WalrusDragonOnABike

Kinda wish I had a clear gendered attraction and a more binary gender so I could come out by saying something like “I like guys, but in a straight way”

That’s probably because the website sent an email to the person and asked them to answer the questions.

Also, the US is one of the premier offshore place to hide money from my understanding. So even if it was money, a lot of the US tokens would be hidden locally.

Wind tends to be higher at night (at least here in Texas), so solar and wind are good complements. The biggest issue here is in the summer right after the sun sets, but that just means having enough battery storage for a couple hours for temps to start dropping. But wind/solar are still cheaper after including storage for that amount of time by far compared to new nuclear or new fossil fuels. Only existing facilities have a comparable per kWh cost when compared to new solar/wind + storage. Even if you quadrupled the storage, it would still be cheaper than new nuclear and comparable to existing nuclear iirc. Granted cost of storage partly depends on what storage options are viable locally for small grids.

Is PV common at commercial scale solar?

Ironically, I seen the claim that the original reason was because the US grid was outdated and Texas wanted to do better. Probably back when people who called themselves “conservatives” actually cared at little bit about conserving the environment (at least in some self-interested ways). Of course it didn’t work out that way.

No clue why the rest of the US is divided into two grids.

The article itself said it’s still counting in future tech advances. Just because the alpha test is done at full size is different than being commercial scale imo. But we shouldn’t even be judging power plants success on how well they can make profits, so whether it’s commercial scale or not should not be relevant. Unfortunately it is, but the article gives no indication that it is commercially viable with current tech. Just that it physically exists.

Nuclear has more location issues than renewable. Do you think people want a nuclear plant in their backyard?

It’s the same issues of will, money, and location that limit both. Why waste all of those on nuclear in 20 years when the grid is unstable today?

Unfortunately simply using renewables alone is t enough to decentralize them. Lately Texas has been having near energy shortages and part of the problem is a few unexpected central outages at fossil fuel plants, but another is the vast majority of wind turbines are built in one sunset of the state, so if wind is low there it can (and has) cause massive decreased in available energy, far larger than a couple traditional large scale nuclear plants when other parts of the state are under fire warnings because of high wind and dry conditions. Of course this isn’t an issue with the technology itself, but rather a problem with implementation. The issue isn’t with what was built, but the lack of building more across the state (or joining one of the two larger grids to further decentralize power production over a broader area)

Anyways, another issue with security is centralized power production make a good target for disruption. And if you have the side effect of causing a meltdown…

This is the exact same for renewables, worse, arguably, since wind farms have to be off shore to be efficient

From the charts I’ve seen lately, offshore is much more expensive than onshore per kwhr for wind by a large margin. If that’s the case, is offshore even valuable anymore?

however once its technology matures

Given this thread is about new nuclear, I’m not sure why you are making up beliefs about what someone else in the thread believes. Personally a fan of old nuclear plants since their biggest expense (financial and likely ecological) is making them, so keeping them running is good as long as we are relying on fossil fuels.

is it possible they’re running into some limits on how much they can generate efficiently that way?

Why just speculate on it while insinuation someone is wrong about something when you could look it up? From what I can gather, it looks like administration/licensing delays, court cases, and rules limiting how close they can be to residential buildings (apparently 10 times the height of the turbine) are the main contributors to the slowdown.

Also, solar is still growing more quickly and 2023 is having quicker growth in wind than last year (which was itself an increase from the previous year), so the trend being shown may already be outdated. Granted, inflation apparently are an issue now (not when the slowdown happened, but now as the rate of wind installation is increasing). And the rate of increase isn’t enough imo, but building new nuclear instead of using the same resources to build solar or wind at this point means relying more on fossil fuels.

What’s the difference?

Fair. If a grid was just powered by batteries, solar, wind, and existing nuclear plants, which would be the most effective to turn off when demand is too low?

It can provide a baseload though where solar can provide extra power during the heat for places where the summer and days are the power intensive part, rather than winter and nights. You still need a short-term stop gap as the sun sets but it’s still hot out, but even if that was just powered by NG it would be a huge step forward. Adding greener energy storage options to store extra power nuclear or wind could generate overnight would be better.

Btw, could a small percent of nuclear reactors be turned on/off seasonally, potentially transporting fuel between the north in the winter and the south in the summer?

Sure, but if costs scaled to reflect the limits of sequestration, people would be priced out of emitting.

If the cost was actually enough to store the CO2 they emit (and offset the other environmental damages from the sequestration), then it would be fine. But it would be so costly for some industries, that positive PR wouldn’t offset the cost.

I don’t think wwwbdd is agreeing with you. You’re suggesting keeping a huge temperature gap all day. I’m just turning on my AC when the temperature outside has already dropped, so I maintain a relatively constant gap. Using the AC only at night uses a lot less electricity (at the cost of it being warming until that point). If you keep it cool during the day, more heat gets in, which means more energy waste to cool it.

Closest thing I can find to a reputable source (not a random blog post, most of which say turning it off during the day saves power):

Jennifer Thorne Amann, MES, buildings program director for the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE). While it may seem like your unit has to work hard to cool a space down from 80 to 75 degrees, “air-conditioning systems run most efficiently when they’re running at full speed,” rather than running for shorter periods at a less

I know the same is true for car engines. They’re least efficient when warming up and running at low effort. They’re more efficient when working hard.

Hopefully we can get anti-science ideas like germ theory, atomic theory, etc out of schools soon too.

In most of the US, there’s no separate lights for cyclists.

Exactly. Which is why the light must have been red for the cars perpendicular to the cyclist if they light was yellow for the cyclist.

In any case, you’re missing that the cyclist did the equivalent of coming from an adjacent lane to cut off cars next to him. No car can anticipate that, from a cyclist or from another car.

Yes you can? How else would you drive without getting in a wreck most days? That’s happens to you at least on a weekly basis if you drive regularly here on the interstates. I’ve never hit them. Generally you can read when people want to get over if you pay attention. Cyclists are even easier to read since they’re not in a box with tinted windows. I’ve had a few times I’ve hit my breaks before one has even turned their head to avoid collisions (on my bike) because I could tell they were gonna suddenly turn. I would say without warning, but given I could tell they were, that wouldn’t be entirely accurate: they just gave no intentional signals and those not paying attention will easily miss the intent (unfortunately, the person right in front of me did collide with the person suddenly turning in front of them in one of those cases).

If you can’t tell most of the time, you aren’t paying attention.

What does puberty have to do with the topic? Should we wait til puberty to teach people that the flu or covid exists? It’s a topic connected to many deaths, so surely it’s a mature topic. Otoh, gender is a pretty basic topic parents force onto children, often before the child is even born. Why do we allow such inappropriate behavior towards literal children?