> In fact if we take Germany as a counter-example, when they stopped building nuclear power plants due to popular demand, they significantly increased renewable energy to a point where they are currently replacing coal power at a greater rate then France, despite Germany actively shutting down nuclear plants that still had years of life left.
Rarely have I seen reality mistreated so blatantly.
France has barely used coal in the last 4 decades, and so it seems to be enough to claim that, by slowly reducing their coal use, Germany does much better.
That reminds me of the popular definition of chutzpah: the person that asks for mercy after murdering his parents, since, afterall, he's now an orphan.
> However, my main point still stands, that investing in nuclear well into the 1990s did not bring costs and delays of new plants down.
Your main point is wrong. [1] shows that each model has experienced faster build time as new units were built. What is true is that new, more advanced designs can take more time to build than older, less advanced designs.
[1]: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_des_r%C3%A9acteurs_nucl%...
CP0: first reactor 6.5y, last reactor 5y
CP1: first reactor 6y, last reactor 5y
CP2: first reactor 5y, last reactor 6y
P4 : first reactor 7y, last reactor 6y
P'4: first reactor 7y, last reactor 6.5y
N4 : first reactor 12y, last reactor 7.5y
> it conveniently excludes
Honestly, I suspect you're just namedroping here. But let's adress the point: Olkiluoto and Flamanville are the first 2 reactors of their generation, I'm not sure what you want to compare them to in terms of build time. My guess is that Hinkley point will get built much faster, and that we may see further improvements if more are built.
That sounds a less impressive when you rephrase it as saying they went from 15x more coal use than france to 9x as much. Percentage wise the decrease seems similar in the last few years.
source: https://www.iea.org/countries/france https://www.iea.org/countries/germany
If we (US) hadn't stopped building nuclear in the 80s and had instead merely key up the pace, our grid wouldn't be 20% nuclear like it is today, it would be 100% nuclear.
Instead, we made the choice to pump 20 gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere while we waited for solar and wind to become viable. I'm glad they finally are -- they just broke into double digits, in a few years they will pass the nuclear buildout we stopped in the 80s -- but that was one helluva waiting cost.
It's not as though Germany could have 'decided' in the 1970s to have 2022 technology. Sure, increased investment at the time may have sped up the development of renewables, but it still wouldn't be fast. Science doesn't quite work that way.
But here we are, instead. Thank Reagan. And Bush. And Bush, again.
US spent $5T trashing Iraq and Afghanistan. That would have paid for completely switching over to renewables, several time over.
This seems to be implying that basically all the research was done between the 2000's and now, and that scientists had been twiddling their thumbs between 1970 and 2000. Actually, scientific advances between 1970 and 2000 were critical to enable the renewables boom that we experienced since 2000.
Could it have gone faster if more funds had been made available? Maybe. But claiming that we "lost" 30 years in research on that topic simply shows ignorance about the way research works.
> US spent $5T trashing Iraq and Afghanistan. That would have paid for completely switching over to renewables, several time over.
Yeah, and if the Romans hadn't spent so much time fighting with their neighbours, we would all be eating free lunches now.
There's reports around about what actually drove the price drops in renewable, and while research plays it's part, market support and scale are big factors, we definately squandered multiple opportunities to nip climate change in the bud.
Reagan took the solar panels off the White House for a reason, so his buddy James Watt could kill off any alternatives to fossil energy. That regime lasted until the 90s and by then any memory of the oil crises in the 70s was long gone.
The panels installed on the White House were not photovoltaic solar panels - they were solar water heater panels. (After they damaged the roof, they weren't replaced after the repairs were done.) It wouldn't have been possible to run the economy on solar water heater panels.
I’m not the biggest fan of arguing about alternate history, but this thread originally spun out after an ancestor poster claimed we would have a rosy present if only we had invested more in nuclear energy. I claim I find way more wishful then claiming the same about renewables.
On the other we have a technology that still doesn't exist in the 2020s and would also need to be build out.
Cockroach archeologists will be puzzled why we chose to go extinct.
You keep saying this, but I'm not sure where it's coming from. Reading upthread, my interpretation is that we are specifically talking about the technology that exists today, in 2022.
I think it's entirely reasonable that, if investments into renewables were made in the 70s and 80s at a level comparable to investments in fossil fuels or nuclear, we would have seen, in the 90s, renewables technology comparable to what we have today. No, it wouldn't be the same technology, but I could see efficiency numbers being similar, though perhaps at a bit higher cost.
I shudder to think what failure looks like to you.
Operating the wind farms is much cheaper than operating the nukes and mining the extra coal would have been. That opex savings goes to more capex wind generation capacity, further reducing costs by each GW displaced.
So, yes, success. Not being off coal already is not failure. Replacing an entire country's energy infrastructure takes time, no matter what.
Looks at France
Sure.
Despite that, the public opinion soured so bad, that it is the detractors that had to bring disaster to nuclear reactors. Protestors fired rocket-propelled grenades at a plant[0]. It did not cause any nuclear danger.
On the other hand, the costs grew because the standards for risk grew to tremendous levels that are way, way above those applied for the coal and gas industries, or wind and solar for that matter.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix#Rocket_attack
The wiki article you linked says the plant was unfinished. This would indicate the attack was a protest against the construction of the plant, not an attempt to induce a nuclear meltdown. You are perhaps unintentionally twisting the facts.
Absolutely true. It proved expensive even at large scale and with full support of the state. I don't trust promises or hypotheticals of cheap nuclear power, at all.
But here's the thing: France succeeded with decarbonizing their electricity production. It's a pretty notable success. Yes, it was (and remains) expensive and yes those plants are now failing often, remaining expensive ober their whole lifetime. But it worked and France could afford it.
I'd argue many other countries could afford it as well. The German electricity mix is a lot dirtier by comparison.
failing plants due to their age and maintenance resulting in less nuclear power in the long run say otherwise
France uses 20x less coal than Germany to begin with (https://www.worldometers.info/coal/coal-consumption-by-count...) so I'm not sure about the comparison of reducing consumption
Also, during the recent conflict with Russia, Germany is turning coal plants back online and France is not.
Domestic coal consumption figures are meaningless.
That's wrong. France is a net exporter of power, by over 50%. So even on aggregate it is a net benefit to the world since 90% of the power generated is CO2 free.
Germany is like 40% coal, and France is maybe 5%. It's easier to reduce at a faster rate when your use is still massive.
Historically the countries that invested in nuclear and hydro have been most successful in lowering the carbon intensity of their energy sector. Looking at the data, Germany does not appear to be nearly as successful as France. In 2021 France's electricity averaged 68 gCO2/kWh, and Germany averaged 364 gCO2/kWh.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/low-carbon-share-energy?t...
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electric...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_by_country#Germ...
In fact if we take Germany as a counter-example, when they stopped building nuclear power plants due to popular demand, they significantly increased renewable energy to a point where they are currently replacing coal power at a greater rate then France, despite Germany actively shutting down nuclear plants that still had years of life left.
This shows that Nuclear power might actually be a hindrance towards an electrified future, as governments have historically put to much faith in it, which was ultimately unwarranted, instead of investing in renewables.
EDIT: I feel like people are focusing on the wrong point here. I was apparently—and unintentionally—disingenuous by touting Germany’s success in replacing coal power with renewables, as compared to France. However, my main point still stands, that investing in nuclear well into the 1990s did not bring costs and delays of new plants down.