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qwerty456127

> ecologists want to reduce our nuclear capacity more and more

How can a person having some idea about ecology ever advocate opening coal plants and closing nuclear ones?

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Because much of the modern environmental political movement had its roots in the anti-nuclear (war and power) movement.

They simply hate nuclear power more than they hate fossil fuel power, and then they push for idiotic swaps like this.

There's an extra layer of irony in that coal power plants cause more radiation and more cancer than nuclear power plants.

Also because of defiance against science / cherry picking.

The French "ecological" party, EELV, has prominent anti-vaccine advocates.

I believe anti-vaccine advocates are there for the sole reason of getting the votes of the anti-vaccine-minded people (and for pushing some into this category just to get their votes). It's improbable real politicians are suicidal enough to actually risk facing a pandemia once they get to power.

Exactly. Greenpeace even goes as far as plain lies, pretending that nuclear power is a significant source of greenhouse gas. Shame on them.

Actually, nuclear power indeed _is_ a significant source of greenhouse gases. Please take into account:

a) construction and teardown of the power plant (massive amounts)

b) uranium mining

c) responsible contaminating radioactive waste (in mountains, etc)

I didn't research for numbers now, but I think one can find them.

It emits much less greenhouse gasses per MWh than "green" energies. Plus you admit yourself that you didn't research the numbers, that's patently ridiculous. Shame on you, too.

That us simply not true, I will dig out the study later when not on mobile, but wind has an energy (which is closely related to co2) ROI of 18 month or less, that is in about 19 month you have recouped the energy you put into building it. For nuclear this is around 40 years (I'm not sure if the numbers included decommissioning). Considering that both produce relatively little to no co2 during operation it's clear that relative wind wins by quite a margin. For solar the time was quite a bit longer IIRC (not 40 years however)

The only way I can understand it is incredible shortsightedness. In other words, it's not "close the nuclear plant and open a coal plant". They see it as "close the nuclear plant" and don't think about it any further than that.

Coal is on the way out also. It won't be "close nuclear and replace with coal". It's "close nuclear and replace with things much cleaner than coal (gas or, increasingly, renewables.)

I'm going to need a few citations because this is an ongoing and highly controversial debate within the climate community. Considering that, it isn't a smart decision to remove nuclear from the conversation all together. I'd go as far as saying removing it from the conversation is anti-scientific.

I want you to look up how many new coal plants have been built in the US in the last five years. Answer: just one, a tiny oneat the University of Alaska. During that time, many nuclear plants were retired here. Shutting down nuclear did not lead to a resurgence of coal. Instead, coal is collapsing. Large steam thermal baseload plants are increasingly uncompetitive, coal or nuclear.

Not the parent poster, but you should add what's actually being built: a lot of gas plants. They're cleaner than coal, but lets be honest, still not particularly good for the environment.

You mean, I could have written something like "gas or, increasingly, renewables"? Which is what I actually wrote.

To be fair, that statement was in the grandparent and not the post I replied to. However, I'd argue

> Large steam thermal baseload plants are increasingly uncompetitive, coal or nuclear.

is generally wrong, since gas power plants are "large steam thermal baseload plants" and they're very much competitive. Large baseload plants are just as necessary now as they used to be since we'll still need power when the wind doesn't blow. The problem is nuclear needs to run at max power all the time to be profitable.

There's ways that you can not run at max power with nuclear reactors. Especially if you include advances from modern reactors (i.e. reactors that weren't designed 50 years ago).

You can also use that energy to charge batteries or pump water uphill the same way you would with excess solar and wind power. Doing so means you need a lower baseload.

Also, another idea, why not use that excess energy to sequester carbon? We do need to be carbon negative.

Technically, there are ways to run nuclear reactors at below full power. But economically, it's ruinous to do so. Almost all the costs of a nuclear plant are fixed. The already poor levelized cost of the plant's output becomes even worse.

You could charge batteries with nuclear output, but why do so, when other sources are cheaper? And the battery charging can be moved around in time, so the intermittency of those sources is less of a problem.

Similarly, why use expensive energy to sequester carbon when cheap energy could be used instead?

No, you are mistaken. CC plants have a steam bottoming cycle, but 2/3rds of the power comes from the combustion turbine front end. This gives them a very large advantage over systems where all the power has to go through the steam. And simple cycle plants require no heat exchangers, steam cycle, or cooling water at all.

Is it so easy to get political power that people who actually are rather than pretend being this stupid use to manage that?

State of fear gives the answer.

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