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> Only the coal lobby wants to continue burning coal. Everyone else is like "No, that's stupid and self-harming, let's just not."

How I wish that was true.

What they actually do is preferring to not burn coal, but when the choice is between blackouts or burning coal for power even the most environmentalist governments in Europe prefer burning coal.

As an example, when the choice is between being cold in Stockholm (Sweden) or burning coal, the citizen of Stockholm rather burn the coal until the water heating plant has been replaced sometimes 2022 (to be burning other fuels). It is only used in the exceptional cases when the other systems are not enough, and yet it stands for 20% of the total pollution of the city.

> Fifth, if you remove all subsidies and include end-to-end clean-up costs, nuke power is actually uneconomic

If we include the use of burning fossil fuel when renewable energy is not delivering, then the cost of renewable is uneconomic and very polluting.

We have not solved the continuously supply problem for renewable energy. Hydro is not enough, large scale battery technology is not a reality yet, adaptive energy policy has never been attempted at a global scale. People want continuously energy 24/7. They will pay for clean and cheap energy when they can, and burn coal when it is not available. The only current clean alternative is to have nuclear when solar and wind is not producing, but the marginal cost of running the nuclear plant is low enough so it will most likely also run when wind and solar is running. A little more environmental friend strategy is to lift up the rods to save fuel and reduce waste, but that means the whole cost need to be recouped during low production periods.

> Apart from that, it's a great idea.

The great idea is to have a full ban on burning fossil fuels for electricity and heat. A full stop. How people then want to solve the problem of continuous power is road full of issues. It is a bit strange political situation where those in favor of renewable do not want a full ban of burning coal, gas and oil, while those in favor of nuclear do want it.

>How I wish that was true.

>What they actually do is preferring to not burn coal, but when the choice is between blackouts or burning coal for power even the most environmentalist governments in Europe prefer burning coal.

It is true.

Germany has already built its last coal fired power plant and has already mandated the closure of all 84 plants by 2020.

Germany is already shifting to generating by renewables, demand shifting to deal with fluctuations in the cost of power, overproduction and pumped water / batteries to make up the rest of the difference.

>It is a bit strange political situation where those in favor of renewable do not want a full ban of burning coal, gas and oil, while those in favor of nuclear do want it.

It'll happen eventually. Nuclear is in no position to make it happen any quicker than renewables are though.

Germany will just continue to cheat and import from France during lulls. Either that or they will just burn natural gas. Renewables (excluding dams because they aren’t supported by zealots) for base load are a complete fantasy. Pumped storage and batteries are so inefficient that we can’t switch without quintupling electricity costs for everyone.

>It'll happen eventually. Nuclear is in no position to make it happen any quicker than renewables are though.

Renewables are not competitive with nuclear for base load, at all. That’s why “environmentalists” conveniently allow the burning of coal and gas for the base load while they sit around waiting on a miracle for storage. Nuclear is a solution that works now. Hoping for storage tech 50 years from now is just stoking the fossil fuel burn.

Convenient to exclude hydro to make your argument where its what powers the existing the 100% renewable countries (either completely or nearly so).

Hydro is fantastic and we should use it wherever we can. Problem is the last part. We can't use it everywhere.

Convenient to exclude the fact that hydro requires a specific geology and willingness to destroy river ecosystems for it to work.

Hydro is finite... When you've harnessed 80%~90% of the potential, that's about it.

If you are mainly looking at an energy source for the downtimes, then there is currently enough hydro being generated to do that.

There are countries which are 100% renewable right now using hydro to do so, so yes.

Which countries? The closest I know of is Norway. But they do burn some gas and also import from Sweden (and others). Even if they didn't have gas I don't think it is fair to say that a country runs on 100% renewables if they import energy from a country that isn't 100% renewable.

These countries do not exist. There is no county getting by without burning fossil fuels or using nuclear for baseload somewhere. The 100% you might be thinking of are countries that import fossil/nuclear baseload during lulls and export spare renewables during high generation times for a “net 100% renewable”. This is a start, but it’s marketing bullshit because it’s not actually sustainable for all countries to do that. Someone needs to provide baseload.

No, there is absolutely not enough hydro for baseload. Where did you get that idea?

>The nuclear industry has proven time and time again that it can't be trusted with nuclear technology.

You can count these events on your hands. The same can’t be said for aviation accidents caused by incompetence. Thousands of deaths have been caused by bad management/bad engineering/bad operations/bad pilots and yet we still fly more and more every day.

>Fifth, if you remove all subsidies and include end-to-end clean-up costs, nuke power is actually uneconomic, and becoming more and more so.

Only if you make up arbitrary numbers for cleanup costs. See what happens to solar if you remove all of the subsidies for the panels as well as the required storage batteries as well as the cleanup costs for the mines providing all of the materials and it won’t be “economic” either.

https://www.iea.org/statistics/?country=WORLD&year=2016&cate...

And here is the wiki page to answer how many since the 70’s (hint, it’s a lot): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accide...

I count 18 after the 70s. Do you realize how irrelevant that is given the millions per year coal is killing?

I've been trying to figure out this problem. It seems like people understand the dangers of nuclear (with some overstatement[0]). The problem I see is that people don't understand dangers of other sources. Like even solar kills more than nuclear (on a per kilowatt basis, and including predicted deaths from cancer of Fukushima and Chernobyl). Or they don't understand how small the waste is in comparison to other sources (~soda can a year compared to train fulls a day (coal)). I don't know if this is due to fear or humans having a hard time comparing large numbers. Or some combination.

[0] example being that meltdowns make a place inhospitable for centuries. Fukushima's exclusion zone is shrinking fast. And only Chernobyl and Fukushima have exclusion zones. Plus, those ares have thriving wildlife and vegetation.