German Chancellor Scholz speaks out against new nuclear power
German Chancellor Scholz speaks out against new nuclear power
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he is against a new nuclear power debate in the country, in an interview released late on Friday with German radio station Deutschlandfunk.
Growth in german wind capacity is slowing. Soo... then the plan is to keep on with lignite and gas? Am I missing something?
Installed Wind Capacty - Germany
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Don’t import Reddit’s extremely ignorant takes on nuclear power here, please. Nuclear power is a huge waste of money.
If you’re about to angrily downvote me (or you already did), or write an angry reply, please read the rest of my comment before you do. This is not my individual opinion, this is the scientific consensus on the issue.
When it comes to generating electricity, nuclear is hugely more expensive than renewables. Every 1000Wh of nuclear power could be 2000-3000 Wh solar or wind.
If you’re about to lecture about “it’s not possible to have all power from renewable sources”, save your keystrokes - the majority of studies show that a global transition to 100% renewable energy across all sectors – power, heat, transport and industry – is feasible and economically viable. Again, this isn’t my opinion, you can look it up and find a dozen sources to back up what I am writing here.
This is all with current, modern day technology, not with some far-off dream of thorium fusion breeding or whatever other potential future tech someone will probably comment about without reading this paragraph.
Again, compared to nuclear, renewables are:
- Cheaper
- Lower emissions
- Faster to provision
- Less environmentally damaging
- Not reliant on continuous consumption of fuel
- Decentralised
- Much, much safer
- Much easier to maintain
- More reliable
- Much more responsive to changes in energy demands
Nuclear power has promise as a future technology. It is 100% worth researching for future breakthroughs. But at present it is a massive waste of money, resources, effort and political capital.
Nuclear energy should be funded only to conduct new research into potential future improvements and to construct experimental power stations. Any money that would be spent on nuclear power should be spent on renewables instead.
Wow I'm surprised to see people are actually downvoting you and arguing about this. It's common knowledge that the cost, impact, and build-time of new nuclear plants makes them a poor choice for energy. Not only is wind/ solar cheaper, it's faster to build.
Redditors are unbelievably brainwashed in this topic, and a lot of Redditors moved over to Lemmy. I have dragged this metaphor to water countless times before, and when I suggest that they could consider drinking, they just arrogantly declare that I don't understand the facts around liquids, that I don't have any basis for my claims that they should drink it, and that by arguing that people should drink more water, I somehow supporting Coca-Cola.
It's also common knowledge that the more often you build something, the lower its price tends to go as that knowledge spreads. It's part of the reason it's so expensive to build trains in the US and so cheap in South Korea and Spain.
This famously isn’t true for nuclear power. It just keeps getting more expensive.
The French nuclear case illustrates the perils of the assumption of robust learning effects resulting in lowered costs over time in the scale-up of large-scale, complex new energy supply technologies. The uncertainties in anticipated learning effects of new technologies might be much larger that often assumed, including also cases of “negative learning” in which specific costs increase rather than decrease with accumulated experience.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421510003526
And this research was done before Fukushima, which increased costs even further.
This is just more reasons to prioritise the already cheaper renewables, isn't it?
I feel like climate change makes this a yes and situation.
It is not a yes and, because urgency favors renewables even more. If it wouldn't be for bureaucratic and political hurdles, from planning to operation is about 2 years for onshore wind and solar sites. For things like retrofitting a small solar plant on a residential or industrial building it can be as short as three months and for balcony solar power as a small hobby project it is as little as a day of planning + the delivery time + a day of installation.
Nuclear plants on the other side take minimum a decade, more likely two decades and that is despite strong political and bureaucratic support that is needed to get it going at all. Otherwise with citizens protest it would stay in court indefenitely.
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Also worth noting are the centralization and security risk aspects of nuclear
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by these. Can you expand on that? (I mostly mean the centralization, but also looking for clarity on what you mean by security)
For centralisation - large areas of the grid are dependent on a few locations, so if there is an issue with one or two areas, the entire network can fail. Say for example if there is an earthquake which disables two nuclear power plants, that could cause massive issues with the grid.
If you have many small power sources distributed across a larger area, it significantly mitigates the issue - the loss of even dozens or hundreds of wind turbines would be able to be handled much more responsively.
Nuclear is uniquely disadvantaged at having very bad responsiveness to demand. Renewables are extremely good at that, coincidentally.
For security, I'm sure you can imagine many scenarios, but nuclear waste is a potential target for creating dirty bombs for example.
First off appreciate the good faith response. It's more than I've come to expect when I ask (probably) dumb questions requesting further explanation.
Coming from an American perspective, I've only recently realized just how badly centralization affects the grid. It's definitely a strong case for rooftop solar.
But focusing on nuclear, I do think we've missed the window where building top-to-bottom nuclear generating facilities would be advantageous, but in the effort to bridge from our heavily fossil fuel based electrical grid to a completely renewable, I think that SMRs are a reasonable solution. I especially like the notion of converting old infrastructure (i.e. old abandoned coal plants) into SMR power plants.
You seem to be knowledgeable and have opinions. What're you're thoughts on SMRs to help bridge the growing energy need?
Unfortunately simply using renewables alone is t enough to decentralize them. Lately Texas has been having near energy shortages and part of the problem is a few unexpected central outages at fossil fuel plants, but another is the vast majority of wind turbines are built in one sunset of the state, so if wind is low there it can (and has) cause massive decreased in available energy, far larger than a couple traditional large scale nuclear plants when other parts of the state are under fire warnings because of high wind and dry conditions. Of course this isn't an issue with the technology itself, but rather a problem with implementation. The issue isn't with what was built, but the lack of building more across the state (or joining one of the two larger grids to further decentralize power production over a broader area)
Anyways, another issue with security is centralized power production make a good target for disruption. And if you have the side effect of causing a meltdown...
Man, the US is a total mess. Why does Texas have a separate power grid? If the US invested in renewables and energy infrastructure they would easily become the #1 renewable energy producer in the world. They have so many ideal geographical features it’s absolutely crazy how much they’re going to waste.
Ironically, I seen the claim that the original reason was because the US grid was outdated and Texas wanted to do better. Probably back when people who called themselves "conservatives" actually cared at little bit about conserving the environment (at least in some self-interested ways). Of course it didn't work out that way.
No clue why the rest of the US is divided into two grids.
Nuclear is uniquely disadvantaged at having very bad responsiveness to demand. Renewables are extremely good at that, coincidentally.
Can you explain to me how you adjust renewable to the demand ? How can you increase the amount of sun or wind in the evening when there is a peak of demand?
For the nuclear you can go from 100% to 20% or the opposite in less 30 minutes. It can also follow the load and have a variation of 5% in 30s.
100% to 20% in 30 minutes, huh? Even if that’s true - I doubt even a quarter of all nuclear power plants in use today can accomplish that - all wind turbines in the world can go from 100% to 0% in a matter of seconds, with no human intervention.
Wind turbines are actually surprisingly complex machines with many ways to control the power generation, for all important metrics: voltage, power, frequency, etc.
Essentially the main variables at play are rotational torque and rotor speed, and there’s a lot of ways to control those variables. For example, the rotor can be rotated to face the wind at the ideal angle, or the pitch of the blades can be tweaked. There are also components quite like those you’d find in a car - brakes, clutch, gearbox, etc. which control the rotor speed and rotational torque. All of these systems are intelligently controlled and responsive, and allow very fast response to changes in demand or weather conditions without human input.
Solar panels, similarly, can be angled - commercial solar farms are usually motorised. This is mostly done so the panels can track the sun, making them much more efficient, but it also means they can be angled away from the sun, if need be, to reduce output. In reality, this isn’t really done, because it’s easier to control wind - solar provides baseline power and wind builds on top of that and adds responsiveness.
It takes a lot of money, planning, and technical know-how to build a nuclear power plant, especially a safe one. It isn't like a new nuclear company can just pop into existence, and start offering reactors for sale.
Traditional nuclear reactors are, therefore, a technology that requires a lot of centralization to implement. Only nation-states and huge corporations can assemble the resources to construct them.
Compare that to wind or hydro-electric power. You can build a generator with some wire and magnets yourself, so you could call them more decentralized.
This might be changing with modular reactors, I don't know.
- Citation Needed
You can have this copy/paste from like 5 minutes of googling. You can also run your own study yourself by just googling "average kwh price nuclear" and "average kwh price wind" and see how it looks. You can also google "average co2 eq emissions total lifetime nuclear" and likewise for wind/solar PV. This is extremely simple stuff, guys. I am basically saying, "lentils are cheaper than steak" and you're asking for citations.
2022 Electricity ATB Technologies and Data Overview, annual technology baseline:
https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-is-nuclear-energy-good-for-the-climate/a-59853315
Wow look isn't it crazy how nuclear is the most expensive one?
Mycle Schneider, author of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report: "Nuclear power plants are about four times as expensive as wind or solar, and take five times as long to build. When you factor it all in, you're looking at 15-to-20 years of lead time for a new nuclear plant."
Differences in carbon emissions reduction between countries pursuing renewable electricity versus nuclear power, published in nature energy: "We find that larger-scale national nuclear attachments do not tend to associate with significantly lower carbon emissions while renewables do. "
and this is a short intro to why a (60%/40%) split between renewables and nuclear may be the most accessible fossil free solution, and why the value of adding more variable renewables to a grid falls sharply the closer you get to 100%.
Also, the last article you posted is paywalled.
This chart is from the "Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems," I wonder whether they might be a wee bit biased. It also puts the "consequential cost to health, environment and climate" of nuclear as higher than coal, which is bananas, and their data on lifecycle carbon emissions from nuclear comes from a noted anti-nuclear group (and the article even admits as much).
"When you factor it all in, you’re looking at 15-to-20 years of lead time for a new nuclear plant." Cool, let's start building a whole bunch of them right now and then worst-case in 20 years we'll have too much electricity.
"In the next 10 years, nuclear power won't be able to make a significant contribution" I appreciate your optimism but we are deeeeeefinitely not going to come anywhere close to phasing out fossil fuels in power generation in 10 years; we're not even going to be done with fossil fuels on days that are particularly sunny in the solar cell areas and particularly windy in the wind power areas.
The Fraunhofer ISE is a reaseach institut with a focus on solar. It is very well respected and I would be very suprised if they where biased here.
Why would we waste money on nuclear when we could build renewables instead? It makes NO sense. Renewables are cheaper and cleaner.
Because nuclear is pretty cool whereas renewables are less awesome. Think about it, the nuclear symbol ☢️ is much more interesting and cooler than the renewable ♻️ symbol. We all know this is what really matters.
That's a great point, can't argue with you on that one. Clearly we need to rebrand renewables as something cooler. Maybe like "Element Zero" or something, and we can use like a wicked tribal tattoo for the symbol or something.
Well now you're back to arguing about new construction instead of keeping existing plants running.
Also, we can build both. Surely you appreciate that there are other factors slowing the speed of the energy transition besides the availability of capital, and that while nuclear has its own roadblocks, many of them are different from + don't overlap or compete with those standing in the way of renewables.
Capital (money) and capital (political) are the only roadblocks between us and a 100% renewable future. So no, there's no value to wasting either of those on nuclear when they could be more wisely proportioned to renewables. Pretty much the only resource that nuclear consumes that isn't consumed by most renewables would be uranium. I'm willing to just go ahead and say we can leave that one in the ground.
They’re really not, and if you think that then you need to read more. And “political capital” isn’t some big fungible pool of quatloos, it’s a lot of little tiny stupid slow fights.
Okay, go ahead and list the resources used for building nuclear reactors that isn't used for building other renewables.
- Uranium.
And thats about it.
Not my optimism, that's a quote from an industry expert, actually. But sure, whatever you say.
I hate when people say “stop importing it from Reddit” like half of us didn’t migrate from there.
What the fuck did you expect to happen? Reddit didn’t believe that. The users that participated in the site did.
Do you really hate that or are you just wrong about nuclear power and now you're mad about being wrong? You don't need to answer.
Please stop posting
I'm willing to stop posting, for the right incentive ;)
Oh no, please allow me to explain. See my comment was just about how a lot of the ideas from Reddit are likely from the users who came from there. While I do not include myself in that group because I do support nuclear; you cannot deny the fact that those ideas did get carried over.
Complaining about Reddit is pointless because you aren’t addressing the root cause of the issue which is educating people.
I'm educating you, amn't I? Free of charge, no less.
I’m educating you, amn’t I? Free of charge, no less.
Based on this interaction I’d rather pay someone else for it 🤣
I'm really glad that you find it so valuable <3
Again, this isn’t my opinion, you can look it up and find a dozen sources to back up what I am writing here.
Although I agree with this comment, this is exactly what the covidiots said. "Just google it". If you want us to believe your controversial opinion, you're going to want to take the time to add the most credible sources you can find to back you up.
The difference between my comment and a COVID denial comment is that if you googled covid denial arguments you’d find that 99.999% of results refute their claims. If you do the same for my claims, you’ll find the exact same sources that I used to make my arguments on the top page of the search results. It’s not the same.
If you used sources to make your argument it's not so hard to add them to your comment. Makes it just that much harder for people to call you out like what just happened.
You know that I didn’t decide to just find out this stuff immediately before commenting, right? It’s not like I was searching this stuff up while I was writing my comment. I have learned about this over time by reading lots of sources, and I was trying to pass along what I have learned. That’s all.
The information I shared is not under any serious debate. For example, if I told you about the theory of evolution, would you ask me to source my claims? It’s established science. While I understand that others don’t have the education, knowledge and experience that I do, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask people who are interested in discussing a topic to do the bare minimum to inform themselves?
Unfortunately I haven’t kept notes and sources of everything I’ve read throughout the course of my life, but I can remember the findings, and I knew that I could find sources to back up my claims. Which, after being pushed for sources, I provided. Thereafter, the pro-nuclear trolls just start moving deckchairs around and continue to just spread disinformation.
No one has “called me out”, what do you refer to? Which claim do you think I have been pushed on that I have not satisfactorily debunked? I’m happy to run another class if there’s something you don’t understand?
I agree with you on nuclear being more expensive as all facts point that way and future nuclear technology, but i dont understand how we could transition to a 100% renewable energy sector, It would be good if you could give a citation or explanation for that. Diverse and distributed source is how we get an energy secure grid, renewables could help with the distributed source part, but when it comes to diversity the popular renewable technologies wind and solar are very limited, both of these source cant power a base load without batteries (this applies mostly to solar, but wind too has low output at night). Also there is this issue witj managing generation and demand (Nuclear too have issue with this as its not possible to quickly adjust nuclear power generation like other conventional spurce). A full renewable energy grid would depend on batteries, currently we have much limitation with batteries. Mature technologists of acid based batteries require huge areas, and lithium based ones would require rare lithium which its mining alone would cause alot of pollution, and relying on other alt battery technology itself would be a long stretch as its development and commercialisation to usable form would take years to achieve as the same case afforable future nuclear technology.
Other alt renewable energy like geothermal could help with base load (not sure, someone could correct me if this is not the case), but itsnt possible everywhere. The same goes for tidal plant as it depends on geography and specific time of day. With this scenarios if we were to move to a 100% renewable grid then, the price for energy will increase at night time in a way that i think could reach nuclear energy rate.
A 100% renewable grid would need a lot of batteries and that too could drive the price up and possibly contribute to climate change. Also solar panel manufacturing is a very intense process with a lot of carbon impact, i read this on a text during my academics (havent checked the source for this other than that).
Also solar panel manufacturing is a very intense process with a lot of carbon impact
The carbon impact mostly is energy used in production. So it's high when you produce solar panels powered by shitty coal plants and basically non-existent when you have build them once and are constructing replacements with solar energy. (The same is true for nuclear btw and also often completely misrepresented in discussion. Nuclear plants in a country full of nuclear plants have a much lower carbon footprint. That's not some technological or scaling effect as often claimed but the simple fact of building the reactor and enriching the fuel with energy already green)
A 100% renewable grid would need a lot of batteries and that too could drive the price up
Actually no. The grid would need batteries (but also alternatives like capacitors or fly-wheels) for short-term stabilisation, but the amount is limited. The grid also need long-term storage but here batteries are completely inadequate. Also the requirements for batteries are usually misrepresented. No, we don't neen some bullshit Lithium-ion batteries or similar stuff requiring rare earths and other rare ressources. Those are used in handhelds where energy density is the main concern. I can perfectly build a stationary grid battery cheaply and without rare ressources as nobody cares if that building-sized installation is 5% bigger and 30% heavier than a build with lithium-ion batteries and also gets 20° hotter in operation... because it's not a handheld.
Case in point: One of the very first things that happened in Germany the moment the new government was sworn in and long before they could actually do anything: energy companies started installing the first battery-based storage units as they now were no longer intentionally sabotaged in creating storage infrastructure for renewables. What did they use? Car battereis. Used ones that were already deposed. Dirt cheap for costs barely above the recycling value. Because the requirements in grid stabilisation and short-term storage are indeed completely different that in cars (again: energy densitiy vs. low price and car batteries with only 60% of their capacity left were completely okay for that job).
Thanks for the comment, you make some great points :) by the way, you should look into non-electrical power storage - pumped storage is the most common, 99% of electrical storage is pumped storage. Essentially, a volume of water is pumped from a low basin to a high basin, converting electrical energy into gravitational potential energy. Then when energy demands exceed supply, the water is allowed to flow back down, and the flow is used to turn a generator, converting the kinetic energy into electrical energy. It’s approximately 80% efficient. It’s less responsive than on-grid electrolytic batteries but all you need is water and simple materials, it’s easy to maintain and has a much longer duty cycle than lithium ion or sealed lead electrolytic batteries and even capacitors - which are too expensive for real on-grid storage solutions, and the benefits of capacitors (high current) aren’t really needed or even desirable for the grid.
Let's not forget distributed grids reliant on wind can't tolerate local drops in energy output so you need to set up a zillion little LNG plants that are even less efficient than big ones
Edit: or I guess batteries that haven't been invented yet but that's sure not how the problem is solved most places these days
Demand sheduling.
The current grid is run on the idea that we ramp up power plants until the current demand is met.
The future will be to make the demand flexible and follow the availability. Typical example is when to charge a car battery, but it also goes for heating and cooling applications, using power to x converters, like hydrogen production, sheduling household appliances like washing machines and industrial processes.
Doing so we can close the gap between real baseload and available renewable supply, which in turns reduces the amount of storage needed.
Here a paper on the base load.
Also solar panels power amortization time is around a year, depending on cell chemistry, production and installation location.
Wind tends to be higher at night (at least here in Texas), so solar and wind are good complements. The biggest issue here is in the summer right after the sun sets, but that just means having enough battery storage for a couple hours for temps to start dropping. But wind/solar are still cheaper after including storage for that amount of time by far compared to new nuclear or new fossil fuels. Only existing facilities have a comparable per kWh cost when compared to new solar/wind + storage. Even if you quadrupled the storage, it would still be cheaper than new nuclear and comparable to existing nuclear iirc. Granted cost of storage partly depends on what storage options are viable locally for small grids.
Is PV common at commercial scale solar?
I wrote a larger comment addressing this, but honestly, you’d be better just googling it. It’s eminently plausible, it’s the industry consensus. Here’s a Wikipedia link for you: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy
Some argue that transitioning to 100% renewable energy would be too slow to limit climate change, and that closing down nuclear power stations is a mistake.[122][123]
"Nuclear power must be well regulated, not ditched". The Economist. 6 March 2021. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved 31 January 2022. McDonnell, Tim (3 January 2022).
"Germany's exit from nuclear energy will make its power dirtier and more expensive". Quartz. Retrieved 31 January 2022.
In November 2014 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change came out with their fifth report, saying that in the absence of any one technology (such as bioenergy, carbon dioxide capture and storage, nuclear, wind and solar), climate change mitigation costs can increase substantially depending on which technology is absent.
Thanks for your sources which support my claims.
Some argue that transitioning to 100% renewable energy would be too slow to limit climate change, and that closing down nuclear power stations is a mistake.
So, what we have here, is two opinion pieces from business-focused news websites, vs the scientific consensus of domain experts in the field of energy production, the IEC, IEEE and countless others. Very cool, very good proof of your claims.
Germany’s exit from nuclear energy will make its power dirtier and more expensive
“Germany has committed to source 80% of its electricity from renewables by 2030”
This article contains no arguments whatsoever that nuclear is better than renewables.
Nuclear power must be well regulated, not ditched
“Nuclear power has a lot of drawbacks. Its large, slowly built plants are expensive both in absolute terms and in terms of the electricity they produce. Its very small but real risk of catastrophic failure requires a high level of regulation, and it has a disturbing history of regulatory capture, amply demonstrated in Japan. It produces extremely long-lived and toxic waste. And it is associated with the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Most of the countries outside Europe that use nuclear power have some history of attempting to develop a bomb. All these factors contribute to an unease with the technology felt, to greater or lesser extent, by people all around the world.”
This isn’t even all of the drawbacks. The advantages of nuclear power, according to that article? It’s safe (but still not as safe as renewables”, and “hey, at least it’s better than fossil fuels”. That’s not the argument. The argument has to be how nuclear is better than renewables.
We’re done here.
Very cool, very good proof of your claims.
I made no claims, I quoted from the wikipedia link you posted for us, which you may have not read yourself. You're clearly a bigger expert than the IPCC though, so I wouldn't even dare to make claims in your presence.
I wrote a larger comment addressing this, but honestly, you’d be better just googling it. It’s eminently plausible, it’s the industry consensus. Here’s a Wikipedia link for you: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy
not with some far-off dream of thorium fusion breeding
Thorium reactors were made those in the 60s, they weren't pursued because thorium can't make nuclear bombs.
Ah, by mentioning thorium, you activated my trap card. I know you guys can't resist it. Everyone in the industry knows it's a pipe dream. It's not viable with current tech.
ignoring the redditspeak, you haven't addressed my point at all.
You didn't really make a point, you randomly mentioned that Thorium reactors were made in the 60s and stated something irrelevant to do with nuclear weapons. I don't care whether Thorium was or was not researched, nor why that may or may not have been the case - Thorium-based nuclear reactors are not at present a viable source of electricity generation.
A 2010 National Nuclear Laboratory report concluded the thorium fuel cycle 'is likely to have only a limited role internationally for some years ahead' and concluded claims for thorium were 'overstated'.
Even if thorium technology does progress to the point where it might be commercially viable, it will face the same problems as conventional nuclear: it is not renewable or sustainable. And that's A LONG way off.
"A 2010 National Nuclear Laboratory report" "for some years ahead"
It's 2023, "some years ahead" is, y'know, now. 13 is "some." Quite a few, actually.
Yeah, your 1960s thorium technology is way more timely.
however once its technology matures
Yeah, it's still commercial-scale, not a "pipe dream" or "not viable with current tech."
"not viable" is different from "impossible", it just means that it's gonna be too expensive and not worth doing compared to, yknow, just spending the money on renewables instead.
The article itself said it's still counting in future tech advances. Just because the alpha test is done at full size is different than being commercial scale imo. But we shouldn't even be judging power plants success on how well they can make profits, so whether it's commercial scale or not should not be relevant. Unfortunately it is, but the article gives no indication that it is commercially viable with current tech. Just that it physically exists.
Nobody is saying that a thorium reactor can't be built, I'm saying it's a waste of money, energy, time and resources that would be better spent on renewables, and that the energy produced would be both more expensive and more environmentally damaging than the same power generated by renewables.
Based on what? And how can you possibly make that claim with any confidence if nobody's built one until now?
nobody’s built one until now
They've been a technology that we've known about since the 1960s... we determined in the 60s it wasn't as efficient as uranium.
We also determined in the 1960s that solar power was a pipe dream and it would never be efficient enough on a large scale to be worth investing in.
Maybe don't use an Appeal to Antiquity.
Sourcing scientific research from 1960 is not an appeal to tradition and you know that perfectly well.
In response to your other point:
1960 - Hoffman Electronics creates a 14% efficient solar cell. 1961 - "Solar Energy in the Developing World" conference is held by the United Nations. 1962 - The Telstar communications satellite is powered by solar cells. 1963 - Sharp Corporation produces a viable photovoltaic module of silicon solar cells. 1964 - The satellite Nimbus I is equipped with Sun-tracking solar panels. 1964 - Farrington Daniels' landmark book, Direct Use of the Sun's Energy, published by Yale University Press. 1967 - Soyuz 1 is the first manned spacecraft to be powered by solar cells 1967 - Akira Fujishima discovers the Honda-Fujishima effect which is used for hydrolysis in the photoelectrochemical cell. 1968 - Roger Riehl introduces the first solar powered wristwatch. 1970 - First highly effective GaAs heterostructure solar cells are created by Zhores Alferov and his team in the USSR. 1971 - Salyut 1 is powered by solar cells. 1973 - Skylab is powered by solar cells. 1974 - Florida Solar Energy Center begins.
What a surprise, you’re wrong. Who could have seen that coming?
How do we deal with balancing the uneven load renewables produce in places where pumped hydro isn't an option for power storage? I.e. lowland areas. Here in the southeastern US, night almost always means no wind as well as the obvious no sun. Chemical batteries, afaik, aren't a sustainable solution ATM.
Thanks for the question. Firstly, most places have a power grid which is far larger than their locality. For example, the southeastern United States is connected to a single big grid which connects every smaller sub-grid east of the Rocky Mountains. This means that a home in Florida can be powered all the way from the Bath County pumped-storage facility in Virginia, the second largest such facility in the US.
Hydroelectricity can also be generated by rivers, which are commonly used in lowland areas, and geothermal is also viable at any time of the day. Biomass is also an option, though it’s the last resort really, although as long as it’s responsibly managed, it can be nearly carbon neutral.
There are also alternatives to pumped storage, lots of them. Compressed air, thermal storage, and hydrogen are a few examples just off the top of my head, though I’m sure there are many more. Pumped storage is just very efficient and cheap, so if we can plausibly do it, it should be the first choice. And if it can’t be done somewhere, then we should connect that place to somewhere which can!
Hydroelectricity
Destroys aquaculture. TVA has absolutely killed those rivers, and there is no way to sugar coat that.
Geothermal can't be used in most places (but should absolutely be used where it can be)
Biomass is just burning shit all over again (thought that was the point of not burning coal).
I'm also skeptical of the pivot from using renewables as a decentralized solution and then touting a massive grid which requires lots of infrastructure. Unless your problem with centralization is targetability by bombing.
I've not heard much about compressed air as an energy storage medium, or thermal storage besides from using solar arrays to reflect light and melt a metal core (like Gemasolar which is another centralized solution), but I've heard nothing good about hydrogen except from breathless techbro types.
Meanwhile Nuclear is a mature technology now, absolutely a less dangerous solution than coal (even without looking a climate change knock-on effects, just looking at the effects coal dust has on populations near coal-fired plants), and can be used to meet the base-load of a local grid with various renewable solutions used to meet peak load demands.
If I knew you were just gonna try to pick holes I wouldn’t have been so nice to you. Ah well, we live and learn!
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I don’t believe you and couldn’t find anything online. Post a source for your claim that run-of-the-river hydroelectric power plants operated by TVA have reduced aquatic life.
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No, wrong. Geothermal can be built pretty much anywhere with the use of EGS.
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Burning shit grown exclusively for the purpose of doing so. Plants breathe carbon dioxide in and breathe out oxygen. When we burn them, some of the carbon they breathed in is released. Properly managed biomass is essentially carbon neutral.
Coal is completely different - it’s carbon that has been sequestered for a really long time that we’re extracting. Biomass is recently captured carbon being re-released. I agree it’s not the ideal solution though. Good thing my comment contained about a dozen other ideas huh?
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Decentralised doesn’t mean disparate. The internet is a decentralised network of computers. It also connects fucking billions of them all together into one big grid. The more interconnected the grid is, the more resilient it becomes. I have explained before the benefits of decentralisation: less risk from natural disaster, accidents, intentional acts of sabotage or manipulation, etc.
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Clearly if YOU, the internet’s most informed commenter, haven’t heard of it, then it must be worthless. Completely glossing over the fact that you probably have thermal power storage in your home right now in the form of a hot water tank, yes, molten salt solar is one form of thermal storage. Again, something like 98% of all electrical storage is pumped storage. I just shared some other options with you because I thought you were a cool guy. Wont make that mistake again don’t worry!
And what do you mean that you “haven’t heard anything good about hydrogen”? What an absolutely absurd statement. Hydrogen is an element. It has a very high energy density per kg. It can be used to store energy. Electrolysis of water produces hydrogen gas and oxygen gas. Then the hydrogen gas is captured, compressed and stored. Later, the hydrogen can be oxidised to produce energy and water. It’s an entirely clean cycle, as long as the electricity used to generate hydrogen is also clean. It’s nowhere near as efficient as pumped storage but it’s another option. We should 100% be transitioning to using hydrogen for cars instead of lithium ion batteries, it’s going to be much much more environmentally friendly, long term.
- Nuclear is more expensive, more dangerous, more environmentally damaging and slower to provision than renewables. Why the fuck are you comparing it to coal? I have never suggested even once that we should invest in fossil fuels in any way whatsoever.
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They also depend on water. And as I looked recently into the world, we are drying out.
Okay, now factor in environmental costs.
…which is hugely worse for nuclear? What is your point?
Nuclear power plants require eye watering amounts of concrete.
They require continuous (and ever-increasing) extraction of fissile matter such as uranium ore (a limited resource, by the way - if we used nuclear power instead of fossil fuels we would run out pretty quickly, too, all things considered).
Nuclear power also consumes (and irradiates) vast quantities of water.
They are huge nightmares for biodiversity as they are massive projects usually flattening large swathes of land.
They produce waste which is not only irradiated and hazardous but also a major security risk, so it has to be safeguarded… and/or sealed into a hole in the ground where it will remain a risk for years to come.
The building projects themselves are astronomical in scale and require huge quantities of materials to be shipped by fleets and fleets of trucks followed by a lot of industrial work. Then in a couple of decades the site has to be decommissioned which is even more work.
Estimates for the lifetime emissions (extraction, commission, operation, etc.) CO2EQ of nuclear power are commonly thought to be between 60-100g per kWh. Solar power is somewhere in the region of 20-40g per kWh, and wind is somewhere around 10-20g per kWh.
So again, no, nuclear energy is not what we want. Support ONLY renewables. Nuclear power is wasteful.
which is hugely worse for nuclear? What is your point?
Objectively not. Precious metal mining is more than a thousand times worse for the environment than Uranium or Thorium mining.
Nuclear power plants require eye watering amounts of concrete.
Sure, in the 1950s. Modern nuclear reactors can be built in existing Coal plants. Most reactor types don't require any additional shielding besides what is already present.
They require continuous (and ever-increasing) extraction of fissile matter such as uranium ore (a limited resource, by the way - if we used nuclear power instead of fossil fuels we would run out pretty quickly, too, all things considered).
We have mined enough Uranium to power the entire world for the next 10,000 years; there is currently enough Uranium in just known mines for the next 1,000,000 years of current global power usage. And that's just Uranium. Thorium is a viable technology with the first reactors already online for commercial use.
Nuclear power also consumes (and irradiates) vast quantities of water.
No, it doesn't. This is just outright a lie, one I have no idea where you got. The internal loop never leaves the building, the external loop is never irradiated.
They are huge nightmares for biodiversity as they are massive projects usually flattening large swathes of land.
They have a smaller impact than solar or wind farms, by a factor of 100.
They produce waste which is not only irradiated and hazardous but also a major security risk, so it has to be safeguarded… and/or sealed into a hole in the ground where it will remain a risk for years to come.
They produce less toxic waste than Coal power plants, and all of the world's projected nuclear waste for the next 100,000 years fits into existing facilities.
The building projects themselves are astronomical in scale and require huge quantities of materials to be shipped by fleets and fleets of trucks followed by a lot of industrial work. Then in a couple of decades the site has to be decommissioned which is even more work.
This is the exact same for renewables, worse, arguably, since wind farms have to be off shore to be efficient and cargo ships are more than a thousand times worse for the environment than any form of overland transport.
This is the exact same for renewables, worse, arguably, since wind farms have to be off shore to be efficient
From the charts I've seen lately, offshore is much more expensive than onshore per kwhr for wind by a large margin. If that's the case, is offshore even valuable anymore?
Yes, given there is no 'empty land,' you are always destroying something if you create a windfarm on land. On the other end of this, offshore windfarms unironically create local ecosystems. If your goal is not just decarbonization, but decarbonization in order to better the health of the planet, which it should be, then offshore would be the best option.
See: Germany tearing down land wind farms in order to mine more coal. Those turbines aren't going to be repurposed, they're going to scrap yards.
What do you know that countries with state funded labs full of scientists haven't figured out?
Nothing? That's my point. They HAVE figured this out. Get your head out of your ass and take an opportunity to actually learn something instead of just being aggressively wrong on the internet. The only people in the industry who think we should provision nuclear power plants are those who would financially benefit from continued investment in nuclear. Just look it up.
If renewables are the answer, why does germany still rely on lignite? If it was figured out, wouldn't they be exporters of carbon free energy to Europe? (France is!) Instead of resisting nuclear, renewable advocates ought to go after fossil fuel subsidies. Fighting nuclear gives lignite "the green light."
Because the last German government did everything it could to make it harder to get more renewables. Just look at Bavaria for example where the little sister f the CDU is still inpower. You are allowed to build wind turbines in very few spots
Renewable advocates famously silent and okay with fossil fuel subsidies
Because the fossil fuel industry and their lobbyists are absolutely, ridiculously, hideously wealthy, and it benefits them for it to be that way?
France lost their place as largest energy producer in the EU in 2022, because France has been having issues with their nuclear power stations.
"France usually exports more power than it imports, but structural problems with its nuclear fleet, which show no signs of improving, saw exports from the country halve compared to the previous year, while Sweden exported 16 terawatt hours"
Sweden has over 60% of their energy generation from renewables, by the way.
Take a look at this graph:
See that blue line that starts out at the top, then it drops off a cliff? That's coal. Look at it dropping.
The yellow line that's just below it, that's been slowly decreasing until it sharply started dropping? That's nuclear.
Look at my boy wind power, that little gray line, going into orbit, flying like the wind.
Solar PV is that purple line that's trending upwards.
Oil is also slowly decreasing.
So no, you're wrong. Stop digging your heels in and admit when you are wrong.
Lol, what am I wrong about? Nuclear is a a carbon free techonolgy that we have that can prodce the energy we need? Germany dumped nuclear to go full renewable and it flopped? France exports a ton energy to Europe? What did I say that was wrong?
I think your brain is full of ideas that came from somewhere else.
Watch this, I can make you ragequit this entire argument with this one comment with like a 90% confidence rate:
Prove either of these two statements as false:
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The total cost per kWh of nuclear electricity is more expensive than common renewable sources of electricity.
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The total amount of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions for nuclear is greater than the carbon dioxide equivalent emissions of common renewable sources of electricity.
Either that or you can loftily declare yourself above this argument, state that I am somehow moving the goalposts, say that "there's no point, I'll never change your mind" or just somehow express some amount of increduiity at my absolutely abhorrent behaviour by asking you such a straightforward question? You may also choose "that's not the question I want to talk about, we should answer MY questions instead!"
But go ahead and prove me wrong, I'll be waiting!
Nice. Topic change.
For real though, you've got a lot of energy on this. That's great. Use it to go after fossil fuels, they're the ones damaging the climate. Costs are indeed a concern with expanding nuclear but money's not a problem. Emissions are. If we need more we'll just print more like we always do.
Ah yeah, that's the stuff, right there. It's like fucking heroin right into my veins. I ask you directly to contradict the entire underlying basis for my entire original argument and you declare that it's a "topic change". I don't know why you love defending the nuclear industry so much, but man, the entertainment value alone, it's great stuff.
Use it to go after fossil fuels, they’re the ones damaging the climate
How about you take that little hit to your ego, admit that you were wrong, and start being right? We've all been there man, I used to be a big supporter of nuclear energy too, you can join me in recovery and we can fight against investments in both fossil fuels AND nuclear AT THE SAME TIME. It's almost unbelievable I know but we're actually capable of more advanced thought than "the mineral fuel enemy of my fossil fuel enemy is my friend". Every million dollars spent on nuclear would have been better spent as half a million on renewables and then burying the other half a million in a hole in the ground. Obviously spending the whole million on renewables would be good as well but I know that it's just not the same generating power without having some big hole in the ground being dug as part of that process so I'm willing to come to a compromise.
The total cost per kWh of nuclear electricity is more expensive than common renewable sources of electricity.
Subsidize nuclear as much as renewables and the price equalizes.
The total amount of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions for nuclear is greater than the carbon dioxide equivalent emissions of common renewable sources of electricity.
This is incorrect, objectively.
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You've converted me :)
I’m really glad to hear it, thanks for being open to changing your perspective when you are presented with new information. It’s a quality which is sadly rare these days it seems!
If you are worried about the cost of nuclear energy, you don't give a shit about the environment.
That's a really bad take. Funds should be focused where they're most effective at transitioning to clean energy.
Would you like to elaborate? Renewables are a much better power source than nuclear in every single way that matters. They’re better for the environment, cheaper, lower emissions and are faster to commission. Every $1 spent on nuclear power is $1 stolen from renewables.
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...Nuclear power is a huge waste of money....
...this is the scientific consensus on the issue.
A battery of tests were performed on the economics of mitigating the impending climate disater. These tests indicated that nuclear is a huge waste of money (p<0.05) (Blake, 2023)
Hahaha :)
I’m on my phone, dude, I’m not gonna juggle a dozen sources on this tiny screen and crappy keyboard just to prove you wrong, you’re more than capable of using Google to find the facts yourself. I challenge you to prove me wrong. You can even cite some hilariously biased source like World Forum of Nuclear Investor Funds or something, those ones are always fun because they’re like “oh with our super cool advanced new nuclear reactor that doesn’t exist, it’s as good as solar or wind for almost 150% of the cost!! :)”
And the argument vanishes into thin air...
I mean IDK if Rueters meets your rigorous standards for journalistic excellence (or why you can't just google something so simple) but here you go new nuclear is more expensive and and worse for the environment than renewables.
2022 Electricity ATB Technologies and Data Overview, annual technology baseline:
https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-is-nuclear-energy-good-for-the-climate/a-59853315
Wow look isn't it crazy how nuclear is the most expensive one?
Mycle Schneider, author of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report: "Nuclear power plants are about four times as expensive as wind or solar, and take five times as long to build. When you factor it all in, you're looking at 15-to-20 years of lead time for a new nuclear plant."
Differences in carbon emissions reduction between countries pursuing renewable electricity versus nuclear power, published in nature energy: "We find that larger-scale national nuclear attachments do not tend to associate with significantly lower carbon emissions while renewables do. "
Germany literally just shut down their existing nuclear plants and replaced them with fossil fuels.
So even if what you're saying were true (and I'd happily sit here and punch holes in it if I thought you were actually open to an argument - anti-nuclear people somehow seem to think that you can build all the solar/wind farms and transmission lines you want without running into the same endless messy regulatory battles you get with nuclear), none of it would be relevant here because the plants were already built and already working and responsible for like 1/8 of Germany's electrical production - it wasn't a cost decision, it was a bullshit anti-nuclear one.
Also: the graph at the top shows the growth in Germany's installed wind capacity in Germany leveling off - do you think that's happening because they just don't feel like building any more wind power, or is it possible they're running into some limits on how much they can generate efficiently that way?
Germany literally just shut down their existing nuclear plants and replaced them with fossil fuels.
This claim is patently false.
Sorry, but this comment is so full of false information.
If you are able to read German or use a translator I can recommend this interview where the expert explains everything and goes into the the details.
Claiming that Germany is fucked after shutting down nuclear for good is repeating the talking points from the far right here. Don't be that guy.
Germany literally just shut down their existing nuclear plants and replaced them with fossil fuels.
That's completely false.
responsible for like 1/8 of Germany's electrical production
More like 2-3%
it wasn't a cost decision
Not exclusively, but the high price of nuclear is one of the main points in the decision
the graph at the top shows the growth in Germany's installed wind capacity in Germany leveling off
Because the graph stops in 2022. The growth now is accelerating and even more so for solar power which OP conveniently does not show us
Given this thread is about new nuclear, I'm not sure why you are making up beliefs about what someone else in the thread believes. Personally a fan of old nuclear plants since their biggest expense (financial and likely ecological) is making them, so keeping them running is good as long as we are relying on fossil fuels.
is it possible they're running into some limits on how much they can generate efficiently that way?
Why just speculate on it while insinuation someone is wrong about something when you could look it up? From what I can gather, it looks like administration/licensing delays, court cases, and rules limiting how close they can be to residential buildings (apparently 10 times the height of the turbine) are the main contributors to the slowdown.
Also, solar is still growing more quickly and 2023 is having quicker growth in wind than last year (which was itself an increase from the previous year), so the trend being shown may already be outdated. Granted, inflation apparently are an issue now (not when the slowdown happened, but now as the rate of wind installation is increasing). And the rate of increase isn't enough imo, but building new nuclear instead of using the same resources to build solar or wind at this point means relying more on fossil fuels.
He is, in fact, arguing against keeping existing plants running too. (I suspected he believed this and he did indeed)
rules limiting how close they can be to residential buildings (apparently 10 times the height of the turbine)
These... don't seem like crazy rules; I don't know how this works in other legal systems but in the US every little podunk wind installation in a residential area is going to be tied up in years of lawsuits over this sort of thing.
building new nuclear instead of using the same resources to build solar or wind at this point means relying more on fossil fuels
I don't think it is the same resources, that's part of my point. I don't think there's a finite pool of money here; the limitations on solar / wind have as much to do with raw materials and suitable locations as anything else, if nuclear provides an additional path to getting carbon-free energy on line (and with the added benefit of not needing to worry about storage, which is going to bring its own rat's nest of location + raw material problems once we get to it) then we ought to be encouraging it as well.
At no point have I said that we should shut down nuclear power plants that are still running effectively, I must request that you redact your false claims, I do not appreciate these libellous remarks. I explained reasons behind why nuclear power plants are decommissioned. I'm sure you understand that no-one believes that nuclear power plants should be built once and run forever and ever.
Nuclear has more location issues than renewable. Do you think people want a nuclear plant in their backyard?
It's the same issues of will, money, and location that limit both. Why waste all of those on nuclear in 20 years when the grid is unstable today?
I’d happily sit here and punch holes in it if I thought you were actually open to an argument
If you had just said this and stopped writing then you'd have saved yourself time and embarrassment. I can dunk anytime, anywhere on whatever arguments you dream up, because definitionally if you're arguing with me about this then you have no idea what you're talking about. It's a fool-in-a-barrel type of situation, really.
Anyways, enough merry-making, to the meat of your comment:
Germany literally just shut down their existing nuclear plants... it wasn’t a cost decision, it was a bullshit anti-nuclear one
Nuclear power has huge cost implications, economically and politically, which make it less viable. If Germany had built renewables instead of nuclear, would they have turned off the renewables that were producing the cheapest, cleanest energy ever known, with zero fuel costs and minimal maintenance costs? You make my argument for me.
The decommissioning of the german nuclear power plants was planned in 2011 because nuclear is a waste of resources. German scientists know this as well as I do. You're the one arguing with them.
"Nuclear energy is also often more expensive than wind and solar power, there are no longer any real advantages with nuclear energy.” - Volker Quaschning, a professor of renewable energy at the Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Berlin. “Nuclear power plants are a hindrance to the energy transition. They are not able to run in stop-and-go mode and cannot really compensate for power fluctuations that arise when using solar and wind energy. With Germany looking to expand solar and wind power very rapidly over the next few years, now is a good time to shut down nuclear reactors to make way for renewable energy,” he said.
“In the German context, the phase-out of nuclear energy is good for the climate in the long term. It provides investment certainty for renewable energy; renewables will be much faster, cheaper and safer than expansion of nuclear energy,” - Niklas Höhne, a professor the mitigation of greenhouse gases at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.
...and replaced them with fossil fuels
I think you're referring to the emergency recommissioning of German coal power plants in response to Russian gas being held hostage over the Ukraine war? It's not like they went "meh fuck the climate lol lets just turn off nuclear and put on the old coal burner for old time's sake".
definitionally if you’re arguing with me about this then you have no idea what you’re talking about
And this is why I said I don't think you're open to an argument. But I'm not actually trying to argue with you about this, to the extent I'm arguing here it's for the benefit of other people reading who are perhaps a tiny bit less pig-headed than you are. Which is great, because I don't have to actually persuade you of anything but simply to give other people an alternative perspective to yours.
If Germany had built renewables instead of nuclear, would they have turned off the renewables that were producing the cheapest, cleanest energy ever known, with zero fuel costs and minimal maintenance costs?
Yes, because they're still tied up in anti-nuclear politics. (hardly a phenomenon unique to Germany)
"Often more expensive" "no longer any real advantages" according to a "professor of renewable energy" who doesn't actually seem to have anything against them except that somehow he wants to "make way for renewable energy" which he somehow perceives an existing, functional nuclear plant as a hindrance to? Again, politics.
"Provides investment certainty for renewable energy" is likewise a weak / hypothetical / pie-in-the-sky argument - show me where existing nuclear power plants are actually getting in the way of new renewables.
"Replaced them with fossil fuels" natural gas is also, y'know, a fossil fuel. Even the anti-nuclear people cited in one of your articles admit that the lifecycle emissions of a gas plant are 4x as high as a brand new nuclear plant. Coal is even worse, sure, but even absent the Ukraine situation they'd be producing a lot more carbon with a very, very thin justification.
Yeah because they're gonna be able to just whip up half a dozen nuclear power plants in response to the ukraine war quicker than they'd be able to build renewables.
Watch this, I can make you ragequit this entire argument with this one comment with like a 90% confidence rate:
Prove either of these two statements as false:
The total cost per kWh of nuclear electricity is more expensive than common renewable sources of electricity. The total amount of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions for nuclear is greater than the carbon dioxide equivalent emissions of common renewable sources of electricity.Either that or you can loftily declare yourself above this argument, state that I am somehow moving the goalposts, say that “there’s no point, I’ll never change your mind” or just somehow express some amount of increduiity at my absolutely abhorrent behaviour by asking you such a straightforward question? You may also choose “that’s not the question I want to talk about, we should answer MY questions instead!”
But go ahead and prove me wrong, I’ll be waiting!
I'll cheerfully concede both of those statements, I just don't think they result in you winning the argument.
It's not clear that we can build enough renewables fast enough, or that we can build storage capacity fast enough when we do; you cite vague studies that suggest we might be able to do, but that's all they are. I'd rather not bet everything on that and then discover in 20 years that we made the wrong bet.
According to the anti-nuclear group cited in one of your articles, nuclear produces about 4x the CO2 emissions of solar but 1/4 the emissions of natural gas. (1/8 those of coal) And it also assumes we can't improve on that any, even though there is a tremendous amount of money + research going on right now on lowering CO2 emissions from construction materials like concrete and steel. (perhaps we don't have any of those improvements up and running for in 20 years, but meanwhile those shiny nuclear plants are getting rid of 3/4 of the CO2 from the natural gas plants they're replacing)
I’ll cheerfully concede both of those statements, I just don’t think they result in you winning the argument.
Obviously those points are the entire crux of the whole argument lmao.
Ah, what a gentleman! Since you've been so sporting, I'll indulge you.
It’s not clear that we can build enough renewables fast enough
You can go ahead and try to prove this statement false:
- The total time taken to provision 1 GWh of nuclear electricity is considerably slower than the total time taken to provision 1GWh of common renewable sources of electricity.
Again, I’m arguing we do both. And anyway this is a volume question, not a construction time one (enough renewables fast enough) - I’m OK with waiting 20 years for new nuclear plants if in 20 years we get a fuckton of them.
You need lunch and you can choose between a nutritious and tasty $5 sandwich from an independent deli or a $10 expensive mass-produced sandwich from a chain. The independent deli is tastier, cheaper, and healthier, and it's easier for you to get since it's on your way to work.
Or you could just get both for no good reason if you want I guess.
Hey, this you?
It’s not clear that we can build enough renewables fast enough
this is a volume question, not a construction time one (enough renewables fast enough)
Woah! What happened to those goalposts? I could have sworn they were here a second ago.
I'm gonna wait for your response to my other question to properly address this one since they're so intrinsically linked.
Just so I'm clear on what you intend to say: you intend to show that the amount of energy Germany produces from wind has increased while the amount of energy produced by both coal and nuclear have decreased, the data standing as a self evident counter argument?