this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2023
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Asklemmy
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I just accept our fate.
Humanity will probably realize we seriously fucked up around 2050 and near the end of the century mass migration will lead to a death count much bigger than WW2 or the chinese civil wars.
The only grace is that most of us reading this thread will die from various reason before the second stage.
I will still do my part by reducing my CO2 footprint but unless we find some miracle technology producing nuclear power plant levels of energy for the cost of a charcoal power plant, shitty world leaders and corporations will ruin everything for fake wealth.
The technology already exists mate. Solar and wind are waaaay quicker to spin up than nuclear. It's a lack of political will due to entrenched industry buying out the political parties.
Solar and wind are not cheap enough
Solar on itself works between a few less than 8 hours and 16 hours depending on the solstice you are the nearest of.
And that's the theorical best.
Reality is efficiency will drop during summer because of the record temperatures each year and in winter we are seeing more sun (Haven't seen snow in 7-8 years btw) but the production is still relatively low.
If you want it to run 24h/24, you need to build batteries which adds more carbon and cost. And that's on top of the maintenance cost for the panels themselves.
Wind can work 24h/24 but you cannot predict it long term.
Wind too strong? We stop the plant. Wind too weak? Subpar production. And with climate change, your expectations on a few years basis can change very rapidly.
So how do you make sure we produce the same amount of energy with certainty? You build oversized farms more expensive than what you theorically predicted.
There is also the problem of land.
A wind or solar power farm requires a lot of land comparatively to nuclear if you want to approach the same power production.
That land can be occupied instead for housing, farming or anything else.
Comparatively, a nuclear plant can easily be circled in a few minutes by foot and produce over 1 Tera Watt of energy.
Once you compound everything, nuclear is the best solution we have at our current technology level but ridiculous anti-nuclear propaganda acts like it is a thing from the demon.(My green party almost closed several nuclear power plants. During the start of the russian war. To open gas power plant instead. Like WTF?).
So what will the rich people do?
Refuse to build nuclear because their fearmongering to push gas/oil backfired on humanity and refuse to build solar/wind because we could build 50 Disneylands in the same area.
I would love them to eat their shit and choose either solution still. But it's only a dream.