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“Green energy” needs fossile fuels such as natural gas as backup power plants. If you want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions effectively, you must support nuc

“Green energy” needs fossile fuels such as natural gas as backup power plants. If you want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions effectively, you must support nuclear power. France went the nuclear path and their energy sector causes 50 million tons of CO2 per year. Germany went the renewable path and their annual energy sector emissions are about 300 million tons of CO2. They were a bit less in both countries due to Covid-19 causing shutdowns of industries.

silvester23 5y ago
For now that may be true, does not mean it will stay that way forever. Although I agree that in order to significantly reduce CO2 emissions in the short term, nuclear power seems like the best option right now.
KozmoNau7 5y ago
> "Germany went the renewable path and their annual energy sector emissions are about 300 million tons of CO2." Not really. They held on hard to gas and coal power. Of the latter, a disturbing amount is still based on lignite or brown coal, which is more accurately described as "somewhat combustible dirt". Germany is not nearly as dedicated to green energy as they would like the world to think. They shut down their nuclear sector due to fear, and primarily replaced it with more fossil energy. I do agree that nuclear power is something we should be more positive towards, but that does not invalidate renewable energy sources.
- titzer 5y ago
  > They shut down their nuclear sector due to fear, and primarily replaced it with more fossil energy. The Wikipedia article [1] on Germany's energy production suggests that fossil fuel sources have fallen slightly and the reduction in nuclear has been replaced with renewables. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany
j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
> If you want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions effectively, you must support nuclear power. Very strong statement but no evidence whatsoever. Germany's a bad example, we're (that is: the government during the last 16 years) doing a lot to keep really old crappy coal power plants running and slow the transformation towards renewables. And still, 50% of the electricity is produced by renewables.
- imtringued 5y ago
  The irony is that Germany approaches the problem completely backwards by starting with the hardest part first. Once Germany is done with all the hard parts progress will speed up dramatically.
adrianN 5y ago
Those fossil fuel backup power plants can eventually be run with Methane generated from CO2, water, and electricity.
- throwawayzRUU6f 5y ago
  I'm surprised why this path isn't discussed as a viable option forward, especially given how much attention is given to hydrogen, despite mountains of likely insurmountable engineering challenges that surround H2. Production of natural gas is a somewhat inefficient, but infinitely scalable battery for renewables. My cynical take is that there's no hype to be generated around power-to-natural-gas, and people hyping up hydrogen don't want the public to know that most of originates from breaking fossil fuels.
  - adrianN 5y ago
    This path is in fact being discussed. Power2Gas for seasonal storage is a key part of all plans for decarbonization that I'm aware of. There are already a number of demo P2G plants in operation.
    - throwawayzRUU6f 5y ago
      > Power2Gas for seasonal storage is a key part of all plans for decarbonization that I'm aware of That's my understanding, too; amongst the technocrats and field-experts, power-to-gas is taken very seriously. However, amongst the public and the press, even the pop-science press, it's scarcely ever mentioned. Hydrogen, batteries, biofuels, carbon capture, and even fusion all enjoy vastly more attention. I cannot think of any explanation that wouldn't be cynical or sinister
      - adrianN 5y ago
        The press has never been particularly good at talking about climate change.
  - Ericson2314 5y ago
novaRom 5y ago
Nuclear power is introducing lots of long-lived fission products into environment by slowly poisoning our biosphere. Right now the United States has at least 108 sites designated as areas that are contaminated and unusable, sometimes many thousands of acres. Events like Chernobyl and Fukushima will certainly happen again and again.
- oblio 5y ago
  There are new nuclear plant designs that aren't really being given a chance.
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  > slowly poisoning our biosphere Relative to what! Coal power plans spew out more radiation. You could screw over just one km^3 of earth putting all our waste there for hundreds of years. Localizing the damage like that is almost incomparably better.
- titzer 5y ago
  > Nuclear power is introducing lots of long-lived fission products into environment by slowly poisoning our biosphere. Nuclear waste from power generation is solid. A typical plant products 3 cubic meters of solid waste per year, which is stored on-site in cooling pools. Compare that to hundreds of thousands of tons per plant of radioactive fly ash just spewed into the atmosphere and millions of tons of CO2. You're going to need a citation for the "108 contaminated sites that are unusable." Also a thousand acres is a little over a square mile; again, which I doubt. That is absolutely not how waste is managed in the US, and leaks like that do not happen. And if you want to talk about slowly poisoning the biosphere, stop with the anti-nuclear hype and start talking about microplastics and pesticides.
tamaharbor 5y ago
Doesn’t the enrichment of uranium require a lot of power? Nuclear is not as carbon free as they lead you to believe.
- philipkglass 5y ago
  The old gaseous diffusion enrichment process plants were very inefficient. You may be thinking of those. They're not used today in the West. (I'm not sure if Russia or China still operates such plants.) The last French plant closed in 2012 and the last American plan closed in 2013 [1]. Commercial centrifuge enrichment, a much more efficient process, started in the 1970s [2]. That's what enriches uranium for power reactor fuel today. That said, even with gaseous diffusion enrichment, nuclear power had much lower life cycle emissions per megawatt hour than any fossil generating source. Nothing is 100% "carbon free" over its full life cycle but nuclear power and renewables both have very low emissions compared to fossil combustion [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaseous_diffusion#Current_status https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaseous_diffusion#Current_stat... [2] https://www.urenco.com/about/history https://www.urenco.com/about/history [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse_gas_emissions_of_energy_sources#Global_warming_potential_of_selected_electricity_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse_gas_emis...
legulere 5y ago
You also need gas for peaking power plants if you use nuclear for the base load. France has a huge problem having to replace crumbling nuclear power plants with new ones being too expensive and too slow to build.

silvester23 5y ago

For now that may be true, does not mean it will stay that way forever. Although I agree that in order to significantly reduce CO2 emissions in the short term, nuclear power seems like the best option right now.

KozmoNau7 5y ago

> "Germany went the renewable path and their annual energy sector emissions are about 300 million tons of CO2." Not really. They held on hard to gas and coal power. Of the latter, a disturbing amount is still based on lignite or brown coal, which is more accurately described as "somewhat combustible dirt". Germany is not nearly as dedicated to green energy as they would like the world to think. They shut down their nuclear sector due to fear, and primarily replaced it with more fossil energy. I do agree that nuclear power is something we should be more positive towards, but that does not invalidate renewable energy sources.

titzer 5y ago
> They shut down their nuclear sector due to fear, and primarily replaced it with more fossil energy. The Wikipedia article [1] on Germany's energy production suggests that fossil fuel sources have fallen slightly and the reduction in nuclear has been replaced with renewables. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany

j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago

> If you want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions effectively, you must support nuclear power. Very strong statement but no evidence whatsoever. Germany's a bad example, we're (that is: the government during the last 16 years) doing a lot to keep really old crappy coal power plants running and slow the transformation towards renewables. And still, 50% of the electricity is produced by renewables.

imtringued 5y ago
The irony is that Germany approaches the problem completely backwards by starting with the hardest part first. Once Germany is done with all the hard parts progress will speed up dramatically.

adrianN 5y ago

Those fossil fuel backup power plants can eventually be run with Methane generated from CO2, water, and electricity.

throwawayzRUU6f 5y ago
I'm surprised why this path isn't discussed as a viable option forward, especially given how much attention is given to hydrogen, despite mountains of likely insurmountable engineering challenges that surround H2. Production of natural gas is a somewhat inefficient, but infinitely scalable battery for renewables. My cynical take is that there's no hype to be generated around power-to-natural-gas, and people hyping up hydrogen don't want the public to know that most of originates from breaking fossil fuels.
- adrianN 5y ago
  This path is in fact being discussed. Power2Gas for seasonal storage is a key part of all plans for decarbonization that I'm aware of. There are already a number of demo P2G plants in operation.
  - throwawayzRUU6f 5y ago
    > Power2Gas for seasonal storage is a key part of all plans for decarbonization that I'm aware of That's my understanding, too; amongst the technocrats and field-experts, power-to-gas is taken very seriously. However, amongst the public and the press, even the pop-science press, it's scarcely ever mentioned. Hydrogen, batteries, biofuels, carbon capture, and even fusion all enjoy vastly more attention. I cannot think of any explanation that wouldn't be cynical or sinister
    - adrianN 5y ago
      The press has never been particularly good at talking about climate change.
- Ericson2314 5y ago

novaRom 5y ago

Nuclear power is introducing lots of long-lived fission products into environment by slowly poisoning our biosphere. Right now the United States has at least 108 sites designated as areas that are contaminated and unusable, sometimes many thousands of acres. Events like Chernobyl and Fukushima will certainly happen again and again.

oblio 5y ago
There are new nuclear plant designs that aren't really being given a chance.
Ericson2314 5y ago
> slowly poisoning our biosphere Relative to what! Coal power plans spew out more radiation. You could screw over just one km^3 of earth putting all our waste there for hundreds of years. Localizing the damage like that is almost incomparably better.
titzer 5y ago
> Nuclear power is introducing lots of long-lived fission products into environment by slowly poisoning our biosphere. Nuclear waste from power generation is solid. A typical plant products 3 cubic meters of solid waste per year, which is stored on-site in cooling pools. Compare that to hundreds of thousands of tons per plant of radioactive fly ash just spewed into the atmosphere and millions of tons of CO2. You're going to need a citation for the "108 contaminated sites that are unusable." Also a thousand acres is a little over a square mile; again, which I doubt. That is absolutely not how waste is managed in the US, and leaks like that do not happen. And if you want to talk about slowly poisoning the biosphere, stop with the anti-nuclear hype and start talking about microplastics and pesticides.

tamaharbor 5y ago

Doesn’t the enrichment of uranium require a lot of power? Nuclear is not as carbon free as they lead you to believe.

philipkglass 5y ago
The old gaseous diffusion enrichment process plants were very inefficient. You may be thinking of those. They're not used today in the West. (I'm not sure if Russia or China still operates such plants.) The last French plant closed in 2012 and the last American plan closed in 2013 [1]. Commercial centrifuge enrichment, a much more efficient process, started in the 1970s [2]. That's what enriches uranium for power reactor fuel today. That said, even with gaseous diffusion enrichment, nuclear power had much lower life cycle emissions per megawatt hour than any fossil generating source. Nothing is 100% "carbon free" over its full life cycle but nuclear power and renewables both have very low emissions compared to fossil combustion [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaseous_diffusion#Current_status https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaseous_diffusion#Current_stat... [2] https://www.urenco.com/about/history https://www.urenco.com/about/history [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse_gas_emissions_of_energy_sources#Global_warming_potential_of_selected_electricity_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse_gas_emis...

legulere 5y ago

You also need gas for peaking power plants if you use nuclear for the base load. France has a huge problem having to replace crumbling nuclear power plants with new ones being too expensive and too slow to build.