Investments in new nuclear power plants are bad for the climate due to high costs and long construction times. Given the urgency of climate change mitigation, which requires reducing emissions from the EU electricity grid to almost zero in the 2030s (Pietzcker et al.1), preference should be given to the cheapest technology that can be deployed fastest.
Cheapest & fastest as overriding criteria for better climate impact seems very very short sighted.
1. Neglects to mention that the sector has been progressively gutted over the last 15 years and pretends like the current cost problems are natural, whereas they are basically a government policy(especially in France which has been trying to gut EDF over the last 15 years).
2. "Uranium mining causes pollution" - Yes, and mining for copper doesn't? A modern wind turbine is like 5 tons of copper.
3. Construction times of around a decade - This is by far the worst aspect of European idiocy around this issue. Yes, if we do thing as usual, the building company makes a normal rate of return and there is no effort then sure it will take a decade. Kashiwazaki-Kariwa was built in 5 years,Hongyanhe was about 6-7 years(for first 2 units), Zaporozhia averaged 5 years per unit(until the last unit which got delayed because of Soviet Union falling apart), Gravelines 6 years, etc.. You can't go around pretending that we are facing a climate catastrophe that has to be solved in 10 years and at the same time trot out estimates that assume business as usual.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 17.6 ms ] threadInvestments in new nuclear power plants are bad for the climate due to high costs and long construction times. Given the urgency of climate change mitigation, which requires reducing emissions from the EU electricity grid to almost zero in the 2030s (Pietzcker et al.1), preference should be given to the cheapest technology that can be deployed fastest.
Cheapest & fastest as overriding criteria for better climate impact seems very very short sighted.
1. Neglects to mention that the sector has been progressively gutted over the last 15 years and pretends like the current cost problems are natural, whereas they are basically a government policy(especially in France which has been trying to gut EDF over the last 15 years).
2. "Uranium mining causes pollution" - Yes, and mining for copper doesn't? A modern wind turbine is like 5 tons of copper.
3. Construction times of around a decade - This is by far the worst aspect of European idiocy around this issue. Yes, if we do thing as usual, the building company makes a normal rate of return and there is no effort then sure it will take a decade. Kashiwazaki-Kariwa was built in 5 years,Hongyanhe was about 6-7 years(for first 2 units), Zaporozhia averaged 5 years per unit(until the last unit which got delayed because of Soviet Union falling apart), Gravelines 6 years, etc.. You can't go around pretending that we are facing a climate catastrophe that has to be solved in 10 years and at the same time trot out estimates that assume business as usual.