the thing is, we did in the last thread on the subject, i was not alone, and right now we have the choice between a stopgap that will destroy us in the next 40 years or a stopgap that maybe will render some part of the world inhabitable in the next 500 years.
problem with TP, i tried last time doing the same as you but he will not take into account any data going against his views, like any good american. he got in his mind that anything is better then nuclear so you will not be able to change him, and he will continue to go full trump and disseminate lies about it all over the place, it is why i did not even try to counter him on this post, the best way is to just ignore what he is saying at one point.
I don't like defending TP but it's not a matter of head in the sand like you claim.
You claim he was like a typical American and stuck in his ways on anything but nuclear when in reality he is/was open to hearing other ideas, just not the one you wanted.
You're not going to sway him on this by just spewing the same claims pro-nuclear activists have thrown around for the last 60 years, he grew up in nuclear's prime and heard all of it before. You better bring facts, links, and evidence and new ideas if you want it to be a viable solution and it needs to be an actual solution, not just another stop gap that just creates an even larger mess to deal with later.
the solution is not destruction, it never is, we can prevent further catastrophes by researching further but with the current mentality it is not going to happen, no company will invest in making anything more secure, just convert to coal, that is an order of magnitude more dangerous, because way lass fail-safes, and will just accelerate our energy crisis, and transform electric cars into coal powered cars.
I am saying to stop bashing nuclear's head in and try to propose alternatives, but it is so much easier to destroy than to build, isn't it?
that is my problem with the TP's and others whole stance, they wants to destroy and do not care about what to build instead, coal is just a faster death, that's it, and right now nuclear is not replaced by renewable, because most grids are not built to handle that but by gas and coal.
when i say TP goes full trump mode it is because on the last thread he just discredited all other sources than his as unreliable internet sources, in sum calling them fake news, while only presenting equally reliable internet and TV sources, it is what pissed me off and form this opinion...
and i am not pro-nuclear, i am just anti coal and gas, and although I'd love to live in a teletubies world where physics and economy does not matter, i am not, and physics dictate that energy takes time to propagate, so you need storage everywhere, and you need energy in to have out, so you need huge storage for the night, and energy storage is inefficient and expensive, and so economy says we have either coal, gas or nuclear... (try to calculate how much it would cost to power your home for a whole night in winter using batteries?, a quick back of the napkin estimation for my house would be 2835 USD in batteries alone, only for heat mind you and assuming cheapest batteries from this site
https://about.bnef.com/blog/battery-pack-prices-cited-below-100-kwh-for-the-first-time-in-2020-while-market-average-sits-at-137-kwh/ and those have a likely usable lifespan of about 5 years is treated correctly less if overheated or ran flat constantly...) the thing is we are not ready, and wont be for as long as peoples are more concentrated on destroying what exists than build something to replace it.
for example to remedy this problem there exists fe-fe batteries, they have rather low energy density but that could be a good thing as it makes them safer, and they are much cheaper and have a much lesser impact on the environment than lithium batteries. and best of all the research is public, only issue is finding the chemicals, as one of them seems impossible to source in europe (iron 3 sulfate if i recall correctly edit: chloride actually and maybe iron 2)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2468067219300318although there maybe a bit less money to be made with all the opensource-ness of it
and i just saw there is a new version of it
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2468067220300808Economy says: whatever is cheapest, so make something else cheaper than nuclear or coal and economy will follow, and so will society...