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PaperclipPerfector  10d ago (text post)   2534 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 7, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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A financial analysis does not avoid any of the pitfalls of actually measuring energy requirements, and it introduces many inaccuracies of it's own.

You're right, though it is more useful for things like "Is this worth using in the world we actually live in as opposed to the one filled with spherical cows" - hence my preference.

Transport costs next to nothing in terms of energy. If you want to make the argument that it's because of mining or refining, be my guest, by provide numbers in terms of actual energy.

As far as I can tell from the literature I have available to me, nuclear has an EROI ranging from 5-15 when you ignore the studies that give a wildly inflated amount by leaving out key steps of the process (if you judge it solely by how much energy is in a given amount of uranium fuel pellets it blows oil out of the water - but that's not really helpful).

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