Comment on Anon questions our energy sector

• chiliedogg@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  You really don’t understand how expensive underground cables are. You know those big, huge steel transmission towers that you see lined up, hundreds in a row?

  Those towers costs hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars each. And the reason they’re used is because that’s way cheaper than underground.

  Shit - just the cable is a couple million per mile per cable.

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  • drake@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Are you fucking serious? Nuclear power plants cost way fucking more than some cables. You people are fundamentally so unserious. Pull your head out of a reactor for ten seconds and take reality as it exists

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    • chiliedogg@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Yes. They cost more than some cables. But we aren’t talking about wiring a stereo.

      A new nuclear unit (4 billion-ish) costs about as much as 2,000 miles of transmission-grade cable (about 2 million per mile). Considering that there’s about 30 cables on a tower run, you’re looking at around 65 miles’ worth of cable for the cost of a nuclear unit.

      And that’s just the cost of the wire. No towers, no conduit, no substations, no land acquisition (aerial easement and underground are very different things), no labor.

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    • jaemo@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      mmmm sounds like someone has zero concept of the scale of the problem: ie how much cable we’d need to bury. Simmer down Tony Snark, you’re demonstrably less clever than the rest of the species’ experts in this.

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      • drake@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        You have no idea what you’re talking about. shut the fuck up, you pretentious cunt.

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• areyouevenreal@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  You do realize that all that is also expensive, and limited? We haven’t invented room temperature superconductors yet, and battery technology is far from perfect. There is only so much lithium and cobalt in the entire world. Yes we can now use things like sodium, but that’s a technology that’s still young and needs more research before it’s full potential is realized. There is also a reason we have overground cables and not underground. Digging up all that earth is hella expensive.

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• Ajen@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Because superconductors are even more expensive than breeder reactors.

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  • drake@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    and breeder reactors are more expensive than faerie magic, I prefer to use technologies that are actually real rather than things I wish were real

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    • uis@lemm.ee ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I prefer to use technologies that are actually real rather than things I wish were real

      Wake up, 80-ies were 40 years ago!

      USSR figured it out long time ago: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-600_reactor

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