I understand the issues with nuclear waste, but it seems that's the current trade-off, if you want lower CO2 emissions and don't have access to large rivers.
If my numbers aren't off it makes more environmental sense to carpool in an EV in France than to cycle to work - even assuming everyone is vegan.
Edit: Slight amend to point out there’s several bikes to each car (as it’s a carpool)
There was a study, that sadly eludes me, that suggested that if you need to travel more than 2km to do you grocery shopping, then it would produce less CO2 to get in your car and drive, compared to walking.
The reasoning is that you need to consume some amount of food to generate the energy required to walk to the store and back. The amount of CO2 used to generate that food, and the additional CO2 you exhale, would be larger than what a modern car would produce, traveling the same distance.
I believe that the same argument that would make multiple people in an EV carpool more environmentally friendly than bikes. But that's also the case with regular cars.
Crazily enough there's generally less CO2 involved in producing the car than having each of a few people ride bicycles a distance equal to a typical car's life-cycle mileage.
Here's my math: For lack of a better source I'm using Renault's own environmental assessment for the Fluence Z.E[0], which puts its production-related emissions at ~8 metric tonnes of CO2. Over 150k km (which is not a lot for a car, but we want a number achievable by a cyclist over their lifetime) that results in ~53.3g/km of CO2.
As for driving let's assume that a fully loaded EV requires 200Wh/km to move around - In France that amounts to 10.6g/km[1].
So overall we have a well-to-wheels footprint of 63.9g/km.
Now here's the fun part:
A typical Vegan will be responsible for 1.5 metric tonnes of CO2 annualy @ 2600kcal daily, so 1kcal = ~1.57g of CO2 - This is the most environmentally friendly diet. Cycling can vary greatly in intensity[3], but let's say 250kcal/h at 10km/h is a reasonable estimate.
Given these figures a single vegan on a bicycle going 10km/h is responsible for 39.25g/km of CO2. According to some sources[4] my numbers aren't that far off.
CONCLUSION (caps for visibility): Two vegans on bicycles having a 17km commute are responsible for 78.5g/km, while the same two vegans in an EV in France produce only 63.9g/km. Bump that to four vegans and we're getting awkwardly close to a typical combustion engine car's emissions.
Meanwhile environmentally conscious(heh) meat-eaters should probably stay off bicycles, eat less and carpool in a compact car.
[0] Page 91 of: https://group.renault.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/fluence...
[1] http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/2/11/german-e...
[2] http://www.greeneatz.com/foods-carbon-footprint.html
[3] https://keisan.casio.com/exec/system/1350958587
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jun/08/carbon-f...
EDIT: formatting.
There are a whole host of negative externalities involved in driving a car that riding a bike (or 4) just don't even come close to.
But this exercise shows one thing: when it comes to reducing our carbon footprint personal transport is actually a relatively low hanging fruit. Same for electricity really.
Food seems to be the hard problem here. I heard somewhere that a safe level of emissions is one metric tonne of CO2 per capita annually. Vegans do 1.5t.
Maybe it will get lower once transportation is cleaned up? I don't know.
EDIT: To be clear - my original write-up was a little bit in jest. This one is my serious position.
At this point it makes more sense to invest in solar, wind power and energy storage capacity to reduce CO2 emissions.
Our current solutions to short-term storage are perfectly adequate long-term solutions. And we don't even need to store it that long, because soon we'll need it to produce fuel for next generation reactors.
The real problem with nuclear waste management are impossible and unnecessary safety requirements.
The cost of waste management is already included in the cost of nuclear energy. The cost of energy storage is not included in the cost of renewables, thus they may appear as cheaper, and indeed they are – for now – because we currently don't need energy storage. But as the renewables penetration rises, the cost of energy storage will skyrocket: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611683/the-25-trillion-re...
In fact, the money needed for waste storage has long been accumulate by a fee in the US and is literally on the bank account of the government .
There is already enough money to build a facility.
The problem is all political.
> At this point it makes more sense to invest in solar, wind power and energy storage capacity to reduce CO2 emissions.
No its actually not. Countries that try to reduce CO2 with these methods are pretty slow and struggle heavily. Even worse, the larger part of your overall grid depends on these the more difficult it sill be to balance the grid.
Furthermore, any sustained drop-down in one of these can shut down part of the country.
Why do we keep claiming that climate change is a existential problem but then we are like 'we can't do the easy solution because nuclear waste is slightly problematic'. Guess what, I much rather deal with nuclear waste in 100 years then with the result of climate change.
France showed the world 50 years ago that it is a pretty easy thing to have low CO2 electricity and had other countries adopted this, we would be in a better situation.
Germany is the perfect example, had they done their 'Energiewende' towards nuclear they would be closing their goals by now.
Cheaper than having an inflexible nuclear plant.
Also, there's the rough rule of thumb saying that when variable sources (like wind or solar) approach a fraction of total generation in the grid equal to the capacity factor of said source, system integration costs start to rise rapidly (because that's, at the latest, the point where you'll start needing large amounts of storage, curtailment, or long-range transmission). Thus, in most grids wind+solar will unlikely see much larger than 50% of total generation without massive extra investment and/or breakthroughs in storage costs.
If we're going for lowest-cost deep decarbonization, it looks like the share of nuclear will start to rise when we go deep enough, see e.g. slide 41 in https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/sites/default/files/Getting...
And your counter argument is 'nuclear plant' are inflexible? What? Nuclear are not actually inflexible specially new ones compared to those we build 50 years ago. Furthermore nuclear industry has finally again started to innovate and the next generation of reactors will be able to be fully load following.
What is actually inflexible is solar and wind, that about the most inflexible technologies that exist.
That ship has sailed already.
Nuclear in west fails because of regulatory issue, and this is totally clear if you look at the history of nuclear construction.
> That ship has sailed already.
That's just a dumb attitude. Gas had many ups and downs. Wind did as well. Even coal.
Saying nuclear is dead because currently in the west or the US its not growing as fast is wrong.
China will be building 100s of nuclear reactors and they are very interested in starting to sell these globally.