Monday, February 3, 2014

Nuclear vs. renewables: Divided they fall

Interesting because of where it appears...

Nuclear vs. renewables: Divided they fall | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:
...advocates for nuclear and renewables are ... competing with each other for government favors and bickering over the question of what should replace fossil fuels, at times framing the debate as an either-or choice. Although both sides acknowledge the magnitude of the climate crisis, they stubbornly refuse to grow up and face the facts: Even with huge expansions of both nuclear and renewables, keeping global warming below a dangerous level will be a tough order.

It must be entertaining for fossil-fuel lobbyists to watch from the sidelines as their puny adversaries sling rocks at each other. But for climate campaigners, being divided and conquered is the worst possible game plan. If they don’t all learn to get along, and soon, it’s game over for climate policy.
The full article can be read at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists - note there's still an apocolypse, it's just not from nuclear power.

There are renewables that are compatible with baseload at certain penetration levels (solar) or for certain tasks (heating), and there are those that are "displacement" sources that have only the value of the fuel they displace (wind in Ontario) - which makes them useless the majority of the time in low/no emissions baseload systems (hydro/nuclear in Ontario)

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