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> You did get the news that it's just another year where France needs to turn off their nuclear fleet because their rivers get too hot? Yeah, in retrospect we

> You did get the news that it's just another year where France needs to turn off their nuclear fleet because their rivers get too hot? Yeah, in retrospect we should have put more plants around our coastlines. > The topic "nuclear and global warming" is a straw man. It makes no sense at all. Okay let's start over. We need to somehow reduce our emissions down to near zero. No oil, no gas, no coal. That leaves renewables (wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, forest wood), and nuclear. And energy savings. Among all those, what can scale, at what cost, and what can we do with those? Hydro is maxed out in many parts of the world, geothermal doesn't work everywhere, forest wood is probably maxed out already (we can burn more, but it would cease to be renewed). That leaves wind, solar, and nuclear. With current tech, nuclear is the thing that takes the least concrete, the least real estate… and with the exception of regular maintenance and hot rivers delivers its full power at will. Wind and solar however not only cost way more (per energy unit), they only deliver when the sun shines or the wind blows. In practice this puts a significant strain of the network. There are 3 ways to compensate for that: nuke plants, energy storage, and cutting off non-essential power. Thing about nuke plants is, they're not less expensive when they run at less than full power. Beyond a certain point, more renewables doesn't need less nuke plants. It means just as many nuke plants, running below capacity. Having any more than that would be pure waste. One huge disadvantage however is that they're very capitalistic: we need a huge investment to make a single plant, and that requires a very stable political environment (a similar argument works for nuclear waste). Energy storage is currently very expensive. It's nice to have some (like hydro dams), and it does mean that we can reduce the nuke installed based accordingly. But building huge swaths of batteries or flywheels may be much more problematic. Finally we could cut-off non-essential power. I'm not entirely against that, but we need to keep in mind that this is not exactly a painless change (I do like my comfort). Of course, we could mix the 3.

Krasnol 4y ago
> That leaves wind, solar, and nuclear. With current tech, nuclear is the thing that takes the least concrete, the least real estate… and with the exception of regular maintenance and hot rivers delivers its full power at will. But takes the most time, cost hilarious amounts of money, creates waste for generations and is just another finite resource energy generation technology from the past. This is not what we need to reduces our emissions down to near zero now. We need technology which is cheap, deployable before it is too late to reduce our emissions and accessible for every country on this planet. This technologies are renewables and only those. So please...if you really care about the environment and are not merely one of those people who blindly recite Michael Shellenbergers Astro-Turf campaign, don't mention nuclear on this topic again. It doesn't make any sense. > Thing about nuke plants is, they're not less expensive when they run at less than full power. Think about nuke plants is, they're least expensive when they are turned off. Even the grid profits from that since you don't have that expensive nuclear crap clogging up the lines so cheap renewable energy generation has to be turned off. Time to face it: nuclear is done....at least in the civil sector.
- loup-vaillant 4y ago
  I believe you’re a little confused. > But [nuclear] takes the most time, cost hilarious amounts of money Depending exactly what you mean, this is either very true, or dead wrong. It is true that a single nuke plant costs gigantic amounts of time, money, and resources. But it also deliver significant power, typically 1GW (sometimes a bit less, generally more). Windmills are vastly cheaper, but typical ratings are around 1MW, and that’s a maximum, not an average, and if you need to control energy output you’ll need a buffer (batteries, flywheels, dams…). To replace a single nuke plant, you’ll probably need something like 2000 windmills, and energy storage to match. Or less if you’re okay with temporary power shortages (a harsh but valid political choice). Now which is cheaper? One nuke plant? Or 1-2K windmills? All those windmills will need a lot of concrete, for which we’re destroying quite a few beaches (desert sand does not work unfortunately). You’ll also need quite a bit more rare earth materials to get that thousand dynamos to work. And eventually you’ll need to transport all that in a world without oil (one reason renewable energy is cheap is because transport is still cheap, thanks to oil). > We need technology which is cheap, deployable before it is too late to reduce our emissions and accessible for every country on this planet. Agreed. > if you really care about the environment and are not merely one of those people who blindly recite Michael Shellenbergers Here’s my main source: https://jancovici.com/ https://jancovici.com/ One thing to note: the guy doesn’t even pretend nuclear power will replace what we have now. He’s just saying that no matter what we do, our energy consumption will inexorably go down, and that will start soon, if it hasn’t already. Since energy is a physical measure of how much we can transform our world, that means we’ll be able to transform it less and less, a.k.a. the economy will shrink, a.k.a. big ass long term recession. And that’s before we make it even worse in the name of staving off global warming. His thesis is that nuclear power will not be enough to stop the fall. But it might significantly soften it, and we can only hope that it will be enough.

Krasnol 4y ago

> That leaves wind, solar, and nuclear. With current tech, nuclear is the thing that takes the least concrete, the least real estate… and with the exception of regular maintenance and hot rivers delivers its full power at will. But takes the most time, cost hilarious amounts of money, creates waste for generations and is just another finite resource energy generation technology from the past. This is not what we need to reduces our emissions down to near zero now. We need technology which is cheap, deployable before it is too late to reduce our emissions and accessible for every country on this planet. This technologies are renewables and only those. So please...if you really care about the environment and are not merely one of those people who blindly recite Michael Shellenbergers Astro-Turf campaign, don't mention nuclear on this topic again. It doesn't make any sense. > Thing about nuke plants is, they're not less expensive when they run at less than full power. Think about nuke plants is, they're least expensive when they are turned off. Even the grid profits from that since you don't have that expensive nuclear crap clogging up the lines so cheap renewable energy generation has to be turned off. Time to face it: nuclear is done....at least in the civil sector.

loup-vaillant 4y ago
I believe you’re a little confused. > But [nuclear] takes the most time, cost hilarious amounts of money Depending exactly what you mean, this is either very true, or dead wrong. It is true that a single nuke plant costs gigantic amounts of time, money, and resources. But it also deliver significant power, typically 1GW (sometimes a bit less, generally more). Windmills are vastly cheaper, but typical ratings are around 1MW, and that’s a maximum, not an average, and if you need to control energy output you’ll need a buffer (batteries, flywheels, dams…). To replace a single nuke plant, you’ll probably need something like 2000 windmills, and energy storage to match. Or less if you’re okay with temporary power shortages (a harsh but valid political choice). Now which is cheaper? One nuke plant? Or 1-2K windmills? All those windmills will need a lot of concrete, for which we’re destroying quite a few beaches (desert sand does not work unfortunately). You’ll also need quite a bit more rare earth materials to get that thousand dynamos to work. And eventually you’ll need to transport all that in a world without oil (one reason renewable energy is cheap is because transport is still cheap, thanks to oil). > We need technology which is cheap, deployable before it is too late to reduce our emissions and accessible for every country on this planet. Agreed. > if you really care about the environment and are not merely one of those people who blindly recite Michael Shellenbergers Here’s my main source: https://jancovici.com/ https://jancovici.com/ One thing to note: the guy doesn’t even pretend nuclear power will replace what we have now. He’s just saying that no matter what we do, our energy consumption will inexorably go down, and that will start soon, if it hasn’t already. Since energy is a physical measure of how much we can transform our world, that means we’ll be able to transform it less and less, a.k.a. the economy will shrink, a.k.a. big ass long term recession. And that’s before we make it even worse in the name of staving off global warming. His thesis is that nuclear power will not be enough to stop the fall. But it might significantly soften it, and we can only hope that it will be enough.