BTW, the list of cancelled power plants (even ones under construction) in the US is pretty long https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cancelled_nuclear_reac... and even the only reactors currently under construction where are risk of being abandoned. The budget is of course overrun and completion set back by six years, so far. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Pla...
Those 5580 were 1700 more than planned. It's like saying: I can use my car two months a year due to maintenance and being fine with it not working for a third month. I
> Those 5580 were 1700 more than planned. It's like saying: I can use my car two months a year due to maintenance and being fine with it not working for a third month.
Welcome to the real world of industrial processes, these aren't cars. Maintenance are run on tight schedules[1], so there can easily be delays (this isn't specific to nuclear though, you'd find delays during maintenance for every kind of electric production site). Also, small problems happen all the time, and because of nuclear's super high safety requirements, when those small things happen, you stop the reactor and fix it.
BTW, around one third of those 1700 days came from small issues at Fessenheim that EDF decided not to fix and keep the reactor off because the plant was planned for closure by the end of the year. You're not gonna fix you car if you know it's gonna be seized soon right?
[1] mostly because like in every business, project manager are like “it's late: workers were lazy. It's dine before the deadline: we gave them too much time”.
In fact, I like to say that the only viable option to get 100% RE is to lower our energy consumption until hydro can cover the majority of our needs.
It’s also worth pointing out that while hydro is renewable, it isn’t clean. Dams are ecological nightmares.
Hydro will like be part of our energy profile indefinitely. But it will never be more than a small fraction. And in the long run that fraction will get smaller as global energy demand continues to grow.
IMO, most industrialized nations have already tapped hydro about as much as it can be tapped, given some constraints about wildlife habitat. But I'd be happy to be corrected -- what new hydro projects do you think we should be doing, and how much power do you think they'd provide?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impacts_of_climate_ch... and the more alarmist https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/impact-climate-change... say that the global economic impact of climate change will likely amount to about 10% of world GDP, and perhaps as much as 20%.
Those are huge, huge numbers! But to put them in perspective, it's less than the difference between living in, say, present day US vs present day UK. Big impact, but hardly planetarily existential.
And, yes, there's more to live than economics. But if life goes on normally enough that we can even not only still talk about GDP with any meaning, but even say that we are going to preserve 80% to 90% of GDP, things won't be too apocalyptic.
Keep in mind that this is 80% of a far larger pie than today, since normal economic growth will continue.
So maybe that's why governments don't act, relying on abstract GDP numbers. «A good chunk of the tropical era of the world is going to be uninhabitable[1]? Who cares, it's only gonna cost us 10% of GDP».
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/08/climate/climate-change-he...
> it's less than the difference between living in, say, present day US vs present day UK. Big impact, but hardly planetarily existential.
Like, the difference between living in Birmingham or living in the death valley?
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/30/world/canada/bc-canada-he...
Well, no, the planet will not be destroyed. The issue is the lifestyle of the semi-hairless apes on the planet.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impacts_of_climate_ch... and the more alarmist https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/impact-climate-change... say that the global economic impact of climate change will likely amount to about 10% of world GDP, and perhaps as much as 20%
No, its that it will grow to that share by 2050 (which is less than 30 years away) and keep growing.
> At a (somewhat generous) 3% baseline growth rate,
At a fairly generous 3% baseline growth rate, 2.35× current world GDP, for a projected population of 9.7 billion to todays 7.9 billion, so (pre-climate change impacts) a little under double the current GDP/capita.
Of course, the losses arent, expected to be evenly distributed among countries, regions, etc., so if you aren't a well-diversified capitalist (say you are working class) and in the wrong place or industry, you have a good chance at seeing dramatically* greater impacts.
> Of course, the losses arent, expected to be evenly distributed among countries, regions, etc., so if you aren't a well-diversified capitalist (say you are working class) and in the wrong place or industry, you have a good chance at seeing dramatically* greater impacts.
Yes, averages hide a lot of variance.
Of course, this is another good reason in favour of allowing freer migration around the globe.
From the perspective of the people in places likely to see lesser adverse impacts, its a reason against freer inbound migration.
Of course, now we'd have to discuss who 'you' is. If you are talking about individual people, or about eg some statistical measure of the country or county as a whole.
See also https://openborders.info/keyhole-solutions/ which would suggest to eg just charge people to immigrate.
Totally renewable - and not just hydro, but also solar (which takes care of the water you let in)!
And yes, this has been proposed and is physically possible & it alreadyhappened for geological reasons in the past:
Also takes care of shipping. ;-) Although I guess you could build a near shore shipping channel, possibly filled with fresh water from rivers.
Well, then you still need to deal with the salt both as a onetime measure.
But throughout the year capacity varies.
And, of course, there's only so many sites that can support dams. So you have to ask 100% of _what_? And is that enough?
Which is half of their lifetime by American standards.
> In 2019 France had 5580 reactor days with zero production.
That means 75% of availability. Good luck finding any renewable source with such a figure ;).