Article claims Germany is beginning to shift. I wouldn’t count on that. Despite having to import all of their energy aside from renewables, there is a wide-spread suspicion of nuclear here. The CDU made a lot of noise about it while they were in the opposition, but turning those closed plants back on is highly unlikely. Very costly and I’m not certain the expertise can be hired.
Asking because I don't know. How is enrichment governed? Say for instance if a country is only using it for energy vs defense/offense. And are there elements that can be specifically used for energy vs otherwise? Last I remember, having access to enriched uranium was grounds for a country to bomb another one.
We need to drive down the costs of implementing nuclear energy. Most of it are fake costs due to regulation. I understand that regulation is needed but we also need nuclear energy, we have to find a streamlined way to get more plants up and running as soon as possible. I think they should all be government projects so that private companies can't complain that they're losing money and keep have to ratchet up the prices, like PG&E in California. My rates have doubled in a few years to over $0.40/kWh and up over $0.50/kWh after I go up a tier depending on usage.
Nuclear was a great option 20 years ago. Today though it's too late. The cost and time to generation (especially in the west) is too high, you'll get far better returns far more quickly from renewables and storage
I’m totally fine with nuclear honestly, but I feel like I don’t understand something. No one seems to be able to give me a straight answer with proper facts that explain why we couldn’t just make a whole load more renewable energy generators instead. Sure, it might cost more, but in theory any amount of power a nuclear plant would generate could also be achieved with large amounts of renewables no?
> in theory any amount of power a nuclear plant would generate could also be achieved with large amounts of renewables no?
Yes in theory, the problem is when you try to apply theory to practice: I don’t want to make a disservice to this discussion and as I don’t have the figures at hand anymore but there have been thought experiments around this and one was to hypothetically have two dams that would pump 2 meters of water out of the sea between France and UK and then release it. If my memory serves well this would only cover 1 week of France’s energy consumption.
Okay, appart from the fact that you would require far more space in term of infrastructure for renewables, the most interesting issue with renewable energies for me is that they are not controllable (I don’t know if this is the correct term in English): basically you cannot command WHEN you produce energy, you are dependent on weather (sun/wind) or water current (tidal power).
What that means is that you cannot aling production with supply and you end up in some cases with acute mismatch: for instance in France, the peak of energy consumption is during winter, a time where there is very few sun, while Japans peak is in summer which could be more convenient.
The Rule when dealing with energy production is that you can’t produce less than demand nor more than demand otherwise you end up with a blackout and potential damages.
To mitigate both the rule of energy production and the non controllable aspects of renewable there are strategies. The two most common ones are buying/selling your energy and storing/unloading it. Those work but they do have their own pitfalls. Buying/selling for instance does work for adjustments but not for peaks because usually during peaks your neighbours are also peaking and thus also looking for selling.
Storing/unloading is its whole set of problems making it hard. You will find a lot of documentation on the subject but here is the gist of it: fist of all it is inefficient meaning you need to produce far more energy than you store and are able to unload in the end. Storing in batteries takes a lot (like really a lot) of place and we are talking nation wide production. Storing using a dam (pumped storage power plants) which is quite a nice way of doing it requires to have places to build them, meaning the correct geographical circumstances. In France for instance we already have quite a large dam network and couldn’t really build more (added to the fact that you usually need to flood a valley which gerenally is not well taken by the inhabitants of the place).
So here you are with your whole lot of space used up to produce renewable energy but you are still confronted to the issue of its non controllable nature. Sure you can store/unload a bit, you can buy/sell another bit, but in the end you still have to face the fact that it is not controllable. So how do you solve the issue ?
Here comes your friend, the controllable energy. A solution to your issue, and the one which is basically always applied is to have a mix of energies, meaning adding a controllable one along your non controllable ones to make up for the highs and lows of the latest. And the king of eco-friendly controllable energies is a nuclear power plant, not only because of the ecological factor but also because of the ratio space/energy produced.
Clean, mostly. With future? No, it creates primary heat. Wind and solar do not.
Water power also does not, but power from damns is not clean if you want an eco-friendly power source.
Wind currently also has a bigger environment impact than solar, but is of course a source available more frequently at night [citation needed, just kidding].
And waste we need to dispose of, which no countries has long term experience in storing. Except for costly disasters in how not to intermediately store it, here in Germany.
If the very finite amount of nuclear fuel is so useful, why not make future generations happy by preserving it for them, and for now, limiting its use until we learned how to add to the initial price the full cost of long term storage, with further disasters as a learning experience for that?
Saving lives and being cost-effective in the short run might work, but every energy expert says in 50 years, nuclear will have to be phased out anyway. And fusion could provide clean, but also primary heat inducing energy. So even that will not save us.
I read a lot of comments talking about „getting down the operational costs“ but i am missing someone talking about the costs of depositing the nuclear waste until it has no more risks. Am i missing something?!
Finally, France will be happy after years of being pushed back on this with the drive for solar and wind turbines, which sadly all got supplemented via gas on the back that nuclear was bad.
Sadly, with electricity becoming more reliant on gas and other fossil fuels when it is not so sunny in winter, or on those cloudy days with no wind, means fossil fuel usage ends up higher than if they had stayed and expanded nuclear - instead they closed many plants(Germany a prime example, in favour of....gas).
Then the whole over-dependence on Russian gas and oil really did whammy the energy price market, not just for Europe, but with a knock-on effect across the world. One we still pay for today.
> Germany, long a symbol of anti-nuclear politics, is beginning to shift.
err, no. it's not. industry lobby tries again and again, yes, and party officials parrot that lobbying, yes.
but no: there is no Endlager (permanent spent nuclear fuel waste site) in sight, the costs of dismantling used plants are outrageous and if it were not for nimbyism, we'd be essentially self sustaining on wind and solar within a decade.
matter of fact fossil and nuclear sponsored fud on wind and solar is the single biggest issue we face in Germany.
The EU may have a geopolitical interest in taking another look at nuclear. The dependance on Russian natural gas and expensive imported US natural gas is not good for their economic outlook long term. Honestly I am surprised Germany has not fired back up a couple of its plants considering its difficulties with Industrial output and competing in a world market.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 130 ms ] thread(Which eventually it will. The more reactors, the more chances for it to happen.)
Yes in theory, the problem is when you try to apply theory to practice: I don’t want to make a disservice to this discussion and as I don’t have the figures at hand anymore but there have been thought experiments around this and one was to hypothetically have two dams that would pump 2 meters of water out of the sea between France and UK and then release it. If my memory serves well this would only cover 1 week of France’s energy consumption.
Okay, appart from the fact that you would require far more space in term of infrastructure for renewables, the most interesting issue with renewable energies for me is that they are not controllable (I don’t know if this is the correct term in English): basically you cannot command WHEN you produce energy, you are dependent on weather (sun/wind) or water current (tidal power).
What that means is that you cannot aling production with supply and you end up in some cases with acute mismatch: for instance in France, the peak of energy consumption is during winter, a time where there is very few sun, while Japans peak is in summer which could be more convenient.
The Rule when dealing with energy production is that you can’t produce less than demand nor more than demand otherwise you end up with a blackout and potential damages.
To mitigate both the rule of energy production and the non controllable aspects of renewable there are strategies. The two most common ones are buying/selling your energy and storing/unloading it. Those work but they do have their own pitfalls. Buying/selling for instance does work for adjustments but not for peaks because usually during peaks your neighbours are also peaking and thus also looking for selling.
Storing/unloading is its whole set of problems making it hard. You will find a lot of documentation on the subject but here is the gist of it: fist of all it is inefficient meaning you need to produce far more energy than you store and are able to unload in the end. Storing in batteries takes a lot (like really a lot) of place and we are talking nation wide production. Storing using a dam (pumped storage power plants) which is quite a nice way of doing it requires to have places to build them, meaning the correct geographical circumstances. In France for instance we already have quite a large dam network and couldn’t really build more (added to the fact that you usually need to flood a valley which gerenally is not well taken by the inhabitants of the place).
So here you are with your whole lot of space used up to produce renewable energy but you are still confronted to the issue of its non controllable nature. Sure you can store/unload a bit, you can buy/sell another bit, but in the end you still have to face the fact that it is not controllable. So how do you solve the issue ?
Here comes your friend, the controllable energy. A solution to your issue, and the one which is basically always applied is to have a mix of energies, meaning adding a controllable one along your non controllable ones to make up for the highs and lows of the latest. And the king of eco-friendly controllable energies is a nuclear power plant, not only because of the ecological factor but also because of the ratio space/energy produced.
Water power also does not, but power from damns is not clean if you want an eco-friendly power source.
Wind currently also has a bigger environment impact than solar, but is of course a source available more frequently at night [citation needed, just kidding].
And waste we need to dispose of, which no countries has long term experience in storing. Except for costly disasters in how not to intermediately store it, here in Germany.
If the very finite amount of nuclear fuel is so useful, why not make future generations happy by preserving it for them, and for now, limiting its use until we learned how to add to the initial price the full cost of long term storage, with further disasters as a learning experience for that?
Saving lives and being cost-effective in the short run might work, but every energy expert says in 50 years, nuclear will have to be phased out anyway. And fusion could provide clean, but also primary heat inducing energy. So even that will not save us.
I just don't see it happening. They cost too much and take too long. Not holding my breath here.
Sadly, with electricity becoming more reliant on gas and other fossil fuels when it is not so sunny in winter, or on those cloudy days with no wind, means fossil fuel usage ends up higher than if they had stayed and expanded nuclear - instead they closed many plants(Germany a prime example, in favour of....gas).
Then the whole over-dependence on Russian gas and oil really did whammy the energy price market, not just for Europe, but with a knock-on effect across the world. One we still pay for today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity
err, no. it's not. industry lobby tries again and again, yes, and party officials parrot that lobbying, yes.
but no: there is no Endlager (permanent spent nuclear fuel waste site) in sight, the costs of dismantling used plants are outrageous and if it were not for nimbyism, we'd be essentially self sustaining on wind and solar within a decade.
matter of fact fossil and nuclear sponsored fud on wind and solar is the single biggest issue we face in Germany.
Atomkraft? nein, danke.
Dispatble solar and wind are about 1/5 the price of new nuclear.