Why Nuclear Must Be Part Of The Energy Solution (2018)

I am in no way or shape against nuclear power per se. I know its technology, I have studied the engineering behind it etc. Still, any argument against nuclear is immediately categorized as "fearmongering" no matter how much it isn't based on the technology itself. Facts and an interest in truly bringing your country forward don't matter. Money and lobbyism is what rules the discussions.

No matter how many subversive nuclear shills keep posting on reddit and other forums. Reddit drowns in fake marketing/PR accounts, you can buy them by the thousands. In the past, I have seen templates for responses written in the weekly pro-nuclear threads. But whatever - just one simple statement that remains true in 2021 is this:

Nuclear fission power is entirely uneconomical and already replaced by safer, better alternatives.

And on top of the insane cost - plants will never be profitable without lifelong government subsidies - the insane length of construction and planning to build new modern generation plants is completely out of what's reasonable because we have to tackle climate change NOW. You're looking at $20bn and 10-15 years of construction at least.

Finland is currently struggling to finish their new reactor and it costs them dearly. Just invest in renewables and be done with it far sooner at much lower cost and factor 1000 less problems (aside from lobbyism and shilling). Just look at this mess of cost and lost time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Finland#New_c... All that jazz for a measly 1600 MW.

Less than 1500 off-shore wind power turbines deliver a whooping 7.5 Gigawatt for Germany [1]. If you can build 300 wind turbines in 20 years at a fraction of the cost of a single nuclear plant you will have the same output and no possible nuclear incidents or nuclear waste to take care of. Mix it with other renewables and you get the power consistency you need. Nuclear in 2021 is so incredibly unreasonable it bothers me to no end.

In Germany, we still have no reasonable way to dispose of 1900 CASTOR containers containing dangerous plutonium with a half-life of 24,000 fucking years. The containers are rated for 40 year protection btw.

We have a super majority that rejects nuclear power. Do we struggle sometimes to make the shift away from fossil fuels AND nuclear at the same time? Yes. Do we have to buy power from France or other neighbors in times of high demand? Has happened before. But we are making progress and are able to sustain a large portion of our economy on renewables TODAY.

If we had this discussion in 1990, my opinion would have been different. But it's too late and too expensive now to shift back into nuclear. By 2042, when a plant planned TODAY would go online, our renewable infrastructure will far outdo what any nuclear plant is capable of in terms of risk-reward.

[1] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/german-offshore-w...

Okay, so let's dig in:

1: Electricity is roughly 25% of a country energy expense. If we want to fight climate drift, electricity should become 80% of the total energy expense at the very least. That mean multiplying the number of power plants by 3.5 roughly, if we want to keep the same level of comfort (and by two if we accept to loose 40% of our GDP).

2: here are the cost of a 100% renewable mix: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030626191...

The land usage cost is ignored, but as 80% of the agricultural surface in the EU is used by animal or for animal feed, let's say we all divide our consumption by 7 (eat meat once a week), and the fred agricultural land can be used for biomass and solar.

The need in rare earth and how much of the worldwide production europe would take in this scenario isn't sustainable, but let's believe in an infinite earth with infinite ressources, so the extraction rate isn't an issue and is done solely with renewable. Europe still need more than 40% of the world future production.

3. So now, using the information you got with 1/, in a scenario with merely doubling the electricity output and reducing GDP by 40%, expand the data on 2/ (still without nuclear plant).

Draw your own conclusions, look at the data yourself, i only did order of magnitude calculations and it seems obvious to me. If one of my point is wrong, please explain why.

Okay, now in the price category: EDF is forced by France to sell its electricity to its competitor at a low price, and basically give it for free for some institution. Also, it is forced to cover the cost of an industrial failure it did neither start nor want, and to bear the cost of political choice (fessenhein closure). Despite that, i'm pretty sure electricity is cheaper in France than in most other European countries with no access with cheap hydro. Oh, and EDF bear the full cost of future nuclear plant decommission, so the "ït will cost more in the future" shit is wrong and already accounted for.

Nuclear is expensive in the short term and remarkably cheap in the long run. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbeJIwF1pVY

That said the more intermittent ambient energy is on the grid the more difficult it is for nuclear to operate 24/7, which makes it take longer for nuclear to go from expensive to cheap.

The article doesn’t even discuss the annual deaths from coal mining accidents, specially in China.

> Seasonal variations in cold climates can be handled better by trash burning facilities. Yeah, recycle/reuse first, but eventually you'll need to get rid of a lot of non-recyclable mixed waste regardless.

Do you have any numbers or sources to provide for this claim?

> If we have enough renewable hydrogen production plants to make all the hydrogen we need for ships, planes, steel production, farming and fertilizers, we'll have all the energy regulation and storage capability we'll ever need.

So your argument is predicated on a future breakthrough in hydrogen production and storage that is so impressive it solves both transportation problems and renewable energy intermittancy? And you argue this is better than using a proven source of baseline energy today?