𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚒𝚛𝚖𝚊𝚗 𝙼𝚎𝚘𝚠

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 16th, 2023

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  • The energy grid of tomorrow is is in no need of a baseline supply.

    The baseline is often referred to as baseline supply, but in reality it’s baseline demand that always needs to be met. A steady supply made most sense in the past, but that’s not the case anymore thanks to renewables. Several countries already produce so much power at peak hours, the supply from renewables exceeds the total demand significantly (leading to negative energy prices).

    Because renewables are the cheapest source of power by some distance, this means that it’s economically the best option to switch all other power generation off. Meaning that to ensure the baseline supply is met, you need a flexible source of power, one that quickly scales up and down without pricing itself out of the market doing so.

    The renewable answer to this is batteries. The fossil fuel answer is natural gas reactors. Both options are cheaper than nuclear.

    Nuclear takes too long to build and there’s just no economic case for it. It’s considerably better to invest in cheaper options with a much faster return on decarbonization.







  • Afaik there’s no evidence that al-Sharaa ordered those attacks on Alawites.

    One thing to understand is that Syria is in an extremely unstable situation at the moment. Al-Sharaa is leader of an already fragile group of militants/terrorists that’s barely held together. He can’t afford war with Israel, because the resulting counter-attack might shatter his government. He’s not fully in control either, leading to these horrible attacks on minorities by certain wings of the armed forces. Militants he has less control over still seek revenge against the Alawites for their support of Assad.

    He basically needs to stabilize the country, centralize control and demonstrate that Syria will rapidly improve under his rule. That is no easy task, and it’s imo not surprising that the civil war is not over yet in certain parts of the country.

    IIRC the EU put as precondition of sanction relief that he gets the militants under control and stops the attacks on minorities. I don’t know for certain that he will or even wants to (he might be a moderate amongst militant Islamists but that’s still fairly extreme), but I also don’t have conclusive evidence that he won’t.



  • The reason for that is that surgeons are rated based on their success percentages meaning they’ll recommend against risky surgeries.

    The upside of this is that surgeons aren’t operating willy-nilly on people and will make a proper risk assessment. The downside is that overweight people have an inherently higher risk of complications from surgery, so some surgeons will pass.

    It’s not because they think these people don’t need it, it’s because they think it’s too risky. They’re usually not wrong about that, you just need to find a surgeon willing to take the risk or, if possible, reduce the risk by losing weight.




  • I know that nuclear and hydro can constantly cover it, the point is that when it’s very sunny out countries with good solar adoption will already 100% cover it (if not more). The nuclear power at those times has to compete with cheaper solar power, which it loses on price. And because the grid can’t handle more supply than demand, it requires shutting something off. The cheapest power is solar so you’d prefer to keep that on for economic reasons, but since nuclear is bad at scaling up and down you have to pick the more expensive option. This increases energy prices beyond what is really necessary.

    This also becomes even less tenable as battery adoption increases.



  • Except people will just purchase their own solar, because it’s cheaper than getting nuclear power from a battery. They won’t wait for demand to catch up, they’ll make sure their own demand is fulfilled so they won’t have to purchase power anymore.

    It’s a simple economic rule, if there’s a cheaper option people wi shift towards it. You can’t force people to purchase your power. You can’t stop it unless you ban buying solar, which won’t be received well.

    Nuclear fills a rapidly shrinking niche in the power mix of tomorrow, and it’s economics that’s squeezing it out. There’s no point in fighting that unless you want to pay more for power than is necessary (which nobody does).





  • The problem with using nuclear as baseload is that people have the wrong idea of what is required from a baseload power source.

    A baseload power source’s most important quality isn’t constant output, it’s rapidly adaptable output.

    When it comes to cost, nothing beats solar. It’s cheap, it’s individually owned and especially with a battery the self-sufficiency basically means not paying for power anymore. So, people will adopt solar at greater numbers as the cost of solar panels is still dropping.

    Solar and wind at peak times in several countries already exceed the demand. Nuclear, which is more expensive to run, now has a problem, because nobody wants to buy that energy. They’d rather get the cheaper abundant renewable power.

    So, the nuclear reactor has to turn off or at least scale to a minimal power output during peak renewable hours. This historically is something nuclear reactors are just not good at. But even worse, it’s a terrible economic prospect: nuclear is barely profitable as-is, having to turn it off for half the day kills the economic viability completely. Ergo, government subsidies are required to keep it operational.

    Flexibility is king in the power network of the future. That means batteries or natural gas plants at the moment. Nuclear can be useful for nations without those and with a lagging renewable adoption, but it will be more expensive in the long run. It will also become more important to do heavy industrial tasks during peak renewable hours, so that the demand better matches the output.