Oddbean new post about login | logout If you were hoping that somehow #renewableenergy would exclude #nuclear power (most obviously due to its financial costs & the historic problem of its waste products)... the fact that the rising price of #uranium would suggest demand (by Governments' #energy programmes) is rising will be disappointing news. Whether its a victory for sectoral lobbying or a lack of confidence in developments around energy storage from renewables, its not good news for anyone wanting the ned of nuclear power. https://cdn.masto.host/zirkus/media_attachments/files/111/076/568/234/819/429/original/e093aa874b312cd7.png
@43d7c4ea Renewables are super important. Absolutely. But they just can't meet all of our energy needs, that this goes beyond the "sun doesn't always shine" and "wind doesn't always blow" arguments. Sometimes we just need raw heat, for example. It takes a lot of heat to bake lime into cement. A cement kiln heats lime mixtures to about 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit in huge cylindrical steel rotary kilns. That's very difficult to do with just electric kilns on an industrial scale. Even if we were to crack the storage problem for the grid (which I don't really think is that difficult of a technical problem, it's a funding problem), Nuclear could help fill other specific energy needs like this.
@43d7c4ea I really don't support opening new nuclear power plants. But how much of the cost of a MWh of nuclear electricity is from the uranium? How much of a difference will doubling the fuel cost make? Isn't most of the cost from the difficulty of building and running the plant and dealing with the waste rather?
@43d7c4ea I guess it is a victory for people hoping that every solution for our CO₂ problem will continue to be used. Especially those that have already been shown to work. As for the »obvious« objections and disappointment, I submit that if you look at the actual facts and put them into perspective, then the disappointment will be much lower.
