Few things before I get down talked
- I am not an extremists and I believe in Tech, I mention it because getting rid of everything like cars, airplanes is for my understandings not an option for modern society. I know some people here see it different but please keep that in mind.
- I know some things I mention are highly controversial because everyone has its own opinion but I think proposed ideas are necessary trade-off.
You do not need to like it but this is what I suggest.
- Invest more money into Fusion Power.
- Remove all nuclear power plants and replace them with wind, earth thermal energy, water, and the other usual renewable suspects.
- Create more decentralized networks for energy create more batteries on bigger scale, the money we use for nuclear and power plants can be used to create batteries facilities near wind off-shore parks because wind and sun is not always blowing and shining.
- Declare coal and nuclear illegal, positive effect for climate directly because no nuclear threat + better air quality + less people die because coal has bad history regarding your health when you work there or live near around it.
- 2 humans only policy. I think 2 children are enough. Of course this is against freedom but I see this as necessary evil. However, I am against shooting someone, the punishment should more to cut funding from government in case you violate it. I am not someone who says you should get rid of the child or something, because there is still rape etc. I think life should be valued but there should be some restrictions on how you punish someone because otherwise people find excuses to bypass this rule. I am aware that this is alone is controversial and delicate topic.
- Renew the energy networks, the ones we have a not really designed to be used the way we use it and we need fundamental upgrades to handle decentralization. So we need money here to improve the situation.
- Money for research should be a much higher priority. We should fund good ideas and instead of wasting 2 trillion each year on war, weapons etc, we should use the money for good. This also can be used for medical things.
- Create at least in the cities better infrastructure for bicycles and open supermarkets 24 7. In my country supermarket often closes and running them maybe 24 7 helps to hire more people, easily ride with your bicycle into it whenever you have time, after work etc.
- Getting rid of plastics or drastically reduce it, the effect would be noticeable I think, see oceans, micro-plastics, cancer rates etc.
- Support more vegans and find better ways to make it more attractive. I tried it several times and it tastes awful, maybe I had bad recipes or wrong guidance, aka none. I think we should make people more aware of their options and directly provide guidance in the supermarket or via apps funded directly by the government so you know it is open source, no scam and everyone could help submitting new things.
- War should be declared - useless - and we should work together. Getting rid of all weapons in the world should be a long time goal. I mention it but that is just not realistic until 2050, but I personally would like to see that we evolve to such a point. Positive effects are so many, I do not think I need to mention them all.
This is no end solution and only my first abstract what I think is necessary and needs to be done. I clearly want to outline that all of this is a team effort and we need to come to an common ground and understand + act pretty fast on this if we really want to turn something bad around to gain more time.
🥺
@CHEFKOCH
I understand that the construction of new nuclear facilities has its own ecological cost, also economically that money may be better invested in renewables. But I don’t see the ecological gain from dismantling running nuclear plants during their planned life cycle.
Also, how do you justify giving priority on stopping nuclear product over fossil fuels? What good can there be in dismantling nuclear as quickly as possible if you have to import more coal and gas to compensate? (looking at you, Germany) Doesn’t the ecological situation rather pressure us into giving up fossil fuels as fast as possible?
I tend to agree on this, only because of the last line here. Running systems should be decommissioned when they are really finished. Nuclear power plant is finished within 60-80 years. I agree that it makes much more sense to let them run until their natural lifetime ends and they start to become inefficient, economical wise.
Uranium runs out in 130 years. The idea, or my idea is that coal and nuclear energies should all be replaced. I fully understand your point.
In another thread I already mentioned that for example in Germany you can go fully green. The energy network gets their green energy from France, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands based on water and wind. When they need more we provide them with more, when we need more we get more from their networks. Key is once again decentralized networks so your own home becomes self manageable and you only need to get energy when sun is not shining and wind is not blowing, also you can install batteries that hold around 20 years, I am currently in that process to do that for my apartment this summer, once that is done I do not need any external energy at all, even in Germany directly in a City.
The weak point is overall the energy network, which causes lots of problems and there is the 4 percent of energy that you waste for nothing which is because of the energy transport. EON and others did some research on this and they now try to compensate this with new and more modern superconductors cables that work up to 10 kilometres and are now improved, they work now under near room temperature, which at least would solve several problems in the industry since there is less energy wasted. I think the process can be improved to make it more efficient.
I think compensating nuclear is 100 percent possible, I have seen models but you need to build better networks, use more money to build more off-shore systems e.g. in the Ostsee and Nordsee which then fully utilizing water energy. But you need to get the money from somewhere and this would be nuclear energy, because maintaining waste is really really expensive and no one really talks about it. With that money alone you can build lots of wind parks, batteries to store sun and wind energy and combine everything and store it when it is really needed.
I doubt you can fully get rid of all fossil fuels in the next 300+ years. It is not only energy that is an issue, oil is used in pretty much everything that is synthetic. We need here the money for more scientific research on coming up with nature based solutions. For example you can use banana plants as plastic replacement for e.g. food packing, you can just throw the packing away, its natural, no chemicals no oil, nothing. We need to combine all of those ideas, not just one or two if we want to reduce the overall carbon footprint. My overall approach here relies on using such ideas and a bigger scale and combine everything we have.
I like to point out at this point that I did not considered the money factor at all, someone must create a model based on my idea and check the math if that is even possible or make sense. I did not put money in consideration due to the simple fact that I see climate, and survival as investment that cannot be measured with numbers. However, I am fully aware here that society as well as the people who pay or invest into it see it different, it is questionable if such a model can be applied but I think it is overall possible. It is drastic change until 2050 but I think doable.
@CHEFKOCH
So that means that we can still renew the current plants for another 50 years, right?
Mind to share the source for this number?
Also, when do fossil fuels run out?
Finding alternatives to other uses of oil are an orthogonal problem. Doesn’t change the fact that we need to reduce fossil-based energy production as much as possible as fast as possible.
I don’t understand how the debate has shifted so much to “nuclear VS renewable” when we still use so much fossil fuels…
I already shared the number across several topics now. Here we go again.
Fossil fuels are estimated to run out, assuming we stay on the current course by 2100 the number says 2060 but both uranium and fossils are estimates, lets simply round them positively up because we might try to reduce both of it over the long run. We all know this is positive wishful thinking but lets not just create fear and panic, I like to see such numbers more as averages that can be go lower or higher, depending on our further actions.
Fact what pro nuclear energy people forgot, and this always is that building more power plants depletes things faster and you need to store more waste forever, I say forever because 1 million years is such long time, that I doubt humans will exist until then. The logic to create more power plants because it is reliable and then swipe under the carpet that you run out faster and create more waste is beyond reasonable.
I agree, water to name an example does not depend on fossil fuels.
We always will use fossil fuels, point tho is that depending on uranium has biggest implications. Ethical ones, there is no solution for end storage, weaponizing it and and and. It is unpredictable and you always need to calculate our estimates based on worst case scenarios and not best case scenarios.
Thanks for the share, sorry I was not following the previous threads very carefully.
Well you didn’t round the uranium number up… At current consuption rates and with currently discovered reserves, uranium is estimated to run out in 127 years and fossils in 28. Adding in the many other uses of fossil fuels for which the alternatives are still to be found, it is way more urgent to get rid of the fossil-based eenergy production than the nuclear one.
How will we if they will run out within one lifetime? As you say, we need to eventually get rid of both, the question is how to organise the transition. It is not absolutely necessary to shut down the nuclear production within 30 years.
Depending on fossil fuel, as we do now, as biggest ecological implication though.
There are proposal and efforts to reduce uranium and fossil fuels, they are not put into consideration into this chart. New reactors are a bit more efficient and the govt already said that EVs are the way to go. So I would say max 2100. It is more realistic.
No, because for the waste storage you waste lots of fossil fuels, I suggest here doing some research because this is a chicken egg problem that goes hand in hand. As said you always will rely on some point onto fossils, one way or another. Point here is that you directly should think in long terms and there is only fusion energy here as solution.
Not in my and your lifetime. Those numbers do not put EVs etc intro consideration, fact is that the gov slowly making the switch, it gives us some more time.
Creating new ones that also depend on fossils and uranium does not solve anything, it only gives you some time. The uranium can also be used for other purposes than just nuclear energy, if we deplete it then we miss an opportunity to research it more. It is necessary to use the money that you gain by shuting down nuclear power plants for long term solutions and that is not nuclear. I think you do not see the big picture here, if you waste 2 trillion dollars each year for weapons and nuclear to gain time and selfish reasons or you invest that money directly in off-shore parks and fusion, well its a mathematically thing. Nuclear lose here, clearly. Because after your 30 years, lets make it just 100 you wasted trillions of dollars for a system that continues to be a financial burden, and fossil burden because the waste will always be there and you could just use that money to directly invest into wind, water, earth, sun.
I understand that, but why not doing a similar overestimate for uranium? I recall that “uranium runs out in 130 years” was your reply to why prioritizing stopping nuclear over fossils.
That is actually an argument for stopping fossils first.
Lifecycle greenhouse gas emission is much lower for nuclear than fossil-based energy, that accounts also facility construction and waste management.
Qualitatively, it involves some fossils, quantitatively it still pollutes way less.
In both cases, it is about earning time, why do you make it a positive thing about fossil fuels?
We agree that we should eventually get rid of both, using nuclear to earn time for the transition out of fossils is a more eco-friendly strategy than the other way around.
Mathematics are the following : are we able to provide enough renewable energy so as to give up on both nuclear and fossil energies right away? If not, the renewable surplus should be used to shut down fossil power plants. When there are none left, we can start shutting down (or stop renewing) the nuclear ones.
The talk about the years is pretty much irrelevant, I did the math with 200 years in another thread already. It does not change the underlying issue. Uranium is also harder to research than fossil fuels, since Uranium has more limits. This is just pure chemistry. Recycling for example is much much harder due to the nature of uranium.
Wind is not fossil based energy source, not sure why I need to mention it. You apparently do not see that nuclear also uses one way or another fossils too, nuclear does not replace fossil all together, also not wind, sun etc. It solves one problem but not all. No one also ever talked here about fossil based reactors or energy sources. If you want to talk about emissions, someone did the math and it does not check out.
Again wind, sun is not fossil. It gives you time to create systems and networks, which is the underlying point. We had already 50+ years for transition time, we need the change now and not in 100 yeas.
Yes math checks out, use the money to build win, off-shore etc and it will work. There are only people like you that apparently support nuclear for no reason when its easily replaceable with alternatives. Point tho is that clean energy is not wanted by the industry as they make less profits once the system is constantly running because maintenance is much cheaper over the long. The studies people here linking are sponsoired often by exactly those big energy monopolies that can effort such studies to support their crazy idea to continue to use something that runs out much much faster than 200 years because for every new nuclear power plant you build you waste more resources much faster.
No this will be too late by then. You apparently do not understand that time here is the factor. If you continue to create new power plants you waste money for something that has limited future, alias none.
I read everything and this is about emissions which is irrelevant since wind energy causes zero emissions. I already explained in depth in multiple threads now that you need combine several things across different countries, it makes no sense to use water energy in africa. That is just common sense.
It can never be a part of the solution, explained now multiple times, uranium is limited the more plants you build the faster you deplete the resource, forever I want to add here.
The context of you linked document are emissions not nuclear power plants. The word nuclear in fact only occurs twice or three times, which shows you did not read it. My context is resources not emissions. You just bring a random document forward b the energy industry that want continue to deplete resources to maximize their profits. Clean energy like fusion is much cheaper and the resources for that will not run out in next 100k years even with society growing and demanding more energy.
This figure not mentioned waste, and the depleting process that speedup when you build more power plants. You switch problems that is all. You lose.
You cannot take this chart serious because left the important parts out, creating more plants creates more waste, depletes more uranium much faster besides you still need fossil fuels for synthetic stuff anyway.
I don’t know where you got the idea that you need to mention it. I never said that nuclear is preferable over renewables. I said we should keep using it as long as we do not produce enough renewable to get rid of fossil fuels.
I never said that nuclear pollutes less than renewables, I said it pollutes less than fossil fuels, hence be used in the transition from fossils to renewables.
Those two things you said are mutually exclusive :
Which one is true? Either, renewables are enough right now, so we can shut down all the fossil plants quickly enough so that we don’t even need to wonder whether to build new nuclear plants. Or they are not, in which case the nuclear+renewable combination is a more eco-friendly temporary situation.
The context of their linked document is emission during a power plant lifecycle, from construction to waste disposal. So the “nuclear” line correspond to total emission related to a nuclear plant.
That it does is literally what the footnote that you cited says.
Again, that you need fossil fuel for other purposes is not an argument in favor of fossil-based energy.
cc @j_ming as there’s replies to your post also