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Manuel_Dyesterday at 9:20 PM4 repliesview on HN

Sure, someone can be both concerned about climate change and oppose nuclear power. But it's a largely self-defeating stance: nuclear is the only non-intermittent geographically independent form of clean energy. Dams and geothermal are geographically constrained. Solar and wind are intermittent, as well as varying in output depending on location.


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tialaramexyesterday at 11:22 PM

Nuclear is also in practice significantly geographically dependent.

Cities basically won't let you put a nuclear power station within a stone's throw, never mind in their midst. Have you ever visited London? There's a wonderful modern art gallery, on the side of the Thames called Tate Modern, and it has this enormous space which is called the "Turbine Hall". Huh. Tate Modern's shell was a 300MW oil fired power station named "Bankside". They burned tonnes of oil right in the heart of London until the 1980s to make electricity. People weren't happy about it, but they designed, built, and operated the station because although any fool can see there's toxic smoke pouring out of it into your city, electricity is pretty useful.

In practice nuclear power stations get built somewhere with abundant cheap water, far from population centres yet easily connected to the grid. England has more places to put a Nuke than say, a Hydro dam, but they are not, as you've suggested, "geographically independent", unlike say solar PV which doesn't even stop you grazing animals on the land or parking vehicles or whatever else you might want to do.

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sandworm101today at 3:00 AM

Small thing, dams are not carbon neutral. Depending on location, the plant life they inundate no longer absorbs carbon and, worse yet, the rotting plant life emits methane and other not-good gasses.

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sunaookamiyesterday at 10:20 PM

Everyone is entitled to their opinions.

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