The fossil fuel industry is funding pro-nuclear PR because they realize that renewables do pose a major economic threat to their business in the short term, since they are now cost-effective enough to replace vast chunks of their business (even if not 100% of it.) Pro-nuclear (and coincidentally anti-renewable) PR is the most efficient way to protect their business. If they can convince the public [incorrectly] that the best way to decarbonize rapidly is to abandon/block renewable build-outs because “nuclear is the only way” then they’ve paid enormous dividends to their shareholders.
If your response to the above is “these random technical points are correct, what’s the problem”, then the problem is: those random technical points are largely a distraction from the important questions of how we decarbonize quickly. The fossil fuel industry understands this perfectly, because they have a lot of skin in the game.
Last time I heard, it wasn't pro-nuclear France that urgently built a new LNG terminal, it was staunchly anti-nuclear Germany (in 2023!!). So I have doubt about your analysis.
"Due to the technical problems affecting French reactors, Germany for the first time sold more power to France than it received from its neighbour, doubling its year-earlier export volume there.
France produced 15.1% less power in 2022 and the volume fell short of national usage by 1%."
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/even-crisis-germany-...
I wonder if it's not even more cynical than that because it doesn't seem right. We still need an alternative controllable* source of energy when renewables can't cover the demand (no wind, no sunshine), and it needs to cover peak demand... For now aside from hydro it's mostly fossil fuels: coal, gas and oil.
As far as the current tech goes, my understanding is that "renewables" are much more compatible with profits from fossil fuel than nuclear power is.
* is "controllable" the right word in this context in english?
I believe the appropriate term is dispatchable.
I don’t disagree whatsoever that the fossil fuel industry is up to tricks. What I’m saying is I don’t care what their intentions are. I care about results. If Hitler came back and found a way to fix climate change, but his intention was in order to create a better planet for Aryan people, I’d simultaneously despise him and support the fix.
That’s an extreme example of course, but trying to make my point that when we’re facing extinction, we shouldn’t take solutions off the table. We should ignore intentions and look at results.
To me, all this arguing about their intentions is a distraction that keeps us from solving the problem.
We have a slim chance of fixing climate change, and I have yet to see a single fact to dissuade me from believing nuclear is our best hope. Even if the people behind the push turned out to be scumbags.
Who are themselves.
(Just thought the story would make more sense if I filled in that last part. :-))
Yes, there is a significant amount of data and research that supports the increasing competitiveness of renewable energy compared to oil. Here are a few examples:
The International Energy Agency (IEA) reported that in 2020, the average global cost of producing electricity from solar photovoltaic (PV) systems was lower than the cost of producing electricity from new fossil fuel plants, including coal and natural gas.
A recent study by the consultancy firm Lazard found that the cost of utility-scale solar and wind energy in the United States has fallen significantly in recent years, and is now cheaper than the cost of power generated from coal and natural gas in most regions of the country.
The US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) reported that the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) for wind and solar energy in the United States has fallen by more than 50% over the past decade, and is projected to continue to decline in the future.
According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the cost of solar PV and wind energy has declined by over 80% and 60%, respectively, since 2010. IRENA also found that renewable energy is now the cheapest source of new power generation in many countries, including Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and the United States.
These are just a few examples, but they demonstrate the trend of declining costs for renewable energy and increasing competitiveness with oil and other fossil fuels.
Obviously we shouldn't rely on ChatGPT for our answers to life, but it's not a terrible list. Except for the absolute lack of any mention of nuclear, which I think fairly reflects the zeitgeist but not the real science.
Here's what it said:
1. Switch to Renewable Energy Sources: We should phase out the use of fossil fuels and switch to renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar, geothermal, and hydropower. This would reduce carbon dioxide emissions and other pollutants from burning fossil fuels.
2. Increase Energy Efficiency: We should invest in technologies and practices that reduce energy consumption, such as LED lighting, efficient heating and cooling systems, and better insulation.
3. Plant Trees and Protect Forests: Trees absorb carbon dioxide, so planting more of them can help reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We should also protect existing forests and prevent deforestation.
4. Reduce Food Waste: Food waste is a major contributor to climate change, as it releases methane and other greenhouse gases when it decomposes. We should reduce food waste and increase food recycling.
5. Reduce Meat Consumption: Animal agriculture is a major source of carbon dioxide and other air pollutants, so reducing meat consumption can help reduce emissions. We should also promote plant-based diets.
6. Improve Transportation: We should invest in public transportation, electric vehicles, and other low-emission transportation options. This would reduce emissions from cars and other vehicles.
7. Educate and Advocate: We must educate people about the causes and consequences of climate change, and advocate for public policies that can help mitigate climate change.
Yes, the cost of generating a watt-hour of power from renewables is competitive with fossil fuels. If you could put those watt-hours in a tank somewhere those numbers would work. However, a tank for a watt-hour is called a battery--and storing that watt-hour is going to cost you more than creating it.
In practice what happens is that renewables reduce the fuel use by gas plants. You still need just as many gas plants, though, and once you count those costs the renewables are no longer the cheapest.
https://www.perplexity.ai/?s=u&uuid=2921714c-3614-41ae-82d1-...
This is an interesting theory devoid of evidence to back it up.
In Germany it's the same companies running fossil and nuclear btw.
They also expand into renewables now.
Now, if your objective is public safety you should use a different standard: Better than any viable competing technology. Within the limit of rounding nuclear is currently 100x safer than it's closest competitor: natural gas. By mandating that level of nuclear safety we are actually increasing deaths by causing the use of a far more dangerous technology instead.
(And note that her post repeats a common mistake about nuclear safety--assigning the Fukushima deaths to the nuclear plant rather than to the politicians. The evacuation of the city did not make sense from a safety standpoint. Growing food there will not be a good idea for some time but the expected death toll from sitting put was zero. The only non-worker nuclear power deaths are from Chernobyl.)
There's still the storage and base load problem. But I am 100% with you that we shouldn't slow solar in deference to nuclear; what we should be doing is mapping out what we want our next generation energy mix to look like (solar, wind, pumped storage, nuclear, geothermal, etc) on a regional basis, stop fucking around and arguing about it, and just get on with building it.
I live in an area (Canadian prairies) where max energy consumption lines up with with minimum solar and wind production (-40C in December on a calm night). Even during the day, those calm bitterly cold days only have about 8 hours of sunlight from a sun that barely comes over the horizon. We're starting to build solar, we've had wind for a while, but even though we've committed to building SMR Nuclear, we're still in a situation where we've got coal and natural gas plants that are approaching EOL and they'll likely be replaced/retrofitted to burn more fossil fuels because we won't have any sufficiently reliable baseload ready.
And BC has tons of hydro.
So build out enough renewables to supply BC when the sun is shining, maybe even enough to pump some water uphill, and then have BC hydro supply the prairies at other times.
863 m^3 of natural gas -> ~9100 kWh of heating energy
Assuming (generously) that I can get a COP of 3, even though that’s unrealistic at the miserable temperatures we had over the last few months, that’s ~3000 kWh for electric heat pump heat.
Electricity was about 745kWh for the month, so 3750kWh total between heat pump heating and electricity.
https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/ma... shows 3.5kWh/mo/m^2 for December and 4.4kWh/mo/m^2 for January. Let’s go with January to be generous.
3750kWh/mo / 4.4kWh/mo/m^2 = 852 m^2 = 9170 sq.ft. of solar required to cover both my electricity and heating needs.
If I look at just electricity it’s a lot easier. 745 / 4.4 = 169m^2 = 1800 sq.ft. which is essentially the same footprint as the house. Heating completely kills it though and is, I suspect for most people, an even larger source of carbon than their electricity use. At least looking at those two bills, there’s an $88 carbon tax charge on the natural gas bill and only $8 on the electrical bill.
I've got one family member in Saskatchewan with rooftop solar looking at numbers similar to you. Another has 40 acres and a honey operation so just has ground mounted solar and often zeroes his electricity bill even during winter months, although he's still using gas for heating. Just got a heat pump water heater, so he's heading in that direction.
Saskatchewan has lots of land, so we we can do it collectively even if we can't do it ourselves just with roof tops.
As far as the urban spots go, my electricity+gas numbers there approximately match the size of the entire lot. Extrapolating a bit and assuming that my house is “average”, that works out to needing a solar farm about the size of Regina to power the city in the winter. Maybe half the size when considering all of the street area.
As of last year they just give a 25% credit.
I think this is a little misleading, unless there' a good story for storage and long distance power transmission, which I haven't seen yet.
Can small modular reactors like those designed by NuScale do better? Maybe. But we're not going to find out sooner than 2030, which is when NuScale plans to have its first plant operational: https://www.nuscalepower.com/en/about
I’m totally on board for building more but it doesn’t seem like this is a solved problem yet.
True.
> her logic and her facts were solid.
I came to a somewhat different conclusion after reading that article: I felt it was sufficiently blatant, manipulative, and simply wrong that no one would fall for that. Ah well.
Nuclear should be a part of decarbonization, and you can search my comment history here to see I've said so for a long time. But the breezy 'I was misinformed!' tone of this article is PR because it dismisses rather than engages with criticisms of the nuclear industry.
For contrast, consider that British Nuclear Fuels used the Irish Sea as a dumping ground for nuclear waste through the 1970s, becoming a significant bone of contention between the UK and the Republic of Ireland: https://cdn.thejournal.ie/media/2012/11/filedownload31607en....
Though practices have since changed and risks appear to have been mitigated, the substack article just ignores the uncomfortable reality of past abuses which should inform policy assessments. When someone tells a just-so story, even if you agree with it - in fact, especially then - you should question whether it's purpose is to educate or to manipulate.
That seems factually incorrect, and the anti-renewables paragraph was the thing that jumped out at me most, though the author claims not "to say that we should abandon renewables altogether, but to illustrate that all energy generation carries an environmental cost, and no solution is perfect."
If they're not, I'd love to see a take down of that. But I see no problem with anything she wrote, I remain convinced nuclear is the only rational energy source left, and all this fear mongering about nuclear is causing us to slowly kill ourselves.