Quick everyone, downvote to oblivion because this guy actually is educated in the subject
Comment on 40% of US electricity is now emissions-free
random65837@lemmy.world 5 months agobut the grid will just keep getting greener as greener is cheapest.
Really? As somebody that works in the power space, how exactly do you figure that? Nuke aside, which people constantly complain about, the NRC doesn’t like to renew licenses, doesn’t want to grant new ones, that leaves wind and solar, both are money pits, waste more than they generate, and have a horrible environmental impact both from lost land, spent panels that can’t be recycled or thrown out as they’re toxic as hell, wind farms need never ending maintenance and again, cost more to run than they give back.
Until modular nuke become the norm and coal plants are retro’d, standard nuke plants are the absolute best bet. There’s no consiracy to keep older coal plants alive, sorry, that’s political stupidity. Every power company on the planet would dump them if they could. They’re a nightmare to operate and keep going.
Zaderade@lemmy.world 5 months ago
SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world 5 months ago
That guy sounds more like that pilot I know bitching how noise and pollution regulations make their job now difficult or even take their wings. It’s not because they’re in the biz they’re not biased.
Meanwhile where I live, solar panels and wind turbines are happily recycled.
Zaderade@lemmy.world 5 months ago
That sounds pretty different actually. On one hand you have someone talking about being inconvenienced.
On the other hand you have someone in the industry talking about practicality. Biased or not, people that work in their respective areas generally know the most about that same area, as opposed to random people online.
SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world 5 months ago
From where I’m sitting is still a random person online. I mean, I worked in a power plant for some time. It doesn’t make me an expert for the whole sector.
EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I actually work in the industry and am definitely educated in the subject and I can say with 100% certainty that guy is not in the industry and is full of shit.
Overshoot2648@lemm.ee 5 months ago
What is toxic in solar panels? While I’d love it if they would actually recycle the silver, copper, and 99.99% pure silicon, most of the time it ends up the same place the fiberglass turbines do: ground into industrial sand for concrete. Also the aluminum is already recycled anyway. There are several recyclers for solar panels popping up as the scale of solar increases to better take advantage of the materials, but they are already fully recycled Also coal plants are shutting down and being edged out by natural gas anyway. I don’t know what sources you are using, but they are either out of date or wrong.
random65837@lemmy.world 5 months ago
What is toxic in solar panels?
Mainly lead and cadmium, and they can be recycled, that’s not the problem, the problem is the cost of doing it vs sticking them in a landfill. Nobody wants to spend 5x to recycle something that’s dead to them and can’t generate income anymore, vs dumping it.
jabjoe@feddit.uk 5 months ago
Easier to recycle solar pannels and wind turbines than burnt coal or gas…
Solar and wind are now the cheapest power. www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/electricity_generation/ Both can be mixed with other land use. Both are still undergoing material use evolution.
Fission is always going to be an issue because humans aren’t grown up enough to handle the waste. scientificamerican.com/…/nuclear-waste-is-piling-…
Let alone running them safely. …wikipedia.org/…/List_of_nuclear_power_accidents_… So I’m pretty uncomfortable with standardized nuclear modules (sub reactors) being distributed far and wide.
Maybe fusion will be different, but it always seams decades away.
wikibot@lemmy.world [bot] 5 months ago
Here’s the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
Worldwide, many nuclear accidents and serious incidents have occurred before and since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. Two thirds of these mishaps occurred in the US. The French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) has concluded that technical innovation cannot eliminate the risk of human errors in nuclear plant operation.^article^ ^|^ ^about^