Europe Is Losing Nuclear Power Just When It Needs Energy

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-01-31/europe-s-nuclear-power-plants-are-disappearing-just-as-energy-crisis-hits-hard

by throwawayffffas • 4 years ago

244 461 4 years ago

bloomberg.com

guerby• 4 years ago

https://archive.is/jNMjM

throwawayffffas9• 4 years ago

On a relevant note first plasma in ITER is still 3 years out. https://www.iter.org/construction/construction

pfdietz30• 4 years ago

And it won't use tritium until 2035 or later. And it will never be able to breed tritium, or operate on DT for more than a few weeks total. And it's on a technological dead end to anything that could be competitive, even with fission.

throwawayffffas9• 4 years ago

I am not any kind of expert in the matter, but I don't buy the technological dead end argument.

But still if everything worked perfectly I would hazard we would still be at least 20-30 years out of a commercial project that would cost billions and take a decade to build.

momenti• 4 years ago

There is a chance that it won't be commercially viable. See e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_0VEmN7Bg8

throwawayffffas9• 4 years ago

I was under the impression ITER was a research and development project, not intended to be commercially viable, but essentially prove the technology as working.

ZeroGravitas6• 4 years ago

A lot of assumptions wrapped up in that short headline.

"Europe is losing ICE vehicles, just as it needs to transport people."

acidburnNSA• 4 years ago

Except ICE vehicles are not providing a unique firm low carbon capability like nuclear is.

roenxi• 4 years ago

It is - frankly - shocking that elite culture has drifted so far into the world of make believe that something as simple as energy security has become a political battleground. If there was a single issue that the entire political body of a country has a stake in, that is the issue.

And yet, somehow, we're seeing Europe in this position where they're trying to go it without energy. The figures out of the UK [0] are jaw dropping to me. 44% reduction in energy production, 20% in electricity and with a growing population!

The country must be populated entirely by monks and ascetics if they are putting up with this.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_Kingdom#O...

automatic6131• 4 years ago

Yup, Brit here. It beggars belief. And the leaders will continue to be so stupid, because the other party will also make this mistake too.

ogogmad2• 4 years ago

What happened to the nuclear reactor built with the help of China, with George Osborne's approval?

kodemager• 4 years ago

Maybe, but those of us who grew up in the wake of Chernobyl are likely never going to support nuclear power regardless of the facts. You can ignore that fact, but that doesn’t mean society is somehow magically going to readjust to what is “right” or “scientific”.

I say this, not in defence of the anti-nuclear generations of Europe but more so to explain why the political climate is how it is.

Beyond this comes money. Our technology sector is invested in basically every sort of green energy, except for nuclear. All our advantages in making money lie in things like wind and solar power, and if we were to truly adopt nuclear power, it’s very likely that all that money would leave Europe and go into Chinese or Indian technology. Which may be great for the planet, but you’re just not going to see European politicians stand in line to transfer energy sector jobs in the hundreds or thousands out from Europe.

It is what it is, but this isn’t likely to change in the next 40 so years.

samwillis4• 4 years ago

Beyond this comes money. Our technology sector is invested in basically every sort of green energy, except for nuclear.

Fortunately (at least in my opinion) this is changing, Rolls-Royce are developing new "mini nuclear reactors". We have the technological expertise and it looks like we are beginning to see the political and financial motivation too.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59212983

samwillis4• 4 years ago

Also as a brit, there is some other truly mystifying things happening with gas.

I was reading yesterday how despite the gas price explosion we are seeing, which is crippling for many low income households, we actually exported twice the quantity of gas September - November 2021 than in the same period in 2020. Clearly privately owned gas companies currently have the right to sell to the highest bidder, even if it is oversees. But, right now, the UK government needs to be addressing the cost of energy crisis that is impacting its citizens and it isn't a supply issue at all.

https://www.energylivenews.com/2022/01/31/how-did-the-uk-man...

ajmurmann2• 4 years ago

Maybe it's needed more "overseas" if they are paying more? Seems like the market is working.

arlort2• 4 years ago

This is not an elite thing.

In the countries where nuclear is shut down / being shut down it's often so with large majorities in public opinions supporting it

sofixa4• 4 years ago

That's why we use representative democracies, sometimes tough unpopular decisions are needed for the "greater good". The majority of public opinion would be against a tax hike to fix infrastructure that's falling apart or new nuclear power plants, but both can be vital ( or otherwise people die by bridges falling apart or pollution).

throwaway0a5e3• 4 years ago

This is not an elite thing.

He's not talking about the Koch, Gates and Murdoch type elites

He's talking about the "I read the New Yorker and shop at whole foods" type elites who make the bulk of the noise and drive most of the discourse around these sorts of issues despite their landscaper being the one who's actually hurt by high energy costs.

rr808• 4 years ago

I think people these days are really disconnected from the real world. Earlier generations lived through wars, saw extreme poverty, food and energy rationing. Now people have never lived without anything important.

tim3332• 4 years ago

Your link has

2004 2,619 produced 135 imported

2016 1,465 produced ? imported

I imagine ? is quite a lot. I'm not sure how they do the numbers but we import a lot of gas and oil. I'd guess the drop in produced has more to do with north sea oil running out than greenery.

ChuckNorris892• 4 years ago

Politicians and the people who support them push for many self-damaging policies based purely on ideologies, just because they sound good (getting rid of nuclear, going green) without considering the direct consequences of these actions (how do we serve our energy needs until we become fully green?).

That's like selling both your kidney to buy a prosthetic robot arm and wonder why you're not feeling well despite the upgrade. Sadly you can't argue on the pros of nuclear as you'd get drowned out by the "But Chernobyl blew up" shouts.

Rich anti-nuclear countries like Austria call themselves green while supplementing their energy needs via imports from coal burning Czech Republic and nuclear powered Slovenia. Laughable. This loophole in the EU should be stopped. If you import dirty energy you should also be responsible for the equivalent CO2 emissions you imported and not be allowed to call yourself green when clearly you just outsource your pollution.

rad_gruchalski4• 4 years ago

without considering the direct consequences of these actions

And the best example of that in Germany is Hambacher Forst. Return to coal is a direct result of moving away from nuclear. Nuts.

emsign2• 4 years ago

Germany did not return to coal. That's simply not true. The coal under Hambacher Forest isn't even needed and it won't be used up either.

cycomanic2• 4 years ago

It's not, really. You can actually see that both nuclear and coal have been replaced by wind and solar in Germany. The issue about Hambacher Forst is politics and political lobbies. The area is owned by RWE since the 1960s and the open pit mine next door exists for much longer than the decision to get out of nuclear. It's simply convenient to blame this on the "Atomaustieg" as part of a lobbying campaign.

It's also interesting that nobody was saying that the Atomaustieg was responsible for increased coal use in 2020. Because it's only last year that was an exceptional year, which saw a uptick in coal vs wind.

tasuki• 4 years ago

imports from coal burning Czech Republic and nuclear powered Slovenia.

I'm a Czech hence biased, but hey we've got two nuclear power plants! (and yes the Austrians hate them)

According to Our World in Data [0], Czech Republic is 15% nuclear while Slovenia is 18% nuclear. We both have different primary sources of power (Czechia coal at 37%, Slovenia oil at 39%). I take offense at your statement "Czechia coal Slovenia nuclear"!

If it weren't for Austria, we'd likely have more nuclear and less coal. We wouldn't have knoedel and schnitzel though, so perhaps it evens out.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/czech-republic?cou...

fsflover7• 4 years ago

throwaway10122• 4 years ago

Germany spent something like a trillion euro on renewables and still produces much more CO2 per capita per year than France who spent 200 billion on nuclear (and whose nuclear industry is forced to bail out competitors now)

One would think "green" movements (greenpeace, and modern green parties) have been infiltrated by coal/oil/gas lobbies as so far the only winner out of no nuclear yes wind policy is Vladimir Putin and not the environment

raphaelj• 4 years ago

Past spending are actually not relevant, as renewable got significantly cheaper, while nuclear got more expensive.

Solar is today 5x less expensive than it was in 2010[1].

---

[1] https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication...

bryanlarsen12• 4 years ago

And a large part of why it's cheaper is because Germany spent so much, driving the costs down the production learning curve. The whole world, including Germany, will benefit tremendously from that spending.

thrown_222• 4 years ago

Coal is free underground which is in the same league as saying that solar is cheep at noon.

That something this simple is never talked about when it comes to renewables is a monument to peoples ability to ignore the obvious.

modo_mario3• 4 years ago

Much of the reason nuclear got more expensive is that there's been such a big dip in construction. Lessons are having to be relearned and we're paying for it. That and so many politicians and contractors getting away with being leeches whilst dragging out projects in some countries. Comparisons of construction projects of the same design in china vs europe would make one cry.

Also much of the price reduction for renewables are in things like solar which has other issues like it's shorter lifespan paired with it's recycling being basically a joke/scam.

Additionally if you throw a solar panel or windmill in the trash before it's proper and well done the cost of it's energy in the calculation goes up just the same.

steeve• 4 years ago

Rain water will always be cheaper than tap water.

cedricgle• 4 years ago

I am perplex. Solar energy for example don't take into account the cost of renewal of the panel (every 20-30 year) and the cost of recycling / storing the toxic photovoltaic liquid [1]. The IRENA projects[2] they can fully recycle this toxic waste and recreate value from it, which is bold imo.

[1] https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/23/solar-panel-waste-a-d...

[2] https://www.irena.org/publications/2016/Jun/End-of-life-mana...

willis9363• 4 years ago

Not modern. Greenpeace was founded 50 years ago with an anti-nuclear agenda. They call themselves "green" because a wolf wouldn't dress up as a wolf, but rather a sheep.

gmm1990• 4 years ago

Pretty sure they started out being opposed to live nuclear weapons testing. Not sure what there exact position is currently, but calling them wolves seems unfair.

usrbinbash2• 4 years ago

Sadly that won't change as long as the red herring "BUT CHERNOBYL BLEW UP!" still works in public opinion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accident...

throwawayffffas9• 4 years ago

From my point of view, it's not about a competition between nuclear and solar/wind/etc.

It's about the choices that led to shutting down nuclear instead of coal, oil and the green-lighting of gas projects.

If we were serious about our co2 predicament the conservation and refurbishment of nuclear capacity would be as high as a priority as taking fossil fuel plants offline.

And then after electricity production related emissions has dropped to virtually zero we could have a great discussion on how to go forward.

fsflover7• 4 years ago

One would think "green" movements (greenpeace, and modern green parties) have been infiltrated by coal/oil/gas lobbies

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30162474

squarefoot2• 4 years ago

Building thousands nuclear plants for every country wouldn't suffice if most of their energy is wasted to mine cryptocurrencies -> make money -> build more mining farms that require more power -> more power plants -> more money, etc. It should be clear now that this endless loop is not going to scale and energy prices are going to soar no matter how many nuclear plants we build, because all available one will be used anyway by people who could still sustain higher energy prices. The problem is not the lack of energy. Actually we'd have plenty if someone didn't waste most of it for just one damn thing that produces nothing of real value in return while slowly killing the planet.

ryan93• 4 years ago

Crypto uses less than 1% or something. What are you talking about?

llampx• 4 years ago

Its the HN pet peeve.

stuaxo2• 4 years ago

It has a pathetic amount of transactions.

If it's adopted to any extent it will need a lot more than that.

paganel• 4 years ago

If anything, it's the upcoming mass transition to EVs that worries me, suddenly the 80-year-old grandma from some village in the Carpathians will have to compete on the same deregulated energy/power market against a fancy lawyer from Luxembourg who drives his 150-170k Tesla or Porsche.

bitexploder• 4 years ago

Is this not a little hyperbole? Bitcoin is estimated to use the power of a “small country”. Much of mining happens in China. Surely that is not a primary factor in energy usage right now. It’s still not a sustainable tech IMO, but is that really “the problem”?

danuker4• 4 years ago

Much of mining happens in China.

Not since they banned it, resulting in a lot of the hash power moving abroad. Only 20% or so that stays underground.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/18/chinas-underground-bitcoin-m...

squarefoot2• 4 years ago

Is this not a little hyperbole?

Unfortunately it isn't. Do you trust the Financial Times, Reuters and Forbes? They're not exactly some treehugger fanzine.

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcontent%2...

(necessary to remove paywall)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tedknutson/2022/01/20/crypto-en...

https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/kosovo-bans-cryp...

danuker4• 4 years ago

Crypto mining needs cheap energy, and household and nuclear electricity is anything but.

If anything, it helps suppliers monetize the load which would otherwise be wasted, like unexpected peaks in solar or wind production.

IF it happened that crypto mining drives electricity prices up, the economy would reach a new balance with mining included.

In any case, crypto mining pays carbon tax as any other industry. If I get sound money in exchange, I agree to pay the transaction fees, which will in turn offset those expenses.

Zigurd4• 4 years ago

There are cryptocurrencies that do not need more power than any other kind of computing because they do not rely on proof-of-work. Proof of work is a waste at any price. Better to use low cost renewable power for synfuels for aviation or other high value applications.

matkoniecz• 4 years ago

if most of their energy is wasted to mine cryptocurrencies

This is not ahppening at all, so not sure why you mention completely absurd scenarios.

throw1234651234• 4 years ago

Try "build nuclear powerplants to meet demand" - Bitcoin stops mining as much as. Ethereum switches to proof of stake. Other coins switch from proof of work too. Crypto energy demands drop. We are left with a bunch of powerplants hanging out providing surplus / super cheap power. Humanity levelled up, whoo.

danjac• 4 years ago

The problem is that for much of the current generation of politicians in power, particularly in Germany, all thought about nuclear power has been frozen in time since 1985.

Furthermore you have bought-and-paid-for members of the establishment like Gerhard Schröder who have a vested interest in shutting down nuclear power plants.

myspy2• 4 years ago

We could've partially solved the problem with steady construction of wind farms which were politically held back in the last 10 years.

ryan_j_naughton2• 4 years ago

Wind generally can't provide base load due to its sporadic nature. They really aren't substitutes until we get cheap energy storage

rekoil10• 4 years ago

I'm from Sweden, and we've also been shutting down reactors, but Germany is the biggest offender in Europe on this particular issue, I hope Germans are raising hell about this at home just like I try to over here.

Sweden is planning for super energy intensive green steel, the Northvolt battery production and recycling facility, huge datacenters for Microsoft/Google/Amazon/Facebook, and on top of that a rapidly accelerating electrification of private vehicles. To cover this they are planning to expand hydro, but the estimates I've seen are for an additional 600MW which is literally nothing in context (green steel alone is estimated to need 9000MW) and will do fuck all for the new requirements from the above, it's fucking looney tunes.

I personally think the environmentally best short-term solution would be for all the shut down but technically still usable reactors, in countries like Sweden and Germany, to be turned back on while we construct new safer and more future proof ones.

I should buy a UPS.

VyperCard7• 4 years ago

The German reactors have been run in maintenance mode. They cannot be switched on again

myspy2• 4 years ago

So what is the current state of affairs with nuclear on CO2 neutrality? Last I heard, in its life time it is not CO2 neutral due to mining and storing the fuel. Are these solved problems?

rad_gruchalski4• 4 years ago

Consider this: Hambacher Forst and return to brown coal in Germany is a direct effect of moving away from nuclear. That would be a great background to the total CO2 math.

usrbinbash2• 4 years ago

Almost nothing human technology does is "CO2 Neutral".

The question isn't CO2 neutrality, but "How much worse is the alternative". And when the alternative is to burn Coal, Oil and Gas, Nuclear power wins by a landslide.

Secondly:

Fossil Fuels have to be mined, transported and stored as well. The components of Wind and Solar energy farms have to be constructed from resources which have to be mined and processed. Power plants, be they coal, nuclear, solar, whatever, need to be constructed and maintained.

rory• 4 years ago

By that standard, no energy source is carbon neutral since wind and solar also require mining and construction.

To our best estimate, the footprint of nuclear is a bit higher than solar and wind, but much closer to them than fossil fuels.

e.g.: https://www.carbonbrief.org/solar-wind-nuclear-amazingly-low...

Edit: see page 539 here for a better comparison https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5...

caoilte13• 4 years ago

It's negligable at current levels, but at some point in the next 40 years we will start to run short of easily mineable uranium.

Some of the other ways we might have to mine uranium then are carbon intensive. But research is being done. So it depends.

stjohnswarts5• 4 years ago

It really is all relative, it can essentially be carbon negative in a sense if you use coal as a baseline for damage and ability to reverse global warming.

DrBazza7• 4 years ago

From my aged perspective, this is reaping the "green benefit" from the 70s and 80s, when there were world wide activists campaigning against nuclear power for "reasons" (largely the Cold War). If you think green activists are something new, it's because you're "young".

We're reaping what we sowed back then: the "brainwashing" of the public that unquestioningly accept that nuclear power is 'bad' and tightly linked to nuclear weapons and death.

Despite the fact that nuclear power stations do not have to produce "weapons grade" plutonium/whatever and, I'll repeat this until I'm blue in the face, has been responsible for smallest number of deaths of any form of energy generation and produce the lowest amount of CO2 (i.e. zero, other than construction). It's entirely likely more people die in a day world wide from fossil fuel pollution and production than have ever died from nuclear accidents.

The trouble, as ever, is time. “Any investment decisions you make now aren’t going to come to fruition until the 2030s,” said Osbaldstone, the research director at Wood Mackenzie. “Nuclear isn’t an answer to the current energy crisis.”

As the saying goes "the best time to build X was yesterday".

Careful what you wish for. The millions of tons of CO2 we could have avoided emitting in Europe...

“Nuclear isn’t an answer to the current energy crisis.”

Sorry, but to use an old quote, nuclear is the worst solution to the current energy crisis, apart from all the others.

dachryn• 4 years ago

ironically, that same could now be said about our gas crisis in Europe, where we handover immense leverage into the control of Russia.

ZeroGravitas6• 4 years ago

I'll repeat this until I'm blue in the face, has been responsible for smallest number of deaths of any form of energy generation and produce the lowest amount of CO2 (i.e. zero, other than construction).

Will you stop repeating this if I explain why it's false?

So first up, the stat is usually fatalities per TwH, since that skews things in Nuclear's direction, not just number of fatalities which would be won by some obscure but not very successful power source.

Second, even with the correct metric, solar and wind are now beating nuclear and projected to continue to do so, widening the gap over time. Comparing the very start of the renewable rollout gives misleading stats as the total power generated is low, and many stats that get quoted on this are more than a decade out of date.

You can build a wind turbine and ritually sacrifice someone on completion of the build and the fatalities per TwH is infinite as it's not generated any power yet, but with every year of operation it gets lower.

Basically the same applies to carbon output, nuclear does well, but wind/solar/nuclear have been basically tied on both metrics unless you're relying on some very, very old data.

Of course if you have a limited amount of money to spend, then you'll generate more energy and save more lives with whatever the cheaper form of energy is, so we should really take that into consideration too.

https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

schnitzelstoat3• 4 years ago

But it doesn't matter anyway - wind and solar should complement to nuclear, not to replace it.

This year we saw weaker summer winds in Europe which is part of what has caused the current energy crisis. These weaker winds are expected to become more common as climate change continues.[1]

Nuclear has the benefit that it's reliable. If you design a plant to output X gigawatts - it'll still be able to do so regardless of the weather.

[1] https://theconversation.com/what-europes-exceptionally-low-w...

dmitriid11• 4 years ago

the total power generated

Total power generated doesn't matter as much as you think it does. Base load and load following matter never factor into the starry-eyed discussions of renewable power sources. Weak winds at night? Boom, suddenly you require other means of producing energy.

shafyy5• 4 years ago

Exactly this. And even leaving out deaths and the high long-term environmental uncertainties of nuclear waste storage, solar and wind are already cheaper and will continue to get cheaper for the forseeable future.

Now, people will say "bUT tHe sUn dOeSn'T sHiNe aT NiGhT", and that's true for the moment. Right now, we cannot shift everything to solar and wind. But if you pay attention to battery development, you don't need to be Einstein to see that pretty soon, we will be able to cost-efficiently store large amounts of energy, distribute it and use it in a way which will solve this intermittency problem.

You can look at the data and read more about this here: https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth

throwawaylinux7• 4 years ago

So first up, the stat is usually fatalities per TwH, since that skews things in Nuclear's direction, not just number of fatalities which would be won by some obscure but not very successful power source.

Why wouldn't it be fatalaties per TWh? It's TWh by the way.

Second, even with the correct metric, solar and wind are now beating nuclear and projected to continue to do so, widening the gap over time. Comparing the very start of the renewable rollout gives misleading stats as the total power generated is low, and many stats that get quoted on this are more than a decade out of date.
You can build a wind turbine and ritually sacrifice someone on completion of the build and the fatalities per TwH is infinite as it's not generated any power yet, but with every year of operation it gets lower.

No, wind towers don't have infinite generation, require maintenance and decommissioning, and have been well around for long enough that statistics are quite well available throughout the lifecycle. People have been acting like we've been at the very start of the renewable rollout for the past 30 years, which is longer than the operating life of an average wind turbine.

Basically the same applies to carbon output, nuclear does well, but wind/solar/nuclear have been basically tied on both metrics unless you're relying on some very, very old data.

Again I've been hearing that renewable energy will solve all this and nothing else can for the past 20 years if not more. Hundreds of nuclear plants could have been built and running in that time now.

Funny thing is it keeps getting repeated. Again, and again, and again, by people who don't understand the fundamentals. Coal was doomed, completely on the way out and destroyed by wind and even solar just a couple of years ago according to these very same anti nuclear people. Today, thermal coal prices have been at record highs for the past year. Coal production is ramping in many countries and global consumption is near record highs and will take many decades to drop. Coal plants are being built with 40 year lifespans.

Where's wind and solar? Still only make up little more than 10% of global electricity generation. Most of the stats for renewables quoted includes hydro which exceeds both of them combined.

causi• 4 years ago

Second, even with the correct metric, solar and wind are now beating nuclear and projected to continue to do so, widening the gap over time.

This is true but not very significant since nuclear is still forty times safer than the next safest energy source, natural gas. Solar, nuclear, and wind all have a niche in a green future. Nuclear fits in locations with insufficient wind and solar resources and provides reliable base supply.

slothtrop2• 4 years ago

solar and wind are now beating nuclear and projected to continue to do so

Projected is the operative word.

One useful concept that was introduced a decade ago is a "cubic mile of oil", or CMO. To yield the equivalent power, one would need to produce 250,000 roof-top solar systems a day for 50 years, or 1200 turbines a week for 50 years, or 1 nuclear power plant a week for 50 years. Innovation is still desperately needed here. Nuclear has been unfairly sluggish in this department.

throwaway89434517• 4 years ago

So first up, the stat is usually fatalities per TwH, since that skews things in Nuclear's direction, not just number of fatalities which would be won by some obscure but not very successful power source.

We aren’t debating obscure energy sources anyway, so I don’t see what the point is. This is absolutely the correct unit.

solar and wind are now beating nuclear and projected to continue to do so, widening the gap over time

Rooftop solar is still losing, but yes renewables in general are still competitive. If the anti-nuclear lobby would allow nuclear to advance beyond 70s tech we could probably see a lot of advances on the nuclear side as well, especially with smaller mass-produced reactors. It’s pretty crumby to criticize nuclear when you’re putting your thumb on the scales.

Moreover, are these figures measuring the actual production or just the capacity? You need a lot more than 1TW of solar or wind capacity to produce 24TWh of energy in a 24 hour period because these energy sources aren’t reliable. You also need something to store the energy (or transmit excess energy to places that can use it)—the construction of which increases the cost, carbon footprint, and fatality count.

Frankly, all of these sources blow fossil fuels out of the water so I don’t much care which of them we use, but we should have a diverse mix for reliability and we should prioritize what works rather than waiting for a technological miracle for economically storing renewable energy.

DrBazza7• 4 years ago

Why is it false?

I'm talking about absolute numbers here, not TWh, and I'm comparing to fossil fuels, but even if we talk about just wind:

In England, there were 163 wind turbine accidents that killed 14 people in 2011. Wind produced about 15 billion kWhrs that year, so using a capacity factor of 25%, that translates to about 1,000 deaths per trillion kWhrs produced (the world produces 15 trillion kWhrs per year from all sources).
These are pretty low numbers. By contrast, in 2011 coal produced about 180 billion kWhrs in England with about 3,000 related deaths. Nuclear energy produced over 90 billion kWhrs in England with no deaths. In that same year, America produced about 800 billion kWhrs from nuclear with no deaths.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2013/09/29/forget-ea...

I'm sure deaths are going to increase in the production, erection, and servicing of tens of thousands of wind turbines, by tens of thousands of employees.

But you can simply tally up all the deaths for nuclear accidents, direct or indirect, and they're still less than other forms of energy generation.

Presumably you're disputing the deaths, but the link you gave is deaths per TWh is lower. Except by absolute deaths it's.... higher. Which was my point, and is reinforced in the quote above.

Second, even with the correct metric, solar and wind are now beating nuclear and projected to continue to do so, widening the gap over time.

Yes, deaths per TWh will go down, but power generation will go up, as there is more solar/wind, but so will deaths as more people build, install, and maintain those systems. Those absolute deaths keep rising.

throwaway0a5e3• 4 years ago

Second, even with the correct metric, solar and wind are now beating nuclear and projected to continue to do so, widening the gap over time

There is no way in even napkin math for this checks out. The amount of construction per generation capacity is orders of magnitude lower for nuclear. For nuclear you build one fancy concrete box and then feed it a fairly minimal amount of fuel for 50+yr. With wind and solar you need far more expansive facilities for equivalent generation capacity and you need to replace them far more often.

Even if you assume a zero carbon supply chain the larger supply chain means that solar and wind have a far larger environmental impact (more mines, more factories, more roads, etc, etc, etc).

Considering the amount of lip services paid to externalities in these sorts of conversations I don't know why this point keeps getting missed but I will note that is is very convenient for some people to miss it.

throw0101a7• 4 years ago

How about:

* stop shutting down current nuclear electrical generation capacity

* build more solar and wind capacity

* as more renewable capacity comes online use it retire fossil fuel generators

Once all the carbon-emitting stuff is offline then perhaps look at shutting down current nuclear.

You know: the opposite of what Germany is doing.

hypertele-Xii2• 4 years ago

You can build a wind turbine and ritually sacrifice someone on completion of the build and the fatalities per TwH is infinite as it's not generated any power yet,

Only for the first wind turbine. For your Nth wind turbine, you sum all the TwH generated by all previous turbines as well as their deaths, including those ritual sacrifices.

funklute2• 4 years ago

So first up, the stat is usually fatalities per TwH, since that skews things in Nuclear's direction

Isn't this precisely the metric you want? If you want to convince me (and perhaps others as well), I think you need to go a little more into the details why this is a bad thing. It's not obvious to me.

You can build a wind turbine and ritually sacrifice someone on completion of the build and the fatalities per TwH is infinite as it's not generated any power yet, but with every year of operation it gets lower.

Related to my above point, should it not be expected fatalities over the projected lifetime of whatever plant/turbine/etc.?

GuB-42• 4 years ago

I have conflicting data about deaths per TWh

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

Most other sources repeat either numbers.

And it is not surprising, because we are talking about very different things. Solar-related deaths are mostly people falling from rooftops, Hydro-related deaths mostly come from a single event: the Banqiao dam failure, and Nuclear-related deaths depend a lot on how you count Chernobyl and Fukushima. Coal goes through the roof, mostly because of pollution.

We simply don't know how many people die from the Chernobyl disaster, from 31 to hundreds of thousands, yes, it is that fuzzy. I think the most official number is around 4000, but who knows what number they used to make these numbers? It is probably in the fine print somewhere if really look for it.

Mining operations are also taken into account, but how deep shall we go into the supply chain? Do we count the fatalities related to the raw materials that make the plant? What about the guy who dies in a car accident going to work at the power plant?

Do these numbers even make sense or are they just politics? By carefully picking my metrics, I could probably make coal looks very safe and solar very dangerous if I wanted to.

throwawaylinux7• 4 years ago

The fossil fuel industry has had no better friend over the past 50 years than the "green" movement. It has worked so well to keep the dirtiest most polluting coal power generation viable that they could not have paid to get better lobbyists.

Following the money and principle of least surprise, you might even be forgiven to think it's very likely anti nuclear movement was funded if not founded by big coal.

fsflover7• 4 years ago

you might even be forgiven to think it's very likely anti nuclear movement was funded if not founded by big coal

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2016/07/13/are-f...

https://thebreakthrough.org/blog/the-true-face-of-the-anti-n...

major5054• 4 years ago

Why would you say something so controversial, and yet, so true?

coliveira2• 4 years ago

This is not the only area of alignment. The green movement has been pushing for "recycling" of plastics for the last decades. This is a big gift to the oil industry, that has been able to rely on a grassroots movement to put the burden of getting rid of plastic garbage on individuals through "recycling".

phicoh16• 4 years ago

It is very simple, nuclear has been a failure in Europe in the last couple of decades. Look at projects in the Finland, France and the UK. The situation would have been much better if there was a nuclear industry that could deliver in time and within budget.

A country like France with a massive amount of aging nuclear power plants is in serious trouble replacing them in time.

Fortunately, wind and solar are doing very well in reducing CO2 emissions. In the coming one or two decades, wind and solar can easily outpace nuclear in reducing CO2 emissions.

fsflover7• 4 years ago

In the coming one or two decades, wind and solar can easily outpace nuclear in reducing CO2 emissions.

This is not a fight between wind/solar and nuclear. This is a fight against coal. You should reduce the coal first, not nuclear.

tablespoon3• 4 years ago

It is very simple, nuclear has been a failure in Europe in the last couple of decades. Look at projects in the Finland, France and the UK. The situation would have been much better if there was a nuclear industry that could deliver in time and within budget.

What are the reasons for that failure? Has Europe had the same problem as the US of severe under-investment in infrastructure and withering capabilities? Is risk-aversion becoming pathological, leading to ballooning costs and complexity?

tarsinge2• 4 years ago

Fortunately, wind and solar are doing very well in reducing CO2 emissions. In the coming one or two decades, wind and solar can easily outpace nuclear in reducing CO2 emissions.

Germany has proved this is a huge lie.

Edit: to elaborate a bit, what it proves without surprise is that wind and solar can't significantly reduce CO2 without a clean baseline. By their very nature (not producing at night and without wind), and without some miraculous tech breakthrough, wind and solar can't be the major part of the mix for our developed societies, that's the hard reality of the orders of magnitudes involved here. So the question is what is the realistic plan for that baseline to complement solar and wind for at least 50% of the mix? Because the only options I see are A/Nuclear, B/Bet on imaginary storage tech, C/Bet on fusion becoming viable with decades earlier.

vkazanov2• 4 years ago

Well, nuclear power plants are not every easy to build. It takes time, knowledge, and experience. US/UK/French experience slowly degraded after this extended period of nuclear hatred. Now, when NPPs are cool again, they realised they lost core competences!

Note how Russians never stopped building NPPs so they do manage to build on time and within budget.

fundatus6• 4 years ago

Nuclear is also the most expensive energy source (total cost per MWh). Which is the real reason why "Europe is losing nuclear power".

When finished the UKs Hinkley Point C nuclear plant will probably have cost around £23 billion for ~3.000 MW which is completely insane.

arkh2• 4 years ago

3.000 MW

Well those are 3000 real MW. Not 10% when the weather is good and 0 otherwise. And it can be piloted as needed.

sofixa4• 4 years ago

£23 billion for ~3.000 MW which is completely insane

3000MW almost constantly, for what, 60-80 years? How much would the equivalent wind+ grid scale storage(multi-day) that would need to be replaced multiple times over that same lifespan cost?

DrBazza7• 4 years ago

And unfortunately, of that £23bn, something massive percentage will be government "bureaucracy" for want of a better word. If nuclear power were properly commercialised it would be cheaper. The only analogy I can think of is cost of launches for SpaceX vs NASA or ESA. SpaceX had to be efficient and make a profit, they innovated, and now are the cheapest launches available by a huge margin. Governments are always interested in nuclear for "security" reasons.

The article indeed mentions modular commercial reactors.

KptMarchewa2• 4 years ago

The already build reactors are the cheapest energy source. If you close reactor stupidly early, like 20-30 years after build, you're throwing out next 30-50 years of generation that cost basically nothing.

Mountain_Skies• 4 years ago

I wonder how much of the green movement of that era was supported by the Soviets, who had obvious motives for undermining nuclear research in the West. I could be that even long after the USSR has been wiped away that its influence remains.

fundatus6• 4 years ago

Don't think so. Taking Germany as an example, many people joined these movements after the country was in large parts affected (to this day actually) by the nuclear fallout of the disaster in Chernobyl. So I guess experiencing this first hand made a huge impact for many people. Personally I don't have a very strong opinion on nuclear (neither positive nor negative) but I also believe that you can't simply take these experiences away from people and it would be wrong to invalidate them.

7952• 4 years ago

All those things may be true, but they still count against nuclear energy. Lack of public support and lack of continuous development make building capacity more difficult to deploy in the present. Technical superiority is not enough.

Aeolun5• 4 years ago

has been responsible for smallest number of deaths of any form of energy generation

So far. The spent fuel will be around for another 10k years to potentially cause further deaths.

If we have a few more Fukushimas, we might ruin the ocean forever.

WithinReason4• 4 years ago

There's 4.5 Billion metric tons of uranium in the ocean already.

https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6191296

tablespoon3• 4 years ago

If we have a few more Fukushimas, we might ruin the ocean forever.

I could be wrong, but, IIRC, coal power has actually created more radioactive pollution than nuclear energy. It's just a far, far larger volume of less concentrated pollution.

Also, Fukushima-style pollution isn't "forever." The most radioactive stuff also decays the quickest, so it disappears relatively quickly. It looks like most of the pollution from Fukushima was caesium-137, which has a half-life of 30 years.

hourislate• 4 years ago

Part of the problem with Nuclear is tax payer exhaustion. Every time they build a plant it take 10-20 years longer and cost over runs are in the billions. And then you have costly refurbishment that runs into the billions and takes half a decade longer than anticipated. It's a shit show from day one until they finally shut it down 20 billion $$$ later...

caoilte13• 4 years ago

even then it's still a shit show because someone has to play for cleanup and storage and the nuclear company usually goes conveniently bankrupt soon after they stop producing energy.

krageon• 4 years ago

'bad'

Given that japan had a giant radioactive ocean leak and I still haven't heard comprehensive reasoning about why we think facilities for storing nuclear waste will not be slowly defunded, I think the scare quotes can go. Politics anywhere (at the moment) simply cannot be trusted to properly manage nuclear waste, so we should not be producing it.

umanwizard• 4 years ago

The alternative is producing emissions from coal and oil which we just dump into the air.

Nuclear is far and away the less harmful solution.

yholio2• 4 years ago

Nuclear had roughly 60 years to deliver clean, cheap and reliable energy. If it did all that, no amount of green lobby could have derailed it. Unfortunately, and I feel that deeply as an engineer, it did not achieve those goals.

What we have currently have are slightly evolved designs over those of the 60s, which are fantastically expensive, take up to a decade to build and three more decades to recover investment, and present a large economic failure risk - see the Nukegate fiasco. No sane financial investor wants to approach nuclear, no one wants to insure it, so the only ones willing to eat the risk are states.

Yes, we had a window in the last 20 years to reinvent fission, have new, secure and cheap reactors which cannot proliferate, are passively safe and fast to deploy. The industry and regulators remained paralyzed, structurally risk averse. That window has now closed.

Renewables are cheaper then nuclear, fast to come online and have very low risk. Storage is quickly dropping in price. Together, storage and renewables, coupled with a smart grid, will be able to cover more and more of the demand and require fossils to be fired less and less. It does not matter if you go fosil for a whole week in a year where there is no sun, wind or rain, that's still only 2% of the production and you can use very expensive mitigations like CCS, as long as you have cheap renewables in the rest of the time.

DrBazza7• 4 years ago

In the UK, every single time there's been a proposal for a reactor, there are local protests, and CND/Greenpeace turn up en masse. There's been no opportunity to deliver 'cheap' energy in terms of up-front cost, because there are so many artificial hoops to jump through - legislation, planning, and so on.

As for clean and reliable. No CO2 right? And the nuclear power stations in the UK pretty much have run continuously since they were switched on, so I'm not sure what 'reliable' means here.

WithinReason4• 4 years ago

France did it

Juliate3• 4 years ago

I don't know where you're from, but in France, we did it.

Electricity was, and is still, rather clean, and cheap, and reliable, thanks to nuclear (see https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/FR ).

And the most striking example of that is how terrifying the rise of cost of electricty is coming ahead for consumers and enterprises, mainly because of other energy sources, rather than because of nuclear itself.

Renewables are all nice and thanks (and definitely to grow and improve), but they cannot, from a long way, deliver the sheer and stable massive amount of base energy that nuclear can.

Without monstruously large storage capacities that we don't have today, cutting ourselves from nuclear is a civilisational collapse guarantee.

mnsc• 4 years ago

the "brainwashing" of the public that unquestioningly accept that nuclear power is 'bad' and tightly linked to nuclear weapons and death.

I can only speak for myself but I don't think nuclear power is bad, and I don't connect it with nuclear weapons or even deaths. It's just scary. And that's due to Chernobyl and Fukushima. And I haven't dug into the technicalities of why one of these new level 5 grand wizard mosfet reactor types can't fail in 50 years like the old ones did. Because we are smarter now? But if I look around at the current state of affairs I would say it looks like we have started to walk backwards as a civilisation. Not a rational thought I know, but it nicely feeds into that first ingrained irrational fear.

ch4s33• 4 years ago

Fukushima wasn't that bad. Very little radiation was leaked and the max number of expected cancer cases expected based on conservative modeling is ~100, mostly of the treatable thyroid variety. Most of those people will likely die of other causes.

Chernobyl was just an idiotic design that no one outside of the USSR would have built after about 1954. Graphite piles are death traps, and not building a containment building is insane.

citrin_ru• 4 years ago

But if I look around at the current state of affairs I would say it looks like we have started to walk backwards as a civilisation

If we talking about technology development than each technology has ups and downs but very often there is a gradual improvement, peak and then slow of fast fall.

I don't think nuclear energy passed its peak and degrades. Newer reactors are better than 50 years ago. The only think which can be worse - ever increasing amount of regulations added without cost-benefit analysis. Safety by any price is a dubious goal because the price may be too high to pay.

Faelian23• 4 years ago

Well, part of it is that there is a lot of FUD about nuclear. The impact of Fukushima accident is a grand total of 0 deaths.

Extract from the Report of the UNSCEAR (United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation) of 2020 :

"Since the UNSCEAR 2013 Report no adverse health effects among Fukushima Prefecture residents have been documented that are directly attributable to radiation exposure from the FDNPS accident."

You can check the source here : https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/fukushima.html. (Be warned, it's full of jargon).

For the worst nuclear accident of this century, I would argue it's pretty good !

whatever1• 4 years ago

Thanks for calling us brainwashed.

First, show us what is the progress in nuclear waste treatment. (None)

Show us the data of long time term safety of operating nuclear plants. (Every decade we have an unmitigated disaster, even with so few operating nuclear plants)

Also please show us an economically viable plan to keep sourcing Uranium for increasing demands. (Ideally one that does not involve waging wars)

tapland• 4 years ago

If you would let somone collect #2 ;)

raxxorrax2• 4 years ago

Nuclear power is not a solution to climate change. It would bind too many resources (which are also finite in economical quantities). Last year the first permanent storage worldwide opened, it is not a solved problem. Nuclear processing plants have elevated cancer rates around their location and it is still legal to dumb contaminated water into the ocean. It was only restricted for barrels.

The construction costs are very relevant, not only from a CO2 perspective. Nuclear power is not very attractive, only if you reduce environmental protection to CO2 output, which is insufficient. So no, the greens of former years were not that wrong. It is questionable to shut down working plants, but if nuclear was that feasible, it would already play a larger in energy production today. If you start building plants today, you will need at least a decade to get them operational. You can look at France for the youngest examples of that.

And would you want to mine Uranium? Have fun with that.

https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-is-nuclear-energy-good-for-...

VHRanger• 4 years ago

Base load

Any green energy plan that dismisses nuclear without addressing base load issues with a concrete plan (no future tech that doesn't exist yet) is profoundly unserious

eternalban• 4 years ago

You need to include the risk, cost, and near and long term consequences, of catastrophic failure in your analysis. That may alter the conclusion that N.E. is 'the least worst option'.

toss12• 4 years ago

And now you know why Russia supports Green Party in many countries. Such support can advance many geopolitical goals, from undermining the party opposed to your interests, e.g.,[1], to undermining forms of energy opposed to your interests, as here. How convenient is it for Russia that Germany could really use the nuclear power that was removed in no small part to strong opposition lead by the Green Party, and just as Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline is nearing completion, tying Germany's entire economy to paying Russia for energy for the next few decades? It is not a coincidence.

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/russians-...

VyperCard7• 4 years ago

You are incorrect. They are advocating against the greens and support the social democrats, because of gas gerd. Google it

zeegroen• 4 years ago

That's only one example, in a voting system that is easily gamed with vote-splitting. Do you have any more examples to show us? You mention Germany, well in that country the best buddies of Putin are the previous Christian democrats and the socialists, while the biggest opponents are the greens under the leadership of Annalena Baerbock.[1]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/25/world/europe/germany-russ...

pelasaco• 4 years ago

For sure I can understand that maybe nuclear power plants from the 70s don't have the best security for today's standards. But based in the technology leap from the 70s until today, I can imagine that a nuclear power plant being built today are much safer than those from the 70s. And you are right, death numbers by nuclear energy accidents is much smaller than with Nuclear. UN says that not more than 50 person died in Chernobyl[1]. In Fukushima: 0[2].

However that's maybe like accidents with Cars x accidents with Airplane: The statistics are irrelevant for people with intrinsic fear from Airplanes.

Resouces:

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

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56252695

emsign2• 4 years ago

Nucler power is just too risky of an investment. You can set up a solar park in weeks, nothing compared to the decades of lobbying, nimby-backlash, getting the planning permissions, financial risks and pouring billions into the nuclear plant. And you still need massive tax cuts and securities from the tax payers for it to be profitable, not to mention the government to help you out if the darn thing goes pop. A d Murphy know a nuclear power plant is one of the most complex machines we humans can built.

Why would you do that as an energy company. Ask Tepco if they are happy. They aren't. The only countries that still build nuclear are the ones that massively promote it for political reasons and it's often countries with an or wanting to have an arsenal of atomic weapons, go figure. Nuclear is a dead horse unless.

ryan_j_naughton2• 4 years ago

Nuclear costs so much because we haven't built reactors in decades. If we had been focused on nuclear innovation and deployment consistently since the 50s, then (a) we would have smaller nuclear facilities by now that are much easier to deploy and can't melt down and (b) operationalizing and deploying nuclear in general would be much cheaper.

You have a headwind to doing an activity when you rarely engage in an activity.

Chernobyl really messed us up in this regard, sadly.

caoilte13• 4 years ago

How about 3 mile island or Fukushima or countless other times where we got lucky. Nuclear disasters are an inevitability with such a complex technology. I'm all in favour of more research into MSRs, but it could easily not work out to be efficient enough to scale. And solar/wind/storage/smart grid solutions are already here and demonstrably up to the job.

throwaway4good• 4 years ago

Incredible you get downvoted for this. You are absolutely correct; nuclear is disappearing because it is too costly and basically only makes sense if you want weapons.

Look at the projects in the UK - delays for decades and massive budget overruns. Or Turkey if you to see something that is driven by dubious reasons ...

throwawayffffas9• 4 years ago

While the building of nuclear plants indeed takes decades. I would like to point out that the US navy has taken delivery of 22 nuclear power-plants in the last 20 years for the Virginia class submarines[1] alone.

If there was a real push for nuclear energy there would be a way to build a plant a year.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia-class_submarine#Boats...

throwawayffffas9• 4 years ago

Also each one of these submarines costs 2.8 billion dollars. Given the complexity of the submarines and the cost of other navy assets (1.8 billion for an Arleigh Burke destroyer), I think it would be safe to assume the cost of the reactor is under a billion dollars.

sofixa4• 4 years ago

Something as paramount to daily life shouldn't be treated as an investment. Yes, it has significant upfront costs, but it generates energy for many decades ( there are literally reactors built in the 1950s still operating) and can't work in a "free market private capital" mode, but why should it? Railways, highways, dams, etc. don't. People need reliable energy. Everyone needs climate change to be reduced, mostly through CO2 emissions. Nuclear solves both of those for a very long time, stably and predictably. No other power generation method can do this at scale while being deployable almost everywhere ( geothermal and hydro are pretty great but don't work everywhere).

_ph_5• 4 years ago

Well, in the end someone has to pay the costs and that is the tax payer. That is why amongst the choices for energy production, the overall cheapest is the most popular. The state can help boost a new technology with subsidies, but in the long term, technologies have to be cost-effective. And nuclear power plants have a very bad track record on this, especially recent projects.

The navy is not really a good comparison. First of all, they have large budgets and somewhat different risk tolerances than civil engineering. Powering submarines by solar power is also not a reasonable concept :p But Germany has some fuel-cell driven submarines, which get many benefits of nuclear ones, but of course with much shorter deployment times (max. 30 days).

Zigurd4• 4 years ago

Not just a risky investment. The downside risk is too large to be insurable. Which is another form of privatized profit and socialized risk.

caoilte13• 4 years ago

the only time you ever see these facts creeping out into the light of day is when politicians are attacking Iran for wanting to develop its nuclear programme. They all know that Iran's programme only makes sense to make nukes and they do occasionally hint at it.

jakozaur• 4 years ago

I think ramping up usage of gas is a bad policy. Even taking a little bit longer, but jumping from coal to renewables make more sense than using gas as bridge fuel.

We should either go nuclear or renewables with storage. There are still some good spots for hydro-storage as well as batteries are getting cheaper each year.

phicoh16• 4 years ago

The problem is simple. For decades, Russia was supplying natural gas reliably and for a reasonable price. Generating electricity with natural gas is trivial.

So shutting down old nuclear power and replacing it with wind/solar backed up by gas was not a crazy idea.

Was is a crazy idea is then letting 'the free market' take care of the gas supply.

Where is gets more complex, natural gas is not just used to generate electricity, but also to provide heat for lots of homes. Keep old nuclear power plants running doesn't do anything for keeping people warm.

In short, Europe has a natural gas problem, not so much a nuclear power problem.

m4rtink• 4 years ago

There are project that use waste heat from nuclear power plants for district heating:

https://keepwarmeurope.eu/news/?c=search&uid=Nsjnork8

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325110704_Construct...

mobilio• 4 years ago

And on other side coal power plants are hit with expensive CO2 quotas.

mcjiggerlog2• 4 years ago

Keep old nuclear power plants running doesn't do anything for keeping people warm.

"According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, about 43 nuclear reactors around the world—mostly in Eastern Europe and Russia—provide district heating in addition to generating electricity." (https://www.powermag.com/district-heating-supply-from-nuclea...)

phicoh16• 4 years ago

You have to compare district heating to about 7 million households using natural gas for heating in The Netherlands alone.

So keeping a few nuclear power plants open has hardly any effect on the amount of natural gas that is used.

zuzun2• 4 years ago

The big asterisk is that countries of the former Eastern bloc have the infrastructure in place. No one will keep old and expensive nuclear reactors around and build a district heating to millions of homes from scratch.

q1w26• 4 years ago

It was an incredibly short-sighted idea. ...with many people blatantly pointing out dangers of it.

Russia now has a "war chest" of almost a trillion USD. Enough to pay off all of its debt and to run the country under complete sanctions for two full years.

This is 100% because the EU, led by Germany, decided to allow natural gas to be pumped in.

pas• 4 years ago

That's not how sanctions, or realpolitik/geopolitics work, yet of course you are right. Western politics is reduced to ~2 year cycles. At best there are overarching themes that continue for a decade, then the next crisis somehow erases everything, and some new thing captures the imagination, that we of course fail to carry on to fruition.

Despite cheap money (pension funds are chock full of cash due to aging retiring population and they buy government bonds) and slack in the economy (youth unemployment) every "developed" country is full of idiots (ahem, pensioners and soon to be pensioners) clutching pearls about how spending will ruin everything. Sure, they want to play it safe, but this has an enormous cost on the current and future generations.

stjohnswarts5• 4 years ago

I wonder what they'll do when NATO goes to war with Russia over the Ukraine? I wonder if natural gas will be available at good prices from Russia then... even without the war Russia is going to be using that as blackmail for the forseeable future.

ogogmad2• 4 years ago

If democratic countries build more nuclear power plants, then won't that encourage less democratic countries to also build nuclear power plants, and then eventually nuclear weapons?

"We're not making nuclear weapons, only nuclear power plants" is what countries like Iran say. And many other countries would like them to stop.

I'm not agreeing or disagreeing, just giving a wider perspective.

cycomanic2• 4 years ago

What is it with framing this in terms of nuclear power. Many of the nuclear plants are being shut down because they are either end-of-life or were recently shut down because they were uneconomical.

Sure we can argue that we were not prepared for the recent uptick in energy demand as well as exceptionally low wind last year. However, one can just as well argue that this was a failure not to build more wind and solar capacity.

The bigger issue is that nobody wants to build nuclear power without massive subsidies, because it is simply not economical. So shouting now, "you should have build more plants" is easy, but that would have meant higher electricity prices, because that's what would be needed to economically run nuclear power.

mcjiggerlog2• 4 years ago

Many of the nuclear plants are being shut down because they are either end-of-life or were recently shut down because they were uneconomical.

This is simply not true. The main reason plants are being shutdown is because Germany, Belgium and Spain are closing them before end-of-life due to political pressure.

ComradePhil5• 4 years ago

For those who want to know more, VisualPolitk EN has covered it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYagGAgHfQ0

martin_a2• 4 years ago

Also don't forget to calculate the cost for maintenance, dismantling and safe storage of nuclear waste for probably hundreds/thousands of years.

We currently do not have _any_ viable solution other than "put it somewhere in a mountain" to get rid of nuclear waste. Nobody would propose a technology or product where this is the only solution to take care of the waste, nevertheless this seems to be fine for nuclear power.

What we really need to do is invest heavily in research and developement of storage systems of all kinds, building a more decentralized power grid (solar on every roof where possible e.g.) and getting rid of fossil fuels along the way. Everythings needs to run parallel, not one after another.

sharikous• 4 years ago

We currently do not have _any_ viable solution other than "put it somewhere in a mountain" to get rid of nuclear waste

What's the problem with that? Radiation goes away, eventually.

The main thing that we should do is to reduce the amount of "nuclear waste". Spent rods are one thing, gloves that touched a facility with some amount of radioactive materials are another

pclmulqdq• 4 years ago

Wind and solar also have large subsidies right now, although the subsidies are decreasing. Nuclear should have been given the same chance as the other carbon-free forms of energy: subsidize it on its way up the S-curve, then drop subsidies after the technology is mature.

caoilte13• 4 years ago

nuclear has always been more subsidized than wind/solar. It isn't enough. It's just crazy expensive.

rullelito2• 4 years ago

I've seen the left (which is also the main culprit, coincidentally) push for this lie. Try asking someone high up in the nuclear industry, who wasn't politically appointed, and they will tell you.

yvdriess• 4 years ago

Is there a good source for the economics surrounding large scale nuclear fission reactors?

I'm interested to see what part is the gearing cost vs building at larger scale. A large part of the cost, some nuclear engineers told me, is that there is no more large scale industry in building large nuclear reactors. Investments have dried up essentially, so next generation plants pay a steep gearing cost.

I'm from a country with about half nuclear mix. The managing company has made around 1-2B EUR in profits last year, and that is with a special 1/5 tax agreement for keeping the nuclear reactors open for longer. So those reactors built in the 70-80s appear to have been massively profitable over their lifetimes. It remains to be seen how much the decommissioning factors in.

q1w26• 4 years ago

There are many large reactor construction companies globally. Many of the reactors being built in China, are being done so by French companies.

pharke• 4 years ago

It's being framed in terms of nuclear power because the original arguments that led to this situation were also framed in that context. The anti-nuke movement of the last century directly resulted in this situation by preventing the construction of new nuclear power plants and in some cases cancelling existing ones such as the Zwentendorf in Austria[0][1][2]

Those decisions made almost half a century ago were shortsighted, emotional, and led by ideologues lacking the ability or the desire to realize the consequences of their actions which we are now reaping in the form of an energy crisis and an environmental crisis that has become much worse than it need have been.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwentendorf_Nuclear_Power_Plan...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_Austrian_nuclear_power_re...

[2] https://www.jstor.org/stable/24881697

MomoXenosaga• 4 years ago

Not just nuclear, the Netherlands is stopping all it's gas production.

Europe is a very diverse continent. Something that tends to be forgotten in American perception. A country like the Netherlands has practically unlimited amount of money to import oil and gas from abroad while people in Greece are reduced to burning wood to keep warm in winter.

jillesvangurp2• 4 years ago

There are no blackouts in Europe. There's no energy shortage. This is not Texas. There's a cost problem, however. With gas specifically. And that reflects in the electricity prices currently because there are quite a few gas plants.

Until recently, nuclear was the undisputed king of cost. There was nothing more expensive in the market. And that's before you count the cost of long term storage, security, and decades of government subsidies. I guess, for this year it might look quite alright compared to gas. But that is probably a temporary effect before it goes back to its undisputed status as being the most costly thing in the market.

Replacing an expensive thing with an even more expensive thing is not a solution to reducing cost. It doesn't make sense. Europe needs cheap power, not expensive power. And it's getting plenty of that from renewables. It's far ahead of most other places in the world in terms of deploying wind and other renewables.

The nuclear phase down in Germany is actually happening without any disruptions to energy supply. The grid seems plenty resilient (again, rolling blackouts are not a thing here). Also, there's a healthy growth of other capacity and it's a very competitive market with lots of innovative companies making lots of money.

Nuclear was always a relatively minor part of the energy economy in Germany. We're talking about some 20GW of capacity in total of which some 8(?) GW remains which is on track to disappear later this year. Compared to the new capacity that has been added in (mainly) wind and solar form since the nuclear phase out started 12 years ago that is nothing. About 3x the amount of nuclear capacity Germany ever had was added in wind energy alone since then. Probably in the next few years more will come online than Germany ever had in nuclear capacity. People probably have more solar on their roofs than ever existed in nuclear capacity. That was growing at a pace of almost 0.5GW per month last summer apparently.

The reasons electricity prices are high is because the EU is overly dependent on natural gas, which until recently was vastly cheaper than nuclear (and coal plants). The current geo-political situation with particularly Russia is disrupting oil and gas prices. Not because there is a shortage but because Russia is trying to pressurize the EU to do what it wants. The cheapest solution to that is diplomacy. And given that apparently gas prices dropped 11% or so after Russia kindly started providing gas through Ukranian pipelines again, that seems to be working.

The likely long term effect will be an acceleration of replacing gas with other things. That was already happening anyway. Higher prices will make it happen faster.

elric2• 4 years ago

The likely long term effect will be an acceleration of replacing gas with other things. That was already happening anyway. Higher prices will make it happen faster.

I'm still waiting for a practical alternative to natural gas for small housing units (apartments, or just small houses without gardens). Heating water with heat pumps is impractical unless you have a lot of space. My combined hot water/central heating heater is the size of a large microwave oven. If I can replace it with something similarly sized, I will. Until that's possible, I'm afraid I'm stuck with gas.

rekoil10• 4 years ago

You don't do centrally heated water in apartments over there? I don't think I've seen anything else here in Sweden. We actually buy heated water from the grid in my housing cooperative, but a lot of them have "downhole heat exchangers"* installed and produce their own centrally heated water circuit, which is also common for villas over here.

*: called bergvärme in Swedish, I just looked up the Swedish wikipedia article and clicked English so I don't know if this is the right term

DocTomoe• 4 years ago

There are no blackouts in Europe. There's no energy shortage.

... yet (and that's only for large-area outages. In 2019, large parts of Berlin were without power for over 30 hours [1]). Wherever I look, civil protection agencies are scurrying to set up contingency plans for a multinational, month-long blackout. In Switzerland, the public broadcaster has started communicating that risk to their population three years ago, clearly stating that this will lead to a massive loss of lives. We are running into a catastrophe, and we're too ideologically blinded to accept it.

Better stock up on those conserves and gas cartouches for cooking.

[1] https://www.dw.com/en/berlin-blackout-raises-questions-over-...

_ph_5• 4 years ago

Yes, if you run it over with an excavator, even a German power line will break :p That is what happened in the link you posted. So it has nothing to do with the energy production capacity in Germany. And there is little to fear in this respect. There is still a healthy amount of reserve power available.

jillesvangurp2• 4 years ago

I actually live in Berlin. I don't remember ever being without power for more than minutes in the 13 years I've lived here and all of those were basically things like blown fuses and had absolutely nothing to do with capacity shortages. This power outage was in a specific area (Köpenick) in Berlin that only affected a very small portion of the Berlin population (30000 people on close to 4M people in Berlin). The root cause was some infrastructure work resulting in a power cable being cut. That stuff can happen anywhere and it had nothing to do with a capacity problem. There was plenty of power but they were cut off from it.

petermcneeley• 4 years ago

Shortage and Cost are 2 sides of the same coin. In a dynamic capitalist economy you will only have Cost issues. In a mixed or socialistic economy you will have shortages due to rationing.

"The likely long term effect will be an acceleration of replacing gas with other things. That was already happening anyway. Higher prices will make it happen faster."

This is a bit of "when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again" thinking.

streamofdigits• 4 years ago

Imagine this dismall planet dotted with decrepit nuclear plants, even as the societies that are supposed to keep them safe collapse either of their own accord, or due to interminable warfare.

When deciding on the wisdom of adopting a technology that will shape our fate for the next century you don't condition on the best (or even expected) scenario, you condition on the worst plausible scenario.

For a long as we haven't solved our obvious and serious socio-economic pathologies it is actually safer to keep burning carbon. At least that damage is in-principle reversible.

kebos• 4 years ago

https://grid.iamkate.com/ - overly good day for renewable production in the UK, my thoughts: 1. Wind is really cost effective for the UK and loads more is due to come online 2. EPR reactors keep running massively over budget e.g. Flamanville 3 3. Research money is heading into the best ways to store grid level energy.

All in all I am very hopeful and not against Nuclear at all but I just can't ignore the charts today.

Such a nice thought that a good % of my flat is being powered with little consequence!

rekoil10• 4 years ago

Oh it's windy today? Great! I guess it'll be windy every day in the future, let's replace all energy production with wind farms! /s

I know this is not what you're saying, but that's pretty much how I imagine some people think, especially "green" politicians.

VyperCard7• 4 years ago

Yeah, but that’s in your head.

rullelito2• 4 years ago

I have friends with the same dilutions. "We just need to build loads of tiny mechanical generators and enough batteries to store a few days worth of our countries electricity consumption"

How someone can say this (and still claim to be green) is beyond me.

akamaka4• 4 years ago

It's mind-boggling to me that so commenters are blaming fear and brainwashing for the demise of nuclear power, when the answer is crystal clear in the numbers.

As of this year, the cheapest wind and solar farms have a lower total cost than the marginal cost of the average nuclear plant.[1] That means that in many places, it is cheaper to immediately shut down the nuclear plants and direct the money that was spent on operating costs into construction of renewables.

Yes, we should certainly keep the better-designed existing plants up and running, and build some new ones where the conditions are favorable, but in most places in the world it doesn't come close to making sense.

[1] https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...

throw0101a7• 4 years ago

As of this year, the cheapest wind and solar farms have a lower total cost than the marginal cost of the average nuclear plant.[1] That means that in many places, it is cheaper to immediately shut down the nuclear plants and direct the money that was spent on operating costs into construction of renewables.

Except that in this situation fossil fuel-based generators keep running.

We should be keeping nukes for as long as possible, and shutting down coal and gas first. The new renewable pick up the slack for coal/gas, and once all of the latter are gone then you start shutting down nuclear.

ComradePhil5• 4 years ago

Even if you fill the entire world in solar panels and wind mills, we won't have reliable 24-hours energy. That means you can't rely of constant supply of it, which means you'll need something as a backup.

Nuclear is one of the most reliable sources. The world has enough uranium for at least a few hundred years, which in practice could be much much longer depending on if we can keep installing more renewable plants. So, why not use nuclear as a backup? There is nothing even close to a better option than that.

akamaka4• 4 years ago

I’m definitely in favor of keeping and upgrading existing plants and building some new ones, but there’s no source of energy that has 100% availability. A few years ago, France had 1/3 of its reactors offline at the same time for maintenance.

Indeed we would have to build enormous overcapacity with wind and solar to achieve 100% uptime, but until we perfect energy storage, that’s true of any energy source today.

VyperCard7• 4 years ago

This is incorrect

thow-58d4e8b2• 4 years ago

The problem with this line of argument is that there's no single "price for electricity". Either it's dirt-cheap when oversupplied, or eye-wateringly expensive when undersupplied. Within the past two months, spot price ranged from 3 cents to 1500 cents.

Renewables push down the cost when the price is already low, and do nothing when the price is high

throwawayffffas9• 4 years ago

I think the people blaming fear and brainwashing for the demise of nuclear power are of the opinion that the prices are the result of the fear and the brainwashing.

credit_guy• 4 years ago

That Lazard presentation gets quoted quite a bit. There's a problem with it though: if things were so rosy, they'd happen in real life. You wouldn't get any energy shortages. Smart businessmen would just build those solar panels and wind turbines, and make a nice profit and also become environmental heroes in the process.

To some extend this is happening. California for example [1] had 1 GW or installed solar capacity in 2010, 13 GW in 2015 and 31 GW in 2020. But California is at a much lower latitude than any place in Europe (the average latitude in Europe is about 57 degrees, in California about 37 degrees). And it's also sunny.

Lazard doesn't say what region their LCOE is based on, maybe it's a global average. But then it's going to be biased towards southern latitudes by the simple fact that that's where most solar installations happen. And they happen there, because that's where they are profitable.

Separately, the LCOE does not take into consideration the fluctuations in the energy produced. And that's quite a big deal for solar and wind.

So, sure, new nuclear power plants are not economical, but just operating existing ones? In Europe, that most surely is.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_California#Phot...

akamaka4• 4 years ago

The Lazard presentation isn’t some kind of rosy green energy fantasy, it’s written for energy investors who are making decisions today. Investors don’t give a damn about shortages, and will happily undercut everyone else’s business model if they can sell the cheapest energy the 95% of the time the wind is blowing.

antman• 4 years ago

Oh great a discussion about international ethics, sure let's dive into the narrative and choose teams. Or not. Anyway, my understanding of the big picture using the mental framework I got from a previous HN post of short and long con(thanks HN)

The short con: Environmental ethics, the other team is illogical.

The long con(Nuclear Lobby): Those that support nuclear have invested and given subsidies to their respective industries disregarding the fact that it is not that safe. The definition of safety is based on the insurance which if I recall was capped at 100mil and the rest is insured by peoples taxes if something happens. If it wasn't capped the concept of nuclear would not be feasible.

The long con(Non nuclear Lobby aka Germany): The previous German counselor (whose politics as I see them from afar where mostly based on human sentiment except when against industry) overshot anyone's assumption of the feasibility of a non nuclear policy and subsidized heavily non nuclear. Then they tried to support by European Lobbying and legislation. The whole thing backfired and they need to buy energy from abroad which has caused a steep increase in prices and a passive policy against Russia. So natural gas needs to also be defined as "kind of environmental" or Germany has no real policy. If it works, and since they are the entry of natural gas for Europe, they can friction everybody towards any policy that makes sense in the future.

Also: The environment something something (I have phased out, EU or any large country does not plan based on ethics, just based on short term reelection goals).

Also 2: EU refused to pre agree with Russians for natural gas prices and the gas price skyrocketed forcing more environmental policy that smaller countries in EU must adopt early. French threw a wrench in German's works who are exposed to their non nuclear investments. Also somehow Russians fault? Sure...

Also 3: Two actual targets of environmental policy: Reduce gas emissions, Reduce nuclear meltdown danger. Pick and choose depending on which country's media you are exposed to and their respective owners financing.

Also 4: 30% increase in non service production due to covid did not help prices I assume.

Guess: They will find an understanding somewhere in the middle, they are financially exposed, which means politically exposed and no one will remember after the a new round of articles from the media. In the meantime we are paying for no reason.

LatteLazy2• 4 years ago

Let's get real, nuclear is a solution in search of a problem.

It's low carbon, but we've decided not to cut our emissions, so why bother?

It would rescue us from Russian gas reliance. But cost 10 times more and won't be ready till 2040 so why bother? (Plus you can't replace domestic gas supplies with electricity...).

It's reliable for base load, but we already have that from gas so why bother?

funklute2• 4 years ago

but we've decided not to cut our emissions

What? Where do you have this from?

LatteLazy2• 4 years ago

We've increased our emissions almost every year for decades.

A few years back, in Paris, we signed a "you do you" agreement to all decide for ourselves whether to cut our emissions and not to complain if others don't cut them.

We're well on schedule to blow through all the ppm concentrations (I think we blew through the 1C rise one last year some time?)

It's like this weird open secret where we all agree something should definitely be done, and then do nothing. Like 100 people are a car crash all hoping someone else will get involved or something.

MrPatan• 4 years ago

Qui bono?

cletus• 4 years ago

This is a key point:

Plants, though, take a decade or more to construct at best and the risk is high of running over time and over budget. Finland’s new Olkiluoto-3 unit is coming on line after a 12-year delay and billions of euros in financial overruns.

I'll expand on this further: do you know how many of the world's nuclear power plants (~660 IIRC) were privately funded and built without (significant) government subsidies? The answer is zero. This is not just a construction issue, it also affects maintenance [1].

Sure lets continue researching smaller, modular reactors that can be constructed more cheaply and in less time. But we're not there yet. None of the research projects, prototypes or proposals are anywhere close to commercial viability yet. Most of them don't even exist yet.

Personally I'm bearing on fission power. Plants take too long to build. They're too expensive to build and maintain. I don't trust humans or corporations for long-term management and maintenance, particularly in countries without strong government. We don't have a good story for the long term storage or disposal of enrichment waste or power production waste. The significant systems required around mining, fuel processing, spent fuel processing, maintenance, fuel replacement, inspection and oversight (eg the NRC) are significant and won't scale to the required level.

The article is right though: this is political and the politics are bad for nuclear. It will take the likes of China to mass deploy nuclear once these problems are solved to change any opinions in the West.

[1] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/nuclear-power-wont-surv...

q1w26• 4 years ago

Your source does not say anything about gov't subsidies for nuclear plant construction.

Nuclear plants are built, like any power plant or major project, with corporate/state/municipal bonds. These aren't really handouts. They are fixed income instruments that allow corporations to spread the cost of construction over the life of the project.

Nuclear reactors are profitable. The challenges are those we create to stop them. Lawsuits, protests, political work stoppages, etc...

ucha2• 4 years ago

Nuclear is obviously key to energy independence etc... but the very common take these days of "Nuclear power is the safest energy production technology available, just look at historical data" is deeply misguided.

It's very hard to accurately estimate the risk of a nuclear power-plant disaster because looking back at the past and extrapolating data from there is non-sensical when the risk is so fat-tailed. Sure, Chernobyl, Fukushima and ever Three Mile Island killed a few thousands at most in aggregate but for anyone familiar with the history of Chernobyl, the story is quite different.

10 days after the main explosion, a leak caused a large amount of water to accumulate under the melting core. Had the melting core reached that pool of water, it would have caused a massive steam explosion that would have spread radioactive particles over most of Europe and Russia making them uninhabitable. Thankfully, three men risked their lives to enter the power-plant and closed a valve preventing more water from accumulating under the core.

Now, you could say that current reactors are safer, which might be true, but before Chernobyl, such a disaster was also thought to be impossible. Even if there is a 10% risk of contamination of a whole continent over a century, does it make sense to take it? One could argue that such risk would be acceptable if it prevents climate change. But acknowledging the existence of these enormous risks is a required step to have an honest debate.

thow-58d4e8b2• 4 years ago

spread radioactive particles over most of Europe and Russia making them uninhabitable

JFC, this is the perfect capture of the level of debate surrounding nuclear

If it was true, don't you think every single country in the world would obtain such a world-destroying weapon?

If it was true, then a single nuclear reactor would be able to power the whole world for eternity

ucha2• 4 years ago

Uh that makes no sense.

If it was true, don't you think every single country in the world would obtain such a world-destroying weapon?

Countries already have nuclear weapons. They can very well spread radioactive material over large landmasses but what's the point?

If it was true, then a single nuclear reactor would be able to power the whole world for eternity

I have no idea how you deduced this but it's wrong.

Faelian23• 4 years ago

Honestly, the battle Nuclear vs Renewable is quite sad when we look at the sources of energy over time.

https://ourworldindata.org/global-energy-200-years?country=

Coal is not even going down.

ajnin• 4 years ago

As the Fukushima disaster unfolded in Japan in 2011, then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel made a dramatic decision that delighted her country’s anti-nuclear movement: all reactors would be ditched. What couldn’t have been predicted was that Europe would find itself mired in one of the worst energy crises in its history

That's just not really true, plenty of people warned that with Germany closing nuclear and coal plants at the same time it would need to rely on external sources for energy, France for electricity, and with NordStream 1 and 2 projects, the reliance on Russian gas for Germany rose to around 50%. It was pretty obvious that becoming dependent on a not always friendly foreign power was a bad idea, but with Germany being so dominant in Europe no one dared to oppose it. Now Russia is playing this card fully.

ho_schi• 4 years ago

Please stop wining and make progress :)

Current situtation: The energy sector (in Germany) was never eager to use nuclear fission power, they were pushed into it by politics in last century. The environmentalist movement is weird - in Germany. People want wind turbines but they don't want wind turbines in reach of 2 kilometer. What is stupid, because it is a minor thing compared to nuclear power plants, coal power plants or whatever harm a wind turbine can do (collapsing, hitting a bird...). One example of how people can completely lose their mind are the "Startbahngegener" in the late eighties, shot a cop to dead. Because? They were against a new runway at one of the biggest, busiest and oldest airports in Europe. The runway is not an issue and made sense. We need to handle climate change anyway, whatever we do. Nuclear fission power plant? If it blows up you, your country, your kids, the neighbor countries and everyone else is fucked. We increase the chance with every nuclear fission power plant further. It is not a matter of "if", it is a matter of "when".

Outlook: At least in Germany. Built wind power plants, build more, store energy as hydrogen (whatever the energy loss is, it is better than not to store) and if possible use NUCLEAR FUSION. Yes Nuclear FUSION! It is much saver, creates only a minimum of nuclear waste after shutdown and in case of control loss and blowup the damage is probably on minor level. Wendelstein[2] - an experimental nuclear fusion project which shall test only but not create energy - is doing progress. Interestingly, this works without the usual international affairs which require involving some companies from every country. But we invest to less. There is no guarantee in success, but nuclear fusion is on any level better than nuclear fission. Sadly politics in cold war were no interested in fusion - nuclear fission was easier to develop and usable for weapons.

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tötungsdelikte_an_der_Startbah... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X

Heads up! Not down!

stjohnswarts5• 4 years ago

Sounds like a business opportunity for France to start prepping for the demand for nuclear in a few years when people are paying 1 euro per kwHr

Europe Is Losing Nuclear Power Just When It Needs Energy

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