STDOUBT
Veteran Member
Greener. By far! Nice side benefit, is Hydro doesn't kill birds. Wind and solar do. EPA needs an enema. Fingers crossed.So they've persuaded the EPA to de-emphasize hydro even though it's as green as wind and solar.
Greener. By far! Nice side benefit, is Hydro doesn't kill birds. Wind and solar do. EPA needs an enema. Fingers crossed.So they've persuaded the EPA to de-emphasize hydro even though it's as green as wind and solar.
The PNW might disagree with the idea that hydro is as green as wind/solar where they are (at least considering) removing the dams after destroying a multi-billion dollar salmon fishery. As with many human endeavors, the law of unintended consequences tends to bite us on the backsides. Who knows, 50 years from now we may be looking at issues from today's "green" alternatives we didn't anticipate.A lot of the policy decisions that decide where our electricity comes from are the work of powerful lobbying groups. For example, the Sierra Club is still hurting from a battle they lost a century ago to stop a dam from being built... So they've persuaded the EPA to de-emphasize hydro even though it's as green as wind and solar. Coal has a powerful lobby even thought it can't compete on a cost basis with natural gas, never mind how dirty coal is... So whole fleets of dirty old coal plants will still be alive and belching for decades. As for Artificial Intelligence and it's appetite for power and lots of it, the same millionaire and billionaire investors who suckered for EVs and self driving cars are pushing AI... Which is really dirty as hell, but they can buy off the politicians with just their petty cash!
Nuclear power is one of those things where I wonder ...50-100years from now, will the people then look back at the late-20th/early-21st century and ask "wait - you mean, they HAD power generators that used relatively little fuel and very little carbon footprint and....they just turned their back on it?!"The PNW might disagree with the idea that hydro is as green as wind/solar where they are (at least considering) removing the dams after destroying a multi-billion dollar salmon fishery. As with many human endeavors, the law of unintended consequences tends to bite us on the backsides. Who knows, 50 years from now we may be looking at issues from today's "green" alternatives we didn't anticipate.
Someone somewhere posted a great analogy. It's like cavemen collectively agreeing to ban fire because one time it got out of control and burnt a forest.Nuclear power is one of those things where I wonder ...50-100years from now, will the people then look back at the late-20th/early-21st century and ask "wait - you mean, they HAD power generators that used relatively little fuel and very little carbon footprint and....they just turned their back on it?!"
They used 'relatively' little fuel, but what was done with the expended fuel afterwards I think was the big problem people had with it. In Europe the spent fuel was processed, in the US it was not, so you had disposal issues and that's where NIMBY comes in.Nuclear power is one of those things where I wonder ...50-100years from now, will the people then look back at the late-20th/early-21st century and ask "wait - you mean, they HAD power generators that used relatively little fuel and very little carbon footprint and....they just turned their back on it?!"
I know there are issues (as there are with anything looking to provide power for millions), but the "loss of life per gigawatt generated" is nowhere close to what coal...and the world seems fine paying that price for coal. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
if they brought the mk8.5 golf wagon TDI 4 motion here, i would buy it in a heartbeatI'm encouraged about whether we might get another TDI back in the US
My old boss who was in the nuclear energy sector for awhile told me with current technology applied to nuclear generation. There’s enough energy in the stored “spent fuel” to power this country at its current usage for 50+ years.They used 'relatively' little fuel, but what was done with the expended fuel afterwards I think was the big problem people had with it. In Europe the spent fuel was processed, in the US it was not, so you had disposal issues and that's where NIMBY comes in.
I'm hopeful that the new administration is going to correct some of these issues.Saw a great presentation on TED talks…
Basically progress is moving from less dense to more dense fuel sources. So least dense starts with wind, wood, to coal, to nuclear obviously being the next step.
Wind and sun at very much not dense and backwards thinking in this model.
Also small modular nuclear reactors could be positioned everywhere massively decreasing the single point of failure model, transmission line problems, and etc. Current technical designs fail safe, and if we can find a way to us low but dense sources even if the modular reactor gets damaged, no one gets sick.