I’m a renewable bro. I wanna see as much money pumped into as much infrastructure for renewables as possible. I wanna see solar on every building. I wanna see off-shore wind and tidal energy production. I’m keenly following development of clean, efficient, and cost-effective energy storage technologies, and much is being done in this space to support a future switch to full renewable reliance.

That won’t change the fact that we need on-demand energy now and we need to stop using coal and gas as soon as possible. We currently don’t have energy storage at scale. We will, but we don’t. So in the meantime, nuclear is probably the best option to pursue for use over the next couple of decades while we continue to invest in, and implement, renewables.

Today, there is 413GW of nuclear capacity globally. Of that, 57GW is in China.

China plans to reach 300GW of nuclear capacity by 2035. Assuming linear growth, that number will be around 550GW by 2050 (more than double the current global nuclear capacity) There are currently 57 nuclear power plants under construction. 21 are in China. 1 is in the US.

This US pledge is basically useless.

🥱

Does anyone actually take these decades-long pledges seriously?

Nuclear power isn't bad. I used to be anti-nuclear energy because of the specter of Chernobyl, 3 mile island, and Fukushima. But learning more about it, there haven't been many actual problems with nuclear energy.

Chernobyl happened because of mismanagement and arrogance. 3 mile happened because of a malfunction. Fukushima happened because of mismanagement and failure to keep up safety standards in case of natural events.

These are all things that can be mitigated to one extent or another. it's much cleaner than other forms of energy, outputs way more than solar or wind, and with modern technology can be extremely safe. I think we should be adopting nuclear, at least as a stopgap until renewable tech reaches higher output in efficiency.

Kinda annoyed that these investments are going into foreign countries, when we are one of the major contributors to greenhouse gas. We should be building them here first to mitigate our own ghg contributions, then helping smaller countries build theirs.

I do still have concerns about waste removal and storage tho, but I'm sure we could figure that out if we actually wanted to. But I doubt we do, because "dA cOsTs" or some shit.

It's not bad, its just bullshit. None of that shit is going to happen, and if it does happen, it'll be China leading the charge not the US.

Nuclear power is good imo. Batteries are not a viable solution to the intermittency problem of renewables, you need that baseload

I’ll believe it when I see it. I’d prefer that they build something modern rather than hauling out the tired old plant designs we’ve been using since the 70s.

2050? They probably know this shit isn't going to happen and just put it out there to make it look like something is being done.

Next they'll say that fossil fuels will be phased out by 2075.

Are US pledges like this worth much?

How about cutting our energy usage?

What does any of what you just said have to do with the US making a pledge to increase global energy sustainability (energy and fossil fuels specifically being the crux of global catastrophe)

Sometimes I think posters just like to jab for rage bait

Where are my renewable bros at? Tell me this is bad.

It's a waste of resources. Perfect timing for the NuScale drama https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2023/11/15/2781465/0/en/NuScale-Power-Corporation-Sued-By-Block-Leviton-LLP-for-Securities-Law-Violations.html