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Comment by insane_dreamer | Hacker News Reader

if it wasn't for France having primarily used nuclear power decades ago, Europe as a whole would be in a much much worse state when it comes to CO2 emissions. That makes it abundantly clear that nuclear needs to be a part of the mix when it comes to non-emission generating energy production.

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France has 12% of Europe's population, and its primary energy is 45% from fossil fuels and 40% from nuclear power. The effect on Europe as a whole is therefore pretty small.

France is simultaneously one of the most populated countries in the EU and the of the top transitioned countries, it does make a difference

I think you included transportation in your stats: planes, cars, trucks and boats. The electrical mix in France includes only 8% from fossil fuels, of which 7% come from natural gas. The rest is mostly nuclear, hydroelectric, wind and solar. In that order.

France also regularly sells its surplus to neighboring countries.

> France also regularly sells its surplus to neighboring countries.

And in order to do that it has pretty massive lines to neighbours meaning it also acts as an exchange platform (for a profit) e.g. if there are strong winds it can buy electricity from an oversupplied german grid and sell it to italy.

https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/24h provides live views of the european electricity grids, and France is the only country which is consistently green (and often dark green aka under 50gCO2eq/kWh) without being blessed with enough hydro for most or all of its requirements (as Iceland and Norway are).

Interesting to see they have data for Russia now. I think that's new.

Most countries use way more primary energy for heating and transportation than for electricity generation. It would be disingenuous not to include this.

It’s fairly disingenuous to mix both actually when they don’t mingle. Especially when you consider that both heating and transportation are going in the direction of using more electricity which is actually favorable to the French choice.

Energy is energy. Why make a special category for heating and transport?

It's because the energy sources, technical implementation and uses are so vastly different between the power grid, heating and transportation.

You're not counting the energy outflows from France to neighboring countries.

Also, France gets 70% of its energy from nuclear, not 40%.

> Also, France gets 70% of its energy from nuclear, not 40%.

No, it gets 70% of its electricity from nuclear.

Yeah, France could invest a lot more into nuclear-heat usage directly (e.g. for district heating or providing process heat to factories) without needing to convert it into Electricity first.

France did invest into a new nuclear powerplant, and the result isn't enticing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...

That wasn‘t what was mentioned, it was specifically mentioned they should use more nuclear to heat, I.e. use exceeds heat for district heating for example.

This is fairly common for coal and gas power plants, but as far as I know, not really used with nuclear power plants.

As far as I know, the French nuclear power plants aren’t exactly in close proximity to any major city, making district heating most likely not economically viable

It implies an adequate design, adapting (retrofit) an existing nuclear plant to such co-generation is very difficult.

That happens when you only build a SINGLE reactor unit after decades of building nothing. Keep improving the design (EPR2) and keep building and the costs and build times will come down.

> only build a SINGLE reactor unit after decades of building nothing

Nope.

The most recent nuclear reactor (Civaux-2) was delivered in France in 1999.

The project aiming at building an EPR in France (Flamanville) started in 2004, and it was a work-in-progress on the field in 2007. Where are those "decades"?

Moreover an EPR was sold to Finland before, and work started in 2005.

Then a pair was sold to China.

Then another pair to the U.-K.

All 6 are very late and have huge overcosts.

If those 6 are in your opinion a "SINGLE reactor" let's swap my single dollar for your six bucks.

Not to count attempts to stem other projects (even in France, at Penly) by offering it to India, Slovenia, USA through UniStar Nuclear, Czech Republic, United Arab Emirates... The prospect weren't thrilled by patent problems at then ongoing projects.

There was a tangible will. As usual this isn't sufficient to succeed.

Germany’s net power grid imports are less than 5% (17% imports vs. 12.5% exports in 24H1), despite having no active nuclear power plants anymore. Around 60% of their domestically generated power currently comes from renewables (up 8% from last year). I don’t think it’s abundantly clear.

CO2 equiv from https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/24h:

France: 40g/kWh Germany 557g/kWh

If the goal is decarbonation, using wind+solar is alright (renewables are a bigger part of the mix in Germany) but burning gas and lignite when there's no sun or wind is not.

In Germany the problem is coal (lignite): it remains a huge social and political 'asset'. Many jobs, low-priced electricity, no dependency towards fuel shipped by a foreign nation...

France switched to nuclear because at the time it didn't have any fossil fuel ( https://sites.google.com/view/electricitedefrance/messmer-pl... ), while Germany (especially the then-RDA part of it, Soviet-controlled) had huge reserves.

Phasing-out coal is therefore difficult for Germany, however it does so and the acceleration after Fukushima (2011) and during its nuclear phase-out is impressive: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-coal?ta...

France & Germany (beware: check the scales...): https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-generation-fr...

After Fukushima most German citizens didn't want nuclear reactors anymore: Which political parties switched most of the nuclear plants off since Fukushima? CDU/CSU: 14 FDP: 11 SPD: 9 Greens: 3 (source: https://x.com/HannoKlausmeier/status/1784158942823690561 )

Net balance over long time periods isn't very interesting: it doesn't tell you what happens on the market and who needs the trade to happen. What you need to look at is whether these exports are correlated with peaks in production or peaks in usage.

Ah, the well loved trick of playing with statistics to make something look good.

The current carbon intensity per KWh in Germany is 526g, vs 50g for France.

The average yearly carbon intensity per KWh in Germany, is 354g.

So, either the rest 40% of domestically generated power are hyper-polluting, or the other statistics don't hold up.

Either way, with such a high carbon intensity, there is nothing to brag about.

And that's before entering the discussion about how the repercussions of the poor long-term German energy plan is currently killing their economy, and, indirectly, their social fabric.

Where do you find the current value? Since it's rather different from the yearly average, it sounds like it's (close to) live and I've been looking for live production stats (more granular than "what was it yesterday") but couldn't find it

https://app.electricitymaps.com/

Ah, and let's not forget the "issue" of zero solar & wind days, as happened at the beginning of the month, with 20 GW missing..

We know how to solve this ( https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/180592/european-cooperation-... ), and the corresponding continental fleet of renewables is a work in progress.

This could be very misleading

> net power grid imports are less than 5% (17% imports vs. 12.5% exports in 24H1)

depending on when those happen. If they import French electricity whenever the wind is taking a break from blowing, that prevents craptons of pollution (including, but far from exclusively, CO2) from the massive German coal plant I live near to. If it's more random, say if it's just helping with some peaks when everyone's making bratwurst and coal currently doesn't cut it, then it's not reducing them from running

There are also times where we hear electricity prices are negative or near zero for a time, afaik usually caused by too much wind-based production. Exporting that may balance the thing out so that the net value is near zero

I'm sure it'll be some mix of those and other scenarios, but I'm not sure that looking at the net result says very much about whether nuclear electricity exports helped reduce emissions in surrounding countries like Germany. I'm more inclined to say the claim of the person you're responding to is likely correct (though I'd say "helpful to be" part of the mix, rather than "needs to be")

Usually in a sentence like "X makes it abundantly clear that Y" X should be some kind of objective fact, not speculation.

Not sure if that still holds true nowadays with renewable energy and storage having got cheaper and cheaper.

The result speaks for themselves, Germany still hasn't reached France 90s levels of emissions.

Energiewende didnt start in 1973, it was first authorized in late 2010.

France's nuclear program was also very, very expensive: https://www.i-sis.org.uk/The_True_Costs_of_French_Nuclear_Po...

You can say whatever you want when discussion the cost of nuclear in France because of the structure of its nuclear industry. Part of it comes from the government’s budget, so depending on your point of view it can be accounted for differently. Then, there are externalities (pollution, greenhouse gases, etc). And then there are strategic aspects and associated costs. The alternative in the 1970s was skyrocketing oil, which is much more costly at the planet’s level, and was on track to be much more costly at the country’s level as well. And in the meantime, consumers got reasonably cheap and clean electricity for decades.

Skimming your source, I would not trust it very much.

>The alternative in the 1970s was skyrocketing oil

They imported and still import just as much oil as anyone else.

They in fact import far less gas than Germany and let’s not even look at coal.

That article is extremely loaded. It bemoans every factor that made building nuclear a sensible choice, as if these factors were unfair and shouldn't have existed (with that logic, I guess Norway should never have built dams, and it's unfair that they have all these mountains). It also insists that France should have added a lot of burdensome process, which reminds me of CIA's Simple Sabotage Field Manual. Also bonus point for complaining about the Tennessee Valley Authority. I've read many articles about pricing the French nuclear fleet, but this was a first.

For people interested about a real inquiry discussing the price of the french nuclear program [1] which is actually exhaustive and well documented.

[1]: https://www.ccomptes.fr/sites/default/files/EzPublish/themat...

I have no clew how come the difference on what's usually said on this forum and the situation in Europe.My only understanding is that the US as whole is more sunny that gives a better ratio solar panel and produced electricity.

Maybe also it's a provider thing ? From country to country, you can always have things that seem randomly more expensive. Germany is more renewable but more expensive than France, is it because of their national company is benefiting citizen properly or is it because the remaining gas part drives up the cost ?

Germany may use more renewables in volume, but it is absolutely dirtier than in France. Their electrical mix makes use of lots of natural gas and lignite coal, the worst kind, both expensive and very dirty.

Compare to the PAST, not the present! As you can see, the trend is downwards and steadily at that: https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Economic-Sectors-Enterpris...

Rome wasn't built in a day and I find it hilarious to advocate for nuclear power instead, if the average construction time (not even taking into account the prior mountain of bureaucracy) is over a decade. Not a single nuclear power plant built in past 15 years in Europe has been on time or on budget. Not even close.

> As you can see, the trend is downwards and steadily at that

Lignite numbers:

2019: 114TWh, 18.7%

2020: 92TWh, 16%

2021: 110TWh, 18.8%

2022: 116TWh, 20%

2023: 88TWh, 17%

I've seen steadier terminal alcoholics.

I think this graph from Wikipedia is better, as it goes back to 1990 [1].

Renewables have increased significantly, but much of that is displacing nuclear power. The remainder, plus a small increase in natural gas, his displaced hard coal and a small amount of lignite. Presumably hard coal is more expensive.

The overall trend is coal is reducing, but it's a poor show compared to Great Britain [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Germany#...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_in_Great_Britain#/...

> Presumably hard coal is more expensive.

Yeah, Germany did have hard coal mines but they closed a few years back as they've gotten too deep and difficult to access to be economically viable (and it was subsidised until 2018), so Germany imports hard coal. Meanwhile germany is either #1 or #2 lignite producer.

Strategically speaking, Europe lacks the natural resources to build renewable, wind turbines and solar panels have to be imported, most of them from Asia.

Nuclear is still a bit cheaper per Watt and less carbon intensive, as it involves less infrastructure, logistics and batteries overall. It's also somewhat more reliable, as it doesn't depend on sun or wind (the former of which France often lacks).

Also, I am hopeful that nuclear power plant construction delays will only improve in the near future, as Europe rebuilds its expertise in nuclear engineering, which it lost after the past decades of anti-nuclear waves.

Finally, I don't see fossil fuel usage going down much in Germany in the link you gave, if at all. Which is the only thing that matters, ecologically speaking.

> Nuclear is still a bit cheaper per Watt

LCOE [1] of nuclear power in Europe and the USA is roughly thrice that of solar or wind [2]. In China it is about even. If you do not trust the Deutsche Bank report, the World Nuclear Association comes to roughly the same conclusion but assumes a lower discount, thus making nuclear power more attractive. [3]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity [2] https://www.dbresearch.de/PROD/RPS_DE-PROD/PROD0000000000528... [3] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspec...

In France, the most recent report [1] by the Cour des comptes, our official accounting organ, still gives nuclear power as slightly cheaper than solar and wind.

I trust your data, but the situation here is different, most reactors are already built, and "only" need maintenance and fuel replacement.

I still stand by what I said in my previous comment about emissions per watts, etc.

[1] https://www.ccomptes.fr/sites/default/files/2021-12/20211213...

This report is about the cost of production of AMORTIZED nuclear plants (moreover the real cost of France's nuclear fleet of reactor, including public money is a matter of debate). Comparing it to the total cost of new renewable is meaningless.

Is this based on cost per Watt without the expenses related to keeping the grid perfectly synchronized or not?

A significant and stable base load is important and it has shown that wind/solar makes it substantially more expensive to keep the grid stabilized, which is of course a no brainer if you don't want a blackout.

> Is this based on cost per Watt without the expenses related to keeping the grid perfectly synchronized or not?

It's the LCOE, you can read what it encompasses in the link I provided.

> A significant and stable base load is important and it has shown that wind/solar makes it substantially more expensive to keep the grid stabilized, which is of course a no brainer if you don't want a blackout.

I assume you mean the utility frequency [1] when you say "base load", because you said "synchronized" and "stabilized". The frequency indeed has to be stable with a rather small margin of tolerance. Today that's mostly a job for gas turbines, though. One can hope that we find ways to store all the surplus regenerative power soon, so that we can retire those, too. Nuclear power plants, in any case, are too slow for that purpose.

Just in case you really meant load, load has no requirement to be stable. The power demands at any time can be met by dispatchable power plants, but utilities like to plan long-term, so they use some averaged load over time to determine a "base load" and buy accordingly on the electricity market. That's prudent business practice, but there is no technical reason to run low-variability power plants because of that.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_frequency

Thanks for clearing up the terminology. Good point regarding gas turbines.

> Germany is more renewable but more expensive than France

No, germany is more renewable but it's also more coal, any time there's no wind the coal plants start up. And they burn lignite (because that's what in germany e.g. that's what the Baggers strip mine).

As a consequence, Germany's electricity emissions are absolute garbage: https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE/12mo

It's not as bad as Poland which basically runs entirely off of coal, but it's absolutely at the bottom of the european barrel.

Also electricity storage still isn't much of a thing (and while germany has two pumped hydro station they have very little capacity), so in periods of high winds germany actually pays its neighbours to take electricity off its grid so it doesn't collapse (at this point it has hundreds of hours of negative spot prices every year).

Which is getting problematic because increase in wind generation in said neighbours means the issue is spreading as they too need to get rid of their wind production at those times.

> No, germany is more renewable but it's also more coal, any time there's no wind the coal plants start up.

Hm. The actual facts say otherwise, though: https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Economic-Sectors-Enterpris...

So number go DOWN, not up, is what I'm seeing.

> Hm. The actual facts say otherwise

They don't.

> So number go DOWN, not up, is what I'm seeing.

The comment I replied to is comparing germany to france. The map I linked literally tells you that in 2024 Germany generated 370g CO2 equivalent per kWh, where France generated 32, that's an objective number you can straight up read.

Yes Germany is 58% renewable versus France's 28 (something the map also tells you), but then 30% are gas and especially coal, the link you provide agrees with that. Coal is insanely polluting, especially because Germany mainly uses lignite which is the least energy rich coal (so even more emissions for the same production), coal represents >3/4th of its emissions.

Meanwhile gas is a minor component of france's electricity mix (pretty much just peaking plants and a few combined cycle district heating plants) and coal is a rounding error.

> gas is a minor component of france's electricity mix

~9%

https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/energy?Metric=Share+of+...

And the reality is even worse than that because France has 40% electricity heating whereas it's only 5% in Germany.

Yes it has:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-intensity?tab=chart&t...

The data you provide quotes Germany being 50% more polluting than France per-GDP-unit, at the level France was at in 2007.

The issue with it is that dividing by GDP rather than, say, population or total energy used is kind of disingenuous. For instance, France's 2007 GDP can't be compared to Germany's 2022 GDP, so it's extremely hard to have an idea of what you're comparing.

2007 is not in the 1990s which is the point I responded to. France was cleaning up in the 1990s but Germany is still doing better than France in even 1999. As you helpfully point out they were about France's 2007 level (when they had 70% nuclear electricity, 40% nuclear power, a hair below their absolute peak 41% nuclear which they hit a few years later) in 2022, so catching up to a global leader with lots of nuclear despite phasing out their own nuclear.

You can see the per capita numbers on the same site and it's the same basic story, France had a head start but Germany is cleaning up faster (while growing GDP faster).

One of the anti-German memes going around is that their decarbonisation is via deindustrialization, so per GDP helps avoid that accusation and adjusts for people importing their carbon as the country with the heavy industry gets paid.

Meanwhile the USA, which has the most nuclear plants and yet is clearly worse than Germany and the EU average, somehow gets a free pass. How odd. It's as if we attack the countries (and states) that reduce carbon without nuclear rather than the ones emitting lots of carbon.

> so catching up to a global leader with lots of nuclear despite phasing out their own nuclear.

No catching up happened, because France also improved in the meantime, despite building no new plant in the 2007-2022 interval. And that's the issue with this measurement: it measures plenty of parasitic information. For instance, GDP growth between the 90's and now explains a large part of what you're highlighting.

Here's another chart from your site showing carbon intensity [1] which shows the improvement in carbon per energy generated is only a small part of the improvement shown in your graph.

And here's a chart [2] showing how GDP growth is the dominating factor for Germany's evolution in your graph.

[1]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/production-consumption-ca...

[2]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/kaya-identity-co2?country...

> France also improved in the meantime, despite building no new plant in the 2007-2022 interval

Thanks to renewables: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-fossil-renewa...

Renewables didn't move the needle since french electricity was already clean. Your graph shows that fossil didn't move over the time period.

The difference has been cleaner energy use (e.g. better car motors) and cleaner production on non-electric energy.

Renewables did compensate nuclear's underproduction: without them France would have burnt more fossil fuels.

Moreover ~60% of France's final energy is obtained by burning fossil fuels => France must electrify (replace fossil fuel by electricity) => produce more gridpower => deploy new gridpower-producing equipment and such heavy industry thingies cannot be built overnight.

Upon an economic viewpoint electrifying is facilitated by the sheer availability of low-priced electricity.

It feels like you've got your answer and are looking for a way to find the fit problem.

> Renewables did compensate nuclear's underproduction

The underproduction episode in 2022 was mostly handled thanks to imports and consumer sobriety.

> Moreover ~60% of France's final energy is obtained by burning fossil fuels

Yeah, that's my point. France would be better served by electrifying its non-electric energy usages rather than trying to replace one clean production by another.

> => deploy new gridpower-producing equipment and such heavy industry thingies cannot be built overnight.

France has a healthy margin before needing to rush production, with electricity usage going down for two decades, and a significant share of its power being exported currently.

>> Renewables did compensate nuclear's underproduction

> The underproduction episode in 2022 was mostly handled thanks to imports and consumer sobriety.

Source?

> France would be better served by electrifying its non-electric energy usages rather than trying to replace one clean production by another.

I disagree:

Renewables-produced electricity reduces fossil the amount -fuel-produced electricity: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-fossil-renewa...

A large part of resources needed by electrification isn't needed to build electricity-producing equipment.

Producing more electricity enables us to contain its price, boosting electrification.

Starting right now to build in order to replace 40-years old nuclear plants (on average) seems adequate to me. New nuclear (Flamanville-3 EPR) isn't adequate (6x times overcostly, at least 12 years late).

> France has a healthy margin before needing to rush production,

Electrification has to ramp up, therefore if everything goes as planned it will soon be over. Waiting is dangerous.

> with electricity usage going down for two decades

Production nearly-flat from 2004 until COVID: https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption

> a significant share of its power being exported currently.

The challenge (getting rid of fossil fuels and the necessary powergrid, see ENTSO-e) is at continental-scale.

> Renewables-produced electricity reduces fossil the amount -fuel-produced electricity

Why the hell would you show me the same graph I showed you earlier, but with only 3 years of history? That graph, over time, shows that fossil hovers around 10%, has been for decades now. Renewables is not decreasing fossil use here.

> A large part of resources needed by electrification isn't needed to build electricity-producing equipment.

As France is a market economy, the issue isn't resources, money is.

> Starting right now to build in order to replace 40-years old nuclear plants

Here is the issue: you don't give a fuck about CO2, all you care about is for renewables to replace nuclear, another clean energy source. All of your discourse is warped and dishonest because you want to pretend that you care about catbon emissions when, in fact, you don't.

If you cared about carbon emissions you would focus on means to lower carbon emissions: electrifiying.

> Why the hell would you show me the same graph

I quoted it 4 days ago (see above). I propose my interpretation of it, for the objective reader to make his mind. Renewables' share is up, therefore they replace fossil fuels because without renewables France should burn more fossil fuels.

>> A large part of resources needed by electrification isn't needed to build electricity-producing equipment.

> As France is a market economy, the issue isn't resources, money is.

If in your opinion each and every resource (expertise, material...) used to deploy electricity-producing plants is 100% adequate for electrifying let's say we live in distinct universes.

> Here is the issue: you don't give a fuck

No arguments, therefore you rant about what (in your opinion) I think. This is moot.

> If you cared about carbon emissions you would focus on means to lower carbon emissions: electrifiying.

I already explained, above, why deploying electricity-producing plants is just as important and urgent. You didn't even try to counter-argument.

> Renewables' share is up, therefore they replace fossil fuels because without renewables France should burn more fossil fuels.

Once again the declining share is nuclear. Fossils are stable as the data you quote shows.

> If in your opinion each and every resource (expertise, material...) used to deploy electricity-producing plants is 100% adequate for electrifying

My point is that this is irrelevant since the bottleneck is money. We don't live in a command economy where material resources and workers are assigned by the state on a given project.

> You didn't even try to counter-argument.

Why would I try when we're at the point where you don't even acknowledge raw data?

> the declining share is nuclear

OMG, is it a joke? Consumption is stable, OK? Nuclear produced less, OK? Therefore renewables compensated for nuclear declining production, OK? Therefore burning more fossil fuels was not necessary, OK? Therefore renewables replaced them, OK?

> the bottleneck is money

My point is solid even given this perspective: the way public money is used is of paramount importance: government recently ordered new nuclear reactors, and also subsidizes renewables in order to compensate past huge subsides to nuclear. More money here, less money there.

> We don't live in a command economy where material resources and workers are assigned by the state on a given project.

Read above.

> you don't even acknowledge raw data

Raw data, as explained, shows that renewables enabled France to avoid burning more fossil fuel. This is a fact, like it or not.

Nuclear is not down for intrinsic reasons, it is down because it comes after renewables in merit order, and therefore when renewables are available, it is scaled down.

In low renewables availability episodes, there isn’t more fossil production, we simply ramp nuclear up.

> it is down because it comes after renewables in merit order

Nope. This is provably false, and even the pertinent official authority (RTE) says so: https://x.com/factsory/status/1712155368304898137

Details:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZCKv0C6Dqs&t=561s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZCKv0C6Dqs&t=2273s

None of the sources you quote is RTE.

And both videos you quote state clearly that the production program is built using merit order, in which renewables always come first.

> None of the sources you quote is RTE.

You didn't watch or understand them. The first thread referenced, on x.com, offers a link towards https://www.youtube.com/live/xP4jL4b_Nnk?si=P4X_qMV9vtkpVD7z... This guy is RTE's official representative. Please listen to what he says, and let me know whether you persist to deny or reckon.

> merit order

A technical merit order, established to optimize and therefore to prefer the most adequate (overall) source. It is enforced for ages and for all sources, it isn't some arbitrarily established rule aiming at hurting poor nuclear lil'baby. If nuclear cannot compete it will disappear. The processus already started.

What storage are you referring too? I see residential ones in houses but absolutely nothing of state-scale, which is necessary to keep industries and services running.

Materials used for current storage technologies are expected to see demand skyrocket. We’re still to see the renewables going further than the residential proof of concept on a society scale.

God bless plutonium.

The CAISO (California Independent System Operator) grid is a good example of large scale battery use (1). Texas is also seeing a ramp up of battery storage (2).

Whilst battery demand will increase it's expected costs will continue to decrease - "Innovation reduces total capital costs of battery storage by up to 40% in the power sector by 2030 in the Stated Policies Scenario"(3)

1. https://www.gridstatus.io/live/caiso?date=2024-11-27 2. https://modoenergy.com/research/ercot-battery-energy-storage... 3. https://www.iea.org/reports/batteries-and-secure-energy-tran...

> Materials used for current storage technologies are expected to see demand skyrocket.

We haven't even specified what kind of storage technology we're talking about yet you already state that "materials used for current storage technologies are expected to see demand skyrocket". Are you referring to batteries? There are countless other technologies to "store" energy.

Eh… plutonium? I think uranium is the usual choice.

Home batteries can be part of a grid level response but this is nascent.

France, unusually, actually does, or at least did, use significant amounts of plutonium (a combo of decommissioned weapons and nuclear reprocessing output) in nuclear energy generation, but yeah, primarily uranium.

New renewable installations are getting cheaper, but are still far from being numerous enough to overcome their terrible load factor and enable switching off some baseline production plants. And storage at a grid level is pretty much inexistant, except for a couple of pumped hydro plants.

There is a significant mismatch between reality and the kind of headlines we see in tech-focused media. These hype future products as if they were already widely available, which creates a false idea of the actual situation in the real world.

Britain has switched off its coal plants.

At least some of that is surely because of renewable power, mostly wind.

And because solar and wind power boost sales of gas turbine power plants that can spin fast enough to react for the wind and solar instability

You'd need to be able to store WEEKS of electricity to make wind+solar work.

Currently, battery grid-scale storage stores seconds.

You'd need an increase of several orders of magnitude for this to work.

Even if manufacturing costs were magically 0, the amount of lithium, copper and other materials required would be unsustainable.

It's not going to happen.

Do you have any source elaborating on that?

Do you realise that German government, European Union and independent third parties have all published scientific estimates as to how much storage is needed and no, it’s not for weeks?

You don’t use lithium for long term energy storage. You just have very shallow understanding of issues at hand.

Let's see... nuclear power is super expensive, relies on finite uranium resources and there is no safe solution to store the waste. Do we really want to rely on this?

What other clean solution for variable reliable power do you know of?

Keep in mind that we should be comparing "super expensive" with climate adaptation consequences, as well as factoring in that e.g. Europe could collaborate and drive down reactor costs with economies of scale where we don't all need to independently reinvent how to build these things

I'm happy for any energy (not just electricity) mix that ends up with a reasonable total cost, adding up current investments needed and future adaptation measures. The problem with ruling out a clean and safe energy source for irrational fears is that it delays net zero (higher future adaptation costs) and requires spending more on alternative solutions to guarantee a steady power supply (higher current investments)

Wind and solar are currently much cheaper per kWp (opportunistic production) and so it seems like the quicker way to net zero, and during the first bit (where we are currently at) that's definitely true. The problem shifts when we want to actually stop using things like gas to make up the difference. Afaik we need to go quite a way beyond what cost-effective pumped hydro locations can supply in most of Europe, so we need to look beyond 2030 and think what power sources we need to have ready by, say, 2040 or 2050, start making specific plans, and break ground on whatever solution is the best compromise

(I'm expecting some people to object to saying nuclear is not rationally dangerous. Please, prove me wrong! I'm happy to update my opinions based on non-cherry-picked data. I've previously looked into the cost in human health (not just deaths) of different energy sources, including dependencies such as uranium mining which is among the worst aspects. The only reliable data I've been able to find shows fission on par with renewables — iirc tending towards being safer, but probably not beyond the error margins due to the low percentage of nuclear energy)

Edit: on the other hand, I'm afraid that this nuclear discussion (especially with germans, I say that as a foreigner living in Germany so I've heard different perspectives) only serves to divide the people who at least understand there is something we should be doing about climate change. I'm happy to compromise if that lets us finally settle on a concrete plan that'll land us in a place we want to be

> nuclear power is super expensive

That is debatable, nuclear power can be really cheap when managed correctly. See for example Ontario, Canada or France during the 70s-90s.

Many nuclear power plants can have life times of more than 8 decades and only the initial build and licensing is the expansive part, so if you average the cost over the total life time it is rather cheap.

https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-el...

> relies on finite uranium resources

https://whatisnuclear.com/nuclear-sustainability.html

> there is no safe solution to store the waste

If its so unsafe, why has there not been a single major accident with used fuel from civilian nuclear power plants? We have been using hundreds of NPPs for decades, yet not a single fatality.

The truth is, nuclear waste can be and is managed safely.

See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_cask_storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KBS-3

“Super expensive” for who builds them, or "super expensive" for the end user paying their electricity bill?

Also, there are safe solutions to store nuclear waste. They are not 1.0e31% secure, but many other kinds of power plants carry significant risks [1] [2] [3]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajont_Dam

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmington_Mine_disaster

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Connecticut_power_plant_e...

It's either expensive to the person paying the bill or to the person paying tax to subsidize it.

That's what "super expensive" means.

And yeah, most of it comes from the cost of building them. But they are barely competitive with solar + batteries if you count only the costs of operating them.

> super expensive

cheaper than dealing with climate change

> finite uranium resources

we're not going to run out anytime soon, unlike oil

> no safe solution to store the waste

yes, there are

It's not the perfect solution for sure. But solar/wind/water isn't going to get us to where we need to be fast enough.

One day we'll figure our fusion and can shut down all our fission plants.

Any data on how much France has slowed the decrease of global temperatures? Is there a “nuclear power to degrees saved” converter?

someone could calculate the savings in CO2 emissions over all the power generated by nuclear energy each year in France, since the power stations were built, vs coal plants (which would have been the alternative at the time)

They replaced oil burning plants in France, when the global oil supply got disrupted.

If France had coal to burn they wouldn't have been burning oil in the first place.

I can't say if this question is asked in good faith.

Pretty obviously it's better than what the other European countries have been doing.

France being about 1% of world's population, any effort won't make a huge dent in a global phenomenon. Also, that 1% pollutes a lot more than the average, so the efforts made on the electricity front are offset by other issues.

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