this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
93 points (98.9% liked)
Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.
5053 readers
383 users here now
Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Tldr: renewables are really cheap and utility partners backed out from buying the energy so it didn't make economic sense.
I can't help but feel that it would make more economic sense if we taxed the fuck out of other stable sources of energy that are killing us (coal/gas).
But it's Utah: they don't give a single shit about air quality or global warming.
Also according to the guardian the project had massive cost overruns increasing the costs by a factor of five:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/nov/09/small-modular-nuclear-reactor-that-was-hailed-by-coalition-as-future-cancelled-due-to-rising-costs
To answer your idea solar costs on a MW bases 30times less today, with falling prices. Solar runs something like 20-25% of the time and you need storage, but that is still much much cheaper then this nuclear plant would be. So you are really wasting money going for nuclear today.
Exactly. Nuclear is quite expensive compared with wind, solar, and short-term storage. The only place new nuclear might make sense is as a competitor for longer-duration storage, and then only if it's able to come in more cheaply than people know how to build it.
Nowadays a big problem with nuclear is that as almost no new reactors are built the expertise to build them has disappeared so it always leads to these huge cost overruns.
@MrMakabar @huginn @climate
Small modular nuclear reactor?
Not in my back yard, thanks. Not that these industries tend to ask.
@huginn @otter @climate
There are locations where, judging by the general populations ignorant attitudes, they don't have enough sense to give a shit about air quality or global warming.
However, in western "educated" society, those general attitudes have been formed due to corruption.
For example, where l live the general public are simply not exposed to the facts about air pollution & climate change. Many live in their own social bubbles & are exposed to industry propaganda
What's funny is I tend to believe the average Utahn cares about air quality. They have some insanely toxic air when inversions set up in the valley.
But they keep electing politicians that run heavy industry (copper mining, steel smelting, oil and gas refining) in that selfsame valley with 0 oversight.