• FooBarrington@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    We’ve heard this for years, yet countries that have denuclearized have not been able to go full renewables, they have become more dependent on fossil fuels.

    Which countries are you referring to? Germany for example denuclearized and replaced them with renewables, they didn’t become more dependent on fossil fuels (even if people like to say that).

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#/media/File:Germany_electricity_production.svg

    • maevyn@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 hour ago

      Japan for one, whose coal and natural gas consumption has gone up significantly: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Japan

      Germany has stayed fairly steady, fair enough. Imagine if they had just focused on replacing fossil fuels instead of nuclear, they would be nearly carbon free by now.

      I have no problem with the majority of funding going to renewables and making progress right now, but I also don’t see why we can’t break ground on new 4th generation nukes and continue investment in nuclear research at the same time. We can hedge our bets, make progress on both. If the 100% renewables + storage plan pans out, cool, we stop the nukes. If they don’t, then cool, we have our carbon free baseload production and we aren’t a decade behind on it when we need it.