3 ms·

> Renewables lead on all these metrics. Do they? That's my question, "citation needed". I've yet to find empirical evidence of a like for like comparison of

> Renewables lead on all these metrics. Do they? That's my question, "citation needed". I've yet to find empirical evidence of a like for like comparison of the full and complete lifecycle and supply chain of both. And that's in addition to environmental costs. Nuclear: dig uranium out of the ground, refine it. Build power station building (pipes, concrete, etc.), maintenance (replacing mechanical parts, etc.). Decommissioning. Renewable proponents always talk about the end product, the panels or turbines. But not the continual manufacturing chain (new factories, consuming more raw materials and power), or the on going maintenance (how often do turbines fail, blades fail, panels fail), or the end-of-life recycling. Nuclear power stations are a one off. Wind turbines and solar panels are being manufactured continually, consuming huge amounts of raw materials and power before they even come online. And don't forget storage of excess power for a rainy/dark/windless day. So then there's whole other supply chain and manufacturing processes for battery storage. Renewables on their own are no good for baseload because of the variability.

tpm 3y ago
> Nuclear power stations are a one off. No? You still have to replace fuel, fix mechanical issues (if they are fixable). There are turbines in nuclear plants too. And another thing is that nuclear plants need highly competent and educated specialist workforce, and after that the very expensive decommissioning needs another specialist workforce, and so on.
- DrBazza 3y ago
  Nuclear power stations are a one off build. I can’t think of two or more identical builds.
  - defrost 3y ago
    Are you talking stations (size of ground pads, number of toilets | parking bays) or reactors ? ( Hydro electric dams are largely "one off builds" - yet many share common turbine units and families ) Does that include the 25 reactors in South Korea that come from families such as OPR-1000 (basic), OPR-1000 (improved), APR-1400, etc? https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-o-s/south-korea.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPR-1000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPR-1000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APR-1400 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APR-1400
    - DrBazza 3y ago
      The entire station. They're vast and substantial.
  - tpm 3y ago
    There are lots of identical VVER reactors, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VVER https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VVER Also RBMK (Chernobyl) was a serial production: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK and so on.
ZeroGravitas 3y ago
Can you name a single factor that isn't covered in great detail here, in this review of what life cycle analysis covered between 2009-2018 (edit to add some context, the cost of solar dropped 82% over that period) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666792421000500 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266679242... > local environmental conditions such as hydrology can influence operations and environmental impacts [13, 14]; population distribution and demand levels can do the same by shifting the burden of supply [15], [16], [17]; regional electricity mixes result in variable environmental impacts [18, 19]; fuel supply and distribution distances can amplify the impact of fuel transportation [20] but also the delivery of electricity to consumers [19]. Environmental releases from electricity generation depend on hourly, daily, and weekly demand cycles at subnational scales [3, 21]; seasonal cycles, both in environmental conditions and demand [22]; degradation of capital [19, 23]; and changes to the regional energy system, including fuel supply, production, and distribution [18]. Joint spatiotemporal factors are exemplified by supply and demand dynamics on the electric grid because interactions between consumers, power plants, transmission and distribution networks, and the fuel supply also depend on locations [18, 20, [23], [24], [25]]
- DrBazza 3y ago
  That's the best article I've seen. Thanks. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666792421000500#fig0002 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266679242... But... note in fig. 2 how the renewables just start at 'manufacture', not 'mining' -> 'transport' -> 'refining' -> 'transport' -> 'manufacture' And how it also ends without '-> battery storage' and all the mining/transport/refining/manufacture that that entails. Battery storage was not a thing before renewable energy sources, that must also be included in analysis like this. Prior to renewables some sort of pumped storage was being used in hydro projects, but nothing like the scale of battery storage we have now. As I said in a previous comment, the supply chain (or whatever you want to call it) for renewables is far longer than is recognised.
  - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
    There's entire documents linked there, comparing the ways that eutrophication is affected by different energy systems. Normal people don't even know what eutrophication is, and they're not only measuring it, but having deep academic arguments about the best way to measure it correctly. So it's bold to glance at an overview diagram and conclude that they've never realised that manufacturing a wind turbine involves mining and therefore GHG emissions. That's something you could read in a right-wing newspapers online comment section over 20 years ago so it's not news to professionals in the field. edit to add quote from a random paper they reviewed: > The major stages of a typical LCA study are raw material acquisition, component manufacture and assembling, production of functional unit, and deposal of the product. Also, the bottom item on that same chart is "storage", both the creation and use of it. Storage, which gets covered even in the period between 2008-2019 when battery storage is fairly rare, because storage has been used alongside nuclear for decades.

tpm 3y ago

> Nuclear power stations are a one off. No? You still have to replace fuel, fix mechanical issues (if they are fixable). There are turbines in nuclear plants too. And another thing is that nuclear plants need highly competent and educated specialist workforce, and after that the very expensive decommissioning needs another specialist workforce, and so on.

DrBazza 3y ago
Nuclear power stations are a one off build. I can’t think of two or more identical builds.
- defrost 3y ago
  Are you talking stations (size of ground pads, number of toilets | parking bays) or reactors ? ( Hydro electric dams are largely "one off builds" - yet many share common turbine units and families ) Does that include the 25 reactors in South Korea that come from families such as OPR-1000 (basic), OPR-1000 (improved), APR-1400, etc? https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-o-s/south-korea.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPR-1000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPR-1000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APR-1400 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APR-1400
  - DrBazza 3y ago
    The entire station. They're vast and substantial.
- tpm 3y ago
  There are lots of identical VVER reactors, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VVER https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VVER Also RBMK (Chernobyl) was a serial production: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK and so on.

ZeroGravitas 3y ago

Can you name a single factor that isn't covered in great detail here, in this review of what life cycle analysis covered between 2009-2018 (edit to add some context, the cost of solar dropped 82% over that period) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666792421000500 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266679242... > local environmental conditions such as hydrology can influence operations and environmental impacts [13, 14]; population distribution and demand levels can do the same by shifting the burden of supply [15], [16], [17]; regional electricity mixes result in variable environmental impacts [18, 19]; fuel supply and distribution distances can amplify the impact of fuel transportation [20] but also the delivery of electricity to consumers [19]. Environmental releases from electricity generation depend on hourly, daily, and weekly demand cycles at subnational scales [3, 21]; seasonal cycles, both in environmental conditions and demand [22]; degradation of capital [19, 23]; and changes to the regional energy system, including fuel supply, production, and distribution [18]. Joint spatiotemporal factors are exemplified by supply and demand dynamics on the electric grid because interactions between consumers, power plants, transmission and distribution networks, and the fuel supply also depend on locations [18, 20, [23], [24], [25]]

DrBazza 3y ago
That's the best article I've seen. Thanks. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666792421000500#fig0002 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266679242... But... note in fig. 2 how the renewables just start at 'manufacture', not 'mining' -> 'transport' -> 'refining' -> 'transport' -> 'manufacture' And how it also ends without '-> battery storage' and all the mining/transport/refining/manufacture that that entails. Battery storage was not a thing before renewable energy sources, that must also be included in analysis like this. Prior to renewables some sort of pumped storage was being used in hydro projects, but nothing like the scale of battery storage we have now. As I said in a previous comment, the supply chain (or whatever you want to call it) for renewables is far longer than is recognised.
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  There's entire documents linked there, comparing the ways that eutrophication is affected by different energy systems. Normal people don't even know what eutrophication is, and they're not only measuring it, but having deep academic arguments about the best way to measure it correctly. So it's bold to glance at an overview diagram and conclude that they've never realised that manufacturing a wind turbine involves mining and therefore GHG emissions. That's something you could read in a right-wing newspapers online comment section over 20 years ago so it's not news to professionals in the field. edit to add quote from a random paper they reviewed: > The major stages of a typical LCA study are raw material acquisition, component manufacture and assembling, production of functional unit, and deposal of the product. Also, the bottom item on that same chart is "storage", both the creation and use of it. Storage, which gets covered even in the period between 2008-2019 when battery storage is fairly rare, because storage has been used alongside nuclear for decades.