Germany spent something like a trillion euro on renewables and still produces much more CO2 per capita per year than France who spent 200 billion on nuclear (and whose nuclear industry is forced to bail out competitors now)
One would think "green" movements (greenpeace, and modern green parties) have been infiltrated by coal/oil/gas lobbies as so far the only winner out of no nuclear yes wind policy is Vladimir Putin and not the environment
And a large part of why it's cheaper is because Germany spent so much, driving the costs down the production learning curve. The whole world, including Germany, will benefit tremendously from that spending.
I am perplex. Solar energy for example don't take into account the cost of renewal of the panel (every 20-30 year) and the cost of recycling / storing the toxic photovoltaic liquid [1]. The IRENA projects[2] they can fully recycle this toxic waste and recreate value from it, which is bold imo.
Much of the reason nuclear got more expensive is that there's been such a big dip in construction. Lessons are having to be relearned and we're paying for it. That and so many politicians and contractors getting away with being leeches whilst dragging out projects in some countries. Comparisons of construction projects of the same design in china vs europe would make one cry.
Also much of the price reduction for renewables are in things like solar which has other issues like it's shorter lifespan paired with it's recycling being basically a joke/scam.
Additionally if you throw a solar panel or windmill in the trash before it's proper and well done the cost of it's energy in the calculation goes up just the same.
Solar recycling is still rudimentary because the vast majority of PV modules that have ever been produced are still in use. The doubling time of the exponential growth of solar has been much less than the lifespan of PV modules.
The shorter lifespan of PV is actually a good thing for solar. In an environment where technology is changing rapidly, long lifespan has little value. Would you think it's a huge negative if your PC fails after 20 years instead of 40? No, because you replace it before then anyway. Pretending that nuclear is better because its value is computed based on a 40 year lifespan is just pretending that its competitors will stop improving (otherwise, the nuclear plant won't even make it to 40 years due to operating costs > full cost of renewables.)
>Solar recycling is still rudimentary because the vast majority of PV modules that have ever been produced are still in use.
The problems with it's recycling are a bit more inherent than that.
>The shorter lifespan of PV is actually a good thing for solar.
It's downright silly to say that PV degrading is good for it. The improvements don't stop because they have to be replaced quicker. More people would adopt it if they lasted longer since the ROI is higher, etc
I might replace my pc in less than a decade but I'm not jumping to get on a roof again and invest 10's of thousands of euros.
It's good because it means there's another cost decline for PV that will occur even after the manufacturing cost per watt stops declining: simply make the modules last longer. Nuclear has already shot its wad on that one.
It also means PV is less at risk right now from obsolesence. The shorter the time span needed to justify a PV installation, the less motivation there is to delay and wait for better technology.
Given that it still ends up the best from a cost perspective (solar doesn't come close) if extended marginally i wouldn't say so.
There is one core difference. Those extensions, investments and even proper use need political will given the size and scope of such projects. Those politicianse are subject to stupidity and lobbying. Hell the US bans fuel rod recycling at the behest of oil and gas companies to give one such example.
You've been posting comments that get flagged, then deleting and reposting them many times—in one case, over a dozen times! That's abusive, and we ban accounts that do that sort of thing, so if you'd please stop doing it, we'd appreciate it.
Also, if you could please stop posting flamewar comments in the first place, that would be good, because it's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
From my point of view, it's not about a competition between nuclear and solar/wind/etc.
It's about the choices that led to shutting down nuclear instead of coal, oil and the green-lighting of gas projects.
If we were serious about our co2 predicament the conservation and refurbishment of nuclear capacity would be as high as a priority as taking fossil fuel plants offline.
And then after electricity production related emissions has dropped to virtually zero we could have a great discussion on how to go forward.
Not modern. Greenpeace was founded 50 years ago with an anti-nuclear agenda. They call themselves "green" because a wolf wouldn't dress up as a wolf, but rather a sheep.
Pretty sure they started out being opposed to live nuclear weapons testing. Not sure what there exact position is currently, but calling them wolves seems unfair.
I disagree. Their influence on policy has directly benefitted the fossil fuel industry and worsened the climate crisis. History will remember them for what they are.
I got 3 messages from 3 recruiters this morning on linkedin for a (wellknown) company i interviewed for few years back.
I politely replied to each that, I interviewed, thought it went quite well and then got ghosted (never heard anything, zero), hence not going thru that again. Besides current job pays more and is interesting
I think its important to sepate Java the language from JVM runtime
Likes of Kotlin (and controversially Scala) do quite well on it and solve many of the ugly deficiencies of Java
Its also probably important to separate latest Java (which is improving) from enterprise Java out there which usually feels like an archeology dig with decades of boilerplate and rubbish and terrible code
Currently in an enteprise java team and hate my life and regreting moving away from Kotlin+Springboot team.
It also got me interested in the 30 years war which i didnt realise was possibly even bloodier period than WW1 and 2 in europe for the populations impacted.
He has another series in same premise with a modern cruise ship going back to ancient greek times, not as good as this series tho'.
if anyone else has any other recommendations in same genre of time travel and re-booting up civilisation it be great to hear! I always found the genre interesting since Jules Verne's Mysterious Island https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32831.The_Mysterious_Isl...
The short story "The Man Who Came Early" by Poul Anderson touches on that theme as well. A soldier is transported back to Iceland of about the year 900 AD.
David Drake wrote a sort of prequel to "Lest Darkness Fall" called "To Bring the Light", with an imperial Roman woman transported back to the founding of Rome. Drake's personal experiences increase the realism of his writing, IMO.
He also wrote "Ranks of Bronze" which is sort of the reverse idea, a Roman Legion kidnapped by aliens for preindustrial warfare. Absolutely worth a read, and an interesting counterpoint to most of the 'bringing civilization to the barbarians' narrative these stories normally follow.
H. Beam Piper did a bunch too, check out "Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen" if you can find it.
Yes, Stirling's Nantucket series is a good example. Loosely also his Emberverse (basically the flip side of the Nantucket series) although I lost interest as I often do with long-running series. Lucifer's Hammer by Niven and Pournelle. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is probably the classic of the genre (Mark Twain).
Most of these books are probably overly optimistic about what one or a small group of smart people who just happen to have to right skill sets could accomplish in such a situation with very limited supply chains.
Flint was involved in the Belisarius series (along with David Drake), and Safehold is basically Weber's "reboot" of one of the books in his "Armageddon Moon" series.
If you liked 1632 you will probably like these as they're in a similar vein
Part of the idea is that the producer and consumer of the energy are on opposite hemispheres and at different longitudes. That means when its winter in China, it is going to be summer in Chile. There is also a considerable time difference between the places which helps to supply electric energy via solar power even while it is night in China.
Honestly it's kinda brilliant. With a big enough global network of overbuilt solar capacity you would avoid the problems of the duck curve and weather limitations.
It was hard to build a DC network in 1900. It's easy today with modern power electronics, which Nikola Tesla didn't have. In fact building a DC network is somewhat easier than AC now because phase-matching is unnecessary.
Summary: DC is always a bit more efficient than AC. The reason our grid is AC is because high voltage transmission is much more efficient than low voltage transmission.* But you don't want multi-thousand volt feeds coming into your house, so voltage conversion is necessary. If you don't have power electronics, you have to use magnetic transformers to convert between voltages, and magnetic transformers only work on AC. Thus our electric grid is mostly AC.
Now that we have power electronics we can convert voltages without magnetic transformers, and AC is no longer a requirement except for backward compatibility.
Presumably it would be very useful to China to be able to buy power during their night time. It might also be beneficial to Chile to be able to buy power from China when the situation is reversed. Better interconnections mean you can get more benefit from cheap solar and don't have to rely on batteries.
> I was immediately thinking about early morning in Asia, still dark outside, everybody puts the kettle on.
In the UK they actually have to plan for grid demand to skyrocket during ad breaks in certain TV shows because half the country puts the kettle on at the same time! In one episode of EastEnders, demand grew by 2290MW, nearly twice as large as any single UK nuclear reactor.
The UK have 3000W kettles whereas in North America is stuck with 1500W kettles.
Many kitchens in North America have 20A outlets, which should at least let us use 2000W kettles. Why won't anybody sell me a 115V/16A kettle with a NEMA 5-20 connector?
Thats like saying America is not United States, we know that :)
While geographically correct of course, politically and economically USA with its 50 states is the center of gravity in North America
just like like EU with its 27 states is center of gravity in Europe
One would think "green" movements (greenpeace, and modern green parties) have been infiltrated by coal/oil/gas lobbies as so far the only winner out of no nuclear yes wind policy is Vladimir Putin and not the environment