4 ms·

Regulation also slows down green projects. There are reasons for these regulations and some of them will be around for thousands of years... Green energy is ch

Regulation also slows down green projects. There are reasons for these regulations and some of them will be around for thousands of years... Green energy is cheaper, less risky and regulation (while also painful) is easier in most cases. As a result a project can be built much faster. Land usage is bigger but mixed usage is OK (e.g. solar over crops, parking lots etc.). Wind can reside in the sea and geothermal can be in the middle of the city. I think the discussion over nuclear is based on data from a decade ago. The world changed. It isn't Greenpeace that should object, its the business interests. It just isn't viable anymore and the viability is declining, since solar/wind, storage etc. keep improving at an amazing rate.

sokoloff 3y ago
From both an engineering sense and an aesthetic sense, I would much rather have 2 nuclear plants serving as base load (not total load) for 10M people, supplemented by solar/wind, than relying solely on solar/wind/storage. (In part because that requires an incredible amount of storage to preserve the current uptime in my part of the US, but also because it's a much better match to the load profile [engineering] and a smaller footprint near people [aesthetics].)
pydry 3y ago
It's ridiculously uneconomic of course but a limited number will continue to be built in spite of this because of the overpowering military imperative. If you have nuclear weapons/submarines/carriers/etc. like Russia or the United States or France it shares some of the gargantuan cost of building and maintaining them. I expect North Korea will get into it in the next few years too for precisely this reason. Countries like Iran, Sweden and Korea, on the other hand, want to be able to manufacture a weapon on a tight deadline because of extremely self evident geopolitical fears. Nobody else builds nuclear power plants. The vast power of the global hippy-industrial complex apparently prevented it :/ Of course, the western nuclear military industrial complex, who always HATED environmentalists with a seething passion, are aware of just how massively uneconomic it is but that doesn't stop them from trying to dress up as "young climate activists" to sell a form of power that is 5x more expensive as a green gamechanger. Consent for enormous subsidies needs to be manufactured somehow if nuclear power is to remain competitive with solar and wind.
- pyrale 3y ago
  Commercial reactors and military/medical isotope reactors are usually completely separated. The reason for that is that BWR/PWR reactors don't let you manipulate the fuel while the reactor is working, which makes it considerably harder to get plutonium.
barney54 3y ago
Renewables industrialize much more land than nuclear and nuclear solve the challenge of renewables being dependent on the weather. Renewables are far more expensive than nuclear when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining.
- tcfhgj 3y ago
  > Renewables are far more expensive than nuclear when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining. Which fortunately doesn't happen too often in Europe.
  - KptMarchewa 3y ago
    It happens _all the damn time_ in winter and late fall. Anyone who doubts that is conjuring their own reality. Poland had 2x larger share of renewables in July than in November. There's barely any sun, wind increase isn't that significant to cover lack of it, and energy demand is very very high.
    - hathchip 3y ago
      A reduction of only 2x between July and November is actually super positive for renewables. Wind and solar energy is almost free on an ongoing basis and installation of new capacity isn't expensive. Your number suggests that simply installing 2x the capacity needed in favorable weather would be sufficient for unfavorable weather. Actually it's more like 3x but that's still often very doable.
    - tcfhgj 3y ago
      No, statistics say otherwise [0] Poland is still part of the European electricity grid. It is not the European electricity grid [0]: https://www.tga-fachplaner.de/meldungen/energiewende-kalte-dunkelflaute-genug-strom-auch-bei-9-mio-waermepumpen https://www.tga-fachplaner.de/meldungen/energiewende-kalte-d...
      - RetroTechie 3y ago
pyrale 3y ago
The issue isn't regulation so much as litigation. PV is safe, but wind turbines tend to suffer from this to a lesser extent.
RetroTechie 3y ago
> It just isn't viable anymore and the viability is declining, since solar/wind, storage etc. keep improving at an amazing rate. Yes renewables are growing at an amazing rate. But they don't cover countries' energy needs entirely, all the time. Which you need for a power grid. The storage problem is by no means solved. And eg. hydro is only an option in a few places. So you need other power generation to fill in the (big!) gaps. Right now, that's a choice between a) let power grid go down, b) fossil, or c) nuclear. Note this is temporary! Only needed until sufficient storage comes online to let renewables do the job. Given the urgency of the situation we're in, I see nuclear as the lesser evil here. And it's very annoying that NGOs like Greenpeace are actively blocking that escape hatch with their outdated stance. They should NOT get in the way of those working to reduce CO2 emissions. Even if nuclear.
- invalidname 3y ago
  At scale they do cover countries energy needs. Storage at grid scale is pretty great, are there enough batteries to replace all the current energy requirement? No. But they can be manufactured much faster than setting up a nuclear plant. If you have a combination of wind, solar, hydro and geo over enough of a distance then you can get continuous energy with very little reliance on storage. The main problem is that this only works at scale and some countries are smaller. For this we need marketplaces that sell energy between countries automatically. That isn't a hard problem on the technical level, but might be a political issue and a logistic issue (grid connections, security etc.). Because of the urgency nuclear isn't viable. The same capacity *with storage* can be setup in less time than it takes to build a nuclear plant. It will be cheaper to boot. The economics of nuclear made sense a decade ago, not now.

sokoloff 3y ago

From both an engineering sense and an aesthetic sense, I would much rather have 2 nuclear plants serving as base load (not total load) for 10M people, supplemented by solar/wind, than relying solely on solar/wind/storage. (In part because that requires an incredible amount of storage to preserve the current uptime in my part of the US, but also because it's a much better match to the load profile [engineering] and a smaller footprint near people [aesthetics].)

pydry 3y ago

It's ridiculously uneconomic of course but a limited number will continue to be built in spite of this because of the overpowering military imperative. If you have nuclear weapons/submarines/carriers/etc. like Russia or the United States or France it shares some of the gargantuan cost of building and maintaining them. I expect North Korea will get into it in the next few years too for precisely this reason. Countries like Iran, Sweden and Korea, on the other hand, want to be able to manufacture a weapon on a tight deadline because of extremely self evident geopolitical fears. Nobody else builds nuclear power plants. The vast power of the global hippy-industrial complex apparently prevented it :/ Of course, the western nuclear military industrial complex, who always HATED environmentalists with a seething passion, are aware of just how massively uneconomic it is but that doesn't stop them from trying to dress up as "young climate activists" to sell a form of power that is 5x more expensive as a green gamechanger. Consent for enormous subsidies needs to be manufactured somehow if nuclear power is to remain competitive with solar and wind.

pyrale 3y ago
Commercial reactors and military/medical isotope reactors are usually completely separated. The reason for that is that BWR/PWR reactors don't let you manipulate the fuel while the reactor is working, which makes it considerably harder to get plutonium.

barney54 3y ago

Renewables industrialize much more land than nuclear and nuclear solve the challenge of renewables being dependent on the weather. Renewables are far more expensive than nuclear when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining.

tcfhgj 3y ago
> Renewables are far more expensive than nuclear when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining. Which fortunately doesn't happen too often in Europe.
- KptMarchewa 3y ago
  It happens _all the damn time_ in winter and late fall. Anyone who doubts that is conjuring their own reality. Poland had 2x larger share of renewables in July than in November. There's barely any sun, wind increase isn't that significant to cover lack of it, and energy demand is very very high.
  - hathchip 3y ago
    A reduction of only 2x between July and November is actually super positive for renewables. Wind and solar energy is almost free on an ongoing basis and installation of new capacity isn't expensive. Your number suggests that simply installing 2x the capacity needed in favorable weather would be sufficient for unfavorable weather. Actually it's more like 3x but that's still often very doable.
  - tcfhgj 3y ago
    No, statistics say otherwise [0] Poland is still part of the European electricity grid. It is not the European electricity grid [0]: https://www.tga-fachplaner.de/meldungen/energiewende-kalte-dunkelflaute-genug-strom-auch-bei-9-mio-waermepumpen https://www.tga-fachplaner.de/meldungen/energiewende-kalte-d...
    - RetroTechie 3y ago

pyrale 3y ago

The issue isn't regulation so much as litigation. PV is safe, but wind turbines tend to suffer from this to a lesser extent.

RetroTechie 3y ago

> It just isn't viable anymore and the viability is declining, since solar/wind, storage etc. keep improving at an amazing rate. Yes renewables are growing at an amazing rate. But they don't cover countries' energy needs entirely, all the time. Which you need for a power grid. The storage problem is by no means solved. And eg. hydro is only an option in a few places. So you need other power generation to fill in the (big!) gaps. Right now, that's a choice between a) let power grid go down, b) fossil, or c) nuclear. Note this is temporary! Only needed until sufficient storage comes online to let renewables do the job. Given the urgency of the situation we're in, I see nuclear as the lesser evil here. And it's very annoying that NGOs like Greenpeace are actively blocking that escape hatch with their outdated stance. They should NOT get in the way of those working to reduce CO2 emissions. Even if nuclear.

invalidname 3y ago
At scale they do cover countries energy needs. Storage at grid scale is pretty great, are there enough batteries to replace all the current energy requirement? No. But they can be manufactured much faster than setting up a nuclear plant. If you have a combination of wind, solar, hydro and geo over enough of a distance then you can get continuous energy with very little reliance on storage. The main problem is that this only works at scale and some countries are smaller. For this we need marketplaces that sell energy between countries automatically. That isn't a hard problem on the technical level, but might be a political issue and a logistic issue (grid connections, security etc.). Because of the urgency nuclear isn't viable. The same capacity *with storage* can be setup in less time than it takes to build a nuclear plant. It will be cheaper to boot. The economics of nuclear made sense a decade ago, not now.