Well, before it was totally unimportant but now that a British Newspaper (i.e. from the nation in Europe with the most “opinion forming” - aka propagandistic - press) published an article were a “young danish climate activist” said it, it’s suddenly important. /s
Mind you, I’m not attacking nuclear or saying that it shouldn’t be part of the future energy mix in Europe, I’m just a little fed up with the overuse of this kind of theatrical spin in opinion articles by newspapers which are very open about their objective being to “form opinion”.
I actually think this relentless use of the slease-sale rather than actual well argumented logical analyses that looks at pros & cons plus risks & opportunities is actually damaging the cause of nuclear, or in fact any cause these types take up, as the slease-sale is often associated with them having some kind profit interest for somebody: The Guardian is a center-right neoliberal mouthpiece that only seems “left” in the UK context because British politics has an overtoon window moved so far to the right that the government is very openly ultra-nationalist and anti-immigrant, and almost all of The Guardian’s writers and editors hail from the British Middle-Class.
The UK has quite the history of doing the wrong kind of nuclear power plants with massive delays and cost overruns, and those white elefant projects are always outsourced to the private, so demands for nuclear from British high-middle-class “opinion makers” as sadly manipulative “selling the book” and hypocrisy is pretty standard in the upper classes over there.
What The Guardian is, is a neoliberal mouthpiece which mostly reflects the viewpoint of a certain english high-middle class who grew up in priviledge, went to expensive private schools (curiously called “public schools” in the UK) and who are amongst the “winners” of the last 4 decades of Neoliberalism and who, of course, care mostly that the gravy train keeps chugging along.
Absolutelly, they’re as worried about global warming as all other highly educated types in the West (which in most other countries include way more people from working class origins than in the UK), it’s just that they’re even more worried about the performance of their investments (being amongst the top 10% wealthwise in Britain), keeping their priviledge and passing their priviledge on to their children, which is why for example they’re totally unable to suggest that something like building nuclear power stations is done by the public sector and will always defend massive private projects instead and do so with no analysis as if it’s self-evidently the only reasonable option.
You’re not going to get unbiased hard-nosed analysis from these types and since the English upper classes - from where they hail - are culturally particularly hypocrite in European terms, you’re not even going to get straight talking honesty.
The arguments of Greenpeace against nuclear power have nothing to do with age though. It’s too expensive, which takes money away from e.g. wind and solar, with less carbon-free energy in the end for the money spent and more fossil fuels being used as a consequence. And still produces nuclear waste.
Just develop batteries, hydrogen and the likes for storage. And ban or tax the use of fossil fuels.
This debate is not over yet, not by a long shot, and climate will remain in the news as long as we live, I’m afraid.
Nuclear power isn’t expensive. It’s launching a cutting-edge industry with a lot of inertia and not giving it the time and means to pay for itself that’s expensive.
And don’t even get me started on the Levelized Cost of Energy. These studies give a big advantage to renewable energies, since they only take into account the cost of building, maintaining and dismantling a given energy plant.
That’s roughly 100% of the cost of a nuclear power plant, whereas most of the cost of solar and wind power will be found in the solutions that need to be put in place to compensate for their lack of controllability, such as redundant power plants, dams and other forms of storage of considerable size, which are therefore never counted in these cost estimates.
At present, we don’t even have the technical means to have enough storage to afford 100% wind + solar in a country, so we’re completely unable to estimate how much it would actually cost.
with less carbon-free energy in the end for the money spent and more fossil fuels being used as a consequence
The reality is exactly the opposite: France has been producing most of its electricity with nuclear power since the 70s and 80s, and has had its electricity almost entirely decarbonized since the 90s, for a total cost of less than 150 billion euros for the nuclear industry between 1960 and 2010, according to a report by the Cour des Comptes.
Germany, on the other hand, which has been anti-nuclear and pro-renewables for 20 years, with 40% RE, produces 9 times more carbon with its electricity mix.
New reactor designs, whose research projects have been opposed and working prototypes shut down by anti-nuclear campaigners, can reprocess and reuse this nuclear waste.
Just develop batteries, hydrogen and the likes for storage
You can see the contradiction here: how can we claim that renewable energies are cheaper when we have yet to develop solutions to make them work on a national scale?
We’re still a long way from having the technology for batteries that can power entire countries for hours or days on end, and hydrogen means we’ll have to oversize our power plants several times over to make up for its inefficiency.
Thanks to French nuclear power, we have proof that it is possible to produce safe, inexpensive nuclear power that can be deployed in two decades. Almost all of France’s current nuclear fleet was built between 1970 and 1990, providing 70%-80% of French electricity production for almost 40 years, at a rate of 2 reactors completed per year at a cost of 1 billion per 1000MW unit.
We’re still waiting for a working example of a country that runs on wind and solar power without huge hydroelectric capacity or nuclear power for backup.
Well, your view is not unbiased, perhaps it’s difficult to do here, given the limited amount of writing room. And in a discussion it seems to be obligatory to only mention the parts that are favourable to one’s personal outcome, somehow. But still. Even though you seem very convinced on the pros of nuclear, others still beg to differ. Like
this research shows. Money remains an important driver of the whole issue, and money being spent on nuclear cannot be spent again on wind turbines or batteries. Unbiased information is difficult to get online however, most websites on the matter have preconceived ideas that they present.
Nuclear waste also concerns medium and low level waste, which are a lesser problem, but still a problem in larger quantities. And high nuclear waste remain radioactive longer than homo sapiens has been around, so although the quantity is not a lot, its longevity makes up for it, so it remains quite a problem for which no final solution has been found.
As I wrote earlier: the debate is not over just yet, otherwise it would not be newsworthy every time again. Strong opinions on both sides do not make up for it, usually a strong opinion is not backed up by knowledge and facts alone, but also on feelings and emotions, otherwise it would not be a strong opinion. Which makes the discussion more difficult.
At present, we don’t even have the technical means to have enough storage to afford 100% wind + solar in a country,
I reject your premise.
I agree that we do not have the storage capacity to maintain the supply-shaping model we currently use.
However, we do have all the technological tools necessary to shift to demand-shaping as our primary model for matching supply and demand. Basically, we can move the times that we use most of our power to the times that power is easy to generate.
Basically, we can move the times that we use most of our power to the times that power is easy to generate.
How?
For example, the typical risk period for a power grid is during winter nights, when people come home and turn on the heat, cook and do their chores, or relax watching their TVs or playing videogames. How can we postpone such a power usage to another time?
How can we postpone such a power usage to another time?
We don’t.
The most efficient traditional generation comes when we can perfectly flatten out demand curve. When there is no variance, we can meet 100% of our demand with cheap, efficient, baseload generation. When we have some variance, we meet our minimum demand with baseload generators, and everything above that minimum is met with expensive peaker plants.
So, what we have done is provided extremely cheap power to heavy industry (steel production, aluminum smelting, etc) over night, when regular demand is low. This raises our minimum load, and lowers our maximum, but it increases night-time consumption. To meet that with solar requires storing power when it is produced, and releasing it overnight.
But the only reason why we need it overnight is because we drove them to those overnight hours. When we have them run during the day, we don’t need to store that power first.
We don’t have to shift all of our consumption to daytime hours. We have plenty of excess nuclear generation capacity available for residential needs after we shed those heavy, industrial loads.
The short answer is the fossil fuel industry and those who support it desperately want to encourage any kind of infighting among any and all people concerned with the climate; Greenpeace itself has been funded massively by the oil and coal industries throughout its lifetime specifically to oppose nuclear power. It’s news now because as we look towards energy generation over the next 50 years we can either have large amounts of LNG and coal power plants while we pretend there’s enough Lithium on Earth to support a renewable-based grid, or we can essentially eliminate 100% of natural gas, coal, and oil-based power plants in the next 15 years and work towards renewable grids with post-lithium power storage over the next 150 years.
That latter scenario would nearly eliminate the global coal and natural gas industries, and severely harm the oil industry. So the more ‘division’ they can sow to delay a decision in either direction, the better it is for them.
People have been telling them this for a long time. Why is this news now?
Well, before it was totally unimportant but now that a British Newspaper (i.e. from the nation in Europe with the most “opinion forming” - aka propagandistic - press) published an article were a “young danish climate activist” said it, it’s suddenly important. /s
Mind you, I’m not attacking nuclear or saying that it shouldn’t be part of the future energy mix in Europe, I’m just a little fed up with the overuse of this kind of theatrical spin in opinion articles by newspapers which are very open about their objective being to “form opinion”.
I actually think this relentless use of the slease-sale rather than actual well argumented logical analyses that looks at pros & cons plus risks & opportunities is actually damaging the cause of nuclear, or in fact any cause these types take up, as the slease-sale is often associated with them having some kind profit interest for somebody: The Guardian is a center-right neoliberal mouthpiece that only seems “left” in the UK context because British politics has an overtoon window moved so far to the right that the government is very openly ultra-nationalist and anti-immigrant, and almost all of The Guardian’s writers and editors hail from the British Middle-Class.
The UK has quite the history of doing the wrong kind of nuclear power plants with massive delays and cost overruns, and those white elefant projects are always outsourced to the private, so demands for nuclear from British high-middle-class “opinion makers” as sadly manipulative “selling the book” and hypocrisy is pretty standard in the upper classes over there.
The guardian isnt populist
That is correct.
What The Guardian is, is a neoliberal mouthpiece which mostly reflects the viewpoint of a certain english high-middle class who grew up in priviledge, went to expensive private schools (curiously called “public schools” in the UK) and who are amongst the “winners” of the last 4 decades of Neoliberalism and who, of course, care mostly that the gravy train keeps chugging along.
Absolutelly, they’re as worried about global warming as all other highly educated types in the West (which in most other countries include way more people from working class origins than in the UK), it’s just that they’re even more worried about the performance of their investments (being amongst the top 10% wealthwise in Britain), keeping their priviledge and passing their priviledge on to their children, which is why for example they’re totally unable to suggest that something like building nuclear power stations is done by the public sector and will always defend massive private projects instead and do so with no analysis as if it’s self-evidently the only reasonable option.
You’re not going to get unbiased hard-nosed analysis from these types and since the English upper classes - from where they hail - are culturally particularly hypocrite in European terms, you’re not even going to get straight talking honesty.
Media just seems random sometimes…
I don’t disagree.
The arguments of Greenpeace against nuclear power have nothing to do with age though. It’s too expensive, which takes money away from e.g. wind and solar, with less carbon-free energy in the end for the money spent and more fossil fuels being used as a consequence. And still produces nuclear waste. Just develop batteries, hydrogen and the likes for storage. And ban or tax the use of fossil fuels. This debate is not over yet, not by a long shot, and climate will remain in the news as long as we live, I’m afraid.
Nuclear power isn’t expensive. It’s launching a cutting-edge industry with a lot of inertia and not giving it the time and means to pay for itself that’s expensive.
And don’t even get me started on the Levelized Cost of Energy. These studies give a big advantage to renewable energies, since they only take into account the cost of building, maintaining and dismantling a given energy plant.
That’s roughly 100% of the cost of a nuclear power plant, whereas most of the cost of solar and wind power will be found in the solutions that need to be put in place to compensate for their lack of controllability, such as redundant power plants, dams and other forms of storage of considerable size, which are therefore never counted in these cost estimates.
At present, we don’t even have the technical means to have enough storage to afford 100% wind + solar in a country, so we’re completely unable to estimate how much it would actually cost.
The reality is exactly the opposite: France has been producing most of its electricity with nuclear power since the 70s and 80s, and has had its electricity almost entirely decarbonized since the 90s, for a total cost of less than 150 billion euros for the nuclear industry between 1960 and 2010, according to a report by the Cour des Comptes.
Germany, on the other hand, which has been anti-nuclear and pro-renewables for 20 years, with 40% RE, produces 9 times more carbon with its electricity mix.
The entirety of high level radioactivity waste produced by France for 60 years (containing 90%+ of the radioactivity).
You can see the contradiction here: how can we claim that renewable energies are cheaper when we have yet to develop solutions to make them work on a national scale?
We’re still a long way from having the technology for batteries that can power entire countries for hours or days on end, and hydrogen means we’ll have to oversize our power plants several times over to make up for its inefficiency.
Thanks to French nuclear power, we have proof that it is possible to produce safe, inexpensive nuclear power that can be deployed in two decades. Almost all of France’s current nuclear fleet was built between 1970 and 1990, providing 70%-80% of French electricity production for almost 40 years, at a rate of 2 reactors completed per year at a cost of 1 billion per 1000MW unit.
We’re still waiting for a working example of a country that runs on wind and solar power without huge hydroelectric capacity or nuclear power for backup.
Why the fuck would they put all their nuclear waste in a cube and leave it by the sea in Marseille. Those french morons.
A bad mouth could argue that it wouldn’t make Marseille dirtier
Well, your view is not unbiased, perhaps it’s difficult to do here, given the limited amount of writing room. And in a discussion it seems to be obligatory to only mention the parts that are favourable to one’s personal outcome, somehow. But still. Even though you seem very convinced on the pros of nuclear, others still beg to differ. Like this research shows. Money remains an important driver of the whole issue, and money being spent on nuclear cannot be spent again on wind turbines or batteries. Unbiased information is difficult to get online however, most websites on the matter have preconceived ideas that they present. Nuclear waste also concerns medium and low level waste, which are a lesser problem, but still a problem in larger quantities. And high nuclear waste remain radioactive longer than homo sapiens has been around, so although the quantity is not a lot, its longevity makes up for it, so it remains quite a problem for which no final solution has been found. As I wrote earlier: the debate is not over just yet, otherwise it would not be newsworthy every time again. Strong opinions on both sides do not make up for it, usually a strong opinion is not backed up by knowledge and facts alone, but also on feelings and emotions, otherwise it would not be a strong opinion. Which makes the discussion more difficult.
I reject your premise.
I agree that we do not have the storage capacity to maintain the supply-shaping model we currently use.
However, we do have all the technological tools necessary to shift to demand-shaping as our primary model for matching supply and demand. Basically, we can move the times that we use most of our power to the times that power is easy to generate.
How?
For example, the typical risk period for a power grid is during winter nights, when people come home and turn on the heat, cook and do their chores, or relax watching their TVs or playing videogames. How can we postpone such a power usage to another time?
We don’t.
The most efficient traditional generation comes when we can perfectly flatten out demand curve. When there is no variance, we can meet 100% of our demand with cheap, efficient, baseload generation. When we have some variance, we meet our minimum demand with baseload generators, and everything above that minimum is met with expensive peaker plants.
So, what we have done is provided extremely cheap power to heavy industry (steel production, aluminum smelting, etc) over night, when regular demand is low. This raises our minimum load, and lowers our maximum, but it increases night-time consumption. To meet that with solar requires storing power when it is produced, and releasing it overnight.
But the only reason why we need it overnight is because we drove them to those overnight hours. When we have them run during the day, we don’t need to store that power first.
We don’t have to shift all of our consumption to daytime hours. We have plenty of excess nuclear generation capacity available for residential needs after we shed those heavy, industrial loads.
None of that explains why this is newsworthy.
The short answer is the fossil fuel industry and those who support it desperately want to encourage any kind of infighting among any and all people concerned with the climate; Greenpeace itself has been funded massively by the oil and coal industries throughout its lifetime specifically to oppose nuclear power. It’s news now because as we look towards energy generation over the next 50 years we can either have large amounts of LNG and coal power plants while we pretend there’s enough Lithium on Earth to support a renewable-based grid, or we can essentially eliminate 100% of natural gas, coal, and oil-based power plants in the next 15 years and work towards renewable grids with post-lithium power storage over the next 150 years. That latter scenario would nearly eliminate the global coal and natural gas industries, and severely harm the oil industry. So the more ‘division’ they can sow to delay a decision in either direction, the better it is for them.
Do you have a source for that? I don’t think you’re lying, but I would like to see evidence that supports that statement.
You know, “trust but verify”.