Wouldnt then our “green renewables” also not be green due to their production lifecycle as well? Plastics, batteries, fiberglass, rare earth metals, cobalt, etc
We don't know the full lifecycle costs of fusion plants, but at least the fuel part won't involve open pit mining, unlike uranium ore, so it hopefully will be better than fission.
Solar and wind is not even close to being in competition with nuclear when it comes to what is cleanest.
Countries that do have bright sun typically skip straight to passive solar water heating systems, which can do an excellent job of eliminating water heating costs.
Current world primary energy consumption is 20 TW, 1/5000th of that amount.
In contrast, 11% of the Earth's land area is under cultivation for crops. Add pastureland and that increases to 37%.
Why the outrage over PV land use, when it will be just a pimple on agriculture's land use butt?
PV would deliver energy in high quality form, electrical power, not as heat. So less than 20 TW, probably much less, would be needed to be equivalent to today's energy usage (although precisely how much would depend on details.)
Energy use will be increasing though, as the world gets wealthier. Still, this will also put pressure on agriculture to increase production, as demand for meat increases. Land constraints in the future will come from that, not from PV.
Also, indium is not a rare earth element.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/a3mavb/we-dont-mi...
Understand, there's been this obnoxious effort by anti-renewable propagandists to spread the lie that PV is dirty because of rare earths. Shellenberger was spreading this falsehood. But it has no basis in reality.
Are you REALLY asking me to prove a negative? Tell me, what purpose do you imagine rare earths serve in silicon PV cells? They are not used as dopants (that's boron and phosphorus). There are no magnets. The glass doesn't require them, nor do the structural metals.
Coal isn't economically unsustainable I don't know where you have that from.
Wind and solar covers less than 1% of the worlds energy needs even push forward to 2040 and it might do around 3%.
It's not even close to being a serious contender for humans energy needs.
They are unreliable but not unpredictable. Weather forecast provides adequate production estimates 48 hours, and precise ones 12 hours into the future (especially when averaged over large areas). Enough time to fire up standby power generation.
Also while wind and solar are unreliable by themselves, they become a lot more reliable once you combine them. That is because when there is little wind, it is usually sunny, and when there is little sunshine it is usually windy. At night, when there is neither, the power consumption is low.
The major problem that needs to be addressed with substantial amounts of energy storage is overcast winter days with no wind, when power consumption is high.
> Coal isn't economically unsustainable I don't know where you have that from.
According to a 2018 report[1] of the German Environment Agency (UBA), the economic cost (health and environment) of coal power is an additional 0,19 €/kWh over the generation cost. This makes it unsustainable compared to other energy sources and only profitable because the public bears this cost.
> Wind and solar covers less than 1% of the worlds energy needs even push forward to 2040 and it might do around 3%.
Someone should tell the Chinese, because they are already at 5% from wind alone.
[1] https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/publikationen/coal-fired-powe...
I don't think you done any serious research into this to be quite honest.
Then there is capacity factor wich is a whole other problem (look it up)
To claim that coal isn't economically sustainable is absurd. It's more or less the cheapest we have.
With regards to China thats 5% electricity NOT energy. Again I don't believe you actually did any fundamental research here or you wouldn't throw out these numbers that does not support your position.
Nuclear, on the other hand, is going to still have lots of concrete, and making concrete emits CO2 even if the energy to calcine the limestone comes from non-fossil sources.
Yes, one could capture and sequester the CO2 from concrete manufacture. But then one could also capture and sequester putative CO2 from PV manufacture. So if sequestration is on the table, the CO2 argument being made against PV in favor of nuclear just collapses anyway.
Nuclear doesn't us "lots of concrete" in any meaningful way especially not when you start factoring in the energy density.
Wind and solar require huge areas, lots of rare earth metals and there is no plan for how to decommission plus, wind and solar are unreliable which means they still need backup from something else like coal, nuclear or oil.
In other words there will be no decarbonized economy without nuclear or fusion or thorium.
Furthermore, when you hear countries like Denmark and Germany talk about x amount of percentage being wind or solar you need to remember a few very very important things.
1) They are talking about what that specific country produces, not what it consumes. 2) What it consumes includes what it imports. 3) Wind and solar only produce electricity which is only part of our energy consumption 4) You also have to factor in the capacity factor which for wind and solar is between 20-40% and nuclear is more or less 100%.
In other words, those high numbers only come from ignoring the entirety of energy needs. The renewable energy sector and its proponents are very disingenuous when they present their "success".
Here's BP projection:
https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/uncategorized/sna...
They have renewables (excluding hydro) supply about 15% of world primary energy demand (not just electric energy demand) in 2040 (although that also includes biomass, waste, and geothermal).
The other consideration is what the wind/solar displaces. 1 joule of wind or solar displaces several joules of primary fossil fuel energy, if the latter were being used for electric power generation. No one benefits from the fraction of fossil primary energy that gets dissipated as waste heat.