140
Solar energy now overlaps in cost with nuclear fuel alone for "cheap" modular reactors
(energy-utilities.com)
this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2023
140 points (94.3% liked)
Green Energy
2110 readers
103 users here now
everything about energy production
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Cool. Sane people can keep building renewables with the tiny margins of funding on the edges, and you can wrest the $7tn/yr of unfunded externalities from the fossil fuel industry. Once you do that we can spend half on nuclear.
I'm very much pro renewables, but without nuclear, ditching fossil fuels for good is a pipe dream. (Look at Germany.) At least until we have proper storage solutions or fusion is viable.
This is more empty rhetoric. What are we even supposed to see when looking at germany? A country whose renewable rollout was sabotaged by a government literally working for gazprom, but is still reducing emissions every year?
If you look at Germany, you see a country which has one of the highest CO2 emission per capita in Europe. Completely agree on the Russian corruption that helped closing the nuclear power plants and slowed down deployment of renewable. In the meantime they're literally scraping the ground and razing towns to get more lignite to compensate for the closure of their plants. On a totally unrelated note, they're also buying large amount of nuclear sourced electricity from France. Their carbon intensity even increased two years in a row. (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1290224/carbon-intensity-power-sector-germany/)
On a totally unrelated note, Germany is net exporting electricity to France every year for decades. This is including this year. The other commentor actually posted a link showing that.
Then I have to ask which towns have been destroyed in Germany for lignite in the last couple years. I know of some villages, but towns are much larger then that.
That's just playing on words mate, villages or towns it doesn't matter, they expropriated people to gnaw at the ground to power their shitty power grid. You can see the mines from space. They release three times as much co2 as France per GW/H (https://energycentral.com/c/um/two-unequal-energy-systems-france-and-germany-comparison). They also tried to block the recognition of nuclear as a green energy in Europe, all the while trying to push that label for natural gas. That's fucking bonkers given the state of the world right now. This debate highlights my point in my first comment. We're arguing about nuclear be renewables, instead of nuclear/renewables Vs fossil fuels.
Nope, that debate is necessary. If it is smarter to invest into nuclear then that has to happen, otherwise we need to invest into renewables. Obviously you have to make a systems comparison and well France does do a better job then Germany in that case right now. It is going to be intressting to see what will happen in the coming years as Germany actually starts to run into the storage problem renewbles pose and what ends up being actually cheaper.
The green energy label for gas power plants can only be given in the EU, if they are converted to an emissions free gas by 2035. Basicly the idea is to use hydrogen in the massive gas storage sites, to solve the problem of prolonged periods of no wind and sunshine in winter. It is not quite as bonkers, but lets see what actually happens in the coming years.
Greens and german people in 2000s: Let's build renewables and then shut down the nuclear fleet because it's cheaper than the maintenance we'd have to start now.
Literal Gazprom employee and "Close friend of Putin" together: Let's cancel that and buy gas instead, and also shut down the nuclear plants early.
Emissions: Go down almost monotonically.
Coal use: Goes down almost monotonically.
Russia shills, oil shills and nukebros: How could the greens make emissions go up with their renewables! Better cancel renewables like the Gazprom employee tried to do!
And here's your "large amount" of between 0.5 and 3%
You sound comically stupid.
Your chart shows that Germany has exported more electricity to France, then it imported from France and that for the last decade and icnluding this year. Obviously not large amounts just 0.5 - 3%.
Welp. That's what I get for assuming it wasn't the opposite of the truth.
Do you know of a way to get the week/month/yearly gross imports/exports by country?
This is interesting to play with: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map
Your reply highlights the point from my first comment. We're arguing over nuclear Vs renewables instead of trying to have them work hand in hand against fossil fuels. I never talked about cancelling and ripping out renewables for nuclear, juste building them side by side and using as much renewables as possible and falling back to nuclear when necessary.
You're presupposing the "necessary" part without evidence when there's not even a credible case for "helpful" or even "possible".
You're also pretending any reactor under construction or pre-construction doesn't get used to delay other projects. Just the grid capacity it takes up without using it is a massive emissions source becauseit delays prpjects that could go on this year rather tham 2040.
You're also repeatedly making false anti-renewable arguments which are part of a fossil fuel propaganda campaign. So it's very obvious you're lying about the side by side part.
I note also you have abandoned your lie completely rather than acknowledging it after it was dismantled and moved to a new piece of bullshit, weird how that keeps happening.
Juste for my culture, point me out which argument I've made that are anti renewables
The gish gallop about how terrible energywende was for one.
The tired lie about how geographically constrained pumped hydro is (but apparently fresh water for cooling is infinite).
The whole stationary storage is impossible schtick (along witb all the other options, battery grid storage is already at double the scale new nuclear achieved in the 80s).
There's also the bit where you pretend french uranium all comes from ranger and cigar lake (and milling and conversion are done by the UF6 fairy) rather than filthy coal and diesel powered low grade mines in niger and central asia to smugly quote inaccurate CO2 numbers as if that made a plan that was never followed invalid.
Basically just an unending hose of shellenberger bullshit.
Please keep it constructive (see instance rules). I agree that these are all tired and long dis-proven talking points of the nuclear lobby, but this lobby was very successful in gaslighting many French like @BestBouclettes@jlai.lu and your style of argumentation is just going to make them defensive.
You have a point I guess. I find it difficult to consider the possibility of good faith when they roll out the "the greens ruined energywende and committed to gas" dogwhistle, but there is a possibility.
The transition for Germany is catastrophic (expected end of coal by 2038) but that doesn't mean renewables are bad. Maybe I'm not aware of new ways to retain water high enough for it to generate energy falling down. By experience I know Luxembourg has one high on a hill, I don't think it would be doable in a country like the Netherlands let's say, it sounds pretty constrained to me.
I'm just done arguing with you, you're just being dishonest and extrapolating my views. Let's agree to disagree.
Cool story. Yet it’s coal plants and gas plants are going up everywhere in first world countries for baseline supply. That’s another 2 decades of fossil fuels.
Or we can just not pay them and let them go bankrupt by putting solar and batteries directly on loads instead..
Hahaha