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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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Because it gets dark and the wind stops blowing and industry still operates when those things happen. Nuclear is not a forever solution, but a necessary stop-gap.
It's not actually required at all though, thats all FUD from the big energy monopoly that hate anything that can be owned and run by people that aren't them - there are endless options for making a stable grid using renewables and they're all considerably cheaper, quicker to make and a lot more resilient.
Nuclear gets pushed so hard because it protects the billionaires monopoly that's the only reason.
What are you talking about? Nuclear has been the target of a massive misinformation campaign from the fossil fuel corporations for decades. Looks like you've fallen for the FUD. People have been formatted by literally every form of media to think of nuclear as something dirty, dumping green glowing waste into the environment, and making fish grow extra heads.
Countries like Germany have been closing perfectly fine NPPs because of FUD funded by their huge fossil fuel lobby. 80% of our energy is from fossils, and they have apparently successfully convinced people that we shouldn't attack that number with every tool at our disposal. Meanwhile, we're collectively spending literally trillions of dollars on fossil fuel subsidies every year. Is that what pushing nuclear hard looks like?
You accuse me of falling for FUD, I accuse you of falling for FUD - you say the reason it's so unpopular is because everyone else is wrong, I say it's so popular because everyone else is wrong...
Germany has been very concerned about nuclear since a reactor exploded and they lived thorough the drama of having a cloud of nuclear fallout drift over them, i remember it and it was scary. Interesting France loves nuclear and this didn't happen in France, the French government lied and said they didn't detect any radiation because they didn't want to pay for leukaemia treatment and etc -- what I'm getting at is it's super complex why some people love nuclear and some hate it. When a second major nuclear disaster hit the planet it bulstered German distrust in the tech, it's not some sinister plot.
The facts remain billionaires make huge sums from oil and are already invested, that's why they fight to keep it - they know they'll lose their monopoly when we move away from it if we go to something normal companies and towns can run so their favourite alternative is the only other option that allows them to have a monopoly.
Oil and gas subsidy are bad for sure, you're kidding of you think the nuclear industry doesn't get absolutely huge amounts of public money thrown at it - look at Hinckley point C for example, the British government locked in an absurdly high price per mwh so EDF would get paid about double the current market rate - and this isn't rare, all over the world tax payers are funding nuclear subsidiaries because the plants aren't economically viable
And when the men in radiation suits came round collecting bird poop because the local reactor was leaking that's also paid for by the tax payers - it happened twice that I've known of. That's before you even think about how much tax money was spent on development and related costs, fuel sourcing, etc...
The wind industry has had mild government support, solar even less - except in Germany where it's been incredibly effective in enabling rooftop solar and grid modernization. Yet they've been building solar farms near me a lot recently because small private investors are able to actually see a return on their investments - since they started taking about building a replacement nuclear plant dozens of renewable sites have been put in the area, all now generating and some already paid off and making profit.
Nuclear was amazing in the fifties and it still has some limited use cases but it's basically obsolete as more modern technologies have emerged - and are continuing to emerge, they're starting to put in tidal systems and biomass conversion facilities (which are actually carbon negative) with huge developments underway in solar panel development, if the same investment had been made in solar and chemistry as has been with nuclear then there wouldn't be any of the fuel crisis going on.
Seriously go look at the history of nuclear power research and development, government money and billionaire energy conglomerate money gets poured into it at every step and it's endlessly pushed as the next big thing... Then look at the developments in things like solar panels and algae to fuel chemistry - that's all major breakthroughs by chem nerds who used their moms old tuppawear to cultivate strains because they'd already spent the research budget on a bus ride to the local park to scoop algae from the pond.
Nuclear subidies aren't even in the same order of magnitude as fossil fuel subsidies. There's so much fearmongering in that comment I don't even know where to start... Chernobyl really was the best thing to happen to the fossil fuel lobby.
My friend, I went to university for this shit.
Yes renewables need to come with storage.
Storage technology isn't there yet. Nuclear is. The only viable approach is "all of the above." Anything less is foolishness and oil industry propaganda.
The same people who run the oil companies also run nuclear plants, billionaires love a monopoly but what they hate is local communities being able to own and run solar farms and wind turbines, they hate the idea of someone that isn't them being able to spend a million making a profitable offshore wind farm or a raised water energy storage facility -- more than anything they hate the thought of houses and businesses having PV on the roof and being able to detach evenb just in part from the mechanisms owned by them.
What? You keep saying this in this thread, where the hell are you getting it from?
I mean it's not even a deep dive to get to that conclusion, it's not even a puddle depth investigation - the companies which run nuclear power station are also oil and gas companies. EDF literally just do both, you don't need to look at shared ownership or board members or anything, they're literally a French government owned power company that traditionally deal in fossel fuel. NRG energy literally nuclear and fossel fuel company, Siemens energy literally used to be called gas and power division, Bruce power in Canada is TC energy who are the major player in oil and gas pipelines....
Go look up who owns your local nuclear plant, it's oil and gas companies so let's not pretend otherwise
I mean, those are power companies. If you're calling public power companies "the oil and gas billionaires" then you're clearly being facetious.
When people talk about the oil and gas billionaires they are referring to the ones who spend millions on lobbying, Exxon, Shell, BP, Aramco, etc. You know, the ones funding climate change denial and nuclear fearmongering for decades.
50 yeas ago people couldn't think of a future without fossile fuel. 100 years ago people thought ships would run on coal for eternity and 200 years ago or in fact up until WW2 horses did most of the work when it came to transportation.
Things change fast. Stagnation of technology is not the norm.
There are urgent needs we can't wait 50 years for.
France started to build their new power plant in 2007 and hope to connect it to the grid next year.
I guarantee you that climate change and industrial loads will still be a thing in 16 years.
And where do you think all the materials for that come from? Eind turbines, solar panels and batteries require huge amounts of (rare) earth materials that need to be dug up in very -let's say ugly- mines.. lithium for example, is now the core component for most of our batteries and lithium mines are polluting as hell. If we want to have all the lithium we need for all of our storage capacity, well need to destroy beautiful places like the Atacama desert because if we don't we won't have enough lithium.
The rare in 'rare earth' is not related to scarcity, many of the most common elements in the crust are 'rare earth materials' lithium is a great example because it's hugely abundant especially in salt water where it can be extracted at the same time as desalination - which is especially good paired with wind and solar because it can rapidly switch power usage so excess energy at peek times can be used which helps stabilise the grid, then when generation is low it can pause to conserve power. Also ideal for placement directly tied to solar where sun and saltwater are plentiful, such as the equator.
The other good thing is that lithium is infinitely recyclable and battery tech keeps evolving to require less of it in its chemistry. Theres endless other battery technologies and energy storage methods available too, lithium is great for cars and phones because of the energy density but for grid tied storage that's not really an issue.