For how long? It's "propped up" by gas reads like a transitional state. LNG prices won't stay high forever. They're speculation/scarcity prices not "new normal" surely? As PV and wind and battery come through the marginal risk on gas supply reduces.
It’s 50 years later, half a century, and we’re still burning all that coal.
The single worst form of energy…
And coal likely brings in a few tens of thousands in swing district votes.
They also deserve to develop, and in fact nothing can stop them from developing. In an ideal world, we are all powering the world from nuclear reactors and a reliable grid, but we haven't gotten there yet.
Wind and Solar are not -- and have never been -- a replacement for reliable energy sources, because the energy storage problem has not been solved for them. This is not what solar advocates want to hear, but it's the truth.
Nuclear, on the other hand, is a reliable source of energy. Hydro and geothermal are also reliable, but their supply is limited.
It takes 100t of new Uranium at ~3.5% to bring an AP1000 online. Reprocessing reduces this by up to 15%
It takes 7.4kg of natural Uranium to produce 1kg of 3.5% enriched Uranium.
World production of Natural Uranium is 45,000t. Doubling this would allow bringing 6GW of new NPP on line per year. Increasing it tenfold would almost match the net power additions of renewables this year, but after one year of additions your new fleet would have under a decade worth of fuel.
Storage is only 'not solved' insofar as renewables + storage cost almost as much as nuclear for the same level of availability.
By all means invest in breeders, but the very precious U235 reserves should be kept for CANDUs to produce necessary isotopes for other purposes until there is one that works.
Those are both huge economies and I guess a big part of the problem is that they need (cost-effective) energy today, not tomorrow, so coal is their immediate solution. So I’d assume that will hold as long as Russia is still at war and other energy tech is still being developed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_in_China#/media/File:Chin...
Why are you surprised? China in particular has enormous reserves of coal (or at least, reportedly). How do you think all of that cheap but energy-intensive stuff we buy from China gets made?
Not true at all. Only if you look in the west yeah.
Globally, coal burning has been going higher and higher thanks to China's growth who's now burning more than ever, and now so is Europe.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-coal-power-plants/
The US rate was falling. India and China were rising. China probably would have leveled off and declined shortly after. India would likely have continued to rise but not enough to have offset losses on other sides.
The loss of Russian gas to Europe increases LNG prices for everyone because now there’s a much smaller supply because shipping it is harder and there’s a big competition for the smaller amounts that are floating about.