Do me a favor and look at the big chartand see how much of our energy needs are currently met by oil, coal and natural gas and see that 16% of our energy needs are met by a combination of all renewables. While I agree that we do need to continue investing more in renewables. There is only so much sunshine in a day and it isn't sunny everyday and it isn't sunny everywhere. We do not have the transmission technology to pipe electricity across continents feasibly. There's certainly enough Sunshine at the equator. Good luck getting it beyond 30° north or south. The other issue is storage pumped. Hydro isn't an option in most places because there isn't enough water or natural reservoirs available to fill. So please elaborate on your battery storage solution for your solar mega farms and how you're going to distribute that energy feasibly worldwide.

[–] kbin_space_program@kbin.run 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

If Germany can have viable solar energy generation, and they do, then everywhere can

[–] Forester@yiffit.net 9 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I'm not saying Germany can't produce solar energy. Currently 5% of all the energy Germany uses is solar. I'm saying Germany can't run on nothing but solar energy which is why we need something dependable to take up the base load. That is not fossil fuel based.

[–] ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

If you Google "is a nuclear baseload required" you'll find plenty of articles clearly demonstrating why this isn't true. Renewables + storage solutions can provide the base load just fine. The biggest issues have been worked out already, it just needs to be built (which is expensive, but so would nuclear be).

[–] Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Yeah, OP keeps using the lack of current investment in renewables as an argument that it can't be done at scale. It's a really weird lack of logic whether they're aware of it and arguing in bad faith or just fundamentally confused..

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

OP calling you a "dipshit" and others "fucking shills" is clear evidence OP knows he/she is losing the argument and gets emotional about it.

What's funny is that nuclear apologists sweep other renewables like geothermal under the rug and only proclaim that wind and solar depend on the elements. Wind and solar do but others like geothermal don't. Hydropower is also less dependent on flukes of nature.

Also France needs to lower their nuclear energy output in summer because the cooling water from rivers gets too hot.

[+] Forester@yiffit.net -4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

[removed by mod]

[–] Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

My argument is that it has taken us 30 years to reach 16% of global power generated by renewables. And every year we seem to add about two more percentage to that.

Mainly because of the fossil fuel and nuclear lobbies bribing politicians, not any deficiency inherent to renewables as you keep implying.

we don't have the fucking time scale to keep that slow rate going rate going

True, but the solution is to increase the investment in renewable energy generation at a faster rate, not giving up and pivoting to the slower, less effective and more dirty transition to nuclear.

Speaking of not having time, nuclear is already getting less effective and less safe due to climate change, a tendency that's going to get much worth in the several years, probably decades, it would take to transition from fossil fuels to nuclear.

Meanwhile, a major solar array or wind turbine park can be built in a matter of months and doesn't have those problems OR the waste disposal issues you keep downplaying.

We need to drastically cut oil yesterday

Again, absolutely true.

the only thing you can use to replace that much oil in a short time span is nuclear

Absolutely 100% categorically false.

Never once anywhere have I said that I want less renewables

Except for repeatedly suggesting that nuclear is a much better option, which it isn't.

There is zero reason that we can't invest in both for a more equitable future.

Except for the fact that a combination of the myriad types of renewables is a faster, cheaper, and cleaner way to get off fossil fuels.

Nuclear is the coal of low to no carbon energy generation: it's an obsolete method that is still used in spite of much better modern technology being available, chiefly because of rich lobbyists bribing politicians and gaslighting regular people.

[–] Forester@yiffit.net -2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Please tell me your plans for renewable storage to meet 84% of our power needs in the next 5 years

[–] msage@programming.dev 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Please remind me how long it takes to build new nuclear plants?

[–] Forester@yiffit.net -2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

That depends entirely on what design you go with. Ideally we would be looking at municipal level power generation with modern proven light water Small modular reactor designs reliant on passive safety features we can pump them out of factories at a rate of approximately two per day if we can look at the average aerospace industry rate of construction for jumbojets for a comparable engineering project in size and scope to most SM reactors.

There are also many options to convert existing fossil-fired plants to be nuclear powered at the end of the day a turbine spinning is a turbine spinning. It doesn't care whether you boiled the water with radiation or coal or oil or gas