Yeah, it sounds perfect on paper. When you start realizing the long term costs and effects of hydro, it's decidedly less than perfect.

The unexpected GHG releases from the reservoirs is probably it's Achilles heel for being a climate change solution.

Not enough and can't scale. Hydro has *very* limited install locations. Where it's feasible, it's mostly already been done.

We have ~100,000 MW of hydro currently. The current grid is 10x that. If you know where we can deploy 1000% more hydro, do tell.

oh and they release more GHG than thought

And of course the Southwest dams are almost to the point of shutting off due to lack of, wait for it, water.

'right now'. All of those articles are 'can' 'could' 'will', and decidedly not 'right now'.

I'll add in another issue renewables absolutely require and that's transmission. Something that again, we don't have 'right now'.

Hand waving away the building of such infrastructure, which will take easily over a decade as an argument against "Nuclear will need to be in place for a couple decades" is an amazing way to admit you're wrong about "It exists 'right now'".

The amount of wind and solar isn't the issue. Could easily cover gross usage with enough installation. It can't time shift enough to be grid scale viable yet. Storage is the remaining leg of the stool needed for full on renewable base load.

I think wind has hit 100% coverage in the UK at points of some days in the last few years. Itself a big achievement, but that's not base load ability by a long stretch

Everything has CO2 emissions for infrastructure build. The main problem is CO2 release per kwh like from fossil fuels.

Doesn't make nuclear a 'good' option, but it is a currently deployed method of base load power without that ongoing CO2 release for usage. We don't have anything else for that 'right now'.

for now. in 20 years? not likely.

Storage is growing at significant rates. With enough storage and solar/wind can more than cover the entire globes energy usage in gross volume. Edge case solutions will be needed in a few places.

Batteries made out of iron or salt.
Heat batteries that store energy for literally *months* that are made of garbage quality sand.
Flow batteries in the GW scale.

Oh and those EV batteries themselves will dwarf the batteries needed for the grid.

Existing nuclear is definitely needed right now for CO2 reasons. The over/under is whether there's enough already installed to get to the renewable coverage capability.

Yeah, the private company angle is the issue. What we need is for 'possession' of citizen data to be prohibited and expressly stipulated the exemptions when it may be possessed. Any prohibition on surveillance is useless when they can simply buy the data and or compel it's production.

Separately, regs on private companies activities are needed as well, but harder. Drawing a line between, it's legal to take your picture in public and taking a picture of you in public every 30 seconds thus providing a full surveillance scope, needs to be figured out.

the issue is the tendrils in the battery. they form and you can't stop them, if they short circuit, you get a bonfire.

Whether just sitting parked or driving.

Full gas tanks generally don't generally combust without external inputs.

Fortunately newer battery compositions don't have the problem.

1/2 of teslas already use a different form of battery, Lithium Iron Phosphate that doesn't have the spontaneous combustion problem.

Battery composition is changing rapidly.

given humanities track record, it's a valid concern. But it exists now and not dealing with it is creating 2 cans, one of which is kicked down the road.

Unless you're suggesting culling a few billion people...we have this problem now and need to solve it.

As with every industrial process, the waste is considered useless and or unimportant until it isn't.

But industry isn't likely to do anything that costs them extra so we need regulation to force such changes far ahead of their short term bottom line.

The point is that the methane does 2 things. It is 100x worse for 2 decades....and then it becomes CO2 and exists for centuries.

So burning it now *is* the better choice of 2 terrible choices. But *only* reclaimed methane, not nat gas from the ground ;-)

I think his confusion is your combination of the two things in this statement "capture the methane and run the exhaust through a scrubber (even a pool of water that is later evaporated)"

Capturing methane and running it through water isn't a solution. I think you meant "burn the trash or capture the methane (and burn that)...."

You need to learn basic economics and logic. If you own the infrastructure, it's *expensive* to lay an entire duplicate network. That's a barrier to entry that you wield against competitors. The existing network was built based on full constituent/monopoly access, the franchise agreement. A competitor doesn't have that and have to build a equivalent network on the hope of some percentage of the market? You've gone bankrupt I'm guessing

Lol, what incentives does a company with a captive market have to enable competitors?