It's rather the opposite. Big oil pushes nuclear because nuclear directly competes with renewables, and because nuclear is a centralised power generation solution that they can fully own, in contrast with stuff like rooftop solar or onshore wind. Shell has a share in General Atomics, BP is eyeing investments into nuclear energy.

Nuclear fusion might truly be an answer, but there is nothing that nuclear does that renewables can also do, but cheaper and faster.

[+] [email protected] -17 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Literal fucking oil shill. Tell me. Where did I ever say to not keep building solar? Where did I ever say that we should let oil Giants maintain their monopolies. I agree that we do need to continue to expand renewable options at a local and state level, not a corporate fossil fuel level. Open your goddamn eyes and read the five graphs I've pasted so far in this common thread. Please make me understand how if technology we've been investing in more heavily than anything else for 20 years and that only now takes up 16% of our total energy needs is going to magically cover the other fucking 84%. Of the base load.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Money spent building nuclear is money not spent on renewables. I didn't say you said to stop building solar, but deciding to build nuclear does mean building less solar, simple allocation of resources.

Solar energy particularly has been becoming increasingly efficient and cheap. In fact, it's ahead of even the most optimistic expectations price-wise.

There's been plenty of studies showing that nuclear is not theoretically required to achieve 100% fossil-fuel free energy generation. And we've known this since 2009: https://frontiergroup.org/articles/do-we-really-need-nuclear-power-baseload-electricity/#:~:text=Nuclear%20power%20proponents%20argue%20that,baseload%20power%20other%20than%20nuclear.

Wind, solar, geothermal, hydro and energy storage solutions are perfectly capable of providing the full energy demand whenever we require it. The only issue is building sufficient amounts of it.

In fact, nuclear is particularly bad at providing base power. The reason is that renewables are so cheap (and becoming cheaper), that one of the main issues has turned into having too much power on the grid. Nuclear unfortunately doesn't turn off and on very quickly. Many old reactors take a couple hours to do so, and even if it's technically possible it's financially impossible because the reactor would be running at too large a loss. When dealing with fluctuating power (mostly caused by the day/night cycle of solar, other effects mostly even out if the grid is large enough), you need a backup system that can also easily turn on and off. Energy storage and hydrogen can do this, nuclear can't.

Then there's the energy security argument. 40% of uranium imports come from Russia. Kazakhstan is an alternative, but even that is largely controlled by Rosatom.

Literal fucking oil shill.

Please stay civil. I'm happy to debate you but you can keep the insults to yourself. I'm very much against the oil industry. I'm not even necessarily against nuclear as a technology (I think it's safe and don't think the waste will be too big of an issue, also fusion is really cool science), but I have to conclude that it doesn't make financial sense to go for nuclear, there's practical problems integrating it with a renewable grid and we just have better alternatives.

[+] [email protected] -9 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

I'm calling you an oil shill because nobody is pushing nuclear. Nuclear is being decommissioned nuclear power is not on the rise for the last 20 years. There has been a net loss of nuclear power and the only country's building reactors currently are China, India and Russia. So your entire rhetoric is flawed.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago

Nobody is pushing nuclear? Strange, I wonder why in my country numerous parties have been pushing for nuclear then (mostly right-wing pro-corporation parties with fossil fuel donors).

Here's an article if you don't believe me: https://www.dutchnews.nl/2023/03/let-the-state-build-new-nuclear-power-stations-vvd-and-cda/

There's plenty of parties pushing nuclear. The fact that it's hard to actually build doesn't mean that there's no lobbying effort being made. And even then, a lobbying effort now will only really result in a net nuclear gain in 10-20 years time when the reactors actually finish.

And for the record, "big oil" , does invest in nuclear. Chevron, Duke Energy, Eni, Shell and BP all investments in some nuclear research or nuclear company. The reason they don't really invest much more is simple: it's barely profitable, if at all. And renewables threaten the financial picture even more.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/10/france-to-build-up-to-14-new-nuclear-reactors-by-2050-says-macron