https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2023/08/05/current-climate-a-new-nuclear-reactor-goes-online-in-georgia/?sh=699ab1691c4d
This week’s Current Climate, which every Saturday brings you the latest news about the business of sustainability.
When do we get the next one?
When do we get the next one.
Well, going off the article:
and a fourth is expected to begin operations in 2024
holy shit people stop fucking talking when you dont grasp a concept, nuclear energy is genuinely the most green energy there is by a longshot when all factors are considered.
I wonder how many emissions could we have avoided if that money was spent on renewables + batteries while we were waiting for this powerplant to come online
Renewables + batteries? You wouldn't have saved any emissions. Construction of a nuclear plant doesn't require as much carbon emissions as you think. And regardless, nuclear isn't competing with renewables, anyway, it's for replacing carbon-emitting power plants. Nuclear and renewables need to work hand-in-hand if we want to actually reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions.
Money is finite, and every decision creates an opportunity cost. In that sense, every energy generation technology competes with one another.
Sure, but we don't talk about solar vs wind power, do we? They all have their place. It's the same thing here. Renewables and nuclear each have a place in a zero carbon grid.
Renewables and batteries are great tools, we need to be building these out. Nuclear can best complement renewables with a stable, emission free, base load capacity. Nuclear has its own challenges, but renewables can not replace enormous load that's currently carried by coal and gas in the near or extended term.
They're not mutually exclusive. A society serious about eliminating fossil fuel use needs both.
Renewables aren't consistent enough alone, so they need a big consistent buddy to help them out. It could be coal or gas, but we'd much rather have nuclear.
The nuclear we built in the 50s is. The technology has come a long way since then, we just haven't built any.
It's much more reliable and consistent at generating power. It's not dependent on the sun shining or wind blowing, so you can get the full capacity of generation at all times, making it a better investment for a government trying to support large populations. It also takes up way less land to set up and run.
Though of course, it doesn't have to be one or the other. Solar and wind can supplement nuclear really well.
You can read more about it here: https://changeoracle.com/2022/07/20/nuclear-power-versus-renewable-energy/amp/
Your last point is the most important one in my opinion. OP implied we have to chose between nuclear and solar/wind but it's plain false.
And anyone who tells you otherwise probably has a profit incentive rather than an environmentalist one.
It is also the first Gen III+ reactor in North America. Usually new technology has some growing pains.
I think most NPPs run billions and at least a decade over budget at this point.
I suppose it's easier to sell the population on a smaller cost to the taxpayer, and then pay more anyway.
It was sold as being modular, with lots of fabrication happening off site. That didn't come to fruition. It was also not too far removed from nukegate in South Carolina.
@Claidheamh @ndsvw
It depends on the renewables. Wind and photovoltaics have stability issues. Hydro and geothermal are more stable. Nuclear is compact and high power but has huge waste disposal issues.
The waste disposal is a solvable issue, that is still less nefarious than fossil fuel emissions. If you set the goal to replace ALL fossil fuel power generation, then nuclear is a necessary component of a renewable energy based grid. Geothermal and hydro are great and necessary, but can't provide a reliable base load for the entire grid. Nuclear plants are complemental to renewables, not competition.
The story "there will be a solution for the waste" is actually pretty old. And there is none yet that solves this globally.
There are interesting documentations about this topic. Basically, you need to plan 1000s of years into the future. I'm not sure whether there is even one plan that worked for 1k years... I mean... Hitler tried it... He called it "1000-jähriges Reich".. It lasted a few years. Anyway....
How do you want to warn the humans that live here in 4k years about what is down there? They will speak a totally different language. Do you want to use signs? Where do you put them? You do you make sure, they last 1000s of years? It's actually not that easy.
In Germany, they tried to find an "Endlager" (a final storage place) for it, but all options have been classified as not good enough at a later point. Additionally, the people here go on the streets when you tell them that you store that stuff in their village or city.
You don't need to plan "1000's of years into the future." Why does Nuclear require a multi-generational plan on a scale that no civilization has ever attained, but burning fossil fuels which will kill most of us within a few generations doesn't? It's a distraction, the solution to nuclear waste was solved in the 50's and the reality is that dangerous nuclear waste is useful and should be recycled, and the low-order nuclear waste isn't dangerous for anymore then a century at most, and even then it's only if you consume it.
The waste disposal is a solvable issue
Strangely enough it hasn't been solved in the almost 70 years of nuclear energy. And I doubt it will be solved in the next 70 years either.
I think that depends on the definition of "solved".
In Finland, the Onkalo repository is being steadily built out (honestly, there might already be waste stored there, I haven't checked in on that story in a while. I know there was some delay due to COVID).
In the United States, there's been a lot of the usual politicking about where to build something that doesn't exactly sound appealing to have in one's backyard. Nobody wants to be the senator who allowed the government to build a nuclear waste site in their state, no matter how safe the site actually is.
This has led to the unfortunate situation where by law, the EPA is only allowed to consider a site in Nevada (because the other sites were in states represented by the Speaker of the House and President pro Tempore of the Senate), but because Nevada became an important state for Obama to become president, the site couldn't/wouldn't actually be built there and has been on hold pretty much ever since. My armchair understanding is that the Nevada site is probably one of the better places in the United States that you could store nuclear waste, but politics has ensured it will not be put there for a long, long time.
What do you prefer? A power plant where all the hazardous material it generates you throw out into the atmosphere, or one where you can capture all of it into a container and prevent it from going out into the environment?
Neither. I don't buy the assumption that they are necessary. Renewables plus storage are very well capable of reliable supply.
Edit: https://www.diw.de/de/diw_01.c.821878.de/publikationen/wochenberichte/2021_29_1/100_prozent_erneuerbare_energien_fuer_deutschland__koordinierte_ausbauplanung_notwendig.html (in German, published by the German Institute for Economic Research, an institution as unsuspicious of being "too green" as it gets)
Renewables plus storage are very well capable of reliable supply.
Don't get me wrong, they are capable of a much larger percentage of supply than they currently provide, but to handle the predictable periods of peak demand on the grid, it would be incredibly inefficient to rely only on renewables plus storage. It's not the most environmentally friendly solution for that.
Do you have an english translation for the link in the edit btw?
an institution as unsuspicious of being “too green” as it gets
Being too green is not the problem. The problem is not being green enough...
@Claidheamh
Nuclear is also very expensive. Bioenergy is the one I missed. That is far cheaper than nuclear and could be scaled up easily. I'm sure there will be a need for both the existing nuclear and indeed some fossil fuels for a while yet. But I think we should focus on getting our renewable energy resources in place in advance of building any new nuclear plants.
It may be expensive to build, but it's much cheaper to run. Just compare France's and Germany's energy prices.
Bioenergy is just more emissions we really can't afford to put into the atmosphere. It's basically just a fancy name for "burning wood".
@Claidheamh straw too. Biofuels are in fact carbon neutral. But yes release CO2. Nuclear also produces CO2 mainly due to the mining, processing and transportation of the fuel. But far less than say coal or gas. The reality is that some new reactors are going to be built. But I believe the money would have been better invested in onshore wind.
Biofuels are in fact carbon neutral.
That's what their marketing would like you to believe. But they're only carbon neutral if you take into account the carbon being sequestered by the growth of plants before they're burned. By that measure they're just as carbon neutral as coal.
Nuclear also produces CO2 mainly due to the mining, processing and transportation of the fuel.
That's not nuclear that produces CO2, that's mining, processing, and transportation. It's transversal to anything you build, be it nuclear, bioenergy, wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, anything. In the ideal conditions of your power being entirely carbon-free, then so is all of that.
I don't support any continued burning it fossil fuels. That's what every previous generation said and look at the thermometer.
In that case you should be in favor of nuclear, as it's the only real replacement we have for fossil fuels, no matter what Shell and BP will try to tell us.
I'm from Portugal, but a web search found this https://www.georgiapower.com/company/about-us/facts-and-financials.html which shows 63% of the grid there is fossil fuels.
But it does not answer the question. The question would be: Where does the baseline have to be? Yes, they have lots of fossil fuels, but you could still replace that with reneawables as long as you have enough electricity left at night when there is no wind. Additionally, it could matter whether you and your geographical neighbours share a power grid and support each other, etc...
but you could still replace that with reneawables as long as you have enough electricity left at night when there is no wind.
That would require storing all that energy, which isn't feasible right now and realistically not anytime soon unless we get some kind of battery breakthrough (Still waiting on those solid-state and graphene batteries)
I wonder why we haven't been looking into mechanical flywheels more ofr the energy storage. They're far less energy dense sure but their service life blow batteries out of the water long term and when you're building static grid scale storage space isn't really a concern.
We have those, that's pretty much how big energy plants work (Coal, gas and fusion all use that I think), it's not exactly a flywheel, but a large turbine which can keep spinning for some time. I think a full on flywheel would have to be absolutely massive to produce enough energy to be meaningful, which is probably just not worth it
Renewables should complement nuclear. "And" not "or"
The thing is we've gotten so good at burning coal that the base load cannot realistically be carried by renewables and transmitted to where the load is. Nuclear, with it's challenges, is the only technology that can fill the power vacuum left by base load coal and gas generation stations.
Complaining about down votes is some small dick reddit energy, don't do that in the future. We are on Lemmy now.
Now to answer your question. "Renewables*" are supplementary. Wind/Solar cannot provide baseline power, and will never be able to provide baseline power for the grid. Any kind of magical energy storage you can come up with that would allow renewables to replace a power plant also requires exotic/expensive tech that would be more expensive then Nuclear power and still doesn't address baseline power consumption. This kind of question is also used as a distraction by the fossil fuel industry so that you have countries like Germany replacing nuclear power with coal and strip mining.
Why are they building coal in the first place? Because "renewables" do not produce enough base-line power. If Germany could use magically renewable energy to meet all of their energy demands, they would probably do it, but that isn't the reality. In the future try to avoid framing solar/wind as competitors to nuclear power. Both are needed, and unlike nuclear power which hasn't been built on any scale since the 70's, solar/wind are absolutely used everywhere they can be and if they aren't sufficient in cases like Georgia, Nuclear should 100% be the answer because if it's not used you will have coal or gas instead. "Just asking questions" like that shows you don't understand power-generation and you have fallen for the fossil fuel industries propaganda.
Excellent rundown. The baseline power supplier for when there's no wind or sun can either be natural gas or nuclear, and nuclear produces far less harmful byproducts.
I think it's more likely that you come of as disingenuous given that you come here to parrot some very well known talking points that are plain fallacies aimed at painting nuclear in a negative way.
Meanwhile, we are getting slow cooked and a lot of people here probably feel the impact of the heat and the urgency of the situation.
Ok, but why not just answering my original comment with "I researched and found out: They build more nuclear, because they stated that they need a baseline X% reliable energy that is always there and so far, they only have Y% nuclear. Oh, and they have also increased solar at lot recently." instead of disliking the hell out of it?
It would be benefitial for everyone and I'd give it an instant upvote.
It's a fact that nuclear power is more expensive than solar and wind. Especially when we talk about insurance of catastrophes. So I think, my question is not that crazy and should be allowed.
BTW: I did not dislike your comment.
PS: Sometimes, I ask myself the question "What, if everyone would do XYZ?"... What, if everyone would dislike every other opinion? Be honest: This platform would be toxic AF. I gave probably 1k likes and under 10 dislikes on lemmy so far and I keep going the way of positivity, because I think, in the end, it's better for Lemmy.