• Shiggles@sh.itjust.works
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      16 hours 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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        13 hours 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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          8 hours 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!

    • neidu3@sh.itjust.works
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      20 hours ago

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

      • Robust Mirror@aussie.zone
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        14 hours 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
      • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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        17 hours 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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          15 hours 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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            13 hours ago

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

      • jagungal@lemmy.world
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        17 hours ago

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