japan has limited land, no oil&gas resources, so the nuclear is the perfect source of electricity for them, plus they have the expertise.
They import about 90% of its energy requirements. This includes nuclear fuel. So this is far away from "perfect" if you can get wind and sun without having to import it.
Nuclear fuel is both relatively plentiful, and can be sourced from a multitude of countries, both Eastern, Western, and, most importantly, unaligned. A lot of countries have economically viable (for power generation) uranium reserves, but do not exploit them because global prices for it are so low.
It differs significantly from oil in this respect.
So it seems not to be such an easy solution.
It gets even worse for poor countries which jumped on the Rosatom train being fully dependent on Rosatom tech, fuel, personal.
Even if it wouldn't be for that, it's far away from the availability of sun or wind.
Here is a nice read on the topic:
https://www.tortoisemedia.com/2024/04/16/russia-is-earning-b...
This is desperate, keeping alive an outdated technology. France slept on the change and now has to do everything to keep the show running.
> You'll basically have the same problems with renewables if china would ban export to eu/us
The solution would only include scaling up existing technology which is already there. Technology which doesn't require safety measures compared to nuclear. Technology which isn't that expensive. It would actually be fabulous if they'd do that because maybe countries like Germany could regrow their potential in this sector. They used to be on the front of it before the Merkel goverment killed a whole sector.
So yeah...it's not even close.
Nuclear has peaked, and its share knows only one way. Down [1]. It neither has become in any way more significant better nor has it become cheaper or faster to build.
Meanwhile, renewables, got better, cheaper and faster to build.
Nuclear is tech from the past. We needed it once. Now it's clogging up the grids, wasting taxpayer money and leaving waste behind for generations to care about.
how calculate yourself how much fossil fuel you need to power 1 GW power plant for half a decade, and how much CO2 emissions will you generate?
How many rail cars of coal Germany will need to generate 1 GW 24/7/365 for 5 years reliably ?
it is just unfair comparison, nuclear is several orders magnitude better in all aspects compared to fossil fuel and renewable - just due to physics of the process. Nuclear is capturing strong and weak forces, while combustion is capturing electromagnetic force with piss poor thermal efficiency and losses abound.
The only reason countries fumble nuclear energy is because they dont invest enough into new designs and constructions and still employ old design plants.
If there was as much investment into new nuclear plants as it was in renewable tech - we would have solved many of our energy needs long long time ago.
Plus oil rich countries lobbying LNG as a greener alternative for nuclear is another fail
And energy production is not some science experiment where you can control all the baseline conditions. It exists within a complex mix of economy, environment, social system, manufacturing etc. There is no scientific method for navigating that. And your industry will probably ignore it if there was. Politics is all we have for deciding complex interrelated questions.
Perhaps it will take generational change (and stopping the propagation of anti-nuclear tropes). Perhaps it will take societal selection (where those who invest will out-compete the others).
This is not a real concern for renewables.
> Nuclear is capturing strong and weak forces
Other (way more practical and determinant) parameters are less enticing. For example: it 'burns' uranium and produces dangerous waste.
Doing so may trigger a market tension.
France reprocesses only part of its fuel, and only 1 time.
> the problem will be the same
Uh?
An existing fleet of reactors is moot without uranium.
An existing fleet of renewables just works (it only needs wind, sun, geothermal activity...)
> France does have several years worth of fuel
Indeed, 'le stock stratégique', about 9 years at best (counting the average amount of uranium already present in reactors). 9 years at best for an overall of your gridpower production system... good luck with this!
Some recycling operations (past contracts) involving Russia also had to be maintained during the current embargo.
No major problem for now, indeed.
However a war or a nuclear renaissance may abruptly lead to challenging conditions, if superpowers need more uranium.
and you need to replenish uranium fuel like once in 5 years - so this is not an issue at all for nuclear energy
I disagree: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41783584
> you need to replenish uranium fuel like once in 5 years
At best. Then, if you cannot obtain uranium, your reactor is just a pile of hot waste.
No such risk with renewables.
not an issue at all, Canada, Australia, Kazakhstan, bunch of other nations mine and sell uranium. Whenever there are big mountain ranges, there is uranium. and it is cheap as a commodity
Nuclear now produces, worldwide, less than 10% of electricity (which is less than 2.2% of total final energy).
Double the reactor fleet and each new one will only produce under current conditions for 60 years (in other words it will probably be quite difficult to finance).
Canada and Australia pertain to the Anglosphere, therefore if nuclear enjoys a 'Renaissance' in the US they will provide uranium to their friends first, and will not provide it to any nation not aligned with the Anglosphere. For quite a bunch of nation Canada and Australia aren't dependable providers.
Kazakhstan can be subdued by Russia (yeah, I know, their current stance is apparently defiant, however recent history is quite clear: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakhstan%E2%80%93Russia_rela... ) or even China. Uzbekistan, also extracting uranium, stands in similar shoes. Who wants to have to beg Russia for uranium?
Read on: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/exclusive-us-utiliti...
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/10/business/economy/russia-n...
https://www.hydesmith.senate.gov/hyde-smith-questions-us-rel...
> bunch of other nations mine and sell uranium
Not really. Niger, Namibia? China and Russia are more and more in control there.
> Whenever there are big mountain ranges, there is uranium. and it is cheap as a commodity
Not at all. Please source. In many places obtaining it is very difficult due to local conditions, ore grade...
During the 'uranium bubble' (around 2007) prospection hugely intensified and raised a mere 15% new known and inferred reserves ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_bubble_of_2007#Impact ). Who wants to bet billions on this?
When it comes to commodity trading - $$$ trumps everything.
uranium reserves are plentiful, given that you dont need a lot of Uranium to recharge the plant
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-global-uranium-rese...
the most importantly: for Uranium producer there is zero reason to withhold uranium. Like what are you gonna do by stockpiling radioactive rock ??? You just gonna lose your customer to another country. Isn't it better to get rid of radioactive rock and get $$$ instead?
even OPEC cannot agree to maintain oil production to keep price stable, there is absolutely ZERO chance someone can cause trouble on uranium market
This single fact shows, according to you, that no embargo can ever happen in the future. I abandon this "conclusion" to you.
Uranium reserves are to be considered in current conditions, all reserves are not immediately available nor equivalent (ore grade...).
> there is zero reason to withhold uranium
There will be more and more reasons to do so if it becomes scarce and needed by superpowers.
> even OPEC
Because the superpowers are at ease with the current situation (shale oil plays a major role here). Oil already triggered wars.
Every country that has nuclear weapons does have nuclear reactors, and supply is basically not an issue. The technology is the main moat (uranium enrichment & reactor tech & turbine tech & missile tech)
Short version: the amount of uranium needed to build an impressive arsenal of nuclear weapons is way, way lower than the amount needed to produce a fair part of gridpower for years.
> Every country that has nuclear weapons does have nuclear reactors
Yes, because a reactor is needed to 'cook' uranium (in order to obtain high-grade Pu-239) for weapons. This very need was what led nations to build reactors, electricity-generating nuclear plants were at best an aftermath and in some cases an excuse (hiding the real objective).
> This very need was what led nations to build reactors, electricity-generating nuclear plants were at best an aftermath
In absolute history, though, this is arse backwards.
The UK and the US both had piles and generation plans before they even thought building nuclear weapons was at all possible.
The US, in particular, had a nuclear science body that were pretty damn sure weapons weren't feasible and had a major focus on atomic power to generate energy.
They ignored the letter by Einstein that highlighted the dangers of a German nuclear program suspected of chasing weapons and only paid heed after several approaches by Tube Alloys (the UK nuclear weapons group) when the Australian nuclear scientist Mark Oliphant visited the US and laid out in detail a method by which a bomb could be feasibly constructed.
In fact the first man-made nuclear reactor was the 'Chicago Pile-1' ( 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Pile-1 ), which was built by the Project Manhattan, exclusively aiming at building a nuclearbomb.
In WP's article please don't miss this: "Emilio Segrè later recalled that: I thought for a while that this term was used to refer to a source of nuclear energy in analogy with Volta's use of the Italian term pila to denote his own great invention of a source of electrical energy. I was disillusioned by Fermi himself, who told me that he simply used the common English word pile as synonymous with heap. To my surprise, Fermi never seemed to have thought of the relationship between his pile and Volta's."
The world's first reactor used to generate electricity (another one generated some during an experiment in 1948), albeit it wasn't its main purpose, was the 4th reactor, and it started nearly 10 years after: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Breeder_Reactor_I