Had They Bet on Nuclear, Germany and CA Would Already Have 100% Clean Power
forbes.com
forbes.com
It has been said that it takes 10 times more energy to refute BS than it does to create it. Unfortunately, this author's purpose is to exploit this fact.
And consider an alternative view: if all of the money spent on nuclear had been invested in renewables instead, we would have had clean power a decade or two ago.
As to the other claim you make, a quick look says that the R. E. Ginna Nuclear Power Plant in NY is the lowest productivity (i.e., provides the fewest MWH per year) plant in the US at around 6 GWH. In Texas alone wind produced 9 GWH (2017).
There are three phases in the life of a nuclear power station: Construction, operation and disposal.
The construction phase is relatively expensive and clean.
The operation phase is cheap and clean. This phase is what most people think of when they look at the benefits of nuclear power.
The dismantlement and disposal phase of a nuclear power station is marked by horrifically expensive and horrifically 'dirty' problems. The words 'Chernobyl' and 'Fukushima' spring readily to mind here, in looking at 'worst-case' scenarios.
Bring on the "dirty" problems! They are better than anything else we have right now.
Way better than coal, but they still kill far more people than the best option: Nuclear.
Maybe some new generation of fuel and reactors can change that. But there is no prototype yet that proves that out.
Nuclear waste is stored safely, the myth that "we don't know what to do with waste" needs to die ASAP. Do you know what electricity source has no strategy for storing waste at all? Fossil fuels and intermittent energies.
There were designs for new types of reactors. The prototypes were working. Unfortunately it was cancelled because environmentalists are too blind to see the priority in problems.
We also dont strictly need power to be 100% reliable. Throttling down industrial production is preferable to 1000s of square kilometres being made uninhabitable by nuclear power.
And yes, we do need power to be reliable. We need to power infrastructure that runs 24/7 (not everything is industrial production).
Nuclear is definitely the best clean energy in terms of land use, for the same area you'll be producing much more electricity.
You do know that countries tend to be a lot larger than, say, cars and phones? But even if energy density were a factor: The one of liquid hydrogen is great.
> And yes, we do need power to be reliable. We need to power infrastructure that runs 24/7 (not everything is industrial production).
We need some power 24/7, not all.
> Nuclear is definitely the best clean energy in terms of land use
Land use is what makes nuclear inacceptable. Once they fail, they make thousands of square kilometres uninhabitable.
This implies California and Germany have spent $680 billion on renewables.
presumably the other 100 billion comes from California.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tihange_Nuclear_Power_Station#...
To expand on my previous point. A nuclear power plant has to be maintained by humans. Humans make mistakes. Accidents will happen. Also, these plants at some point will get old. What can they be replaced with? This is exactly why Belgium can’t shut Tihange down. What is the alternative for them, coal from Hambacher Forst?
The best alternative for them is a modern nuclear plant, built right next to the old one. Which the "activists" won't let them build.
Is the problem of greenhouse gases "solved"? Last I checked, 31% of Germany's considerable energy appetite is filled by burning hydrocarbons. If we are to believe climate change alarmists, this is destroying the planet to a far greater and more permanent extent than some leaky barrels in some German salt mine.
Activists must have some terrible cognitive dissonance in their heads. On the one hand we keep hearing that "we're all gonna die" if something is not done within the next decade. On the other hand, the only thing that can realistically be done in the next decade to combat climate change _for real_ is building a ton of new nuclear power plants and shutting down the coal and natural gas ones. No, solar and wind aren't going to cut it, it's readily apparent if you run some basic back of the envelope, and solar creates an environmental disaster of its own, both now (in China mostly) and in the future, due to the limited lifespan of the panels.
I don't know much about semiconductor but I guess you can store them in a relatively normal warehouse until you figure out a way to do that and recycle the materials without running into problems like converting bigger parts of land into a radioactive wasteland?
I don't think that's a very good comparison.
What we do with waste is a key ingredient to any power source, and the plan with old batteries, solar panels and wind turbines is no better than nuclear.
There is no free lunch, only competing ideas with different sets of problems and difficulties.
https://www.windpowerengineering.com/mechanical/blades/recyc...
It may not be perfect, but Nuclear solves a lot of problems.
Here's the scale of the nuclear waste problem, from wikipedia [1]
"High-level radioactive waste is stored for 10 or 20 years in spent fuel pools, and then can be put in dry cask storage facilities.
In 1997, in the 20 countries which account for most of the world's nuclear power generation, spent fuel storage capacity at the reactors was 148,000 tonnes, with 59% of this utilized. Away-from-reactor storage capacity was 78,000 tonnes, with 44% utilized. With annual additions of about 12,000 tonnes, issues for final disposal are not urgent."
Urgent or not, what final disposal options are there? Reprocessing is one. The "La Hague" plant in France [2] reprocesses about 1000t of spent nuclear fuel per year, and a capacity of 1700t.
If only the US had the political will to restart nuclear fuel reprocessing... Commercial reprocessing was suspended in 1976, then banned in 1977 (for fears of nuclear proliferation), then the ban was lifted in 1981, but it never took off. [3]
Another solution is to use breader-reactors, which have a much higher efficiency that regular nuclear reactors, and so produce much less waste. Russia already has some, such as the BN-800 [4]. The design that Bill Gates invested in, Terra Power [5] is an advanced design of this type.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-level_waste#Disposal [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Hague_site [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing#History [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-800_reactor [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraPower