this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
209 points (94.5% liked)

World News

32327 readers
833 users here now

News from around the world!

Rules:

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Nuclear capacity is expected to rise by 14% by 2030 and surge by 76% to 686 GWe by 2040, the report said

This is only good news if it displaces thermal coal and gas generating stations.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (12 children)

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’ve been told “it’s not possible to have all power from renewable sources”, you have been a victim of disinformation from the fossil fuel industry. 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.

This is all with current, modern day technology, not with some far-off dream or potential future tech such as nuclear fusion, thorium reactors or breeder reactors.

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 capable of being scaled down on demand to meet changes in energy demands

Nuclear power has promise as a future technology. But at present, while I’m all in favour of keeping the ones we have until the end of their useful life, building new nuclear power stations 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 building nuclear power plants should be spent on renewables instead.

Frequently asked questions:

  • But it’s not always sunny or windy, how can we deal with that?

While a given spot in your country is going to have periods where it’s not sunny or rainy, with a mixture of energy distribution (modern interconnectors can transmit 800kV or more over 800km or more with less than 3% loss) non-electrical storage such as pumped storage, and diversified renewable sources, this problem is completely mitigated - we can generate wind, solar or hydro power over 2,000km away from where it is consumed for cheaper than we could generate nuclear electricity 20km away.

  • Don’t renewables take up too much space?

The United States has enough land paved over for parking spaces to have 8 spaces per car - 5% of the land. If just 10% of that space was used to generate solar electricity - a mere 0.5% - that would generate enough solar power to provide electricity to the entire country. By comparison, around 50% of the land is agricultural. The amount of land used by renewable sources is not a real problem, it’s an argument used by the very wealthy pro-nuclear lobby to justify the huge amounts of funding that they currently receive.

  • Isn’t Nuclear power cleaner than renewables?

No, it’s dirtier. You can look up total lifetime emissions for nuclear vs. renewables - this is the aggregated and equalised environmental harm caused per kWh for each energy source. It takes into account the energy used to extract raw materials, build the power plant, operate the plant, maintenance, the fuels needed to sustain it, the transport needed to service it, and so on. These numbers always show nuclear as more environmentally harmful than renewables.

  • We need a baseline load, though, and that can only be nuclear or fossil fuels.

Not according to industry experts - the majority of studies show that a 100% renewable source of energy across all industries for all needs - electricity, heating, transport, and industry - is completely possible with current technology and is economically viable. If you disagree, don’t argue with me, take it up with the IEC. Here’s a Wikipedia article that you can use as a baseline for more information: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Most renewables aren't effective 100% of the time. Solar only works during the day, wind generation only works when there is wind available. Both of these aren't viable in every location on the planet and both are highly variable. Geothermal and Hydropower are both extremely location dependent, and will not work in 99% of locations.

The issue with renewables is and has always been base load generation. Solar, wind, etc. are great when they are viable, but base load that is available and can be adjusted up or down as necessary at any point in time is something they cannot do. The energy storage requirements for highly variable renewables like that are not viable with current storage technologies.

Base load is where things like coal and natural gas work extremely well, with renewables reducing load when they're available. Nuclear should be viewed as a safer and more environmentally friendly base load replacement, not something to replace renewable technologies like solar or wind.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Modern geothermal plants are much more versatile and can be used basically anywhere.

With a mixture of energy distribution (modern interconnectors can transmit 800kV or more over 800km or more with less than 3% loss) non-electrical storage such as pumped storage, and diversified renewable sources, this problem is completely mitigated - we can generate wind, solar or hydro power over 2,000km away from where it is consumed for cheaper than we could generate nuclear electricity 20km away.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Climate varies from year to year. Just in the recent years there are variation of 25% on the scale of the whole Europe. With climate change it'll probably get worse. And load balancing on the scale of a continent has never been done without nuclear and fossile.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What’s your point? If the sun stops shining everywhere for a year we’re all fucked anyways. If the wind stops blowing it’s because the sun has died. And if water decides to suddenly start disobeying the laws of physics then I think we will have bigger problems than turning on the TV.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

You're looking completely ridiculous there. There are clouds in the sky and wind. These do affect solar and wind production. And these do vary from one year to another. The distribution of solar exposition or wind is not a constant, even on a continent scale.

This means you need to account for variations from one year to another. Which means you need incredibly large quantities of storage (probably not feasible), or incredibly oversized production capacity (not feasible either).

When antinuke people complain that nuclear lost capacity last year, that's the same with solar and wind, but it's random for the renewables when it's technical planning that was poor for nuclear.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

We need to drastically increase the amount of renewables energy in the world, mainly solar and wind since hydroelectricity is already close to the maximum installed capacity.

I think everyone can agree to that.

The next question is how much and what do we need around it to power a whole country with a minimum of CO2 emissions.

I know about 6 scenarios that has been done for France, if anyone knows about similar scenarios for other countries please share them.

All the scenarios include some degrees of flexibility in the consumption.

To be able to have a stable grid all the scenarios have to include battery storage and thermal production. Today thermal production in the world is mostly gas and coal that are terrible for climate but to have no emissions it will probably be biomass, biogas or hydrogen.

Including a bit of nuclear in the mix (13% nuclear/87% renewable) greatly help to stabilize the grid. This small amount of nuclear divides by 2 the amount of solar needed, divide by 2 the amount of battery storage and reduce by 30% the need for thermal power station compared to a scenario with 0% nuclear and 100% renewables.

There is other scenarios with more nuclear but it shows that nuclear can ease a bit the pressure on renewable energy.

In this case, to replace the last 13% (16GW) of nuclear in the mix we would need to install 90GW of solar + 9GW of thermal power + 13GW of battery.

It shows having a power grid fuelled with renewable energy will become exponentially difficult has it get close to 100%.

There is probably a good ratio between 50%-90% of renewables energy and nuclear energy can be a very good candidate for the rest.

https://rte-futursenergetiques2050.com/panorama/scenarios

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Most studies suggest that a 100% renewable source of our energy needs is completely viable. That should be our goal. It’s much easier and cheaper to aim for that - what benefit would nuclear give? It’s just much more expensive for all the downsides.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy

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

As I said in my comment, yes 100% renewable is possible but adding a bit of nuclear make it easier to achieve and cheaper.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

given that you are so confident of this can you explain how a 100% intermittant grid deals with a two week dunkleflaute? Im keen to know what the solution is given that storage to cover that for the uk currently (without electrifling transport or heating) would cost in excess of a trillion dollars.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Here are some sources. 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.

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

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. "

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The last paper is insane. France has one of the lowest co2 emission in the world because of nuclear. Meanwhile Germany and Spain have increased their emission despite insane investment in renewable.

As for average costs it's a farce. Renewable prices are negative sometimes because you produce loads of energy when you don't need it. If it wasn't for nuclear and fossile to produce energy when you need, there wouldn't even be a functioning power grid.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Coal, especially lignite being better for the environnement than nuclear is a very good joke.

I assume it's a good example of German humor.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

doesn't nuclear require less land than renewables?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Ofc. Looking at people who put solar panels on their roofs, it is enough for a household. Apartments use less power, but have much less roof per apartment. And industries use more power then households.

I think it's feasible (including electric cars), especially since we got hydro and stuff.

Real Engineering on youtube did calculations and such, so i recommend people to look there.

PS Funny how wind and hydro are just indirect solar.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

The United States has enough land paved over for parking spaces to have 8 spaces per car - 5% of the land. If just 10% of that space was used to generate solar electricity - a mere 0.5% - that would generate enough solar power to provide electricity to the entire country. By comparison, around 50% of the land is agricultural. The amount of land used by renewable sources is not a real problem, it’s an argument used by the very wealthy pro-nuclear lobby to justify the huge amounts of funding that they currently receive.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago
load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments (8 replies)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (10 children)

This is only good news if it displaces thermal coal and gas generating stations.

Is there another plausible scenario? Wind and solar are getting so cheap, that displacing either with nuclear is like flushing money down the toilet.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Wind and Solar aren't reliable, so you either need storage or a backup source to compensate when demand peaks above production from renewables.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Absolutely! The way I see it, grid energy storage is something we really need to improve dramatically.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, but there really aren't that many good options for it. Pumped Hydro is by far the best but limited by geography.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That’s what I thought until I watched this video.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I assume you mean the "limited by geograpghy" bit? It's a pretty good video overall, but the US and Australia aren't the best examples here. You guys have tons of space and a rather low population density. But large parts of Northern Europe we have some insanley densly populated areas and no site for pumped storage nearby.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah, that’s exactly it. Initially I thought it was pretty much impossible to find suitable locations any more, but apparently there are lots of sites left. Highly populated areas are obviously a lot more challenging. The point is that as opposed to having exactly zero locations, it seems that we do have some options here and there.

Update: here’s an interesting map for potential locations. If you’re in Paris, Berlin, Warsaw, Stockholm or other flat regions, you’re not going to see any pumped hydro any time soon. However mountains of Norway, Spain, France, Italy and Germany look a lot better in that regard.

Actually, Poland, Hungary, and England are probably the worst locations, but fortunately there are still many opportunities elsewhere in Europe.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Currently that backup/storage is mostly fossil fuels, so building nuclear would displace fossil fuels. As long as nuclear remains expensive, we will only build it because not emitting CO2 is socially valuable.

Nuclear would have to get a lot cheaper to eat wind/solar's lunch. Maybe that could happen someday, but it's not worth worrying about now.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

the other scenario is coal stays online to meet a growing demand...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Unfortunately, there is. Let’s think about the situation in China or India.

They already have plenty of coal power, and the need for energy keeps on growing. If they replace coal with nuclear, their energy production can grow that way, but it’s goin to re quire lots of investments. However, in a situation like that there’s little incentive to do so when you can just keep your coal power running and build more nuclear to meet the energy needs of the country.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Maybe if China had access to more oil they could switch to natural gas like the West did...

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago
load more comments
view more: next ›