668
A nuclear plant’s closure was hailed as a green win. Then emissions went up
(www.theguardian.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
668 points (92.4% liked)
News
23024 readers
3253 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
I may not like nuclear, but if we want to decarbonise we need some more of it. Maybe before phasing out older and unsafe plants, we can start to build a new one in its place? I don't know this is not my field
Yeah, on one hand nuclear energy is very safe, runs 24/7, and doesn’t belch greenhouse gases and poisons into the air. But on the other hand, it’s expensive, takes a long time to build, and many people are irrationally afraid of it.
Unfortunately, I think the real-world decisions are going to be dictated 99% by economics. But that can turn back into a good thing as green/renewable energy gets cheaper and cheaper.
The cheaper renewable energy gets the less economic sense a nuclear power plant makes. If you design a multi-billion-dollar plant for an expected electricity price and that price drops in half before the plant is completed now it won't make a profit for twice as long.
For sure. If renewables are already significantly cheaper, and that’s because the cost has been falling and falling, how much cheaper will they be in another decade?
For nuclear, maybe the only hope is if SMRs ever take off and benefit from some economies of scale. If you can just order a handful of modular reactors from the factory and be selling electricity within a year, that changes the whole dynamic.
Unfortunately I think the latest I read about it is that SMRs are currently more expensive per watt than the traditional nuclear plants, and they’re focusing on remote areas and industrial heat and stuff like that. If that’s correct, we might need a solar-like rapidly dropping price for them to compete for mainstream grid power use.
I wish we had some place where all the anti-nuclear, flat earthers, theists, anti-GMO, vaxxers, etc. could live and pray in peace....far away from the rest of us.