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Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

nytimes.com

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Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#131

Post by lelag »

traveler01 wrote: post #60

Don't know how germans thought that closing down nuclear plants in favor of natural gas was a good idea, both politically and environmentally

Thinking about it makes me mad. For all their renewable production capacity they still average over 300g of CO2 / kwh with all the gas and coal they burn. All of it, credit to the german green movement trying to save the planet from... Not sure. Even assuming the occasional Chernobyl/Fukushima-level disaster, as terrible as those catastrophes are, nuclear plant accidents are localised and will never threaten mankind survival. Climate change IS threatening our future, however.

And don't get me started on the political cost which the news make so obvious now.

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#132

Post by tomp »

photochemsyn wrote: post #12

Funny article in that it doesn't discuss lifecycle costs. A side-by-side comparison of the cost of grids powered by nuclear power plant relative to those powered by wind/solar/storage is what I'd expect to see from a 'paper of record' like the NYTimes. Except in some specific cases (Finland, other Arctic regions with long periods of low sunlight) I'm pretty sure this cost comparison comes down firmly on the side of w…

> A far better plan for Europe would be to go 100% renewable asap, meaning no need for fossil fuel imports from any party.

“asap” LOL

Here in the real world, we have Germany, which has the strongest pro-green anti-nuclear agenda in Europe, but is (1) building coal plants, (2) financing Russian war and (3) blocking sanctions on Russia to save its economy (along with Hungary who are doing it for political reasons).

The green agenda is a massive failure in the real world. Maybe it will work in 50 years (when “possible technological development” in batteries catches up) but not right now.

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#133

Post by q1w2 »

fallingknife wrote: post #59
photochemsyn wrote: post #12

Funny article in that it doesn't discuss lifecycle costs. A side-by-side comparison of the cost of grids powered by nuclear power plant relative to those powered by wind/solar/storage is what I'd expect to see from a 'paper of record' like the NYTimes. Except in some specific cases (Finland, other Arctic regions with long periods of low sunlight) I'm pretty sure this cost comparison comes down firmly on the side of w…

Everybody always says that solar + storage is cheaper. And sometimes there are even studies to support it. But if that's true where is it ?

In fact, there are NO studies that demonstrate that solar or wind AND STORAGE, are able to produce CONSISTENT power for a full year anywhere.

The only studies you'll see are that they proved to be economical on a certain day, or maaaybe overnight. ...but there are zero studies that any solar and/or wind (even combined), can provide consistent power for a full year. ...because that is not currently possible with economical tech.

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#134

Post by Brometheus »

outside1234 wrote: post #5
impostervt wrote: post #3

I just finished Bill Gates' "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster". Very good book, and it makes two points (among many others): - To reduce carbon in the air, getting clean electricity is key. If we can do that, we can more easily reduce emissions from other areas. - There are no paths to clean energy by 2050 without nuclear power.

* No paths to nighttime clean energy without nuclear power

https://www.e3dc.com/#Intro

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#136

Post by DoingIsLearning »

cycomanic wrote: post #85
unchocked wrote: post #32

I will hazard that the problems with nuclear are not technological but political, and the economic problems with nuclear are there because of political reasons. France gets ~75% of its power from nuclear, safely and economically. France inhabits the same physical world as the rest of us, but is different politically. If there were a will, there would be a way. If the environmental movement had paid more attention to…

France is not using their reactors economically. They have been told multiple times by the EU that the reserves that operators have to provide for decommissioning of plants are much too low. So this means that the government/the taxpayers have to foot the bill. And we have not even talk about long term storage cost which are typically never taken into account. So yes it is a political decision, France is willing to h…

> France is willing to highly subsidise their nuclear industry.

And most of the world is willing to subside Oil and Gas to the tune of $5.9 trillion in 2020 or about 6.8 percent of the _world's_ GDP. [0]

Tax payer's money will be sunk anyway, choose your poison.

[0] https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2021/09/23/Sti...

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#137

Post by legulere »

traveler01 wrote: post #60

Don't know how germans thought that closing down nuclear plants in favor of natural gas was a good idea, both politically and environmentally

Nuclear was replaced by renewables in Germany: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_phase-out#/media...

It would have made more sense though to first replace coal plants before shutting down nuclear plants.

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#138

Post by q1w2 »

Brometheus wrote: post #128
fallingknife wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody always says that solar + storage is cheaper. And sometimes there are even studies to support it. But if that's true where is it ?

Top five countries with the highest wind energy capacity in 2020 China – 288.32 GW. ... United States – 122.32 GW. ... Germany – 62.85 GW. ... India – 38.63 GW. ... Spain – 27.24 GW.

This means nothing if you don't factor in storage, or at least measure the CONSISTENT power output.

These are just PEAK numbers that are totally useless when planning a grid.

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#139

Post by BenoitP »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #63
impostervt wrote: post #3

I just finished Bill Gates' "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster". Very good book, and it makes two points (among many others): - To reduce carbon in the air, getting clean electricity is key. If we can do that, we can more easily reduce emissions from other areas. - There are no paths to clean energy by 2050 without nuclear power.

> There are no paths to clean energy by 2050 without nuclear power. This is either stupidly wrong or stupidly right. Stupidly right, there's fairly new nuclear plants in operation that there's no real reason to shut down, so will probably be running in 2050. Stupidly wrong, it seems to be placing some entirely unwarranted implication that without nuclear we'd be lost, when most serious analysis agree that renewables…

> most serious analysis agree that renewables will be about 80%

Well, let's see them; and see how much they rely on yet to be proven industrially new storage tech (and without humongous mining activity)

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#140

Post by adrianN »

philwelch wrote: post #112
photochemsyn wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'handwave the unsolved-at-scale' ? All you have to do is look at Australia: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/08/10/worlds-largest-grid-f... > Battery rollout: "AGL Energy has committed to build 850 MW of battery-based assets by 2024. To that end, Torrens Island marks the first project to be constructed at the site of a fossil-fuel power plant. It won’t be the last, however, as big batteries are planned for New South…

French electrical power is 70% nuclear and has an installed capacity of 135 GW of power today. That comes out to 94.5 GW of nuclear power in France alone. Is there any country in the world that can supply hundreds of gigawatts to the grid from batteries today? If not, then the problem of grid power storage is unsolved at scale compared to nuclear.

I don't think that's a common use of "unsolved at scale". We know how to do it, it just doesn't make economic sense right now. I mean, suppose you have hundreds of GW of storage of some form installed. You could just claim it's still not "solved at scale" because the global energy consumption is even higher.
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