I was in Delhi then. I saw one of the photos in my memories the other days. Even now it felt otherworldly. All my other memories there had hazy skies. It was even more eerie because the Diwali before had aqi > 1,000 and even indoors was so hazy you couldn’t see the other side of the room clearly (well my flat wasn’t sealed great but still)
"Nuclear is not considered to be a renewable energy source."
Nuclear isn't renewable in the same way directly building your own artificial sun isn't renewable. It is orders of magnitude the better way to produce energy for a large, growing, and thriving society with multi-planetary aspirations.
The "renewables" aren't actually. They rely on a sun that has a bit over 4 billion years left, and they put a hard cap on our planetary energy consumption possible without negatively impacting the environment (image a planet covered in solar panels for an extreme).
Nuclear energy is in a different tech tier not far off from the sun itself. The order of magnitude of unleashing energy directly from atoms is the end game of energy production for humans. It allows for space travel to every planet in this solar system and beyond. It allows for thriving colonies on other planets and trade between them. It will allow for an explosive growth in innovation, trade, and economic activity. And, it will open up access to resources orders of magnitude larger than what is possible on Earth, with the asteroid belt alone -- all without harming the Earth's precious ecosystems.
Most importantly, it gives the next generations hope. Hope of a better future, of extreme progress, of something to feel pride in our species for. This is what creates life in human civilization.
We, as a species, can eventually offload ALL manufacturing from Earth to other, ecologically dead planets. Mars is a great candidate for this. And at 1/3 the gravity, activities like drilling into the ground and building large, shielded warehouses will take significantly less energy than Earth.
Energy should be the foundation of currency, not whatever our current currencies foundation is. Energy capacity and usage is the truer measure of a civilization's productivity. The sooner we all realize this, the smoother our planetary transition to the next phase will be.
If curious, there are more "foundational measures" -- computational capacity (cumulative of neurons and artificial compute), and attention (what the compute is targeting), but that's another thought.
Nuclear power is "generally accepted" as non-renewable amongst people opposed to nuclear power. Since uranium fuel is not going to run out on any reasonable time scale (and thorium will last even longer), it is "renewable" by any practical standard.
It makes no sense to worry about how "renewable" or "sustainable" some technology is if the time when it would start to matter is long after the technology has likely been replaced by something else anyway. That is, it makes no sense unless you're trying to score some political point...
Considering how you formulated your reply, I'm gonna guess you're the one with the political axe to grind. No need to project it on me, I don't have anything against nuclear.
"The International Energy Agency defines it as "energy derived from natural processes that are replenished at a faster rate than they are consumed"
You want to use another definition, that's fine by me. I'll stick to the generally accepted ones.
Hydrogen fused by the sun, which generates the energy both solar panels and wind power utilizes, are not renewable by this definition.
By the provided definition, solar and wind are non-renewable. They are just sun/fusion energy collectors, and the sun is not regenerating its fuel...
...it just has A LOT of it. Sort of like another fuel available to use, called Uranium and Thorium, and every other fissionable radioactive element in the entire universe.
By the time we run out of nuclear fuel, we will be making gravity-confined fusion reactors with shells made of solar panels, aka artificial suns for energy.
In the end it looks like the OP wanted to say "low carbon" and said "renewable", because everyone nowadays says "renewable" when they mean "low carbon". Would you be ok if he said "low carbon" in the first place?
If he used the correct term from the start I wouldn't have mentioned it.
The OP didn't know the difference, now he does. I think that's a good thing, no? If I used incorrect terminology to describe something, I would prefer it if this was pointed out to me. It makes it easier to communicate.
I actually thought Nuclear was renewable. But it doesn't matter if by defination it is not, it is much better than current Indian energy sources(mainly Coal)
I don't know what political machinations go on in the International Energy Agency, but one has to wonder why they thought it was useful to define a term "renewable" in this way, considering that such a term is of no use in formulating any rational energy policy. Could it be that it lets some companies get subsidies targeted at "renewable" energy, which sound good to the voters, without also providing such subsidies to nuclear power?
Awesome!! Let's shut down some coal plants and let people enjoy the blue skies. I hope this effort expands across the country.
India is actively building 9 reactors right now to come online between now and 2027.
Article says 16 though so there’s probably more coming.
Yeah, it was amazing how clean the skies got during Covid…
I was in Delhi then. I saw one of the photos in my memories the other days. Even now it felt otherworldly. All my other memories there had hazy skies. It was even more eerie because the Diwali before had aqi > 1,000 and even indoors was so hazy you couldn’t see the other side of the room clearly (well my flat wasn’t sealed great but still)
India also added 15GW of solar in first half of 2024. It's great to see India radically moving to renewable energy sources.
Nuclear is not considered to be a renewable energy source.
The "renewables" aren't actually. They rely on a sun that has a bit over 4 billion years left, and they put a hard cap on our planetary energy consumption possible without negatively impacting the environment (image a planet covered in solar panels for an extreme).
Nuclear energy is in a different tech tier not far off from the sun itself. The order of magnitude of unleashing energy directly from atoms is the end game of energy production for humans. It allows for space travel to every planet in this solar system and beyond. It allows for thriving colonies on other planets and trade between them. It will allow for an explosive growth in innovation, trade, and economic activity. And, it will open up access to resources orders of magnitude larger than what is possible on Earth, with the asteroid belt alone -- all without harming the Earth's precious ecosystems.
Most importantly, it gives the next generations hope. Hope of a better future, of extreme progress, of something to feel pride in our species for. This is what creates life in human civilization.
We, as a species, can eventually offload ALL manufacturing from Earth to other, ecologically dead planets. Mars is a great candidate for this. And at 1/3 the gravity, activities like drilling into the ground and building large, shielded warehouses will take significantly less energy than Earth.
Energy should be the foundation of currency, not whatever our current currencies foundation is. Energy capacity and usage is the truer measure of a civilization's productivity. The sooner we all realize this, the smoother our planetary transition to the next phase will be.
If curious, there are more "foundational measures" -- computational capacity (cumulative of neurons and artificial compute), and attention (what the compute is targeting), but that's another thought.
I'll stick to the generally accepted definitions, but you do you.
Nuclear power is "generally accepted" as non-renewable amongst people opposed to nuclear power. Since uranium fuel is not going to run out on any reasonable time scale (and thorium will last even longer), it is "renewable" by any practical standard.
It makes no sense to worry about how "renewable" or "sustainable" some technology is if the time when it would start to matter is long after the technology has likely been replaced by something else anyway. That is, it makes no sense unless you're trying to score some political point...
Considering how you formulated your reply, I'm gonna guess you're the one with the political axe to grind. No need to project it on me, I don't have anything against nuclear.
"The International Energy Agency defines it as "energy derived from natural processes that are replenished at a faster rate than they are consumed"
You want to use another definition, that's fine by me. I'll stick to the generally accepted ones.
Hydrogen fused by the sun, which generates the energy both solar panels and wind power utilizes, are not renewable by this definition.
By the provided definition, solar and wind are non-renewable. They are just sun/fusion energy collectors, and the sun is not regenerating its fuel...
...it just has A LOT of it. Sort of like another fuel available to use, called Uranium and Thorium, and every other fissionable radioactive element in the entire universe.
By the time we run out of nuclear fuel, we will be making gravity-confined fusion reactors with shells made of solar panels, aka artificial suns for energy.
In the end it looks like the OP wanted to say "low carbon" and said "renewable", because everyone nowadays says "renewable" when they mean "low carbon". Would you be ok if he said "low carbon" in the first place?
If he used the correct term from the start I wouldn't have mentioned it.
The OP didn't know the difference, now he does. I think that's a good thing, no? If I used incorrect terminology to describe something, I would prefer it if this was pointed out to me. It makes it easier to communicate.
I actually thought Nuclear was renewable. But it doesn't matter if by defination it is not, it is much better than current Indian energy sources(mainly Coal)
Indeed. All this quibbling about whether it is renewable or not really just comes off as making the perfect the enemy of the good.
I don't know what political machinations go on in the International Energy Agency, but one has to wonder why they thought it was useful to define a term "renewable" in this way, considering that such a term is of no use in formulating any rational energy policy. Could it be that it lets some companies get subsidies targeted at "renewable" energy, which sound good to the voters, without also providing such subsidies to nuclear power?
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Such wonderful news. Congratulations to India!