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Young climate activist tells Greenpeace to drop ‘old-fashioned’ anti-nuclear stance
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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The cost of continued fossil fuel use is far higher.
Profit should not be the motivation of preventing our climate disaster from getting worse. If the private sector isn't able to handle it, then the government needs to do so itself.
And besides, the only reason fossil fuels are so competitive is because we are dumping billions of dollars in subsidies for them. Those subsidies should instead go towards things that aren't killing the planet.
Would it be better to dump billions into nuclear power plants that won't come online for a decade at least, or to dump billions into renewables that can be online and reducing emissions in under a year?
We should worldwide be putting trillions into both. Renewables should be first priority, but not all locations have good solar, wind, and battery options.
That's your opinion. I think funding nuclear is just burning money and wasting time we don't have.
That's the exact argument people have been making for 60 years, and look where we are now. Around 80% of the world's energy is still from fossil fuels. Do you want to continue making the same mistakes as the previous generations?
You cannot run the entire grid on entirely renewable. We physically don't have enough lithium in the world to make the batteries for it, and even if you don't use lithium there would be untold ecological destruction to extract the rare earths.
Renewable and hydroelectric is a solution but not viable everywhere and hydro also causes massive ecological destruction
If we started building nuclear powerplants right now it would take 10-20 years before they're even online. That's 10-20 years worth of technology improvements that could make it obsolete, especially if we don't pin our hopes on nuclear baseload and start building a grid that can be 100% renewable.
And that's not even mentioning the truly massive budget overruns. Or the environmental impact of mining and refining fuel.
And you would be running 10-20 years of gas and coal power plants in addition to the renewables if you're not in a suitable area for hydro because suitable grid scale energy storage solutions literally don't exist. Maybe they will in 10-20 years, but would you bet on a maybe or go with nuclear which we know will work as a baseload?
Considering nuclear plants consistently go tremendously over budget, budget that could be used on renewables, and how quickly renewables are improving, I would take that bet in a heartbeat.
For reference, here's a graph comparing the cost per megawatt hour over cost per installed capacity from 2010-2019. Solar is now 1/5th what it was 10 years ago, onshore wind is half, and offshore wind is down by 25%.
The cost of nuclear power in that time has increased by more than 50%.
I would much rather invest in something that's showing improvements in cost and technology than Cold War white elephants.