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NNadir

(38,822 posts)
7. What I saw - and I'm pretty sure my reading comprehension skills are far better than some I see - is a typical...
Thu Jun 18, 2026, 05:32 AM
Thursday

Last edited Thu Jun 18, 2026, 08:54 AM - Edit history (1)

...antinuke remark about efficiency, placing clean nuclear energy in the same class as coal, coal being the main source of electrical power in China, where we see whooping about electric trucks. In China, electric anything remains at this point in time, dirty.

In general, antinukes love to lump reliable forms of energy together. There are actually only 4 and a half major dispatchable forms of electrical power generation; the word "dispatchable" for people with poor reading comprehension skills means "available on demand."

They are, coal, gas, oil, and nuclear for the "four" and "hydroelectricity" for the half. Hydroelectricity in many places, Norway for instance, is dispatchable, but it appears from the American West, the destroyed Glen Canyon dam that created the "Lake" Powell and the Hoover dam that created "Lake" Mead may end up as unreliable for generating electricity as all the unnecessary solar and wind garbage in California. The problem for Lake Powell and the Hoover dams is that the 5.689 trillion dollars squandered on so called "renewable energy" between 2015 and 2025 has been completely and totally useless at addressing the collapse of the planetary atmosphere. Hence major droughts. I therefore will give a "half" for hydroelectricity as dispatchable form of energy, a crude, admittedly, approximation. It's clearly facing problems with reliability. The disappearance of the Himalayan glaciers will probably do the same in time for Three Gorges.

I am well aware of thermodynamics, in particular the thermal efficiency of powerplants. By contrast, it's pretty clear that anyone prattling insipidly about batteries and hydrogen on a burning planet doesn't know shit from Shinola about thermodynamics. This is obviated every time they prattle on about batteries and hydrogen.

Of the four thermal reliable forms of energy, the three fossil fuels about which antinukes couldn't care less, and nuclear energy, only one is clean and sustainable. That's nuclear fission.

Antinukes have been lumping the clean and sustainable form of energy, nuclear, with the types about which they couldn't care less, oil, coal, and gas, for decades. When they are in denial of doing so, as an advocate of environmental sustainability I am inclined to call them out on their clear disingenuous - or to put it more firmly, dishonest - practice of lumping nuclear energy, to which they object, killing people, with fossil fuels.

Of course there are "I'm not an antinuke" antinuke types around here too. They claim that the world will be saved by fusion energy, about which they know next to zero, just as they know next to zero about thermodynamics and nuclear fission energy.

Thinking fusion is sustainable and fission is not sustainable is absurd, given that no one has ever generated electrical power from fusion, and it still is not clear that anyone ever will. Meanwhile, while we wait for fusion just as we all wait for the "renewable energy"/hydrogen/battery nirvana that did not come, is not here and won't come, the planet is burning.

I would ask members of this class of "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes, the "fusion will save us" types if I thought them remotely cognizant of reality, if they know if the world supply of isolated tritium - produced in Canada's fission reactors - has reached 100 kg yet, but I'm not sure they'd understand the implications. Their knowledge of basic physics is appallingly bad in my opinion.

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