build. If we had started when we knew of the problem, we could have avoided some of the problem. It is the only energy source we can scale up in that way, however. Every other energy source takes longer for less yield with current technology.
Sadly, humanity had other things to do :(
Ain't that the truth. We could've just been naked eating fruit and making art all day, but instead we have anxiety and loans.
Yep. Fuck Putin.
If we had started, but we didn't.
It is not the only source like that at all. It is way easier, cheaper, faster and sustainable to build windmills where the is constant wind, solar cells where there is a lot of sun, hydro where there is... Energy sources should be built depending on the locality so they complement each other.
This kind of talking in absolutes like some of you are doing is just plain wrong and it does disservice to advocacy for nuclear power.
The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, but the second best time is today. We can't let what we should have done stop us from doing what should be done.
And for other sources, wind and solar are great sources of energy that should be a supplement, but sometimes the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine, and we don't currently have the battery technology to store energy on the scale to handle those fluctuations. We need a stable backup, and nuclear is by far the best clean and stable energy source.
We kinda do, though. It's really new, but there are a few battery technologies that claim they can currently store enough power to defend building them and making solar or wind be the base load. At a lower cost per lifetime kwh than nuclear.
Another person with the incredible wisdom to tell me the is no sun during the night. Thank you sir!
I'll make it quick: Reducing carbon emissions is urgent. Building nuclear plants takes time, is expensive. There is no capacity to build enough to offset any carbon, not to mention building them produces carbon emissions. Plus many are even scheduled to be closed.
Building something that will make a difference 20 years from now is smart, but if it comes at the expense of what is urgent today, it is very very dumb.
Exactly. This person is talking about planting trees and waiting 20 years?
If you're hot today you don't plant a tree, you put up a temporary shade (like a tent). Just nailing plywood roof to four posts is better than waiting 20 years for a frigging tree to grow.
People complaining about "the current technology" of solar, windmills, and batteries? Prices per MW are dropping so fast, it won't even matter soon. Battery tech is only old because we didn't have a lot of power to store. I bet we have better batteries before the decade it will take to build a single nuclear plant.
That is quite the gamble though. You're so sure that we'll be able to develop a new technology and deploy it on a global scale within the next 20 years, that we shouldn't even bother with the one clean solution that we know works? Not only that, you're assuming a technology we don't have yet will be better for the environment, despite all of our current battery tech being awful for the environment.
That's not like putting up a tent, that's like saying we shouldn't plant a tree because someone is probably going to invent an instant tree service, so we should just wait. Like, maybe someone does invent instant trees, but if it doesn't happen in 20 years we're gonna feel really dumb
Solar not working during the night is going to keep being a relevant point until we have the capability to manage it, your sarcasm doesn't do anything to refute that point. There are plenty of cool ways that scientists and engineers are working on solving those problems with better energy storage, but it's all still in the experimental stages, and until I see build out timelines for energy storage on national scales, all of the variable output power solutions will be nonstarters for fossil fuel replacement. You say that we can't wait 20 years for nuclear reactors, but we also can't wait 20 years to figure out how to build a big battery. We don't even know what the carbon emissions or time costs of whatever we decide on will be, but we do know that working nuclear reactors are a thing today.
I'm not against solar or wind, I have solar panels on my house right now, but it has only reduced my reliance on the fossil fuel grid, it's nowhere close to replacing it
Then don't! I kind of see your point about not building new reactors, even if I disagree, but what purpose could closing existing plants possibly have? How is that going to save carbon and reduce fossil fuels??
I'm all in favor of going apeshit with renewables, but I was under the impression that with current global energy usage, it would take renewables on a scale that is basically impossible to accomplish, if we wanted to drop carbon and nuclear as the backbone of global power production. Or at least that's what Sabine Hossenfelder told me on YouTube.
I watch her videos, but I'm pretty sure she didn't say that. I remember the conclusion was that is expensive, not renewable, new nuclear tech is even more expensive and nobody wants it next door. We need to reduce carbon immediately, but there is no way to build enough nuclear plants to even make a dent into the carbon emissions we produce. Not to mention many reactors are even scheduled to close. So sure let's have the conversation and let's plan to build but not at the expense of what is urgent now.
Yes. PIMBY - please in my backyard - solar, methane capture off my septic tank, a windmill. I'm not saying "it's impossible, so fuck it," to be sure. Though solar infrastructure needs more incentive/requirements to be installed over urban parking lots. They're converting arable farmland with prime soil into massive solar fields that aren't designed to be compatible with shade-based agriculture either because of the density or the heavy metals leeching into the soil, and meanwhile there are entire countries worth of parking lots in the USA where I'm sweating my balls off in the baking August sun.
If going 100% renewable is impossible to accomplish, then nuclear is even more impossible. The front-loaded cost for nuclear plants means you'd be able to power the world for 20-30 years or more of solar/wind/batteries (at an amortized rate because costs aren't front-loaded) for the cost it would take to just turn on the facilities that got us to 100% nuclear.
I think you are vastly overestimating the productivity of renewables right now. They are a smart investment to augment what we have, but to take non-renewables offline and to build enough renewables to reach the levels of modern nuclear, we will need an additional decade... Assuming the tech in renewables continues to make massive gains. There just aren't enough skilled workers, and you can't run these people non-stop to produce enough windmills to meet demand.
Renewables are only 20% of the US total, nuclear is 18% (and the US is the highest producer of nuclear worldwide at 30% of the world's total), and the remaining ~60% is fossil fuels.
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3