I mean, looks like solar beat out everythng on that graph but the wind turbines producing more than Diablo Nuclear sound better too...

I'll go see your link, maybe I can figure out what tyou are trying to say about the numbers and who's lying?

As stated in the OP, numbers don't lie.

It would be great if we had even more solar options here.

As for wind, aren't there European countries that get better return from their turbines? Or was it the ones offshore? ...maybe I recall seeing something about somwhere using almost 100% renewable, which would include solar too.

After the expenditure of trillions of dollars on solar and wind, they produced in 2021, 12 Exajoules of energy on a planet consuming 624 as of that time.


Source: 2022 IEA World Energy Outlook Table A 1a, page 435

People lie to each other, and they lie to themselves, but numbers don't lie.

...we definitely need to speed up construction of wind and solar sources as quickly as possible.

Wind and solar power are entirely dependent on fossil fuels for their economic viability and are thus not an existential threat to the fossil fuel industry. They will only prolong our use of fossil fuels and will not significantly delay the final reckonings of global warming.

Nuclear power is an existential threat to both the fossil fuel industry and the large scale solar and wind industries. It's the only energy resource capable of displacing fossil fuels entirely, which is something we must do.

If we build enough nuclear power plants we don't need fossil fuel power plants and we don't need large scale wind and solar development. This is why the natural gas industry in particular is allied with the solar and wind industries. The solar and wind industries know this too and are happy to act as greenwash for the fossil fuel industry that is destroying earth's natural environment as we know it. It's a mutually beneficial relationship to the detriment of the earth and future civilization.

Hybrid natural gas / solar / wind power grids will not save the world. The experiment has been done in places like California, Denmark, and Germany at gigawatt scales. The numbers are in and the results are disturbing.

If we had ten times the number of reactors, we would have 9 years of uranium left in economically viable proven reserves. Then what?

https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/uranium-resources/supply-of-uranium.aspx

Wind and Solar are infinite.

...radiation paranoid reactionaries to tear up for industrial parks to reflect their indifference to humanity and the environment in general.

Neither are the fossil fuels on which the wind and solar garbage depend. If one goes to the CAISO website in the OP, one can see how much gas California burned every day that the wind industry was useless. California has no intention of stopping the burning of natural gas and dumping of its waste directly into the planetary atmosphere, thus driving the disaster about which antinukes couldn't care less, climate change.

Nor have the antinukes who've been selling the solar and wind and wind scam for half a century bothered to notice that all their chanting, prayer, soothsaying and selective attention that climate change is accelerating because the world disastrously bought into their cult thinking, and because of these cults, the planet is in flames.

It's cute when reactionaries of the type who want humanity to return to the early 19th century try to do math.

A kg of plutonium contains about 80 trillion joules of recoverable energy plus some neutrinos. Our antinukes here, even though they can't show that the storage of used nuclear fuel in this country for over has killed as many people as will die in the next six hours from air pollution complain about that fuel. About 1% of it is plutonium, 4-5% is fission products, and the bulk is simply unreacted uranium. We have a valuable resource of around 85,000 tons of used nuclear fuel in this country, implying about 850 tons. This translates, the plutonium alone, to about 68EJ, enough to fuel all the world's nuclear reactors that now exist despite the fear and ignorance directed against it by reactionaries who caused climate change for over two years. If the breeding ration for thermal reactors is 0.9, at the end of that two year period. If the breeding ratio was .95, at the end of the period of two years, about 800 tons would be available.

This is, of course, the language of conservatives, who are slightly less noxious that the reactionaries who want to return humanity to 18th century dependence on the weather with the delusional statement that wind and solar do not require vast mining of limited resources and the willful destruction of wilderness.

In the fast neutron spectrum, now being revived all of the world by people who can actually do math, every kg of uranium can be converted to plutonium and it can be shown, given the the uranium cycle operating between the Earth's mantle and its oceans leads to a steady state mass of 4.5 billion tons of uranium in the oceans.

As for the World-Nuclear webpage, I'm quite sure that the antinuke math here is out of context entirely and consists simply of nonsense chanting.

This said, a complaint in my son's lab - he is studying nuclear engineering to save the world from the appalling idiots who set it in flames where their stupid wind and solar antinuke fantasies that soaked up trillions of dollars for no result - the nuclear industrial community remains conservative; they believe things should be done because "that's how they are done." The young people of course, will have the opportunity to change the world, and in my son's case, and in the cases of his colleagues, they will be prepared to do so. This sent of engineering scientists really don't give a rat's ass about antinuke "math." They're, um, educated.

I have argued, some years back with appeal to around 50 scientific publications available at that time, that Uranium is inexhaustible.

Is Uranium Exhaustible?

I have some updated commentary on this in preparation built around some recent readings on the topic. It can easily be shown that all of the uranium that has already been mined, when converted to plutonium, along with all of the radioactive thorium dumped by people mining lanthanides for wind junk, could easily cover all of humanities energy needs for centuries, centuries without vast land areas rendered into industrial parks for the wind and solar industries, without the fossil fuels on which wind and solar depend, without, in fact, any other source of energy.

Have a nice evening.

It is far less deadly than oil and coal. We need to keep this in mind as we seek to decarbonize- not perfect but…. Also- stop subsidizing oil and gas! If we did this, if I heard correctly, we could reduce emissions by 30% by 3030. (Please fact check me)

And yes, Diablo is built in the stupidest place…

I used to be an anti-nuclear activist who spent a lot of time on the roads between Humboldt Bay and San Onofre in the late 'seventies and early 'eighties.

Now I think natural gas is the greatest threat to human civilization, mostly because people think it's "better than coal" (it's not) and it supports their renewable energy fantasies.

There's enough cheap natural gas in the ground to destroy whatever is left of the natural world as we know it. It's best we leave it in the ground.

Is the way it’s been done in this country.

It has saved a vast number of lives, demonstrates the highest capacity utilization of any form of electrical energy in this country and is responsible for an extraordinarily low loss of life, if any loss of life.

The main problem with nuclear energy in this country is that there are people who are spectacularly disinterested in the grotesque problems of all other forms of energy, don't care about climate change, or the number of people killed by air pollution and who exercise extreme and ridiculous selective attention to oppose nuclear energy using criteria they apply to nothing else.

The lack of gratitude for what nuclear energy has accomplished in this country and around the world is reflective of the malign ignorance that has left the planet in flames.

Obviously, wind and solar are a better investment, not to even mention the longterm cost of radioactive waste storage:

The nuke crowd wants the US to run on imported energy. Sounds like a plan - not. Less than 16 percent of the Uranium used in the US is from the US.

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/nuclear/where-our-uranium-comes-from.php

reminder: solar and wind dont use fuel in normal operation. The just kick out current and voltage. There is no fuel needed, just devices.

Nukes constantly burn nasty toxic fuel and that comes at a major ongoing cost, not to mention the energy security aspect of importing almost 90 percent of the Uranium needed. Bad idea all the way around.

Remember kids - radiation is good for you!

...I never even thought about where the radioactive fuel for nuke plants comes from!

Shame we can't return the still radioactive waste to Russia.