I've always hoped they're secretly funded/friends with the oil lobby, because otherwise that's just pure sadness.
For the past 100+ years, Russia has been one of the largest energy players in the world, bigger than Saudi Arabia. You can see this today in the Russian Invasion in Ukraine, as Germany tries to comply with the international regulations and shut the Russian Nord Stream pipeline off and can't; Russia has a stranglehold on everyone on that side of the world.
So, given that, they feared an America that could meet its energy needs without pollution, heavy investment, and significant cost; while Russia was literally killing its own people to make the oil and gas flow as a cost of doing business. Thus, they slipped right in and used the Hippies to astroturf an anti-nuclear position.
Reagan may have torn down that wall, but Russia won the cold war; and then they made sure, post-Soviet, to make sure we'd never attain energy independence. The end result of that trainwreck is currently under investigation by the FBI as per the recommendations of the Jan 6th Committee.
At a minimum, it seems that (thanks to ignorance) they lapped up all of the anti-nuclear FUD that was generated by the oil lobby and others.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Greenpeace_Energy
You would have thought that France would have supplied the European continent with electricity now that Russia cut its gas supply, but it turns out that France received electricity from Germany even during this time.
It turns out that even new builds of nuclear power plants take years to be completed. Getting safety right is a challenge, the more we know about engineering and material science for nuclear plants, the more we know about challenges in building them, the more we need to do to avoid these risks, the harder it is to build a safe power plant.
By 2050 it will be easily possible to power the world using renewables. Ending nuclear at that point doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me.
Disregarding electric dams because, while wonderful, those depend heavily on the country geography and I assume a lot of countries cannot build enough of them. (but we should build as much as we can of those, just don't expect 50% hydroelectricity everywhere)
Norway 98% since 2016. Costa Rica 98% since 2015. Scotland 97% in 2020. Uruguay 98% in 2021. New Zealand pushing close to 90%.
> Are we talking 90%, an the entire year, without creative accounting?
I don’t know what this means. If a country reports that X amount of energy came from a particular source in a particular year, that means the entire year. And if you believe these countries are lying and doing “creative accounting”, then the burden of proof lies with you to prove it, not for me to disprove it.
So except for Uruguay (which does look interesting), most countries mostly use renewable dispatchable sources which are perfect. But not all countries have the hydro potential / population ratio of Norway. We should use hydro as much as we can but we are limited by geography; once everything that can be used is we are stuck with nuclear, wind or solar. Maybe Uruguay could be an example of country that manages somehow with mostly solar/wind; I need to look into it. Thank you.
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/180592/european-cooperation-...
The sole closed nuclear plant (Fessenheim) was the oldest one, disputed by neighboring nations Germany and Switzerland (all owning stakes in it!) for seismic-related risks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fessenheim_Nuclear_Power_Plant...
A new reactor (Flamanville-3, an EPR) was ordered in 2004, work began in 2007 for a delivery in 2012, it is not delivered yet and 6x times over-budget. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...
A huge program (55 to 95 billions euros) aiming at upgrading all existing reactors in order to run them for 60 or even 80 years was launched and runs: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_car%C3%A9nage
Governments adopted sustained nuclear R&D budgets. See «Graphique 1», French ahead: https://www.ecologie.gouv.fr/energie-recherche-et-developpem...
Governments also sold reactors to Finland (running project, way over-budget and delay), China (2 reactors, over-budget and delay, and they stayed offline or at low-power for a full year after an incident) and the U.-K. (this is a running project, already late and over-budget).
The issue with construction isn't that it's hard to build a safe power plant, it's that there's been no will from anyone, or active harm from incompetent shitheads.
Fessenheim is the perfect reason for why Hollande wanted to close some of those plants: old, accident ridden, one of those which have to be closed down in summer due to possible overheating of nearby rivers and to top that off: it's in a region which may have earthquakes for which it is not prepared...
> The issue with construction isn't that it's hard to build a safe power plant, it's that there's been no will from anyone, or active harm from incompetent shitheads.
Weird because there are plenty western countries which do have popular support for nuclear energy but still struggle with construction times and costs in astronomical ways.
And as always, the same awful arguments about "don't overheat the rivers", when the limits set by the safety regulations are way under anything that could damage the environment. You could triple the output heat in the river and it would change absolutely nothing.
Hollande did not want to diversify our energy production. It was a purely political play to get EELV's support and used Fessenheim as a sacrificial chip. Glad to see the German energiewende led to such diversification that you're running half your country on coal right now btw. https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE
That is false. It was an old and accident ridden plant.
> And as always, the same awful arguments about "don't overheat the rivers", when the limits set by the safety regulations are way under anything
Luckily those limits are set by people who know what they're doing and not the nuclear astroturf online.
> Hollande did not want to diversify our energy production. It was a purely political play to get EELV's support and used Fessenheim as a sacrificial chip.
That's pure propaganda from the opposite political spectrum and is not even worth the discussion anymore at this point.
> Glad to see the German energiewende led to such diversification that you're running half your country on coal right now btw. https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE
We even had to get some coal plants back from retirement (just like you did) because your rotting nuclear fleet isn't performing and it's cold outside. You're welcome :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany#Closu...
Moreover the long-term deposit site (dubbed 'Cigéo') isn't ready.
France closed a working-order nuclear plant for political reasons just two years before, so we're not making exactly the brightest decisions here either.
I believe in nuclear as a technology, and I believe in mankind's ability to perform science and engineering tasks.
I don't have a lot of faith in the role of the government in properly and adequately regulating a booming nuclear industry.
Is it though? The US Navy has a pretty impressive nuclear safety record for the number of reactors they have in service.
To flip it, would you have more trust in a private company with nuclear safety? If the same decisions being made that allows PG&E to cut their funding for maintenance that allows their lines to be the cause of California's forest fires, why would we trust they would pay for the upkeep on a nuclear reactor?
If the government wanted PG&E to properly fund their line maintenance, PG&E would properly fund their line maintenance.
Whoever was behind it successfully managed to delay nuclear fission adoption by about 60 years for all of the EU and UK except France causing massive amounts of totally unnecessary CO2 emissions in the process.
[Rosatom] ranks first in the overseas NPP construction, responsible for 76% of global nuclear technology exports: 35 nuclear power plant units, at different stages of development, in 12 countries, as of December 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosatom
France is often considered to be in "The West".
Of course some green energy climate tree hugger whatever protesters oppose nuclear energy, but they are powerless and don't change public opinion much and certainly don't influence outcomes. To my knowledge it's government regulations and laws that stifle nuclear energy - not protesters or climate people.
1 - https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/03/23/americans-c...
It's like an Illuminati conspiracy theory except with people who dont use soap...
Global warming will cost countless trillions and displace, sicken, and/or kill billions in the coming centuries.
Nobody is talking about fossil anymore. It's on the way out just like nuclear.
Well, from, like 1960 until about 2010 everybody who built a power plant did exactly that.
And, from about 2015 onwards if you didn't ignore it it's still 5x more expensive than solar panels or wind farms.
So, not a likely conspiracy theory.
The anti-nuclear movement is also still alive and doing well but at this point it's like arguing over spilled milk, the damage is mostly done and a lot of is irreversible. We can try to salvage nuclear but we've already regressed to further impure sources in some countries so progress seems unlikely.
0. Nuclear is not forbidden.
1. Nuclear power is exceedingly common in many countries.
2. Electricity production is not (by far) the only source of carbon emissions. Why have we also not seen any major action to reduce emissions from other sources? Or did the treehuggers also force people to fly, eat meat and drive large cars?
3. > Last best hope.
Energy efficiency. Regulation incentivizing fuel efficiency. Low carbon public transportation. Incentives to reduce the carbon emissions from agriculture. Renewables. The list of available remedies is long.
But sure, go ahead and blame environmentalists for the destruction profit driven market capitalism caused. If that soothes your cognitive dissonance.
What is this point replying to?
Anyway, over-regulation can make nuclear energy commercially unviable. It doesn't take a ban for nuclear to die.
If nuclear was truly this obvious answer to aquire abundant clean energy, wouldn't our business friendly leaders embrace it with open arms?
A couple of treehuggers didn't stop them from allowing overfishing the sea, or from extracting fuel from oil sands. Despite those things having very clear negative environmental consequences. And strong popular opposition.
But for Nuclear apparently they went totally in the opposite direction. Deaf to the cries of businessmen they heavily regulated an obviously harmless and extremly profitable energy industry to death?
Occam's razor says there's a simpler explanation.
This is laughable. I come from a country that’s officially socialist. But even people from there want to come to Texas and drive a big SUV and live in a big house with a pool. Better yet, they want to attain that same standard of living in their own country.
If environmentalists tell people to turn down the thermostat and stop eating meet and crowd into public transit, they will lose every time.
Then I dearly hope turning down the thermostat, stopping eating meat, and crowding in public transport isn't necessary to prevent climate change.
Because if it is, and if you're right, then we are fucked.
And to people saying it is not possible, I call bullshit. There are large carbon footprint variations within the West. Of course countries have different circumstances, but it's also very clearly a question of political will.
The alternative economic systems are even worse on environmental grounds, and their only saving grace is their ineptness and inefficiency, which limits the amount of damage they cause.
Like, have you heard about environmental disaster of Aral Sea? About how Soviet Union explicitly pursued maximizing fossil extraction as its core economic policy? About the environmental disaster of Great Leap Forward? Check out the list of 10 most polluted places in the world, where are they? Literally the only one that got its pollution under capitalism is in Zambia, all the rest are in former Soviet Union, China and India, which started doing market economy when they were already high polluters.
The masses of environmentalists moved on from nuclear in the 80's but would surely return if nuclear regained traction.
We could have had the wind and solar revolution any time in the last 70 years. Instead trillions were gifted to fossil fuel and nuclear con artists.
This blame of the failure of nuclear on them being forced to sort-of clean up some of their mess rather than just sending native people to mine with no PPE and dumping tailings and waste wherever is a sad attempt at gaslighting.
Controversial opinion: by scaremongering about nuclear power—which the west could have started adopting in the 1970s like France did—the naked tree huggers did as much to set back climate change mitigation efforts as the oil lobby.
At least with the oil folks, they were pushing a status quo that was likely to stand until today anyway, because renewables have only become cost competitive relatively recently. Even without lobbying by the oil industry people had powerful incentives until now to stick with the technology that didn’t require them to put on a sweater or pay more for energy.
The anti-nuclear movement by contrast knee-capped the last best hope for climate change mitigation. A technology that could have been deployed—and catalyzed electrification and energy storage efforts—decades ago when we had more runway.