• Laser@feddit.org
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    3 days ago

    You claim that nuclear is short sighted, but then you claim we should be using renewables. Where do those renweables get their energy? From nuclear.

    Yeah… a nuclear fusion reaction that has about 18*10^29 kg of hydrogen available at its disposal and is conveniently placed in a vacuum, mostly unaffected by gravity other than its own, with magnetic fields enabling it.

    When we speak of nuclear as a source of electric energy, it’s about nuclear fission. And it’s not like we’re not trying, nuclear fusion research is going on since over 60 years, with insane amounts of money invested into it and yet no result that is practical for large scale electric energy generation.

    Its easy to make the argument that we didnt have to pay the upfront costs of the sun, but the sun itself isnt renewable. Even if you invested fully into renewables now, for humanity to last long term you would STILL have to eventually go nuclear. And what about deep space habitats? They cant use renweables pretty much at all.

    If you think humanity (or actually, any form of life) can sustain once the sun no longer exists as it does now (probably becoming a red giant), you’re probably wrong. But that consideration is of no importance when talking about covering today’s energy needs