this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2024
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Science Memes

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Anon questions our energy sector (slrpnk.net)
submitted 1 month ago by MataVatnik to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 month ago (25 children)

Anon is dumb. Anon forgets the nuclear waste. Anon also forgets that the plants for the magical rocks are extremely expensive. So much that energy won by these rocks is more expensive than wind energy and any other renewable.

[–] InputZero 13 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Anon isn't dumb, just simple. Nuclear energy can be the best solution for certain situations. While renewables are the better choice in every way, they're effectiveness isn't equally distributed. There are places where there just isn't enough available renewable energy sources year round to supply the people living there. When energy storage and transmission methods are also not up to the task, nuclear becomes the best answer. It shouldn't be the first answer people look to but it is an answer. An expensive answer but sometimes the best one.

Also nuclear waste doesn't have to be a problem. If anyone was willing to cover the cost of burning it in a breeder reactor for power or burry it forever. It just is because it's expensive.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Also nuclear waste doesn't have to be a problem. If anyone was willing to cover the cost of burning it in a breeder reactor for power or burry it forever. It just is because it's expensive.

But it is a problem. Finding a place that can contain radioactive waste for millions of years is incredible difficult. If you read up on it, you get disillusioned pretty fast.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 month ago (3 children)

When energy storage and transmission methods are also not up to the task, nuclear becomes the best answer.

Obviously, the best answer is to improve energy storage and transmission infrastructure. Why would we waste hundreds of millions on a stupid toy power plant when we could spend 10% of that money on just running decent underground cables.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

You do realize that all that is also expensive, and limited? We haven't invented room temperature superconductors yet, and battery technology is far from perfect. There is only so much lithium and cobalt in the entire world. Yes we can now use things like sodium, but that's a technology that's still young and needs more research before it's full potential is realized. There is also a reason we have overground cables and not underground. Digging up all that earth is hella expensive.

[–] chiliedogg 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You really don't understand how expensive underground cables are. You know those big, huge steel transmission towers that you see lined up, hundreds in a row?

Those towers costs hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars each. And the reason they're used is because that's way cheaper than underground.

Shit - just the cable is a couple million per mile per cable.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Because superconductors are even more expensive than breeder reactors.

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