[evelynsalt]

Peak energy deserves more discussion. The world uses 150 petawatt-hours which will be 300 petawatt-hours in 45 years.

No matter what we do, what energy source we use, we cannot meet these exorbitant demands for energy.

e.g. you'd have to build 1031 nuclear reactors per year for 45 years starting today to generate 300 petawatt-hours.

[snapplebobapple]

People that think this fail to comprehend how utterly restricted the nuclear industry has been by bad regulation. We are not capturing any of the gains from scale or mass production in nuclear, we are not doing the work beyond the basic science to exploit alternate nuclear chemistries to expand usable fuel sources (there is enough fission energy in just the easily minable thorium to last thousands of years for example) and efficiently recycle partially spent fuel to maximize energy output and minimize actual nuclear waste. Even with the current nonsense in place doing what you describe is doable. Getting the regulators to use more reasonable regulation and doing the engineering to expand fuel capability and hitting 300 petawatt-hours will be very, very easy.

[sofixa]

> No matter what we do, what energy source we use, we cannot meet these exorbitant demands for energy

Not only can we probably do meet them (nuclear, renewables), but we have to. Energy demands today are what they are with significant amounts of the world's population living in poverty and/or pretty poor conditions compared to what developed countries are used to. It's extremely unfair to deny those people the opportunities, not to mention that few in the developed countries would want to scale back and limit their lifestyle to the extent that it would matter. That doesn't mean no such avenues needs to be explored (e.g. LEDs, optimising transit networks, etc.) but that shouldn't be the main focus.

[cityofdelusion]

The worlds energy supply has doubled in the past 50 years. Another doubling seems easy, especially with wind/solar prices plummeting every year.

[sofixa]

> especially with wind/solar prices plummeting every year.

Past performance isn't indicative of future gains. At some moment prices will plateau, or even rebound (e.g. the same was said for batteries, and now prices are up due to too much demand and raw material shortages).

Not to mention that at some point you will run out of suitable locations either due to actual space limitations or just lack of desire from people to have wind turbines nearby or solar panels taking up valuable land. (Of course offshore wind and rooftop solar kind of mitigate this).

You can't really beat the energy density of nuclear reactors per land taken, so they shouldn't be discarded.

[cplusplusfellow]

There is a limit to my faith that the plummeting of these prices will continue without fossil fuel use to produce the equipment. We are also in an inflationary period where raw materials may see outsized gains.

Build the nuclear plants.