“Endanger birds”
A whole lot less than most alternative solutions
Comment on We can do all three things at once
FinishingDutch@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I’ve got solar panels on my roof, and being Dutch windmills are in my blood. But I’m also not blind to the reality that both wind and solar will only get you so far. And there’s already a lot of opposition to wind farms - they ruin the view, endanger birds and there’s health concerns due to noise and shadow projection.
If we just build even one nuclear powerplant, we could basically just… not do wind. And we’d have pleeeenty of power for the coming energy transition, change to electric vehicles, etc.
But noooo… nuclear is scary. Especially to the people who only cite Fukushima and Chernobyl in regards to safety. That’s the same as banning air travel because of 9/11 and the Tenerife disaster. Nuclear power is safe, cheap and we owe it to the planet to use it wisely instead of more polluting alternatives.
Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Default_Defect@midwest.social 1 month ago
Aren’t stray cats more dangerous than windmills for birds?
Cliff@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Toxic baits, windows, roadtrafic, high voltage powerlines, the massive decline in insects. All of them are much worse than the casualties by windmills.
Honytawk@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
Definitely.
But Coal pollution is also killing more birds.
Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Main bird killers in the world
bstix@feddit.dk 1 month ago
Nuclear is not cheap.
FinishingDutch@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Even the link itself mentions how it’s not really a good metric to use as it doesn’t factor in whole lot of externalities. I.e coal is cheaper, but when it creates air pollution that shortens your lifespan, is it worth the tradeoff? Nor does it factor in things like energy density: a nuclear power plant is far smaller than the amount of lsnd needed to put up enough wind turbines to match its output.
Basically… LCOE looks like a neat gotcha, right up until you look past that first diagram.
Forester@yiffit.net 1 month ago
Its cheaper than climate change.
Forester@yiffit.net 1 month ago
Its expensive to build new bespoke massive, built on site reactors. I’m not arguing for more of them I’m saying lets run them for their full service lives as they were so expensive to produce. However if we are discussing new installations i’d love to start making a lot of small modular light water reactors in factory conditions. Economies of scale.
bstix@feddit.dk 1 month ago
I agree. Smaller local modern salt reactors would be a better use of nuclear than investing in the conventional centralised nuclear plants. However they’re still in the experimental phase and not easily available. I too would love if “we” starting making a lot of them, but there’s no finished design or anyone offering to build them for mass deployment.
Right now, with the currently available options, renewable is the only cheap mass produced energy source that can beeasily deployed everywhere and in different scales.
Hopefully the container sized nuclear plants will eventually be as easy to setup.
Renewables also have a similar issue with storage. It exists mainly in experimental projects. It’s extremely local if it even makes financial sense to do it. In places where existing nuclear or hydro is available it will not be make much financial sense to store excess renewable energy with a loss.
Forester@yiffit.net 1 month ago
Its not exactly new science we have proven designs. en.wikipedia.org/…/United_States_naval_reactors
Strykker@programming.dev 1 month ago
Power from nuclear plants in Ontario is some of the cheapest to produce in the province, because the plants have been running for literal decades.
stebo02@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
building new nuclear plants is barely an option though because it costs tons of money and, more importantly, takes like 10 years to build. However I agree we shouldn’t decommission the existing ones if they still are in a good state
FinishingDutch@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Well, here in the Netherlands we definitely need far more energy in the near future. We’re moving away from natural gas for heating and fossil fuels are going away in favor of electric vehicles. Add in things like heat pumps, more people getting airconditioning, data centers and other growing energy needs.
Basically, right now we have ‘just about’ enough electricity available, but soon it won’t be.
Nuclear plants are expensive and take a long while to build. Which is why I hold politicians responsible for not pushing them through years ago. The best time to build a nuclear plant was ten years ago. The second best time is today.
stebo02@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
I guess that makes sense yeah
Resonosity@lemmy.world 1 month ago
One of the ways solar and wind can become more reliable is by expanding the grid.
I’m not sure where you’re from, but in the US we have three grids: the Eastern Interconnect, the Western Interconnect, and Texas. These grids aren’t connected despite their names, and there have been many attempts in the past to connect them to little avail.
The benefit of larger grids with distributed energy resources is that even if local environments are cloudy or calm, those conditions usually are locally concentrated. This means that if one DER is underproducing, another DER can make up for the loss if that DER’s locale is sunny and windy.
This gets better the wider a net you cast to collect energy (i.e. grid).
On your counterpoints to wind, “the view” is in the eye of the beholder - I’m young and I love the look of modern wind turbines; wind turbines reduce the overall amount of bird deaths from the energy industry as we transition away from fossil fuels; no significant evidence has been found to link wind turbine noise to health issues; and shadow flicker has not been correlated with any adverse health outcomes either, leading me to believe that this propaganda is being propagated by either NIMBYs or the fossil fuels industry or both.
Point is: solutions to climate change will come in a silver buckshot, not in a silver bullet. We need an all hands approach to this so we reverse damage as soon as possible and get to restoration as soon as possible.
Other I agree with you though. I would love to have a backbone of nuclear through the American Great Plains where population centers are low. Only issue there though is groundwater use, but I’d imagine future reactors could make use of geothermal-type solutions to cool instead of surface waters. Maybe there’s a radiation risk there. Idk, need to research more
SapientLasagna@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
It’s kinda the same though isn’t it? Opposition to nuclear power, opposition to wind, solar, geothermal, hydro. Seems like maybe what people want most of all is to stick their heads in the sand and just have everything stay the same forever. It was a multi-decade effort to get people off of leaded gas FFS.
Harbinger01173430@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Yet those two places are not nuclear wastelands
henfredemars@infosec.pub 1 month ago
You know what’s scary? The existential threat of climate change.
FinishingDutch@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Absolutely that’s scary. Heck, we’re seeing the effects of it every day. If more nuclear means less coal and other polluting options, I’m all for it.
Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Are you really saying that to a Dutch? They are the first ones that get affected by rising sea levels, don’t worry, they know it’s scary.