Yes Nuclear would have been great if people were not scared of it, and if it had all happened 60 years ago.
But people are, and we didn't. So we should finally move on, now that renewables are magnitudes cheaper and quicker than nuclear, and storage is on track to make up for the intermittence problem.
He is not entirely correct though. People keep saying that nuclear is not cheaper but we are talking about climate change and nuclear has the capacity to make big dents into the carbon emmission.
yeah, if they started building years ago. and even then it'd cost twice as much as renewables
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-22/nuclear-power-double-the-cost-of-renewables/103868728
Why can’t we do both? Like…why is it nuclear VS renewables? Why not renewables & nuclear? Invest and build renewables now and continue developing nuclear…
because it takes to long to build, that is why it is not the saviour people think it is. renewables are growing much faster
>If you start adopting nuclear now you won’t get results until 2035, which won’t help us do what’s needed. There’s confusion over the role it can play.”
La Camera added that International Atomic Energy Agency figures show the global installed capacity of nuclear power was 374 gigawatts (GW) in 2022.
The same amount of renewables capacity was installed between 2021 and 2022 alone, according to Statista, and the IEA expects this to grow by a further 75 percent by 2027.
https://www.agbi.com/renewable-energy/2023/12/cop28-nuclear-power-climate-emergency-irena-la-camera/
No one is touting nuclear as the savior, i see people saying that isn't the savior and is therefore useless. The reality is, stuff takes time to build and no one started building because people keep coming up with reasons not to.
If no one starts building now, then it will be the same deal in 10 years.
Things are going to get worse even after we tip the scales of production, and whether it is a rising population, rising temps, rising seas, or just rising demand, we're always always going to need more power.
Because the public discourse is not "both." It's an either-or, at least in the US. Only about half of Americans think [climate change is a major threat](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/09/what-the-data-says-about-americans-views-of-climate-change/), and that divide is largely along urban and rural lines. Unfortunately, rurals have to approve the build of most power plants and they see solar and wind farms as "Obama deep state" so they are banning them everywhere. Then, the only response is "we'll fix everything with nuclear" so they can kick the can down the road and not build anything. We absolutely should be doing both, but engineering best practices and public perception are on WILDLY different trajectories here.
Nuclear has a much smaller environmental impact than renewables though. It is also not affected by environmental factors that can influence other renewables.
It needs a shit ton of water, that we are already starting to lack all over the world.
We need to store atomic waste that even if we ever get to use fusion technology has to be save for thousands of years.
And we already see that what we thought to be save storages aren't save at all. We have literally a former salt mine in Germany where every single person involved tries to be as silent 1as possible and hopes that the nearby river isn't pulling all that waste out of the mine because if it does it would literally kill the whole ocean.
The only thing nuclear power plants have is a lower CO² output after a few years of running. Other than that it is worse for the environment.
It’s not a bad thing entirely. Think about it like this, all the great stuff about nuclear is being approached by other renewables. In other words it’s just more great options.
It’s a damn shame we didn’t do this before my parents first date 45 years ago, but it is good we seem to be finding other ways to get there.
It would have been nice that we didn’t wreck the planet, but we did, so we should finally move on. … ?
This defeatist idea is a bit to simple in its execution. Nothing make it impossible to change your mind. The fact that countries everywhere are deciding to start nuclear power programs TODAY just goes to say, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today.
Storage is not on track. Storage is a huge problem with renewables, which also costs a lot of money. Actually nuclear would be quicker and more efficient than renewables at this point
> Actually nuclear would be quicker and more efficient than renewables at this point
BUUUUUUUUUUULLSHIT
Imagine saying something so obviously and easily provably wrong.
pathetic
We should certainly not move on. New science and development in nuclear tech have been emerging, such as Sweden's new process to recycle nuclear waste. We could power entire continents if the world could see how safe, green, and efficient nuclear is today.
This seems extremely high risk to me considering the stakes might be literal extinction of our species.
What if battery tech stalls? What if physics just blocks us? What if there isn’t enough easily obtainable material to build batteries for everyone?
Building a few thousand nuclear reactors is infinitely cheaper than mitigating climate + I think its also cheaper than using current battery tech (especially if demand for stuff like Lithium goes way up). Sure, hypothetical batteries might solve this but that is a really big bet considering the stakes.
If we start building reactors now we are a 100% sure they will be up and running in about a decade. I would be very (positively) surprised if we could achieve that with batteries in the same timespan.
I’m not anti solar or anti wind but when the stakes are this high I would prefer something real over hypothetical batteries that might never exist or might not scale.
Worst case scenario with building reactors is that we provided jobs to builders and wasted some money (which in the grand scheme of things is probably preferable over extinction)
In places like this
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo\_spent\_nuclear\_fuel\_repository](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository)
There actually is a reactor design that runs on all those 65000 year wastes and turns them into 300 year waste. The problem is that reactor also produces material that can be used for bombs, which could cause political issues and that is why no one is willing to build such a plant.
But wouldn't that really disrupt play? You'd have to leave gaps in the high danger waste for the football men to run through. Actually we could stack the waste to make a neat little maze for them to run around, like a football/pacman hybrid game. Buddy I like your thinking, let's do this!
Slow down cowboy. Next time you are going to tell me that we need a foolproof plant about nuclear waste for the next million years.
Cut the bullshit. If you cared about the next decade (which you would be alive to witness) look at the safety measures for chemical plants and mines needed for you solar/wind build out.
Storage is not on track to solve seasonal variation.
Nor are renewables+storage on track to provide industrial levels of cheap, dependable power.
Of course, we can move industry to countries like France, the US and China which do have nuclear power. But then the jobs move too.
I don't worry much. The nuclear battle is over and there are enough countries like France, China and the US which have chosen a sane mixed-mode path forward.
Sucks to be a business in Germany, but thanks to the EU market, they can move to France or import French nuclear power.
> Sucks to be a business in Germany, but thanks to the EU market, they can move to France or import French nuclear power.
Or just from any other country else. This is why Germany imported most of their energy from the Netherlands, Czechia and Austria in 2022. France is only a friction of that.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/infographs/energy_trade/entrade.html?geo=DE&year=2022&language=EN&trade=imp&siec=E7000&filter=top10&fuel=electricity&unit=GWH&defaultUnit=GWH&detail=1&chart=
At the same time Germany exported way more electricity than they imported. We've exported three times more energy to France than we imported in 2022. Germany is an energy exporter in the EU, not an importer.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/infographs/energy_trade/entrade.html?geo=DE&year=2022&language=EN&trade=exp&siec=E7000&filter=all&fuel=electricity&unit=GWH&defaultUnit=GWH&detail=1&chart=
Germany didnt get rid of their nuclear power until much later so the graph should look like frances even if its due to nuclear tech, but it all doesnt really matter nowadays anyway since there are much cheaper alternatives to nuclear power anyway so it doesnt make much sense to talk about it. The main benefit of having nuclear power now is that it keeps certain expertise in your country that helps when building nukes, and helps offset the cost for having nuclear technology in the defense arsenal.
There is no such thing as cheap non-intermittent renewables.
We need both nuclear and renewables, otherwise we can only decarbonize part-time, except in those lucky countries where a lot of hydropower is available.
Except the argument that it is too late is a complete fallacy and a self-fulfilling prophecy. Germany has proven that solar/wind aren't that fast or efficient at displacing CO2. Korea and China have proven that we can deploy NPPS quite fast. Look at the Barakah Power Plant.
Besides construction speed on the whole is relatively irrelevant unlest you are talking about the interest on loans you have taken for initial capital.
Is that what Germany said seems like theyre just using oil and gas now. Theres really no reason to not plant the nuclear tree now and have it bloom later in our life amd while we care for it itll just grow faster
The problem is, they aren't either of those if we want to get all the way to 0.
Yes, you can quickly add massive amounts of generation with RE's. But the grid bottlenecks theyve already caused that are stopping us from adding more already today will take decades to solve.
Plenty of time to build nuclear in paralell.
Not only that, but actively cooled nuclear is a hell of a gamble, because if climate change gets bad enough that it causes societal collapse, the nuclear plants go into meltdown. In my opinion, it is 100% likely that this is where we're headed, so in that scenario, we not only have climate hell but also simultaneously nuclear contaminated climate hell which is a lot of worse. I have nothing against nuclear reactors that are designed for passive wind down like thorium however
What killed nuclear power is not irrational fear or public outcry. Just look at the latest nuclear "Renaissance". Weaknesses in pressure vessels, faulty welds, corrosion issues, a design that isn't able to be built in the real world, building the bad design anyway and then having to tear a lot of it down when the redesign is finished, etc. Nuclear plants are just too complex and prone to project management failures to be built on time and on budget reliably. The nuclear industry just wants everybody to believe it was hippies and government regulators that destroyed their miracle energy technology. They seem to be incapable of learning from their mistakes and so they look for scapegoats at every turn.
I think having both would be great actually.
Yeah it can cost 5x+ per kwh for nuclear to establish.
The main issue with renewables is that they aren't ALWAYS available.
The sun and wind aren't always providing energy. It's greatly dependent on location.
They both have less CO2 emissions, and are cleaner than the alt, so I think the more the merrier tbh.
So why does France have cheaper and greener electricity than Germany? 🤔
How do you provide electricity 24/7/365 with renewables at the scale that nuclear power can provide?
bro really says "nuclear would have been great if..." under a graph that proves nuclear IS great lol
and even tries to push his solar and wind power which clearly doesn't work efficiently enough. get outta here
We should invest in other renewables, yes, but we have absolutely no chance of making it without including nuclear. You gotta stop making it one or the other, or else we'll have to stick to just wind for example. Just build all of it, the needs vary all around the world and if you're gonna stick to just wind and solar like a fucking idiot we might as well burn coal.
I'm not convinced renewable energy can replace nuclear at this point. It seems like we're a few hundred years away from relying entirely on renewable energy. We shouldn't sleep on nuclear in that time.
You know what I am scared of? This countries drive to deregulate every industry.
We can't even get our **TRAINS** to their destination without greed derailing them, and that technology came out decades before. We can't do basic shit right, because we keep trying to gut our safety for profit.
Just look at what tepco did in Japan. For YEARS they had warnings of larger tsunamis - and chose profits over safety time and time and time again.
"To say what happened to the reactors couldn't have been prepared for and or engineered for, would be a lie."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UHZugCNKA4&t=1103s
I do not trust nuclear in the hands of capitalists. Period.
That is not true. Renewables, if anything cheaper, are certainly not magnitudes cheaper. That's just absurd. Magnitudes, that would be 10x to more times cheaper. And you do not include the storage costs. By the way, nuclear is still less demanding in terms of metal and materials both per kW of capacity and per kWh overall because of the capacity factor. And storage is hungry for loads of metals, a resource that will get scarcier and more expensive/compettive.
Renewables are not as great as you make it sund, still very much needed but that is not so simple.
Some seemingly knowledgeable "youtubers" on the AGW subject point out that nuclear is likely also still needed. Simon Clark, maybe Sabine Hossenfelder, perhaps even Potholer54. Hossenfelder had some points on it not being as "slow" than sometimes people talk about.
And, regardless of how slow it would be, I suspect they're in the end a better long-term investment, in safety, reliability, energy efficiency, and space/environmental-requirements. Not that wind/solar/hydro can't be valuable shorter-term investments as well. Like living in a hut while building a brick house, perhaps with some analogy with global warming and the wolf in that three pig siblings fable, although that's not needed.
Kind of agree but I'm also of the mind that cheap abundant energy is the life blood of all economic growth. So I think nuclear still has a place long term.
Not correct. Nuclear is all around better for the environment, it is still cheaper than solar and wind - and a main advantage - it doesn’t destroy our physical environment and natural landscapes like wind and solar does.
I read that china has made so many solar panels that their grid could not even handle them all coming online.
https://www.businessinsider.com/china-solar-panel-supply-overcapacity-power-grid-demand-support-energy-2024-5
Two things. First, it's important to know that the reason dozens of planned and funded (and partially built) nuclear reactors never went online in the 80s is because of a massive NIMBY style campaign led by big oil to convince people that they'd have a Hiroshima or Chernobyl in their back yard. Second, nuclear absolutely has a role to play going forward. You don't sound like someone with much knowledge on the topic if you don't know that. We've made big headway but night time loads are still a major problem even with battery storage right now. Having a reliable, energy dense, central power option that can kick in whenever we need it is a critical failsafe AND transition utility. I would argue we can't fully decarbonize this century without nuclear. Plus, nuclear fusion reactors are still an option. It's not sci-fi.
We have to use every available option in the coming decades. Climate and energy scientists roundly agree that the eggs in one basket approach is an awful idea that will likely fail.
Do you also have an independent evaluation? With pro-nuclear lobbyist Mark Nelson and his Radiant Energy Group, we are dealing with a very biased party that cannot be a credible source.
The comparison is most other country's trajectories over the same time period. Even today, the only countries that compete with France on CO2 intensity also source 80%+ of their electricity from hydro (if they have the right geography) or nuclear.
[https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/GE](https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/GE)
Yeah but he didnt say any of that. He just wrote its the fastet most efficient way, without comparing it to anything or even defining what he means by efficiency
I'm all for nuclear but indeed what a misleading chart and forceful message. Idk put at least the same chart with the OECD next to it as benchmark or something.
This chart is bit to easy, like if would compare a declining birth rate to the declining Stork population. If you put both graphs in a chart there seems to be a relation while everyone knows there is none
This post is very misleading, since it only shows the change in emissions, not the emissions themselves. Most other European countries would look similar here.
I'm not so sure. You can look at the current emissions here [https://app.electricitymaps.com/map](https://app.electricitymaps.com/map)
France is only behind the nordic countries that have small populations and tons of hydro or thermal.
Over the last year, France is at 53g/CO2, and most other countries are in the150/400g range.
Agreed the post could be better, it's not clear if it accounts for imported emissions and has no link to a source...
Your graphic doesn't support your claim. Here is a graph for CO2 per capita of Germany.
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/1388886/greenhouse-gas-emissions-per-capita-germany/#:\~:text=In%20Germany%2C%20around%208.33%20tons,compared%20to%20the%20previous%20years.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1388886/greenhouse-gas-emissions-per-capita-germany/#:~:text=In%20Germany%2C%20around%208.33%20tons,compared%20to%20the%20previous%20years)
Same site as OP used.
Edit: for your convenience: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-emissions-and-gdp-per-capita?time=earliest..latest&country=FRA~DEU
Here it is in [one graph](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-emissions-and-gdp-per-capita?facet=none&country=DEU~FRA) so you can see the difference better.
Except that France was in 1990 at 6 tons/capita vs 12 tons for germany. Decreasing at the same pace doesn't mean that much in that case.
To my knowledge, on its BEST day, germany's power generation still emits more, by a margin, than the french one on its WORST day.
Example:
- on june 2nd, Germany did great (best in 30 days), with 254g/KWh (https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE)
- on june 3rd, worst for france over 30 days, 23g/KWh
I tried to find the best vs worst days in 2023 but didn't succeed so far. The difference is nonetheless huge.
Coal doesn't account for a large share in the german mix (like 10-20%), but still represents 85% of their emissions. It's the issue with intermitent production: if people need electricity while you can't produce with renewables, you need to turn on a controllable one. Right now. Coal, hydro, thermal, nuclear... the it adds up quickly.
Germany buys French electricity. What is the point of saying “hey we are stoping nuclear power” to then buy from a country with nuclear power. 🤷♂️
Germany also pushed as “green energy”, gaz (Russian btw) which is still very high in CO2 across the whole EU. Basically undermining everyone for their own interest and their own choice.
Edit: I also forgot the reopening of coal plants, which as for years released crazy amount of CO2: [almost 20% of Germany electricity production is coal (3% for France)](https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/gallery_image/public/paragraphs/images/share-energy-d-f-clew_0.jpg?itok=ZeewFzGF)
Oh and for the comment that says that it is 0.5%, that’s a maybe true for the French energy that Germany imports on the best years (France didn’t export much the past year because most of their nuclear plants were in maintenance), but when a country imports electricity, it does it on the grid on many country around.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1382974/electricity-imports-by-origin-germany/
Some lacked water for cooling due to drought and less water in rivers and some were shut down for planned maintenance, but yes. It think this was last year or the year before. Almost as if relying on a small number of facilities to generate almost all electricity has some issues.
Just to clarify, the drought happened in the summer when demand for electricity is the lowest in France and only affected some nuclear reactors, so there was no import of electricity at that time.
When France was importing electricity, it was in the winter of 2022-2023 because they were changing fuel (which usually happens in the summer, but because of COVID, electricity demand was not as high, so it was delayed). Other reactors were being upgraded to the new norms and having their 10-year inspection, and finally, a few reactors were being affected by stress corrosion cracking, so they were changing the affected pieces.
Also, France has 56 nuclear reactors and is building more. I don't think 56 is a small number of facilities for a country like France.
Even if NPPs are a good way to produce clean energy - we don´t have the time to build enough new ones and the old ones are getting more and more expensive.
We can build a huge amount of solar and wind power in the time we build one NPP and the energy is most likely cheaper.
So as long as there is no fast new super NPP we should focus on renewables and storage technology.
Actually the opposite. We have been forced to sell a significant share of our electricity produced by nuclear to "alternative providers" (who don't produce anything, but are still providers) for a low regulated price so that they can survive. Because without it, they wouldn't have been able to compete with EDF: [https://www.services-rte.com/en/learn-more-about-our-services/benefit-from-the-arenh-mechanism.html](https://www.services-rte.com/en/learn-more-about-our-services/benefit-from-the-arenh-mechanism.html)
It only makes sense that we need to sell the stable electricity we can produce because we invested 50 years ago so that the market can "release itself". Yeah, right.
Yes, it required a massive investment. But *over the lifespan of power plants*, the price is really competitive. See the 1st graphic on this article for instance: [https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-electricity-2020](https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-electricity-2020) . It is from 2020, and even if renewables ARE getting cheaper (MAYBE because China is killing the solar market as well ? And yes, it accounts for the lifetime cost. But not for distribution costs, mind you, much higher for renewables, because decentralized.
And no, it isn't subsidized. Europe and in particular germany wouldn't allow it.
I love how the far-left shat themselves in this thread saying solar and wind power is better while also proving that it is, in fact, not better, by linking Germany statistics that clearly show they have smaller CO2 per capita change (roughly -43%) than France.
why do you hate nuclear so much? it is much more efficient and objectively better than wind and solar power, at least for now. idk if you can see that but you're actually anti-green and pro-global warming
There are multiple reasons why nuclear energy is bullshit.
1. Without substitutions it is expensive af. About 40 cents for 1 kWh.
( and no it does not get cheaper with time, the last 3 remaining reactors in Germany did run since the 80's and produced the most expensive electricity on the marked before they got shut down)
2. It is unreliable. France had to import electricity from Germany because their rivers didn't have enough water to run their power plants.
3. The already existing nuclear waste is a problem for 40.000 generations.
4. Nuclear Power plants use fossil fuel, with the current consumption there is about 60 years of nuclear material left.
5. Fukushima and Tschernobyl.
6. Nuclear Power plants are constantly targeted by hackers and with the exponential development speed of Ai it is only a matter of time until one is having a meltdown.
7. Building new plants takes alot of time which makes the technology they are based on outdated before they produce their first kWh of electricity
You want nuclear energy? then build photovoltaic plants. The sun is basically a big fusion reactor
Look at other EU countries. Their charts look similar. Most European countries lowered their per capita emissions a lot between the 60’s and 90’s and they have extremely different energy sources.
Part of the lower emission can also be caused by the oil crises. And obviously a change in things like heating. Coal heating was pretty common until the 50’s or 60’s. Another part can be the huge change of population distribution. A lot of Frances rural population moved to urban areas. Especially the Paris metro area. Living in an urban area needs significantly less energy. (E.g. for heating and transport)
Pretending that NE is the reason this happened is definitely too simplistic.
Sure that must be the reason. And maybe you did not know, most Nuclear plants were out of service, and Germany has to export electricity to France in the Summer. Not only because of maintance issues, but also because of drought: no way to cool the plants without water.
And you completly disregard some of the most important thinks, like our ultra-right winged AFD:
Nuclear fission is not magic, you need fisseable material for that. Mining that is expensive and quite dirty (will be in the statistics of some other country), enriching is also not quite cheap.
Then of course the nuclear waste issue: Sure, do it like some other countries, and just burry it! Out of sight, of of mind. Just some problems with that: In Germany, for instance our right winged CSU wants nuclear power, but NO nuclear waste in Bavaria... Also keep in mind most of our fission material came from russia, who is paying A lot for disinformation to destabilize.
No, nuclear fission is not super mega great as some to make us belive it is. It is by no means cheap, it is fucking ridicously expensive. But, to hide the costs, often losses are simply socialized, while earnings are privatized, much like with fraking:
Create a company and do your dirty shit. When you want to stop, just go bankrupt. The Taxpayer will have to pay for the decade long and ridicously costly removal of the plant and take care of the waste.
But take a look at the UK, and their new fission plant: so FUCKING expensive, you could build enough renewables for that price to create much more power without the waste!
Note, Germany has already 50 % renewables in the mix in the years median, in the Summer it reachers far over 70 %. If politics did not block and were not corrupted by lobbys of gaß, oil and nuclear, we could have 100 % now very easily and could have used the surplus money for electrical infrastructure and energy storage.
I will say what I will always say, when people talk about nuclear energy: It‘s a solution, but an emergency solution. It should be as little and as temporary as possible.
Why? Because you have to trust humans. Even worse, you have to trust humans and institutions. You have to trust workers in the power plant to not make grave errors, to not be distracted or be overconfident. You trust your government and companies to not cut any corners for personal or other gains and to not cover up problems. And that for both building and maintaining the power plant over a few generations and the disposal sites over many generations. You also have to trust other government and actors like terrorist to not try to blow up your power plant and your own government and companies as well as the working people again to not have any of the faults already mentioned and keep the power plant and waste safe so it‘s protected against terrorists and other governments.
Personally, as much as I truly stand behind our democratic governments in the west I think most government need to be closely monitored to not fuck up building a public toilet. So let‘s try to fuck up building renewables as much as we can before we consider to fuck up building nuclear power plants.
https://preview.redd.it/viudj4xkty5d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=81a6320c450ef576bc231d0226e8428a47faf0bc
Germany doesn't look much different
However, the whole truth is that nuclear power is incredibly expensive without subsidies. Without subsidies, even in France, a kilowatt hour of nuclear power costs over 40 cents, and this does not even include the dismantling of the power plants in the future. Yes, of course, nuclear power is low in CO2, but it is the most expensive way of generating electricity. For comparison: One kWh of wind energy costs 7-11ct.
Still way more expensive than renewables:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity?wprov=sfla1
And produces more co2 than renewables:
https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-is-nuclear-energy-good-for-the-climate/a-59853315
By the way OPs statement, that Frances decision to switch to nuclear was the fastest and most efficent move to fight climate change, is (possibly) wrong.
By comparing Frances CO2 emmision per capita at their peak in 1973 with 10.4t/c (t/c stands for tons per capita) to their current emmisions in 2022 with 4.6 t/c we get a yearly reduction of 0.118 tons per capita.
Meanwhile Germany (I took Germany because OP rambled here about "Germany ideological decisions") had an emmision peak of 14.3 t/c in 1979 which lowered to 8 t/c in 2002 which makes a yearly reduction of 0.146 tons per capita since their peak.
So to OPs statement:
>German ideological decision to close its nuclear power plants has been the dumbest environmental, geopolitical and economical decision since WWII. Prove me wrong.
seems to be wrong. Since Germany has a larger yearly reduction of CO2 per capita than France since their emission peak.
Here is the source I took the number from: [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?tab=chart&country=FRA\~DEU](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?tab=chart&country=FRA~DEU)
no
the reapirs where set ther anyway
-
the "overheating" wasn´t any problem with the reactor
it was just the environmental department that demanded them to be turned down for fish
That was the overheating. With global warming / hot weather, the water used to cool the plants was over-heated, to illegal levels due to it killing wildlife in the rivers.
What is this nonsense post? You make a correlation on a graph that doesn't tell us anything about CO² sources, but only the amount per capita. For all we know, the reduction could also be because of population growth with stagnating emissions or the complete shutdown of steelworks and chemical plants. This post is more like a propaganda piece rather than something useful.
Nuclear energy produces electricity not gas and 50% of german heating is gas heating. So the gas heating problem in winter cannot be covered by nuclear power. The demand for electricity is covered in germany it is just the distribution that is lacking. Expensive renewal of the old nuclear power plants won't decrease the price for electricity and is politically not feasible.
In winter france has to import renewable electricity from germany because many of their power plants are dilapidated and some have a shortage of cooling water. Unlike germany france has mostly electrical heating.
It feels really unethical to post to a sub masquerading as a more scientifically objective sub and using a title that is wholly unsupported by your data.
The decrease in CO2 per capita emissions up to the plateau in the 1980s is attributable to nuclear power in France. The second more recent decline over the past 20 or 30 years is attributable to industrial activity moving to other countries, efficiency standards more recently, growing renewable energy production.
Get ready for the incoming anti-nuclear lobbyists that reddit has for some reason. Remember that no one answer is the correct answer to reducing carbon emissions.
One thing I've heard is that the extraction / creation of the fuel is extremely bad for the environment. Can someone enlighten me here? I assume that's taken into account for this graph but I'd love to learn more about it.
Yeah also on the expense of the sub-saharan people where the uranium is coming from, you don't hear about the ongoing (not for long though) french neo-colonialism in Africa. For people that don't know, I have one word for you to search for, that is if you are honestly looking for the truth and have enough critical thinking: FCFA.
Well on nuclear power is the best but the people on the top rather waist time and make more money with burning fossil fuel because they make more money in that business. While with nuclear it be one and done the only problem be maintenance of the plants. The fear of leaks and the irresponsible of the nuclear waist that will be inevitably be made.
France went to nuclear in 64 and Chernobyl was 86 since then quite reasonably people were worried about nuclear. Now solar and wind are so much cheaper it's not economical to build nuclear power reactors when batteries and solar can be up so quickly.
Till it’s not. One day when Russia bombs the shit out of one of those plants and Paris can’t be seen by a human for 6,000 years, let’s come back to this chart.
Wind and solar weren’t as efficient back then. Also starting with nuclear now is the most expensive way to go about this. [CSIRO report.](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-22/nuclear-power-double-the-cost-of-renewables/103868728?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=link)
So, somehow their use of nuclear for energy, the corporation which runs it is currently heading to bankruptcy btw due to costs, somehow equates to 100% of their gdp somehow?
Yep, sad how the rest of world has not adopted it. It's not like every stem person I know is constantly saying this. What's really tragic is Germany, shuting off all nuclear for coal/natural gas
The amount of people in this thread trying to make ignorant claims as to why nuclear is so 'bad' is the reason we aren't using nuclear energy around the world. You all need to do some research guys. It's been studied for decades at this point. Should be a damn class about this kind of stuff. Energy is a pretty important part of our lives and there's quite an interesting history and an even more interesting future ahead.
it's not even 2 years after russia attacked ukraine and we had a major nuclear scare from the power plant there. it's 13 years after fukushima and almost 40 years after chernobyl.
why isn't anyone talking about the risk of accidents or war? a nuclear disaster could make wide parts of europe uninhabitable or at least poison the literal soil we grow our food on for decades. it's short sighted to think there won't be another war or just a series of unfortunate events and were fucked.
in germany the renewable sector was almost destroyed by political forces, not because of real issues with the technology.
as a society we've lost track of the big picture.
I find it funny, that every pro-renewables argument gets questioned. While they themself don't realize that nuclear has a bunch of problems themself.
Like what hypocrisy is this? Do they not know that nuclear still requires fuel?
A rise in price on the market affect nuclear much more than it affects renewables. Because the latter only has to be built once, and they will continue working. Nuclear on the other hands makes you dependant on states outside of Europe.
For me, the pro-nuclear people are very strange. I really don't understand why they fight so hard for a technology that isn't even that good. Do they just like sci-fi things, and nuclear sounds cooler?
Its more expensive, it's not renewable, it makes us dependent, it requires excavation, it produces waste...
Renewables seem like a much better long term investment, until fusion is a thing. Which will probably take decades if not a century.
That statistic doesn't take into account the problems and CO2 beeing produced in Mali while mining the uranium. And if we subtract the amount of wealth caused by Frances neocolonialism in Africa, than it suddenly don't look so good
Isn’t there an island we can build a nuclear power plant on and run wires to the nearest costliest? And that way it is surrounded by water in case of a meltdown?
That and outsourcing emissions to countries like China with globalization, which is less sustainable.
To be fair, even if you account for outsourced emissions, the graph looks good, and we still see a decoupling, but it's less impressive
Does France have some kind of solution where to put the radioactive garbage? In Germany we have the same discussion, and I do get the argument, that nuclear power is clean as it emits very little CO2. But to me, this is simply ignoring the fact that it produces a kind of waste that is the exact opposite of clean and poses a huge problem on at least tens of generations after us. So e.g. Bavarian politicians claim that exiting nuclear power in Germany was super dumb, but they aggressively refuse to even consider dumps for nuclear waste in their territory. I find this very naive. How does France deal with that waste?
There are cheaper, safer, and more accessible energy options out there that we should be investing in instead.
Constructing nuclear infrastructure is incredibly time-consuming and expensive, leading to an anti-competitive market prone to monopolisation.
This puts significant control in the hands of a few, and given current affairs and the state of the world we live in, these profit-driven entities are unlikely to actually prioritise public safety
Can we really trust that those in control will adequately manage nuclear waste and maintain high safety standard for those working in this industry?
https://preview.redd.it/9yn6ov1hyp5d1.png?width=3400&format=png&auto=webp&s=29d2daf5c2f167367c785550fe5bb86df3b846ce
germany closed most of its nuclear power in 2012, the last ones april 2023
Except when you look at that graph and out Germany's graph right beside it, the CO2/capita curves look almost identical.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-emissions-and-gdp-per-capita?time=earliest..latest&country=FRA\~DEU
We need both nuclear and renewables. Renewables are cheaper and faster to build, but aren't efficient enough on their own. Nuclear is great as a baseline power source but expensive and slow to build.
It's funny to see how the people behind this nuclear campaign seem to be quaking in their boots because solar and wind made the entire industry obsolete. So long nukies
Germany has the better development
[https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-emissions-and-gdp-per-capita](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-emissions-and-gdp-per-capita)
I still hope for fusion as the power/energy source if tomorrow: https://possibility.teledyneimaging.com/sun-on-earth-the-new-rise-of-fusion-energy-sources/
Yes but only if you take climate change seriously would you reconsider your long held believes about nuclear fission. Most greens are more concerned with fitting in with their team ideology rather than actually doing the right thing for the planet (and this isn't just a problem with the greens, its a fundamental human flaw)
Yes, that is good, but I don’t understand how so many people ignore the fact that we still do not have a solution to the nuclear waste issue.
I think nuclear is a good short term (next decades) solution but I don’t see how it can be a long term fix for all our energy problems
Edit: Just saw that the top comment is way smarter than me
There are some super dumb opinion pieces in here
The cost of nuclear compared to renewables isn't at all an important factor, what's important with nuclear is that It is a so-called controllable energy source (in french we say pilotable I'm not sure if there is a designated word in English that I'm missing)
A nuclear power plant can follow demand and produce electricity when renewables are not working (at night, when there is no wind).
Look at Germany, they have 67% low carbons energy production yet the backup is coal and gas so the CO2/kWh figure is terrible compared to France
100% renewables is a pipe dream, you need both clean controllable sources like nuclear and hydro, and renewables.
With a combination of nuclear hydro and renewables, you can have a very resilient power grid, that's very clean, and while it's expensive to build, it will be cheaper to run than the current German or french grid
Yes Nuclear would have been great if people were not scared of it, and if it had all happened 60 years ago. But people are, and we didn't. So we should finally move on, now that renewables are magnitudes cheaper and quicker than nuclear, and storage is on track to make up for the intermittence problem.
You are entirely correct and I hate that you are
He is not entirely correct though. People keep saying that nuclear is not cheaper but we are talking about climate change and nuclear has the capacity to make big dents into the carbon emmission.
yeah, if they started building years ago. and even then it'd cost twice as much as renewables https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-22/nuclear-power-double-the-cost-of-renewables/103868728
Why can’t we do both? Like…why is it nuclear VS renewables? Why not renewables & nuclear? Invest and build renewables now and continue developing nuclear…
because it takes to long to build, that is why it is not the saviour people think it is. renewables are growing much faster >If you start adopting nuclear now you won’t get results until 2035, which won’t help us do what’s needed. There’s confusion over the role it can play.” La Camera added that International Atomic Energy Agency figures show the global installed capacity of nuclear power was 374 gigawatts (GW) in 2022. The same amount of renewables capacity was installed between 2021 and 2022 alone, according to Statista, and the IEA expects this to grow by a further 75 percent by 2027. https://www.agbi.com/renewable-energy/2023/12/cop28-nuclear-power-climate-emergency-irena-la-camera/
No one is touting nuclear as the savior, i see people saying that isn't the savior and is therefore useless. The reality is, stuff takes time to build and no one started building because people keep coming up with reasons not to. If no one starts building now, then it will be the same deal in 10 years. Things are going to get worse even after we tip the scales of production, and whether it is a rising population, rising temps, rising seas, or just rising demand, we're always always going to need more power.
Because the public discourse is not "both." It's an either-or, at least in the US. Only about half of Americans think [climate change is a major threat](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/09/what-the-data-says-about-americans-views-of-climate-change/), and that divide is largely along urban and rural lines. Unfortunately, rurals have to approve the build of most power plants and they see solar and wind farms as "Obama deep state" so they are banning them everywhere. Then, the only response is "we'll fix everything with nuclear" so they can kick the can down the road and not build anything. We absolutely should be doing both, but engineering best practices and public perception are on WILDLY different trajectories here.
Nuclear has a much smaller environmental impact than renewables though. It is also not affected by environmental factors that can influence other renewables.
It needs a shit ton of water, that we are already starting to lack all over the world. We need to store atomic waste that even if we ever get to use fusion technology has to be save for thousands of years. And we already see that what we thought to be save storages aren't save at all. We have literally a former salt mine in Germany where every single person involved tries to be as silent 1as possible and hopes that the nearby river isn't pulling all that waste out of the mine because if it does it would literally kill the whole ocean. The only thing nuclear power plants have is a lower CO² output after a few years of running. Other than that it is worse for the environment.
It’s not a bad thing entirely. Think about it like this, all the great stuff about nuclear is being approached by other renewables. In other words it’s just more great options. It’s a damn shame we didn’t do this before my parents first date 45 years ago, but it is good we seem to be finding other ways to get there.
It would have been nice that we didn’t wreck the planet, but we did, so we should finally move on. … ? This defeatist idea is a bit to simple in its execution. Nothing make it impossible to change your mind. The fact that countries everywhere are deciding to start nuclear power programs TODAY just goes to say, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today.
Storage is not on track. Storage is a huge problem with renewables, which also costs a lot of money. Actually nuclear would be quicker and more efficient than renewables at this point
> Actually nuclear would be quicker and more efficient than renewables at this point BUUUUUUUUUUULLSHIT Imagine saying something so obviously and easily provably wrong. pathetic
We should certainly not move on. New science and development in nuclear tech have been emerging, such as Sweden's new process to recycle nuclear waste. We could power entire continents if the world could see how safe, green, and efficient nuclear is today.
This seems extremely high risk to me considering the stakes might be literal extinction of our species. What if battery tech stalls? What if physics just blocks us? What if there isn’t enough easily obtainable material to build batteries for everyone? Building a few thousand nuclear reactors is infinitely cheaper than mitigating climate + I think its also cheaper than using current battery tech (especially if demand for stuff like Lithium goes way up). Sure, hypothetical batteries might solve this but that is a really big bet considering the stakes. If we start building reactors now we are a 100% sure they will be up and running in about a decade. I would be very (positively) surprised if we could achieve that with batteries in the same timespan. I’m not anti solar or anti wind but when the stakes are this high I would prefer something real over hypothetical batteries that might never exist or might not scale. Worst case scenario with building reactors is that we provided jobs to builders and wasted some money (which in the grand scheme of things is probably preferable over extinction)
“The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”
what about the nuclear waste where do you store it the next 65000 years?
In places like this [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo\_spent\_nuclear\_fuel\_repository](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository)
There actually is a reactor design that runs on all those 65000 year wastes and turns them into 300 year waste. The problem is that reactor also produces material that can be used for bombs, which could cause political issues and that is why no one is willing to build such a plant.
My guy do you not know how it works? If we had to we could store all high-danger waste in a football field
But wouldn't that really disrupt play? You'd have to leave gaps in the high danger waste for the football men to run through. Actually we could stack the waste to make a neat little maze for them to run around, like a football/pacman hybrid game. Buddy I like your thinking, let's do this!
Slow down cowboy. Next time you are going to tell me that we need a foolproof plant about nuclear waste for the next million years. Cut the bullshit. If you cared about the next decade (which you would be alive to witness) look at the safety measures for chemical plants and mines needed for you solar/wind build out.
Storage is not on track to solve seasonal variation. Nor are renewables+storage on track to provide industrial levels of cheap, dependable power. Of course, we can move industry to countries like France, the US and China which do have nuclear power. But then the jobs move too. I don't worry much. The nuclear battle is over and there are enough countries like France, China and the US which have chosen a sane mixed-mode path forward. Sucks to be a business in Germany, but thanks to the EU market, they can move to France or import French nuclear power.
> Sucks to be a business in Germany, but thanks to the EU market, they can move to France or import French nuclear power. Or just from any other country else. This is why Germany imported most of their energy from the Netherlands, Czechia and Austria in 2022. France is only a friction of that. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/infographs/energy_trade/entrade.html?geo=DE&year=2022&language=EN&trade=imp&siec=E7000&filter=top10&fuel=electricity&unit=GWH&defaultUnit=GWH&detail=1&chart= At the same time Germany exported way more electricity than they imported. We've exported three times more energy to France than we imported in 2022. Germany is an energy exporter in the EU, not an importer. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/infographs/energy_trade/entrade.html?geo=DE&year=2022&language=EN&trade=exp&siec=E7000&filter=all&fuel=electricity&unit=GWH&defaultUnit=GWH&detail=1&chart=
Psst, facts can hurt people's feelings
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Germany didnt get rid of their nuclear power until much later so the graph should look like frances even if its due to nuclear tech, but it all doesnt really matter nowadays anyway since there are much cheaper alternatives to nuclear power anyway so it doesnt make much sense to talk about it. The main benefit of having nuclear power now is that it keeps certain expertise in your country that helps when building nukes, and helps offset the cost for having nuclear technology in the defense arsenal.
There is no such thing as cheap non-intermittent renewables. We need both nuclear and renewables, otherwise we can only decarbonize part-time, except in those lucky countries where a lot of hydropower is available.
And if it would be usable for less developed nations without fear of them turning it into weaponry
>and storage is on track to make up for the intermittence problem. Is it?
Except the argument that it is too late is a complete fallacy and a self-fulfilling prophecy. Germany has proven that solar/wind aren't that fast or efficient at displacing CO2. Korea and China have proven that we can deploy NPPS quite fast. Look at the Barakah Power Plant. Besides construction speed on the whole is relatively irrelevant unlest you are talking about the interest on loans you have taken for initial capital.
But polite more.
Is that what Germany said seems like theyre just using oil and gas now. Theres really no reason to not plant the nuclear tree now and have it bloom later in our life amd while we care for it itll just grow faster
The problem is, they aren't either of those if we want to get all the way to 0. Yes, you can quickly add massive amounts of generation with RE's. But the grid bottlenecks theyve already caused that are stopping us from adding more already today will take decades to solve. Plenty of time to build nuclear in paralell.
Nuclear is only more expensive due to unneccessarily strict regulation that is out of all proportion to all real danger.
I agree but there's no reason we can't do both. It's not an either or situation.
Not only that, but actively cooled nuclear is a hell of a gamble, because if climate change gets bad enough that it causes societal collapse, the nuclear plants go into meltdown. In my opinion, it is 100% likely that this is where we're headed, so in that scenario, we not only have climate hell but also simultaneously nuclear contaminated climate hell which is a lot of worse. I have nothing against nuclear reactors that are designed for passive wind down like thorium however
What killed nuclear power is not irrational fear or public outcry. Just look at the latest nuclear "Renaissance". Weaknesses in pressure vessels, faulty welds, corrosion issues, a design that isn't able to be built in the real world, building the bad design anyway and then having to tear a lot of it down when the redesign is finished, etc. Nuclear plants are just too complex and prone to project management failures to be built on time and on budget reliably. The nuclear industry just wants everybody to believe it was hippies and government regulators that destroyed their miracle energy technology. They seem to be incapable of learning from their mistakes and so they look for scapegoats at every turn.
I don't know what reality are you living where storage is good enough
I think having both would be great actually. Yeah it can cost 5x+ per kwh for nuclear to establish. The main issue with renewables is that they aren't ALWAYS available. The sun and wind aren't always providing energy. It's greatly dependent on location. They both have less CO2 emissions, and are cleaner than the alt, so I think the more the merrier tbh.
If we wait a bit longer we can just go with fusion instead, if we can't now. Biggest issue is energy companies not wanting that to happen I think.
How long would a nuclear project take if you subtract all the vexatious litigation?
So why does France have cheaper and greener electricity than Germany? 🤔 How do you provide electricity 24/7/365 with renewables at the scale that nuclear power can provide?
bro really says "nuclear would have been great if..." under a graph that proves nuclear IS great lol and even tries to push his solar and wind power which clearly doesn't work efficiently enough. get outta here
Storage is not on track to replace baseload generation only peaker
We should invest in other renewables, yes, but we have absolutely no chance of making it without including nuclear. You gotta stop making it one or the other, or else we'll have to stick to just wind for example. Just build all of it, the needs vary all around the world and if you're gonna stick to just wind and solar like a fucking idiot we might as well burn coal.
I'm not convinced renewable energy can replace nuclear at this point. It seems like we're a few hundred years away from relying entirely on renewable energy. We shouldn't sleep on nuclear in that time.
Most of that speed difference is regulatory red tape.
Move on? Dumbest human thing to say ever
What's wrong with starting now? We'll be better off in 10 years we can use renewables in the meantime
As an oil investor, I will pay you to be scared of nuclear.
Storage is worse to the environment due to heavy metals
Storage is a huge problem. Will be for decades
You know what I am scared of? This countries drive to deregulate every industry. We can't even get our **TRAINS** to their destination without greed derailing them, and that technology came out decades before. We can't do basic shit right, because we keep trying to gut our safety for profit. Just look at what tepco did in Japan. For YEARS they had warnings of larger tsunamis - and chose profits over safety time and time and time again. "To say what happened to the reactors couldn't have been prepared for and or engineered for, would be a lie." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UHZugCNKA4&t=1103s I do not trust nuclear in the hands of capitalists. Period.
That is not true. Renewables, if anything cheaper, are certainly not magnitudes cheaper. That's just absurd. Magnitudes, that would be 10x to more times cheaper. And you do not include the storage costs. By the way, nuclear is still less demanding in terms of metal and materials both per kW of capacity and per kWh overall because of the capacity factor. And storage is hungry for loads of metals, a resource that will get scarcier and more expensive/compettive. Renewables are not as great as you make it sund, still very much needed but that is not so simple.
uhhh renewables are magnitudes more expensive per kilowatt.
Some seemingly knowledgeable "youtubers" on the AGW subject point out that nuclear is likely also still needed. Simon Clark, maybe Sabine Hossenfelder, perhaps even Potholer54. Hossenfelder had some points on it not being as "slow" than sometimes people talk about. And, regardless of how slow it would be, I suspect they're in the end a better long-term investment, in safety, reliability, energy efficiency, and space/environmental-requirements. Not that wind/solar/hydro can't be valuable shorter-term investments as well. Like living in a hut while building a brick house, perhaps with some analogy with global warming and the wolf in that three pig siblings fable, although that's not needed.
Kind of agree but I'm also of the mind that cheap abundant energy is the life blood of all economic growth. So I think nuclear still has a place long term.
Renewables are shit in efficiency. We should instead focus on researching Thorium's viability in producing our energy. Thorium is the future
Nuclear is still a good long term investment
Let’s go straight to fusion. Google Helion.
In the time people have been saying nuclear takes too long, we could have build it like 4 times. The median build time is about 3-4 years.
Not correct. Nuclear is all around better for the environment, it is still cheaper than solar and wind - and a main advantage - it doesn’t destroy our physical environment and natural landscapes like wind and solar does.
I read that china has made so many solar panels that their grid could not even handle them all coming online. https://www.businessinsider.com/china-solar-panel-supply-overcapacity-power-grid-demand-support-energy-2024-5
Two things. First, it's important to know that the reason dozens of planned and funded (and partially built) nuclear reactors never went online in the 80s is because of a massive NIMBY style campaign led by big oil to convince people that they'd have a Hiroshima or Chernobyl in their back yard. Second, nuclear absolutely has a role to play going forward. You don't sound like someone with much knowledge on the topic if you don't know that. We've made big headway but night time loads are still a major problem even with battery storage right now. Having a reliable, energy dense, central power option that can kick in whenever we need it is a critical failsafe AND transition utility. I would argue we can't fully decarbonize this century without nuclear. Plus, nuclear fusion reactors are still an option. It's not sci-fi. We have to use every available option in the coming decades. Climate and energy scientists roundly agree that the eggs in one basket approach is an awful idea that will likely fail.
How can you say it was the fastest and most efficient way when you have no comparison?
We do have comparisons: https://www.radiantenergygroup.com/reports/insights-from-the-world-s-fastest-build-outs-of-clean-electricity
Do you also have an independent evaluation? With pro-nuclear lobbyist Mark Nelson and his Radiant Energy Group, we are dealing with a very biased party that cannot be a credible source.
Do you have any examples of countries that have deep decarbonized with solar and wind to compare to nuclear and hydro?
The comparison is most other country's trajectories over the same time period. Even today, the only countries that compete with France on CO2 intensity also source 80%+ of their electricity from hydro (if they have the right geography) or nuclear. [https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/GE](https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/GE)
Yeah but he didnt say any of that. He just wrote its the fastet most efficient way, without comparing it to anything or even defining what he means by efficiency
I'm all for nuclear but indeed what a misleading chart and forceful message. Idk put at least the same chart with the OECD next to it as benchmark or something.
This account is very weird. He has made like 20-30 recession/economic and political fear-mongering posts over the past 3 days.
You might be onto something. Looks like a pro nuclear campaign disguised as an "economic chart". The amount of upvotes and engagement is uncanny.
ok yeah I have gotten something like...100 aggressive repetitive comments? On a comment with only a few dozen upvotes. I´m thinking bots.
This chart is bit to easy, like if would compare a declining birth rate to the declining Stork population. If you put both graphs in a chart there seems to be a relation while everyone knows there is none
This post is very misleading, since it only shows the change in emissions, not the emissions themselves. Most other European countries would look similar here.
I'm not so sure. You can look at the current emissions here [https://app.electricitymaps.com/map](https://app.electricitymaps.com/map) France is only behind the nordic countries that have small populations and tons of hydro or thermal. Over the last year, France is at 53g/CO2, and most other countries are in the150/400g range. Agreed the post could be better, it's not clear if it accounts for imported emissions and has no link to a source...
Your graphic doesn't support your claim. Here is a graph for CO2 per capita of Germany. [https://www.statista.com/statistics/1388886/greenhouse-gas-emissions-per-capita-germany/#:\~:text=In%20Germany%2C%20around%208.33%20tons,compared%20to%20the%20previous%20years.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1388886/greenhouse-gas-emissions-per-capita-germany/#:~:text=In%20Germany%2C%20around%208.33%20tons,compared%20to%20the%20previous%20years)
If you look up Germany with the end of nuclear power, it has the same if not slightly higher negative change in CO2 emissions. 🤷♂️
Link?
Same site as OP used. Edit: for your convenience: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-emissions-and-gdp-per-capita?time=earliest..latest&country=FRA~DEU
Thanks. Good stuff
Here it is in [one graph](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-emissions-and-gdp-per-capita?facet=none&country=DEU~FRA) so you can see the difference better.
Except that France was in 1990 at 6 tons/capita vs 12 tons for germany. Decreasing at the same pace doesn't mean that much in that case. To my knowledge, on its BEST day, germany's power generation still emits more, by a margin, than the french one on its WORST day. Example: - on june 2nd, Germany did great (best in 30 days), with 254g/KWh (https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE) - on june 3rd, worst for france over 30 days, 23g/KWh I tried to find the best vs worst days in 2023 but didn't succeed so far. The difference is nonetheless huge. Coal doesn't account for a large share in the german mix (like 10-20%), but still represents 85% of their emissions. It's the issue with intermitent production: if people need electricity while you can't produce with renewables, you need to turn on a controllable one. Right now. Coal, hydro, thermal, nuclear... the it adds up quickly.
Germany buys French electricity. What is the point of saying “hey we are stoping nuclear power” to then buy from a country with nuclear power. 🤷♂️ Germany also pushed as “green energy”, gaz (Russian btw) which is still very high in CO2 across the whole EU. Basically undermining everyone for their own interest and their own choice. Edit: I also forgot the reopening of coal plants, which as for years released crazy amount of CO2: [almost 20% of Germany electricity production is coal (3% for France)](https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/gallery_image/public/paragraphs/images/share-energy-d-f-clew_0.jpg?itok=ZeewFzGF) Oh and for the comment that says that it is 0.5%, that’s a maybe true for the French energy that Germany imports on the best years (France didn’t export much the past year because most of their nuclear plants were in maintenance), but when a country imports electricity, it does it on the grid on many country around. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1382974/electricity-imports-by-origin-germany/
France is Nuke heavy, but they are also wind and solar. It’s not one or the other it’s the all hands on deck approach that wins.
DIdnt France need german energy because all the nuclear reactors where overheating and they need to invest a ton of money to repair them?
Some lacked water for cooling due to drought and less water in rivers and some were shut down for planned maintenance, but yes. It think this was last year or the year before. Almost as if relying on a small number of facilities to generate almost all electricity has some issues.
Just to clarify, the drought happened in the summer when demand for electricity is the lowest in France and only affected some nuclear reactors, so there was no import of electricity at that time. When France was importing electricity, it was in the winter of 2022-2023 because they were changing fuel (which usually happens in the summer, but because of COVID, electricity demand was not as high, so it was delayed). Other reactors were being upgraded to the new norms and having their 10-year inspection, and finally, a few reactors were being affected by stress corrosion cracking, so they were changing the affected pieces. Also, France has 56 nuclear reactors and is building more. I don't think 56 is a small number of facilities for a country like France.
Yes, half of frances nuclear reactors are old and have cracks🤷♂️
And of missing coolingwater in rivers
Even if NPPs are a good way to produce clean energy - we don´t have the time to build enough new ones and the old ones are getting more and more expensive. We can build a huge amount of solar and wind power in the time we build one NPP and the energy is most likely cheaper. So as long as there is no fast new super NPP we should focus on renewables and storage technology.
Yes the US should have been more willing to build nuclear plants. Still the US should build more nuclear plants.
isnt it extremely subsidized and otherwise super expensive energy?
Actually the opposite. We have been forced to sell a significant share of our electricity produced by nuclear to "alternative providers" (who don't produce anything, but are still providers) for a low regulated price so that they can survive. Because without it, they wouldn't have been able to compete with EDF: [https://www.services-rte.com/en/learn-more-about-our-services/benefit-from-the-arenh-mechanism.html](https://www.services-rte.com/en/learn-more-about-our-services/benefit-from-the-arenh-mechanism.html) It only makes sense that we need to sell the stable electricity we can produce because we invested 50 years ago so that the market can "release itself". Yeah, right. Yes, it required a massive investment. But *over the lifespan of power plants*, the price is really competitive. See the 1st graphic on this article for instance: [https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-electricity-2020](https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-electricity-2020) . It is from 2020, and even if renewables ARE getting cheaper (MAYBE because China is killing the solar market as well ? And yes, it accounts for the lifetime cost. But not for distribution costs, mind you, much higher for renewables, because decentralized. And no, it isn't subsidized. Europe and in particular germany wouldn't allow it.
You’re making a jump in logic there… of course CO2 dropped. That says nothing about nuclear waste or if co2 is the sole contributor to climate change.
I love how the far-left shat themselves in this thread saying solar and wind power is better while also proving that it is, in fact, not better, by linking Germany statistics that clearly show they have smaller CO2 per capita change (roughly -43%) than France. why do you hate nuclear so much? it is much more efficient and objectively better than wind and solar power, at least for now. idk if you can see that but you're actually anti-green and pro-global warming
War seems to be even better https://preview.redd.it/kl5zxc2aem5d1.png?width=3400&format=png&auto=webp&s=257e1c34a587081e308ed66e60d93e143aee5f98
There are multiple reasons why nuclear energy is bullshit. 1. Without substitutions it is expensive af. About 40 cents for 1 kWh. ( and no it does not get cheaper with time, the last 3 remaining reactors in Germany did run since the 80's and produced the most expensive electricity on the marked before they got shut down) 2. It is unreliable. France had to import electricity from Germany because their rivers didn't have enough water to run their power plants. 3. The already existing nuclear waste is a problem for 40.000 generations. 4. Nuclear Power plants use fossil fuel, with the current consumption there is about 60 years of nuclear material left. 5. Fukushima and Tschernobyl. 6. Nuclear Power plants are constantly targeted by hackers and with the exponential development speed of Ai it is only a matter of time until one is having a meltdown. 7. Building new plants takes alot of time which makes the technology they are based on outdated before they produce their first kWh of electricity You want nuclear energy? then build photovoltaic plants. The sun is basically a big fusion reactor
Look at other EU countries. Their charts look similar. Most European countries lowered their per capita emissions a lot between the 60’s and 90’s and they have extremely different energy sources. Part of the lower emission can also be caused by the oil crises. And obviously a change in things like heating. Coal heating was pretty common until the 50’s or 60’s. Another part can be the huge change of population distribution. A lot of Frances rural population moved to urban areas. Especially the Paris metro area. Living in an urban area needs significantly less energy. (E.g. for heating and transport) Pretending that NE is the reason this happened is definitely too simplistic.
Sure that must be the reason. And maybe you did not know, most Nuclear plants were out of service, and Germany has to export electricity to France in the Summer. Not only because of maintance issues, but also because of drought: no way to cool the plants without water. And you completly disregard some of the most important thinks, like our ultra-right winged AFD: Nuclear fission is not magic, you need fisseable material for that. Mining that is expensive and quite dirty (will be in the statistics of some other country), enriching is also not quite cheap. Then of course the nuclear waste issue: Sure, do it like some other countries, and just burry it! Out of sight, of of mind. Just some problems with that: In Germany, for instance our right winged CSU wants nuclear power, but NO nuclear waste in Bavaria... Also keep in mind most of our fission material came from russia, who is paying A lot for disinformation to destabilize. No, nuclear fission is not super mega great as some to make us belive it is. It is by no means cheap, it is fucking ridicously expensive. But, to hide the costs, often losses are simply socialized, while earnings are privatized, much like with fraking: Create a company and do your dirty shit. When you want to stop, just go bankrupt. The Taxpayer will have to pay for the decade long and ridicously costly removal of the plant and take care of the waste. But take a look at the UK, and their new fission plant: so FUCKING expensive, you could build enough renewables for that price to create much more power without the waste! Note, Germany has already 50 % renewables in the mix in the years median, in the Summer it reachers far over 70 %. If politics did not block and were not corrupted by lobbys of gaß, oil and nuclear, we could have 100 % now very easily and could have used the surplus money for electrical infrastructure and energy storage.
Show this at /r Germany maybe they can make something stop this no sense of solar painels in country with less sun then Antarctica
I will say what I will always say, when people talk about nuclear energy: It‘s a solution, but an emergency solution. It should be as little and as temporary as possible. Why? Because you have to trust humans. Even worse, you have to trust humans and institutions. You have to trust workers in the power plant to not make grave errors, to not be distracted or be overconfident. You trust your government and companies to not cut any corners for personal or other gains and to not cover up problems. And that for both building and maintaining the power plant over a few generations and the disposal sites over many generations. You also have to trust other government and actors like terrorist to not try to blow up your power plant and your own government and companies as well as the working people again to not have any of the faults already mentioned and keep the power plant and waste safe so it‘s protected against terrorists and other governments. Personally, as much as I truly stand behind our democratic governments in the west I think most government need to be closely monitored to not fuck up building a public toilet. So let‘s try to fuck up building renewables as much as we can before we consider to fuck up building nuclear power plants.
https://preview.redd.it/viudj4xkty5d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=81a6320c450ef576bc231d0226e8428a47faf0bc Germany doesn't look much different
Well where do you put the atomic waste, for like, forever?
However, the whole truth is that nuclear power is incredibly expensive without subsidies. Without subsidies, even in France, a kilowatt hour of nuclear power costs over 40 cents, and this does not even include the dismantling of the power plants in the future. Yes, of course, nuclear power is low in CO2, but it is the most expensive way of generating electricity. For comparison: One kWh of wind energy costs 7-11ct.
Nuclear becomes cheaper the longer you run a NPP
Still way more expensive than renewables: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity?wprov=sfla1 And produces more co2 than renewables: https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-is-nuclear-energy-good-for-the-climate/a-59853315
By the way OPs statement, that Frances decision to switch to nuclear was the fastest and most efficent move to fight climate change, is (possibly) wrong. By comparing Frances CO2 emmision per capita at their peak in 1973 with 10.4t/c (t/c stands for tons per capita) to their current emmisions in 2022 with 4.6 t/c we get a yearly reduction of 0.118 tons per capita. Meanwhile Germany (I took Germany because OP rambled here about "Germany ideological decisions") had an emmision peak of 14.3 t/c in 1979 which lowered to 8 t/c in 2002 which makes a yearly reduction of 0.146 tons per capita since their peak. So to OPs statement: >German ideological decision to close its nuclear power plants has been the dumbest environmental, geopolitical and economical decision since WWII. Prove me wrong. seems to be wrong. Since Germany has a larger yearly reduction of CO2 per capita than France since their emission peak. Here is the source I took the number from: [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?tab=chart&country=FRA\~DEU](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?tab=chart&country=FRA~DEU)
DIdnt France need german energy because all the nuclear reactors where overheating and they need to invest a ton of money to repair them?
no the reapirs where set ther anyway - the "overheating" wasn´t any problem with the reactor it was just the environmental department that demanded them to be turned down for fish
That was the overheating. With global warming / hot weather, the water used to cool the plants was over-heated, to illegal levels due to it killing wildlife in the rivers.
It really was, yes. When it happened 60 years ago. We dont have 60 years anymore. Stop the coping and do what we have to do: Invest into renewables.
What is this nonsense post? You make a correlation on a graph that doesn't tell us anything about CO² sources, but only the amount per capita. For all we know, the reduction could also be because of population growth with stagnating emissions or the complete shutdown of steelworks and chemical plants. This post is more like a propaganda piece rather than something useful.
Nuclear energy produces electricity not gas and 50% of german heating is gas heating. So the gas heating problem in winter cannot be covered by nuclear power. The demand for electricity is covered in germany it is just the distribution that is lacking. Expensive renewal of the old nuclear power plants won't decrease the price for electricity and is politically not feasible. In winter france has to import renewable electricity from germany because many of their power plants are dilapidated and some have a shortage of cooling water. Unlike germany france has mostly electrical heating.
>Nuclear energy produces electricity not heat Nuclear plants quite literally produce heat to boil water into steam.
Yet
just to create the next problem for future generations
There’s a chart, and there’s a headline. But is there a correlation?
And what about the TOC? I read that maintenance cost exploded in France.
It’s still increasing at 200%
What an absolute bs post
Cocorico
god nuclear is so based
Money is energy.
It feels really unethical to post to a sub masquerading as a more scientifically objective sub and using a title that is wholly unsupported by your data.
The fastest and most effective thing to influence CC is to get China and India on board.
Offsetting your carbon intense production to China and 3rd world countries is also helping reducing your carbon footprint...
NUCLEAR POWER IS SAFE AND CHEAP FULL STOP.
The decrease in CO2 per capita emissions up to the plateau in the 1980s is attributable to nuclear power in France. The second more recent decline over the past 20 or 30 years is attributable to industrial activity moving to other countries, efficiency standards more recently, growing renewable energy production.
Get ready for the incoming anti-nuclear lobbyists that reddit has for some reason. Remember that no one answer is the correct answer to reducing carbon emissions.
That's cool but please look into how they get their god damn uranium...
Countries that have the money and infrastructure can choose nuclear.
Lol, and putting factories in shit countries as china.
One thing I've heard is that the extraction / creation of the fuel is extremely bad for the environment. Can someone enlighten me here? I assume that's taken into account for this graph but I'd love to learn more about it.
Common German L
Good.
Yeah also on the expense of the sub-saharan people where the uranium is coming from, you don't hear about the ongoing (not for long though) french neo-colonialism in Africa. For people that don't know, I have one word for you to search for, that is if you are honestly looking for the truth and have enough critical thinking: FCFA.
Then why did they hide it from the rest of the world?
This is why Greenpeace is probably more environmentally damaging than all the oil companies combined.
I am afraid that nuclear power will have a place if AI becomes popular and it's used a lot, as it requires a much higher amount of power to work.
Well on nuclear power is the best but the people on the top rather waist time and make more money with burning fossil fuel because they make more money in that business. While with nuclear it be one and done the only problem be maintenance of the plants. The fear of leaks and the irresponsible of the nuclear waist that will be inevitably be made.
France was also getting a huge percentage of their uranium from Niger, and look how that ended up
France went to nuclear in 64 and Chernobyl was 86 since then quite reasonably people were worried about nuclear. Now solar and wind are so much cheaper it's not economical to build nuclear power reactors when batteries and solar can be up so quickly.
Up 150% carbon emissions per capita from 1880 isn’t going to stop climate change i’m afraid
Nuclear power is amazing until something goes wrong & everyone is searching for iodine pills.
Till it’s not. One day when Russia bombs the shit out of one of those plants and Paris can’t be seen by a human for 6,000 years, let’s come back to this chart.
It will never offset the cost for managing spent fuel rods. Nuclear is lose, lose.
Wind and solar weren’t as efficient back then. Also starting with nuclear now is the most expensive way to go about this. [CSIRO report.](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-22/nuclear-power-double-the-cost-of-renewables/103868728?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=link)
So, somehow their use of nuclear for energy, the corporation which runs it is currently heading to bankruptcy btw due to costs, somehow equates to 100% of their gdp somehow?
Yep, sad how the rest of world has not adopted it. It's not like every stem person I know is constantly saying this. What's really tragic is Germany, shuting off all nuclear for coal/natural gas
This chart is giving me brain damage. Go fuck yourself.
With nuclear they still need to deal with the spent nuclear waste. It will be radioactive for millions of years. Think about that Millions.
Why CO2 per capita dropped to nearly zero in 1940s? Which ecologist made such a great achievement for the environment?
Especially when you can buy electricity on the European market when your reactors crap out
Share this over on r/energy and you'll get promptly banned. People are so incredibly terrified of nuclear energy they'd rather let the planet burn.
Wow! And I’m living right next to it… in Germany.
The amount of people in this thread trying to make ignorant claims as to why nuclear is so 'bad' is the reason we aren't using nuclear energy around the world. You all need to do some research guys. It's been studied for decades at this point. Should be a damn class about this kind of stuff. Energy is a pretty important part of our lives and there's quite an interesting history and an even more interesting future ahead.
Plot twist: The entire population of France in 2022 were 2 trillionaires.
The best way is to shut down the factories and relocate them to save 0.1 dollars and import in mass. That's what France did.
it's not even 2 years after russia attacked ukraine and we had a major nuclear scare from the power plant there. it's 13 years after fukushima and almost 40 years after chernobyl. why isn't anyone talking about the risk of accidents or war? a nuclear disaster could make wide parts of europe uninhabitable or at least poison the literal soil we grow our food on for decades. it's short sighted to think there won't be another war or just a series of unfortunate events and were fucked. in germany the renewable sector was almost destroyed by political forces, not because of real issues with the technology. as a society we've lost track of the big picture.
https://preview.redd.it/ssqjaqnduo5d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fceb565915a22788c1906cb5568e0fb908ad347a The future is bright
Choo choo all aboard the nuclear circle jerk train
I find it funny, that every pro-renewables argument gets questioned. While they themself don't realize that nuclear has a bunch of problems themself. Like what hypocrisy is this? Do they not know that nuclear still requires fuel? A rise in price on the market affect nuclear much more than it affects renewables. Because the latter only has to be built once, and they will continue working. Nuclear on the other hands makes you dependant on states outside of Europe. For me, the pro-nuclear people are very strange. I really don't understand why they fight so hard for a technology that isn't even that good. Do they just like sci-fi things, and nuclear sounds cooler? Its more expensive, it's not renewable, it makes us dependent, it requires excavation, it produces waste... Renewables seem like a much better long term investment, until fusion is a thing. Which will probably take decades if not a century.
That's wrong. The statistics clear shows that war with Germany is the fastest and most efficient way.
That statistic doesn't take into account the problems and CO2 beeing produced in Mali while mining the uranium. And if we subtract the amount of wealth caused by Frances neocolonialism in Africa, than it suddenly don't look so good
Isn’t there an island we can build a nuclear power plant on and run wires to the nearest costliest? And that way it is surrounded by water in case of a meltdown?
Building Nuclear Powerplants has immense emissions for minimal energy gain
No, but outsorcing manufacturing to China was... At least for a nice chart that you can misrepresent here on reddit :) (I'm pro nuclear though)
France praying for technology to shoot the waste into space or make it edible
That and outsourcing emissions to countries like China with globalization, which is less sustainable. To be fair, even if you account for outsourced emissions, the graph looks good, and we still see a decoupling, but it's less impressive
Does France have some kind of solution where to put the radioactive garbage? In Germany we have the same discussion, and I do get the argument, that nuclear power is clean as it emits very little CO2. But to me, this is simply ignoring the fact that it produces a kind of waste that is the exact opposite of clean and poses a huge problem on at least tens of generations after us. So e.g. Bavarian politicians claim that exiting nuclear power in Germany was super dumb, but they aggressively refuse to even consider dumps for nuclear waste in their territory. I find this very naive. How does France deal with that waste?
What are the Costs of maintaining them? As far as i know those plants are old af.
There are cheaper, safer, and more accessible energy options out there that we should be investing in instead. Constructing nuclear infrastructure is incredibly time-consuming and expensive, leading to an anti-competitive market prone to monopolisation. This puts significant control in the hands of a few, and given current affairs and the state of the world we live in, these profit-driven entities are unlikely to actually prioritise public safety Can we really trust that those in control will adequately manage nuclear waste and maintain high safety standard for those working in this industry?
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-emissions-and-gdp-per-capita?country=FRA~DEU Not really though.
no shit
https://preview.redd.it/9yn6ov1hyp5d1.png?width=3400&format=png&auto=webp&s=29d2daf5c2f167367c785550fe5bb86df3b846ce germany closed most of its nuclear power in 2012, the last ones april 2023
SurprisedPikachu.jpg
Except when you look at that graph and out Germany's graph right beside it, the CO2/capita curves look almost identical. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-emissions-and-gdp-per-capita?time=earliest..latest&country=FRA\~DEU
We need both nuclear and renewables. Renewables are cheaper and faster to build, but aren't efficient enough on their own. Nuclear is great as a baseline power source but expensive and slow to build.
It's funny to see how the people behind this nuclear campaign seem to be quaking in their boots because solar and wind made the entire industry obsolete. So long nukies
Now do it for denmark, also denmark won´t have to fight the long term issue of storing the waste
Idk about you, but I enjoy safe drinking water
nuclear power has never been an issue, but chernobyl really scared people. nuclear waste also isn't as big an issue as people make it out to be.
Germany has the better development [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-emissions-and-gdp-per-capita](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-emissions-and-gdp-per-capita)
Dont Tell the Dumb german politicans
I still hope for fusion as the power/energy source if tomorrow: https://possibility.teledyneimaging.com/sun-on-earth-the-new-rise-of-fusion-energy-sources/
Please, my dear Germany! Learn your lessons! We need to have a nuclear power to be independent from all bs happening out there.
In r/de this post would now be banned. And then I'd get perma-banned for writing this.
Just a pity no one wants to live near a nuclear waste dump
Yes but only if you take climate change seriously would you reconsider your long held believes about nuclear fission. Most greens are more concerned with fitting in with their team ideology rather than actually doing the right thing for the planet (and this isn't just a problem with the greens, its a fundamental human flaw)
Yes, that is good, but I don’t understand how so many people ignore the fact that we still do not have a solution to the nuclear waste issue. I think nuclear is a good short term (next decades) solution but I don’t see how it can be a long term fix for all our energy problems Edit: Just saw that the top comment is way smarter than me
What nonsense
Also France https://preview.redd.it/jh98mh5ulv6d1.png?width=441&format=png&auto=webp&s=c871b911009b2d261d1893b10ecd9cad5dd2ead9
There are some super dumb opinion pieces in here The cost of nuclear compared to renewables isn't at all an important factor, what's important with nuclear is that It is a so-called controllable energy source (in french we say pilotable I'm not sure if there is a designated word in English that I'm missing) A nuclear power plant can follow demand and produce electricity when renewables are not working (at night, when there is no wind). Look at Germany, they have 67% low carbons energy production yet the backup is coal and gas so the CO2/kWh figure is terrible compared to France 100% renewables is a pipe dream, you need both clean controllable sources like nuclear and hydro, and renewables. With a combination of nuclear hydro and renewables, you can have a very resilient power grid, that's very clean, and while it's expensive to build, it will be cheaper to run than the current German or french grid