All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

That's an interesting question, actually, and the numbers seem difficult to come by. A master's thesis from 2011 says[0]:

"data on the amount of rare earths in wind turbines vary, ranging from 0.2 to 3.3 kg of neodymium content per kW of rated capacity"

For comparison, a nuclear power station generates[1]:

"24,000,000 kWh from 1 kg of uranium-235"

So, taking the lower estimate for the neodymium content, the wind turbine would have to produce energy for 0.2 x 24,000,000 hours to be as efficient in terms of mass. That's about 548 years. Even with recycling, that's a longer term commitment than some nuclear waste storage proposals, although with less of a proliferation risk.

[0] https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/153229259.pdf

[1] https://www.euronuclear.org/glossary/fuel-comparison/

I am a fan of nuclear energy for various reasons, and it's obvious that the safety and waste problems can be solved with new technology like small modular reactors with inherently safe designs.

However, even I realize that nuclear energy is not viable to significantly combat climate change due to the following reasons:

* The technology is not there yet. There are a lot of promising companies that are trying to solve the safety problem, and there is a lot of research on how to better deal with the waste, but due to the inherent dangers it will take decades to prove these designs are safe, work as intended and can be produced at a significant scale at the promised cost. Sadly, we don't have decades, we need to start replacing coal right now.

* nuclear energy is way to expensive. Wind and solar are much cheaper. current numbers are roughly 50% cheaper for renewables, and while lots of companies promise cheaper nuclear design, these claims are unproven and the renewables are also still significantly improving in cost. The nuclear cost models I've seen also ignore most of the storage and security cost for handling the waste for millenia. There are cheaper alternatives with existing and proven technology. Power to gas for example has an efficiency of roughly 50%. which funny enough corresponds to its cost advantage over nuclear. simply building a lot more wind and solar capacity and using power to gas to fill existing gas storage systems with excess energy from renewables has roughly the same cost as nuclear, without the safety and proliferation headache, and the added advantage of long term storage.

* proliferation. even if we could solve the problem of safeguarding thousands of SMR in developed countries, you can't just export them to every country on earth. however, that's a requirement for replacing coal, as those countries need to reduce emissions, too.

So yeah, I'd love molten salt SMR to be a thing, and they probably will be in some applications in developed countries in 10-20 years, but the value of this to combat climate change is minimal and people who think otherwise are ignoring the previously mentioned facts.

I don't think the applications for nuclear energy were rejected for the reasons being implied by the original article. This article[1] mentions that they weren't accepted because they missed the submission deadline.

> According to Kirsty Gogan, cofounder of TerraPraxis and a senior climate and energy advisor to the U.K. government, “All three Green Zone applications by nuclear groups were rejected.” However, it seems some of that may be due to miscommunication regarding application deadlines for the COP26 Green Zone.

I couldn't find the original source for the miscommunication on application deadlines, hopefully someone can find it.

[1] https://www.ans.org/news/article-3188/controversy-over-nucle...

No, they're not what-about answers. They're cause and effect. Germany's coal sector is growing BECAUSE of shutting down it's nuclear sector.

The other points are simply false (nuclear waste isn't dangerous for nearly as long, and his CO2 comment is actually a "what-about" complaint as a reason to not want nuclear power).

> Renewables need to be combined with power sources that can be turned on and off quickly and on demand. Nuclear emphatically cannot provide that.

That's true of current nuclear, but it's not an intrinsic property of nuclear power. Proposed plants that use molten salt as a working fluid, for example, give you the option to run the plant all the time, but at any given time either use the heat in the molten salt for power generation immediately, or move the molten salt into a storage tank for later use. Molten salt is already used this way in concentrated solar plants, and works fine for that purpose.