• neidu3@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      Yes. Water + spicy rocks. Everything else is solar power, which is also nuclear power, but with the spiciness in the sky instead.

      • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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        3 months ago

        Fun fact. Coal plants release more radioactive materials than nuclear plants.]

        Except the ones that blew up. Those ones were extra spicy.

        • chaogomu@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Except, even then, an average coal plant will release more radioactive material over its lifetime than Fukushima did.

          It’s just Chernobyl that you have to top. And even then there are coal plants that come close.

          Now, it’s not apples to apples. Coal plants release uranium and thorium. Not ceasium and strontium.

          But yeah, never go swimming in a coal plant ash pit. For more than the obvious reasons.

          • anomnom@sh.itjust.works
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            3 months ago

            How many average coal plants per Chernobyl though. I suspect that number is surprising lower than the total number of coal plants.

      • Robust Mirror@aussie.zone
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        3 months ago
        • Solar panels: Direct sky-spiciness to electricity conversion
        • Wind: Sky-spiciness made the air move
        • Hydroelectric: Sky-spiciness lifted the water up, gravity brings it down
        • Fossil fuels: Really old stored sky-spiciness from ancient plants
      • jagungal@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        I mean, radioactive isotopes are formed in supernovae, so it’s really just solar power from a different sun, right?

          • Zink@programming.dev
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            3 months ago

            All power is nuclear power when you keep digging, whether rocks come into play or not!

        • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          It’s all gravity in the end. Or probably middle but I don’t know why gravity, so that’s as far as I can reduce it.

          Everything we see around us is just hydrogen trying to get closer to the middle of the biggest hydrogen party it can find in the general vicinity. And we were all once part of at least one massive party that eventually got a bit out of hand when we all tried to get so close together we bounced off of a neutron star before it collapsed into a black hole.

    • Shiggles@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      Most power generation is just steam spinning turbines. Solar’s just weird. Wind cuts out the steam loop.

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Reflective solar is normal at least. But photovoltaics are weird. Even weirder is that they’re LEDs backwards, and the fact that transistors just are like that is why they’re encased in black plastic

        • reinei@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Unless you WANT your transistor to be this way and use it so you put an actual led inside the plastic as well to mess with (i.e. turn on and off) the transistor!

          Also I would argue that wind could also be considered ‘steam’ turning a turbine. It’s just vapour pressure ‘steam’ with a LOT of other pollutants which somehow increase the efficiency!

  • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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    3 months ago

    Reminds me of the meme using the Donnie Darko psychologist template.

    Donnie: I made a new form of power generation.

    Psychologist: New or steam?

    Donnie: Steam…

    • Cyrus Draegur@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      Steam implies water! What if we used some OTHER phase-change working fluid? :D

      ||(No idea what, though. my question is implied with a playful tone and is at least 50% facetious; any actual discussion that might result would be little more than a pleasant coincidence)||

      • MehBlah@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        You want to see weird water look up super critical boilers. That stuff was nasty. A regular steam leak will set things on fire. That stuff would explode a broom. We looked for the leaks with straw brooms. You can’t see steam in normal conditions. Only its effects.

        • Benjaben@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Blech, I’ve heard stories in my industrial automation days of people being clipped by invisible high pressure steam leaks. No frickin thank you, regular stovetop steam jacks me up frequently enough.

          • xthexder@l.sw0.com
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            3 months ago

            Well, now this is on my list of invisible things that scare me:

            • Radiation
            • Methanol fires
            • Supercritical steam jets
            • Benjaben@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              Not quite invisible but you could also splash and wade into a pool of strong acid thinking it was water, during what first seemed like a somewhat routine FUBAR maintenance situation…filling your boots etc.

              • xthexder@l.sw0.com
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                3 months ago

                Definitely dangerous, but I’m less scared of that one. I’ve got detectors for that, and that’s more of a “go peacefully in your sleep” kind of danger.

            • MehBlah@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              The regular ones will kill you as well. Boiling water on a stove is nothing compared to steam under pressure.

      • chaogomu@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Molten salt?

        We can then use compressed CO2 in the place of steam to drive the turbine.

    • I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      The only truly new method of power generation we’ve made in the last 100 years has been photovoltaic cells. Everything else is just finding new ways to make turbines spin.