Nope, it will make it harder and more expensive.
I didn’t mean they were the same as a single cigarette butt, sorry if I wasn’t clear - it’s just that one of them has a bunch of lithium and electronics as well as plastic, obviously neither is good but the vape is especially egregious imo!
What’s your point? If the sun stops shining everywhere for a year we’re all fucked anyways. If the wind stops blowing it’s because the sun has died. And if water decides to suddenly start disobeying the laws of physics then I think we will have bigger problems than turning on the TV.
To be able to have a stable grid all the scenarios have to include battery storage and thermal production
Totally wrong - you need to source this claim if you’re going to make it. All of the studies I have found claim the opposite - wind power is the best for stabilising a grid both in energy demand and frequency response. With renewables and pumped storage there is no need for batteries or for fossil/nuclear power.
The United States has enough land paved over for parking spaces to have 8 spaces per car - 5% of the land. If just 10% of that space was used to generate solar electricity - a mere 0.5% - that would generate enough solar power to provide electricity to the entire country. By comparison, around 50% of the land is agricultural. The amount of land used by renewable sources is not a real problem, it’s an argument used by the very wealthy pro-nuclear lobby to justify the huge amounts of funding that they currently receive.
The entirety of the US could be powered by solar power if they converted 10% of land which is just parking spaces to solar farming, and there would still be enough parking spaces left in the country to have seven for every car. The amount of land required for the benefits is completely inconsequential.
Meanwhile, for nuclear:
- more CO2 equivalent emissions per kWh than renewables
- very harmful extraction of uranium ore
- industrial processes to refine uranium ore are polluting
- huge quantities of concrete are consumed to build a nuclear plant, concrete is an extremely environmentally harmful material
- huge amounts of industrial traffic moving astronomical quantities of materials across the country for building and dismantling plants
- huge amounts of water consumed and irradiated by operating plants
- much more maintenance required
Most studies suggest that a 100% renewable source of our energy needs is completely viable. That should be our goal. It’s much easier and cheaper to aim for that - what benefit would nuclear give? It’s just much more expensive for all the downsides.
It’s far faster and more efficient to build and scale out renewables than nuclear. Nuclear is slower and more expensive.
To be fair, discarding cigarette butts is less wasteful of resources than discarding single-use vapes though, isn't it? ~~Also aren't cigarette butts 100% biodegradable and renewable nowadays?~~ Edit: No, they're not at all, they're also bad for the environment. Clearly disposable vapes are individually more wasteful though
Modern geothermal plants are much more versatile and can be used basically anywhere.
With a mixture of energy distribution (modern interconnectors can transmit 800kV or more over 800km or more with less than 3% loss) non-electrical storage such as pumped storage, and diversified renewable sources, this problem is completely mitigated - we can generate wind, solar or hydro power over 2,000km away from where it is consumed for cheaper than we could generate nuclear electricity 20km away.
Here are some sources. You can also run your own study yourself by just googling "average kwh price nuclear" and "average kwh price wind" and see how it looks. You can also google "average co2 eq emissions total lifetime nuclear" and likewise for wind/solar PV.
2022 Electricity ATB Technologies and Data Overview, annual technology baseline:
https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-is-nuclear-energy-good-for-the-climate/a-59853315
Mycle Schneider, author of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report: "Nuclear power plants are about four times as expensive as wind or solar, and take five times as long to build. When you factor it all in, you're looking at 15-to-20 years of lead time for a new nuclear plant."
Differences in carbon emissions reduction between countries pursuing renewable electricity versus nuclear power, published in nature energy: "We find that larger-scale national nuclear attachments do not tend to associate with significantly lower carbon emissions while renewables do. "
In the other remaining 7 parking spaces per car?