Every euro invested in nuclear power makes the climate crisis worse
dw.com
dw.com
Take the baseline power away and the cost equation dramatically changes.
Nuclear provides more emissionless power than solar and wind combined.
Anyone who claims to be an environmentalist who is against nuclear power doesn't really believe warming is a threat.
Also, their funding profile could inform their stance.
(Places with significant hydroelectric might not even need much storage if they just run water through the turbines at night, or whenever they have a shortfall. Or even pump water back uphill when there's a surplus.)
This is one of the primary drivers for alternative chemistries and non battery energy storage such as green hydrogen and kinetic or thermal storage.
Hydroelectric isn’t relevant for the vast majority of the population and hydroelectric that doesn’t have a severe impact on the environment is even rarer.
Not many countries have the topology and water sources as Sweden.
We should’ve been building and advancing nuclear reactors since the 80’s instead we had the likes of Greenpeace blocking coolant intakes and outflow pipes to nuclear plants and the Greens in countries like Germany running a hybrid war against nuclear power for decades.
There are now some fairly good estimates including these 2020 calculations by the International Energy Agency that illustrate that onshore wind, utility-scale solar, and hydro are competitive with nuclear power:
https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-el...
Solar, wind and hydro power all benefit from relatively short (and safe) construction times and (as I naively understand it) usually require less complicated on-site security, maintenance and monitoring.
It feels like there is a large opportunity for renewable sources of energy to gain momentum and scale up.
Mycle Schneider (pronounce Michael, /ˈmaɪkəl/) (born 1959 in Cologne)[1] is a Paris-based nuclear energy consultant and anti-nuclear activist.[2][3]
Using this kind of shady tactics may have some superficially good effect, but once people catch you manipulating them so grossly, they tend to disregard your arguments afterward.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Nuclear_Industry_Status_...
People like him are just as responsible for the current crisis as Halliburton et al.
France has one of the cleanest grids on the planet with less than 10% of electricity produced using fossil fuels. And it has been the case for decades. If all developed countries would’ve been even close to this we would’ve been at a very different situation right now.
These must be different from the environmentalists that think the world is on the verge of a grisly doom where war and famine tear us apart that we have to pay any price to avert.
If the climate crisis is remotely comparable to a nuclear meltdown then we can go back to sleep. The fallout from all the nuclear disasters has been much more bark than bite.
Anyway, I had this discussion many times here so I won't get into it, but nuclear is pretty damn safe, and I can't wait for ITER.
As long as it doesn’t get into the water supply you can build your house on top of it, anything really nasty burns out quickly anything that has a half life in the 1000’s not to mention millions of years isn’t a concern.
50% are levies, fees and taxes, which partly pay for the built up of the renewable energy generation.
There is a lot of obvious evidence german politicians are pushing for Nord Stream 2.
When ex German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder becomes the chairman of Nord Stream 2 after his term is over some warning lights should be going off.
Do you think the campaign to kill off all the evil nuclear plants is a random happening? When you have to make room for all that gas?
> ... because now this money cannot be used to invest in efficient climate protection options.
The actual amount of concrete and steel needed is very low.
If we could get a consortium of countries together to design and build 500 identical nuclear plants to power 50% of the world for the next 50 years, it would surely work out cheaper.
But the minute every reactor is custom the cost advantage will vanish.
That's surely just a crazy flight of fancy, though -- since we're in a "climate crisis" where the earth will be overheating, politicians will surely arrange for us to have great bags of cheap, plentiful, reliable power for our air conditioning so that we don't go back to the days of, say, 1911, when tens of thousands of people died in heatwaves.
The economic arguments in the article might be right, that nuclear just isn't price competitive anymore. But I think the argument that "anything spent on option A is taking away from option B" isn't really all that convincing. I mean, we could take money away from other things, like subsidies to fossil fuel companies and build some new nuclear power plants. Or we could build fewer aircraft carriers, or raise the tax rate on capital gains.
The main problem here isn't that we're spending too much on nuclear power plants, it's that we need to drastically expand our use of solar and wind. (And while we're at it start building out more utility-scale large battery banks, and/or build high-capacity transcontinental HVDC lines so most of the world can buy power at all times from wherever the sun is shining right then.)
It's sort of like saying that paying a thousand dollars to provide rent for someone whose house burned down is killing a bunch of people in Africa because you could have spent that money more efficiently on mosquito nets. I understand the argument, but people everywhere have needs and it's better I think in the long run to help with all the ones we can than to sort all the needs in priority order based on cost/benefit ratio.
What a stupid statement.
Also, most establish environmental protection organizations and activists are deeply anti-capitalist and massively left-leaning, so they automatically are against any technology that can be controlled by large companies. Did you notice how fast Greta Thunberg was away from the front stage of all established EPOs like Greenpeace after daring the sacrilege to endorse nuclear?