The only thing they can come up with as a downside is that “prime farmland is being covered in solar”. This is ridiculous, nobody’s doing that. There’s agrovoltaics, where the shade panels provide are an addition to the growing process, but that’s about it.
Comment on Stop renewables and wait for nuclear: Nationals stunning rejection of science and industry
Designate6361@lemmy.letthewookiee.win 1 year ago
I mean I am very pro nuclear but that’s the dumbest statement I have heard that’s meant to be pro nuclear…
jonne@infosec.pub 1 year ago
Chadus_Maximus@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Renewables seem to getting too close to replacing fossil fuels, pivot. Pivot to endorsing nuclear.
Designate6361@lemmy.letthewookiee.win 1 year ago
He bought?
SaveComengs@lemmy.federa.net 1 year ago
the problem is the instability of renewable power though, batteries aren’t cheap and arent great for the environment either.
I am pro nuclear and think that we should start building a fission plant ASAP on somewhere like french island in vic, and switch to that when it’s done after 15 years or so. We should be building renewables in the meantime though
Zagorath@aussie.zone 1 year ago
The truth is that baseload power isn’t nearly the problem for renewables that the right would like you to believe it is.
Nuclear is insanely expensive to build. Maybe one day new nuclear tech will eventually deliver the promised reduction in price, but it’s not there yet. Renewables have been the cheaper option in Australia for years, and are only continuing to come down. I was relatively pro-nuclear myself, until I learnt that.
vividspecter@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Agreed. Australia is pretty much the perfect location for renewable energy. We have an absurd amount of solar and wind resources (both onshore and offshore), and a large install base of rooftop solar to help in the transition. The only real challenge is transmission lines, but we are going to need to replace and upgrade them regardless of what we do, and some of that challenge can be reduced by putting more batteries out there in the right places, and using the existing lines more efficiently during the transition.
SaveComengs@lemmy.federa.net 1 year ago
Baseload isn’t the problem right now, but we can make it the problem instead.
If we have a solid foundation of baseload, we can incentivize more use of power in low demand times. This could be through water heaters heating household water at night, insulating more houses and using their internal temperature as energy storage, and with the increasing amount of EVs we could also mandate them to only be charged at night.
These measures would all flatten the curve of electricity consumption and increase the base demand in relation to the peak.
Nuclear is ofc really expensive to build, but it’s also expensive to build a million solar cells. And although we don’t know how expensive it would be because we don’t have nuclear power in Australia, in many countries it’s even cheaper than wind and solar per kwh.