With climate change looming, it seems so completely backwards to go back to using it again.
Is it coal miners pushing to keep their jobs? Fear of nuclear power? Is purely politically motivated, or are there genuinely people who believe coal is clean?
Edit, I will admit I was ignorant to the usage of coal nowadays.
Now I’m more depressed than when I posted this
Actually I thought it’s maybe because our crazy “friend”, who recently decided to show how it never actually left from behind the red curtain, had no problem shelling multiple nuclear power plant sites. Just saying.
Because renewable energy and nuclear energy require significant capital investment, which the private sector and governments in the age of ‘fiscal discipline’ are not willing to make.
Can we just… Cull all old people, start fresh? Make some new laws that aren’t based on ideologies from the year 1910?
Old people aren’t really the problem, capitalists are
I’m going to assume that you’re being facetious when you talk about “culling” them (otherwise that’s pretty concerning). many old people are annoying, many of them are downright hostile to any progress whatsoever, but they, and the viewpoints they hold, are the symptoms of a much larger problem.
Renewables (solar and wind) are actually the cheapest forms of electricity generation (see Lazard’s Levelized Cost of Energy report). This has been true since at least the 2016 version of the report, and it is true even when the cost of generation is not subsidized with government funding.
This is why Texas is investing so much in building new wind turbines, even though they’re not politically inclined toward “green energy” - the cost per MWh is lowest.
This is also affecting nuclear power projects. The cost of wind and solar has dropped to the point where building new nuclear power plants looks financially irresponsible.
yea but the report also mentions energy storage which is necessary for solar and wind because of its intermittent nature.
also cheaper electricity means potentially less profit. why would private sector want that?
electricity market must be destroyed and energy must be exclusively public sector
There are concerns outside of the list you wrote. For example:
- people need energy and coal is a source of energy
And they’re going for coal in some places because the political situation has made other reliable energy sources unavailable:
- the Russia-Ukraine war has destroyed natural gas supply lines to Europe
- anti-nuclear activism has resulted in lack of nuclear investment
Outside of coal, nuclear, and natural gas, there aren’t many options for reliable sources of electricity.
the Russia-Ukraine war has destroyed natural gas supply lines to Europe.
Didn’t the US bomb them, tried to blame Russia at first, and are now trying to blame Ukraine? With friends like that, who needs enemies?
The big problem with nuclear is scalability and infrastructure. The power plants take long to construct and require huge investment. Even if that’s solved and the whole world goes nuclear tomorrow, there’s huge doubts about there even being enough easily minable Uranium. Honestly solar and wind should be the way to go, but then there’s the intermittency issue. Which is an issue fossil fuels don’t have. At this point degrowth is desperately needed to avert the worst effects of global warming.
now trying to blame Ukraine
Blaming Russia was either stupid b/c putting the Nord Stream out of commission hurt Russia, or cynical b/c they thought we’d be stupid enough to buy that story. Blaming Ukraine has a basis in reality. https://www.reuters.com/world/us-had-intelligence-ukrainian-plan-attack-nord-stream-pipeline-washington-post-2023-06-06/ We may well have done it, as Biden promised, in concert with Ukraine or without them. https://www.wsj.com/video/video-biden-says-no-nord-stream-2-if-russia-invades-ukraine/B5942F2D-E4E5-4BD1-8CB3-8816A2ECAF19.html
Look up the stuff Alex Hirsch has been putting out over the last decade.
It’s Gravity Falls, and a background role producing The Owl House. Great shows! The LGBT representation in the latter goes hard, and I love everybody involved pushing back hard on Disney to make it happen.
Anyways, I actually meant Seymour Hersh. I just typed it wrong at first, but I felt compelled to gush about some incredible kids shows with great messages.
The US did it and Norway helped.
Why are people so against nuclear? It doesn’t make any sense.
I agree that it shouldn’t be a matter of being for or against nuclear.
The best mix of renewable energy supply of any country is going to be very context dependent. Geothermal, hydro, solar, wind all perform best when they’re used in the right location. Nuclear energy is much more expensive per Megawatthour than renewable energy sources, but it’s highly predictable.
In addition to the high cost, the construction time of a nuclear power plant tends to be somewhere between 10-20 years. Therefore, it makes sense to find solutions first in grid balancing solutions like mega batteries (for balancing, not long term storage), smart EV chargers, and matching demand better with supply through variable pricing. These are all relatively affordable solutions that would reduce the need for a predictable energy supply like nuclear.
But, if the measures above are not enough or if there are concerns about the feasibility of such measures in a particular context, then analyses might point towards nuclear as a solution as the most cost effective solution.
It’s pointless to make nuclear power a polical issue while we’re rapidly approaching an irreversible climate crisis. We don’t have the luxury to act based on preferences. Policymakers shouldn’t view nuclear power as a taboo, but also shouldn’t opt to construct one simply to attract voters.
Because of Godzilla is my best guess. CGI is so good these days people think it’s real.
3 Mile Island occurred while “The China Syndrome” was in theaters.
That’s mostly it. A hit-job sensationalist film came out right before a minor incident that resulted in ZERO injuries, damage to the environment, or loss of containment, but was major news largely because of the film.
Back then, it was scared of what you don’t understand. Nuclear was bombs and radiation, bad stuff right. Then it was Chernobyl. And having talked with some of them online, they are scared that it’s not 10,000% safe.
it’s not about the power but about the waste. no one wants that in their backyard.
It’s been long established that coal produces more radioactive waste than nuclear power, and largely dumps it straight into the environment.
Somehow people think it’s worse if you keep it contained rather than massively diluted. If we thought of it like we do radiation in coal waste, we’d be happy to just dump it in the ocean.
Living in Finland, I’m proud of the fact that we’ve got one of the first long-term/final storage sites for nuclear waste in the world. YIMBY.
You guys have that super deep underground storage site right?
Real talk, why can’t we just launch that shit into the sun? Obviously, I understand the risk of a rocket filled with spent fuel rods exploding is low Earth orbit and the weight to cost ratio, but are there other reasons?
It’s insanely more expensive than any of the other options, even the long-term storage deep down underground with further burial and complete abandonment of the location in a way that would make the location as unremarkable as possible, preventing future generations developing interest to potential markings.
Tom Scott has a great, rather concise video about that. It’s not really just ground, but rock, making it even more secure and unaffected, especially given that the waste is first sealen into special containers.
The waste is vitrified, meaning that it’s encased in what’s basically solid glass.
Basically to put something in the sun you’ve got to bring it to a near-standstill relative to the sun. You have to slow it down from the speed Earth is orbiting at (2 * Pi AU/year) to almost zero. It takes a ton of rocket fuel to do that.
That plus the danger you mentioned makes burying it the cheaper and safer option.
Fukushima and Chernobyl kinda stick out. Nuclear is safe until something goes catastrophically wrong. When that happens it’s 100s and 1000s of years before you can move back in and have a stable genome.
Nuclear power is a bit like aviation. Statistically, traveling by airliner is the safest way to travel; it’s been over a decade since the last fatal crash of an American-registered airliner. But when a plane does crash, SHEEW BUDDY does it make the evening news.
Nuclear power has that same effect. Statistically, nuclear power has a fucking amazing safety record. Very, very few people are hurt or killed in the nuclear power industry, especially compared to the fossil fuel industry, and the second hand smoke factor is non-existent as long as the plant is operating correctly. But as soon as it does go wrong, SHEEW BUDDY does it make the evening news. And it has gone wrong, multiple times, in spectacular fashion.
A major concern I have about building new nuclear power plants is my government is trying as hard as it can to steer into the hard right anti-science anti-regulation of industry space, and successful, safe operation of nuclear power plants requires strong understanding of science and heavy government oversight. The fact that we have no plan whatsoever for the nuclear waste we’re already generating, and that no serious solution is on the horizon indicates to me that we are already not in a place where we should be doing this.
There’s also the concern that nuclear power programs are often related to manufacturing fuel for nuclear weapons. That that’s what the megalomaniacal assholes that are somehow “in charge” actually want nuclear power plants for, and megawatts of electricity to run civilization with is a cute bonus I guess.
What an excellent explanation you’ve written here. I love it. SHEEW BUDDY!
Nuclear is probably the safest form of power when proper protocols are put in place but it’s hard to do that when the largest country in Europe (Russia, both by size and population) is currently in a war
This. Nuclear safety requires active habit keeping and protocols, hence is dependent on social stability.
Safer than wind and solar?
Oddly enough, it’s safer than wind.
Solar’s a little better in that regard, but all three are so much safer than any high-carbon sources of energy that any of them are great options.
I can’t look at their sources, so I’m going to believe them, buuut that is death per energy units. And I can’t argue that nuclear isn’t more efficient and generally safe. Presumably though, those injuries from wind are from construction primarily? Nuclear power plants have been out of fashion since the 80s for some reason, so there aren’t really equal opportunities for construction incidents to compare that while wind construction has been on the rise. And I can only assume that after construction, the chance incidents only go down for wind while they can really only go up for nuclear.
None of that is to say that nuclear is bad and we shouldn’t use it. Statistics like this just always bug me. Globally we receive more energy from wind than nuclear. It stands to reason that there’s more opportunity for deaths. It’s a 1 dimensional stat that can easily be manipulated. it’s per thousand terawatt per hour, including deaths from pollution. So I got curious and did some Googling.
After sorting through a bunch of sites without quite the information I was looking for, I found some interesting facts. I was wrong in my assertion that wind deaths don’t go up after being built. Turns out, most of those deaths come from maintenance. It does seem to vary by country, and I can’t find it broken down by country like I wanted. It’s possible that safety protections for workers could shift it. But surprisingly, maintenance deaths from nuclear power are virtually non existent from what I can tell. It seems like the main thing putting nuclear on that list at all is including major incidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima. Well, Fukushima has really only been attributed for 4 deaths total. And Chernobyl was obviously preventable. So it looks like you’re right! Statistically, when including context, is definitely the least deadly energy source (if we ignore solar).
I believe so because of construction injuries but idk how well that scales
Russian war has little to do with it. For example Germany had already decided to scrap nuclear for gas, which actually bit them in the ass when the war started.
You’re right with Germany’s decision.
The reason why Russia is mentioned might be that Russia (and one of their close allies Kazakhstan) are the source of a good chunk of the Uranium that’s used in Europe’s nuclear power plants.
Sweden has large stores of uranium but the green party has opposed any new mines (uranium or not) on environmental grounds. Ignoring the fact that we then have to import resources from other countries that don’t have regulations which could minimize pollution
What is safe on Nuckear Power Plants?
It’s enough for hundredthousand of years, if only one time happens a SuperGAU. Only once is enough.
And the nuclear waste is dangerous as fuck for also hundredthousand of years.
And you can produce 30, 40 or maybe 50 years electric energy, and it needs the same time to decontaminate and dismantle a nuclear powerplant. And before it takes 20, 30 or mor years, to build such a plant… This is not cheap, not safe and not sustainable.
I don’t trust the US Federal government to properly dispose of it. The waste from the Manhattan Project is buried in a landfill, a landfill that’s on fire.
The problem isn’t fire, it’s that the waste at Hanford has leached into the soil and a plume of it is headed towards the Hanford Reach on the Columbia River. There’s a mitigation plan in place and it looks like it’s ultimately going to work, but it’s very expensive and not something that anyone wants to see happen again.
I was referring to the Westlake Superfund site in St Louis right next to the Missouri river
Nuclear waste is not dangerous when handled correctly. I’d recommend checking out Kyle Hill on YouTube about this, but when mixed with cement/sand in large amounts it becomes safe much more quickly than that. A lot of the dangers of nuclear power are actually misconceptions
- Fukushima
- Chernobyl
- 3-Mile Island to name a few
Yes yes, we know people don’t understand statistics.
If you’re referring to the nukes-are-statistically-safe argument, then to be fair, you also have to take into account the scale of their failures.
Time to start dismantling wind turbines then? https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/
Right it would be something involving number of people harmed, for number of joules or watt-hours of energy produced. How much injury, death, etc is there on a per-unit basis. That would be how you’d get a probability of harm. Then you could compare it numerically with other forms of energy to see which is the safest, statistically speaking.
I’m looking forward to seeing your Instagram snaps once you move back to pripyat permanently. Statistics never tell the full story.
Ah yes, the clusterfuck of the 20th century is the lode stone
Also Pripyat isn’t that bad.
I want to add, it also take a while to get it going and the upfront costs are several billions of dollars. There also needs to be some kind of training or something to get the right personnel.
And it’s a long project that will span multiple administrations, leading to low certainty of project completion. As long as it’s a political wedge issue the support can’t be relied upon throughout the project.
I don’t think we ever stopped mining it
Why “going back to it” have we ever stopped?
I was going to say, coal remains around 1/3 of our electric generation worldwide (as of 2022): https://www.statista.com/statistics/269811/world-electricity-production-by-energy-source/
Coal can’t be reused, created, or otherwise obtained outside of mining. Until we remove our dependency on coal, mining will continue.
While in hindsight not all the decisions of the German energy policies seem right and it would have been better to keep the nuclear power plants operating for a few years, there was never the plan to replace nuclear with coal. All of the nuclear power generation has been replaced by wind and solar power generation. In fact, the plan was to phase out nuclear and replace the remaining coal generation with natural gas power plants. This definitely got more difficult in the time of LNG. The plan in any case is to phase out coal as well and with 56% renewable generation in 2023 Germany is on track to do so.
I hope this is a serious question, obviously this depends on your baseline. In 2013 Germany had a 56% share of fossil fuels, 27% share of renewables and 17% share of nuclear power generation. In the current year, the shares are: 59% renewables, 39% fossil fuels and 2% nuclear power generation. So in the last ten years there has been a switch in generation from both nuclear and fossil fuels to renewable generation. Could it have been better in the wake of the looming crisis of both climate and energy? Yes, I think it would have been better to keep some newer nuclear power plants running. But Cpt. Hindsight always has it easier.
In the long run every successful economy will generate its major share of electricity from renewables. Some countries will choose to generate a part with nuclear, others will choose to use a mix of hydrogen, batteries etc. to complement renewables. We will see what works best.
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Why replace nuclear and not coal though, seems like a pretty stupid choice
While I agree that it would have been better to phase out coal before nuclear power plants, I also think that those decisions have to be viewed in context and are more nuanced than ‘pretty stupid’.
For example, as other in this thread pointed out, nuclear power plants can be pretty safe to operate IF there is a good culture of safety and protocols in place. Which of course need to be followed and supervised by a strong regulatory body. Two of nuclear power plants in Brunsbüttel and Krümmel were missing this kind of safety culture in the opinion of the regulatory body. They were both operated by Vattenfall. If you lose trust in the operator of such critical infrastructure, then a decision to shut down nuclear power plants has to factor in all the arguments at hand.
That’s a fair point
$$$
It’s still needed until the transition to full renewables is viable in most places. People still need to afford electricity so it’s a means to an end
Until all coal plants are replaced there will be a need for more coal. We can’t just shut down these plants over night, the world is transitioning to cleaner energy production, unfortunately it’s just not happening fast enough.
I get the feeling they’re talking about all the publicity around coal in the past few days.
Germany is dismantling windmills to expand a coal mine. A state in the US gave the go ahead to restart a power plant (and supposedly turn it into a hydrogen plant eventually) , and another state is expanding mines. Australia approved enough new mines to add another 150 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere. Canada is expanding exports of thermal coal. Not to mention, China and India using a bunch of coal in general.
These are all headlines I’ve seen, in like the past week. Even though demand for coal hasn’t really ceased, it seems like recently, there’s a renewed push.
Just FYI, those windmills were at the end of their lifespan and would’ve been torn down either way. I don’t support coal mining, but let’s not make this more stupid than it is.
I genuinely thought coal was phased out as an option for power, and that fossil fuels were starting it’s (very long) descent to being phased out just the same.
Fossil fuels will take way longer, but why the more recent interest in coal again?? That’s the part I cannot understand, and I don’t know where it came from
Coal is a fossil fuel, btw. Part of the problem is that through subsidies, the cost of energy is being kept artificially low in the US. We need the increase in cost to de-incentivize oil/gas/coal.
Lol nope we’re fucked
I’m sure places that are still banning nuclear power aren’t helping either.
Same reasons we won’t solve the climate crisis, democracy and capitalism are not great at dealing with long term, side spread problems.
If you re-open a coal mine in a depressed community, you’ve earned a lot of votes while the people who were on the green side of things are diffused throughout the world.
Socialism into communism has been disapproval far worse from an environmental point of view. Well from nearly every metric.
Even with the best form of political and economic systems, people still will use every resource possible if it makes their life that much more comfortable.
I’m not saying democracy is a bad thing. But, it is important to understand flaws that are inherent to it. Long term problems are a particular weakness for democratic governments as there is almost no incentive to deal with them instead of short term “sugar high” projects.
I disagree with much of China’s strategy but the sort of moves being an autocracy allows enables it to simultaneously pursue a policy of economic growth while planning for the future. (You also get stuff lile the belt and road initiative, which was an incredibly ambitious program.)
Again, I am not saying China is better or democracy is bad. There are a BUNCH of huge flaws to autocratic governments like China’s. But, democracy is going to particularly struggle with these sorts of long term threats.
Countries like China can certainly enact unpopular opinion with little opposition. That can get policy thru that may be beneficia at times. You can see this with their recent energy policy. They are bringing online coal power production at a rapid rate. I can understand how that will help them from an economic standpoint. It is certainly something democratic countries would have a tough time implementing where as they can do this with little opposition.
Yup. That same ability to do things without public input also allows China to better multi task. So, while China is building more coal power capacity (much like America is doing with oil) China is also backing it up with an insane amount of renewable projects; China approved 106 GW of coal capacity in 2022 but for comparison has some 379 GW in solar currently under construction and 371 GW of wind power on track to be built by 2025 (which would double the world’s wind capacity.)
That ability to multi task is why they’ve been able to reduce air toxicity by a dramatic 40% in under ten years. While the coal is regrettable, parts of the infrastructure simply aren’t constructed for intermittent energy yet (same is true in America, transitioning the grid to be entirely renewable is going to be a Herculean task and there are almost no plans to do so there) so to keep the lights/factories on, coal is a cheap, quick stopgap to meet those needs while they build more renewable capacity than the rest of the world. The ability to over ride popular demands is also why you could easily see those plants being shut down before their natural life cycle.
I know Germany is shutting down its reactors and without Russian gas they need to get a reliable baseload power generation from somewhere… :/
Coal is decreasing in Germany because of renewables.
More renewables has come online than was lost from nuclear.
As many people pointed out, we never stopped. Nor will be stop for decades to come. Unlike what people hear online, change takes time.
It’s also something I wish people would keep in mind more when evaluating whether decisions or even whole politicians and their terms have an effect or what effect: A large portion of your own term in an office is spent on realizing the decisions made by your predecessor, and/or trying to prevent their worst effects. Conversely, anything a current politician does will have most of it’s effects after they left office.
Oh absolutely. The first year of any new president will mostly be governed by what policies were signed under the previous president.
And many of times, certain agreements are multi year ones which yiu have little control over.
Either way, we have time. Yes, we shouldn’t lose momentum to keep the changes coming, but holy crap we have some people in here who never step away from the internet and are fed an endless stream of over hyped doom and gloom.
Time of something we don’t have the luxury of.
Relax. Get off the internet for a few days. We got time.
This is why the whole Stop Oil crew need to take a deep breath.
What do they think is going to happen if we suddenly stop using oil? It is phased approach but, no, bank’s are bad for funding them.
Reliance on oil and coal is an immediate human need but it will diminish.
When has it ever been a realistic worry that we would just very suddenly completely stop using oil? This is like being in a car careening down a hill and saying to the people saying “hit the brakes!” "Woah whoa, do you have any idea what would happen if we deccellerated to a complete stop in a millisecond? We’d be crushed flat! "
They’re all triggered into thinking the world is going to collapse tomorrow, and it is infuriating.
In 50 years, we’re still going to have cars that run on gas. We’ll still have plastic bags and straws. The world will not have ended.
The worst part of all this doom and gloom is that it is going to make some people think nothing can be done, so why bother. Then there are going to be some 9ther people who want change, but after a few years they will start to wonder why hasn’t the environmental apocalypse happened yet and start thinking it was all a sham. You already hear that from people who grew up in the 70s when the last time this kind of thought was spreading. Back then everything was about global warming this and global warming that. We were going to boil over all our oceans and everyone was going to die. That never happened, obviously. In more recent years scientists have changed their views to the current climate change model where they state that some parts of the globe will actually get colder while other parts will get hotter. We will have more severe storms. That seems to reflect more of what is happening these days, but even the most doom and gloom scientists aren’t claiming we will all die in a few short months. Yet that’s kind of the hysteria of far too many folks online.
Yes, we have to do something, but relax, it’s not going to all collapse by next week.
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It never stopped. Hasn’t even really slowed down.
People need electricity. Renewables are great, but they don’t provide for the full generation need. Coal and natural gas power generation will continue unabated until a better (read: lower price for similar reliability) solution takes their place.
In my opinion, fossil fuel generation won’t take a real hit until the grid-scale energy storage problem is solved.
Time. People can see past the storage issue when it’s not that big of an issue.
Interconnectors and curtailment at peak output are economically optimal. The renewable transition doesn’t seem to be slowing.
The renewable boom has only been going for about 10 years. Give it another 10-20 and the world will look drastically different in one generation.
The us is is doing shit because their population doesn’t care and the management is poor.
But it’s about exponentials and us is just far behind where it should be.
Everything has a cost of course, building solar panel requires a significant amount of precious metals, which may or may not be easily accessible or affordable depending on the political climate between countries who mine vs the countries who needs the resources.
And the production of solar panel does create some toxic leftovers which needs to make handled appropriately. Not saying they’re a bad alternative and they’re definitely before than fossil fuel or coal, just needs to consider the cost and the impact of everything.
The truth is, we do have enough resources. We just care more about the economy and profit than our future climate (which will also strongly affect the economy, but that’s in the future so…).
If we actually valued the climate as much as we ought to, switching fully to renewables would be a bargain.
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Storage. Coal, natural gas, and nuclear generate power regardless of weather, day and night.
Solar generates plenty of electricity (with enough panels installed), but it slows down significantly under cloudy skies and stops entirely at night.
Wind generates plenty as well…unless the wind stops blowing.
The grid needs power all the time, not just when it’s sunny and windy. For renewables to actually compete, the excess power they generate during sunny and windy times needs to be stored for use when it’s dark and still.
As much as we applaud lithium batteries, our energy storage technologies are abysmally inefficient. We’re nowhere near being able to store and discharge grid-scale power the way we’d need to for full adoption of renewables. The very best we can do today (and I wish I were kidding) is pump water up a hill, then use hydroelectric generators as it flows back down. Our energy storage tech is literally in the Stone Age.
Don’t underestimate the battery potential of gravity!
According to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity#:~:text=The round-trip energy efficiency,sources claiming up to 87%25. The round-trip efficiency of pumped storage is 70-80%, that’s pretty darn good for cheap mass-storage. There’s not much more to gain there.
Pumped water is about the only practical gravity battery, but it has limitations.
- It can only be built in a few geographical locations.
- This tends to limit it’s overall capacity unless you’re Norway or Switzerland.
- It requires flooding an area to make a storage lake and so has a high environmental impact.
- Building power stations inside mountains is difficult and expensive.
So it’s great stuff, but I don’t think it’s going to be the backbone of any storage solution we have.
It works very well, not disputing that.
But, like geothermal power generation (which is also very good), it’s extremely dependent on location. Most populated areas don’t have the altitude differential (steep hills) and/or water supply to implement pumped hydro storage.
Where it can be used, it should be (and largely is - fossil fuel generation does better with some storage as well, since demand is not consistent), but it’s hardly something that can be deployed alongside solar and wind generators everywhere.
With some high voltage long-range transmission lines you could viably do it pretty much everywhere. Just requires some cooperation.
Yes it will slightly reduce efficiency over very long distances, but it’s not unreasonable amounts.
I might also add there’s smart algorithms being developed for about 5y+ now that distribute power surplus and deficiency over a grid. This will probably be key. Just take a look at “energy metering”.
Long range transmission of AC power is limited to about 40 miles. DC can be transmitted much farther, but the infrastructure is substantially more expensive (because it’s more dangerous), so that’s only done for extreme need.
We aren’t getting away from having many power generators all over the place, so one location-dependent storage solution isn’t going to solve all the problems.
Coal us and fossil fuels is crashing in Europe and China might have hit peak petrol usage.
The S curve is well in its way.
Hasn’t even really slowed down.
I think thats… not wrong per say, but somewhat misleading. Coal consumption has been steady worldwide for the last decade despite the population going up a whole billion, and as the average persons energy usage has gone up (largely as a result of growing quality of life in developing nations).
Absolutely. Coal has remained consistent as demand for power has risen steadily. Renewables are growing, but remain a tiny slice of the whole generation picture.
Natural gas has become a cheap and reliable replacement for coal over the last 10-15 years as it’s become less expensive to transport. Many coal plants have been converted, even. So as demand has risen, it’s natural gas, not renewables, that is filling the gap.
It will slow when nuclear is the main energy source, especially in the United States (its currently ~47%)
Nuclear can also get recycled, and for the average American, the actual waste that can no longer be recycled is about a soda can (standard 12 ounce can)
Imo, the US needs to work toward nuclear usage being 90-95% instead of using coal. There’s still a need for natural gas but it can be minimized
Imo, the US needs to work toward nuclear usage being 90-95% instead of using coal. There’s still a need for natural gas but it can be minimized
Why? Wind and solar are cheaper, faster to build and don’t produce toxic waste. They can easily cover most of the energy needs. Or technically all of it, once you start using any overcapacity for hydrogen production (which is needed for carbon neutrality anyways).
Here in Texas, we use wind and solar a lot. That’s why in 2021 when it froze, we had zero power. The wind turbines were seized from the freeze and snow covered the solar panels. We had dropped our coal production until we had to suddenly go to 100% utilization.
And with it being texas and hardly snowing, we don’t have infrastructure in place for the roads. There’s no snow plows, road salt, tire chains, etc…
I think that was propaganda.
The shitty electrical grid and the gas plants that couldn’t operate in winter failed. Wind power prevented worse blackouts as they kept working.
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Fuel reprocessing through the purex process has never been economical and frankly doesn’t make much sense. You’d want to increase the volume of those very nasty fission products for eventual storage through vitrification anyway (inverse square law gets very important for big gamma emitters) so you’d need a big site regardless. It’s fine if you’re recovering plutonium to make a bomb, but it seems to create a lot of chemical waste without much benefit otherwise.
The fuel is cheap. It’s the reactors are consistently over budget. Westinghouse Electric is bankrupt because of the last nuke they built.
Yes, countries like Germany are turning to coal as a direct result of nuclear-phobia.
The US, with all its green initiatives and solar/wind incentives, is pumping more oil than Saudi Arabia. The US has been the top oil producer on whole the planet for the last 5-6 years. The problem is getting worse.
Fantastic. We’re doomed
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Sorry, this is just false info. Germany is not turning to coal as a result of your called nuclear phobia.
I will repeat my comment from another thread:
If you are able to read German or use a translator I can recommend this interview where the expert explains everything and goes into the the details.
Don’t repeat the stories of the far right and nuclear lobby. Nuclear will always be more expensive than renewables and nobody has solved the waste problem until today. France as a leading nuclear nation had severe problems to cool their plants during the summer due to, guess what, climate change. Building new nuclear power plants takes enormous amounts of money and 10-20years at least. Time that we don’t have at the moment.
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Germany has not build any new coal plants. At least not in the last five years.
Edit: Why are people down voting a factual statement? Go ahead and provide better info if you got it.
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Hmm I think what you mean is that some coal plants have been put into active maintenance. IIRC this was rather a countermeasure in case of absence of gas supplies. They are not part of the regular energy market.
Anyway, I think there is not only one way forward. Countries like France choose to use a big portion of nuclear, Germany does not. And every way has its own challenges. What is important is that energy supply should be independent of oppressor states and moving into a direction of carbon neutrality.
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And that’s more likely than enriched Uranium becoming unavailable or locally unobtainable?
As people pointed out in another thread, nuclear energy is NOT the future and also a really bad short term solution,so countries like Germany are going back to coal short term to make the transitions to renewables in the meantime.
It’s not a great solution, but without Nordstream, there’s really not much else more sensible to do right now, just to make the transition.
what makes nuclear energy a bad option?
- It takes 20 years to build
- nobody knows how much nuclear fuel will cost in 20 years
- you have to take out a big loan and make interest payments on it for maybe 30 years before you start making a profit
- if you don’t have enough water for cooling because of climate change, the plant must shut down
- if your neighbor decides to start a war against you, your nuclear plants become a liability, see Ukraine.
I think smaller, decentralized renewable energy is cheaper in the short and long run and has a much lower risk in case of accidents, natural Desasters or attacks.
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SMR (small modular reactors) are looking like they could become the next hip thing in nuclear power tech.
Basically a lot lower initial investment and offer a lot more flexibility.
The link has a lot of info on them
I really don’t see that as a good progression. We want to focus on renewables because that’s the most sustainable way to go. Why go back to nuclear again?
That said if you are saying that’s where the industry is moving even though that’s probably not the best approach, fair enough. My opinion has zero effect on the industry.
50+ years of fear from fossil fuel company propaganda.
“BuT thE WaSTe diSPoSaL PrObLEm”
Meanwhile coal:
“Oh that thing that’s more radioactive than nuclear waste? Yeah, just toss it in the air. Who cares”
It’s just nuclear phobia.
It’s literally the second safest form of energy production we have only behind solar.
It’s literally safer than wind power.
Yeah there’s been a few disasters with older reactor designs or reactors that were put where they shouldn’t have been, but even with those it’s still incredibly safe.
I don’t necessarily agree, but the usual arguments against are cost, lead time, and waste.
Opposed to running fossile fuels alongside renewables.
But that’s literally what you’re gonna have to do for 20+ years if you decide to go both ways and also build new nuclear plants. Put all your budget into renewables at once and you instantly cut down on the fossil fuel you’d otherwise burn while waiting for your reactor to go online, all while you’re saving money from the cheap energy yield which you can reinvest into more renewables or storage R&D to eventually overcome the requirement to run something alongside it.
No 100% renewables is viable. You don’t need anything running beside it.
