> Oh, and we got a recent report from our national energy company (or something close), that laid out several plans to reduce our CO2 emissions, and most contingencies involved both nuclear and renewable, including the "nuke max" scenario. We'll definitely need renewables, but it's pretty clear shutting down nuclear plants is one of the riskiest plans — hopefully our politicians will wake up to that.
Great. Hope they don't forget what scientists say: we must use much less energy.
There is no scenario where a comparable wind or solar farm requires more concrete than a nuclear plant. Not even close. A modern nuclear plant requires hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of concrete (ie: over a million tonnes), as well as hundreds of thousands of tonnes of steel.
Yes, a solar farm may require more land surface area, but it can be very quickly and easily deconstructed and removed when no longer required. Where as decommissioning a nuclear plant can cost tens of billions of Euros, and can take 60 years or more to complete.
You want to be renewable only? Then you need to install several times the power output you need, and enough energy storage to have your energy at will: dams, batteries… This is going to cost a lot.
Also, shutting down a nuke plant takes about a minute, then you need very little water to keep it cool. Completely dismantling it takes much longer of course, but it takes so little surface compared to its energy output that you might as well just leave it there to rot.
Not as bad as the Germans. The decision to build new nuclear plants is one thing, but to close down perfectly good and safe existing nuclear in the name of the environment is madness.
Especially when the alternative to those nuclear plants is to burn more lignite coal and build new pipelines to import more Russian natural gas.
I think it is getting better, though. Environmentalists are slowly waking up to the fact that nuclear energy is not nearly as bad as we make it out to be, even compared to windmills & solar panels, which requires many more times the ground surface and/or concrete.
Oh, and we got a recent report from our national energy company (or something close), that laid out several plans to reduce our CO2 emissions, and most contingencies involved both nuclear and renewable, including the "nuke max" scenario. We'll definitely need renewables, but it's pretty clear shutting down nuclear plants is one of the riskiest plans — hopefully our politicians will wake up to that.