“Wind and solar produced more U.S. power than coal during the first five months of this year, as several coal plants closed and gas prices dropped”
“Wind and solar produced more U.S. power than coal during the first five months of this year, as several coal plants closed and gas prices dropped”
Coal dropped, but looks like natural gass usage jumped. That’s only a small difference in carbon output. Nuclear is the way to go until we’ve got a solid infrastructure that can handle the ups and downs of renewables, grid storage and general upgrades, nation wide.
Nuclear needs a steady supply of water for cooling, which has become rather unreliable these days in many regions.
Newer generation nuclear plants have been designed to be safer and cooled by other means than water, but whether those will ever get built still seems up in the air.
Ever heard of Molten salt reactors? They’re much safer than traditional reactors in many ways
Yeah, let’s absolutely get more renewables out there, but I don’t see how we can accommodate base grid loads without something like nuclear (especially when grid storage of renewable energy that isn’t consumed at the time of generation seems like a problem that will take a long time to solve).
The anti-nuclear stuff drives me nuts, and as we’ve seen with Europe and their general move away from nuclear (France being a notable exception) is that you can spin up all the nuclear you want but you’ll need more fossil fuel plants to handle base load regardless.