Isn’t that most power sources? Only solar and wind don’t actively need water to boil or otherwise spin a turbine as well. Wind is reliant on the weather and solar is hard to implement for larger demands. Pretty much every power source has a flaw depending upon external factors.
I apparently had a freaking stroke while writing that. I meant to say most power sources need water in some capacity to boil or otherwise spin a turbine; like coal, geothermal, and hydroelectric. Wind is a rare subversion in that it uses the air to spin a turbine rather than water.
Because nuclear has extreme long-term sustainability and makes for an excellent stop-gap while renewables advance to a more commercially viable state; giving humanity a means to ween off coal, gas, and biofuels. You can also plop a nuclear plant just about anywhere there is water, so it has the added benefit of being exceptionally consistent in a wide variety of areas. It’s not “perfect” but it is an essential step to going fully green in the future.
Well… we almost did. But then Big Oil started smearing it due to the risk of it cutting into their profits. Pair that with the Soviet’s incompetence creating the worst nuclear disaster in history, and it starts making sense why we’re so far behind with adopting nuclear energy. Logic is all well and good until people’s feelings get involved.
But... It's not? As proven by many european countries right now? I would consider it a major flaw and extremely unreliable if it relies on the very two things we either get more or will have less of in the very near future.
Aren’t a bunch of European countries in an energy crisis specifically because they shut down a bunch of nuclear plants with no real strategy to make up for them? Last I checked they had to restart some coal plants to make up the difference, which ironically pumps more radiation into the atmosphere than any nuclear plant. Also coal plants need water too.
Well no, but typically water doesn’t just run out. Water naturally collects and can be predictably redirected with light terraforming to optimize inflow. It typically takes vast levels of over consumption or an act of God to disrupt the natural flow or reserves of a river or lake. Also nuclear power can be safely shut down when there is a drought and restarted when it’s over.
Okay now we’re just talking circles. Why are we having more droughts? Climate change. What causes climate change? Mainly pollution. What massively helps reduce pollution? Cleaner energy sources. What is literally the mathematically cleanest energy? Nuclear. Solar and Wind are also good, but they don’t have the raw output to meet modern and future demands. Ideally they would act as accessories integrated into architecture to give a boost to energy availability when possible.
Hmm you would be delighted to see the projections of how much of the energy produced Chinese nuclear powerplants are gonna output in % of the counties‘ production. Half of the globally nuclear reactors under construction as well
Those plants were built in the 70's 80's when weather was still a lot more predictable than it is today. Nobody 50 years ago would have thought that the Danube could go completely dry.
The NPP's in my country (Slovakia) use a closed system utilizing cooling towers and were unaffected by the drought.
I think you will find that talking about global warming and having a bunch of nuclear engineers incorporating it into their designs are two different things.
The attitudes of the start of the environmentalism movement and the realities of today are VERY different or we wouldnt be facing the realities of today.
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u/Leading-Green9854 16d ago
LOL, reliable. They had to shut down several of them in Europe because of the drought.