The California legislature recently voted to keep their last remaining nuclear power station, Diablo Canyon, open for another 5 years.
I was doing some reading on EU green energy policy and I stumbled across something called “taxonomy”. It was a little confusing but as best as I could determine, it involved defining what is considered green energy.
Included within that was biomass and nuclear power. There was a caveat included with both of those stating that under certain conditions, those sources can be considered green energy.
In the case of biomass, it involved the planting of new trees and other vegetation that consume the CO2 generated by burning biomass, and in the case of nuclear, the condition was availability of safe storage facilities for the nuclear waste.
That may be an oversimplification of the facts and I’ll defer to those living in the EU on the specifics, but with the Diablo Canyon and EU taxonomy thing in mind, looking more towards the end game thing of all of this, could it be that we’re being set up to make nuclear a more acceptable form of energy?
Given how much effort has been spent on scaring people and demonizing nuclear, they can’t just jump up and say, “You know what, nuclear isn’t that bad after all”.
I’ve yet to come across anything that claims green energy can provide 100% of the worlds energy needs, and I agree that burning fossil fuels does put a lot of crap into the atmosphere, so given that, what’s left?
The French have lobbied in the EU to have nuclear energy classified as “green power”.
I’m sure this has nothing to do with the fact that the majority of electricity generation in France comes from nuclear power plants.
And who knows, maybe it’s green. Until things go sideways, and then all of a sudden it is very much not green. Ask the folks in Fukujima, Chernobyl or Three Mile Island.
I think it’s a lot cleaner and way more reliable than the current green favourites,
which involve a lot of mining and later disposal of used materials
I’d go that way until fusion is a reality
There’s not much of a gold rush aspect to building nuclear power stations though, compared to wind farms and solar
Which may be why it has been demonised for decades,
the big corporations can’t make mega bucks out of it
Until things go sideways, and then all of a sudden it is very much not green. Ask the folks in Fukujima, Chernobyl or Three Mile Island.
I agree that’s 3 too many,
but they can be built safely if they stick strictly to modern safety rules
There’s 440 in the world currently,
with another 55 being built
Today there are about 440 nuclear power reactors operating in 32 countries plus Taiwan, with a combined capacity of about 390 GWe. In 2021 these provided 2653 TWh, about 10% of the world’s electricity.
About 55 power reactors are currently being constructed in 15 countries, notably China, India, Russia and the United Arab Emirates
The economics of nuclear power are different from coal or gas - it takes gigantic upfront investments, and you can’t just crank it up and shut it down.
If all goes well it is a reliable long term supply of electricity. And I agree that coal and gas - aside from being finite sources of fossil fuel - aren’t great for the environment.
The last I read on that there are decades of both gas and oil left at present consumption,
maybe even centuries
I think there’s been some scaremongering going on there that’s loose with the facts
The global south will suffer the most from any worldwide push to end fossil fuels
They simply can’t afford it,
and millions will end up burning dung instead with the resultant lung disease
Worse for their immediate environment, for sure
As for nuclear power in the global south,
investors are a bit hesitant to invest where there’s political instability or war
South Africa is the only country in Africa to have operational nuclear power (2 plants),
whereas only Argentina (3), Brazil (2) and Mexico (2) have plants in Latin America
There’s other developments happening…
Asia has the biggest growth in NP
Asia is the main region in the world where electricity generating capacity and specifically nuclear power are growing significantly.
In Asia there are about 140 operable nuclear power reactors, about 30-35 under construction and firm plans to build an additional 40-50. Many more are proposed.
The greatest growth in nuclear generation is expected in China.
A poor design, no containment structure for the reactors, and a botched test that had nothing to do with the daily operation of the plant.
Fukujima:
Hit by a tsunami and while there was a release of nuclear material, it was far less than originally projected as was the expected damage to the environment. However, 1600 people committed suicide because of the drastic measures the Japanese government took.
Three Mile Island:
No significant release of radiation, no damage to the environment, and no deaths.
Yes, saying that we’re about to run out of oil/gas clearly has some beneficiaries. It’s annoying that for all of the bIg OiL wAnTs YoU tO tHiNk ThAt talk out there, nobody ever seems to mention this.
Look at COP26, with the presentations about creating $4 quadrillion of new asset classes on the back of the climate emergency drive (because owning oceans is important for that m’kay). That figure makes the cumulative total of Big Oil profits pale into insignificance (biggest companies made a total of a meager $0.0002 quadrillion in 2019) so there has never been a bigger prize up for grabs than this.
We can increase those profits to $0.001 quadrillion globally if we take the entire global industry 50 year average profits, which would still take 4,000 years to match the COP26 bankers’ bonanza.
But yeah, modern nuclear reactors are a vital part of the jigsaw for now.
Also I saw a very cool vertical axis wind turbine with integrated gravity battery that operates in deeper water that seems to tick all of the boxes. That’s something island communities could chip in for to put near their island. It could probably work in a frozen lake too.
If it weren’t were for the “how can we scare people into voting for us in the next election” attitude that marks our politics here in the US, we’d probably already have fusion.
I read where the reactors that China is building are a new American design that not only creates electricity, but uses the heat from the reactor to heat homes and businesses, making them even more energy efficient.
As with all things, solutions will be found, and things will move on to the next crisis. We just have to go through these periods of tearing ourselves apart while those who stand to benefit the most jockey for position.
They are so cool
Those mega-big wind farms look dystopic as fuck and are pretty limited in wind speed and placement, and their power is intermittent not on demand,
but I want one of these VAWTs…
Yeah, those are the ones! They’re just better in every way, they’d disappear over the horizon a lot sooner than one of those other ones, are painted grey/blue so blend in with the surroundings but are compact without giant arms so are a clear target for birds to avoid. Plus they work all of the time.
They could do with putting a sort of outer rotating wind vane on them that shields the half of the receiving side that creates resistance from the wind.
They kinda look like little yachts, I like them
On-demand-power has to be the winner
A lot less steel involved too, Vs more mining and coal-firing to smelt the big fuckers
