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.
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.