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Had They Bet on Nuclear, Germany and CA Would Already Have 100% Clean Power
- l24ztj 8y agoClean if we ignore radioactive waste, that is.
- frozenport 8y agoMeh. All tech produces waste. Radioactive waste is small, compact and isn't released into the environment. Solar panels produce 300x more waste than nuclear. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/23/solar-panel-waste-a-disposal-problem/ https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/23/solar-panel-waste-a-d...
- jdc 8y agoAnd if the "Last Week Tonight" (John Oliver) episode is any indication, nuclear waste disposal is not a job the US has been handling well.
- martin_a 8y agoDidn't watch that, but here in Germany we just dump nuclear waste into old salt domes and hope for the best. We can't even recover the waste from there because it sometimes was literally just thrown down there. One can just hope that will never lead to any problems.
- T2_t2 8y agoAs opposed to wind and solar? Let alone batteries, that use extremely toxic chemicals. What we do with waste is a key ingredient to any power source, and the plan with old batteries, solar panels and wind turbines is no better than nuclear. There is no free lunch, only competing ideas with different sets of problems and difficulties.
- woah 8y agoHow is disposing of wind turbines and solar panels any different from disposing of any other silicon and aluminum machines?
- mhalle 8y agoThere doesn't seem to be a great answer regarding recycling or disposing of composite wind turbine blades: https://www.windpowerengineering.com/mechanical/blades/recycling-wind-turbine-blades/ https://www.windpowerengineering.com/mechanical/blades/recyc...
- solarkraft 8y agoAs opposed to composite planes or car frames?
- Fjolsvith 8y agoSize? Seems to me you would need to unearth a massive landfill to put the wind turbine blades and towers in.
- waddlesworth 8y agoRadioactive waste is a problem, but I don't think it's worse than the effects of climate change. It may not be perfect, but Nuclear solves a lot of problems.
- petre 8y agoHere, educate yourself about nuclear waste: https://youtu.be/Q3EGOL4J6yI https://youtu.be/Q3EGOL4J6yI
- credit_guy 8y agoSome people ignore nuclear waste, but then some other people ignore nuclear waste solutions. Here's the scale of the nuclear waste problem, from wikipedia [1] "High-level radioactive waste is stored for 10 or 20 years in spent fuel pools, and then can be put in dry cask storage facilities. In 1997, in the 20 countries which account for most of the world's nuclear power generation, spent fuel storage capacity at the reactors was 148,000 tonnes, with 59% of this utilized. Away-from-reactor storage capacity was 78,000 tonnes, with 44% utilized. With annual additions of about 12,000 tonnes, issues for final disposal are not urgent." Urgent or not, what final disposal options are there? Reprocessing is one. The "La Hague" plant in France [2] reprocesses about 1000t of spent nuclear fuel per year, and a capacity of 1700t. If only the US had the political will to restart nuclear fuel reprocessing... Commercial reprocessing was suspended in 1976, then banned in 1977 (for fears of nuclear proliferation), then the ban was lifted in 1981, but it never took off. [3] Another solution is to use breader-reactors, which have a much higher efficiency that regular nuclear reactors, and so produce much less waste. Russia already has some, such as the BN-800 [4]. The design that Bill Gates invested in, Terra Power [5] is an advanced design of this type. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-level_waste#Disposal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-level_waste#Disposal [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Hague_site https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Hague_site [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing#History [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-800_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-800_reactor [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraPower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraPower
- rad_gruchalski 8y agoI would suggest to the people from Forbes to read up on Tihange to figure out why Germans may have a problem with nuclear.
- rukittenme 8y agoCan you help? I read the wiki[0] but I don't understand the concern. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tihange_Nuclear_Power_Station#Incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tihange_Nuclear_Power_Station#...
- rad_gruchalski 8y agoHave a look here: https://www.diggitmagazine.com/papers/stop-tihange-and-doel-activism-streets-and-social-media https://www.diggitmagazine.com/papers/stop-tihange-and-doel-... To expand on my previous point. A nuclear power plant has to be maintained by humans. Humans make mistakes. Accidents will happen. Also, these plants at some point will get old. What can they be replaced with? This is exactly why Belgium can’t shut Tihange down. What is the alternative for them, coal from Hambacher Forst?
- m0zg 8y agoShutting down a nuclear plant "to protect the environment" is like clubbing baby seals to protect the animals. Doesn't make any sense. A properly functional nuclear power plant _does not produce any emissions_, produces electricity 24x7x365, lots of it, and does so for decades on end. The best alternative for them is a modern nuclear plant, built right next to the old one. Which the "activists" won't let them build.
- dewey 8y agoLast time I checked the final storage of nuclear waste is not solved yet. In Germany they store it in old salt mines that are in a very bad state for years already.
- openloop 8y agoHad Fukushima Colorado happened. Oh wait plutonium.
- simonblack 8y agoNot so. There are three phases in the life of a nuclear power station: Construction, operation and disposal. The construction phase is relatively expensive and clean. The operation phase is cheap and clean. This phase is what most people think of when they look at the benefits of nuclear power. The dismantlement and disposal phase of a nuclear power station is marked by horrifically expensive and horrifically 'dirty' problems. The words 'Chernobyl' and 'Fukushima' spring readily to mind here, in looking at 'worst-case' scenarios.
- ars 8y agoIf EVERY reactor ended its life like Fukushima it would still cause less death than what we are doing now. Bring on the "dirty" problems! They are better than anything else we have right now.
- solarkraft 8y agoSolar panels are just so deadly.
- ars 8y agoThey are 4,400 times as deadly as US Nuclear. And approximately 3 times as deadly as wind. Way better than coal, but they still kill far more people than the best option: Nuclear. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents
- jhayward 8y agoYet another Michael Shellenberger column in Forbes. Folks, it's not worth going through the cherry-picking, misrepresentation, and outright fabrication of Shellenberger and his "Environmental Progress" sham organization. It has been said that it takes 10 times more energy to refute BS than it does to create it. Unfortunately, this author's purpose is to exploit this fact.
- TheOtherHobbes 8y agoIndeed. And consider an alternative view: if all of the money spent on nuclear had been invested in renewables instead, we would have had clean power a decade or two ago.
- ftr45 8y agono
- craftinator 8y agoJust take a look at the energy densities of "renewables" vs nuclear power. I wrote a paper last year comparing the output of the entire fleet of US wind turbines (onshore and offshore) to the output of the US's least productive nuclear powerplant. Over the course of a year, the powerplant produced 20% more energy, at a total cost of 90% less $, than all of US wind turbines combined. Just let those figures settle in your mind a little...
- jhayward 8y agoIf you have an example of nuclear providing power at a cost 90% below wind, which is generally the lowest cost provider in the US please supply a link and support the implied claim that this is somehow representative of the industry and not cherry-picked. As to the other claim you make, a quick look says that the R. E. Ginna Nuclear Power Plant in NY is the lowest productivity (i.e., provides the fewest MWH per year) plant in the US at around 6 GWH. In Texas alone wind produced 9 GWH (2017).
- AckSyn 8y ago
- woodandsteel 8y ago"Had California and Germany invested $680 billion into new nuclear power plants instead of renewables like solar and wind farms" This implies California and Germany have spent $680 billion on renewables.
- javagram 8y agoThe linked article states "In pursuing the Energiewende, Germany will have invested $580 billion in renewable energy and storage by 2025. " presumably the other 100 billion comes from California.
- Zigurd 8y ago30 years ago, wind and solar were pipe dreams. Now they are the cheapest AND cleanest forms of power generation. Nuclear had a chance, and blew it. They still can't be built on time and within budget. The waste is still not stored safely. The disasters are still hugely costly to remedy. Maybe some new generation of fuel and reactors can change that. But there is no prototype yet that proves that out.
- rakoo 8y agoNuclear is almost the cleanest electricity source, second only to hydro. If you're going to count intermittent sources (aka pv and wind) then take into account that we want reliable current flowing through the outlet, not just when the wind blows or the sun shines. Either you factor in batteries (which also need to be built, typically in acountry that uses a lot of fossil fuel for electricity), or you supplement it with something that has the flexibility you want, and that's gas. Nuclear waste is stored safely, the myth that "we don't know what to do with waste" needs to die ASAP. Do you know what electricity source has no strategy for storing waste at all? Fossil fuels and intermittent energies. There were designs for new types of reactors. The prototypes were working. Unfortunately it was cancelled because environmentalists are too blind to see the priority in problems.
- anoncake 8y agoWe dont need batteries. We need energy storage. Other ways of storing energy are not nearly as space-efficient, but that does not matter here. We also dont strictly need power to be 100% reliable. Throttling down industrial production is preferable to 1000s of square kilometres being made uninhabitable by nuclear power.
- rakoo 8y agoIt absolutely matters if we're talking about useful scales, ie delivering hundreds of MWs over days. Otherwise it's just a pet project with no chance to ever replace fossil fuel. And yes, we do need power to be reliable. We need to power infrastructure that runs 24/7 (not everything is industrial production). Nuclear is definitely the best clean energy in terms of land use, for the same area you'll be producing much more electricity.
- ftr45 8y agoit's pretty obvious ,nuclear is the only avaible solution to climate change, renewables are not
- solarkraft 8y agoHad we bet on nuclear we would now have nuclear, not clean power. Nuclear shills, along with hydrogen shills, are incredibly embarassing.