if they claim a 15lb Turkey feeds 12, how am I supposed trust any of the other numbers?
Rookie Numbers. It only uses electrical power generated. Why not cook turkeys in heat destined for cooling towers ? Gotta push those numbers way up.
Wow, didn’t realize how anti-nuclear Lemmy is after looking at this comment thread.
Common on contrarian and alternative platform as this particular topic has been seeded by russia psyops against russian oil alternative.
This is why germany shut down all its reactors and went back to burning lignite coal when nordstream was blown up by a ln Ukrainian triggerman.
I really don’t get this ackshually business about nuclear power, we’re absolute idiots to not employ it more. Everywhere there’s been a focus on nuclear power generation we’re seeing reliable results over a long long timespan
Lemmy keeps telling me nuclear power is stupid. I’ve been screaming for more going on 30-years now. 🤷
The problem with nuclear is: business wise, it is a TOUGH sell to the public, even without the anti-nuclear lobby groups fighting with safety propaganda.
It takes a much higher capital spend to start up nuclear than any other type of plant, so you won’t “break even” for 30 plus years, if ever.
It doesn’t help when there are high profile sites that are being refurbished, whose costs are already phenomenaly high, and then the managing firm fucks it up (I’m looking at you Crystal River).
It makes it high risk, financially. And it’s the public that ultimately ends up paying.
My hope is that SMR’s become viable. They introduce a new factor though. If you get small, “cheaper” nuclear plants, then you will get more operators and you will get some that may run fast and loose. One fuck up can ruin it for everyone.
I can accept the argument that it’s safe and effective but the public irrationally won’t accept it. Seems to have been a pretty good sell on the other side of the curtain though
SMRs also produce significantly more waste for the amount of power generated.
It’s sort of too late for nuclear though. They take years to build and cost a fortune. The time to invest in nuclear power on a large scale was probably 10 years ago (although, was it as safe then? I don’t know)… Right now we need answers that get us away from fossil fuels much, much quicker. Nuclear may still be a part of the picture, but renewables are more pressing.
Think beyond your own lifetime
The energy problem we have isn’t beyond my lifetime, it’s now. There is a finite amount of investment available for new energy projects, and if we pour it into nuclear that means 10+ years of continuing with present usage of fossil fuels. Obviously I know noone is suggesting we do only nuclear, but the point remains that renewables projects can be completed sooner and cheaper. Even if we continue to use nuclear to support the base load and decide to develop some level of capability beyond what exists today, the majority of investment should go to renewables.
Thing is this has been said for longer than I’ve been alive, and will probably still be said after I’m dead, in the intervening 70-80 years we could have and could be actually building the damn things.
Thing is this has been said for longer than I’ve been alive, and will probably still be said after I’m dead
I’m not making this argument in the past, I’m making it now.
in the intervening 70-80 years we could have and could be actually building the damn things
Well, they are being built? It’s not like the world has abandoned nuclear power. We need the base load, there’s certainly an argument to use some nuclear, but the safety and waste issues mean it shouldn’t really ever be our only way to generate power, at least until some of those problems are solved. Modern reactors are much safer than they once were, but as I said before - the fossil fuel situation is immediate and pressing. I’m not sure I disagree with anyone who made this argument in the past - renewables are a faster way to convert away from fossil fuels. It’s more pressing now than ever, but it isn’t a new problem and it’s been urgent for a long time. Just because we failed to solve it before doesn’t mean we should throw the baby out with the bathwater. What’s your reasoning to focus on nuclear rather than renewables today?
My reasoning is we should do both, nuclear and renewables both have useful properties in the short and long term and the idea we can’t afford both seems ridiculous when we can apparently spend huge amounts of money on things like space tourism and giving amazon more money back in rebates than they paid in taxes to begin with.
Well I agree there. I think we should be focusing on renewables, but like I said I think we also need nuclear unless we can solve the energy storage problem.
