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Except nuclear energy is the safest form of power: https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-fo

• natmaka 7y ago
  Once the last reactor decommissioned and the last nuke waste inert we may try to evaluate the impacts. Until them everything can happen, even the worst. As for Fukushima there are many hypothesis about the real impact until now, and even more for the future. Believing the effects are already fully known is at best 'weird'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa... Thinking that we can only replace fossil fuel with nuke is not even funny, as solar and wind soar. In Europe solar and wind already produce as much electricity than nuke plants, and sail around while nuke plants are shutting down. Storage is indeed a challenge, and the real choice is between our capacity to lower nuke-induced risk (waste, disasters...), which seems low after decades of efforts, and on the other hand our capacity to further enhance existing other energy 'sources', which are progressing at a very fast pace.
  • kortilla 7y ago
    Stop comparing solar and wind to nuclear. That’s a cudgel to ignore the fact that being anti-nuclear means being pro-fossil fuels. Bringing online solar and wind does not displace nuclear because they do not provide a stable base. You highlight that storage is a challenge, but it’s the entire blocker at this point. Until storage is solved, solar/wind do nothing more than displace some peaker plants.
    • natmaka 7y ago
      Nuclear power generation also implies using fossil-fuels powerplants. Even in 'all-nuke' France 7 to 11% of the powergrid is produced by fossil-fuel plants. This could be alleviated thanks to decentralized production (small units). Granted, this is theoretically true for nuclear and solar/wind alike, however civilian practical small solar/wind units do exist, nuclear units don't. Many write just as if nuclear plants may really solve our climate-related problem. They neglect that gridpower is a small portion of the total energy (about 17%), therefore a fully 'cleanly'-produced gridpower (by whatever method, nuclear and/or other) lets us, on the sole 'energy' side of the matter (there are other ones), with at the very least 60% of the climate-related problem at hands.
      • cm2187 7y ago
        France could have gone 100% nuclear, french nuclear reactors can adapt their load to the demand intra-day. It is not a technical decision.
        • natmaka 7y ago
          No, nuke is for base-load, it cannot be started/stopped in 10 minutes (in France, as in many countries, hydro dams are used as buffers).
          • erentz 7y ago
            Parent is talking about load following. Nuclear power plants can absolutely load follow the diurnal predicted demand closely. Most power demand is forecast very accurately with only small amounts of new generation dispatched or load shedded to account for the smaller variances, or when outages happen on some part of the grid.
            • natmaka 7y ago
              Indeed, however all this neglects that solar produces during peak hours, and that multiple production sites are possible (benefiting from various meteorological conditions). The huge powergrid it implies isn't very different from the one nuke powerplants already need (given that many cannot sit nearby huge cities), that both wind and solar in such a wide area not producing enough is a rare occurrence. Transporting energy far away causes losses, but we already do it, and who cares if its TCO is very low (solar and wind are progressing quickly), and its production not dangerous? Add geothermal, hydroelectric, and biomass, then better global efficiency and energy savings. Then a pinch of very small complementary units (already available). ... and we are better set for so many more scenarios, at a globally lower cost and without any serious risk.
• davidwihl 7y ago
  That report excludes renewables like hydro, solar, etc.