668
A nuclear plant’s closure was hailed as a green win. Then emissions went up
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
668 points (92.3% liked)
News
23406 readers
3137 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
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
Fucking anti nuclear dipshits.
I blame The Simpsons, much like South Park and their climate change denial, they've probably cemented the opinions of millions of people.
Nuclear power is expensive. If a plant is no longer safe to operate, it may make sense to shut it down for good.
Building the same capacity in renewables is often cheaper and faster than repairing an old plant or even building a new one.
People do not realize this is a tricky question. Because, no, replacing, say, 1000MW of nuclear with 1000MW of solar and wind actually DOES NOT give you the same capacity. You have to consider capacity factor, which is a measure of how much power it produces versus its theoretical maximum.
Nuclear generally has a capacity factor of 90%. They are essentially always pumping out their nameplate capacity except during shutdowns for maintenance and refueling.
Solar and win have capacity factors of 20-30%. They spend most of their time producing less than their nameplate capacity.
So you need ~3.5 times the amount of solar and wind to match the lost capacity of a nuclear plant. And that does not even consider the issue of storage.
Or the issue of space occupied, nuclear plants don't take up anywhere near the same amount of space as renewables.
I know. The price per kWh is still better with renewables and the speed of construction doesn't even compare.
There are a lot of people who do not. In any case, as I said, there is still the issue of storage. Nuclear is great because of the consistency of generation. It meets base loads. I believe there is plenty of space for both nuclear and renewables.
And you want to talk speed of construction and price per kWh, well, look at gas turbines. There is a reason Indian Point was replaced with those and not renewables. Yes, we have to pay a premium for consistent clean power, but it is worth it.