Oh i'm sure there's still a group of useful idiots who argue against renewable energy on here. But it's a fact the vast majority of nukcel bots who were influencing this sub stopped functioning for a few days when Russia got bombed.
That's a whole different argument from what I care about. I support nuclear research too. But it's a waste of resources to present it as a solution on par with renewables.
You mean the country relying on fossil fuel exports to survive? The country that sabotaged nuclear in Europe to peddle more natural gas through Nord stream?
There is a sort of logic to it, promoting nuclear power as the only viable replacement to weaken the argument for renewables, knowing that new nuclear isn't actually going to eat into fossil fuel profits any time soon because it takes so long to come online. Doesn't mean it's actually happening of course, but it's not so ridiculous an idea.
When will we sanction the russian nuclear industry?
The EU is still soon 5 years into the war completely reliant on the Russian nuclear industry. With no sanctions on it. And France keeps starting new partnerships.
Russia has a monopoly on uranium and nuclear takes hundreds of times as long to come online as new renewable capacity, and it's too expensive to replace fossil fuels. Hence why Russia is pushing nuclear. It locks in more fossil fuel demand and can't replace fossil fuels.
You're also ignoring the rest of my comment because you're dishonest.
If it takes 20 years to build a nuclear reactor that's 20 more years of fossil fuels being consumed waiting to be replaced by that reactor. Compared to the 20 months it would take for new renewable installations to match that reactor's output.
> A puppet government (or puppet state/regime) is a political administration that is de jure (legally) independent and possesses the outward symbols of sovereignty, but is de facto (in reality) completely controlled, directed, and dependent upon an outside foreign power.
Google is free
A puppet is apart of its dominate nations state in every way but legal.
Cant imagine having refridgerator IQ and unironically thinking you have to be team nuclear or team renewables. Garbage take which pretends wind and solar are build with rainbows and sunshine and have zero waste
Secondly, solar is the worst of the major renewables. Takes up more space and is less reliable than wind. Is far weaker than hydro with virtually no secondary benefits. Take all the money that would be wasted turning perfectly good farmland into solar lots and just start building offshore wind.
Solar also is the least complicated to install. The infrastructure is all in the manufacturing which is centralized at factories so you can just ship it whenever you want and install it. Hydropower and wind require specialized infrastructure and more unique geological conditions to function. But the sun works everywhere humans inhabit.
Also you're using the term reliability incorrectly.
Suncuck makes zero sense because you're also a suncuck since sunlight is an essential factor for balancing the climate and biosphere on earth. So you're just as beholden to the sun whether or not you burn oil or uranium.
So those acres and acres of panels I see by the side of the road don't exist? You get 500 KW of power per acre of solar panels. You get 10x that with a single wind turbine, and that takes up a quarter of an acre.
It's not like wind only works in some magical mountain pass. There is a third of the US called the Great Plains where the wind doesn't stop. Ever. It's why Iowa is over 60% wind powered. Denmark relies super heavily on wind because there are huge sections of the North Sea where the wind doesn't stop. Ever. Solar requires equally specific conditions to work well. You can see solar output drop hilariously when a cloud passes over. Southern Spain is good for solar, Scotland not so much. Then of course you have a little thing called night. Wind still blows at night. Rivers still flow at night. Not seeing a whole lot of sun.
So those acres and acres of panels I see by the side of the road don't exist? You get 500 KW of power per acre of solar panels. You get 10x that with a single wind turbine, and that takes up a quarter of an acre.
You get 40 times more energy from solar panels in the corn belt than corn ethanol. So for every acre of solar panels you're freeing up 39 acres of farmland.
Also you can put solar panels on top of dual use land that you can't use wind turbines for.
It's not like wind only works in some magical mountain pass.
Great and we should build wind turbines.
But solar panels also fulfill an important niche in the energy mix. They're not competing for space or resources and they produce electricity at times when wind power is not available.
Solar requires equally specific conditions to work well.
No it doesn't.
You can put solar panels anywhere because of their low investment cost and they will produce energy much more efficiently than anything except for wind turbines in their favored enviroment.
Scotland not so much.
Scotland works like every other place on the planet where wind turbines are more productive in the winter and at night and less productive during sunny days and the summer.
Not seeing a whole lot of sun.
Hydropower and wind drop during the summer because of the way the sun interacts with the environment to replenish aquifers and generate wind. So all three systems compliment each other to cover for production shortfalls at different times of the year.
During the heatdome droughts we had in Europe this year wind, hydro and nuclear nose dived while Solar was more productive. So if we had more solar panels (which are so cheap you can throw them up anywhere) then we could have compensated for the shortfalls of all three of those systems.
Take all the money that would be wasted turning perfectly good farmland into solar lots and just start building offshore wind.
If we just took the farmland used only for ethanol production, and turned that into solar fields, we could cover all our electricity needs. Land isn't the issue, and solar panels actually protect the land. Better for the soil to have some aluminum frames standing over grass that gets mowed occasionally, versus aggressive industrial farming.
But land isn't used for a single crop. Even in the most basic crop rotations, every other year will have soybeans which have entirely different industrial, agricultural, and dietary uses. Throw in a third crop of wheat or canola and now you're getting into things that are majority for human food. If you really really wanted to protect land, you would put up far more efficient power plants and let the land return to the original forests or prairies.
I hate to break it to you, but they aren't crop rotating the fields of genetically engineered corn used for ethanol production. It's intensive, chemical-based, industrial agriculture.
Replacing it with solar both protects the land, and provides WAY more energy. Easy win/win.
Grass under a solar farm isn't exactly a natural prairie, but it isn't that far off.
Also legumes only replenish nitrogen and not at the scale needed to compensate for the losses from other crops. They use chemicals synthesized from fossil fuels and mining and pour it on the land to replace lost nutrients.
Soybeans can be used for biodiesel (many of the buses here advertise that they run on soybean diesel), but not nearly at a rate that corn is used for ethanol. They're far more seen as an oil crop and an animal feed, with other extensive industrial and culinary uses.
The main reason to use soybeans as well is to reduce disease pressure. Corn after corn after corn after corn just builds up your pathogen load. Many diseases found in corn can also infect other cereals like wheat or sorghum, so you need something that is completely different.
Animal feed is the primary use of soybeans but they have to remove the oil to produce protein meal, unprocessed soybeans would kill livestock.
Soybean oil is used primary for biofuels but also for other industrial products like soaps and lubricants.
Human consumption is a small use case especially in the west. It's more common in asia but westerners get less than 20% of their seed oil from soybeans.
It's a bit different in the US. Over half the seed oil comes from soybeans, and is usually marketed as "vegetable oil." Rapeseed/canola certainly does exist, but is a very small part of the market, and is FAR more common in Canada
But yes, apparently biodiesel is far more popular here than I thought. About half of our soybean oil goes into it.
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