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submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by Metal_Zealot@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

With climate change looming, it seems so completely backwards to go back to using it again.

Is it coal miners pushing to keep their jobs? Fear of nuclear power? Is purely politically motivated, or are there genuinely people who believe coal is clean?


Edit, I will admit I was ignorant to the usage of coal nowadays.

Now I'm more depressed than when I posted this

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[-] NormandyEssex@lemmy.world 136 points 2 years ago

I don’t think we ever stopped mining it

[-] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 40 points 2 years ago

Yes, the correct answer is that "net zero" Is a greenwashed lie to placate the masses into inaction while the oligarchy continues business as usual until collapse.

https://medium.com/@samyoureyes/the-busy-workers-handbook-to-the-apocalypse-7790666afde7

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[-] DasRubberDuck@feddit.de 88 points 2 years ago

Why "going back to it" have we ever stopped?

[-] 0110010001100010@kbin.social 27 points 2 years ago

I was going to say, coal remains around 1/3 of our electric generation worldwide (as of 2022): https://www.statista.com/statistics/269811/world-electricity-production-by-energy-source/

Coal can't be reused, created, or otherwise obtained outside of mining. Until we remove our dependency on coal, mining will continue.

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[-] ThatWeirdGuy1001@lemmy.world 76 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Oil propaganda convinced millions of people that renewable energy sources like nuclear power or wind turbine were dangerous/ineffective.

Basically humans are stupid and don't like change and rich people know and took advantage of it.

[-] Swiggles 22 points 2 years ago
[-] theKalash@feddit.ch 60 points 2 years ago

It's renewable the same way as the sun is: Not, but it will last for a really, really long time.

[-] ThatWeirdGuy1001@lemmy.world 43 points 2 years ago

Because the amount of fuel used in a nuclear reactor is exponentially less than fossil fuels.

There's enough nuclear material on this planet to power nuclear reactors for tens of thousands of years.

Nuclear power is clean, efficient, and lasts for essentially ever

[-] Admetus@sopuli.xyz 20 points 2 years ago

It's close to 'renewable' but technically it should be called 'low carbon fuel'.

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[-] tinkeringidiot@lemmy.world 59 points 2 years ago

It never stopped. Hasn’t even really slowed down.

People need electricity. Renewables are great, but they don’t provide for the full generation need. Coal and natural gas power generation will continue unabated until a better (read: lower price for similar reliability) solution takes their place.

In my opinion, fossil fuel generation won’t take a real hit until the grid-scale energy storage problem is solved.

[-] saigot@lemmy.ca 11 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Hasn’t even really slowed down.

I think thats... not wrong per say, but somewhat misleading. Coal consumption has been steady worldwide for the last decade despite the population going up a whole billion, and as the average persons energy usage has gone up (largely as a result of growing quality of life in developing nations).

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[-] bouh@lemmy.world 47 points 2 years ago

Because the ecofanatics focused on fighting nuclear power for 50 years instead of fighting fossile fuels.

Fast forward to now, renewable are not ready at all and they need fossile fuels anyway to provide steady energy. But geopolitics is making oil too expensive, so countries are mining coal again.

In brief, ecofanatics were stupid (and still are) and war in Ukraine.

[-] BigNote@lemm.ee 11 points 2 years ago

Were they stupid or deliberately misled, propagandized and manipulated by the fossil fuel industry? Sure some of them were stupid, but I don't think that's the whole story.

[-] PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml 10 points 2 years ago

I'm an eco-fanatic and I am extremely pro-nuclear.

[-] Ostrichgrif@lemmy.world 23 points 2 years ago

Yeah but that wasn't the case in previous decades. Environmentalists have protested just about every nuclear power plant opening for the last 60 years. It might even still happen if we bothered to open more plants.

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[-] Blackmist@feddit.uk 44 points 2 years ago

Because it got cheaper than natural gas.

Nobody thinks it's clean, they just don't care.

[-] thru_dangers_untold@lemmy.ml 37 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Yes, countries like Germany are turning to coal as a direct result of nuclear-phobia.

The US, with all its green initiatives and solar/wind incentives, is pumping more oil than Saudi Arabia. The US has been the top oil producer on whole the planet for the last 5-6 years. The problem is getting worse.

[-] klisklas@feddit.de 56 points 2 years ago

Sorry, this is just false info. Germany is not turning to coal as a result of your called nuclear phobia.

I will repeat my comment from another thread:

If you are able to read German or use a translator I can recommend this interview where the expert explains everything and goes into the the details.

Don't repeat the stories of the far right and nuclear lobby. Nuclear will always be more expensive than renewables and nobody has solved the waste problem until today. France as a leading nuclear nation had severe problems to cool their plants during the summer due to, guess what, climate change. Building new nuclear power plants takes enormous amounts of money and 10-20years at least. Time that we don't have at the moment.

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[-] hoshikarakitaridia@sh.itjust.works 21 points 2 years ago

As people pointed out in another thread, nuclear energy is NOT the future and also a really bad short term solution,so countries like Germany are going back to coal short term to make the transitions to renewables in the meantime.

It's not a great solution, but without Nordstream, there's really not much else more sensible to do right now, just to make the transition.

[-] Lemmyvisitor@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 2 years ago

what makes nuclear energy a bad option?

[-] AnAngryAlpaca@feddit.de 21 points 2 years ago
  • It takes 20 years to build
  • nobody knows how much nuclear fuel will cost in 20 years
  • you have to take out a big loan and make interest payments on it for maybe 30 years before you start making a profit
  • if you don't have enough water for cooling because of climate change, the plant must shut down
  • if your neighbor decides to start a war against you, your nuclear plants become a liability, see Ukraine.

I think smaller, decentralized renewable energy is cheaper in the short and long run and has a much lower risk in case of accidents, natural Desasters or attacks.

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[-] A7thStone@lemmy.world 19 points 2 years ago

50+ years of fear from fossil fuel company propaganda.

[-] DrQuint@lemm.ee 13 points 2 years ago

"BuT thE WaSTe diSPoSaL PrObLEm"

Meanwhile coal:

"Oh that thing that's more radioactive than nuclear waste? Yeah, just toss it in the air. Who cares"

[-] Gormadt 19 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

It's just nuclear phobia.

It's literally the second safest form of energy production we have only behind solar.

It's literally safer than wind power.

Yeah there's been a few disasters with older reactor designs or reactors that were put where they shouldn't have been, but even with those it's still incredibly safe.

[-] dotmatrix@lemmy.ftp.rip 18 points 2 years ago

A single new reactor takes decades to build and costs billions. Investing in solar, wind, the grid and storage instead will generate more energy, faster, and for less.

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[-] ExLisper@linux.community 36 points 2 years ago

Climate change 'looming'? Dude, it's already here.

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[-] theKalash@feddit.ch 36 points 2 years ago

In my country, because of a decades long fearmongering and disinfomation campaing that destoyed the nuclear energy industry. So now we're stucked with coal to keep the power running at night and during winter.

[-] rufus@discuss.tchncs.de 16 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Well, nuclear energy is expensive anyways and the amount of uranium on this world seems quite limited.

It's just not the technology of the future. In the long term we should use regenerative energies that are way cheaper.

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[-] Mrs_deWinter@feddit.de 34 points 2 years ago

It didn't, at least not in the way you think. The headlines of the past few days show the aftermath of the last decades: industry contracts that were made in the last century and the political heritage of a generation of politicians who are no longer in power.

Coal is being phased out and that's not changing. It cannot change substantially anyway; there is only so much coal in the gound. Recent political decisions moved to keep most of it there. For technological, political, economical and industry related reasons this won't be a fast process unfortunately.

One of the roadblocks of our transition to a sustainable energy supply is how much money (and in our capitalisic society, therefore, power) the industry itself holds. Coal lobbies will work hard for you not to think about them too much. Nuclear lobbies will work hard for you to blame those pesky environmentalists. A game of distraction and blame shifting. This thread is a good example of how well it's working.

Our resources are limited. This is true for good old planet earth as well as our societies. We only have so much money, time, and workforce to manage this transition. And as much as I'd love to wake up tomorrow to a world with PVC on every roof, a windmill on every field, and decentralised storage in every town center, this is just not realistic overnight. We'll have to live with the fact of our limited resources and divert as much as possible of them towards such a future. (And btw, putting billions of dollars in money, time, and workforce towards a reactor that will start working in 10-30 years is not the way to do this, as much as the nuclear lobby would like you to think that.)

[-] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 34 points 2 years ago

Again? Did we stop?

It doesn't look like anyone has mentioned metallurgical coal yet. Even if you don't burn it for energy, the carbon in steel has to come from somewhere and that's usually coke, which is coal that has been further pyrolised into a fairly pure carbon producing a byproduct of coal tar.

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[-] DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.com 21 points 2 years ago

Over here (Australia) we never stopped. Our coal lobby is simply too influential with our government.

[-] Fallenwout@lemmy.world 17 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Because of the war against nuclear plants. Our green party shut down nuclear plants in favor for renewable energy. But as predicted, renewables don't meet our demands. So the green party started building gas plants to compensate instead of keeping nuclear running.

So why? Because of green idiocracry that demand the impossible of green energy (at this moment) and nuclear = evil

[-] Asimo@lemmy.world 16 points 2 years ago

It's never really stopped.

But from the actions of those in power it seems they're just plowing through climate change and making money whilst they can. Imagine the decision is we're fucked anyway so let's get mine whilst I can and see if it helps me survive.

[-] const_void@lemmy.ml 12 points 2 years ago
[-] BustinJiber@lemmy.world 11 points 2 years ago

Actually I thought it's maybe because our crazy "friend", who recently decided to show how it never actually left from behind the red curtain, had no problem shelling multiple nuclear power plant sites. Just saying.

[-] Cynoid@lemm.ee 11 points 2 years ago

I blame the release of both Factorio and Victoria 3.

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this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
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