France (One year graph): https://www.epexspot.com/en/market-data?market_area=FR&tradi...
Germany (One year graph): https://www.epexspot.com/en/market-data?market_area=DE-LU&tr...
Now for some extra fun, overlay this with graphs over CO2 emissions.
Germany (One year graph): https://www.epexspot.com/en/market-data?market_area=DE-LU&tr...
Now for some extra fun, overlay this with graphs over CO2 emissions.
Some other fun: Overlay this with a graph of nuclear waste production.
1. https://www.orano.group/en/unpacking-nuclear/all-about-radio...
The waste repository (Cigéo) isn't ready, and nobody knows how much it may cost (maybe up to 35 billions €).
The buffer (La Hague) is nearly saturated. Source: https://www.publicsenat.fr/article/parlementaire/traitement-...
We could graph how much money Germany is funding the Russian military by buying gas, coal and oil. We could also graph how much radioactive particels get released into the environment through fossil fuel combustion. However both would just correlate directly with how much fossil fuel they consume which would then follow the graph of CO2 emissions. One line is plenty enough to describe all those things without having to be too explicit about the trade offs being made in Germany compared to France.
I would expect that more nuclear waste is produced when more nuclear energy is produced and less waste when less energy is produced. Isn't that a fluctuation?
The European energy market price is determined by changes in supply (wind and solar being the main contributors for fluctuations, followed by water supplies), demand for energy, and prices for fossil fuel. If gas prices goes up, the price for energy on the market goes up. If cheap wind is flooding the market, prices goes down. As can be read by the graphs, since the European energy market is connected those changes occur simultanious in both Germany and France. However, there is an additional transport cost and thus prices can be a bit different. The negative energy prices also seems to effect those more closely to the plants with excess energy, rather than transporting the excess energy across the European continent.
The actually cost at any specific location is then determined by the energy market price (see above) and transport distance between the energy production point and energy consumption point.
A graph over nuclear waste would have no correlation with the market price. At most one would see a slightly more volatile market price when nuclear energy production is low, and a slightly more stable market price when the production is high, but one would need to have a pretty fancy graphical design in order to confer that knowledge in a graph.
Does the market price correlate really better with CO2 emissions? Does the price drop between 21 Dec and 31 Dec from ~430/515 €/MWh to ~12/23 €/MWh mean that CO2 emissions of energy production dropped by 95% at the same time?
There is however the ability to increase/decrease imports when needed by adding more transport trucks or reduce the flow in the pipe lines.
A graph over CO2 emissions is thus more useful in this context since they follow the actually consumption of gas/oil/coal, and has a direct connection with the market price for which the above graphs represent.
in a best of case scenario we would not use either of coal,gas,nuclear oil or any other fossil technology, but we are far from it, but i'm pretty sure europe is closer than most other countries/states/etc.
France 5.0
Germany 9.1 India 1.9
EU 8.6
China 8.0
Japan 9.4
Russia 12.1
United States 16.1
Canada 16.1
Australia 16.8
As you say that’s double counting.
The US buys 50% of its uranium to them: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/exclusive-us-utiliti...
Maybe even for France and Germany, but doubt so.
Moreover ore grade falls with extraction, and extraction-related emissions grow accordingly. Maybe up to 110g/ CO2-e/kWhel: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2051332
A lot of people don’t really know much about waste from reactors other than that it is “bad”.
All plants, worldwide over all human history, for 20% of the power production of the entire planet, 100% green, have produced less than one half of one football field of barrels.
We can stop climate change on one field of barrels every 31 years
Thanks to mining byproducts, nuclear produces less and lower level radioactive waste than solar or wind
Zero humans in history have died from nuclear waste
It's just something scared people say to sound like they know something important
Europes nuclear power Zaporizhzhia plant is surrounded by Russian troops and sustained damage:
> At 11:28pm local time on the 3 March 2022, a column of 10 Russian armored vehicles and two tanks cautiously approached the Power Plant.[18][19][20] The action commenced at 12:48am on the 4 March when Ukraine forces fired anti tank missiles and Russian forces responded with a variety of weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades.[19] During approximately two hours of heavy fighting a fire broke out in a training facility outside of the main complex, which was extinguished by 6:20am,[21][22] though other sections surrounding the plant sustained damage.
and even under these conditions, once again, zero deaths
the point you're trying to make actually works against you
I agree with your point, but for the record there's apparently been one death due to radiation (and possibly more to come): After the fighting was over, the russian soldiers seem to have camped in the Red Forest (absolutely the most contaminated area after the reactor structure itself https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Forest ), dug trenches and eaten local animals. And continued doing so for a month.
All the nastier bits are under a layer of "clean" soil and you would have no contact with them ordinarily.
These soldiers actually dug down to the nasty bits and likely breathed some of the dust in.
Between that, and eating wildlife (which acts as a powerful concentrator), I'm not surprised they died. The exposure must have been thousands of times above the already non-insignificant baseline.
Huge strawman. By the same logic one could claim that climate change is not a big deal because the worst hasn't happened yet.
This is not a useful metric, except to impress folks that know almost nothing about the field. Even then it is misleading, because the storage requirements are so strenuous that it cannot be assumed to be done well.
> We can stop climate change on one field of barrels every 31 years
Instead, we will have radioactive children in 50 years.
> Zero humans in history have died from nuclear waste
Quite simply a fabrication.
* Install a single swimming pool. Maybe a hot tub. Leave out Tiki bar.
* Put 'waste' there.
* Realize this argument is stupid.
This red cube is the entire amount of nuclear waste produced by France. And you'll never get in contact with any of it. On the other hand do you know what's filtering coal and gas particulates out of the air ? Your lungs every single day of your life
ah, and coal emits more dangerous radioactive waste than nuclear power plants, and again, your lungs are getting their fare share of it: https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/...