this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
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By atom, do you mean nuclear energy? Why did you stop the nuclear plant?, assuming that's what you're referring to.
How does this relate to Germany relying using natural gas from Russia, before their invasion of Ukraine? My understanding was that Germany had energy issues at the offset, which I wouldn't expect considering how much renewavles you use
Honestly, despite all of nuclears many benefits, there's still no good action plan for the significant amounts of substantially dangerous waste it leaves around. Hard to figure out a storage plan for an invisible poison seeping from a rock for the next 50,000 years.
Does it actually seep? my understanding of chemical waste is: that it doesn't generate a lot (the US has about a foot ball fields worth from all of our nuclear power plants in our total history, so nearly 70 years), and that they placed is secure, not leaking containers. You're right that it will eventually be a problem, but probably a problem that we will have to deal with later than our current climate crisis. An argument could be made that maybe new nuclear plants shouldn't be made, but if we have some up and running, that's cheap energy that generates little carbon.
That is the great misunderstanding of nuclear. It isn’t cheap. It’s supported massively by tax money. In France with all its big nuclear plants for example, the power company went bankrupt. Nuclear is too expensive to run. The government took over the operations.
In Germany, the power companies refused to prolong the operations of nuclear at the beginning of Russian invasion. It was too expensive for them.
The only advantage that nuclear has, is that it’s independent of weather and doesn’t emit carbon. The drawback is the costs, inflexibility (always on), and reliance on cool water (which was an issue in France). That’s why MS, Amazon and all put there eggs into this basket for AI power - they shit money.
Nuclear is too expensive to run in the short term. Nuclear plants only start being profitable after like 10 years. But then they're really fucking profitable. So it makes sense a company could go bankrupt when you're 10 years in the red.
Also, on the topic of flexibility, this is only true for, like, 70s era nuclear. France has had load-following nuclear for some time now. Does it follow second-to-second variations? No, but it can load follow on the scale of the daily variations in demand.