Most new clean energy does not use boiling water.
Pushing electrons? Really? Man of your talents?
What is worst is that if we look deeper, we find out that everything is just turning the mill
The only advance would be solar that was capable of not using a mill that have to turn… Everything else? Just a fucking mill
We rotate around the sun, though
Fucking damn it!
Looks like the Dutchies were right in the first place
Nah, the dutchies also invented the stock market.
Solar and batteries (chemical). If we could harness lightening then that’s come without mechanical energy as well. There’s biological energy as well, we don’t have a way to extract it directly as electricity but it exists
Mechanical and heat is just the most common way to get electricity for us at the moment.
Fun fact time oklo is the only known instance of a naturally occurring fission reactor.
Wow, that’s mental
I love the description of PV to be basically ‘outsourced fusion’
Face it, all power is water, all stories are Hamlet, all food is grass, and all music is Pachelbel’s Canon. Reality’s budget is running out and it’s having to reuse assets.
I’d love to see someone try to explain how As You Like It is Hamlet
I’d like to thank some post on Mastadon, which really boiled down how and what a nuclear power plant works to provide power… the little things.
You’ve probably heard of an internal combustion engine, like what power cars and airplanes. Well there’s such a thing as an external combustion engine - a steam engine. A steam engine just needs some source of high pressure steam, the source of heat you find to boil the necessary water is almost a separate problem. You could use a wood fire, a coal fire, an oil fire, a natural gas fire. I’ve seen a small steam engine that runs on a tea candle. Heat from a geothermal vent, concentrated sunlight, or nuclear power.
How about a diesel engine? Large oceangoing vessels with 2-stroke diesel engines the size of a duplex put out a lot of waste heat, plenty enough to boil water and run a steam turbine engine. The diesel engine provides main propulsion, the steam engine powered by its exhaust provides electricity. Ships with such a system can shut down their aux engines while underway saving tons of fuel per voyage.
Can’t improve on perfection.
“You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.” -Uranium, Star Wars
Uranium is clean?
Extremely.
Even adding in construction and mining, it has the lowest carbon per KWh out of any option. Even Hydro comes out worse, due to the years of carbon and methane emissions from the decaying plant matter at the bottom of the newly formed lake.
Wind and solar are down there, but the mining costs and the low output per unit tend to bump the numbers.
Noted, that’s just the carbon released. There are other metrics, and nuclear tends to meet most all of them because it’s very heavily regulated.
Humanity’s relationship with producing energy continually blows my mind, and it’s one of the main things that makes me think that maybe we do live in a simulation.
We discovered fossil fuel energy, which was fine for a bit to kick off the industrial revolution, but obviously is super harmful in the long term. Then just as it was starting to become a problem, the universe went “okay, here’s this magic rock that just gives off energy, you can use that to generate massive amounts of power with no carbon.” And we just went “nah.”
So then, the universe is like, “alright then, how about this: you can just get it from the sun, the air and water. Again no carbon and it’s infinite free energy forever, you’re welcome.” And again, we were like “no we want to just burn fossils.” Even now at the ecosystem is visibly collapsing around us we’re adopting it somewhat, but still dragging ass on it like crazy.
It’s like whoever’s running the simulation keeps dropping the difficulty level to help us not die, and we just won’t accept it. I fully expect in the next century or so we’ll figure out cold fusion, build like two plants and humanity will just collectively go “BORING” and dig up more coal again.
It’s like whoever’s running the simulation keeps dropping the difficulty level to help us not die, and we just won’t accept it. I fully expect in the next century or so we’ll figure out cold fusion, build like two plants and humanity will just collectively go “BORING” and dig up more coal again.
it isn’t “humanity” who stands in the way of moving on from fossil fuels, it’s a few hundred extremely wealthy assholes who own the fossil fuel industry
That’s one hell of a claim. In fact such an outrageously bold one that you shouldn’t be able to post a comment like that without citing a reputable source.
It’s not that bold or outrageous… It’s been common knowledge for over 40 years.
Basically since the dawn of nuclear power plants we knew it was the cleanest form of energy generation. That was literally its selling point.
The problem was the fear of radiation if shit went wrong.
The Nuclear industry actually makes an effort to clean up after itself. Coal wouldn’t be such a big deal if they captured the carbon before it hit the atmosphere.
It would take far more than just capturing carbon to make coal clean.
Radioactivity isn’t clean.
Coal plants put out more radioactive material than even the bomb factories they call nuclear power plants. Newer plant designs are FAR more fail safe too, and some can actually ‘eat’ the waste from older plants.
New nuclear is right up there with renewables, with the added bonus of being great for baseloads. The only problem is we needed to be building it 20 years ago, since it takes a long time to design, permit and build them properly. If we try to rely on them now, it will be too late.
Class A whataboutism. Both are dirty, neither is clean.
It’s relative harm. New nuclear is far cleaner than coal, and can slot into it’s place in the grid. We should have done this decades ago, but the plans languished till china found out about them. (Much to the designers joy)
It’s also not an either/or situation. As china is demonstrating, there is a limit to how quickly you can roll out renewables. Doing other, pollution reduction in parallel makes sense.
Taking nuclear off the table was the biggest win the oil barrons pulled off.
On a plus side, we will finally find out if fusion is viable in the next 5-10 years. The first over-unity test reactors, designed for sustained operation are being built.
Renewables are cheaper than building new reactors. Fusion is always viable in 10 years.
Fusion has been 10 years away, with proper funding. It never got that funding. It struggled to maintain the break even funding to keep skilled people employed, and the lights on.
The difference is that over unity has been achieved, in a normally sustainable manner. The funding is such that it’s 5-10 years at current funding. Most of that is building the actual test plants.
I fully agree that renewables are currently the best cost option. The catch is that they are not viable everywhere. They are also inherently low density, so can get expensive in certain areas.
Basically, we want a mix of options, to fit local requirements. Nuclear (and later fusion) should be part of the plan.
In practice, I’m of the take what we can get. We need to crash CO2 output, and we need to do it yesterday. Anything speeding that up is a win, as far as I’m concerned.
Perfect is the enemy of good.
Nuclear isn’t good.
Fully clean technologies exist already.
Nuclear is cleaner than any other power option.
It’s just Oil Industry lies that make it seem “dirty”. Lies that started at the very beginning.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0009279723004544
Yes.
