(I am charitably assuming that you know enough about renewals to know that they are not currently a realistic replacement for the entirety of FFs.)
Nuclear power is not needed and it is worse than fossil fuels. Renewables with battery storage can be 100% of our power. We just have to stop being distracted by the fossil fuel and nuclear industries who keep telling us we can't do it.
> By stuffing them in a mountain and putting signs outside that we hope people in 10,000 years will understand means death is inside?
You can visit the Elephants foot safely today. Nuclear fuel is no where as deadly as you make it out to be.
> Renewables with battery storage can be 100% of our power. We just have to stop being distracted by the fossil fuel and nuclear industries who keep telling us we can't do it.
No it cannot. 100% Battery storage would cost trillions and be beset by toxic waste that is toxic forever and since it's a consumable and need to be replaced every decade. It's a full non starter.
Compare that to the tiny amount of spent nuclear waste which is solid, can be safely stored or even recycled.
Nuclear is a solution which works well right now. No need for fantasy battery technologies which would be better used in transportation anyways.
Visit. No one can live there. Parts of the earth are off limits because of nuclear errors. And there will be more as long as we continue to use nuclear power.
I am not overstating anything, you are buying into nuclear industry propaganda. Nuclear waste is deadly for millennia. People have ideas on how to recycle it, but none of them work today. Not one. Nor do we have any reasonable belief they will be soon. But the nuclear industry pushes these ideas to try to reduce resistance to nuclear power.
> No it cannot. 100% Battery storage would cost trillions
So would replacing all fossil fuel power with nuclear.
> and be beset by toxic waste that is toxic forwver and since it's consumable and need to be replaced every decade.
Lithium Ion batteries can be recycled today. Not some hope that a promising idea will become viable in the future. Today. When we are talking about grid load backup they do not need to be replaced every decade. They have a much longer useful life than that. My Nissan Leaf is 8 years old and still using the original battery pack which still has 100% capacity. Yes that is not a typo. I also still have a 2012 Retina MacBook Pro which still has its original battery. That does not have 100% capacity but it still functions and I have no need to replace it. When we are talking grid storage batteries they can degrade extremely significantly and still be useful. They will not degrade 100% in 10 years. When they do reach the end of their useful life they can be recycled.
Lastly, that you try to claim that battery production waste is worse than nuclear waste is beyond absurd. You have bought in way too much to nuclear industry propaganda.
https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc785510/
the fission products are less radioactive than the original uranium in 500-1000 years.
How long will it be until parts of the earth are inhabitable due to climate change? There will be more as long as we continue to neglect nuclear power.
>When we are talking grid storage batteries they can degrade extremely significantly and still be useful
I doubt it. It will be a major blow to energy efficiency.
>Lastly, that you try to claim that battery production waste is worse than nuclear waste is beyond absurd. You have bought in way too much to nuclear industry propaganda.
Nuclear waste is extremely manageable compared to mining waste.
Lithium mines, rare earth mineral mines, and other mines which are used for battery technology and electric motors are contaminated, forever, with ground water contamination which is much more dangerous than the solid spent nuclear fuel of a Reactor. Those sites will never be livable for humans.
>Nuclear waste is deadly for millennia.
Extremely long half life's mean that a material is extremely low in radioactivity. Meaning that it's actually quite safe to be around. It's short half lives which you should be worried about, but those also become safer more quickly. Given the nature of depleted nuclear fuel, it doesn't have a risk of leaching, nor does it have a risk of accidental ingestion. You are much safer near it than you are near a coal plant.
>Lastly, that you try to claim that battery production waste is worse than nuclear waste is beyond absurd. You have bought in way too much to nuclear industry propaganda.
Nuclear waste is the only toxic waste in the world which becomes non toxic at some point. That's a miracle. And the fact that you only need about a coke can volume of material to provide enough power for your entire natural life is a second miracle. Compared to the literal tons of lead, lithium, neodymium, and other materials that will be required for your alternative, the numbers start stacking in one side's favor.
> Lithium Ion batteries can be recycled today. Not some hope that a promising idea will become viable in the future. Today.
Lithium ion battery recycling is more expensive than new battery production. The toxic batteries are melted down to extract lithium from them. But let's say that it's the same price, or even half the price of new batteries. That's still an enormous amount that will have to be spent remanufacturing the batteries. Just because your car or laptop still operates with worn down batteries and you don't mind lower capacity doesn't mean that will scale just dandy to a grid solution. The failure case of your laptop dying prematurely is not nearly as big of a deal as brown outs or black outs because it's not sunny or windy enough.
A 10 megawatt project I was adjacent to that would cycle the batteries every day estimated 5 years.
Im not really convinced that a set of baseline nuclear + renewables + batteries to handle peaking isn’t the way to go
Lithium is extremely plentiful on the earth. Today's mining methods -- like all of today's mining -- have more negative environmental impacts than anyone would like, but this is not a reason to go nuclear, it's a reason to regulate the industry and require better practices.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup#Cos...
AFAIK nobody (here) advocates fossil fuel. Usually it is about nuclear/renewable.
"Renewables" is really wind and solar supplementing fossil fuels. There's no realistic plan for a predominantly intermittent grid without some form of dispatchable source backing periods of non-production. If that happens to be a hydroelectric dam, great. But for most regions that means fossil fuels. So advocating renewables is advocating fossil fuels in effect.
In 2016, Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry estimated ((...)) decontamination costs estimated to rise from ¥2.5 trillion (US$22 billion) to ¥4 trillion (US$35 billion), costs for interim storage of radioactive material to increase from ¥1.1 trillion (US$10 billion) to ¥1.6 trillion (US$14 billion), and costs of decommissioning reactors to increase from ¥2 trillion (US$17 billion) to ¥8 trillion (US$69 billion).
The very amount of backup needed by a renewable-based system can be reduced by adequately spreading-out production units: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/180592/european-cooperation-...
Energy storage (hydro... V2G has a huge potential: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid) and curtailment further reduce it.
A dispatchable source ('backup') isn't necessarily fossil-fuel-burning: green-hydrogen-fueled gas turbines are clean: https://global.kawasaki.com/news_211209-2e.pdf This very green hydrogen can be produced thanks to (clean!) renewable units overproduction.
Even fully-nuclearized France produces around 9% of its electricity thanks to such 'backup' (today: fossil-fuel burning plants). Red surfaces: https://www.statistiques.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/editi... 9% is 33 days per year, that's quite a margin.
Hydrogen storage has significant technological barriers. Nobody has successfully deployed a hydrogen grid storage facility so far. There's no telling when, or if, these barriers will be overcome.
France can build more nuclear plants to drive down it's fossil fuel use. But no amount of overproduction will make a solar plant produce electricity at night, or wind turbines on a windless day. For that reason, "renewables" is really renewables plus fossil fuels. While France uses 9% fossil fuels Germany, the biggest renewables stan, uses fossil fuels and biomass (which gets a green label but is often even more polluting than fossil fuels) for just under 40% of it's electricity. Not much of a win for renewables.
On matters such as those (vast, gov-funded, lengthy and intrinsically new projects) largely under-estimating seems way (way!) more probable to me.
> Nobody has successfully deployed a hydrogen grid storage facility
Indeed (this is a work in progress, and may indeed not be possible), however the industry already uses huge amounts of H (therefore short-term storage for intermittency compensation is possible), and more and more vehicles do so (therefore a quite large distribution network for intermittent consumers is possible).
> France can build more nuclear plants
France already tries to builds a new nuclear reactor ("EPR") since 2007, it is way over budget and over schedule.
As for renewables intermittency: I answered in my previous post.
> While France uses 9% fossil fuels Germany, the biggest renewables stan, uses fossil fuels
This comparison seems absurd to me.
France launched its nuclearization in the 1970's, while very rich ("30 Glorieuses)", industrial, and it was a strategic case (continuation of the "atomic bomb" program and therefore benefiting from military credits + oil crisis), and the need (electricity consumed) was 3 times lower than it is now, using reactors existing since the 1950's. It then took 25 years to build the nuclear fleet.
Germany isn't as (relatively) rich and industrial as it was in the 1970's (after many crisis since the 1990's), there is a quite strong "the climate crisis isn't really a strategic top-priority form most governments" (even in Germany) argument, really launched its transition in 2011, and it uses very-quickly evolving technologies.
> biomass (which gets a green label but is often even more polluting than fossil fuels)
This is more nuanced: some are rather clean.
Incorrect. We have plenty of experience working with hydrogen produced by steam reformation. But that emits CO2, and thus cannot be used for energy storage. The vast amounts of hydrogen produced for ammonia production does not translate into usable infrastructure for hydrogen electric storage.
Energy storage is a problem that has resisted an effective solution for a long time. There's no guarantee we'll find a good storage system 20 years from now or 200 years from now.
> France launched its nuclearization in the 1970's, while very rich ("30 Glorieuses)", industrial, and it was a strategic case (continuation of the "atomic bomb" program and therefore benefiting from military credits + oil crisis), and the need (electricity consumed) was 3 times lower than it is now, using reactors existing since the 1950's. It then took 25 years to build the nuclear fleet.
So investing in nuclear yielded great reductions in CO2 emissions, and brought fossil fuel use to near zero.
> Germany isn't as (relatively) rich and industrial as it was in the 1970's (after many crisis since the 1990's), there is a quite strong "the climate crisis isn't really a strategic top-priority form most governments" (even in Germany) argument, really launched its transition in 2011, and it uses very-quickly evolving technologies.
So Germany invested in renewables and even after more than 30 years of investment it hasn't seen nearly as big a reduction in CO2 emissions.
Again you're making a very strong case for nuclear, renewables not so much.
> Incorrect. We have plenty of experience working with hydrogen produced by steam reformation. But that emits CO2
Not pertinent: I was writing about green hydrogen (no CO2 emissions), as stated above: "green-hydrogen-fueled gas turbines".
> cannot be used for energy storage
Many factories do have hydrogen tanks, the unknown territory is storing huge amounts of it in the long term (ongoing experiments try to use salt caves), both goals not necessary for the electrical system.
> Energy storage is a problem that has resisted an effective solution for a long time
There was no incentive, as fossil fuels are incredibly convenient.
>> France
> So investing in nuclear yielded great reductions in CO2 emissions
Not-so great, if you consider that electricity is only at max a quarter of consumed (final) energy, and also the total amount of emissions (taking into account importations): abstaining from emitting is easy if other nations are producing goods for you. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-co2-embedded-in-tra...
> and brought fossil fuel use to near zero.
In France 9% of electricity is produced by burning fossil fuel.
In France fossil fuels remain the main source of energy: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fossil-fuels-share-energy...
>> Germany >> really launched its transition in 2011
> So Germany invested in renewables and even after more than 30 years of investment
Sorry but 2011 to now is 11 years, not 30
> it hasn't seen nearly as big a reduction in CO2 emissions.
Starting from a way higher amount of consumed energy, in a way more difficult context (crisis...), without de-industrializing as much as France... in 2010 Germany's emission intensity were 471 (before shuting down many nuclear reactors) and in 2020 314. This is a pretty good result! France also reduced its emissions, but only thanks to renewable sources (no new nuclear reactor since 1999, because an attempt to build a new one, ongoing since 2007, fails) https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/daviz/co2-emission-i...
Huh?
>We don't just have to stuff it in a mountain and pretend it doesn't exist.
What is your problem with the current state of nuclear waste management? Seems pretty safe to me. I mean, you already seem to pretend that background and cosmic radiation doesn't exist.
>regulate the industry and require better practices.
... Which will inevitably increase costs.
Nuclear power is inherently too risky for its benefits. It creates too many opportunities for human error to cause irreversible damage.
When a solar farm gets hit by an earthquake it might stop working. When a wind farm gets hit by the storm of the century it might fall over. Nuclear reactors present existential threat and we have no need for it.
More important, once-through is not available. They closed Yucca Mountain so we have to do something else with the waste.
Ignoring the rest of your grossly misinformed statement, this absurdity alone should give you pause.