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Phanatic posted:Here’s a shot of Palo Verde from Google Maps. This is the largest nuclear plant in the US, about 4 gigawatts of reactor. The reactors are also cooled with grey water and sewage in the evaporative coolant loop CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 21:28 on Sep 12, 2020 |
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Sep 12, 2020 21:24
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ounce for ounce, coal ash released from a power plant delivers more radiation than nuclear fuel waste shielded via water or dry cask storage. And we produce many orders of magnitude more coal ash than radioactive waste https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ Basically if someone is legit worried about people being exposed to toxic radioactive elements they should be a little concerned about nuclear power and extremely concerned about coal power and coal mining
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Sep 12, 2020 21:27
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Harold Fjord posted:I always like the "deaths per terawatt hour" measure, where even if you make a lot of really unfavorable assumptions there's a clear choice. WOO! 100k for coal? That’s gotta be an estimate. I wonder if natural gas includes production associated fatalities too. https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/
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Sep 12, 2020 21:28
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Trabisnikof posted:Something to consider when looking at EIA forecasts is that they're very constrained, for example they *must* assume there are no legislative or regulatory changes, and they're constrained by what price and technology changes they can consider. **** Ten or even five years ago I was sure that a huge resurgence in nuclear was going to be necessary to get off fossil fuels in a reasonable time frame, and was very pro-atoms. Since wind, solar, and storage costs have dropped so fast, and show room for more improvement in the future, I think we're past the point where that makes sense anymore. I still think nuclear is amazing tech and has a place in decarbonizing the grid, but it's not going to be at the front of the pack for a long time, maybe ever. Ramping up the specialized skills and heavy industry required to construct and operate that many reactors would take years even as a moonshot project with lavish national funding, and that's clearly not in the cards. If we'd started a heavy nuke buildout a decade ago I think it would've been a fine path to take and we'd almost certainly be better off than we are today, but we didn't.
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Sep 12, 2020 22:05
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CrypticTriptych posted:Ten or even five years ago I was sure that a huge resurgence in nuclear was going to be necessary to get off fossil fuels in a reasonable time frame, and was very pro-atoms. Since wind, solar, and storage costs have dropped so fast, and show room for more improvement in the future, I think we're past the point where that makes sense anymore. I still think nuclear is amazing tech and has a place in decarbonizing the grid, but it's not going to be at the front of the pack for a long time, maybe ever. Ramping up the specialized skills and heavy industry required to construct and operate that many reactors would take years even as a moonshot project with lavish national funding, and that's clearly not in the cards. this is why it so perfectly functions as a test of peoples character as much as it has to do with nukes. its an almost perfect proxy for "are you still capable of learning new things and changing your opinions" vs "my brain froze in place at 35. between now and death I'm going to slowly brain-petrify into a boomer by being more and more condescending while simultaneously getting more and more wrong". (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Sep 12, 2020 22:39
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Granted, I would say that it even 10 years ago it was looking pretty ify. I think there has been at least a partial consensus in this thread, even at that point, that while fears of nuclear power in certain regards were overstated, there were always serious barriers to it beyond public opinion, including financial, economic, and engineering feasibility of a mass French-style rollout. Also, public opinion wasn't really being driven by Greenpeace or hippies (even if they were clearly anti-nuclear power) but a confluence of factors that go back to the 1950s. It is clear that Chernobyl and Fukushima nearly turned public opinion more negative, but it wasn't the only thing that turned opinion. Personally, I think nuclear power still has a place in most energy portfolios and I think Germany jumped the gun. That said, as others have stated, renewables have made progress in the meantime and in all honesty have earned themselves a bigger share of the pie. As for Germany, one reason they are going to need nordstream 2 is for electricity generation and China is going to need Russian gas for much of the same reason even if they are going the other way on nuclear power.
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Sep 12, 2020 22:57
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I think that in the long run (like 2050-scale), there a number of ways to get zero-carbon dispatchable power to balance the grid even assuming the growth in wind and solar continues or even accelerates: 0. Continue to use a non-trivial amount of gas-fired dispatch (or biogas or similar) 1. Use remaining nuclear plants for as long as possible, and actually starting to build some more. 2. Enormous buildout of lithium-based storage (the technology that can be most economically built out at scale now. 3. Building out an infrastructure to store energy via hydrogen by way of electrolysis 4. Exotic storage technologies 5. Enormous expansion of demand response-type technology like smart thermostats or water heaters 6. Extreme overbuild of wind and solar combined with large investments in transmission (requires large amounts of curtailment) The U.S.' current policies seem to lead to a mix of 0. and 2 as the likely trajectory. I think that retiring existing nuclear is a lost opportunity right now, but agree that new nuclear plants are not really the best immediate action. All of these have their upsides except I would say that 0. is unacceptable in the long run. Gas generation is fairly mature but I would say that there are a lot of hurdles to manage for all of the others, meaning that as matter of temperament I would suggest it's best to be open-minded regarding each of the alternatives. The most feasible path to success seems to be some form of 'all of the above', meaning that it's not too important to analyze the situation solely in terms of one particular item, pro or anti.
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Sep 12, 2020 23:13
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Ardennes posted:Granted, I would say that it even 10 years ago it was looking pretty ify. I think there has been at least a partial consensus in this thread, even at that point, that while fears of nuclear power in certain regards were overstated, there were always serious barriers to it beyond public opinion, including financial, economic, and engineering feasibility of a mass French-style rollout. Also, public opinion wasn't really being driven by Greenpeace or hippies (even if they were clearly anti-nuclear power) but a confluence of factors that go back to the 1950s. It is clear that Chernobyl and Fukushima nearly turned public opinion more negative, but it wasn't the only thing that turned opinion. It seems very hard to imagine the physical materials or labor to construct nuclear power plants have gone up fifty times in cost, and it seems pretty hard for improved safety features in the proposed new generation of reactors to cost ten times more than the rest of the plants combined. So what is it? Does anybody actually know?
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Sep 12, 2020 23:14
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Infinite Karma posted:Is it productive to ask "why is nuclear so expensive?" Obviously it's still a big building made of metal and concrete with machines inside, it's not magic. Is it regulatory fees and lawyers/analysts that have ballooned the cost to 10x or 100x what it used to be? Design fees, redesigns, and change orders? Finance charges? Or even worse regulatory capture stuff like utilities milking cost plus contracts and kickbacks to insiders, where they purposely waste as much money as possible? How much of the cost of nuclear power is profit margin for middlemen, and how much is the actual costs of labor and materials and real estate? These are all good questions, and something I've been wondering about as well. You'd think we would be able to curtail the regulatory costs if we used standardized designs, but that's not really materializing anytime soon by the looks of things...
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Sep 12, 2020 23:22
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MightyBigMinus posted:this is why it so perfectly functions as a test of peoples character as much as it has to do with nukes. its an almost perfect proxy for "are you still capable of learning new things and changing your opinions" vs "my brain froze in place at 35. between now and death I'm going to slowly brain-petrify into a boomer by being more and more condescending while simultaneously getting more and more wrong". Possibly the most pretentious post that I've seen in the thread, and also the most unwittingly ironic
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Sep 12, 2020 23:23
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It is a bit of all of the above, but nuclear reactors aren't necessarily cheap in other countries, but usually less regulation and state support have made them more attractive in terms of price in certain countries such as China. They also have a far less litigious legal system (this isn't necessarily a good thing. In addition, the US right now just doesn't really have the engineering personnel on hand for a major expansion, which is going to probably take years of retraining. Design changes (which can actually be necessary...) also drives up the cost of projects. It is hard to turn back the clock to France during the 1960s (or China right now) that had far more free range to implement a build-out. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 23:36 on Sep 12, 2020 |
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Sep 12, 2020 23:26
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Thats why SMR and PRISM are kinda my hopes in the US, granted we are building new reactors at Votgle but something needs to challenge our shift to Natural Gas as a baseload alongside renewables. Modular reactors will vastly lower the cost hopefully QuarkJets posted:Possibly the most pretentious post that I've seen in the thread, and also the most unwittingly ironic He's basically projecting, its hilarious. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 23:30 on Sep 12, 2020 |
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Sep 12, 2020 23:28
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Wibla posted:These are all good questions, and something I've been wondering about as well. You'd think we would be able to curtail the regulatory costs if we used standardized designs, but that's not really materializing anytime soon by the looks of things...
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Sep 12, 2020 23:36
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Infinite Karma posted:You can curtail the regulatory costs, but my hunch isn't that. Stuff like "the concrete needs to be made by an NRC-certified plant with a verified chain of custody", but because it's so hard and expensive to comply, the few specialty companies who do it gouge 90% profit margins after going through the paperwork to rubberstamp normal concrete. Multiplied by all the parts and materials. So these hypothetical 15000 ton forges make a billion dollars in pure profit on each reactor vessel. It is part of the reason why having the government either own those companies outright or be able to demand a certain price point helps a lot.
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Sep 12, 2020 23:43
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Monaghan posted:assuming that there's no overthrow of capitalism in the near future. Sorry in advance for making this tangentially political thread explicitly political, but this really is what it all comes down to. Capitalism is the primary cause of the mess we're in. Breathlessly chasing the cheapest most destructive energy sources for decades and destroying huge swaths of land that are critical to the planets ability to absorb more of the effects of climate change - we've had a very real understanding of what climate change is and what our role is in it for over 50 years now, taking productive steps to change course was extremely easy then, and the primary reason we didn't was capitalism. And every single year since then we've had the option to change course, and we still do. But we can't as long as capitalism is the primary driving force of society. I'm not even saying we have to overthrow it (though, could we? Please) but we at a minimum have to smash it down to a system that follows the will of society instead of guiding it. Sure, we've made some progress, particularly in renewables. But the progress has been primarily driven by profit-seeking, and thus is not nearly strong enough and started way too late. The point I'm trying to make here is that we still haven't changed course. The best time to change our energy production was 50 years ago. The second best time was the subsequent 49 years. But it's still better to do it now than to not do it at all. Progress on renewables and storage is awesome, and I'm all for accelerating it, but it's not enough. If we sit back and say "ah, renewables will be enough, look they're getting cheaper!", we'll continue to do exactly what Germany has done - grow our CO2 output and stall upgrades to our energy grid. We have to be more aggressive than that, that's why there are so many ardent nuclear supporters in this thread. Every single one of us is gung-ho about renewables, and about storage, and about better grids, etc. But that is simply not good enough. We have to use something besides natural gas and coal to get us to the point where we can, someday, run on 100% renewable power. Also, on the storage point, lithium is a huge huge huge bottleneck. It's rare, expensive, notoriously difficult to mine, and if I understand right (please correct me if I'm wrong) our current known sources of lithium do not even come close to the amount required to manage the grid storage of even one country, much less the world. Also there are the human rights implications of that, like how the US just overthrew a government so that we could continue to exploit lithium sources. If we're going to lean on storage more heavily (which I think we should, to be clear), we're going to need way more options than lithium batteries.
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Sep 12, 2020 23:51
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FreeKillB posted:I think that in the long run (like 2050-scale), there a number of ways to get zero-carbon dispatchable power to balance the grid even assuming the growth in wind and solar continues or even accelerates: This seems like a pretty fair take of the future of the US grid at the very least. As you point out these strategies can and will be mixed together. For path #0 a dynamic I think about a lot is the way that the changing carbon footprint of activity interacts with the infrastructure choices made today. So within path #0 we have a sub-path where we build new natural gas plants, commit to maintaining gas wells and infrastructure for decades more etc and a divergent path where we instead focus on maintaining a set of existing plants for black sky events. If we assume that future infrastructure will be less carbon intensive then delaying certain infrastructure choices til later will be in the climate benefit. It might be better to pay to keep a fleet of gas plants available if it allows us to be carbon neutral 99+% of the time sooner and focus on solving that <1% of black skies later in the out years where the relative costs in carbon and resources will likely have declined.
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Sep 13, 2020 00:19
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Taffer posted:Sorry in advance for making this tangentially political thread explicitly political, but this really is what it all comes down to. Capitalism is the primary cause of the mess we're in. Looking at other command economies - they've had just as many as their own environmental catastrophes. Global warming is a problem of economics. It's also an engineering problem, a societal one, culture, etc. and that's why it's so freaking difficult.
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Sep 13, 2020 00:24
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Trabisnikof posted:This seems like a pretty fair take of the future of the US grid at the very least. As you point out these strategies can and will be mixed together. I disagree on the gas part. See the article I Posted a page up: Unless we are willing to nationalize and regulate gas extraction, emissions, and use as much as we regulate nuclear, its a liability we cannot afford.
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Sep 13, 2020 00:27
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Gabriel S. posted:Looking at other command economies - they've had just as many as their own environmental catastrophes. There is a vast range of options between maximum capitalism and a literal command economy. I'm not sure how you got that from my post, but that's not at all what I'm advocating for. I am however definitely advocating for nationalizing energy companies and the construction of new energy production - that's a far cry from a command economy and is critical to get us away from some of the most immediate catastrophes, like California's.... situation. There are a lot of reasons nuclear is super expensive (like the good posts on this page talk about), some of those are certainly capitalism and corruption but it's foolish to say it's all that. But what is clear is that a capitalist mode of production is strongly disincentivized to work on super expensive projects that have years or decades of wait before there's a profit. Especially when the primary benefit of nuclear is not monetary. State operated agencies have a much broader set of goals (where capitalism is only "make as much money as possible in the shortest possible time") which can allow for non-profitable things that are good for society.
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Sep 13, 2020 00:36
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Gabriel S. posted:Looking at other command economies - they've had just as many as their own environmental catastrophes. It is also a problem of resources, and the US theoretically has the resources to address the issue but won't. In contrast, China, for all of its faults, has been significantly lowering the carbon intensity of their output even as that output has increased.
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Sep 13, 2020 00:40
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CommieGIR posted:I disagree on the gas part. See the article I Posted a page up: Unless we are willing to nationalize and regulate gas extraction, emissions, and use as much as we regulate nuclear, its a liability we cannot afford. Liability or not, a grid that is 99+% carbon neutral (by the MWh) sooner is better than a 99+% carbon neutral grid later even if that requires keeping fossil capacity for theoretical black sky events. Which still would be leading towards the end of life for fossil plants and is distinct from the divergent path of building even more new fossil capacity.
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Sep 13, 2020 00:52
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Taffer posted:There is a vast range of options between maximum capitalism and a literal command economy. I'm not sure how you got that from my post, but that's not at all what I'm advocating for. You said the capitalism is the primary cause of Global Warming. There's way more than economics involved here. And if we're going to beat Global Warming it's critical to understand that. Ardennes posted:It is also a problem of resources, and the US theoretically has the resources to address the issue but won't. In contrast, China, for all of its faults, has been significantly lowering the carbon intensity of their output even as that output has increased. The United States along with Canada, Europe or other "wealthy" countries are the best equipped to deal with Climate Change no doubt from our wealth to our expertise. Yet, China is still building coal Power Plants. Japan is building coal power plants to replace their Nuclear Power.
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Sep 13, 2020 00:54
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Gabriel S. posted:The United States along with Canada, Europe or other "wealthy" countries are the best equipped to deal with Climate Change no doubt from our wealth to our expertise. China is at least also trending downward which is something considering it is still developing. Industrialization of non-align states was always going to cause higher amounts of carbon to be released but the first world could have certainly played its hand very differently especially the US. It may have been necessary to see slower growth in countries in China in exchange for more technical and direct monetary aid to move toward renewables and nuclear power. In addition, Western countries should have moved to lower carbon emissions quicker. Despite that, we should have seen climate change but we could have still mitigated circumstances quite a bit better than what we did.
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Sep 13, 2020 01:11
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Even within the economic sphere, the issues standing in the way of decarbonization aren't necessarily a problem with capitalism per se. In the U.S., large swathes are serviced by highly-regulated vertically-integrated monopolies. The regulators set allowable electric rates, and these generally are set to be the cost of service (including a return on invested capital, which allows these companies to profit). The thing is that regulators will only allow costs to be recovered if those costs are prudent, which means that there isn't a lower-cost alternative. The nature of the regulatory compact is that if an alternative resource is more expensive than a fossil plant, then those companies could not recover the costs of investing in such a resource, outside of statutory requirements like Renewable Portfolio Standards. In many ways it's a lot closer to a command economy despite there being a clear profit motive. Note that a number of states did switch to a different model, which broke distribution monopolies out of owning generation assets. In these cases there is still a lot of regulatory attention paid to making sure that the wholesale power market is 'fair' (although in practice this might be a notion of fairness that can be stacked against renewables). On the vertically-integrated side, there may or may not be such a wholesale market.
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Sep 13, 2020 01:12
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Gabriel S. posted:You said the capitalism is the primary cause of Global Warming. There's way more than economics involved here. And if we're going to beat Global Warming it's critical to understand that. Capitalism is the primary cause because it optimizes solely for profit without the ability to deal with externalities. "China is also building coal power" is not a counterargument to this, as 1) their electricity production largely runs under the rules of socially subsidized capitalism and 2) while they've been building coal power they've also been a world leader in green energy expansion and investment for years. Green energy has become profitable in recent years in large part due to nation states funding research, subsidizing production capacity, and subsidizing production. The world builds green energy in spite of capitalism, not because of it.
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Sep 13, 2020 01:40
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Ardennes posted:China is at least also trending downward which is something considering it is still developing. Industrialization of non-align states was always going to cause higher amounts of carbon to be released but the first world could have certainly played its hand very differently especially the US. It's true China's emissions have been going down however ever since 2016 (I wonder what happened here...) they've paused and their recent re-investments into coal have increased so much that if they continue at their current rate it will be impossible to hit the Paris Climate Accord. Their construction of additional coal power isn't solely due to economics but things at a state or local level. Their cities tax coal power, their universities teach how to run boilers, cities are built around supporting workers at the plants, etc. Even if China wanted to suddenly flip into a stronger command economy changing this kind of configuration will be extremely difficult. Hence, my point there's way more than just economics at play.
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Sep 13, 2020 02:46
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QuarkJets posted:Capitalism is the primary cause because it optimizes solely for profit without the ability to deal with externalities. Or you could just include externalities into the cost. Command Economies are able simply ignore externalities if they decided to do so. Now, would it be easier for Command Economies to transition towards zero emissions? Yes but that said doing so is in absolutely no way some kind of magical ameliorate towards Climate Change. Economics are one or one large piece of the puzzle. QuarkJets posted:"China is also building coal power" is not a counterargument to this, as 1) their electricity production largely runs under the rules of socially subsidized capitalism and 2) while they've been building coal power they've also been a world leader in green energy expansion and investment for years. A Country purposefully expanding Coal Power so much that the world will miss the Paris Climate Accords is in no way a leader on Green Energy. QuarkJets posted:Green energy has become profitable in recent years in large part due to nation states funding research, subsidizing production capacity, and subsidizing production. The world builds green energy in spite of capitalism, not because of it. The world builds "Green Energy" because it's now cost effective and cleaner. Even fracking wouldn't exist without the investments and subsidizes by the Department of Energy.
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Sep 13, 2020 02:57
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Here's a great example of how it's more than just economics. Japan Races to Build New Coal-Burning Power Plants, Despite the Climate Risks quote:Just beyond the windows of Satsuki Kanno’s apartment overlooking Tokyo Bay, a behemoth from a bygone era will soon rise: a coal-burning power plant, part of a buildup of coal power that is unheard-of for an advanced economy. quote:Fukushima, though, presented another type of energy crisis, and more reason to keep investing in coal. And even as the economics of coal have started to crumble — research has shown that as soon as 2025 it could become more cost-effective for Japanese operators to invest in renewable energy, such as wind or solar, than to run coal plants — the government has stood by the belief that the country’s utilities must keep investing in fossil fuels to maintain a diversified mix of energy sources.
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Sep 13, 2020 03:05
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Gabriel S. posted:Here's a great example of how it's more than just economics. And its a stupid move, period. There's no other way to frame what Japan is doing.
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Sep 13, 2020 03:20
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CommieGIR posted:And its a stupid move, period. There's no other way to frame what Japan is doing. Agreed entirely but everyone's now freaking paranoid of Nuclear Power. 
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Sep 13, 2020 03:28
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Gabriel S. posted:Or you could just include externalities into the cost. Command Economies are able simply ignore externalities if they decided to do so. Why do you keep talking about command economies? Do you believe that a command economy is the only alternative to full capitalism? The question isn't whether a command economy (or whatever economy) is better, it's whether capitalism has been largely to blame for climate change. And the answer is yes, it has. Reductions in carbon emissions have been in spite of capitalism Gabriel S. posted:A Country purposefully expanding Coal Power so much that the world will miss the Paris Climate Accords is in no way a leader on Green Energy.  Green energy and carbon emissions are related concepts but not to this degree. A country can be investing more in green energy than anyone else and still be a massive polluter, say if their electricity demand is also massively growing (as China's has been). The key point is that they're doing a lot more to invest in green energy than most other large countries Gabriel S. posted:The world builds "Green Energy" because it's now cost effective and cleaner. Even fracking wouldn't exist without the investments and subsidizes by the Department of Energy. Green energy and fracking are both only profitable largely thanks to government investment, yes. Or in other words, it's as I said: green energy is profitable in spite of capitalism. QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 03:47 on Sep 13, 2020 |
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Sep 13, 2020 03:36
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QuarkJets posted:Why do you keep talking about command economies? Do you believe that a command economy is the only alternative to full capitalism? I'm not sure what you're saying here - we're discussing the relationship between economics and climate change. Our reductions in emissions do have to do with economics as much as they have to do with engineering, society, etc. It isn't just one thing. QuarkJets posted:
And their investments in green energy are pointless if the results are increased emissions or they stay flat. QuarkJets posted:Green energy and fracking are both only profitable largely thanks to government investment, yes. Or in other words, it's as I said: green energy is profitable in spite of capitalism, free market forces alone would never have brought us to where we are today. A communist utopia could easily make the conscious decision to continue emissions. Humanity wants food, water, shelter, mobility, enjoyable lives, etc. All of these things generate emissions. I'm not disputing there isn't a relationship between the two - there is one - but in absolutely in way is it purely or overwhelming just economics. It's also true that green energy is profitable and feasible because of capitalism!
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Sep 13, 2020 03:49
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I love that he's going on about command economies, despite the fact that most nuclear tech was brought about by Federal Government investment and research rather than private industry. If the Feds decided tomorrow to start building reactors, they have not only the means and ability to tell State government to gently caress off, but also the resources to do so. this is not to say that's what will happen, but to demonstrate that they can solve these even outside of a Communist command economy. TVA is living proof of this.
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Sep 13, 2020 04:00
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If we're talking about economics and "command economies", then really there ought to be a discussion about the effects of uneven regulation and subsidization in "non-command" economies like the United States. It's not an accident that the regulations overseeing fossil fuel distribution and power generation allow a host of societal externalities, environmental impacts, and taxpayer write-offs - all done in the name of making it affordable. If coal plants actually had to sequester carbon emissions (aka "clean coal") rather than pump them into the surrounding community, it would immediately double the capital and operating costs. If they had to restrict all their emissions to just hot air, it would multiply the costs many times. That regulation policy choice is picking and choosing just as much as any CCP bureaucrat. When BP or Enron oil tankers inevitably run into problems and spew oil all over the oceans, causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damages to the United States, the economy, their fellow citizens, etc., they invariably get heavily subsidized by the government during the cleanup, and protected in the courts from punitive penalties. And so they don't have to meet stringent safety requirements, or face meaningful regulatory enforcement, or get expensive insurance. This policy gets repeated over and over for fracking, for pipelines, and fossil fuel trains, all of which are much, much cheaper as a result. It gets repeated in the subsidized gas prices at the pump, and the lack of emissions regulations in cars, and the constant road-building efforts. These are choices that are made intentionally. When it comes to energy generation, every economy is a "command economy". Kaal fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Sep 13, 2020 |
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Sep 13, 2020 04:04
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Gabriel S. posted:And their investments in green energy are pointless if the results are increased emissions or they stay flat. You disputed the idea that China is a world leader in green energy investment by saying that they also build a lot of brown energy. Clearly that's nonsensical. I don't even know how to begin explaining why, this is on the level of basic arithmetic and I am not an educator. QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 04:18 on Sep 13, 2020 |
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Sep 13, 2020 04:13
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CommieGIR posted:I love that he's going on about command economies, despite the fact that most nuclear tech was brought about by Federal Government investment and research rather than private industry. I don't understand what that has to do with my post but if they US Federal Government started building reactors tomorrow all it takes is another two or four years for a democratic government to vote those folks out of office because they don't want a Nuclear Reactor in their back yard. That's a societal and education issue. Not one of economics, which is precisely what I am getting at.
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Sep 13, 2020 04:14
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QuarkJets posted:You disputed the idea that China is a world leader in green energy investment by saying that they also build a lot of brown energy. Clearly that's nonsensical. I don't even know how to begin explaining why, this is basic arithmetic and I am not an educator. I care about results because we need emissions to drop. The more we emit the worse it'll get it. I didn't think that needed explaining either.
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Sep 13, 2020 04:16
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Kaal posted:If we're talking about economics and "command economies", then really there ought to be a discussion about the effects of uneven regulation and subsidization in "non-command" economies like the United States. It's not an accident that the regulations overseeing fossil fuel distribution and power generation allow a host of societal externalities, environmental impacts, and taxpayer write-offs - all done in the name of making it affordable. This is before we even get into how heavily subsidized fossil fuels are. Gabriel S. posted:I don't understand what that has to do with my post but if they US Federal Government started building reactors tomorrow all it takes is another two or four years for a democratic government to vote those folks out of office because they don't want a Nuclear Reactor in their back yard. No, its not. So much of the "economy" is drive by government investment and subsidies. You live in a nation that prides itself on Socialism for the Wealthy and Capitalism for the poor. Companies get bail outs and protection from the Goverment, as well as subsidies, allowing those companies to exercise vastly more of their resources than they could. You live in a pseudo-command economy. You've never lived in a Free Market or a truly Capitalist one. Its only capitalist for those that suffer under it.
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Sep 13, 2020 04:17
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CommieGIR posted:No, its not. So much of the "economy" is drive by government investment and subsidies. You live in a nation that prides itself on Socialism for the Wealthy and Capitalism for the poor. Companies get bail outs and protection from the Goverment, as well as subsidies, allowing those companies to exercise vastly more of their resources than they could. The deployment of Nuclear Power is absolutely a societal, education and economics issue. It is not just one of these things and the context of that was Japan replacing Nuclear Power with coal despite it being un-economical to their own economy. Yes, there's no pure command or market economy nor will their ever be one.
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Sep 13, 2020 04:21
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Gabriel S. posted:I care about results because we need emissions to drop. The more we emit the worse it'll get it. Okay, so if I generate 10GW in new green sources and 5GW in new brown sources, is that really the same as generating 15 GW in new brown sources? Of course it isn't. Because 15 is more than 5. You apparently disagree and I don't know what to say about that. And this doesn't even get into the secondary benefits of green energy sources becoming cheaper for everyone when countries like China and Germany spend massive amounts on developing and installing green energy
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Sep 13, 2020 04:23
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