I use headphones every night to listen to audiobooks or YouTube videos until I fall asleep.

The inheritance is not just a simple chain. New things developed, were based on old and proven stuff, sometimes mixed with ideas taken from somewhere else… Every now and then something completely new gets invented… It’s more tangled.

But I like Lemmy. It’s open, accessible, owned by the people and unites people, the way it works. In that regard it feels like a sucessor of what was before the forums in the 2000s.

Forums also have been used to fragment communities. Sometimes you had to sign up everywhere to join in or even read. And there wasn’t one ‘the’ place.

Discord is especially bad. Everything happens behind closed doors. You miss out on everything that doesn’t accidentally happen where you’re already subscribed to. And everybody has their small little kingdom and you have to submit to them. It doesn’t unite people and it isn’t democratic at all. I don’t like it.

Reddit is kinda ‘meh’. It is/was ‘the place’ to discuss things. But it’s owned by a single large entity whose intentions aren’t well aligned with mine. I don’t consider them harmful like the design decisions for Discord, but I don’t participate anymore, either.

I think the fediverse has some technical issues with scaling. But that can be overcome. Other than that, it’s superior to most things out there today.

Where do you get these numbers?

Ahem. In Germany we have neither. I’m sure there are hidden secrets in modern buildings, but not in the usual apartments.

Again, that’s simply false. Around the world, the taxpayer ends up paying the major portion of the cost needed to dealing with that. Look it up.

And a mix of nuclear and renewables isn’t that smart. These two don’t complement each other. Nuclear doesn’t ‘balance out’ the fluctuations of renewable by pushing the rods more in or pulling them out. Look at the diagrams. Nuclear produces a constant amount of energy, day and night. It is theoretically possible, but practically not feasible to cycle this too much. They do not complement each other. You’d need almost the same energy storage facilities you’d need without nuclear being in the mix. It’s a waste. And I don’t know who listened to too much propaganda. If the studies and numbers tell a different story, maybe reflect a bit on your previous knowledge. I’ve also grown up learning nuclear is a cheap way of generating energy and it produces less CO2. But technology has made advancements and the first thing just isn’t true (anymore).

And you’re generating more cost for future generations. Dealing with the waste. Dismantling those reactors is a huge ordeal. You end up with vast amounts of concrete that is expensive to treat. That isn’t an investment, that’s a liability. On the other hand, a wind farm is an investment.

(Sorry. I don’t want to argue with you specifically. I’m more annoyed by politics for making the wrong decisions. And getting us to in the situation where we now burn all that coal that we wanted to get away from. This was the original subject of this discussion anyways. We’re now in that situation and we can’t change the past. But we can make the right decisions for the future, now. And I expect politicians to know how much for example 100 billions of money is. And they should do scientific studies with the current state of knowledge and then do the calculation and do what’s best.)

I’m also not against nuclear per se. My problem is, handling the radioactive stuff is what makes it very expensive and there is no way around that at this point. For example I see many issues storing that waste. It is true that these geological structures have been there for millions of years. But once you drill into them, this isn’t the case any more. We have massive problems finding a final storage repository, and for several reasons. We’ve tried for decades. My prediction is that it’ll be massively expensive to look after these things in the tousands of years to come. At some point there will be an issue, water will get in and more billions of money will be needed to clean that up. This will not be payed for by the people who used that electricity.

It makes me a bit angry that nuclear is massively subsidised. They get subsidised when building plants, they didn’t have to have the money for dismantlement ready. I bet this will be some more 100 billions for the german taxpayer. They probably only pay a fraction of the needed research. If they’re basically only paying for operation, I can tell, why this looks feasable for people and nobody believes the actual numbers.

And it’s a bridge technology anyways. There’s no way around that. Once the real deal is around, you need to accept that and slowly phase it out.

I believe in the studies, the state of the art in research and actual numbers. Without factoring the subsidies I just talked about in, we talked about the study in the USA where nuclear power was 5 times as expensive to generate. And those are real electricity prices. The subsidies and unaccounted cost of waste storage that become just extra profit for those companies, get on top.

So why do you want to pay extra for electricity? Why do you want to create more and more difficult to solve problems? Why invest even more money in such a dying technology? I mean, I’m okay if we don’t switch off those existing plants before they’re due. They’re here and we may as well use them to cut down CO2. But please. If science tells you it is expensive and difficult by some huge factor. Don’t throw more billions and billions at yesterdays technology and research in blind hope that you’ll be able to bridge that gap somehow. It’s not competetive as of today. And you’ll need more and more money to stay in business in the future.

I don’t want to pay that with my taxes. And we need that money for the energy transition. To address some of the issues you mentioned. Especially like you said for the last few percent getting close to 100% renewable. That will also be expensive. And now we need money to make changes to the energy grid and afford more offshore wind for example. And politics to really think hard and have the right incentives for people and companies in place. The off-shore wind park will generate energy day and night for decades to come once you build it. The energy grid and energy storage facilities will be an investment. Please don’t waste all the money because I want someone to build a carbon-neutral helicopter to fly to these off-shore windmills and service them.

There had been a time where your nuclear was the right choice. Now it’s a money-losing business for the people. And renewable would be an investment into their future. The actual numbers tell the same story. So I’m more against stupid and expensive choices, than against nuclear specifically.

Is the crack under your doors really that big? I genuinely don’t know so please tell me. Where I live it’s tiny. You wouldn’t be able to get your pinkie underneath the door. Maybe a piece of cardboard. But I’ve tried and that door stop from the dollar store is really in there and won’t budge.

I’m sorry. If OP’s doors are also built like this, they might have to find another solution.

If your door opens into the room, use a door wedge. Really cheap and super effective. Close your door and really drive it in. If it slips, try a plastic/rubber one.

Other than that: Listen to the other people. This isn’t normal behaviour. And you’re the victim of mental abuse here.

Sleep, eat, sleep, watch/hear/read something, talk to random people (preferably other stranded people), visit the smoking lounge, walk though all the stores, maybe buy a magazine.

And all the people recommending mobile games… I’ve wasted hours on end playing tower defense games, bridge builder or something like that. Get up inbetween and mix things up. Everything will get boring in that situation.

I’m sorry. Let’s end the argument here. We won’t agree. Some of your points are valid, most of them are plainly wrong or don’t contribute.

No country has the most of its energy from renewables

Yes, this page shows there are currently 4 countries above your arbitrary 80% demonstrating exactly that.

it’s not proven

Yes. See above.

a prototype

We’ve already established countries like Germany with close to 50% renewable aren’t a prototype. I’ve given countless other examples.

after 30 years of abandon, the construction is hard and more expensive

then don’t do it.

Nuclear already dealt with these problems.

You’re sure nuclear is without issues nowadays?

there isn’t wind and sun everywhere

That’s why we shouldn’t only do 100% of those. I’ve explained several alternatives and you can store and transport energy across the continent.

silicium you need for the batteries and solar panels

We don’t focus on batteries and solar. We need a diverse mix. In fact we don’t need batteries at all, we need energy storage. But this doesn’t have to be batteries. Same applies to solar. I’m living a bit far north and it gets rainy here sometimes. Maybe just take another kind of energy.

Btw. where do you get your uranium 235? Is that a different argument?

How do you deal with balancing the load?

Well, how do you do it? Nuclear also is generating a relatively constant amount of energy. Day and night, 24/7. Nuclear also doesn’t balance the load. Same argument applies here.

Nobody says it has to be 100% this or that by tomorrow. It needs to be a diverse strategy. It needs to factor in individual geographical facts. If we’re only at 70% renewable tomorrow it’s better than 20%. It is a process. We don’t have to skip everything and jump to 100% immediately. Let those natural gas plants run a bit and balance out things, as they do today. Just put in the effort. Once there are cheaper alternatives, use them and don’t cling to old technology just for the sake of it.

is there any solar or wind farm of more than 30 years

Let’s scrap solar for the sake of this discussion. Let’s say material science is completely wrong and they vastly over-exaggerated lifespan of solar panels. Solar is a small fraction of the equation. Tell me what in a wind turbine we don’t understand. Windmills have been around for centuries. As have been generators. I’m not looking that up but I bet we had wind farms in the 70s. Water power has been used to generate electricity for more than a century. It works at scale for some time now. Geothermal works with steam and turbines. They’re also in your nuclear plant. Can you explain all this away?

and the last models that are so efficient are less than 10 years old

As is everything that made some progress. My computer is faster and better in most aspects than the one I had a decade ago.

The experience also shows that all countries that went for renewables ended up using more fossile energy btw. Spain and Germany most notably. How do you answer this problem? This is not theory, this is what happened when countries decided to use renewable energy.

Politics. Germany was supposed to invest into renewables and phase out the old stuff. In a sane way. Then we switched off all the nuclear plants at once (after Fukushima). Obviously this requires buying energy from neighboring countries and ramping up other technology. We subside companies wreacking havoc throughout the Niederrhein for brown coal which isn’t even economical in the first place. Instead of investing that money into our future. We also killed off our domestic solar industry years ago. The war in Ukraine happened. That took us by surprise and we were dependant on Russian natural gas. I’m not an expert on Spain.

You’re right with your distinction between theory and the real world. What we should do isn’t always what we do (or did). When someone does something stupid, it doesn’t automatically make it right or wrong. But you’re supposed to learn from their mistakes. And factor in everything if you want to talk about what makes sense for the future.

The wikipedia article on renewable energy also has some facts about history and state of the art in green energy, so you can have a look at the world-wide numbers and decide if your perspective is that this is sci-fi or actually out there. I don’t say this is easy or possible without changes to the energy grid, society or whatever. And I don’t argue we need to do 100% solar. Or get rid of all of the batteries in the world. Or do everything with lithium batteries. Or the problems getting from 0-20% are the same as going from 80-100%. That’s not my argument. My argument is, if it’s the cheapest option in the long run. And the way to not further temper with climate. Why not use this? Why not invest in this unless there is a proper argument against it? We’ve already begun, made some mistakes and are getting smarter by the day. Nuclear has so many challenges that are difficult to solve. And looking at the numbers, it’s unlikely it will improve so much in its current form that it’ll become better than renewable anyways. I’d be happy to reconsider things once sombody gets a nuclear fusion reactor viable for real-world use.

Idk. Solar cells have been around for a while, too. Wind turbines are kind of simple devices. I bet an engineer can predict their maintenance cost and lifespan fairly accurate. Hydroelectric power plants have been around for more than 100 years. Electric cars have been invented before the combustion engine took off. Nuclear power has been around for some time. But you can’t use that as an argument and simultaneously argue about using thorium which large scale deployments are still hypothetical.

And I don’t think those numbers are 500% off. You can double some cost and were only at 200%. And they’re not complete speculation. They took the actual numbers of the previous year. And the years before that. These numbers are the ‘actual history’.

No significant energy production was made with variable renewable

Pardon? Norway? New Zealand? Switzerland? Iceland? Sweden? Countless others I probably forgot because I’m bad at geography? The USA and China, Philippines, Indonesia all have major ‘variable renewable’. Thousands and thousands of megawatts of energy are generated this way as of today. Then there is biomass if you’re geologically not that favored by nature, but I barely know anything about that. And who says we can’t use the sun and wind? Of course we can also use those.

Sure. Just use molten salt energy storage, hydroelectric dams or whichever of the dozens of technologies makes most sense where you are.

Combine different kinds of renewables so you get power at night and when the wind isn’t blowing. Build more then enough and if you got excess energy, maybe make some hydrogen.

Have your devices and industry ‘smart’ so it draws less power when there’s less supply.

You really don’t need to do everything with ‘normal’ batteries like in a smartphone.

The ‘working’ thorium reactors are for research. They don’t generate energy. At least if we’re speaking about generating energy for a whole country. The planned thorium reactors of the next many years also don’t generate any significant amount of energy. With that argumentation we also (almost) have nuclear fusion power plants.

A thorium power plant that contributes to the power grid and shows up in the numbers is sci-fi. I mean, it’s not impossible. It’s just lots of very expensive work left to do.

Ah okay.

Þ ?

At one point in the future I’m sure we can look back, do the calculations and see if that had been a good bridge or an expensive thing for the taxpayer to deal with the dismantling and long time storage.

As of now I think the time of that bridge technology has come to an end anyways. We now have efficient renewable energies available. And concepts for energy storage. I think we should invest in that instead of putting the money into a thing of the past.

excellent

the article ‘the’ - ðə

Damn. I shouldn’t have linked auch a long PDF. What are you talking about? I’m referring to the diagram (and text) on page 293. The annual Levelized Cost Of Energy.

It’s not only calculated on sunny days. They take the annual energy output for the calculation. Availability and everything included or these numbers wouldn’t make any sense.

And yes, we need batteries. But the nuclear plants also need other (faster) plants alongside. And this match isn’t a close call. With a 5 fold increase in being economical, we have plenty of money to spare to afford some batteries and hydroelectric dams.

Yeah. But the technology is - at this point - more sci-fi than anything else. Probably nothing we need to worry about in the next few years.

And you still need to mine some non-renewable resource. It’s still nuclear and produces waste. And it seems super expensive.

Sure it is. The World nuclear status report 2021 for example says it’s five times more expensive than wind energy.

And sure there are other fuels for nuclear. But I think most of them are even more limited?!

cost per unit

We’re talking about effective cost of the resulting power, altogether. All things included. (Except for nuclear waste, which is a topic for a different discussion and difficult to quantify.) Just comparing one aspect wouldn’t be fair.

store energy on scale

Yeah, and science and investors are way ahead of politics. There are several concepts already available or already in place somewhere. Several promising ideas and projects that need funding. Storage facilities that aren’t able to store energy because Bavaria is not willing to run cables across the country. It is a complex topic that also needs individual solutions. For example depending on geography you could have dams and pump water. Or one of the concepts that work everywhere. Infrastructure and cunsumer get more advanced/intelligent. You could charge your car automatically during periods where renewable is abundant. You can fine-tune factories, maybe have the large heat pump of an office building vary temperature a bit when there is a Dunkelflaute. Some countries just get geothermal power for free because of their location… You can put those storage facilities close to energy generation or close to the consumer. And as supply and demand changes prices, it’s also well aligned with the way our economy (and capitalism) works.

We should really hurry up and put in the effort this needs. Because we really need those storage facilities. And I’d like energy costs to come down again, and CO2 emissions also.

And if I remember correctly, the current natural gas power plants are the ones that can react to supply and demand the most quickly. But this seems not to be a good idea anymore, now that we have enough problems with the natural gas in central europe. I (personally) would be happy if there was an alternative.

I haven’t heard any scientist in the last years tell something different from renewable plus storage is the way. Not unless some miracle happens and we get fusion reactors or something. But it’s still unclear it that’s going to happen.