Comment on Anon has a power fantasy
GoodEye8@lemm.ee 5 months agoRenewables are a solution only in short term. The biggest issue with renewables is the relatively low power output. Our power demands will only grow in the future and eventually we’re going to hit a wall with renewables. Long term nuclear is the way to go. Ideally we should be creating solar and wind parks and focus on making thorium reactors viable so we could switch from renewables to thorium.
Nuclear is the future, just not the kind of nuclear we’re using right now.
Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world 5 months ago
That’s literally the opposite of true. What do you think the word “renewable” means? 🤦
Which is not a problem when done on a larger scale by now.
Only if we keep doing half measures like now rather than go all in. Wind, solar, thermal and wave energy combined can more than cover the world’s energy needs in perpetuity.
Nope. Which parts of “already made less effective and safe by climate change that will have become fat worse by the time we build just one nuclear plant, let alone replace all fossil fuel power” did you not understand?
By that time, nuclear power will be rendered all but useless by the necessary conditions no longer existing. Renewables aren’t so fragile.
It really is not. By the time the thorium reactors that have been 10 years away for 30 years arrive, it’ll be too late. The very problem they were supposed to fix will have rendered them inoperable.
GoodEye8@lemm.ee 5 months ago
Let’s say a perpetual motion machine exists and you can create infinite energy from it, but it takes a lot of space and makes very little energy (let’s say 400wh) Would it solve the energy question? The answer is not really. Theoretical you have infinite energy, but in practice you’re still making a finite amount of energy at any given time. If our energy consumption exceeds what the infinite energy source creates then it doesn’t solve the energy question. You can make “infinite” amount of energy from renewables, that’s what renewable means. However if the energy throughput generated by renewables is less than our consumption then we still need a different source.
And what will we do when all the space is used to and we still need more energy?
Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world 5 months ago
That’s not true of renewable energy, so your analogy has already fallen apart. It’s an untrue stereotype concocted by people trying to hold on to their fossil fuel profits.
It isn’t.
And thus we don’t.
Well for one thing, most sources of renewable energy can be built places where a huge nuclear power plant can’t, such as in the ocean, lakes, on hills or even mountains. In deserts. On a slight incline. Somewhere without a cold stream.
If anything, renewable energy is much MORE space efficient since it doesn’t need a huge flat area and the aforementioned rarer and rarer stream.
GoodEye8@lemm.ee 5 months ago
I had more in comment that got fucked up. But from your comment it’s becoming a pretty clear you’re in makebelief land when it comes to renewables. Just look up how much energy renewables make in a year and then look up fossil fuels. All renewables combined make less energy than gas, which makes the least energy of all fossil fuels. And half of the renewable energy come from hydropower which means solar and wind make up even less global energy. But somehow renewables can meet our global energy demands and can expand anywhere (while still being cheap to build) all the while everything else is completely unviable.
Absolutely ludicrous.
GoodEye8@lemm.ee 5 months ago
Let’s say a perpetual motion machine exists and you can create infinite energy from it, but it takes a lot of space and makes very little energy (let’s say 400wh) Would it solve the energy question? The answer is not really. Theoretical you have infinite energy, but in practice you’re still making a finite amount of energy at any given time. If our energy consumption exceeds what the infinite energy source creates then it doesn’t solve the energy question. You can make “infinite” amount of energy from renewables, that’s what renewable means. However if the energy throughput generated by renewables is less than our consumption then we still need a different source.
And what will we do when all the space is used to and we still need more energy?
We will run out of space. One nuclear reactor will generate more energy than multiple parks combined.
Less effective is roughly 1% less effective per 1 degree of ambient temperature rise. We will dead before it’s going to have a significant impact.
You’re thinking only in terms of the current century, I’m thinking beyond the current century. We most likely need renewables to quickly get away from fossil fuels, but eventually we will also move away from renewables because unless we build a Dyson sphere renewables are not enough to meet our future energy demands.