I think people like nuclear because, over the last half century, CO2 emissions per capita have been drastically lower in the places nuclear has a larger energy share, like France.
ZeroGravitas 5 hours ago [-]
When it began to dawn on them that their political "side" was intentionally ignoring climate change to boost fossil fuel profiteers they fell back to mocking hippies and silly women environmentalist for supporting feel good renewables instead of manly nuclear.
It made them feel much better, so now they need to desperately avoid learning anything about either renewables or nuclear power because their ego will collapse if confronted with reality.
toomuchtodo 4 hours ago [-]
Their side will never learn, as it isn't an education issue, but an ideology issue. Anti renewables is deeply ingrained in their identity and belief system. We just need to keep powering through the energy transition while ~2M voters 55+ age out every year. You're not going to logic and reason someone out of ideology [1] [2]. Same reason 100k churches are going to close over the next 5-10 years [3]. The ideology ages out, because it is rigid and in many aspects, unwavering versus being able to change.
Not many coal generators (~182GW) [4] and mines [5] in the US left to go. Keep going. Fossil gas gets pushed out next.
(If the US replaced all of the ag land it uses for biofuels, about the size of Oregon, with solar PV, it would produce more power than the entire country consumes while being wildly more efficient)
("Progress occurs one funeral at a time." -- Max Planck)
pstuart 17 hours ago [-]
Geothermal needs to enter the chat as well.
I'm not anti-nuclear (if it's "done right"), but the economics of it are not very competitive. I think it's a technology we should not abandon (I'd love to see SMRs find a way to be viable and secure).
exabrial 16 hours ago [-]
I would love the idea geothermal, I'm just not aware of a lot of places in the US that can take advantage of it :/
~182GW of coal generation capacity remains to be retired, as of this comment, per EIA's Form EIA-860 generator dataset. The DOE was illegally mandating must run for the below coal generators, which should now be able to close due to a recent judicial ruling.
J.H. Campbell Units 1, 2 and 3 in Michigan (1,331 MW)
Transalta Centralia Unit 2 in Washington (670 MW)
R.M. Schahfer Units 17 and 18 in Indiana (722 MW)
F.B. Culley Unit 2 in Indiana (90 MW)
Craig Unit 1 in Colorado (427 MW)
mc32 18 hours ago [-]
The increased demand in coal was, uhum, fueled primarily by data center energy demands. Along with coal, there was also an uptick in solar installations to meet DC energy needs. Given solar is cheaper, it stands to reason more solar will be built to meet DC energy demand.
pstuart 17 hours ago [-]
The increased use of coal was, uhum, dictated by the Trump administration. They are rabidly anti-renewals (too woke), and all in on fossil fuels.
And loosening pollution rules "because AI needs more power" should lead to torches and pitchforks.
tialaramex 8 hours ago [-]
Coal (and gas) has "owners" and so that means more wealthy people to give Trump gold trinkets and praise. Trump can turn $1M of tax into $500k wealth for a Coal mine owner, that owner can give Trump $100k "donation" and praise The Donald as the greatest President in history. No downside. Well, not for Donald.
I think the US is going to find itself with a bunch of stranded fossil fuel infrastructure (expensive but now worthless) and hyperinflation. Countries that ten years ago would see the US as an old ally which has fallen on hard times will instead see a traitor getting what was coming and turn a blind eye.
AuthAuth 17 hours ago [-]
a drop in the bucket
readthenotes1 16 hours ago [-]
They gave numbers for the increase in coal, but not the increase in CO2. It's hard to know what the impact is
AuthAuth 12 hours ago [-]
The impact is a drop in the bucket emissions wise.
karmakurtisaani 7 hours ago [-]
Basically almost any emission is a "drop in the bucket", and yet the bucket is somehow full.
tialaramex 5 minutes ago [-]
The usual thing is to point at China because China is a huge place with a huge population and so as it industrialized it uses a lot of power and emits lots of CO2.
This made plenty of sense ten years ago, when for a smaller country you could compare their entire CO2 footprint to China's annual growth and ask why bother. But increasingly while China is still huge these comparisons look worse for even medium-sized countries unless they're actually on a sensible path. China is growing more slowly and importantly mostly by using more renewables and electrifying, so the comparison looks more uncomfortable.
from https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-countries-that-consume-... top 10 coal burning nations:
Consumption in exajoules ranked by 2025 use
This is all we want.
Not sure where this fixation on new nuclear comes from?
Ignoring the enormous cost, and long build times, plus the fact that when it gets hot they have to be turned off like last Summer.
Yeah, they have their place, but renewables are the real hero here.
I think people like nuclear because, over the last half century, CO2 emissions per capita have been drastically lower in the places nuclear has a larger energy share, like France.
It made them feel much better, so now they need to desperately avoid learning anything about either renewables or nuclear power because their ego will collapse if confronted with reality.
Not many coal generators (~182GW) [4] and mines [5] in the US left to go. Keep going. Fossil gas gets pushed out next.
(If the US replaced all of the ag land it uses for biofuels, about the size of Oregon, with solar PV, it would produce more power than the entire country consumes while being wildly more efficient)
[1] https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy/idaho-coun...
[2] https://www.datawrapper.de/_/vecRk/ ("755 counties have ordinances against renewables, and 61% of those counties are rural.")
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49644302 (citations)
[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49704064 (citations)
[5] https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=03b7a02fb9c24967918...
("Progress occurs one funeral at a time." -- Max Planck)
I'm not anti-nuclear (if it's "done right"), but the economics of it are not very competitive. I think it's a technology we should not abandon (I'd love to see SMRs find a way to be viable and secure).
Iceland on the other hand....
Map: https://www.nlr.gov/docs/libraries/gis/high-res-images/geoth...
There's plenty of geothermal in the US to be tapped into, we just need to invest more in it. It then becomes the perfect baseload utility.
> US scraps limits on emissions from coal and gas power plants
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cmly433ke05vo
https://openenergyhub.ornl.gov/explore/dataset/eia-860-data/...
U.S. coal-fired generating capacity retired in 2025 was the least in 15 years - https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67427 - April 13th, 2026
Planned retirements of U.S. coal-fired electric-generating capacity to increase in 2025 - https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=64604 - February 25, 2025
~182GW of coal generation capacity remains to be retired, as of this comment, per EIA's Form EIA-860 generator dataset. The DOE was illegally mandating must run for the below coal generators, which should now be able to close due to a recent judicial ruling.
Michigan coal plant [J.H. Campbell] set to close was illegally kept open - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49666023 - September 2026
And loosening pollution rules "because AI needs more power" should lead to torches and pitchforks.
I think the US is going to find itself with a bunch of stranded fossil fuel infrastructure (expensive but now worthless) and hyperinflation. Countries that ten years ago would see the US as an old ally which has fallen on hard times will instead see a traitor getting what was coming and turn a blind eye.
This made plenty of sense ten years ago, when for a smaller country you could compare their entire CO2 footprint to China's annual growth and ask why bother. But increasingly while China is still huge these comparisons look worse for even medium-sized countries unless they're actually on a sensible path. China is growing more slowly and importantly mostly by using more renewables and electrifying, so the comparison looks more uncomfortable.