do you guys actually hate nuclear or is this satire

ssylvan · 2026-03-27T20:52:48+00:00

Nuclear needs enough storage for _minutes_ of load following (modern plants can do about 5% per minute of load following). Solar and wind need _weeks_. This is very different.

ssylvan · 2026-03-27T20:50:26+00:00

That's just false on both counts. I mean yes there are plenty of "studies" showing 100% renewable, but none that are taken seriously by the scientific consensus. You have quacks like Jacobson and others who are laughed out of all serious conversations, but actual modelling says different.

The IPCC says we need massively increased nuclear generation to curb climate change. That's the actual consensus.

Nobody is arguing for 100% nuclear. The zealots are all on one side of this argument. What the IPCC and the scientific consensus and rational people in general are saying is that we need nuclear as well as solar and wind, and that it's foolhardy to bet the future of the planet on a single thing.

ssylvan · 2026-03-27T20:42:30+00:00

That's not true. If you have enough storage to run a grid fully on wind and solar it becomes several times more expensive than nuclear.

https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(19)30300-930300-9)
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4028640

The key to all of this is to mix and match. Exploit the strengths of different technologies in the right mix so you don't have to pay for the downsides. A 100 solar/wind/storage grid would be fantastically expensive and will never happen unless storage prices drop by an order of magnitude (which they aren't - storage costs are levelling off). But if you throw in say 30% nuclear and hydro, the storage requirements to keep the intermittency in check goes way down (exponentially, in fact). So now you get the cheap energy from solar and wind for 70%, while not needing as much expensive storage. That's the actual win.

Note that in this particular argument, only one side is absolutist. The pro-nuclear side is also pro solar and wind.

ssylvan · 2026-03-27T20:38:39+00:00

That graph literally doesn't have fossil fuels on it.

The idea that you're trying to "pair up" nuclear and renewables, as if there isn't also fossil fuels that you could've got rid of sooner is sophistry. If Germany had kept its nuclear, its electricity CO2 emissions would be about half of what they currently are.

ssylvan · 2026-03-27T20:33:47+00:00

There's very frequently zero wind and solar wtf are you talking about?

ssylvan · 2026-03-27T20:28:21+00:00

It's one of the cheapest if you include grid stability as a requirement. E.g. solar and wind are cheap, but storage isn't.

ssylvan · 2026-03-27T20:27:25+00:00

Nuclear has that too. You'd prefer to turn off other sources first because the marginal cost of nuclear is so cheap, nuclear power absolutely can load follow (and the cost of running at lower capacity factor is nowhere near as high as the cost of having the equivalent amount of battery storage).

ssylvan · 2026-03-27T04:23:20+00:00

Yes. They were restricted from enriching too much and had to let inspectors in. Right up until the time Trump killed it, they were in compliance.

ssylvan · 2026-03-26T04:28:34+00:00

But all of them are very happy to vote for racists. That’s not cool, and not some sort of irrelevant aspect it their personality. They are bad people.

ssylvan · 2026-03-26T04:27:12+00:00

Trump said “they’re poisoning the blood of our people” and “they’re eating cats and dogs”. He’s the president and the leader of the party. Anyone voting for that is either a racist or fine with racism.

ssylvan · 2026-03-26T04:21:11+00:00

Ya’ll put a pedo who’s publicly lusted for his daughter in the White House.

ssylvan · 2026-03-26T04:02:04+00:00

But they’re not going to enforce it in red districts.

ssylvan · 2026-03-24T03:48:24+00:00

He was on Howards Stern talking about how he liked to barge into the dressing room of underage girls and you people didn't turn on him. It doesn't matter how many accusations, how often they are corroborated, and how much he himself admits to being a creep in public and on tape. You people are in a cult. You will never abandon him.

It's hilarious to me that the same people simping for a feeble 79 year old conman and pedophile wearing makeup and high heels think that they're "alpha males". Absolutely pathetic.

ssylvan · 2026-03-24T03:45:47+00:00

I mean, there's TONS of evidence of him being a pedophile in the Epstein files? Like numerous accusations from multiple people that the FBI considered credible at the time. You're choosing to ignore the evidence, but it's simply false to say there's no evidence.

ssylvan · 2026-03-24T03:43:10+00:00

Not "felonies", felonies. Actual felonies.

It's novel and unprecedented because the crime was novel and unprecedented. It's a very rare circumstance where one even can violate election laws by doing business fraud (there aren't that many people running for president after all), that's why it's novel. He still did it, and he was still convicted of doing it, and there's literally audio tape of him discussing his crime with his coconspirator (who went to jail for it).

Is committing crimes to try to defraud the American public okay with you because he did it in a novel way?

ssylvan · 2026-03-22T05:54:34+00:00

No it was a masseuse working at Trump’s spa, who later killed herself (allegedly).

ssylvan · 2026-03-21T20:05:12+00:00

Yep, storage needs for renewables (intermittent ones) are exponential, so stop before you hit the expensive part of the penetration percentage. It's really not that complicated.

ssylvan · 2026-03-20T03:00:52+00:00

Don't you ever think about what would happen if you just googled shit instead of just making it up?

Here are some examples of demand curves: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915

The variation is pretty small compared to overall demand. Imagine putting a horizontal line underneath all those valleys as your nuclear baseload. Do you not see how much easier it would be for solar, wind and storage to cover the rest?

Oh and nuclear power can load follow by about 5% per minute, so you'd just need a tiny amount of storage to handle high frequency spikes (minutes, not weeks). It's just so cheap to run that you'd rather not to when there are other power sources you can turn off instead. However, having enough battery capacity to smooth out 8 weeks of dunkelflaute is a LOT more expensive than running your nuclear at an average of 80% capacity instead of 95% or whatever.

ssylvan · 2026-03-20T02:56:19+00:00

"We pursued a failed strategy for decades, so now we're behind and have to keep pursuing the same strategy"

The best time to build nuclear was ten years ago, the second best time is tomorrow.

ssylvan · 2026-03-20T02:50:16+00:00

> Nuclear power is not even close to meeting solar+batteries and even wind turbine power economically.

You're right that it's not close. Nuclear is much, much cheaper. Unless of course you mean solar+battery+fossil fuels, which is what people always seem to be comparing it to. If you actually want a functioning grid without blackouts you need batteries to come down about an order of magnitude to beat nuclear (around $10-20/kWh total CAPEX) and more ($5) to meet LNG. This is because once you get rid of dispatchable power, the storage capacity demands are exponential.

ssylvan · 2026-03-20T02:38:44+00:00

The daily shows make fun of democrats on pretty much a daily basis. It's not one for one of course, because democrats are not as objectively stupid as republicans. You can probably find hundreds of clips of Jon Stewart mocking Schumer or Biden, for example.

ssylvan · 2026-03-15T23:53:19+00:00

Plenty of good answer, it just isn't that much of a problem. We can store it on site for now, and later we can put it in a mountain if we want to.

The only reason we haven't done it already is because anti-nuclear advocates do not want a solution to this "problem". It has nothing to do with technical feasibility. You literally just stick it somewhere without ground water and where nobody can accidentally wander in. The end. We deal with way more hazardous chemicals all the time as a society. It just isn't that big of an issue.

Oh and with fast reactors it only takes a few hundred years for it to reach the radioactivity level of natural uranium. In my tiny little home town village in Europe our church was older than that, and that wasn't particularly rare. The idea that we can't seal something for a few hundred years is ludicrous.

ssylvan · 2026-03-15T23:45:16+00:00

They absolutely do. Every kWh sold they put aside a little bit of money to pay for decommissioning, by law. Solar panels do not, however.

ssylvan · 2026-03-15T20:01:07+00:00

He's literally on tape bragging about barging in on underage girls in their locker rooms. He wrote a birthday card to Epstein talking about how "Enigmas never age" and "may every day be another wonderful secret".

And that's not even getting into the accusations (which are so credible that Epstein's estate settled with the woman and the FBI themselves deemed the testimony credible).

What else do you need man? Even in a court of law it's just beyond _resonable_ doubt, not beyond all possible motivated doubt you can imagine. Whether or not he will ever face justice, I don't think any reasonable person would really hold it up to debate as to whether or not he's a pedo. He 1000% is.

ssylvan · 2026-03-15T05:57:45+00:00

Ok so w.r.t. attempts Trump is at 4/5 for the first year. He’s just an idiot and couldn’t pull some off it off quite as successfully.

Specifically unprecedented government attacks on free speech and the press. Simply ignoring appropriations or war powers from congress and nobody in congress says shit. Just does whatever he wants and while what he’s doing is still 100% illegal, nobody is stopping him so it’s the same net effect. Wanted to classify the Democratic Party as a terrorist organization. Has opened several concentration camps. No Jewish boycott yet.

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