lot of those expense are unnecessary self inflicted burocracy

What do you mean?

Hinkley Point C in the UK is way over budget and time at an estimated cost of £49B and an estimated build time of 13 years. It’s still not operational, so the final numbers may be a lot higher still.

Flamanville 3 in France was also way over budget and time, at somewhere between €13B and €24B (latter includes financing costs) and a build time of 17 years. Yes, both were built during COVID, so ideally things would go a little smoother just due to a lack of a pandemic.

But - those are 2 different countries, both taking ages and ridiculous amounts of money to build a single nuclear power plant. What exactly is self-inflicted in these 2 instances?

Germany is drowning in requests for large commercial batteries to be built and/or connected to the grid (source, e.g.: https://www.smard.de/page/home/topic-article/444/221208/entwicklung-bei-uenb-und-vnb). We are talking about a give or take 10% approval rate.

I’d speculate the reasons are a mix of backward-thinking or when it comes to Katharina Reiche, possibly corrupt, politicians and a grid that isn’t prepared to handle this kind of load.

Either way, these fluctuations in renewables are extremely lucrative to investors. Store power when the sun shines or the winds are strong, release it in the night hours and pocket the difference.

So, what is actually in the way of renewables apart from a good and controllable grid and some conservative politicians? I don’t think there’s much.

As for nuclear, even if you leave the risks of meltdown out of it, the upfront and running costs do not allow it to be competitive.

And yes, French power is cheaper, but take a look at the taxes and fees added to power in Germany. The actual power generation makes up only 41.3% of its household price.

This is a controversial topic but nuclear is absolutely not the way forward.

Compared to renewables, nuclear is expensive, will get even more expensive due to a very limited supply of pure uranium, has issues with safe long-term storage of radioactive byproducts and the potential to melt down comes with terrible consequences to the environment. Yes, it produces the same power day and night.

But - we live in the 21st century. We have microchips, the Internet and plenty of ways to collect and store energy. No, it’s not as easy as a power plant that goes brrrrr 24/7, but building up a smart power grid is absolutely possible with our current tech.

With rooftop and balcony solar, we have finally found a way for people to decentrally generate (or even store) their own or their neighbors’ energy.

Yet, nuclear fission to heat up water to spin a turbine is still being flaunted as the future by some people. Makes no sense to me.

Thank you. And I sympathize, 40min is rough.

We’ve been using a catmate feeder for the last 2 nights and it seems to have helped a little.

But some of the morning ruccus may just be literal screams for attention 😏

I posted this using the android app “blorp” and I guess that does some compression?

Yes, he is a grumpy boy. Unless he’s asleep, then he becomes a seal 😅

I like this idea. Will try dry food in the morning. He doesn’t get nearly as excited about dry food 😁

A full day’s meal in one go? He’s really into food but I’d be afraid he’d vomit if he ate that much 😄

This is a bit tricky, unfortunately. The gray one is much more into dry food and we’ve already had to cut back on food a little bit because he has been gaining weight. I fear that if food is always available, the gray one would gain weight very quickly.

Did you feed him just dry food? I’d be concerned about wet food going bad, especially in summer.