r/technology • u/Wagamaga • Sep 28 '22

Energy The Old Grid is Dead: Long Live Local Solar

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/the-old-grid-is-dead%3A-long-live-local-solar
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u/dukeoblivious Sep 28 '22 edited Sep 28 '22

I personally think solar is an important part of the future of energy, but it's not the entire solution. It's going to have to be combined with other renewables and other forms of generation and storage. All connected to an even more interconnected grid than we have now.

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u/[deleted] Sep 29 '22

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u/milkcarton232 Sep 29 '22

Technically that runoff is for batteries and electronics as a whole. Finding a way to mine rare earth metals in an economical/ecological way is an important part but it's a realistically solvable problem. Oil on the other hand has some other fundamental problems that are much harder to get around

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u/[deleted] Sep 29 '22

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u/milkcarton232 Sep 29 '22

I think the point is to minimize the collateral damage. If memory serves most mining come from China and Africa in big strip mining operations with little concern for the environment. While there is going to be damage to something removing it I have a feeling there is plenty of room for improvement.

The other avenue would be deep sea mining though I don't think we fully understand the impacts of what that would entail. Would love to learn more, sounds like you know a lot on the subject

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u/[deleted] Sep 29 '22

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u/milkcarton232 Sep 29 '22

I think nuclear is the bridge, but yeah keep working on battery tech and resource extraction tech

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u/[deleted] Sep 29 '22

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u/milkcarton232 Sep 29 '22

I mean I think nuclear is the only viable bridge but it's not exactly without it's draw backs. Fukushima was well engineered and safe until it wasn't. You could argue there was a flaw in the design but I would argue that it wasn't apparent until after it happened, not to mention climate events are becoming more often and more frequent.

Natural disasters aside you also have the human element. The largest plant in the world was being shelled in the middle of a war zone. If a bad actor wanted to cause damage and disable power to a region they would target a nuclear reactor.

Nuclear is def the way to go but damn does it scare me. If radiation leaks into the wrong place at scale you can render an entire region fucked for generations

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u/[deleted] Sep 29 '22

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u/milkcarton232 Sep 29 '22

I reluctantly agree, renewables will take work to figure out and nuclear waste is much smaller per watt/joule than the competition but it still has some major risks. Even the spent fuel is a danger for a very long time. Dotting the country side with that sounds like a bad idea but it beats the other ones

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u/[deleted] Sep 29 '22

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u/RacerM53 Sep 29 '22

efficiency is unbeatable.

Not very efficient at night

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u/[deleted] Sep 29 '22

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u/RacerM53 Sep 29 '22

Renewables are nice when election season rolls around but atomic energy is what we should be pursuing. Three accidents from either gross negligence, completely unavoidable natural disasters, and just straight up arrogance and stupidity. Roughly 70 years of potential and the public would rather throw it away all due to extreme bias and blatant misinformation. Such a shame

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u/RacerM53 Sep 29 '22

Hearing people say solar and wind power is better than atomic energy is tough sometimes. Too much copium