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Nuclear power output expected to break global records in 2025 (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

23 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Experts say world is ‘past peak fossil power’ but warn against uneven development of energy projects

Nuclear power generation is likely to break records in 2025 as more countries invest in reactors to fuel the shift to a low-carbon global economy, while renewable energy is likely to overtake coal as a power source early next year, data has shown.

China, India, Korea and Europe are likely to have new reactors come on stream, while several in Japan are also forecast to return to generation, and French output should increase, according to a report on the state of global electricity markets published by the International Energy Agency (IEA) on Wednesday.

Electricity demand is also expected to increase around the world, fuelled largely by the move to a low-carbon economy. Electric vehicles and heat pumps, as well as many low-carbon industrial processes, require electricity rather than oil and gas.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Let's hope they don't cut investment in low carbon renewables and actually slash fossil fuels investments with this.
Nuclear and low carbon renewables should be the preferred mix for the foreseeable future.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Yeah, I'm sure that's exactly how it'll go.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

how anyone can take the IEA predictions seriously is beyond me:

https://twitter.com/AukeHoekstra/status/1064529619951513600

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

FINALLY!!!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

Nice to hear some good news for a change. If energy usage must increase best that it be green energy.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Let's gooooo!

[+] [email protected] -7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Fantastic. Let's sink more money into white elephants rather than investing in stuff that's actually economical.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Nuclear can be very economical.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (2 children)

No it can't. Have you looked at any current project? They're all wildly over budget. And none of those calculations even consider decommissioning or nuclear waste storage. Both are endless money pits that are usually paid for by the public. You cannot even put a price tag on nuclear storage because it's never been done before and it needs to be operated beyond the horizon of any reasonable accounting practice. We're effectively saddling future generations with our crap.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

And yet, EDF has built the current french nuclear reactor fleet without any subsidies, and made billions of euros of net profit every year for decades, excepted in 2022. It is feasible. Current failures are not inherently tied to the nuclear technology. It's political.

You cannot even put a price tag on nuclear storage because it's never been done before

Plain false. Cigéo will work for 100 years for about 25 billions of euros. That's dirt cheap. And you now why it's dirt cheap? Because the entire high level radioactive waste produced by a country like France for 60 years fit in a 16 meters wide cube. And most of it will be re-used in future EPRs.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Wikipedia:

On 17 January 2023, Andra submitted the application for authorisation to create the Cigéo site to the Ministry of Energy Transition. The Nuclear Safety Authority has five years to examine the file and decide whether or not to authorise the creation of the site.

So maybe they'll start building this thing in five years. OK. And we all know projects like this always come in in time and in budget, right? The problem of nuclear waste storage constantly gets handwaved away by the fanboys but we're nowhere near any kind of solution.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

This cube contains 98% of the radioactivity in all French nuclear waste, produced over 60 years.

90+% of it can be re-used in the future EPRs and 4th gen reactors, and transformed to low-level waste which are way less radioactive.
The most radioactive waste are those which deplete the fastest. You don't have to store those ones for millions of years, we're talking about decades or 2-3 centuries at most.
It's sealed and not going anywhere and it can definitely wait years, even decades, for something like Cigéo to be built.

Stop pretending it's some kind of unsolvable problem, nuclear engineers have solved it decades ago, it's just anti-nuclear folks that oppose all solutions provided.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

90+% of it can be re-used in the future EPRs and 4th gen reactors, and transformed to low-level waste which are way less radioactive.

None of this stuff exists and there is no timeline as when it might be made into reality. Just another pipe dream.

The most radioactive waste are those which deplete the fastest. You don’t have to store those ones for millions of years, we’re talking about decades or 2-3 centuries at most.

So how are you going to separate out the technetium? Just because something is doable in a lab, doesn't mean it's doable on an industrial scale.

It’s sealed and not going anywhere and it can definitely wait years, even decades, for something like Cigéo to be built.

Yeah, let's let the future generations sort it out. At the same time, let's work at bringing down civilisation. What could go wrong?

Stop pretending it’s some kind of unsolvable problem, nuclear engineers have solved it decades ago,

No they haven't. Not at all. You obviously have no clue what you're talking about.

it’s just anti-nuclear folks that oppose all solutions provided.

Yeah yeah yeah, same old bullshit. The reality is that this stuff just doesn't work economically.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

None of this stuff exists and there is no timeline as when it might be made into reality. Just another pipe dream.

Super-Phénix was a fully-working prototype cancelled by anti-nuclears. It produced and pushed 3TWh in the French national electricity network back in 1996 before being shut down. And there are built and working EPR in the world right, you're just denying reality at this point.

So how are you going to separate out the technetium? Just because something is doable in a lab, doesn't mean it's doable on an industrial scale.

Technetium is literally extracted from nuclear waste to be used in numerous medical field, such as marking cancerous cells in bodies. You're throwing random terms trying to find some point here.

No they haven't. Not at all. You obviously have no clue what you're talking about.

See? Another anti-nuclear shill that denies the reality. Most geologists and nuclear scientists have agreed on a solution for years : they're just so little to bury, it's so easy to contain, just bury it in an inert ground and it will not move for millions of years.

We're literally finding millions-years old unprotected fossils of dinosaurs that are almost intact. Nuclear waste will be sealed in containers which are made for this.

We're finding gigantic pools of gas and liquid that stayed in the same place for millions of years. Nuclear waste will be either solid or liquid, so it is way easier to contain than gas, and sealed in containers.

Even if the containers break for some reason, the solid waste will just no move, and radiation can be stopped by a few centimeters of water. The liquid waste would not move either, but let's say it moves for some magical reason, then there is only one way it would move : down. There is gravity and pressure, you know.

Yeah yeah yeah, same old bullshit. The reality is that this stuff just doesn't work economically.

130 billions of euros for 60 years of french nuclear, everything included. EDF net profit is averaging billions every year. 10 billions of euros in the first semester of 2023 alone. And that's with ARENH, which forces EDF to sell at loss 25% of its nuclear electricity to its competitors.

Nuclear can be economical and profitable, when you don't perpetually throw wrenches in the works.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

We should rather build more coal plants to fill in what renewables can't right?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I suppose you're talking about base load? That tired old myth has been debunked so many times, yet it gets rolled out every single time these discussions come up. Maybe come up with some new "argument"? Oh right, you don't have any.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yes, because that's what I said. I said we need to keep a minimum demand to keep the stations going...

You people are insufferable. When we have battery systems that are efficient enough to store enough power to keep things running when there's not enough window or solar generation for a period, then it'll be fine. You know that there are a lot of industries that run 24/7, for instance the infrastructure you're seeing this message on.. That has nothing to do with base load and everything to do with constant power draw..

Why don't you set yourself up with some solar and wind, but make sure not to use any batteries though, and get off the grid, then you can be a renewables puritan and lord over everyone else like you're better than them.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Did you even read the article I linked to? Or make any effort at all to get informed? And yes, we're going to have to build a whole lot of more storage. And grid capacity. And grid management. And load management. All of which are drastically easier, safer and cheaper than building a lot of nuclear plants. Even if it was feasible to do so which it very patently isn't. Nuclear power doesn't scale, as Hinkley Point, Olkiluotto etc. have proven beyond a shadow of doubt.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Nuclear is expensive because when particulate pollution kills millions of people every year, nobody cares at all. But when a nuclear accident kills exactly zero people, we get massive levels of hysteria and shut down a dozen nuclear power plants on the other side of the planet.

Imagine the reaction if there was a single nuclear disaster that killed 9 million people. According to greenpeace that'd be 9 chernobyls, but more likely it would be between 100 and 1000 chernobyls. Do you think people might be a bit upset about that? But with fossil fuels that is now happening every single year, and it's probably just going to get worse. (CO2 emissions are just getting higher every year despite all the growth in renewables) And you get a few news headlines about it and then everyone forgets. Weirdly enough climate change caused by the same fossil fuels gets far more attention, even though those effects are even harder for the average person to understand.

And even with this level of paranoia about nuclear, with the incredible level of security put in with gen 3 reactors that directly contribute to the massive cost and time overruns, we still have these "nuclear is not safe enough" claims flying around.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Nuclear is expensive because when particulate pollution kills millions of people every year, nobody cares at all. But when a nuclear accident kills exactly zero people, we get massive levels of hysteria and shut down a dozen nuclear power plants on the other side of the planet.

That's the dumbest take I've ever heard on this topic and that's saying a lot. And how do you know how many people were killed by the Fukushima triple meltdown that is in no way contained and has displaced tens of thousands of people permanently? The answer is we don't know because the Japanese government has systematically suppressed any reliable information from coḿing out. Which just goes to show that nuclear power is a danger to democracy on top of all its other drawbacks.

And who ever said the alternative to building nuclear plants is building more fossil fuel generation capacity? That's just delusional. Nobody is doing that, in fact fossil ist very quickly being replaced by renewable at a pace nuclear could in no realistic scenario get even remotely close to.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

That’s the dumbest take I’ve ever heard on this topic and that’s saying a lot

So which part is wrong? Does pollution not kill millions of people each year? Is shutting down reactors on the other side of the planet a smart move when the causes of one disaster are completely inapplicable to them? Are both of these responses reasonable and proportional?

And how do you know how many people were killed by the Fukushima triple meltdown that is in no way contained and has displaced tens of thousands of people permanently? The answer is we don’t know because the Japanese government has systematically suppressed any reliable information from coḿing out. Which just goes to show that nuclear power is a danger to democracy on top of all its other drawbacks.

you're sounding like a conspiracy theorist. I don't think japan has a police state that is in the habit of suppressing all information. I'll admit zero deaths is hyperbole for fukushima. There were probably a few deaths directly caused by, it, maybe a few dozen (at most, and totally unproven) from long-term health effects, and many deaths from the (unnecessary in hindsight) rapid evacuation. They still pale in comparison to the 19 thousand deaths from the tsunami that caused the disaster.

Which just goes to show that nuclear power is a danger to democracy on top of all its other drawbacks

Certainly not an enormous leap in logic at all. No sir. It's just that the deadly nuclear radiation spontaneously causes the death of liberty. Russia only covers up their nuclear accidents (on those RBMK reactors they are still running) because of nuclear power, certainly not because of the way their society structured.

And who ever said the alternative to building nuclear plants is building more fossil fuel generation capacity?

You just said that. Nobody else said that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

you’re sounding like a conspiracy theorist.

Like CBS?

or the New York Times?

or Mainichi?

I could go on. This is public knowledge. But there's no point trying to argue with the willfully ignorant. I'll leave it at that.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Did you even read your own articles?

CBS:

its delayed disclosure of the meltdowns at three reactorswas tantamount to a cover-up

NYT:

Culture of Complicity Tied to Stricken Nuclear Plant

Mainichi:

then TEPCO president Masataka Shimizu had ordered the company not to use the term "meltdown" to describe what had occurred

None of these support anything close to the kind of cover up needed to result in a "nobody can know how many people died" level of lack of information. They're mostly about failing to report the disaster fast enough and downplaying it by using certain wording and having a lax security culture. Not about the government preventing investigations or giving gag orders or something like that.