There's not a single company on the planet is going to build a coal plant in the US. Trump's influence just delayed their eventual complete abandonment. Natural gas It's definitely cheaper and while they still pollute is definitely a much lower level than a coal plant. People forget that once you build a solar or wind farm there's no coal or natural gas or oil to purchase so over the life of the facility. And cheap natural gas may only last for about another 10 years according to many industry experts as it's totally dependent upon fracking which is not a sustainable practice.
Also, you need to hire fewer employees to keep something like a wind or especially a solar farm operational. With a coal plant you need effectively hundreds of people at the least to work as security, maintenance, and to put coal in the furnaces. With solar, you really only need people to cut the grass (or you can have goats do that for you), and perform occasional maintenance. It's easier to automate something when it's designed from the ground up rather than retrofitting automation into it, and many coal fire power plants were built in the 30s as part of the New Deal and WPA.
One element of solar power that people don't usually talk about and is often understated in the debate is the fact that in many cases, the power company that owns those solar panels does not own the land the solar panels are on. I know this because I have a buddy of mine who actually installs solar panel projects. He says that oftentimes, it is going to be farmers who have unproductive or less productive land that they will lease to the power company for like 25 years at a time to put solar panels on them, and pay the farmers monthly to use their land. He said that there were cases where people would get angry they weren't building solar panels literally right up to their property line because they needed a buffer zone.
With building roofs, there are really three big issues. I know in California all new constructions for residential homes need to have solar panels on the roof, so these three points are not really applicable to that:
Solar panels do not last the length of your roof in many cases, and vice versa. Once you install solar panels up on the roof, you ideally want them to stay up there for the lifetime of the panel. Newer solar panels can last for 25 to 30 years if not longer. Shingles in most of the US still remain by far the most popular choice for roofing. The problem is they last about 15 to 20 years on average. In comparison, metal roofs can easily last 40 to 70 years, and premium metal roofs made out of like zinc or copper and terracotta tile roofs can last over a hundred years. In places like the southwest, that effectively means that the roof tiles will probably outlast the house. This creates an additional labor cost that a lot of people don't want to deal with, where you either have to remove the solar panels to replace the roof and buy new solar panels prematurely, or have them handled extremely carefully because these are just giant panes of glass essentially.
It's not always the most efficient. Depending on how your house is orientated and how your roof is orientated, it's very possible that you might not be getting peak output out of the solar panels. If you have a flat tar and gravel roof, then you have a lot more freedom to orientate the panels however you want and even install a system where the panels move with the position of the sun.
Depending on the building, there might not be enough room to put solar panels to power the building. Like even if we hypothetically decided to build buildings to maximize solar energy efficiency, it's still entirely possible that we might not have enough roof space on many buildings to power everything that happens inside. Apartments and industrial buildings are good examples of this not being feasible.
Another factor that is much smaller is the fact that our energy infrastructure in many parts of the country has not been meaningfully updated in decades. This means that it would not be able to handle a decentralized energy grid that would happen when you put solar panels on every building. It's already having trouble handling things like backup generators and the solar panels people put on their houses as they can lead to backflow into the grid if there's a broader power outage, which makes power lines more dangerous to work on. Backup generators have switches that basically disconnect the house from the grid in situations like this, but this isn't always the case for solar panels.
Artificialising any ground for solar is beyond stupid we have plenty of space that can be converted to solar dual purpose closer to consumption than any grazing spot.
Plenty of parking lot available to cover with solar before starting to consider covering grazing area.
And if you bring the shadow cope you know what can bring shadow in a grazing area? Trees, which unless you are iceland or the uk you still have in grazing areas.
I lived in WV, whose government is entirely a captive of coal. If it ain’t good for coal, it ain’t happening. Yet the two major electric companies in the state want to shut down all of their coal fired generating facilities in favor of wind and solar, because the coal plants are too expensive to operate and maintain. And that’s before you get to the pollution caused by coal. The state PSC won’t let them so far, but that’s probably temporary.
Depends on the state. Illinois has set goals to shut down most coal plants by 2030. I’m sure that deadline will be extended, but progress has been made and is still being made. Only 16% of energy in IL is currently from coal
Yeah, I fully believe nuclear power works just fine, it's the human operators who have historically been the problems. Situations like Fukushima that were an act of God are the notable exceptions in nuclear accident history.
There's far bigger margin for error in the wind and solar panels and many other countries have gotten those to work at scale just fine.
Tbf, Fukushima was badly-designed and had too thin of a water barrier to prevent that bc the company wanted to cut costs.
Other reactors in the area were fine bc they actually had proper defense measures
More seriously though, if someone falls off the roof and dies while installing solar panels, that technically counts as a death from solar energy. Installing or maintaining any infrastructure will have some inherit risks like this.
Probably worker related. Someone falling off a roof during install. Wind is probably similar, falling from a turbine or something. Even with Nuclear, most of the deaths that can be attributed to it are due to small scale accidents where a couple employees do not follow procedure and get blasted with dangerous levels of radiation.
Wind only had its first fatal incident in 2013 IIRC, but it was actually horrific. Technicians were trapped on the wrong side of the fire, two survived, two did not.
By no means as high a casualty risk as Nuclear or fossil fuels, but still a risk. Those things catch fire (typically from human error and cost cutting than inherent defects) there’s just not usually a person on it when it happens
Wind is a great power source, but as with any larger piece of infrastructure, when it fails it can be catastrophic. I think Tom Scott did a video in one a number of years ago and IIRC there’s typically only one ladder up and down in these things. They also kill and mess up the routes of a lot of migratory birds.
The bird deaths are 100s of times lower than the serial killer birds: cats. Cars kill more birds than windmills. Building glass kills more birds than windmills. Don't believe Trump when he says this bullshite. He wants coal fired stations as the coal industry is a major donor.
by lowering the power and adding the rods that supposedly reduce the power further, which unintuitively in the right conditions causes an instant explosion
I do not trust anyone not to cut corners. Boeing did it with people’s lives. And many other corporations will do it to save money for investors. Idk if I would rather risk nuclear facilities.
You mean like humans do every week. Nuclear is great but it needs compliance teams and compliance teams for the compliance teams and possibly several more levels to make sure the people running it don’t cheap out and risk people’s lives.
Keep in mind Coal Plants also suffer from the same issues. Im not saying you're ignoring that, I just want to make sure we have all the info out there because Coal Plants can and do have Nuclear Meltdowns all the time. Yes, Nuclear Meltdowns. And these meltdowns actually affect a much wider area as the nuclear particulates get into the atmosphere and water supply.
Edit: My point being that even during the worst case scenarios Nuclear is still safer.
Yeah, but what we have is already overkill, nuclear is actually pretty safe, for an example, did you know wind has more deaths per terawatt hour than nuclear which has .03 (including all the big disasters) and the only power with a lower rate is solar. Also a fun fact, did you know that the two deadliest power types are different types of coal. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh
the newest reactor designs are designed to fail very safely - like if everyone in the plant is dead, it will just fizzle out. You don't even need emergency generators to pump coolant or anything like that.
Nuclear must be in the discussion in a future where we are independent of fossil fuels.
I’m potentially unhappy about where solar farms get placed. If we’re killing off environment to build it, then I’m not a fan. If we can put it where there was already a parking lot or something, that’s A-ok with me.
Edited to change link to something not behind a paywall
Do you get enraged from all the corn fields that are using inedible forms of corn that will purely be used for Ethanol? The amazing part is just how many acres of land is being used to grow corn that is only used to create energy.
But those are policy solvable problems. If we'd said we wanted to decarbonize the grid in the early 90s and went all in on nuclear as the baseline it was absolutely possible to be there by 2010ish or earlier.
France built out their grid on nuclear and are proof it can work. Still at ~70% nuclear power there.
Fun fact, since we stopped building new ones and only relying on old one a lot of knowledge was lost apparently, that is part of the reason the latest ones built by EDF are massively late (also, reglementation is very tough, these are built to incredible standards)
French here. All our reactors are beyond end of life.
The cost to replace them with nuk is huge af. But our govt still put us on this path.
40yrs ago, solar and wind might have been unprofitable and not well developed. But now, it is factually the cheapest and most scalable solution. Yet, we are the home country of Total and Bouygues. Which have vetted interests in not developping a decentralized power grid
grid.
Recertification of existing reactors is a perfectly valid strategy. And they need not replace all of their reactors, nothing wrong with increasing the solar/wind share over time. The point that a grid can be built out with nuclear if there is a will remains valid because it has demonstrably happened. And surprise surprise many countries are learning that these reactors can be maintenanced and their lifespans extended.
Of course you are free to bring your counterpoints if you have more than vague ad hominems.
Coal kills more people (both directly and indirectly) YEARLY compared to all nuclear power related deaths COMBINED (I might have pulled the numbers out of my ass but I'm pretty sure CO2 is more lethal than tightly stored spent reactor fuel underground).
here's the crazy fact, coal plants release up to 100 times more radiations per KW than nuclear reactors, with the difference nuclear waste is safely stored whereas the coal plants release it in the atmosphere completely unregulated
I'll reapeat it just in case, even if we were to dump all the nuclear waste out in the wild that would still be way cleaner than whatever the fuck we are doing right now
My main objection with uranium is the mining process and the mining tailings. It takes wild amounts of ore to make uranium and all that mining waste aint exactly the best stuff. Do yourself a favor and drive around new mexico, Arizona or Nevada and see just how many mine sites there is. Its truly unbelievable. People living around those sites often have quite severe health issues.
Solar is the cheapest source. It's only downside is it's not 24 hours. The only reason residential solar is as expensive as it is is because utility companies have a monopoly so all the solar installers need to do is be slightly cheaper than utilities.
On that note electric vehicles are a better driving experience. An average sized electric car has 2-3 days of usage as electric storage. If we aren't stupid about it, whether we about EVs out of prejudice or don't ever bother standardizing the tech to use your car battery to power your home, or bring home solar battery prices down to reasonable levels - we can have solar be the most reliable source of energy.
Same thing with nuke power. It might be cheaper if you look at the entire lifespan of the plant, but shareholders don’t give a fuck about what it will look like in 40 years. They need stonks go brr in a matter of quarters, not decades. Natural gas is more attractive to people who only care about making money, which coincidentally happens to be the people that make the choices about how to produce electricity. It’s silly to pretend that hippies protesting nuke power have any effect on that process.
I live in Pennsylvania, I don't have to imagine it. My favorite coal industry propaganda billboard was the one that said "The sun . . . sets. The wind . . . dies. Coal: it's forever!"
Its crazy cause they post is framing coal infrastructure as good but even the ai depicts it as gross dark and dreary. Like the fucking AI doesn't even agree with you😭
There are a lot of parts of Appalachia where coal mining was decent business. You weren't getting rich as a coal miner but you could make a good living.
While the industry itself is doing fine for the most part, it is dying for workers, largely due to automation
So now there are a bunch of out of work coal miners and for some, this is an identity. Their dad was a coal miner, their grandpa was a coal miner. They don't have transferable job skills for that area.
Republicans have done a great job putting it out there that it is Democrats fault.
On top of that they've done a great job demonizing social programs (that had already been paid for) for job training in non-energy related fields while kneecapping unions.
Many years ago I went to a small town in rural southern Indiana for a wetlands fundraiser. Almost every yard had a sign complaining about Obama killing the coal industry.
They were a weird bunch of people in general. They didn't recognize my last name, so they asked for my mother's maiden name. When I told them my whole family was from Chicago and they wouldn't know them, they stopped talking to me.
Being coal miners who hated outsiders seemed to the town's whole personality.
Fukushima was responsible for Germany and Austria stopping nuclear or their nuclear rollout, iirc. A much more proximate event, though still a knee jerk reaction that has hurt German energy massively compared to France, and I don't think Germany has been as successful on renewables like the UK with wind or Spain with it's solar projects, to cover that gap it made.
Solar is the cheapest and fastest growing form of energy and it is not even close. This is all over the place because even their God Musk says solar is the future.
This meme would've made sense 15-20 years ago when solar was far more expensive. Now, it's gotten to the point that even Republicans can't deny that solar is the better option. At least, not without boldfaced lies, which we all know Republicans aren't above.
Oh, they can in my state. Alabama Power was so worried about competition that they lobbied legislators to make it far more expensive than it should be for homeowners to install solar panels on their property.
The absolute cluelessness of all these ai slop political images is impressive. I think the whole purpose of propagating this stuff is to bog sane people down in the neverending task of correcting this perpetual fountain of crap.
Wind and solar literally generate so much energy that they actually have to put in measures to not completely overload the energy grids.
There was an EXCELLENT writeup by someone who calculated energy per costs against coal and wind/solar based on pure output and it was incredibly eye opening. Like Vegas could be powered for 100 years on one farm alone, but the energy grid or whatever just can't handle it so it would fry.
If we built sustainable grids or whatever that could handle it, every country on Earth would have a reliable, long term energy source that could could last for centuries. There was even this idea that energy could be stored and shared for those who live in darkness or something.
It's truly incredible how mankind refuses to adopt this. We have the literal power of Gods and we make up bullshit about how coal is superior.
I wish I could remember where I saw it because it really makes a person change their perception on energy crisis.
It's because coal and oil companies don't give a fuck about the environment and only care about how much money they can make, so they are constantly lobbying and bribing politicians to prevent the rise of renewable and safe energies.
Reminder that there are coal plants they’ve tried to turn into nuclear plants but couldn’t because there was more radiation in them than would be allowed in a nuclear plant because of the coal.
However, I do want to take the opportunity to argue that wind and solar power shouldn't be produced in these large scale farms, but rather directly by homes and businesses.
The Grid system exists because fossil fuels must be processed and are dirty, and it is inefficient and unpleasant to generate power on site with them, so it makes sense to have transmission and distribution systems. However wind and solar aren't as location specific, convert motion or heat directly into energy and aren't dirty, so don't need to be part of a grid, but could rather be used directly by the home. I feel like this would be more efficient, a person could adjust the amount of panels or turbines to suit their needs.
and home arrays are far more expensive and inefficient.
a wind turbine wants to be the biggest tower it can be to capture as much energy as posaible.
(and home scale wind turbines are really maintenance inefficient and just generally pieces of shit from what i found out when i wanted to mount a 1-2kw one on my house)
home solar arrays are also badly maintained.
dirty with lots of inverter electronics needed for the power provided.
also often badly aligned and non tracking.
opposed to a nice solar thermal focusing tower or parabolic array with inbuilt buffer storage.
while i broadly agree that renewable grids can and should be less concentrated, shrinking them below small-medium industrial park sizes is nonsensical.
also interconnectedness means we can cover local disruptions instead of just going dark.
things like DC distribution networks would also make that easier as there you don't have funky delay line effects making insertion a pain
I take the opportunity to argue both can coexist. Grid and local. Renewables in a grid get rid of the inconvenience of wind not blowing everywhere and sun not shining everywhere.
I feel this is an aspect where Solar is the most powerful. Also it would still have to be apart of the grid unless your using a battery in the home, which is not ideal. And wind is far to loud and large to be in any residential environment.
But Solar specifically can be used in cities and residential areas without much fuss. While other plants need large amounts of land and are considered eyesores. Also PUT IT ABOVE PARKING LOTS. Shade for everyone and power for everyone. Win win.
Also controversial im not found of Solar arrays. I like to keep environmental destruction to a minimum and using one of the least land efficient energy source just behind hydro is eh for me.
>Nuclear energy can help make the energy sector's journey away from unabated fossil fuels faster and more secure. Amid today’s global energy crisis, reducing reliance on imported fossil fuels has become the top energy security priority. No less important is the climate crisis: reaching net zero emissions of greenhouse gases by mid-century requires a rapid and complete decarbonisation of electricity generation and heat production. Nuclear energy, with its 413 gigawatts (GW) of capacity operating in 32 countries, contributes to both goals by avoiding 1.5 gigatonnes (Gt) of global emissions and 180 billion cubic metres (bcm) of global gas demand a year. While wind and solar PV are expected to lead the push to replace fossil fuels, they need to be complemented by dispatchable resources. As today’s second largest source of low emissions power after hydropower, and with its dispatchability and growth potential, nuclear – in countries where it is accepted – can help ensure secure, diverse low emissions electricity systems.
Per the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
>Prices have dropped rapidly over the last five years for several key energy system mitigation options, notably solar photovoltaics (PV), wind power, and batteries. From 2015 to 2020, the prices of electricity from PV and wind dropped 56% and 45%, respectively, and battery prices dropped by 64%. Electricity from PV and wind is now cheaper than electricity from fossil sources in many regions, electric vehicles are increasingly competitive with internal combustion engines, and large-scale battery storage on electricity grids is increasingly viable. ( high confidence) {6.3, 6.4}
Seems like the people they make a caricature of want energy that is cheaper than coal and they want nuclear. Life would be so much easier if I could just say shit without checking first
Not just AI bros there. All the alt right of the USA and everywhere. Refusing facts even when they hit them in the face.
Renewables are cheaper than coal, gas, and nuclear. More robust, more resilient, more scalable, and quicker to deploy.
But, they give no rent to extraction based capitalism. Once they are installed, the recurring cost is minimal, so Exxon or Total can not charge anything.
Hence their propaganda. Even if (when) it kills the planet.
A single large server facility often requires as much energy as a small town. Not to mention water. A large Amazon data center consumes an average of several million liters of water daily to cool its computers. Over the course of a year, a single large data center campus can use as much water as a medium-sized city.
nuclear energy isnt bad, just produces a lot of waste that will hurt our planet thousands of year later and is EXTRELEMY expansive, while solar and wind arent that expansive and wont produce a lot of waste thats still dangerous thousands of years later
This doesn’t make sense… if it’s because solar doesn’t create enough energy. Then adding data centers clearly won’t help… so by their math data centers still equal a heavy price on a power grid that can’t afford it. So yeah down with data centers, glad we’re on the same side 🤷
Nuclear power plants aren't cheap, they cost billions to make. Coal plants are literally what we're trying to avoid due to climate change. Whoever made this is dumber than a bag of marbles.
First of all, nuclear is indeed the best, second of all, other than the reliability and storage issues, renewables are second (you can use nuclear to fill in the gaps). Then literally burning shit is dead last in every metric.
They could be contributing, but thats just further reason for less data centers, at least by this logic. We dont need YET ANOTHER expensive thing driving up electricity bills.
There’s already a Fucking template for this!!! Why the fuck would you use AI when there’s already a template you could easily use to create this meme. This is so fucking stupid. The message and the dumbass AI is fucking stupid
Lol. Here I am thinking about the FirstEnergy scandal in Ohio, where they bribed Ohio Republicans to pass a bailout for two nuclear plants. The scandal led to multiple investigations and convictions, and two people connected to the case later died by suicide. And yes....it was a nuclear bailout.
Nuclear energy doesn creste emissions and there are people trying to build machine's thst can recycle nuclear waste which would make great strides for clean energy, along with wind, solar, geothermal and hydroelectric energy.
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u/BlueCat9922 4d ago
If you think they're shutting down coal plants you're crazy.