Hacker News Reader

Comment by thedrbrian | Hacker News Reader

And sitting in the dark wearing two jumpers

That‘s nonsense. At least when you only relate this to renewable energies. Ask the French, what they think about this summer, when they had to shut down many nuclear reactors simply because there was no water to cool them. Or us Germans when Russia invaded Ukraine and we were faced with our past decisions to completely rely on cheap Russian gas. Or look at water taps in the US that you can turn into little flame throwers because fracking contaminated drinking water. Also check out the rising numbers of earth quakes in the US due to fracking. But sure. Climate change is great, so that at some point you won‘t have to wear any jumpers anymore, even in winter. Too bad that grandma then died a little before her time, in the last heatwave.

Ask me what I think about the solar panels on my house late at night or when it's winter-dark outside.

So you live somewhere remote without connection to the grid? In that case, nuclear power wouldn‘t help you as well.

For everything else, I recommend googling the following terms to get started with: green hydrogen, biogas, hydropower, pumped hydro storage, smart grid.

Biomass boasts 155 times more deaths per unit of energy produced compared to nuclear, while hydropower only 43 times [0] but at the same time is a methane (potent greenhouse gas) emitter and a general ecosystem wrecker.

The others seem to be a rounding error in today's actual energy industry - maybe someday in the future?! Meanwhile we keep burning gas, oil and coal and spewing CO2 into the atmosphere.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...

What about nuclear waste? Is that no problem for us just because it‘ll be a huge problem for hundreds of future generations? Nuclear energy is not clean energy. And the illusion that it is will only postpone the further concentration on renewables - as it did in the past. It‘s also not cheap, it‘s very expensive up to unaffordable if you include permanent disposal into the price per kWh.

Fusion reactors would be the only form that could have a future.

Waste is a non-problem. Just burry it in a mine (that's where it came from anyway), put warning signs around and maintain them. Furthermore current reactor designs use and reuse fuel and irradiated materials.

But it's beyond weird to worry about a problem for a hundred generations in the future when there is a civilisation ending danger straight here in our times: Climate Change. While worrying about some small group in the future stumbling upon and dying because of our buried nuclear waste - mammoth storms, pollution, raised sea level, heat waves, thirst and hunger are already killing or threatening to kill millions right now.

And, BTW, burning coal spews (slightly) radioactive smoke in the air while the resulting ash has to be kept in watered mounds (so the wind doesn't blow them) or covered with dirt because it is also - radioactive. Straight into our lungs!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com