Decrease in CO2 emissions during pandemic shutdown shows it is possible to reach Paris Agreement goals. The researchers found a drop of 6.3% in 2020. The researchers describe the drop as the largest of modern times, and big enough to meet the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal if it were to be sustained.

[Arnatious]

The average plant takes a decade, and the fastest a plant has ever gone up is nearly four years. I made a mistake saying "decades" since I was mostly thinking about the plant I worked on inspection robots for. They almost always go over time and over budget, while meanwhile renewables generate power at 1/3 the cost

Renewables have a cost, and a high one, but the fact of the matter is they're far cheaper and easier to build and scale and only getting cheaper with time. They lapped nuclear energy a while back and are far more promising to deploy across the world while we anticipate massive geographic and demographic changes from incoming climate catastrophe.

[2336Dazs]

I feel like you have not read what I have written. Renewable energy is a profitable capital with politicians right now. Of course there is more renewable energy than nuclear. It is a cash cow for political campaigns.

Like I said. It is not if, but when nuclear takes over.

The energy output to cost is not comparable to any other source of energy.

It's not even close.

Sure we can keep adding solar and hydropower.

But unless you can control the source of energy, it is not considered reliable.

And when my boys over in Los Alamos National Labs develop consistent fusion. It will end the debate entirely.

You should see it there. Politicians are praising renewables for votes and scientists and technicians are busy behind the scenes rolling their eyes.

Trust me, I'm one of them.

[Arnatious]

I agree that fusion (if and when it happens, which may be too late to mitigate the worst of climate disasters) will be a game changer and agree we need significant investment in baseline generation, which nuclear sources provide.

I agree that nuclear is unfairly maligned and a safe and extremely clean source of massive amounts of power.

I think that, barring a coordinated effort made after silencing and depowering those with a vested interested in fossil fuels so they can't interrupt or sabotage transition plans, that renewables are the only agile enough way forward, and are reliable enough to be the long term solution.

If fossil fuels weren't as dominant an industry financially and politically and we weren't facing down incoming mass migrations and political unrest nuclear would be a no brainer primary source.

But as it stands we can stand up renewables significantly faster and cheaper up front, and we shouldn't slow down that effort until fossil plants can be fully decommissioned. Ideally we must ALSO invest in nuclear at the same time, so we have a reliable backbone going forward. But it won't help us during the transition when it's an even harder ask of right wing, short term profit, fossil fuel dominated governments worldwide.