What Germany did was very quickly turn off all nuclear power plants without any plans on replacing them with sustainable alternatives. Now they're offline, what's done is done. France still has nuclear power plants, and they're really pushing for nuclear energy to be considered green.
This is about investing and creating incentives. So IMHO Germany shouldn't build new plants and France shouldn't get EU funding for their existing ones and everyone, but especially these wealthy countries should focus on truly sustainable energy.
Every euro spend on a "transitional" does not go towards the truly sustainable technologies.
> Every euro spen[t] on a "transitional" does not go towards the truly sustainable technologies.
We won't have many euros left if we need to fight climate change effects while we wait for new technologies. We need to use the technology we already have. In addition to that, in parallel, we also need to find enough land owners that are willing to have a wind turbine in their proverbial back yard. And in parallel install solar panels on available surfaces. And introduce (pumped, battery, etc.) energy storage. We need all of it.
Renewables don't have a money problem, it's a political and humanitarian problem. It literally costs money to have money (ask your bank), so the big money owners want to invest it. It's well known that solar panels and wind turbines pay for itself easily and are very low risk (lower even than an index fund if you operate more than a single device).
Nuclear isn't so simple, but has unique advantages. We don't have the luxury to play politics around whether nuclear is renewable or not, it's low on greenhouse gases and doesn't require a lot of land per MWh. No point delaying further while we debate for another five years about whether we should really fund this not-truly-renewable technology.
For gas, I mostly agree with you because that's an ongoing emission source with much higher greenhouse gas emissions. Building new gas plants isn't going to get us very far (even if its merits vs. alternatives need to be weighed on a case-by-case basis).
But nuclear is different from gas: it's a calculable emission source for the initial construction, and over its lifetime will be orders of magnitude lower, in the same ballpark as wind and hydro.
I'd love to go with only truly renewable sources (not that "renewables" like wind and solar have renewable or long-lived hardware, but it's a good start). I just don't see that as an option in densely populated western Europe. I'm happy that the EU looks at merits here rather than ideologies.
>Nuclear isn't so simple, but has unique advantages
Its advantages are dwindling compared to solar/wind/battery/pumped hydro/demand shaping.
It requires gargantuan subsidies to even exist.
For instance, the nuclear industry in the US has barraged us with propaganda about how really incredibly safe it is and how overregulated they are but insurers will still refuse to insure a nuclear plant unless 99% of the liability for accident cleanup is placed on taxpayer shoulders.
Its main advantage is that it can mitigate some of the costs of maintaining a nuclear arsenal. This is realistically why the US, UK and France keep it but Germany doesnt think it's worth it.
These three elephants in the room: cost, accident liability and nuclear arsenals are invariably absent from media discussions about nuclear power in the US largely because of who drives the discussion.
While Nuclear is not cheap, it will be cheaper than the effects from un-softened climate change.
While Nuclear is difficult to maintain and if an accident happens it is bad, but the damage and affected area can be easily calculated.
While Nuclear waste storage costs money and has to be secure for a long time, the chance that we as humans will be able to recycle the nuclear waste in 200-500 years is fairly high. On the other hand once shit hits the fans with climate change shit really hits the fan but with the quantity of New York City's total sewage from the last 5 decades.
The thought that we will be able to recycle nuclear waste in 200+ years is more reliable than any promise Elon Musk has ever given.
>While Nuclear is not cheap, it will be cheaper than the effects from un-softened climate change.
Is it cheaper than demand shaping/wind/solar/grid-scale batteries though? That's the real question.
As far as I can see that answer may be yes in one specific circumstance - when you already have a nuclear plant with another 5+ years of life left. i.e. when the insane capex is a sunk cost.
In all other instances it only really comes close if you assume the risk of nuclear disaster is close to zero or if you pretend that the precipitous fall in solar/wind/battery prices didnt happen yet.
> Is it cheaper than demand shaping/wind/solar/grid-scale batteries though? That's the real question.
I believe that’s the wrong question to ask.
We need nuclear to be cheaper and more attractive than coal and oil (and later natural gas).
If grid scale batteries ever become a viable thing and cheaper than nuclear then that’s just great and eventually the nuclear plants can be phased out in favour of those.
In the meantime however we need to get rid of coal and oil, because that’s where the overwhelmingly most emissions are.
>If grid scale batteries ever become a viable thing and cheaper than nuclear then that’s just great
Ok. So, what if that already happened?
>In the meantime however
The meantime is past. Arguably it lasted until latest 2020 which was the last time grid scale batteries were expensive. 2014 was the last time solar or wind were expensive.
Meanwhile, if you tried to commission a new nuclear plant now it wouldnt be running until 2030 earliest and possibly later (hinkley point C will take 20 years).
A new battery/wind/solar farm usually takes a year and theyre still plunging in price.
If that already happened then that's great. It's the first I'm hearing about it but I don't work in the sector so that's fair.
Nevertheless nuclear energy is a steady and reliable source of large amounts of energy, just like coal and oil.
By having a few of those, the grid operator can greatly decrease their need for grid-scale batteries, thus enabling more grids to deploy them faster, paving the way for more solar/wind.
This is not a competition between renewables and nuclear. They aren't enemies.
CO2 is the enemy, we must focus on that.
Point well taken about how long the nuclear projects take, that's why natural gas a bridge is important.
I want purely renewable energy just as much as you but I'm highly skeptical that it is possible or even desirable to build out all the capacity we need in just solar/wind/hydro in the short amount of time we have. Everything that helps, helps. Until the point where it doesn't and then that's the time to address that.
>This is not a competition between renewables and nuclear. They aren't enemies.
They kind of are. They are competing for limited investment and they are not complementary.
Nuclear power is not a "battery". It's an extraordinarily expensive way to produce a fixed amount of power whether it's needed or not.
You trade ~20% extra reliability for 3x the cost.
>I'm highly skeptical that it is possible or even desirable to build out all the capacity we need in just solar/wind/hydro in the short amount of time we have
Nothing can do it in the short amount of time that we have to save us from 2C.
Diverting limited resources to nuclear won't speed the transition up though, it'll slow it down.
I guess we just disagree then. I think we have plenty of resources to do both.
Government might better focus on clamping down on frivolous waste of resources such as cryptos (both waste of hardware, energy and most valuably talent).
>Is it cheaper than demand shaping/wind/solar/grid-scale batteries though? That's the real question.
Hmm, I think one should also add other factors.
Space Requirements for Wind and solar. To generate the same amount of energy as a nuclear power plant a lot of space is needed for Wind and Solar.
Resources to Produce Batteries, Solar Panels and Wind mills. Battery production requires a fuck ton of water. With impeding Water shortages this is suboptimal.
How many Solar Panels and Wind mills can we produce daily?
Not just construction and installation on site, but also mineral mining for the Solar panels.
And then how many factories can produce these, and can that be scaled up?
How many construction workers are there and how many on site installation can be completed.
We need 1200 wind turbines to replace an 30year old nuclear power plant. Windturbine = 3mW, Nuclear power plant = 1.2GW
Just to cover our current demand of electrical energy we need a ton of wind turbines and solar panels. Than add to that every other industry that needs to switch to electricity, Transportation, Chemical Industry, Steel Industry, heating etc. This would quintuple our electrical energy consumption.
>We need 1200 wind turbines to replace an 30year old nuclear power plant. Windturbine = 3mW, Nuclear power plant = 1.2GW
Hornsea two provides as much as a nuclear plant, with vastly lower cost and built about 15x faster. It's 165 x 8 MW turbines.
It was planned, executed, built and brought online before Hinkley point C even laid the first brick at ~45% of the cost and a load factor of about 65% (to nuclears 80) due to the greater reliability of wind with large turbines.
> Its main advantage is that it can mitigate some of the costs of maintaining a nuclear arsenal
With such arguments, there really is no point having a discussion. You know that's not the advantages I was referring to (since they're in the very next sentence you're quoting) and you're ignoring that completely.
I bring it up because while it looms large in the minds of policymakers and is a large factor in their decision-making it almost never gets discussed in the media.
The question of who insures nuclear plants (always taxpayers) is likewise something else that is always curiously whitewashed out of American media.
Most of the advantages other than the nuclear arsenal one, on the other hand, are repeated frequently and are very well known.
> What Germany did was very quickly turn off all nuclear power plants without any plans on replacing them with sustainable alternatives.
This is not quite correct.
The first decision to phase-out nuclear was made around the year 2000 [1]. Its initial date for the shutdown of the last nuclear reactor was set to be 2022. The plan was agreed upon by the owners of these plans.
Around 2010, this first decision was taken back, and a few months later, Fukushima happened. This led to the second decision to phase-out nuclear.
Only then, eight of 17 reactors were turned off quickly. But this had no major impact, because the switch to renewables was already under way for ten years.
Compare Germany's coal consumption after Fukushima with Japan's, and you'll noticed the difference.
Which will increase the pressure upon Gas demand at a time that is probably one of the worst for a long time, let alone the usual winter pressure.
Shame nuclear didn't get that green EU label years ago when, as France could of green lit it's updated nuclear plant program instead of stagnating in limbo at a time in which many of their existing plants are entering end of life and with current timescales, would at best see a few pushed past that or some serious shortfalls in energy production.
As for Germany building new plants, with the public opinion, I would suspect that Germany's nuclear production is something they are happy to offshore to France and buy in that green energy cheaply without any of the political fallout/protests on it's doorstep.
This is about investing and creating incentives. So IMHO Germany shouldn't build new plants and France shouldn't get EU funding for their existing ones and everyone, but especially these wealthy countries should focus on truly sustainable energy.
Every euro spend on a "transitional" does not go towards the truly sustainable technologies.