this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
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Yes, countries like Germany are turning to coal as a direct result of nuclear-phobia.
The US, with all its green initiatives and solar/wind incentives, is pumping more oil than Saudi Arabia. The US has been the top oil producer on whole the planet for the last 5-6 years. The problem is getting worse.
Fantastic. We're doomed
Sorry, this is just false info. Germany is not turning to coal as a result of your called nuclear phobia.
I will repeat my comment from another thread:
Don't repeat the stories of the far right and nuclear lobby. Nuclear will always be more expensive than renewables and nobody has solved the waste problem until today. France as a leading nuclear nation had severe problems to cool their plants during the summer due to, guess what, climate change. Building new nuclear power plants takes enormous amounts of money and 10-20years at least. Time that we don't have at the moment.
The article you linked isn't very convincing in my opinion. "We could shut down our nuclear reactors because France has plenty of nuclear reactors" doesn't explain why the switch to coal would be an advantage. The article also admits that in the winter the carbon intensive coal plants would need to switch on to supply power (but that happened not to be necessary last time).
Nuclear is expensive but not inherently more so than coal. Plants have become more expensive because of the nuclear scare in the 80s and 90s, but they're still cost effective today.
The anti nuclear propaganda from the left is as strong as the anti solar propaganda from the right. I think everyone sensible agrees that solar and wind energy are the future, but grid storage is ineffective to this day and electricity demand will only go up. The fact Germany is ~~constructing new~~ reactivating decommissioned coal plants proves that.
The best moment to start building a new nuclear power plant was ten years ago. The next best moment is right now. I don't see why we should accept the carbon footprint and toxic, radioactive exhaust of coal plants, especially for how little electricity were getting out of them in exchange.
Germany has not build any new coal plants. At least not in the last five years.
Edit: Why are people down voting a factual statement? Go ahead and provide better info if you got it.
If hasn't constructed any new ones, but it has reactivated plants that were previously shut down. I suppose that means you're right, but it also means the coal plants that have been activated are using older environmental norms, so I'm not sure if that's an improvement.
Hmm I think what you mean is that some coal plants have been put into active maintenance. IIRC this was rather a countermeasure in case of absence of gas supplies. They are not part of the regular energy market.
Anyway, I think there is not only one way forward. Countries like France choose to use a big portion of nuclear, Germany does not. And every way has its own challenges. What is important is that energy supply should be independent of oppressor states and moving into a direction of carbon neutrality.
Renewables are great until the sun stops shining and the wind stops blowing.
And that's more likely than enriched Uranium becoming unavailable or locally unobtainable?
If you haven't noticed, the sun stops shining for several hours every day and how much the wind blows changes pseudo-randomly on a hourly basis. Are problems with uranium supply more common than that? Not to mention that uranium can be recycled.
There is no "nuclear lobby" stop making shit up. Nuclear isn't profitable, that is why we don't have it. If it's not profitable, there will be no industry lobby pushing for it. The fact that it isn't profitable shouldn't matter. I care about the environment and if Capitalism can't extract profit without destroying the environment (it can't) then we need to stop evaluating infrastructure through a Capitalist lens.
As people pointed out in another thread, nuclear energy is NOT the future and also a really bad short term solution,so countries like Germany are going back to coal short term to make the transitions to renewables in the meantime.
It's not a great solution, but without Nordstream, there's really not much else more sensible to do right now, just to make the transition.
what makes nuclear energy a bad option?
I think smaller, decentralized renewable energy is cheaper in the short and long run and has a much lower risk in case of accidents, natural Desasters or attacks.
SMR (small modular reactors) are looking like they could become the next hip thing in nuclear power tech.
Basically a lot lower initial investment and offer a lot more flexibility.
Linky link
The link has a lot of info on them
I really don't see that as a good progression. We want to focus on renewables because that's the most sustainable way to go. Why go back to nuclear again?
That said if you are saying that's where the industry is moving even though that's probably not the best approach, fair enough. My opinion has zero effect on the industry.
A single new reactor takes decades to build and costs billions. Investing in solar, wind, the grid and storage instead will generate more energy, faster, and for less.
It's not "instead of".
You're supposed to run nuclear along side renewables. Opposed to running fossile fuels alongside renewables. Either way, something has be running besides renewables.
But that's literally what you're gonna have to do for 20+ years if you decide to go both ways and also build new nuclear plants. Put all your budget into renewables at once and you instantly cut down on the fossil fuel you'd otherwise burn while waiting for your reactor to go online, all while you're saving money from the cheap energy yield which you can reinvest into more renewables or storage R&D to eventually overcome the requirement to run something alongside it.
No 100% renewables is viable. You don't need anything running beside it.
I don't necessarily agree, but the usual arguments against are cost, lead time, and waste.
It's just nuclear phobia.
It's literally the second safest form of energy production we have only behind solar.
It's literally safer than wind power.
Yeah there's been a few disasters with older reactor designs or reactors that were put where they shouldn't have been, but even with those it's still incredibly safe.