Great British Nuclear to boost UK energy security, reduce dependence on volatile fossil fuel imports and deliver government priority to grow the economy
It’s an obvious distraction pushing the topic of nuclear power again, just days after they prepared to open massive new oil and gas production sites while stifling the well-going UK wind industry.
But there are enough people out there brain-washed by decades of anti-renewable propaganda that it will work. And in the end we have just another country failing to build the proper amount of nuclear base load AND the proper amount of renewables… but at least someone smart “thought ahead” and worked for enough fossil fuels to compensate.
The conservatives just operate on the assumption that everybody else doesn’t have a clue what’s going on because they don’t.
I bet they were told that the nuclear commission were going to open another power plant and just ignored them and gave out the oil drilling contracts anyway.
If intermittent energy would be held to the same standards of sustained energy, you’d see the real price. Right now, the dirty secret is that renewables are integrated into our energy supply by having a crap-tonne of gas capacity (and importing nuclear energy from France) standing ready on poor renewable days.
Go look at any historic data of U.K. power generation. We have multiple periods every year where there’s barely any wind and solar generated for a week. How do you propose to supply exactly every Watt required, at every second of the day, running only on renewables?
If your answer is batteries or pumped storage then please go look at battery storage capacities and what a week of energy needs look like for the U.K.? You’d have to strip mine the entire planet’s worth of supply lithium and other required metals to be able to do it … and if you think nuclear is expensive, have a look at battery storage.
If your answer is “imports” then my retort would be that every country has to solve this problem and we can’t just “turtles all the way down”-solve this problem. On the same days that wind turbines are still in the U.K. they are still in Denmark, Norway, Germany. Where does the energy come from then? Oh, they’ll just import their electricity from Eastern Europe and we can buy their little renewable generation for that week? Ok, but then you’ve just transitioned to coal plants in Poland, by way of a long supply chain. Every country has to solve this problem.
If your answer is “we just need to build such an excess of renewables that we have enough even on still/gray days” then we are back to cost of guaranteed generation, which is how renewable energy providers should be measured anyway. Where does their backup come from? If you held renewable energy supplies liable for guaranteed supply rather than just accept “oh on some days, you can’t generate any power” you’d see a then buy their supply from backup gas. As they currently do, they can just squirm away from the accountability.
Having said that, I’m a HUGE fan of renewable/intermittent energy. We need to build more, fast! Lots and lots more.
But we do have to answer the uncomfortable question of how we back it up too. That’s included in the price of nuclear.
So what do we do? Import our way out of it, moving the generation to remote, cheap, foreign coal? Over, and over-build renewables, thereby making it extremely costly. Accept gas peak generation, thereby keeping carbon in the mix? Or nuclear?
You could have made an actual argument here… but then you decided on the “renewables only work because of nuclear imports from France” fairy tale.
And we all know that this is a lie and also who likes to tell it. So please, stop reading that bullshit and use those trash tabloids as the only thing they are somewhat useful as: toilet paper …
Right now, the dirty secret is that renewables are integrated into our energy supply by having a crap-tonne of gas capacity (and importing nuclear energy from France) standing ready on poor renewable days.
You’d have to strip mine the entire planet’s worth of supply lithium and other required metals to be able to do it
Neither of these are questions. These are statements. False ones repeated again and again by the same fossil fuel and nuclear lobbyists lying to you.
Oh, sorry. No. They don’t lie. They pay millions for desinformation so people like you tell the lie while seriously thinking it’s true. That might actually be worse even but ymmv…
Nope, burning coal was cheap a long time ago and allowed the people to accululate enough wealth to push for more coal (and brain-wash people to believe coal is cheap; and also how expensive renewables are). Just like the nuclear producers did decades ago to tell the tale of how there’s no alternative to nuclear.
The actual reality looks like this. And if you think that you need to pay more for electricity to not destroy the planet that’s already their propaganda having done their work.
Some parts of it are… there is a certain amount of either nuclear base load or storage infrastructure needed.
But more than 50% renewables are easily doable without much strain on modern grids (modern models for nuclear usually plan with ~30-35% minimal base load needed…).
Also another argument for specific fossil fuels -domestic availability and thus more independence- is also a pro argument for renewables.
So no matter where you stand, if you are not at least using (or planning to use in near future) 50% cheap renewables in your electricity mix (or see narratives about expensive renewables even) then you know that the decision is not taken for economic reasons but because decision makers are getting money to stick with more fossil fuels than necessary.
Renewables are an economical no-brainer right now. Actual complexity of balancing out their fluctuating production with base load or storage comes much later (although in the case of nuclear the build times are often long enough that you should start soon). And still there are so many countries so far away from the absolute no-brainer amount of renewables.
Hundred percent. I’m happy that the UK is considering going nuclear for the other 50% instead of just saying, “we’ve done 50% wind and solar so we’re done. Let’s jut burn coal and gas for the remaining 50%.”
Also it works so flawlessly for the French (not*), why not do it too?
*France is slowly overcoming stress-corrosion problems (35 out of 56 reactors were down, drought is another problem), and Finland celebrates the commissioning of a new reactor (albeit 14 years late), while on the other hand monthly German nuclear generation will be zero for the first time in over 50 years.
The real thing is the cost, the cost per kWh is falling so going nuke and locking in to a price that’s already above market makes no sense at all.
The Tories are ideologically opposed to renewables because of some weird culture war thing, plus they hate the idea of locally sustainable communities not being totally under the control of billionaires - people are a lot easier to scare into obedience when you can tell them their power might be shut off. The main reason though is huge projects can only go to huge companies, they don’t want lots of little solar farms they want their oil baron buddies to maintain their monopolies, that’s the only reason we still hear so much about this now allbut obsolete technology.
I totally agree and it is the same for Germany. That’s why especially wind energy for South Germany was held back for so long, how dare communities go energy independent. It seems the resistance there is broken now, at least I hope it is and not just an election promise that gets broken after the Bavarian election.
“Our biggest supplier for fossil fuels is imploding from failing to conquer a neighbor a tenth their size, let’s become even more reliant on them for energy”
The cost of burning fossil fuels isn’t measured in pounds or dollars. Nuclear is the only tech we have that can meet current and future load. We must pair it with renewables. There is no other option right now and if we wait for fusion, it’ll be too late.
Yeah, if you tell that lie often enough it will surely become true one day… Seriously, it will happen. Just another ten thousand times or so. By current rates that should be doable by the nuclear-cult on social media in only a few weeks, so you are sooooo close to changing reality…
This happens all the time. It happened to New York State after the decommission of Indian Point, it happened to Germany, it literally happens everywhere nuclear reactors are decommissioned, because fossil fuels provide the reliable and tunable capacity of nuclear power with explicit domestic and foreign subsidies driving down its cost. We keep talking about renewables displacing fossil fuels but German fossil gas consumption is going up, not down.
The last three nuclear power plants generated 6.7 TWh until their shutdown on April 15. In the first half of 2022, the figure was 15.8 TWh.
Coal-fired power generation also fell: Lignite-fired power plants generated about 41.2 TWh, a sharp decline of 21 percent from 2022 (52.1 TWh). Net production from coal-fired power plants also decreased by 23 percent, from 26.2 TWh in 2022 down to 20.1 TWh in 2023. Electricity generation from natural gas decreased only slightly from 24.3 TWh to 23.4 TWh. In addition to gas-fired power plants for the public power supply, gas-fired plants in the mining and manufacturing sectors also supply the industrial own consumption. These approximately produced an additional 24 TWh for industrial captive use.
And we are getting the fossile gas consumption down by laws made towards changes for the industries and private households that will have to have other means of heating in the near future, although it is not an easy process. We also lead when it comes to home insulation and other means of saving energy, even our stubborn automobile industry is finally turning.
We are not going back to nuclear energy and we are going towards renewable energy more and more and it has already proofen that not even a war in Europe can change that. We will sit and watch when you fight for uranium and pay 10+ times more money than planned for the next nuclear plant that’s 14 years late and will not add to the grid, but just be finished in time to replace an old nuclear plant that is falling apart and then you pay for that and pay for the old plants because they aren’t sustainable by themselves, like these in New York:
New Yorkers are paying $40 million every month to subsidize nuclear power – over $480 million in the first year alone, nearly 200 times as much as the state is spending to develop renewable energy. And the nuclear costs will take a big jump in April 2019, because the subsidy is scheduled to increase every two years – even while solar and wind power keep getting cheaper and cheaper.
It is not working. It is not the future. It is not even a good investment anymore. And I don’t even have to talk about nuclear waste or uninsurable risks to proof it.
We are not going back to nuclear energy and we are going towards renewable energy more and more and it has already proofen that not even a war in Europe can change that.
Yeah because America opened our strategic reserve wide open to keep you from freezing to death last winter.
To secure gas supplies for the coming winter, a storage level of 75 percent must be reached by September 1, 2023. The storage target was already reached in June 2023.
Gas imports are way down and our reserve is filled to the brim for Winter and Germans actually know how and are willing to safe energy. You can’t beat the numbers with words. It is not going to happen.
Renewables alone can’t meet New Yorks base load. Nuclear is the only technology that can. Gas turbines were connected to the grid to cover Indian points load which is a disaster.
Nuclear must be complemented with as much renewable capacity as possible. There is no other way.
Yes, that’s obviously what your nuclear fairy tales are aming for: Not building even the minimal capacity needed for base load, failing to build that insufficient capacity at a reasonable time/cost frame, failing to build the complementary renewables and then crying why you need to still burn fossil fuels in decades… while obviously blaming renewables (that you failed to build) and storage (that you denied is viable) for the failings of nuclear.
Please list the countries either planning/building or already having sufficiently modern capacities right now to cover just the minimal base load of ~30-35% of the projected electricity demand by 2050 and onward… Hint: The one country close is France, which will be able to (barely) reach 30% of their projected demand when they build all the planned new reactors… where “all” is the full 14, not the bullshit right now of only bulding 6 with 8 being optional. Because nothing about those is optional. They are the bare minimum that will be needed. But even in France you can’t honestly tell the people the required amounts and investments needed…
That’s the actual state of nuclear power right now… It’s prohibitely expensive and inefficient and only kept alive by lobbyists. And by people like you they brain-washed for decades who are now fighting their fight against renewables (that are actually also a requirement for every viable nuclear model) and cheering for every country building nuclear power even when it’s mathematically proven that it’s purely symbolical and not even close to relevant for co2-neutrality.
They don’t work well together. Nuclear needs to operate at as close to 100% uptime as possible, otherwise it isn’t financially viable. What happens when it’s very windy and sunny and renewables are creating more power than we need? You can’t just run nuclear to cover the peaks in demand, it doesn’t work that way.
Ok but what’s the alternative? Gas peakers? Storage isn’t practical - even the biggest battery storage facilities are a smidge on pumped storage and have hardly any of that.
I agree nuclear needs to improve flexibility (with, say, sodium heat storage) but the fact that the technology needs to get better (with clear candidates for doing so) shouldn’t rule it out when all other options have worse implications.
Nuclear base load and renewables is actually one of the two viable concepts (the other is storage).
But electricity demand will massively increase: Most countries nowadays only cover about 20% of their primary energy by electricity. But all the oil and gas used in transport and industry needs to be converted to electricity (directly or indirectly). (On the other hand electricity is more efficient in a lot of cases, so it’s not the full factor 5 in increase that will be needed. But still a lot.)
And not single country seems to be able to even start investing on the scale necessary to build the needed base load. ~30-35% is the minimum, but that’s 30-35% of the future demand. Which is probably at least 2,5 times the demand of today. So basically any country that is not planning or already building enough nuclear capacities to cover at least 80% of todays electricity production purely on nuclear (which will be ~30% of the demand in 2-3 decades) is already failing. And pretending that that one (or a few) reactor(s) planned is more than symbolic is a lie.
As I said France comes close but only if they start being honest and build all the 14 planned new reactors. And if they can keep their aging fleet of existing reactors running long enough until those are build. (PS: The few lucky countries with a lot of hydro potential can of course cover some of that base load with hydro. But that’s irrelevant for most other countries without the same geography.)
Why nobody is actually planning proper amounts while pretending to trust in nuclear power as a solution? That’s easy: the cost. Even when we assume that the massive nuclear upbuild needed is not more expensive than the alternatively needed infrastructure and storage, the latter is an continues investment over decades. Nuclear comes with a massive upfront cost now to be ready in decades (maybe one if Europe suddenly rediscovers how to build them quickly, but I wouldn’t bet on it).
And it even becomes worse. Most countries planning with nuclear are also lacking proper renewables although their own model requires them and massively so (65%-70% to complement the nuclear base load… multiplied with at least 2,5 for the future demand…).
That’s the legacy of decades of nuclear lobbyism going for the perceived competition and trying to discredit renewables or nowadays telling us how storage is impossible on the required scale. At this point reacting to plans to build renewables with “oh, so you want to burn more fossil fuels and kill the planet?” is completely normal although also completely insane of course.
And now comes the best part: nuclear power doesn’t work without the same storage they tell everyone isn’t possible: Just look at France. They are massively overproducing in summer right now and still don’t have enough electricity in the coldest weeks of winter and need imports. But now imagine a future where everyone is either running nuclear and renewables or even more renewables and storage. There will be no export market most of the year (because everyone has a surplus at the same time) making nuclear much more expensive. There also will be no one with a sizeable surplus in the coldest weeks of the year, which means you need even more reactors producing even more surplus over most of the year.
RTE (France’ grid provider) did a extensive study in 2020 about electricity demand in 2050. That’s where the minimal needed base load of about 35% comes from, also the announced 14 new reactors first announced less than a year later coincidently have the capacity to cover 35% of their projected demand in 2050. (Side note: They also compared their models to purely renewable ones… always funny to see how the guys working in that field and with nuclear are not the ones doubting the viability of a renewable model)
The gist of it… nuclear and renewables are economical viable compared to fully renewable models, even more than the minimum base load can even be better economically. But only because all their models were based on hydrogen production basically all year from excess electricity… used in industry, as long term storage or as the new way of exporting energy.
That was informative. Was the takeaway- we’re screwed? Cause I kinda get the feeling energy can’t keep up with demand, and there isn’t an adequate way to store it.( batteries)
There is storage. Batteries can keep up and more importantly there are a lot of options that are better (in terms of costs and ressources) than the lithium-ion ones we here so much about. Because a stationary installation doesn’t have the same requirements as a mobile device or car (although even there they already move to other materials). Cheap materials and longevity for example are more important than energy densitiy because no one cares if the building is 30% heavier (for a phone however that’s important).
Also batteries are not the storage we usually talk about. They are more short-term and more used in balancing out short-term fluctuations (for example even pumped storage also uses batteries as a buffer because it makes no sense to start pumping big amounts of water when they are only needed to provide smaller loads right now). And for this reason the needed capacities are much smaller and heavily de-centralized, too.
What we primarily need when we talk about full renewables is long-term storage. The kind of storage you collect the overproduction of months in, to use it all in the 5-7 in a row once a year when neither solar nor wind produce proper amounts. And it’s no concidence I mentioned hydrogen production as one part of France’ future plans. Because that is storage. We will need green hydrogen to electrify a lot of industries and some transport. Maybe even green efuels (=putting even more electricity in to bind carbon to the hydrogen for a higher energy densities) for some kinds of air travel for example.
That’s potential long term storage right there. Yes it isn’t very efficient, but it doesn’t need to be. You already need a constant supply for industries and having some buffer to smooth out production (that will be linked to renewable excess production) is already economically benefical. Making that buffer capacity bigger (so it can also double as storage for the small amounts of time renewables don’t suffice) only costs the money you need to build it. And most of it doesn’t need to be build but can be converted from existing natural gas storage.
So the takeaway is: Build renewables. Neither a nuclear plus renewable model nor a renewable plus storage model works without them. Then start building nuclear. Or storage. Or even a mix will do.
But the most important thing: do it now and massively so. Storage models need about 115-125% production (depending on how well you diversify renewables), nuclear models also need 65%+. Of the long term demand in 2+ decades… So there is exactly no country at any risk to build too many renewables right now. The 35% base load numbers basically show us that you can reach 65% renewables in your mix without problems, so all the talk about grid stability is bullshit. Again…You won’t manage to build too much.
Also the most important part. Every single solar panel or wind turbine build today has a direct impact on co2-reduction. Which means you have more time to reach 100%.
That’s the other problem with nuclear build times. Let’s say every country manages to decide today to build the sufficient amount of nuclear base load and also manages to do the planning, construction and everything in 15 years (which would be impressive, when most need longer after all planning and location finding is done just for construction). Then they will still fail to meet the climate goals the agreed to as they can’t afford today’s co2-production for another 15 years. So again, they need to start a massive renewable upbuild just as a buffer to even reach the day when their reactors come online.
Oh, and of course renewable energy is cheap as fuck. So providing enough of it will automatically trigger changes in the way you use electricity. If there are enough times when electricity is basically free (most countries with higher amounts of renewables already have these a few hours a day) private companies will build storage without public investments, just because they can make money with it. Or industries using a lot will change their working pattern to need it when it’s cheap. Or they will build their own batteries.
TL;DR: Build renewables! Now! Many! You can’t do wrong here as it’s not only the fastest way to reduce co2-output now but also a requirement no matter what your complementary plan (storage or nuclear) is.
Remember: 65% (nuclear) to 125% (renewables with sub-optimal diversification) are needed. In a future with at least 2,5 times today’s electricity demand. So that’s 162,5% of today’s production at the very least, just in renewables before any base load. There is no excuse not to start today.
And Hinkley Point was such a roaring success, let’s pour more money down the bottomless barrel!
It’s an obvious distraction pushing the topic of nuclear power again, just days after they prepared to open massive new oil and gas production sites while stifling the well-going UK wind industry.
But there are enough people out there brain-washed by decades of anti-renewable propaganda that it will work. And in the end we have just another country failing to build the proper amount of nuclear base load AND the proper amount of renewables… but at least someone smart “thought ahead” and worked for enough fossil fuels to compensate.
The conservatives just operate on the assumption that everybody else doesn’t have a clue what’s going on because they don’t.
I bet they were told that the nuclear commission were going to open another power plant and just ignored them and gave out the oil drilling contracts anyway.
Burning coal is cheap, that’s why we’re here. I’ll pay more for electric today to leave a planet for our children. Wish my parents did that for me.
Only a fool would consider the cost in dollars alone.
Only a fool would advocate for paying way more for nuclear when renewables + storage are substantially cheaper.
Storage? Like battery storage? Lead? Lithium? Go on, tell me more.
Or will we flood river valleys? What are you thinking?
And only a fool would think that Renewables + [magical] storage was sufficient on it’s own.
If intermittent energy would be held to the same standards of sustained energy, you’d see the real price. Right now, the dirty secret is that renewables are integrated into our energy supply by having a crap-tonne of gas capacity (and importing nuclear energy from France) standing ready on poor renewable days.
Go look at any historic data of U.K. power generation. We have multiple periods every year where there’s barely any wind and solar generated for a week. How do you propose to supply exactly every Watt required, at every second of the day, running only on renewables?
If your answer is batteries or pumped storage then please go look at battery storage capacities and what a week of energy needs look like for the U.K.? You’d have to strip mine the entire planet’s worth of supply lithium and other required metals to be able to do it … and if you think nuclear is expensive, have a look at battery storage.
If your answer is “imports” then my retort would be that every country has to solve this problem and we can’t just “turtles all the way down”-solve this problem. On the same days that wind turbines are still in the U.K. they are still in Denmark, Norway, Germany. Where does the energy come from then? Oh, they’ll just import their electricity from Eastern Europe and we can buy their little renewable generation for that week? Ok, but then you’ve just transitioned to coal plants in Poland, by way of a long supply chain. Every country has to solve this problem.
If your answer is “we just need to build such an excess of renewables that we have enough even on still/gray days” then we are back to cost of guaranteed generation, which is how renewable energy providers should be measured anyway. Where does their backup come from? If you held renewable energy supplies liable for guaranteed supply rather than just accept “oh on some days, you can’t generate any power” you’d see a then buy their supply from backup gas. As they currently do, they can just squirm away from the accountability.
Having said that, I’m a HUGE fan of renewable/intermittent energy. We need to build more, fast! Lots and lots more.
But we do have to answer the uncomfortable question of how we back it up too. That’s included in the price of nuclear.
So what do we do? Import our way out of it, moving the generation to remote, cheap, foreign coal? Over, and over-build renewables, thereby making it extremely costly. Accept gas peak generation, thereby keeping carbon in the mix? Or nuclear?
I know which way I’d choose.
You could have made an actual argument here… but then you decided on the “renewables only work because of nuclear imports from France” fairy tale.
And we all know that this is a lie and also who likes to tell it. So please, stop reading that bullshit and use those trash tabloids as the only thing they are somewhat useful as: toilet paper …
I no point did I make that argument. I posed a series of questions. Right now renewables only integrate because of masses of gas plants.
Neither of these are questions. These are statements. False ones repeated again and again by the same fossil fuel and nuclear lobbyists lying to you.
Oh, sorry. No. They don’t lie. They pay millions for desinformation so people like you tell the lie while seriously thinking it’s true. That might actually be worse even but ymmv…
Compared to nuclear? Go check out the cost and schedule overruns for Hinkley C and then talk to me about cost. $40 billion and counting so far.
No, compared to the cost that proponents of an all-renewable strategy argue it would cost.
Both nuclear and massive-oversupply of renewables are pricey. The difference is one works on a quiet night, while the other doesn’t.
Show your math.
Sigh. Really?
I’ll show you all the world’s power grid planners, combined, making a choice to include nuclear in their decarbonised grid planning!
But I’m sure you know better than all of them.
Go right ahead.
Actually coal energy is expensive. Renewable energy is cheap energy.
Nope, burning coal was cheap a long time ago and allowed the people to accululate enough wealth to push for more coal (and brain-wash people to believe coal is cheap; and also how expensive renewables are). Just like the nuclear producers did decades ago to tell the tale of how there’s no alternative to nuclear.
The actual reality looks like this. And if you think that you need to pay more for electricity to not destroy the planet that’s already their propaganda having done their work.
Dollars is a metric that is easy to understand and complex problems are complex. Do you really think it’s that simple?
Some parts of it are… there is a certain amount of either nuclear base load or storage infrastructure needed.
But more than 50% renewables are easily doable without much strain on modern grids (modern models for nuclear usually plan with ~30-35% minimal base load needed…).
Also another argument for specific fossil fuels -domestic availability and thus more independence- is also a pro argument for renewables.
So no matter where you stand, if you are not at least using (or planning to use in near future) 50% cheap renewables in your electricity mix (or see narratives about expensive renewables even) then you know that the decision is not taken for economic reasons but because decision makers are getting money to stick with more fossil fuels than necessary.
Renewables are an economical no-brainer right now. Actual complexity of balancing out their fluctuating production with base load or storage comes much later (although in the case of nuclear the build times are often long enough that you should start soon). And still there are so many countries so far away from the absolute no-brainer amount of renewables.
Hundred percent. I’m happy that the UK is considering going nuclear for the other 50% instead of just saying, “we’ve done 50% wind and solar so we’re done. Let’s jut burn coal and gas for the remaining 50%.”
Also it works so flawlessly for the French (not*), why not do it too?
*France is slowly overcoming stress-corrosion problems (35 out of 56 reactors were down, drought is another problem), and Finland celebrates the commissioning of a new reactor (albeit 14 years late), while on the other hand monthly German nuclear generation will be zero for the first time in over 50 years.
The real thing is the cost, the cost per kWh is falling so going nuke and locking in to a price that’s already above market makes no sense at all.
The Tories are ideologically opposed to renewables because of some weird culture war thing, plus they hate the idea of locally sustainable communities not being totally under the control of billionaires - people are a lot easier to scare into obedience when you can tell them their power might be shut off. The main reason though is huge projects can only go to huge companies, they don’t want lots of little solar farms they want their oil baron buddies to maintain their monopolies, that’s the only reason we still hear so much about this now allbut obsolete technology.
I totally agree and it is the same for Germany. That’s why especially wind energy for South Germany was held back for so long, how dare communities go energy independent. It seems the resistance there is broken now, at least I hope it is and not just an election promise that gets broken after the Bavarian election.
Germany’s logic for energy is wild.
“Our biggest supplier for fossil fuels is imploding from failing to conquer a neighbor a tenth their size, let’s become even more reliant on them for energy”
The cost of burning fossil fuels isn’t measured in pounds or dollars. Nuclear is the only tech we have that can meet current and future load. We must pair it with renewables. There is no other option right now and if we wait for fusion, it’ll be too late.
And Germany added 36M tons of emissions because they replaced the decommissioned reactors with fossil gas.
Yeah, if you tell that lie often enough it will surely become true one day… Seriously, it will happen. Just another ten thousand times or so. By current rates that should be doable by the nuclear-cult on social media in only a few weeks, so you are sooooo close to changing reality…
This happens all the time. It happened to New York State after the decommission of Indian Point, it happened to Germany, it literally happens everywhere nuclear reactors are decommissioned, because fossil fuels provide the reliable and tunable capacity of nuclear power with explicit domestic and foreign subsidies driving down its cost. We keep talking about renewables displacing fossil fuels but German fossil gas consumption is going up, not down.
https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/press-media/press-releases/2023/german-net-power-generation-in-first-half-of-2023-renewable-energy-share-of-57-percent.html
And we are getting the fossile gas consumption down by laws made towards changes for the industries and private households that will have to have other means of heating in the near future, although it is not an easy process. We also lead when it comes to home insulation and other means of saving energy, even our stubborn automobile industry is finally turning.
We are not going back to nuclear energy and we are going towards renewable energy more and more and it has already proofen that not even a war in Europe can change that. We will sit and watch when you fight for uranium and pay 10+ times more money than planned for the next nuclear plant that’s 14 years late and will not add to the grid, but just be finished in time to replace an old nuclear plant that is falling apart and then you pay for that and pay for the old plants because they aren’t sustainable by themselves, like these in New York:
It is not working. It is not the future. It is not even a good investment anymore. And I don’t even have to talk about nuclear waste or uninsurable risks to proof it.
Yeah because America opened our strategic reserve wide open to keep you from freezing to death last winter.
Gas import from LNG (US) ist the lowest of all imports we do and don’t pretend it is a gift, you had too much of it and didn’t know what to do with it. It makes your country a lot of money: https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/DE/Gasversorgung/aktuelle_gasversorgung/_svg/Gasimporte/Gasimporte.html
https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/DE/Gasversorgung/aktuelle_gasversorgung/start.html
Gas imports are way down and our reserve is filled to the brim for Winter and Germans actually know how and are willing to safe energy. You can’t beat the numbers with words. It is not going to happen.
Renewables alone can’t meet New Yorks base load. Nuclear is the only technology that can. Gas turbines were connected to the grid to cover Indian points load which is a disaster.
Nuclear must be complemented with as much renewable capacity as possible. There is no other way.
Yeah, let’s just keep burning fossil fuels, amIrite?
Yeah, let’s just keep burning fossil fuels, amIrite?
Yes, that’s obviously what your nuclear fairy tales are aming for: Not building even the minimal capacity needed for base load, failing to build that insufficient capacity at a reasonable time/cost frame, failing to build the complementary renewables and then crying why you need to still burn fossil fuels in decades… while obviously blaming renewables (that you failed to build) and storage (that you denied is viable) for the failings of nuclear.
Please list the countries either planning/building or already having sufficiently modern capacities right now to cover just the minimal base load of ~30-35% of the projected electricity demand by 2050 and onward… Hint: The one country close is France, which will be able to (barely) reach 30% of their projected demand when they build all the planned new reactors… where “all” is the full 14, not the bullshit right now of only bulding 6 with 8 being optional. Because nothing about those is optional. They are the bare minimum that will be needed. But even in France you can’t honestly tell the people the required amounts and investments needed…
That’s the actual state of nuclear power right now… It’s prohibitely expensive and inefficient and only kept alive by lobbyists. And by people like you they brain-washed for decades who are now fighting their fight against renewables (that are actually also a requirement for every viable nuclear model) and cheering for every country building nuclear power even when it’s mathematically proven that it’s purely symbolical and not even close to relevant for co2-neutrality.
Why not nuclear and renewables?
They don’t work well together. Nuclear needs to operate at as close to 100% uptime as possible, otherwise it isn’t financially viable. What happens when it’s very windy and sunny and renewables are creating more power than we need? You can’t just run nuclear to cover the peaks in demand, it doesn’t work that way.
I didn’t know they were exclusive. Thanks
Ok but what’s the alternative? Gas peakers? Storage isn’t practical - even the biggest battery storage facilities are a smidge on pumped storage and have hardly any of that.
I agree nuclear needs to improve flexibility (with, say, sodium heat storage) but the fact that the technology needs to get better (with clear candidates for doing so) shouldn’t rule it out when all other options have worse implications.
Nuclear base load and renewables is actually one of the two viable concepts (the other is storage).
But electricity demand will massively increase: Most countries nowadays only cover about 20% of their primary energy by electricity. But all the oil and gas used in transport and industry needs to be converted to electricity (directly or indirectly). (On the other hand electricity is more efficient in a lot of cases, so it’s not the full factor 5 in increase that will be needed. But still a lot.)
And not single country seems to be able to even start investing on the scale necessary to build the needed base load. ~30-35% is the minimum, but that’s 30-35% of the future demand. Which is probably at least 2,5 times the demand of today. So basically any country that is not planning or already building enough nuclear capacities to cover at least 80% of todays electricity production purely on nuclear (which will be ~30% of the demand in 2-3 decades) is already failing. And pretending that that one (or a few) reactor(s) planned is more than symbolic is a lie.
As I said France comes close but only if they start being honest and build all the 14 planned new reactors. And if they can keep their aging fleet of existing reactors running long enough until those are build. (PS: The few lucky countries with a lot of hydro potential can of course cover some of that base load with hydro. But that’s irrelevant for most other countries without the same geography.)
Why nobody is actually planning proper amounts while pretending to trust in nuclear power as a solution? That’s easy: the cost. Even when we assume that the massive nuclear upbuild needed is not more expensive than the alternatively needed infrastructure and storage, the latter is an continues investment over decades. Nuclear comes with a massive upfront cost now to be ready in decades (maybe one if Europe suddenly rediscovers how to build them quickly, but I wouldn’t bet on it).
And it even becomes worse. Most countries planning with nuclear are also lacking proper renewables although their own model requires them and massively so (65%-70% to complement the nuclear base load… multiplied with at least 2,5 for the future demand…).
That’s the legacy of decades of nuclear lobbyism going for the perceived competition and trying to discredit renewables or nowadays telling us how storage is impossible on the required scale. At this point reacting to plans to build renewables with “oh, so you want to burn more fossil fuels and kill the planet?” is completely normal although also completely insane of course.
And now comes the best part: nuclear power doesn’t work without the same storage they tell everyone isn’t possible: Just look at France. They are massively overproducing in summer right now and still don’t have enough electricity in the coldest weeks of winter and need imports. But now imagine a future where everyone is either running nuclear and renewables or even more renewables and storage. There will be no export market most of the year (because everyone has a surplus at the same time) making nuclear much more expensive. There also will be no one with a sizeable surplus in the coldest weeks of the year, which means you need even more reactors producing even more surplus over most of the year.
RTE (France’ grid provider) did a extensive study in 2020 about electricity demand in 2050. That’s where the minimal needed base load of about 35% comes from, also the announced 14 new reactors first announced less than a year later coincidently have the capacity to cover 35% of their projected demand in 2050. (Side note: They also compared their models to purely renewable ones… always funny to see how the guys working in that field and with nuclear are not the ones doubting the viability of a renewable model)
The gist of it… nuclear and renewables are economical viable compared to fully renewable models, even more than the minimum base load can even be better economically. But only because all their models were based on hydrogen production basically all year from excess electricity… used in industry, as long term storage or as the new way of exporting energy.
That was informative. Was the takeaway- we’re screwed? Cause I kinda get the feeling energy can’t keep up with demand, and there isn’t an adequate way to store it.( batteries)
There is storage. Batteries can keep up and more importantly there are a lot of options that are better (in terms of costs and ressources) than the lithium-ion ones we here so much about. Because a stationary installation doesn’t have the same requirements as a mobile device or car (although even there they already move to other materials). Cheap materials and longevity for example are more important than energy densitiy because no one cares if the building is 30% heavier (for a phone however that’s important).
Also batteries are not the storage we usually talk about. They are more short-term and more used in balancing out short-term fluctuations (for example even pumped storage also uses batteries as a buffer because it makes no sense to start pumping big amounts of water when they are only needed to provide smaller loads right now). And for this reason the needed capacities are much smaller and heavily de-centralized, too.
What we primarily need when we talk about full renewables is long-term storage. The kind of storage you collect the overproduction of months in, to use it all in the 5-7 in a row once a year when neither solar nor wind produce proper amounts. And it’s no concidence I mentioned hydrogen production as one part of France’ future plans. Because that is storage. We will need green hydrogen to electrify a lot of industries and some transport. Maybe even green efuels (=putting even more electricity in to bind carbon to the hydrogen for a higher energy densities) for some kinds of air travel for example.
That’s potential long term storage right there. Yes it isn’t very efficient, but it doesn’t need to be. You already need a constant supply for industries and having some buffer to smooth out production (that will be linked to renewable excess production) is already economically benefical. Making that buffer capacity bigger (so it can also double as storage for the small amounts of time renewables don’t suffice) only costs the money you need to build it. And most of it doesn’t need to be build but can be converted from existing natural gas storage.
So the takeaway is: Build renewables. Neither a nuclear plus renewable model nor a renewable plus storage model works without them. Then start building nuclear. Or storage. Or even a mix will do.
But the most important thing: do it now and massively so. Storage models need about 115-125% production (depending on how well you diversify renewables), nuclear models also need 65%+. Of the long term demand in 2+ decades… So there is exactly no country at any risk to build too many renewables right now. The 35% base load numbers basically show us that you can reach 65% renewables in your mix without problems, so all the talk about grid stability is bullshit. Again…You won’t manage to build too much.
Also the most important part. Every single solar panel or wind turbine build today has a direct impact on co2-reduction. Which means you have more time to reach 100%.
That’s the other problem with nuclear build times. Let’s say every country manages to decide today to build the sufficient amount of nuclear base load and also manages to do the planning, construction and everything in 15 years (which would be impressive, when most need longer after all planning and location finding is done just for construction). Then they will still fail to meet the climate goals the agreed to as they can’t afford today’s co2-production for another 15 years. So again, they need to start a massive renewable upbuild just as a buffer to even reach the day when their reactors come online.
Oh, and of course renewable energy is cheap as fuck. So providing enough of it will automatically trigger changes in the way you use electricity. If there are enough times when electricity is basically free (most countries with higher amounts of renewables already have these a few hours a day) private companies will build storage without public investments, just because they can make money with it. Or industries using a lot will change their working pattern to need it when it’s cheap. Or they will build their own batteries.
TL;DR: Build renewables! Now! Many! You can’t do wrong here as it’s not only the fastest way to reduce co2-output now but also a requirement no matter what your complementary plan (storage or nuclear) is.
Remember: 65% (nuclear) to 125% (renewables with sub-optimal diversification) are needed. In a future with at least 2,5 times today’s electricity demand. So that’s 162,5% of today’s production at the very least, just in renewables before any base load. There is no excuse not to start today.
You are very knowledgeable concerning this. Please post more here and elsewhere to get the word out. We need people with knowledge to lead the change.