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1041 points mpweiher | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.203s | source
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jama211 ◴[] No.45225631[source]
I’m totally fine with nuclear honestly, but I feel like I don’t understand something. No one seems to be able to give me a straight answer with proper facts that explain why we couldn’t just make a whole load more renewable energy generators instead. Sure, it might cost more, but in theory any amount of power a nuclear plant would generate could also be achieved with large amounts of renewables no?
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1. palata ◴[] No.45227067[source]
There are a few things:

1. The electrical system was built for big power plants distributing the electricity to households. If you want to generate electricity a bit everywhere, you need to adapt the infrastructure. That's costly and it hasn't really been done at scale (whereas with nuclear plants it has).

2. With nuclear, you have great control over how much you produce. With renewables, you generally don't: you have electricity when there is wind or when there is sun. Batteries are not a solved problem at scale.

3. Renewable is cheap, but it depends on globalisation, which in turn depends on the abundance of fuel fossils. With nuclear, it's easier to have fewer dependencies. Which proportion of solar panels come from China?

4. Nuclear energy is very dense. Estimate how many solar panels you need to produce as much as a big nuclear plant, even without factoring in the batteries and the weather.