Every time there's a thread on the topic, I like to share this fantastic realtime map of the carbon intensity of electricity production in various countries :
As I write this, the UK's intensity is 326 gCO₂eq/kWh, which is nothing to write home about.
This is better than the worst European offender (coal-loving Poland : 652g) as well as Baltic countries, the Netherlands and Germany (373).
But it's far from the best in class : Nordic countries (around 20-30, thanks to hydro) or for a more comparable country, France (around 60, thanks to nuclear)
Germany is interesting because it consistently has one of the worst carbon intensity figures of all developed countries, in spite of a record-setting share of renewables that its green activists like to boast about, and hundreds of billions of € in subsidies poured into them in the past 20 years.
That's of course the consequence of its decision to phase out nuclear power in the early 2000s. Wind/solar are intermittent and there's no way around that (battery storage isn't nearly mature enough).
That leaves 4 options for handling the base load : nuclear, hydro, gas or coal. Only 2 of those are low-carbon. And if you don't have the geography for hydro (like the Nordics do) but still decide to go nuclear-free for political reasons, guess what you're left with ?
IIRC, German coal power plants have 7 spots in the top 10 worst air pollution emitters across the EU. Coal-related air pollution causes an estimated 10.000 extra deaths each year across the continent. Radiation caused one direct death in Fukushima. Thanks, Die Grüne.
>As I write this, the UK's intensity is 326 gCO₂eq/kWh, which is nothing to write home about.
Yeah, that's true, but you've taken a reading there at the worst time of day whilst it's not windy here. The other week we achieved the second lowest carbon intensity daily average ever (the lowest was in the summer last year).
Also, I don't believe that (whilst I love their visualisation) the Electricity Map UK gCO2/kWh measurement is very accurate. For starters, they don't appear to separate out different types of gas plants. The CO2 intensity of OCGT is 3x that of CCGT.
Electricity Map is using 490 gCO2/kWh for UK gas, which is pretty much exclusively CCGT. This does seem high. The US average [1] seems to be around 418 gCO2/kWh whereas electricityinfo.org [2] seems to be using 394 gCO2/kWh and so gets a rather different value for current UK carbon intensity.
> For starters, they don't appear to separate out different types of gas plants. The CO2 intensity of OCGT is 3x that of CCGT.
What makes you believe that? They list CCGT and OCGT separately, it's just that (unless every site I've seen about UK energy is wrong) there isn't a lot of OCGT generation in the UK because it's uncompetitive. Which would be for the same reason it increases CO2 intensity - it's inefficient to run. In the UK market it doesn't make up for that enough by being cheap to build and fast to spin up so as to create an incentive to build a lot more.
Not that I have any stake in the accuracy of electricitymap's statistics, but I don't think there's any point seperating out OCGT from CCGT generation. OCGT makes up a negligible share of realised generation (and indeed, even generation capacity is rather limited). The few plants that are still in operation need very specific market conditions to make their operation worthwhile, especially considering that 3x CO2 output means 3X fuel input, and 3x fuel costs. It's better to think of them as grid-stability mechanisms, like diesel generators, or the industrial load-shedding schemes.
I don't know how any German in their right mind can continue supporting coal (especially lignite) even if you were to ignore all the fancy carbon emission calculations. Lignite is won using strip-mining here, and by here I mean in the most populous state of Germany between the major Ruhr area and Düsseldorf/Cologne, all major population centers. From where I live, I have to drive straight through these mines whenever I want to go to either city, and the experience is surreal. There's a brand new three-lane highway and then open pits, hundreds of meters deep, for miles and miles in either direction, nothing else. It defies the imagination: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheinisches_Braunkohlerevier#/...
If these anti-nuclear activists live in coal-burning countries, and they protest nuclear power until it shuts down, and they do not protest coal power until it shuts down, then for all practical purposes, they are supporting coal.
All renewables except hydro (which Germany doesn't have the geography for) are intermittent.
It's impossible to go 100% renewables unless there's a breakthrough in battery storage.
By the time that happens, it will be too late for climate change. That's why phasing out nuclear without having any other solid low carbon plan was irresponsible.
Biogas is a renewable. And contributes 5% to Germanys energy load, at baseload capability, still being made more and more flexible. You may not like it but it is definitely there. Hydro by the way also destroys vast stretches of land and creates rivers that are poor in aquatic life. Nuclear plants also heat up local water ways. In Heidelberg, we had the local river Neckar freeze for the first time in 40 years after the nuclear plant upstream shut down.
At this point, nobody that is serious is talking about 100% renewables. As is 100% nuclear which has similar problems of being inflexible. However, not all of this has to be battery storage, having a power full, europe-wide grid is equally important. Without that already now when they are still allowed, nuclear plants have shut down at times voluntarily because there was no demand. Phasing out nuclear may not have been the smartest of all moves, but its still far from the top ten of most stupid moves done in the german energy strategy. And especially not in the top ten of the most stupid moves of the conservative party.
It's a common canard to say that batteries are the only storage technology that could be used.
Long term storage is better handled with hydrogen. Using batteries and hydrogen at plausible (or even conservative) costs, one can get to a 100% renewable (PV + wind) grid more cheaply than one also using new nuclear power plants.
Most do, they want to replace them with nothing, e.g. reduce electricity usage. And that may be a hard thing to swallow, but reducing energy usage is the only realistic pathway towards a <2deg world goal.
Perhaps you didn't mean it in a literal sense, however you and I have a very different opinion on the term realistic.
I believe a deus ex machina type carbon capture solution is a far more likely scenario than getting industrialised nations, let alone emerging ones, to actually reduce their energy usage.
Good point, I meant "realistic" as the only technologically plausible scenario. Is it realistic from a human point of view, I don't know.
I see what you mean, but even if a magical carbon capture solution was invented, it would take several decades for it to be implemented on a sufficient scale - given that the current emissions don't increase even faster!! I can't consider it as part of any "likely" scenario.
Also, emerging nations don't really need policies to reduce their own energy usage, as long as most of their own energy usage is linked to the production chain of industrialized nations, it will decrease by itself.
That's not the only technologically plausible scenario, we can use nuclear now. It's also way more realistic from a human point of view to have populations accept this rather than a drastic and sudden lifestyle change.
"using nuclear now" is part of the scenario. Any technology that has brought more efficient, less co2-intensive energy thus far has been used to increase the energy usage at a limited impact, instead of decreasing the impact. Only a policy focused on reducing (or at the very least, stopping the increase) energy usage can have positive final results.
À significant part of the population accepted a drastic and sudden lifestyle change over the last few months. Suddenly remote work and visio conferences are acceptable alternatives to driving 2tons of metal through 30km of asphalt 2x a day. Change is possible.
I think your second paragraph is misplaced. It's my belief that people "accepted a drastic and sudden lifestyle change over the last few months" precisely because it was advertised as a temporary measure.
We're already seeing large numbers of people reject the "stay at home" narrative , simply because they want to, rather than it being driven by improving conditions.
Using this as evidence to suggest that people will adjust to a "new normal" is arguing against your point.
I see what you mean, and I don't think it's gonna be easy either, I don't have false hopes.
Technically though, being locked down is more restrictive than forcing people to move in small electric cars or e-bikes. Just like remote work has jumped up in the lead few months, if proper measures are taken and enforced, demand for bike /rail infrastructures will increase immediately.
People can adapt. How many will resist to change, is the question.
Expecting industrialized countries to reduce energy usage immediately by double digits to reach the climate change goal is everything but a realistic pathway.
In practical terms that means years of Covid19-style lockdown.
We don't have time to wait for a breakthrough in battery storage or carbon recapture.
We have a solution now and it's nuclear power. It's a bit late for starting a nuclear programme now, but countries with current a nuclear power capacity (including Germany) should absolutely delay or cancel phasing it out until climate change is solved.
Well there is the hope than soon enough, that methane is made from atmospheric CO2, water and renewable energy. That would be pretty awesome as the infrastructure to store and move methane is already there.
I have this hope too, but it’s really energy intensive right now. I also have hope for renewable hydrogen, but we have a lot of research to do to reduce costs.
I love the way you say it so casually. In the grand scheme of things you are of course right, but I reckon converting a coal plant to gas is a non-trivial undertaking.
The article discusses the switch of a major plant in the UK to compressed wood pellets, sourced from the US. I would think that Germany (and most of Europe) would have a good climate for wood pellet production.
are they for real? Wood is so inefficient as fuel that shipping it over anything more than 500km (number taken out of my behind, but it is in the ballpark) takes more energy than is contained in it.
The only reason to do so is to end up with high value in "biofuels" category. Just for show.
Not wood, compressed wood pellets. Energy density seems to be between 50-80% of coal. And remember that fuel is only part of the total cost, especially if the formulas include health costs, pollution or carbon emissions.
It's an obscenity, defiling woods to make way for strip mining. I wonder once it's all played out whether they will backfill and let new woods grow again.
Ironically, Germans seem to have bought into the antinuclear frenzy that was sold to them by The Greens. Fukushima was massively overblown by the media and critical thinking went out the window during that time.
Now Germany imports nuclear from France, has the biggest investment in green energy with little to show for it, and is clammering onto their belief that nuclear is the bogeyman.
It doesn't seem as if many Germans saw further than their nose and fear when they voted against nuclear (and still continue to do so)
Minor nitpicks here - battery storage is already reaching deployment ready maturity (its not as far away as you think), but the key attribute that needs solving is not 'baseload' power, but rather 'dispatchabilty'.
Baseload power in the traditional sense (its always on) isn't always a great think either, what you really want is the ability to have it on, or off, or in between depending on the gap in demand that changes and needs to be filled. By this metric, combined cycle gas plants and hydro are the dispatchable options. While the French have figured out rampable/dispatchable nuclear - it is not the standard in reactor designs and the actual desired attribute here is the ability to dispatch energy on demand.
(also, another reason why German electricity emissions are so bad are those plants use lignite (brown coal) - the least efficient and most polluting form of generating electricity (lots of Poland is dependent on brown coal too).
Battery storage gas great dispatchability. It's scale that it lacks. It's estimated that a country needs 3 days worth of energy storage for solar and wind to work. The US would require 7 years worth of Global battery production: https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/14/global-lithium-ion-batt...
Not sure if I missed it but didn’t see anything in your source to back up this 7 years worth of battery production requirement for what the US needs in stationary storage. Without seeing how we got to the number, I’m skeptical. Things worth considering:
1) decommissioned battery packs from electric cars will eventually have 2nd lives on the grid
2) the manufacturing capacity of li-ion globally today is paltry compared what’s needed just in the batteries for mobility, let alone grid storage. Just like underestimations done for solar and wind, I expect current projections to be undershooting where we’ll end up
3) effective demand response (ramping up and down variable loads like commercial refrigeration, heating water, among others) based on renewable generation levels can effectively replace large chunks of battery storage requirements.
4) wind and solar generation profiles compliment each other - when it is usually sunny, it’s not too windy and when it’s colder (night, winter) wind generates more. Add in negative energy prices in periods of excess generation / curtailment - that is economic opportunity for energy storage to come in and capture value
5) li-ion batteries as they are today are effective for “peak shifting” applications of moving energy across a few hours, but not across weeks or even across seasons. Where it is applicable, pumped hydro and other tech can better fill those other spaces - but we can still make lots of progress prior to those ramping up.
6)Investing in broadening the connectedness of grids across states / countries / continents is another way to reduce generation variability with renewables as across, say North America - it may not be very windy in one state at a given moment but 1000mi away it could be either sunny or windy elsewhere. Smoothing the generation across geographies and types ( connecting hydro and nuclear to more grids) is another way to reduce the amount of energy storage required on a grid.
> Not sure if I missed it but didn’t see anything in your source to back up this 7 years worth of battery production requirement for what the US needs in stationary storage.
The source is a curve of projected battery production. You take the integral of the curve. The US consumes 4TWh of electricity per day. 3 days of storage is 12 TWh. The 3 day capacity estimate already includes solar and wind generation complementing each other. Wind can produce energy at night, but is more variable over the long term.
Decommissioned battery packs don't change global lithium ion battery production. We're currently producing 300GWh of battery capacity each year. Even if we stopped making electric vehicles and electronics and dedicated 100% of global battery production to grid storage we'd still have 40 years to reach 30TWh at current production capacity. Production capacity is projected to increase year over year so the overall time to reach this capacity would be less. But it's still nowhere remotely feasible, especially when you consider that we can't actually dedicate 100% of battery production capacity to grid storage.
This is even further compounded by the fact that batteries wear out after a few thousand cycles. There are theoretical ways to recycle batteries, but we'd need to recycle them in extremely large capacities.
The notion that battery storage is remotely feasible comes from the erroneous idea that technologies applicable to household use can scale up to heavy industry. This is not the case. This is why places like Germany and California hit a wall and have been unable to generate more than 50% of their energy from carbon free sources. It's no possible without highly scalable storage. And the only storage we have that's remotely scalable is geographically limited (hydro).
Apologies for not clearly stating that what I wanted to know was not how you did your math, but your source/the modelling behind the '3 days of storage' number which I didn't see in your source.
The points in my previous reply were all in questioning the need for everywhere to have '3 days of energy storage' in order for us to significantly decarbonize. While it might represent a theoretical metric based on the state of the world today, I am doubtful it includes the points I mentioned, particularly demand response and continent wide grids connected with HVDC transmission lines (both of which are under discussions in various parts of the world).
Additionally, the same principle applies with a server/service uptime reaching 100%. Realistically, we talk about 'how many 9s'. 99% uptime is much easier than 99.999%. Pushing the last 10% of fossil fuels off our grid will be hard, and the last 1% even harder, 0.1% etc as you start covering all the edge cases until we get to 100%. Probably will not get to 100% in our lifetimes. But I'd bet that we will get to 80% and maybe even 90% much faster than what status quo projects.
Using Germany and California as an example, where many of my points above do not apply (and they are still able to get to 50% renewable generation) I view as a good sign. Neither grid has a particularly large amount of installed storage, connectedness to other grids or integrated demand response either. Getting the world to even 80% renewables will require no-where near the '3 days of storage', particularly as other tech (like storing energy as heat in blocks when there is excess energy) becomes viable in this decade. Many parts of the world have less than single digit penetration of renewables today - we have lots of room to go.
Additionally, solar's cost is declining quickly (disclaimer & note: I am in the solar industry and see these cost declines continuing apace) and have seen first hand people starting to 'overbuild' their solar sites. Factor overbuilt solar, and that it has a unique property of 'predictability' (you KNOW for sure the sun will rise tomorrow, you don't know if it will be windy at all in the next 2 weeks). Given that even a very cloudy day can still generate a large fraction of the peak energy capacity - any excess can be curtailed until that capacity can find somewhere valuable to go as the grids and other energy storage tech beyond li-ion evolves.
Estimates vary. This study [1] calls for ~1,700 TWh of storage globally (and proposes that synthetic methane be used for that storage, but this requires a way of separating and storing carbon dioxide out of gas turbine exhaust which doesn't yet exist). This study [2] calls for 3 weeks energy usage to reach 100% renewable energy consumption. A compromise of only 80% renewables would only require 12 hours. But that still leaves 20% unaccounted for. And even this more modest figure is still massive compared to what batteries can deliver. My numbers above weren't correct. The US consumes 4,000 TWh of energy annually [3] which works out to 11 TWh daily not 4TWh. half of that would be 5.5TWh, which is still more than 18 times the current global lithium ion battery production.
Declining cost of solar does nothing if there's no way to store that energy. Daytime energy use is already saturated in many markets. This a big reason why German emissions have remained mostly flat for the last 5 years despite substantial increases to solar power.
Energy isn't just a matter of installing X watt-hours of capacity. It's about delivering energy when it's needed where it's needed. Heat engines are the only way we know how to do this reliably (hydro and geothermal too, but those lose out on the "where" part). That's why the only country that have successfully gotten their electricity generation to mostly non-carbon sources without geographically dependent sources is France. They use heat engines, but with a non-carbon source of heat (nuclear energy).
The rationale is to point out that the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl caused one fully attributable death (and an expected 50 excess deaths in 50 years), but coal plants cause 10,000 deaths per year (500,000 in 50 years) when they are working as designed.
Yet nuclear is labelled dangerous and unhealthy.
I have seen it alleged (I have yet to confirm) that the coal funded scare campaign about nuclear power in the 1960s was where tobacco learned its science-denying tactics used in the 1970s-1990s, which were later adopted by the climate change denial astroturfers.
Mining and transport of uranium ore, processed fuel and nuclear waste. I don’t know how significant those are.
My main concern with nuclear power is that they still haven’t managed to create any active long term storage of the nuclear waste. And before that, we don’t know the full actual cost of the energy.
> Mining and transport of uranium ore, processed fuel and nuclear waste. I don’t know how significant those are.
Completely and utterly insignificant, to the point where it is downright insulting when they are brought into a discussion about how 10000 people die of coal-related air quality problems every year in Europe.
> My main concern with nuclear power is that they still haven’t managed to create any active long term storage of the nuclear waste. And before that, we don’t know the full actual cost of the energy.
Do you have any sources for that? And no sensible person is advocating that we should continue burning coal as we have. So it is not nuclear vs coal, but nuclear vs renewables.
The Onkalo repository is still not active. It is projected to begin storing this year, I can't find any more exact status. And that is one site for the whole world. You have to agree that that is a rather meager result considering that they have been trying to find a solution for at least half a century.
Yes. You bury waste underground in an area with no groundwater. No geological event is going to bring a cask from 500 meters below ground to the surface, short of a meteor strike (which would make nuclear waste one of your smaller worries).
Where do you get the idea there’s no ground water at Onkalo? And no, no one is worried that the tubes one day by accident will float up to the surface one way or another.
Re: "underground isn't dry" (HN is rate limiting this thread)
Yes, it is. These story facilities are built in bedrock. You seem to be under the impression that these digs are in some random back yard. They're not. They're built in places with no groundwater and no geological activity. The only way this waste is getting out into the environment is through human intervention. I have indeed read through the waste storage plans. I suggest you do the same.
Yucca Mountain's cancellation is entirely due to political posturing, not feasibility.
There’s groundwater at Onkala [0]. So you are suggesting that there is a site in the US that will be used for burying
Nuclear waste that is dry and will be guaranteed to be dry for the next 10000 years? Why don’t you name it? I’m sure more people than I want to know.
Nowhere in your source does it predict that this trace amount of water will compromise the storage. This study doesn't even contain results, only describing the process used to measure potential water infiltration.
And for the second time, Yucca mountain is a cave dug out of bedrock. In a desert. It's abandonment was done by politicians, not by scientists raising concern over safety. We're not using it because there's so little nuclear waste to store.
The concern over waste storage is laughable in comparison to environmental damage done by fossil fuels, solar power, and hydroelectricity. We're concerned about uranium buried deep underground, miles away from any population center. Despite the fact that uranium is a naturally occurring resource that we dug from out of the ground in the first place.
Think of it this way: right now there are veins of uranium unknown to us. We're taking this uranium and putting it in a known location. In between we use it as a carbon free power source.
No, because that was a study of the water flow, which contradicted your idea about it being dry. There are countless other studies where they look at how for example how radioactivity affects corrosion etc.
It doesn't matter why Yucca was abandonned. It isn't active. If it is technical or political reason behind it. It doesn't matter because you still don't have anywhere to store the waste. If it is political or technical problem doesn't matter, because it is still not solved.
And about that desert, maybe you have heard about this thing climate change that sometimes they mention in the news? That might actually mean that in even a hundred years there isn't any desert there any more.
Arsenic occurs naturally in many places. Would you mind me burrying a few gallons of it in your backyard? You'll know where it is, so you don't have to worry about it.
> Arsenic occurs naturally in many places. Would you mind me burrying a few gallons of it in your backyard? You'll know where it is, so you don't have to worry about it.
In concrete casks, buried 500 meters deep in bedrock, sure.
That was me answering a question about dry storage casks. Dry storage casks are used above ground. Under ground it is rarely dry, so it’s not dry storage. All these things are easy to look up. I suggest you do.
And I don’t know what US proposed disposal site you have in mind, but you do know that Yucca Mountain was abandoned?
Basically we just bury it and hope for the best, it will be someone else's problem anyway.
> The Onkalo repository is expected to be large enough to accept canisters [...] until around 2120.[13] At this point, the final encapsulation and burial will take place, and the access tunnel will be backfilled and sealed.
We go from "dig it out" to "dig it in". Very sustainable. /s
> Basically we just bury it and hope for the best, it will be someone else's problem anyway.
It's rather more involved than that. The short version is that we find a place where the rock has remained undisturbed for more than a billion years, and bury them deep enough that they should remain undisturbed for the next billion years.
It doesn't need to last a billion years. Within 10-50 thousand years the uranium is no more radioactive that uranium that was never used in fuel. Sure, uranium is still a toxic heavy metal. But you do understand where this uranium came from before it was used as fuel?
Indeed.
For example, the 9TWh required to power France's high speed train fleet for a year produce 200kg of nuclear waste. Since the beginning of the country's nuclear programme, the total cumulative volume is 3650m3 of waste : one olympic swimming pool's worth of it.
What percentage of potential energy is extracted? My (old, probably out of date) understanding is that (at least in Canada) nuclear facilities limit themselves to extracting some tiny quantity of the potential energy in order to avoid producing material that could be made into nuclear weapons.
Normal nuclear reactors only extract single-digit percentages of the energy. You want to use breeder reactors to actually burn all the nuclear fuel. The "waste" still contains almost all of its energy. Breeder reactors are of course unpopular politically, because they create raw material for nuclear bombs as part of their normal operation.
The first is that they are more expensive than burner reactors. With uranium ore being cheap and plentiful, and with the energy cost of enrichment so low now (gas centrifuges using 50x less energy than gaseous diffusion), there's no economic case for reprocessing, let along breeding.
The other problem is that fast breeders are inherently dangerous, with the possibility of fast supercriticality lurking in a serious accident. Edward Teller famously pointed this out publicly in 1967:
"For the fast breeder to work in its steady-state breeding condition you probably need something like half a ton of plutonium. In order that it should work economically in a sufficiently big power-producing unit, it probably needs quite a bit more than one ton of plutonium. I do not like the hazard involved. I suggested that nuclear reactors are a blessing because they are clean. They are clean as long as they function as planned, but if they malfunction in a massive manner, which can happen in principle, they can release enough fission products to kill a tremendous number of people.
[…]
...But, if you put together two tons of plutonium in a breeder, one tenth of one percent of this material could become critical.
[…]
I have listened to hundreds of analyses of what course a nuclear accident can take. Although I believe it is possible to analyze the immediate consequences of an accident, I do not believe it is possible to analyze and foresee the secondary consequences. In an accident involving a plutonium reactor, a couple of tons of plutonium can melt. I don't think anybody can foresee where one or two or five percent of this plutonium will find itself and how it will get mixed with some other material. A small fraction of the original charge can become a great hazard."
Interesting. I didn't know that they were even more expensive than normal nuclear plants. Do you have sources, so that I don't have to cite you comment the next time I talk about breeder reactors?
This slide deck also gives references to more detailed reports.
Fans of traveling wave reactors, molten salt reactors, and other not-actually-operating reactors will quote rosily low cost projections despite the lack of any empirical evidence. They're not worth arguing with. If/when commercial TWRs or MSRs actually exist, then we can compare costs. Right now the advanced reactor cost claims are on par with Battery Breakthrough of the Week stories about how a laboratory experiment could revolutionize energy in 10 years, if it's followed up with a lot of funding and absolutely no problems crop up along the way.
The French have admitted the reprocessing doesn't save them any money, in fact it's more expensive than not reprocessing. But the cost is still only a very small part of the cost of nuclear power.
I haven't kept up on it, but aren't travelling wave reactors supposed to use the spent rods from light water reactors?[0] Seems like an elegant use of nuclear waste.
There was an argument made last year [1] that the problem with nuclear power generation is that everything we have in production is 50+ yo technology. Modern reactors are far cleaner, far safer, but the political hurdles for regulatory approval and NIMBY hurdles are enormous barriers.
Incidentally, if we're considering mining and transport of base resources to be part of indirect deaths, let's not forget that our renewable infrastructure relies on very dirty mining and transportation processes for quartz, rare earth minerals... and coal!
There are always a lot of interesting research projects brought up about what to do with the nuclear waste in the future. But never anything cost effective actually in production yet, and it's not like they haven't hade some decades to get them going. If we can cite <future technolog> as our solution, I suggest that we go with fusion reactors directly.
The main barriers for building new nuclear plants are that they aren't cost effective, so no one wants to invest in them. I'm certain they could be built cheaper without regulations about safety and funds for long term storage of waste. But I don't think we want to go there.
(Your second link directs me to a documentary about Bill Gates. How is that relevant?)
The Gates Foundation is one of the leading US investors in new nuclear tech right now. That documentary gets into the details of what they're working on and the hurdles they have in bringing new tech online. For a quick digestible bit of Gates on nuclear, watch the following. The documentary explores a lot more about the reactors:
No, it’s not good for some centuries. Corrosion and other processes that aren’t fully understood how they are affected by radiation make it hard to make any leakproof containers that will last even one century. Also, above ground storage is vulnerable both to changing climate as well as changing political circumstances.
Finally, even if all of the above was overcome, it’s just a way to push the problem to future generations. I’d be quite upset if our generation would have to deal with a hundred thousand tons of radioactive waste in old corroding containers without getting anything for it.
> My main concern with nuclear power is that they still haven’t managed to create any active long term storage of the nuclear waste. And before that, we don’t know the full actual cost of the energy.
That's a red herring. The "waste" has a lot of energy remaining (otherwise, it would not be radioactive [1]). There are reactor designs that can use "waste" from current reactors as fuel.
Only, we're not building them. Because coal is better or whatever.
[1]: that's bit of a shortcut, but elements that undergo radioactive decay on timescales that make them dangerous are unstable enough, you can put them in a reactor and poke them to undergo that decay faster and get you electricity.
No, it is not a red herring. It doesn't matter that it in theory has a lot of energy remaining if there isn't any cost-efficient and safe way to extract it. And the reason we aren't building them is because other forms of energy, including wind, water and sun, are cheaper.
> Only, we're not building them. Because coal is better or whatever.
No, we're not building them because they are more expensive than ordinary LWRs, uranium is cheap, and separated plutonium from spent fuel has negative value.
> That's a red herring. The "waste" has a lot of energy remaining (otherwise, it would not be radioactive [1]). There are reactor designs that can use "waste" from current reactors as fuel.
Don't these reactors produce nuclear weapons products? Seems like that may be a reason we don't want a lot of them around.
Rather, their fuel is plutonium. There's lots of plutonium in spent reactor fuel that can be extracted into more pure plutonium and used as fuel, but also to build nuclear weapons.
When they start repeating again that radiation didn't killed anybody, or only one people, or whatever... they lose any credibility.
If they makeup the second part of the statement, I assume that the first is also embellished and that the "but estimated 10.000 deaths" part is also false.
Why they still try such silly strategy first with Chernobyl and now with Fukushima, is a mystery to me. It does not work.
There are serious estimates, by several international organisms, that calculated between 1600 and 2000 deaths by the nuclear plant accident, just for the first two years.
Many by the evacuation, other because the hospitals in the area closed, other by stress of losing its home... and all of this happened because there was a damaged nuclear plant in the area. Not more, not less. Most of them had a slow death instead being instantly fried, but there is nothing here to rejoice. In the end is the same result.
To claim that only one people died by Fukushima and compare indirect deaths by coal with direct deaths by nuclear is an insult to the intelligence, specially when the consequences are still deploying and the process is far from being over. Nuclear kills thousands of people indirectly, for decades. The nuclear plant killed more people yet than the Tsunami did in the same area.
> compare indirect deaths by coal with direct deaths by nuclear
"stress of losing its home" = direct deaths by nuclear ? That may be the actual insult to intelligence :)
Both are indirect deaths of course. The only difference is perception : this is similar to the discrepancy between the much better air travel safety record compared to driving, and people being irrationally scared of flying.
Even assuming your indirect deaths figure is true, we'd still be talking about 2000 deaths in a single incident triggered by a natural catastrophe (most nuclear plants aren't in highly seismic zones), of which there have been two in ~50 years of nuclear power.
That's in contrast to 23.000 yearly deaths in Europe alone, from air pollution from coal alone.
We could stop the math there, but what about the death toll from displacement and migrations caused by climate change ? Or actually, the existential threat it poses to the human race ?
Australians know. The government, however, behaves as if beholden to the fossil fuel lobby.
South Australia installed the largest lithium ion battery in the world[0], and the federal government rubbished it as not fit for purpose and to small too make any difference.
Have you ever known the government of any country to play down the installation of the biggest X in the world, in their own country, rather than using it as an advertising opportunity for how technologically progressive and advanced the country is?
Australia's Prime Minister compared the usefulness of the battery to "the big banana" in Coffs Harbor, a tourist attraction[1], and the Energy Minister, of all people, compared it to Kim Kardashian.
Australian and former ex-pat of the UK here. I'm happy to see our Government getting rightly ridiculed on an increasing basis in more and more of these types of conversations.
Vale John Clarke, yet another great Australian who happened to have been born in New Zealand.
and in reply to LilBytes, I think, unfortunately, the increasing ridicule of our Government still resides within an echo chamber. There's a fair way to go before critical mass. The opposition just don't hold them to public account on much other than trivialities.
electricitymap's feed for distributed solar in Australia seems to be inoperable at the moment. Eg APVI's live map currently shows over 1GW in QLD of distributed PV generation.
This has been one of the worst times of the year for renewables - it has been cold, cloudy, rainy, and not very windy. Spot prices on the wholesale market apparently spiked to $12000
The color value is misleading though, since it doesn't account for differences in energy consumption per unit of area. For example Belgium is very densely populated compared to France, so if for example both had the same gCO₂eq/kWh, Belgium would have higher CO₂ intensity per unit of area, but this map would color them the same.
One of us is misunderstanding the map. My understanding the color is gram of CO2 (equivalent) per kWh, so not per area, but per unit of electricity consumed.
Change is happening, slowly (like everything else in germany) -- I used to take the train from Berlin to frankfurt and would pass 60km2 of solar farms starting within about 10km of west berlin..
Let's not pretend germany is agile in any way, anyone who lives here knows that's not true, but things ARE actually moving.. Slowly.. :}
Poland looks horrible when you count CO2 per kWh. But pretty good if you count CO2 per capita per unit of time. We use so little energy per capita when compared to western world that our CO2 emissions look better than some bit greener countries (for example UK or Germany) despite getting nearly all of energy from coal.
These seem to be specifically CO2 emissions from coal. When you look at total CO2 from all energy sources Poland fares better also than UK or Czechia I think.
We also buy less stuff and are not really into eating cows.
> That's of course the consequence of its decision to phase out nuclear power in the early 2000s. Wind/solar are intermittent and there's no way around that (battery storage isn't nearly mature enough).
Hmmm, in theory, it seems like overbuilding Wind/Solar might work.
Solar continues to generate electricity on cloudy days, its just diminished. Wind works from 5mph all the way to 50mph or so, it makes less energy on 5mph days but the wind almost never truly stops.
Overbuilding Solar/Wind to make up for this however, would cost significant amounts of money. Batteries would be best for storing the excess energy, but maybe other plants (ie: Aluminum manufacturing) can also be used (variable amount of Aluminum based on energy demands).
Both Solar and Wind can "ramp down". Solar panels can safely generate zero-power if you prevent current from flowing. Wind turbines must continue to move, but you can slow down wind turbines by controlling the angles, and grossly "ramp down" the energy produced.
As such, it is safe to overbuild both solar and wind plants... and later "ramp down" if the grid gets too hot.
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But overall, I agree with you that nuclear seems like the simplest solution. Its a shame that the world in general is afraid of uranium. Despite the geopolitics involved, I really do think its the simplest solution to worldwide energy problems.
There's the issue of space as well : I seem to recall you'd basically need to cover the whole country in wind/solar farms to make up for the loss of a few nuclear plants.
While its not that high (about 5%), Germany also has biogas which is also a baseload capable energy source that is renewable and can use most of the existing gas infrastructure
ERCOT aka Texas isn't showing up. It says something like "data not available at this time". Does anyone know if data has ever been available from ERCOT? I know that there have been a very large number of wind turbines added to the Texas grid over the last few years, including some near my home town, which I didn't really expect, as that is central Texas and not west Texas where the big farms are.
Edit: I will say, at the other end of my home county there is a coal plant.
Is there a source to learn more about how wind/solar are "intermittent" solutions? I personally think fission's worst case disaster scenario is much worse than coal's. Imagine living in a tiny country like S. Korea and getting their nuclear plants blown up by N. Korea agents. The whole country might become uninhabitable. That's not even considering the waste.
"Wind/solar are intermittent and there's no way around that (battery storage isn't nearly mature enough)"
One way 'around that' is to use gravity storage -- of which dozens of examples already exist around the world. China has at least 21 pumped-hydro facilities (19GW capacity [0], working on 30GW more [1]) and Britain's been using one for 'tea-time' demands for decades.
'Waiting for batteries' is decisively not a useful argument. They're very far from the most economical and environmentally-friendly storage.
Great points, great site. I would just note that those scores are near real-time, so they don't reflect the full picture for a country year-round (summer will have better scores than winter, and thus better than an annual score).
For instance, the Yukon Territory in Canada shows on electricitymap.org as 100% hydro with 24g Carbon Intensity score (and 3x that only 12 hours ago). Which is great, but a look during winter surely must be a different story. Having lived at a similar latitude, I know the water powering the hydro plants freezes up at some point during the winter months, at which time the small communities I've been in switch exclusively to diesel generators for part of the year (fuel for which is trucked in). Indeed, quick research of the power suppliers in Yukon (YEC/YECL) indicates several diesel generation facilities probably for exactly this purpose.
Maybe for small hydro plants, but definitely not the major ones. Quebec uses almost only hydro all year long (with the major dams being far in the north), and houses and buildings heating is mostly electrical.
France imports and exports a lot of electricity, so the used electricity is far less clean than that suggests. Similarly, countries that import from France are cleaner than that suggests.
This is an important consideration when looking at the cost of scaling nuclear power as it gets far more expensive the lower the utilization. You can get to around 40% across an electric grid such as Europe or an island, but scaling past that needs truly massive subsidies.
> This is an important consideration when looking at the cost of scaling nuclear power as it gets far more expensive the lower the utilization. You can get to around 40% across an electric grid such as Europe or an island, but scaling past that needs truly massive subsidies.
This is why diversified solutions are best. You get ~40% from nuclear and the same from solar and you're 80% carbon-free. Even using natural gas for the last 20% would put you well ahead of most countries as it is, and as storage or other alternatives improve you can move even that to solar+storage or whatever alternatives.
The linked page tracks both - production and consumption.
For example, at the moment, Germany produces at 415g/kWh but consumes at 382g/kWh, mostly thanks to 3 GW import from France and 2.7 GW import from Switzerland.
The map shows both production and consumption, but it only tracks carbon by production nationwide.
PS: It’s not uncommon to see a country export and import electricity at the same time. In that context using nationwide numbers is clearly missing important details.
Norway is about 95% hydro. Sweden is 40% hydro, 40% nuclear, 10% wind and 7-8% biomass, 2% fossil (the last two an estimate based on a graph). Source Wikipedia.
We must also thank the nuclear industry for Windscale, Three Mile Island and of course Chernobyl. They've also been generous enough to allow us to pay to store their nuclear sewage for thousands of years.
https://www.electricitymap.org/map
As I write this, the UK's intensity is 326 gCO₂eq/kWh, which is nothing to write home about.
This is better than the worst European offender (coal-loving Poland : 652g) as well as Baltic countries, the Netherlands and Germany (373).
But it's far from the best in class : Nordic countries (around 20-30, thanks to hydro) or for a more comparable country, France (around 60, thanks to nuclear)
Germany is interesting because it consistently has one of the worst carbon intensity figures of all developed countries, in spite of a record-setting share of renewables that its green activists like to boast about, and hundreds of billions of € in subsidies poured into them in the past 20 years.
That's of course the consequence of its decision to phase out nuclear power in the early 2000s. Wind/solar are intermittent and there's no way around that (battery storage isn't nearly mature enough).
That leaves 4 options for handling the base load : nuclear, hydro, gas or coal. Only 2 of those are low-carbon. And if you don't have the geography for hydro (like the Nordics do) but still decide to go nuclear-free for political reasons, guess what you're left with ?
IIRC, German coal power plants have 7 spots in the top 10 worst air pollution emitters across the EU. Coal-related air pollution causes an estimated 10.000 extra deaths each year across the continent. Radiation caused one direct death in Fukushima. Thanks, Die Grüne.