antler

As the blog post discusses, there are multiple ways to measure efficiency; energy density is one, and possibly the most important advantage of hydrocarbons. The first figure in the blog post describes another: quantity of mineral extraction per energy production. From that metric, renewables are much more efficient.

Personally, I’m not bothered by the blog post. The advantages of fossil fuels are well known - that’s why they continue to be widely used. Their main disadvantage, emissions, are also we’ll publicized. The perspective of the blog post is that there are other, less discussed metrics under which renewables have an advantage.

If Books Could Kill podcast did an episode, if you’re interested:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2040953/episodes/16872977

This might have something to do with it:

The first country to have a reactor could “declare a keep-out zone which would significantly inhibit the United States,” the directive states, a sign of the agency’s concern about a joint project China and Russia have launched.

Unexpectedly, it doesn’t seem like this is a primarily technical decision.

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