Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/why-nuclear-powered-...

You mean, they are the most reliable base load and load-following power sources we know.

> References are easy to find if you want confirmation

It's just as easy to find confirmation that all the problems you listed are the result of neglect and politics of the past 20-30 years.

> it has to be done properly and safely, which is certainly not the case around here.

As in: France has 56 operable reactors that provide 75% of France's electricity... And you call that neither safe, nor reliable, nor...

Why we don't talk like that about renewables though? While the nuclear production was down to 65% capacity, renewables were down in the same time to ... 8%.

To be fair, the renewable production was lacking even more than the nuclear one at that time, despite being the worst maintainance event during the past 40 years.

....we could also choose to just use less energy and become more efficient. but my guess is nobody would accept it :D

There will be no need to do city or urban planning around radioactive fallout or leaks because fusion simply doesn't have those problems.

Activated water with tritium in it has been released accidentally a number of times, and small amounts of tritium and other gasses are released by any reactor, but no unapproved leaking besides that has ever been made public.

There are of course ecological problems with the heat, but all the reactors use one of the Great Lakes as a heat sink and water supply itself isn't a problem.

The CANDU design can be fuelled online and most of the reactors have been online over 80% of the time, including refuelling, maintenance and refurbishment projects. The later designs hover around 90%.

They were expensive to build, and the last plant was really expensive. This was due to various reasons, including post-Chernobyl reviews, and pausing construction for over a year due to a labour dispute, and high interest rates.

Still, amortized over more than half a century they've ended up being the second-cheapest source of power in the province, after hydroelectric. Government is casting around for replacement options as the reactors are retired over the coming decades, but nothing concrete in the short term.

Germany had some of the best managed plants in the world -- until they decided to shut them down, leading to more coal being burned and more dependence on other countries like Russia...

Please share numbers demonstration health hazards. For ex, bananas are radioactive. Should we outlaw bananas?

> rivers are getting too hot to cool down nuclear plants correctly

That's wrong. In 2022, the power output had to be reduced by 0.18% (not a typo) (https://twitter.com/energybants/status/1645696906327388160). In addition, Nuclear plants can work even in the desert: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_...

> nuclear plants are very unreliable

That's also wrong. Please share numbers. Nuclear has a load factor of 95% and its down time can be scheduled (maintenance). Wind has a load factor of 30-40% (and output is unpredictable), solar has a load factor of 20%, hydro requires mountains.

> the government wants to simplify control organism and laws around building new plants

When controls are too tight, nuclear is too slow ; when controls are too loose, nuclear is dangerous. Face je gagne, pile tu perds.

The goal is less CO2, and for that any low carbon energy source is good.

In quantities not relevant to safety. We can detect extremely small amounts of radiation, down to 1.0001% higher than backrgound levels.

- rivers are getting too hot to cool down nuclear plants correctly

Not quite: the flow of rivers was low enough that they would exceed the 28C temperature limit (ostensibly to protect fish, but no adverse impact from higher temperatures has been observed). It was entirely possible to cool the plants, if this restriction were not in place. Perhaps the solution here is to ask for better evidence on the supposed adverse ecological impact of higher river temperatures, and examine whether it outweighs the global catastrophe of greenhouse gas emissions.

- nuclear plants are very unreliable, we almost got out of power this winter and next winter will be equally tough (only an abnormally hot winter avoid cuts...)

Quite the contrary: Nuclear plants have some of the highest capacity factors [1] of any energy source. France's reactors were taken down for maintenance, much of it actually scheduled in advance. This is, intentionally or not, cherry picking a year with a particularly low capacity factor.

- the government wants to simplify control organism and laws around building new plants

Correct, and since nuclear thus far as proven to be one of the safest power sources [2] it's a reasonable change to accelerate the fight against climate change.

Nuclear is one of the few sources of decarbonized energy that is both non-intermittent, and geographically independent. Solar, wind, and hydro, are all either geographically dependent, intermittent, or both. Plans for a grid based on solar and wind almost invariably assume that a nearly-free form of energy storage will be invented in order to make these generation systems feasible. Unfortunately, such as system has yet to be produced. The heat engine made modern industrialized society possible, and it's easier to switch to a different source of heat than to restructure all of society around intermittent energy sources.

1. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/what-generation-capacity

2. https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...

I generally look at how people perceive things like this as an IQ test. At the moment the HN visitors upvoting/downvoting things in this thread have failed my baseline IQ test.

How I wish all presumably well-intentioned but badly informed and ill-educated people who very often seem to have.. let's say, bad luck when thinking would just stop trying to spread their gospel via forums in this destructive way. Looking at you, vaguely-informed "friends of the planet".

I'm not sure how France treats radiation levels, but in the US, the guidelines we have set are non-nonsensical.

You need to quantify whenever talking about radiation, otherwise it's meaningless. Granite countertops also leak radiation, same as bananas.

Also, coal powered plants leak radiation every time they burn coal...because coal is radioactive too. They also release mercury, which is why we can't eat too much tuna fish.

btw how does France deal with nuclear waste?

> one of the plant regularly leaks radioactive material

Je suppose qu'il s'agit du Tricastin, ou il y a de temps en temps des petits rejets de Tritium détectés, parce qu'il n'y a pas vraiment d'autres centrales proches de Montpellier qui ont des emmerdes. "Regularly" est un mensonge, et omet aussi les quantités qui fuient. Oui, c'est un problème qu'il y ait une fuite, et le CRIIRAD bosse dessus des que ca arrive, mais on parle de radioactivité non seulement très minimes, mais extrèmement diluées aussi.

>rivers are getting too hot to cool down nuclear plants correctly

Non. On décide de ne pas rejeter de l'eau chaude dans les rivières parce qu'elles sont déjà très chaudes et qu'on a des normes pour éviter d'endommager la vie aquatique qui sont extrèmement basses, et basées sur une moyenne de temperature annuelle. Dans la pratique, on pourrait faire monter largement les temperatures des cours d'eau sans danger encore, mais on ne le fait pas justement pour éviter des surprises. Et c'est oublier que ce problème n'existe que pour les centrales n'ayant de pas de tours aerorefrigerantes, auquel cas _il n'y a aucun probleme de refroidissement_

>nuclear plants are very unreliable, we almost got out of power this winter and next winter will be equally tough (only an abnormally hot winter avoid cuts...)

Jean-José Mauvaise Foi frappe fort la. 60 ans de production sans aucun incident majeur, il aura fallu trois vagues de covid + des conditions météorologiques défavorables + un problème structurel relativement mineur (mais corrigé du coup) qui a causé un alignement des arrêts de centrales.

>the government wants to simplify control organism and laws around building new plants

Fallait pas donner une majorité relative aux tarés.

Bref, comme d'hab, finir sur un "je suis pas contre le nucléaire hein" tout en donnant des arguments dignes du pire article de Reporterre.

Probably just Tritiated water which is essentially harmless. Basically water with extra neutrons and it is very weakly radioactive. So weak that you can't detect it with a Geiger counter. Since it is water it does not accumulate in organisms. Tritium is also naturally created in the atmosphere by cosmic radiation.

So why are you talking? Seriously, why? Lol

We are already seeing this in Germany[1], where electricity prices are also becoming zero[2] during parts of the day. The problem with renewables will become apparent only once the reserves of easily dispatchable electricity generation is used up across Europe to balance renewable generation.

[1] - https://www.nordpoolgroup.com/en/Market-data1/Dayahead/Area-...

But instead we’re spending tens of billions on windmills and solar panels that won’t last 15 years or operate well in many regions, including Germany and especially south Germany. This is why Germany is now reliant on France’s nuclear power to handle the majority of its power needs and the citizens are paying massive premiums for it. Not the government.

So maybe we should ignore the pesky cost issue cause we certainly ignored the financial and economic cost consequences of solar and wind.

> But when it comes to cost, they suddenly check out,

Nuclear is expensive because of 2 reasons. First, because we didn't build any, we have zero momentum savings. Second, it is expensive because we make it expensive. Nuclear has to be orders of magnitude safer than any other form of energy. If raw material mining for solar had the same kind of limitations (per human-year lost), then solar would be prohibitively expensive too. If disposal of waste (pollution) for coal/natural gas was as stringent (adjusted to human years lost), then they too would be prohibitively expensive. Nuclear costs are technically quite low. We have scared ourselves into making it so expensive that it is impossible to build.

> wind + solar

You conveniently mention the 2 form of electric production that nuclear does not compete with. Consistent-electricity comes in the form of petroleum, hydro-power and nuclear energy. We need consistent energy. Nuclear replaces petroleum and hydro-power, both of which are significantly worse for the environment and cause much higher median and worst-case loss of life than nuclear energy. If we could build nuclear power plants with the sort of carelessness that coal and hydro-power plants are, then nuclear would've been the dominant form of consistent energy production.

_______

My suspicion is that the lack of nuclear powerplants is because of perverse economic incentives for countries with uranium supplies. The nations with the largest uranium reserves [1] are either already oil/coal producing countries and do not need uranium disrupting their own economy (Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Russia, Canada, Australia, South Africa) or do not have the technological knowhow to execute on a nuclear power plant (Namibia, Niger).

The exceptions are China and India, both of which therefore pushing for more nuclear power. [2] [3] "Show me the incentive, I'll show you the outcome".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_r...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_India#:~:text....

I think this is a rather inaccurate characterization and we need to be a bit more nuanced here. I'm going to address this out of order, and first with the power shortage.

Power shortage:

I'd actually argue that nuclear power played an extremely important role since the invasion of Ukraine. Remember that France is the second largest exporter of electricity in Europe[0], just a hair behind Germany (#3 (Sweden) is half of #2, number 4 is half of #3) (it is also worth considering that France's electricity is almost an order of magnitude lower in emissions[1]). It is also worth considering which countries were reliant upon Russian gas, and France had low reliance whereas Germany had a high dependency[2,3] and remember that Europe would still be importing gas from Russia if they could[4]. Germany also had increased reliance on Russian gas over the last 20 years, and had a sharp increase in gas intake post 2011 (Fukushima)[5].

So let's put it this way: Europe hit a energy crisis where Russian gas played a major role[6] (but to be clear, not the only). Who picks up the slack? What what does that country use to generate most of its electricity?

Lack of plants:

A problem here is that in Europe only a handful of plants have gone into operation in the last 20 years. Ukraine got two (2005 and 2006), Romania got one in 2007, Belarus got one in '21, Finland got one a week ago, and that's it. 5 reactors in 20 years[7]. The majority of the existing reactors came online in the 80s. Yes, there's been several proposals but nuclear power has long been politically contentious, especially in Europe. See Germany who only even considered stopping their shutdowns (which were politically motivated) due to the power crisis. You'll notice that most environmental scientists suggest shutting down all fossil fuels before nuclear, but this was not the path taken. While yes, this does technically mean that you're right in that nuclear didn't come to the rescue but I'd argue that this is akin to saying that a hammer isn't useful in woodworking because you never took it out of the toolbox. This is not the same as (properly) using the hammer and it failing to meet the demands of the task. Or maybe a different analogy we can say is that it is unfair to claim a consumable resource (plants need to be replaced, including renewables) is useless when you do not replace that resource for decades. We're not going to talk about costs of plants because I expect everyone on HN to understand scale, momentum, and working knowledge are all significant factors.

Now there is another factor that plays an important role, and this conversation can't happen in good faith without mentioning it: France's "nuclear crisis"[8]. This was an unfortunate event and a "perfect storm" if you will. So we know most of these reactors have been operating since the 80's, it is only natural to expect repairs. Unfortunately in early 2020 there was a global pandemic and in response many planned outages were delayed or reduced in 2021[9], with the expectation that a lot of the slack could be picked up in 2022. Unfortunately, a certain country invaded another country and the invading country had an control over one of the major power sources of that Europe.

Conversations about nuclear power are often terrible online. Neither the nuclear bros nor the anti-nuclear bros are arguing from a scientific perspective. Both climate and nuclear energy are incredibly complex and nuanced issues. First order approximations are not "good enough" and what many claim is "common sense" or "obvious" isn't (and obvious post hoc isn't obvious in situ). To be clear, the scientific consensus has been to focus on renewables but not take nuclear off the table (note that this is not the position you find either camp arguing for online). While nuclear bros often advocate for high levels of nuclear power, no reasonable energy/climate scientist would suggest this. Similarly, no reasonable energy/climate scientist will say that nuclear should be rejected while we're still using fossil fuels (the argument is if we need nuclear or not for a future world of zero carbon energy production, but this is highly nuanced). Nuclear bros argue for thorium breeder reactors due to their lower waste levels and proliferation risk, not knowing that these are not major concerns in the community and can be solved in other ways. Anti-nuclear bros argue about cost but ignore the build-out issue, history, progression of nuclear technology, and the polarizing political sphere surrounding the issue. While I am certain that most, if not all, these comments are well intentioned and people are trying to make the world a better place, that does not mean that the arguments are being done in good faith (high confidence + low domain knowledge = bad faith).

I frequently argue (including here on HN) that this over confidence and tribalism prevents actually resolving these issues. I've provided a lot of resources here and I think everyone should be careful in how they discuss complex subjects online. I understand that many of you are passionate, but make sure that this passion isn't tribal. If you're really passionate about something then you'll invest a proportional amount of energy to learn about the subject. Are you passionate about fixing problems or expressing you opinion? Are your opinions able to be changed or are you just "educating" others? We live in a highly specialized world, it is not a demerit on your intelligence to not be knowledgeable in a specific domain, but it is to speak confidently about domains you have no expertise in. Let's all try to encourage this behavior and hold ourselves to high standards. This happens in every nuclear thread and I hope we can learn to be better than Reddit.

[0] https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/electricity_export...

[1] https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/FR

[2] https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2022/07/19/blog-how-a-...

[3] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/how-much-does-germany-n...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_in_the_European_energy_...

[5] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/key-challenges-ha...

[6] https://www.jpmorgan.com/insights/research/europe-energy-cri...

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_reactors_in_Euro...

[8] https://web.archive.org/web/20230307020200/https://www.nytim...

[9] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil...

Nuclear works at night and in locations that aren't good for solar or wind generation. Nuclear with a relatively small number of generating sites feeding a large distributiion network fits in with our existing electricial infrastrucure better than the widely dispersed generation that solar and wind provide.

We need leadership that will just clear the way for liquid metal, fast neutron reactors that don't need refined fuel and produce less waste. If you believe that carbon emissions are an existential threat to human survival, it's time to stop fretting about nuclear proliferation and waste disposal. The challenges of those issues are tiny compared to global climate change.

The truth is that the once the power plant is built it generates clean power for decades. That power can then be used to power things like building new power plants.

What are the total carbon emissions over the life time of usage including construction, operation, maintenance, and destruction of a nuclear plant vs a fossil plant?

I wouldn't be surprised if a nuclear plant emits far less carbon overall than a fossil-powered plant while operational for the same power generation and lifetime of use when considering those factors.

https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/documentaries/containmen...

How can we contain or dispose of some of the deadliest, most long-lasting substances ever produced? How to we ensure it lasts well beyond the possibility of our civilization currently and mark it in such a way that its clear to others its dangerous. Without those answers I am not sure how we can argue its better/safer.

How do you think those windmill parts and solar panels get from the manufacturers to the end users?

I personally don’t see solar and wind able to provide enough energy to electrify an entire nation’s fleet of freight haulers. Nuclear, maybe — assuming they build a bunch of little plants so a truck can “refuel” in the middle Wyoming away from large populations.

Maybe Wyoming isn’t the best example as it’s always windy there but the point stands.

> Whereas nuclear power accounts for all materials through the decommissioning phase—and surprisingly, 90 percent of all materials from a nuclear power plant can be recycled—compared to old wind and solar platforms, which generate millions of tons of waste

And the answer is that it's lower than most renewables: https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and...

Or you can keep reading it and see that it literally says "It is a misnomer to say renewables are carbon-free compared to nuclear power." And discusses the very things you stated was disingenuously discounted.

First, there are no sources of energy that are carbon free, only those who's energy production does not result in carbon emissions. This is why we say zero "net" emissions and why so many are working on sequestration methods (reforestation, soil management, natural sequestration, artificial sequestration). All your arguments are universal and not unique to nuclear, renewables, nor fossil fuels.

Second, the "and" in the thesis is important. The line did not make the claim that renewables are not carbon-free, but rather that of zero-emission generators, renewables are insufficient to power the grid alone.

Reading the article, it isn't too bad. There's a clear bias and ignores some aspects, it isn't too different from any other opinion piece. It at least isn't making the absurd argument that nuclear should be even the dominant producer of energy. I think the author would agree that renewables play an important role in our future of energy but they are making the argument to not take nuclear off the table and trying to convince others (aka propaganda) with an exaggerated and incomplete argument.

I agree that the article is deserving of criticism but I think we need to be a bit more specific. I also agree that the article is propaganda, but I do not agree that just because something is propaganda that it can be trivially dismissed. The word is too vague and encompasses all discussions where politics is part of the discussion. The word is like "conspiracy", common usage does not reflect the actual definition and is often used to dismiss a claim rather than address it.

Propaganda:

> information, ̶e̶s̶p̶e̶c̶i̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶a̶ ̶b̶i̶a̶s̶e̶d̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶m̶i̶s̶l̶e̶a̶d̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶n̶a̶t̶u̶r̶e̶, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.

Which is a good thing. Energy demand is centralized in big population centers, so centralized production is easier to deploy.

One of the big issues with renewables is that due to the low energy density and geographic variations in power output, they often need to be built far away from where energy is in demand. This puts more strain on transmission networks: https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/11/30/178686...

> Nuclear power is objectively not safe, with the one caveat that we are talking about long term. In the long term even one accident is absolutely devastating to entire regions of the planet. This risk is simply NOT acceptible.

Incorrect. People seem to forget that we detonated hundreds of nuclear warheads in the atmosphere. Chernobyl was exposed to the atmosphere and burned for weeks. Chernobyl really was the worst-case scenario: an explosive meltdown in a reactor with no secondary storage. It really doesn't get any worse than that. We already have good data on the adverse impact of nuclear incidents, and while bad they're not nearly as devastating as you make them out to be.

2. Just some more than we have now.

3. Yes!

4. Yes!

Seriously though, I just want some reactor construction to spin up with non ancient reactor designs, to replace some fossil fuel plants. PBR[1] sounds good to me... but what do I know? There are experts who can decide this.

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble-bed_reactor

2) 200% of current demand, to account for the rise in demand caused by climate change

3) whatever we can build now

4) Only governments genuinely have the ability to build nuclear reactors without any outside intervention or help. Even when they are built supposedly privately there's government involvement to make sure radioactive material isn't diverted or dumped. I can't imagine anyone but the most extreme libertarian wants private unregulated nuclear reactors.

2) However much is necessary to create a stable grid with as minimal an amount of electricity coming from fossil fuel usage possible. I do prefer renewable to nuclear, but I think society scale energy storage isn’t going to be a solved problem in a reasonable time frame. If we only need 20% nuclear to phase out most fossil fuel plants, great. I don’t know the exact point where experts expect that renewables without storage would stop being able to create a stable grid without the existing plants.

3)Ideally MSRs, but given they’re still not completely proven out it’s probably best to start building traditional immediately and switch if the currently in production MSR plants do in fact work out.

4)Start nationalized at least, since they’re more expensive than private ownership allows but necessary for the public good (also, yeah, don’t really want private ownership of traditional reactors). If MSRs work out and economies of scale kick in a little as we build out more plants, maybe private ownership will be viable at some point.

Maybe they train GPT-25 only when the demand is low enough the power producers basically give it away?

Unfortunately, the discussion is so emotionally and politically charged, that I'm afraid no one is actually properly calculating all the costs, and risks etc.

Well both side complain about truth and disinformation, and this affirmation is far from reality.

Because they're economically incompatible.

Nuclear is very expensive to build, and wants to run 24/7 to offset costs. They also want to run continuously.

The problem is that renewables are cheap, but intermittent.

So take an economically rational marketplace. I can either buy the same amount of power for $1, or for $2, what do you think I'd choose? $1 of course. Power is power, I don't want to pay more than I must.

So any time I can buy renewables for $1, nuclear makes no revenue. This pushes off its payoff into the future. This isn't a good situation to be in. Time goes by, components get older, people get impatient, more renewables keep getting built.

Now you're a bank considering a loan for nuclear you think might be paid off in 20 years. Or if renewables keep growing, maybe in 40. Or if they really take off, maybe never. Risking billions that way doesn't sound enticing, now does it?

If nuclear made money we wouldn't be seeing these blog posts show up over and over. Money solves many problems and greases many palms. If nuclear was profitable, every other problem would be solvable. Not enough safety? Money can buy that. Too close to people? Money can put a plant further away. Legal problems? Money pays for lawyers.

The logical end state of all this seems to be that renewables kill off the profitability of nuclear badly enough that nobody builds it (relatively speaking). Eventually the grid destabilizes and this forces urgent measures to shore things up. The final state I imagine is a very renewable-heavy grid, after a period of chaos in the middle.

We tried four reactors back then, using a new regulatory process that was supposed to speed construction and reduce costs. Instead, costs and timelines ballooned 3x. Two of the four reactors were abandoned half-way through construction, resulting in rate payers holding the bag for billions of dollars and no Wh delivered to the grid. Executives are being criminally prosecuted for fraud.

The other two reactors are supposed to complete late this year, but I don't think any honest person should rely on such timelines when they inevitably slip every single time.

Nuclear is not something we can realiably build. We are bad at big construction jobs to begin with. But when you add in training up massive new workforces for extremely specialized welding or concrete pour skills, it's hugely inefficient because we don't know how to utilize this labor effectively. People sit idle for months, waiting for their chance to work. Just a gigantic clusterfuck of logistical (mis)management.

And construction productivity has stagnated since the 70s, while manufacturing productivity has gone through the roof. We should use our limited construction capacity to build factories to manufacture things, not spend it on nuclear reactors. $15B spent on solar or battery production facilities will churn out many many GW year after year of additional capacity, whereas it only buys a single GW of nuclear. And that's in the best case scenario where we actually finish the damn reactor...

Right now, the way we're using intermittent sources is to shut fossil fuel plants off when renewables are producing and turn them back on when they are not producing. Intermittent sources are essentially supplementing a grid based in fossil fuels.

If we use nuclear plants to fill in the gaps in intermittent sources' production curves, then we'd have already built enough nuclear capacity to run the grid without intermittent sources so we'd just run nuclear plants at full capacity and eliminate the need for intermittent sources.

The problem isn't convincing J Random Person off the street, the problem is convincing somebody who has control of billions of dollars that there's any chance the investment will make financial sense.

Until there's a halfway compelling financial argument, until there's a way to reliably build a reactor on a realistic timeline, nuclear is a pipe dream.

Once there is a way that nuclear can be built and makes financial sense, there are tons of locations that would welcome a new large source of employment nearby. For example, nearly all of the current nuclear reactors that are aging out across the US are in cities that don't want to lose the jobs and don't mind having nuclear nearby.

Incandescent lights have been banned for years in most European countries to speed up the adoption of led-lighting. Street lights are being replaces by leds. Tax cuts and subsidies are given for energy efficient housing.

Nuclear is THE ONLY SOLUTION. We would need such a hilarious, painful amount of renewable energy sources just to survive, let alone thrive. Or, we could just build a few thousand reactors around the world.

> The United States under a Biden administration, similar to the British, would move towards an unsustainable, and national security risk by eliminating fossil fuels, and killing people who need electricity and global security the West provides.

> The weather and climate are dynamic and ever-changing. Thus, this hysteria is a giant ploy to deprive people of freedom and liberty instead of providing them with affordable and flexible energy.

Googling the author you can see he works for a lobby group called E4 Carolinas whos biggest funders include Duke Energy and Dominion Energy both massive energy companies with a massive fossil fuel portfolio.

I think we can conclude the author has some obvious biases which benefit his employer.

    Initial investment in factories:
        Solar: $ 11 billion
        Wind:  $212 billion

    Initial investment in factories:
        Solar: $212 billion
        Wind:  $ 11 billion

Nuclear produced only half of that in recent years.

The whole renewable energy production covers ~40% of all the energy produced. Despite 16 years of almost full stop of expansion.

https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Branchen-Unternehmen/Energ...

Another way to put this is that variable sources of energy are variable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_Uranium_Mining_Prod...

I am not sure what other "consumables" are involved.

https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-just-cant-quit-russia...

Yes, Germany is a large net exporter of electricity.

Taken too far you would get into this weird situation of over-spending for capacity, and having surplus wind energy when it's windy, while still burning gas when it's not. But as a moderate contribution to a grid, 10 - 30% of supply perhaps, especially where gas is a primary source already, it makes a lot of sense, in some places.

I hope no one expects to actually run everything on 100% wind power.

2. There's a few ways to transport power

3. Wind isn't the only renewable, though it can be really cheap

At this point, I'm having to remind myself of the xkcd lucky 10,000, because it feels disingenuous to even need to ask.

And I'm saying that as someone who really hopes the new fusion companies succeed, and that nuclear should have been used to move the world away from coal (and ship fuel) in the 60s onwards, and lament the risks and accidents were handled so poorly by the politicians.

But now? Meh.

The answer is tech from the 2000s, not 1900s tech.

Power industry folks are used to a field where tech hasn't changed for decades. It's time to get over that and use the new things that have been developed that will reduce the cost of energy, increase energy abundance, and advance society. We need to let go of the obsolete.

What I mean is the spent nuclear fuel must be kept cool at all costs, backups are finite. There's already been a few accidents and many close calls, none as bad as they could of been. Scale up nuclear to find how to bad it can get.

The NRC said so itself - https://www.science.org/content/article/spent-fuel-fire-us-s...