Mastodawn

Since releasing my oil video I've had so many people claiming that renewables will never work and we need nuclear power instead.

What's odd is that almost all of the messages mention that nuclear power is the only solution for the "base load".

I have a degree in Electrical Engineering and I took several nuclear science electives. I like nuclear energy. But I received so much "base load" gaslighting that I started to doubt my own understanding of the situation.

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Soso 1d ago

@notjustbikes I used to be very pro-nuclear. While.I still think removing power plants today for ecological reasons is highly counter productive, I have significantly changed my position overall. So many countries don't have the ability to deploy nuclear. They don't have any already, building the expertise takes decades, and can be the cause of geopolitical tensions (see Iran...).

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kravietz 🦇1d ago

@sgued

Have you considered geopolitical tensions in an industry where 85% of the whole supply chain (!) is controlled by a single authoritarian country?

That’s the PV market today and includes not only the panels but also backdoored inverters…

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Future Sprog 1d ago

Plenty of other countries and companies can produce panels. LG, who are Korean, make a lot of PV.

Also, once purchased, they keep running without requiring approval and new shipments from an authoritarian country, so your fears are somewhat overblown.

@kravietz @sgued

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kravietz 🦇1d ago

@futuresprog

1) “Can produce” != “do produce”
2) 85% supply chain control means even if you intend start your own production, you still depend on China for resources… which they can cut at any time, as they occasionally do with rare earth metals etc
3) moving production back to EU means cost increase because you no longer leverage Chinese forced labour, poor environmental standards, subsidies and low CO2 tax

Which are the reasons why China built that supply chain dependency in the first place 🤷

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Allegro con Fuoco 1d ago

@kravietz @futuresprog

So you want more fossil or what?

There is no basis for any geopolitical tension between the EU and China. Most of it was concocted by the US, starting with Trump, then with Biden turbocharging it.

The EU has little to lose and everything to gain by leaning more into solar weaning itself off of both Russian and US machinations.

Besides, the EU (Germany) had a world leading solar industry before either through gross mismanagement or malice it tanked its own industry.

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kravietz 🦇

@largo

So you want more fossil or what?

No, precisely that’s why I want more nuclear power combined with renewables in EU so we can actually finish decarbonisation rather than wholesale importing PV from China and pretend their CO2 doesn’t count.

@futuresprog