I can’t read it, as the website doesn’t like my adblocker. The first few sentences talked about nuclear.
I found this showing that in 1991 1/3 of your total energy came from nuclear, which is super impressive, now it is down to 1/5. Do is your plan to double that number again? And what is your current time-frame for that?
From the article: “Climate Minister Romina Pourmokhtari said […] that the government believed that new nuclear power equalling 10 conventional reactors would need to go into service in the 2030s and 2040s.”
Assuming that a conventional reactor is around 1 GW, adding 10 would more than double their current capacity.
It took Finland nearly two decades to complete Scandinavia's newest reactor. Sweden can remove the cap, but good luck finding private companies willing to invest in that. Not without guaranteed profits and subsidies. Of course Sweden could just build it themselves. But it's not cheap.
Yeah, nuclear is quite expensive, just like batteries, hydrogen, and long-distance transmission are expensive. The effects of climate change will be incredibly expensive. The best way to make technology cheaper is to build a lot of it, and just building something is step one.
Because building lots of solar and wind farms is not sufficient. You also need stuff like batteries, hydrogen, and long-distance transmission to make the grid reliable without fossil fuels.
Though it seems like Europe overall is planning for enough diversity that the nuclear countries can sell to neighbors in times of shortage. Hopefully some US states will make similar plans.
Usually it's renewables that's sold over the border rather than nuclear energy. Also, nuclear and batteries, for example, are not comparable. Batteries have an ROI of less than three years. It'll be profitable long before nuclear is even constructed. That's presuming private companies are interested in them. Are you aware of a single nuclear power plant, anywhere in the world, that is unsubsidised? Or even an insurance company that's willing to insure a plant in full? Usually not, usually it's subsidised by the government, with guarantees of profitability to private companies, and at least partially insured and decommissioned by the government. Because nobody wants anything to do with nuclear. Not even nuclear companies. EDF's renewables part of the company, is subsidising the nuclear side. On top of all this, studies are clear on what is faster and more effective at reducing emissions.
Renewables are sold over the border more because they are naturally geographically distributed. I want to see nuclear on the grid as a power source of last resort, so we can destroy the fossil fuel infrastructure, yet keep civilization running if a volcano blocks out the sun or climate change turns the deserts cloudy, or who knows what the future holds.
Fossil fuels are incredibly subsidized, both explicitly and through unpriced externalities. If we must subsidize the alternative, then so be it. Nuclear should get cheaper as we build more.
Most nuclear plants today will melt down if left unattended. That’s pretty stupid. We should let engineers make them orders of magnitude safer, with passive air cooling or huge water reserves, so they can be insured at reasonable cost. There is no shortage of ideas on that front.
It's actually the opposite. Just look at France. They are massively overproducing most of the time, even when they run checkups and maintenance on a lot of their plants in summer, they have huge amounts to export. And yet they still need imports in the coldest weeks of winter (while even winter on average sees overproduction).
So no, nuclear countries will not sell any power in times of shortage. They will be the ones needing imports from countries with storage. Or they need to start up storage themselves, too. Because enough nuclear base load to survive the few weeks with high demand without imports or storage when your renewable half of production is underperforming is insanely expensive. As it means having a lot of overproduction the rest of the time... but with no market to export anymore like they have today, because all countries will have high demand and low supply in the same time frames.
(Speaking about France: Their grid provider ran a big study about future electricity production. And the only reason nuclear (even more than the minimal required base load) was economically viable was because they plan with hydrogen production all year. For industry, for export (because -as I said- they need a way to export when not everyone has high production but low demand) and as storage...)
PS: Yes, the conclusion is that nuclear needs storage to be economicaslly viable. Just like they need a lot of complementing renewables. But don't tell that to the nuclear cult pretending storage is impossible and renewables don't work, because their heads might explode. Wait... Do tell it to them, as these exploding heads would be an improvement.
Wholesale power prices are cheaper in Germany than they are in France. Last year France had to shut down half their reactors for maintenance and weather. Germany had to export to them. Before the French government bailed out the nuclear industry again, there was talk of splitting up EDF from their profitable renewables investments, away from its loss-making nuclear problem. EDF's CEO resigned because of the vast cost of the UK's HPC nuclear plant. And now, under agreement with the UK government, EDF can make a profit from HPC without it actually being constructed with their RAB model.
The usual fantasizing about nuclear and failing any actual plan, very popular right now. Because nuclear lobbyists pay well.
Or more precise: They want to build more nuclear power. But of course all their planned and their existing nuclear combined will not even be remotely enough to cover just the minimal required base load in a few decades. Because changing most of our primary energy demand (industry, heating, transport in varying shares) to electricity (that is often only making up 20%+ in a lot of countries) will massively increase the demand.
If you are not building (or planning to start the build-up very, very soon) enough nuclear capacity to cover 80% or more of today's electricity demand then you will not have the minimal base load required in 2-3 decades, because there will be an increase by at least a factor of 2,5 in demand.
But that's not something you tell people as nobody has a clue how to pay for building even more nuclear (where "even more" means the actual needed amount)...
(A few exceptions with massive hydro potential aside -as they have access to that cheaper base load- there is exactly one country with a plan that works mathematically: France. And even their government is lying to their people when they talk about 6 new reactors with another 8 optional. Because the full set of 14 is the required minimum they will need in 2050 and onward (their old ones are not in a state to run mcuh longer than that).
But hey. Even the most pro-nuclear country and the one with a domestic indutry actually doing a lot of the nuclear build up for other countries can't tell their population the trutz about costs and minimla requirements. If you want to know just onme thing about the state of nuclear, that this should be it.
Who the fuck are paying nuclear lobbyist? Do they even exist? Like is “Big Nuclear” real? Can I get a job there? I’d love to get paid a shit load to go to the same dinners fossil fuel executives go to, but I’d get to actually advocate for something worthwhile and that would improve life in the future.
Yeah, it genuinely is. Doesn't take too long to find the lobby groups. A lot of funding comes from mining. Also, RAB funding (from the government) allows nuclear companies to earn a profit without having the plant completed yet. So there is money to be made. Ever wonder why there's a lot of pro-nuke videos on YouTube? Rather than academic spaces? Which time and again shows you that renewables are superior in virtually every way?
Is it though? You'd need to cut the price of nuclear by about 1/4. Even then, renewables are faster at decarbonisation. Not that nuclear represented a large amount of the German grid in the first place. Best case scenario for Germany, is extending the lifespan of their plants not more than a few years.
It's actually the worst time to get started on nuclear. Costs keep going up. There's a reason why countries overwhelmingly prefer to invest in renewables over nuclear. This includes nuclear companies. EDF is one of the largest investors in renewables, and it's actually the profitable side of the business. It's going to be the taxpayer that's going to pay for nuclear, and they're not going to get their money's worth, as opposed to renewables.
But that's excactly not was it happening. Keeping the remaining reactors alive (they provided ~2,6% of the generated electricity btw...) just for the sake of keeping them would have slowed down renewables (as those old reactors are definitely not fit to adapt to fluctuations well) and would also have bound a lot of money then missing for renewables and infra-structure (why upgrade the grid to better renewable fluctuations when the reactors can't anyway).
So they actually start right now and massively so to build up renewables and the matching infra-structure. Unlike countries with alleged nuclear plans, that all still plan to start building soon™ and in most cases not even close to the actual required numbers for the projected demand in two decades+. Because completely decarbonising transport, industry and heating means a massive increase in electricity demand as we basically shift all primary energy demand over to electricity. Yes, in some cases electrity will be more efficient and will save some energy. But we are still talking about all primary energy, with electricity today often only making up 20-25% of the primary energy demand in most countries today.
PS: But yes, if you want to build nuclear. Start today. But do it on a scale that you will be actually able to cover the minimal required base load of your projected electricity demand in 2050+... Fun fact: No country actually does. They all just pretend and actually sit the problem out for someone else by loudly planning nuclear but not in amounts that make sense mathematically. France is basically the only country with a somewhat reasonable plan. When they scrap the "8 optional reactors" bullshit and build the bull set of 14. That's their required baseload. And they will need to keep their aging fleet functional until the majority of them are build. They will also not be trivial.
The targets got missed by construction (some small part) and transport (mainly)... and again like clockwork the brain-washed nuclear brigade storms in lying about electricity production.
Add comment