Open pit mining doesn’t require that much energy or labor, and they’re relatively safe for the same reason because being underground is much more dangerous.
Absolutely. If you broaden the scope to include R&D, mining, transport, manufacturing, service, and disposal, you can’t eliminate fossil fuels from everywhere. And if you widen the scope even further and look at the absolute numbers, it’s very clear: even if the share of renewables in total energy production grows, fossil fuel use still increases in absolute terms. Renewables do not replace fossil fuels; they add to the energy mix. There is no transition. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use them, because they are faaaar better than “pure” fossil fuels and better than nuclear. It just means we shouldn’t think of them as the solution. They are not green; green energy simply does not exist. The only solution is degrowth. And it will happen, with or without humanity’s consent.
Nuclear causes the fewest deaths out of all available energy sources, except solar, which is a tiny bit lower in that regard. Both wind and hydro have a higher death toll, with wind being just slightly above nuclear, and hydro being a lot higher (about 40x more deaths).
Usually I wouldn’t cite this source, but in this case their data matches other, more trustworthy ones, and is the first that shows up in search engines.
It also have a bit of due to regulations making sure people who work on nuclear are way more compentent, while other green energy infrastructure can be built by rando workers like your roads and such. Kind of similar to how air travels are the safest only because of strict protocols and requirements to work on it.
You actually don’t need any fossil fuel to make it work. You just have to electrify the mining machinery then you can power it with solar, wind, hydro and nuclear.
China is doing that. It does make sense as mining operations tend to also are far out so not needing to send fuel in would allow the less dense battery to pay itself off if the operation goes long enough.
Electrification of the operation also could benefit if we get better technique to process nuclear to convert some of them to energy on site
Oh yes of course, a mine only use fuel for their vehicles. You know a whole lot about mining, obviously.
Edit: and I never said that it was technically impossible. It is. But it’s impractical and far too costly in a lot of places, the vehicies need far too much down time so you need more vehicles, the surplus of electricity needed would be a problem in a lot of places, and it would still need fuel for a lot of adjacent needs. And I didn’t even took into account the other destructive “externalities” to mining not strictly related to air pollution, like the destruction of ecosystems, that we still don’t know how to ecologically treat the electric vehicles after they stopped working, or that it would mean more mining to find the ressources to electrify mining… it’s not green. Not at all. An electrified mine is better than an other, but all mines are catastrophes.
And ironically, electrification is better suited for underground mines. You know which mines are mostly underground? Coal mines. Others are mainly surface mines, and electrification is harder for surface mines.
Yeah nobody ever died here (an uranium mine) and you absolutely don’t need any fossil fuel to make it works.
Nuclear energy is better than fossils, but it’s far from green.
Nuclear is very green.
Source: Watching too many Simpsons episodes in my misspent youth
Open pit mining doesn’t require that much energy or labor, and they’re relatively safe for the same reason because being underground is much more dangerous.
Still more risky than constructing a windmill, which was what OP’s post was about.
Are the fossil fuels used to create wind and solar power are also unavoidable?
Absolutely. If you broaden the scope to include R&D, mining, transport, manufacturing, service, and disposal, you can’t eliminate fossil fuels from everywhere. And if you widen the scope even further and look at the absolute numbers, it’s very clear: even if the share of renewables in total energy production grows, fossil fuel use still increases in absolute terms. Renewables do not replace fossil fuels; they add to the energy mix. There is no transition. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use them, because they are faaaar better than “pure” fossil fuels and better than nuclear. It just means we shouldn’t think of them as the solution. They are not green; green energy simply does not exist. The only solution is degrowth. And it will happen, with or without humanity’s consent.
Nuclear causes the fewest deaths out of all available energy sources, except solar, which is a tiny bit lower in that regard. Both wind and hydro have a higher death toll, with wind being just slightly above nuclear, and hydro being a lot higher (about 40x more deaths).
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh
Usually I wouldn’t cite this source, but in this case their data matches other, more trustworthy ones, and is the first that shows up in search engines.
It also have a bit of due to regulations making sure people who work on nuclear are way more compentent, while other green energy infrastructure can be built by rando workers like your roads and such. Kind of similar to how air travels are the safest only because of strict protocols and requirements to work on it.
This is probably true when it comes to wind, but deaths from hydro is all about dams breaking.
Almost all deaths from both nuclear and hydro are caused by major accidents like Chernobyl or the Banqiao Dam.
Which makes you think, considering coal power plants still cause infinitely more deaths - and that’s just standard operation.
Exactly. Also the deaths from coal are not contained to a single spot.
Just the radioactive damage from coal under normal operation is worse than the radioactive damage from nuclear disasters.
Those deaths are counted in my 5 k
You actually don’t need any fossil fuel to make it work. You just have to electrify the mining machinery then you can power it with solar, wind, hydro and nuclear.
“You just have”… that wishful-thinking and technosolutionism.
China is doing that. It does make sense as mining operations tend to also are far out so not needing to send fuel in would allow the less dense battery to pay itself off if the operation goes long enough.
Electrification of the operation also could benefit if we get better technique to process nuclear to convert some of them to energy on site
We literally have them in use already but ok… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH8xyFzSMc0 as Ev’s continue to replace autos they become cheaper than diesel.
you should direct that to the 5 people who have said grid scale batteries in this thread
Oh yes of course, a mine only use fuel for their vehicles. You know a whole lot about mining, obviously.
Edit: and I never said that it was technically impossible. It is. But it’s impractical and far too costly in a lot of places, the vehicies need far too much down time so you need more vehicles, the surplus of electricity needed would be a problem in a lot of places, and it would still need fuel for a lot of adjacent needs. And I didn’t even took into account the other destructive “externalities” to mining not strictly related to air pollution, like the destruction of ecosystems, that we still don’t know how to ecologically treat the electric vehicles after they stopped working, or that it would mean more mining to find the ressources to electrify mining… it’s not green. Not at all. An electrified mine is better than an other, but all mines are catastrophes.
And ironically, electrification is better suited for underground mines. You know which mines are mostly underground? Coal mines. Others are mainly surface mines, and electrification is harder for surface mines.