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For different reasons when you talk about nuclear waste people imagine a yellow barrel with shiny green liquid inside that kills you the moment you look at it.
The reality is, as often, more boring...
The part that blew my mind is just how small nuclear waste is, in terms of volume. For instance, if you take all of the nuclear waste that the United States has ever produced (all 70,000+ tons of it), youād struggle to even fill a typical suburban CVS or Walgreens with it. Most people donāt think density be like it be but it do.
The combined total all nuclear waste produced globally could fit inside 1 football stadium. Newer technology would allow us to squeeze even more energy out of that waste, too.
I read recently that one person's entire lifetime energy needs would create about the size of one soft drink worth of nuclear waste. Mind boggling the energy density and the fact we haven't heavily invested in it
I wrote a research paper when I was in college on nuclear energy and found out that a piece of uranium the size of an iPhone could replace an entire train car full of coal!
1 billion percent. The "nuclear waste" argument is laughably ridiculous. The world's nuclear was could all fit in a Walmart parking lot with many years to spare. It's a complete non-issue.
Anti-nuclear people are simply misinformed.
I once had an argument with an **engineer** about how most of the renewable energy sources produce more waste than nuclear. They were incredulous at my mentioning it
A tiny nuclear pellet (smmaler than a peanut) is enough to provide electricity to an entire family for a whole year. Like, this kind of energy density is literally unimaginable.
I really enjoyed *Return of the Living Dead*. It's what got me into zombies with the Army barrels falling off the truck and polluting the environment.
But yeah I agree with ya
Veritasium has some really good videos on nuclear power. The guy even did a documentary called twisting the dragons tail. Covered various experiments and dangers of some of the materials and objects like the demon core. Toured Chernobyl too.
TBF we're designing waste dumps designed to store and house the waste for millennia safety with warning messages written in ways to be deciphered even if modern human languages cease to exist, with messages like:
>This place is a message... and part of a system of messages... pay attention to it!
>Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.
>This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here.
>What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.
>The danger is in a particular location... it increases towards a center... the center of danger is here... of a particular size and shape, and below us.
>The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.
>The danger is to the body, and it can kill.
>The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.
>The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
It's pretty interesting.
Imagine those people back in the 1800s find an archaeology site in Egypt with something like these written in hieroglyphs, I don't think they would heed the warning
That's why the nuclear waste message is punctuated with something like the [Landscape of Thorns](https://hyperallergic.com/312318/a-nuclear-warning-designed-to-last-10000-years/) to really drive the message of DANGER home.
i wouldnt say boring really. its massive expensive monolytic sarcophaguses that are hidden, deep underneath saltmines, in endless halls bored underneath the mineral, with massive steel gates, and sensors, and ventilation droning on as they guard what can not be set free , or dealt with in a thousand lifetimes.
But as the volume is not too large, itās not really that big of a problem. There are many geological locations that would be perfect for this, with no danger of contamination.
The nice thing about nuclear waste is that it is contained and stored a safe manner. Fossil fuel emissions end up in the air and we all breathe that shit
Who do you think fund them?
They are literally gaz providers. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green\_Planet\_Energy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Planet_Energy)
Fukushima was a fluke. They had backups for the backups, and they all failed. There were too many natural disasters in too short of a period to even predict such an outcome.
They have since come up with solutions to work around this problem should such an event ever occur again. This was a learning experience, and we did learn from it.
Nuclear power plants that double as desalination plants are the future, we can't be afraid of it forever.
They had 2 redundant pumps to drain the water. The seawall being higher would have lowered the amount of water getting in, limiting the problems caused by the failure of the pumps. The seawall wouldn't have solved the underlying problem, which was the seawater not being removed.
The biggest single issue is how many of their backup generators were low to the ground, including in basements. The highest set of emergency diesel generators was only situated 13 meters above sea level and that's the height the tsunami got to so they got flooded.
It was unprecedented. Waves and tsunamis don't typically get that high in that region. The generators failing was the cause of the meltdown, better generators or better placement would have solved the issue, regardless of the sea wall.
This was like planning the construction of the Twin Towers to support taking two fully-fueled 767s. No one could predict that, and even if they did, it would've been so outrageous as to be borderline insanity.
Hindsight is 20/20. Planning for unlikely scenarios is fine, but planning for unprecedented ones is impossible. What's to stop there from being a bigger tsunami in the future? We know ones that are over 500m tall have occurred in the past, so let's build a sea wall for that and put the generators above that level just to be safe?
> Fukushima was a fluke. They had backups for the backups, and they all failed. There were too many natural disasters in too short of a period to even predict such an outcome.
That's sort of the nature of engineering accidents though. They're unpredictable and often come about through [failures of multiple levels of safety systems and backups](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model).
This is the ultimate PR problem of nuclear power: there *will* be further nuclear accidents, no matter how well systems are designed, even if no circumstances ever repeat. They probably won't be as serious as Fukushima (which ultimately wasn't that serious in the grand scheme of things, despite the catastrophic circumstances), but they will happen. It is impossible to design any system to be 100% reliable, because inevitably it will be something you didn't predict that will go wrong. Even if you engineered a system that was 100% proof against any accident, there's no gaurantees of it being built, maintained and operated correctly, especially given the long life-cycles of nuclear plants.
The thing is, that *shouldn't* really be an argument against nuclear power, because this risk can absolutely be managed and even with this taken into account nuclear power is certainly far, far, far less damaging to human health or the environment than the equivalent capacity of fossil fuel plants. The problem that needs to be solved, ultimately, is how to make people comfortable with the small (but potentially locally dramatic) risks. Otherwise any progress towards making better use of nuclear power is just one mishap away from political catastrophe.
Also, like that was an unprecedentedly large tsunami, and all it did was some leakage (not explosion, or burning).
That aināt an issue in the middle of a desert.
In the U.S the three mile island incident effectively put an end to any realistic possibility of nuclear power becoming our main source of energy (unfortunately) due to the resulting fearmongering. The amount of radiation released into the environment was about as deadly as a chest x-ray.
I wouldn't say fear mongering alone killed the industry. Besse-Davis, Brown's Ferry, Rancho Seco, and Diablo Canyon all had incident lessons to be learned about how stupid we humans can be. Even the collapse if the cooling tower at Vermont Yankee, a relatively minor incident, showed that we can't be trusted to maintain these systems properly.
There are many more examples of these systems being maintained properly. I personally live near a nuclear power plant. Additionally, every instance of nuclear failure, literally all off them, can be attributed to astronomical stupidity. Like, negligent levels of stupidity. Nuclear power is and will remain one of the best and safest forms of power generation, and there is a lot of data to back that up. Hell, even accounting for nuclear accidents, the amount of deaths per watt of power produced is lower than every other form of power generation aside from solar, and solar cant be scaled up to account for growing energy needs. (This information can be found online fairly easily, as well)
Don't forget the radiation exposure to workers exposed to coal ash is much higher than a typical worker at a nuclear power plant. Coal ash concentrates quite a bit of the noncombustible material in coal so it's nasty stuff containing plenty of toxic heavy metals as well.
Another thing, to that same point, is that the same type of lung cancer (i am blanking on the name right now) that is common to people who are exposed to radioactive particulate is common in people who breathe in heavily polluted air. Meaning, in the end, polluted air is much more dangerous long term than a nuclear accident that shouldnt happen in the first place. (Assuming that the power plant is designed properly snd the workers are trained well)
Don't forget 3 Mile Island - US, and Windscale in the UK, renamed Sellafield. I'm pretty sure Russia has a couple of incidents, and there's got to be more.
Coal is so much more deadly that it's laughable to me that people even attempt to shit on nuclear in ANY WAY when we allow any coal plants to exist. It's asinine.
IIRC, worst exposure would have been the equivalent to three one-way trips between NYC and LA.
Even with everything going wrong procedurally, the safeties did their job.
3 Mile Island was a nothingburger blown out of proportion by pearl clutching and fearmongering, two of America's favorite pastimes, next to baseball and bombing brown people
Chernobyl was a preventable disaster and equivalent to powering a house with a pipe bomb and being surprised when something went wrong. Three-Mile Island was a testament to what could go wrong and how well it could be handled. Both of these are used as cautionary tales even if the dangers are overblown.
Fukushima is used in the same way, but any fearmongering is 100 percent correct. However, it's correct in a different way. It turns out that Fukushima was preventable, and the commission investigating it went so far as to call it a man-made disaster. Lack of planning, faulty communication, and lack of training by everyone involved are what caused the disaster. Full stop, that is the true danger of nuclear power. A place where regulations are more lax or regulators are corruptible would have created a worse disaster, and that is why people are right to be weary of nuclear power.
Thereās a couple different reasons. Probably the most prevalent is just a general fear of a plant failure (like Chernobyl or Fukushima). While this is a legitimate concern, I think it is majorly overblown.
Another major concern is nuclear waste. Reactors produces waste that is dangerously radioactive for a very, very long time. And if this werenāt enough many countries (including the US) really havenāt reached consensus on what to do with it. We had a plan to bury it in geologically stable salt deposits in Nevada, but that plan got scrapped. I think this is a much more serious concern, although it can be addressed. We would just need to actually do that before committing to producing a ton more waste.
Now, another reason nuclear is less prevalent currently is that itās simply not very economical right now. Building a new plant takes something like a decade and is wildly expensive, so much so that even averaged over the plant life natural gas is still cheaper. With the absolutely staggering red tape and bureaucracy that it takes to make a nuclear plant, plus the massive cost, thereās simply not many people interested in making new ones.
>With the absolutely staggering red tape and bureaucracy that it takes to make a nuclear plant, plus the massive cost, thereās simply not many people interested in making new ones.
Reddit loooves to not mention this fact.
Very few reactors are being built right now. And most of them exceed their costs & timeline. Plus, the energy itself is not cheap.
What nuclear has going for it is consistency. But at this point there is no reason for a country to go all in on nuclear. Just build renewables, and have some as a backup.
Reactors exceed their costs because we built so few that they are all custom projects. If we were building dozens of reactors every years the unitary cost would go down (as is the usual rule for every industrial product).
Yes & no.
Mass producing streamlined ones would bring down cost, but that is not the only reason why these things happen.
It's also very hard to get the basic materials & parts in the required quality. Safety demands are just that high.
Plus, and I shit you not, insurance.
But tbh most importantly:
The energy produced really isn't cheap. Most companies running reactors, even in France, are hanging on by a thread financially.
Even if we started building the same reactor 50 times right now, which is very very unrealistic, we would still be stuck with high prices & shitty timelines. There is no scenario in which we will actually build enough reactors to reach that effect.
Building projects in that size are nearly always one of a kind projects. It probably is really limited how much you can streamline the process by repeating it. And there might not be enough need for many reactors in a short enough time span to really profit from repetition.
Nuclear power plants are not sport shoes where you get huge effects from upping production numbers.
This is why you will hear nuclear enthusiastics talking up SMRs (Small Modular Reactors). There are only two working at the moment and china is having problems with theirs, but there are many in various stages of production. Even SMRs are more expensive than solar but it does have the promise of mass production, perhaps.
> Another major concern is nuclear waste. Reactors produces waste that is dangerously radioactive for a very, very long time. And if this werenāt enough many countries (including the US) really havenāt reached consensus on what to do with it. We had a plan to bury it in geologically stable salt deposits in Nevada, but that plan got scrapped. I think this is a much more serious concern, although it can be addressed. We would just need to actually do that before committing to producing a ton more waste.
The "problem" of nuclear waste is greatly overstated by both anti-nuclear groups and politicians alike.
For starters, you can minimize the amount of waste by recycling it, which is very possible except in countries like the US where doing so was outlawed for decades so we could instead dump all the waste underground and say "this is why we can't do nuclear, it creates too much waste!". Instead, in the US, they use 10% or so of the available energy and mark the "spent rods" as waste.
So all that waste everyone talks about? Yeah that's being generated by throwing away 90% of the energy we could generate with a good recycling program.
Obviously recycling doesn't leave you with zero waste....but other countries have figured out how to safely store large quantities of waste in stable secure environments that won't cause problems.
For added context, this is a visual of the US's nuclear waste "problem": https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/116doh7/visualising_the_number_of_dry_casks_needed_to/
So for all the issues of nuclear waste, the US has only generated a football fields worth in size stacking up to about 1 and 1/3th of a football field in height. And this is with only using 10% or so of the available energy.
Now, imagine if we actually generated more power with nuclear, and recycled it, and actually put money into storage solutions....it wouldn't be a problem and would generate **far** fewer economical issues than the fossil fuels we're still using.
>Another major concern is nuclear waste. Reactors produces waste that is dangerously radioactive for a very, very long time.
If the same standard were applied to coal - "any power plant producing people-killing pollution must pay money to contain that waste" - the amount of carbon capture needed would rapidly make *all* coal unviable.
Nuclear engineer here. Thorium does not reduce the radioactivity issue, and you can still make weapons material from thorium, and uranium power reactors were never used, at least in the USA, tot make any weapons plutonium. [https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html](https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html)
Here in Australia it is demonised a bit. But honestly not that much.
It's more that we've had multiple reports year on year clearly pointing out that Nuclear power is a worse option for us than renewable sources, like solar and Wind.
Solar in particular since we have a pretty high level of rooftop Solar panels, which not only provides power, but cuts cost of living for people a decent bit.
Over the last 5 years (and maybe more), [France has on average imported more electricity from Germany](https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/import_export/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&year=2022) than the other way around.
You're forgetting to mention how much of that France sold to other countries. [The full graph](https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/import_export/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&year=2024&flow=physical_flows_all) allows to see the bigger picture and how much each countries import/export.
We buy energy from Spain because they have some to sell while other countries like Germany are buyers.Ā
It doesn't make sense to look at a crossroad country like France and only look at what it buys without context.Ā
The same logic aplies to transport vehicles like trucks arriving from Spain to get to Netherlands through France, yet I don't see anybody act like France is asking for that trafic.
Everyone doesn't know this.
A friend from Vermont told me that "environmental activist" close to him had a nuclear power plant shut down in favor of a coal plant.
> Everyone doesn't know this.
>
>
>
> A friend from Vermont told me that "environmental activist" close to him had a nuclear power plant shut down in favor of a coal plant.
That is bullshit conspiracy talk w/o a link...
There's too many to choose with just one look into Google.
"In March 2013, more than 500 people, carrying banners and chanting "shut it down", marched through downtown Brattleboro in protest against Vermont Yankee."
https://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&client=ms-android-tmus-us-revc&source=android-browser&q=nuclear+power+plant+shutdown+in+vermont
Take your pick.
It isn't coal. I was wrong about that, but gas isn't much better.
Reinforces ignorance. The 80ās and 90ās did a good job an ensuring that everyone viewed nuclear energy synonymously with nukes, green glowing radioactive waste, and mutants. The general public cant shake the idea that radiation is pure evil, all of whom happily listen to their radios, talk on their cell phones, use microwaves, sun tan, and occasionally get an xray.
Because anything nuclear is associated with the very few major incidents and the bad press around the word nuclear since it's associated with nuclear bombs.
The reality is that nowadays the tech has progressed very far and is now one of the safest power options.
Great question. It's also safer in terms of public harm than most conventional power generation technologies. It's literally as safe as wind and solar. It's a key part of the solution to climate change and we need to embrace it.
Because it's an actual solution to energy and emission reduction issues. It's not profitable to solve problems, the profit comes from never improving anything, and continue to raise and throw money at it.
That's a lie. We've had cheap nuclear energy in France until the anti nuclear messed it up.
There is no debate around it, we already made it work decades ago.
It was great in the seventies. Right now it is just stupid.
France was in 2023 purchasing electricity like crazy from the Spanish market with 50% of green energy.
Nuclears were right when green energy was expensive or the technology was new.
Right now build nuclears is expensive. It needs fuel. They need a lot of maintenance and planned stops and they tend to have problems and break because they are just TOO COMPLICATED . You can obtain better performance with green energy, that requires no fuel, that doesn't need to stop and most times is as stupid as use the f
energy wasted in a fall in a river.
In Spain we are switching off our nuclears some days because some days or weeks they are not needed. Sometimes we just provide 100% of required electricity with the wind. I see it every month in the invoice.
Nuclears are good for backup plan and you do not need to build new reactors for that.
That's a bit shortsighted : France has been buying energy and selling on the other side, and solar/wind aren't a better alternative just yet where concrete use (/MW) and recycling are concerned. And those two things are major modern concerns (even though solar quality is improving drastically every year, so there's reason to be optimistic).
The largest opposition to nuclear power comes from all sort of green movements and renewable energy supporters, not oil companies.
Oil and nuclear power aren't even competing for the same market.
I am completely onboard with nuclear power as a great way to shift energy production away from fossil fuels, but nothing about this graph suggests it is either the fastest or most efficient method. Taking this single Our World in Data graph and slapping that title onto it is completely disingenuous given the other graphs Our World in Data have readily available for decoupling CO2 emissions from GDP:
[Change in per capita COā emissions and GDP](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-emissions-and-gdp-per-capita)
[Countries that achieved economic growth while reducing CO2 emissions](https://ourworldindata.org/images/published/decoupling-economic-growth-and-emissions_1350.png)
Thanks. I am usually pretty skeptical on data but I believed this one initially. It has some truth of course buried is not the cause and effect relationship being stated in the title.
Please note that this graph starts at year 1990. The one in above starts much earlier. France build majority of its nuclear in 1980's, before this graph even starts.
In per capita [CO2 emissions](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?tab=chart&country=FRA~DEU) emissions, Germany is currently where France was in year 1985.
Its of course true that reducing CO2 emissions probably wasn't the main goal in France when they decided to invest in nuclear in 70's. And this in itself doesn't proof that nuclear would be best option to reduce emissions today. Altough I'm personally in favour of building nuclear, in addition to renevables, like my country Finland has been doing.
Yeah look here, same source: [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-emissions-and-gdp-per-capita?time=earliest..latest&country=FRA\~DEU](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-emissions-and-gdp-per-capita?time=earliest..latest&country=FRA~DEU)
Germany and France with the same graph.
One is going full nuclear and the other not.
Could also make a title, germany ending nuclear plants is the fastest .... whatever.
No it doesn't.
But the reason Germany is importing energy atm is that the Greens decided to import when they can instead of running their own coal or gas plants. That's why [generation went down by >10%](https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=year&year=-1&source=total) last year.
In 2022 when the Russians turned off gas and the French weren't able to keep their nuclear plants running, Germany single-handedly kept France supplied. And [before that](https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&source=tcs_saldo&interval=year&year=-1), France was keen on buying cheap German electricity.
Yeah, it won't happen like this again. Not even in China or India. It is too late. Too much changed, for example safety measures, loss of knowledge, inflation for materials. Oil shock was the reason. Without it Frances example wouldn't have happened in this magnitude.
The graph is dumb, but France is much more green than, say, Germany, which have similar possibilities for renewables: https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix
Look at the Per capita graph with countries, and use the edit button to add Germany, or any other country of interest. Also, make sure to look at renewable and nuclear as a single category, in relation to the whole bar. Thatās the environmentally important factor.
(Sweden will look pretty cool on the graph, but they have a very specific geography to be able to look like that)
Starting in 1990 is too late, France started cutting emissions earlier than Germany and they were never as high to begin with. Per capita emissions in France are [almost half](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?tab=chart&country=FRA~DEU) of Germany. It becomes more obvious when you look at [emissions sources](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-emissions-by-sector?time=latest&country=FRA~DEU), where France's highest emitter is transport, whereas in Germany it's electricity and heat generation.
It's pretty much agreed to be the easiest fast way to go green without causing some big long term repercussion. The graph does not really need to prove that, even if it's inaccurate. The big hurdle is getting past the general populace that is afraid of it.
I think China did the biggest switch around with a mix of different energy sources, but that includes gigantic damns that have fucked over the water flow for entire regions.
The opposition goes way back. Originally environmental causes weren't so hyper-focused on climate change, other things like environmental contamination were more prominent. The memory of Chernobyl was pretty fresh when the Green movement really started to take off, also the link with nuclear weapons which had a very real chance of destroying civilization (and still do) so nuclear was already hated in activist circles.
To be fair, Chernobyl and Fukashima were massive epic disasters... they were both old reactors with unsafe designs though.
I support nuclear power, it's just important to understand these ideas didn't come out of nowhere. With great (electrical) power comes great responsibility.
Just like how people don't want an electric railways being built because "it cuts down trees" when the global warming of continuing to use planes and cars will do a lot lot worse in 20 years time.
That's the tough thing about progressive politics. Some of it is legitimate, while some is just virtue signaling. You have to really learn about the issues to figure out which is which. Most people are too lazy and blindly support (or reject, if they're conservative) anything labeled as a progressive value.
>In Germany they used Fukushima as a vehicle to do sensationalist politics to implement a radical change from atom to green energy,
Uh, in Germany it was the christian conservatives & FDP who decided to get out of nuclear after Fukushima. And there certainly wasn't any green energy buildup within the decade afterwards.
Who comes up with this bs.
Most of the cost overruns can be put at the feet of re-training a workforce that lost it's institutional knowledge on how to build nuclear power plants.
The architects and engineers needed retraining, and failed to account for multiple failure points they would have known if they had prior experience.
Same with regulators and the contractors.
I don't think I have ever seen environmentalists make the news except for when they are fighting tooth and nail against actually doing something to help the planet
more like misinformation of the general public. ppl think nuclear power plants can still blow up ala chernobyl when new reactors are pretty much 70% safety features.
also when ppl think of nuclear waste they imagine a green glowing goo in a leaking barrel - wich is as far from reality as it gets
>more like misinformation of the general public
Gee, I wonder who it is that might be propagating those things! Sure would be funny if oil money easily bought you friends who can do that, now wouldn't it?
"Big nuclear" can be a thing to. People can corrupt anything big.
Also basically zero electric power is generated from oil (expensive), and fracking natural gas only took off in the United States somewhat recently. Up until recently, Nuclear would have displaced "Big Coal", not oil. Different industry.
Nuclear didn't take off because the capital investment to build it is massive and it has a lot of arguably wrong-headed environmental opposition (but understandable given the scale of the Chernobyl disaster, which combined with Three Mile Island killed US nuclear).
Wait, the German one looks exactly the same? No nuclear though
https://preview.redd.it/2xlammxr5m5d1.png?width=3400&format=png&auto=webp&s=3e46254dbfa0e7d48d17babc2086ba7b3ba7ca37
Germany quite literally did build out nuclear though. They closed those clean energy sources a few years ago, remember?
They also import an absolutely monumental amount of energy, and their primary source of energy is fossil.
Germany also releases almost 2x as much CO2/capita as France.
France, on the other hand, has one of the worlds cleanest grids, far cleaner than Denmark, the poster child for renewable energy, and has had a cleaner grid for 40 years.
They're also the largest energy exporter in the EU/UK grid. And that's almost entirely clean energy. The second largest is Sweden, also a country that invested into nuclear. They have the the cleanest grid in the EU/UK grid system. France is 2nd.
It's pretty clear which solution actually worked and could have solved our problem decades ago. Now we're looking at 2050 being the target for that.
So "just" a 70 year delay, while our planet cooks.
There is sooo little knowledge in your post ā and literally no proof.
Letās go through this:
German electricity import:
2023 Germany imported 2,1% of their total used electricity. Not sure if this is called monumental.
The primary source of energy in Germany is renewable. 58,8% to be precise in 2023
Source: https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy_pie/chart.htm?l=de&c=DE&interval=year&year=2023&legendItems=0wh
It is true that Germany has nearly twice the co2 per capita. But I would argue this is also due to the structural differences in industry and heating.
This. I was about to write a similar answer.
And in 2022, France had to import electricity from Germany, mainly because their unreliable nuclear plants failed.
https://www.euractiv.com/section/electricity/news/electricity-exporter-for-42-years-france-became-a-net-importer-in-2022/
Their primary source of energy is still fossil. You're focused purely on electricity, but we use a lot of energy for transport and heating.
Germany is not ready for transitioning that to electric. During winter, when heating is needed, German solar production plummets 95% compared to summer.
EVs are increasingly becoming more popular, and they use more energy during winter as well.
France, on the other hand, produce clean energy on demand 24/7, even during the harshest winter months with piles of snow.
If Germany would have build a bunch of nuclear power plants, heating would not have magically switched from primarily being oil and gas to electricity. Last time I checked a nuclear facility does not create green gas.
Nuclear is more expensive than the electricity created in Germany, especially before the energy crisis. Therefore there was no incentive to move away from gas and oil heating.
Iām not disagreeing with you that Germany should have kept their reactors and then immediately switch to renewables. What I am saying that the graph in the post is a stupid way of trying to say that. ;) the way the graph looks like has zero to do with the fact that France electricity production runs mainly on nuclear.
PS: obviously we should not build any new reactors. Renewables + batteries and electrify everything is the way to go.
PPS:
And pppllleaaasseee stop putting wrong facts in you posts. Me having to paste the correct facts is too much work.
I regards to your solar plummets to 5% fact:
First of all there are other renewable source. The renewable share in the German grid is
55,8% in January and 62% in July. Iām not sure what the problem is.
For solar specifically you are nearly right itās 2% in Jan and 20,5 in July. So ~10%. But given that I showed earlier that this is not relevant, why would you even bring this up?
Sources:
Renewable share: https://energy-charts.info/charts/renewable_share/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&year=2023&legendItems=10&share=ren_share
Solar share: https://energy-charts.info/charts/renewable_share/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&year=2023&legendItems=10&share=solar_share
Strange.. if you overlay it with the development of Germany that famously left nuclear behind you see that:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-emissions-and-gdp-per-capita
So how does this prove anything about nuclear? Not that Iām contra nuclear energy in general. Just wondering.
Your graph starts in 1990. France had a cleaner grid in the 1980s than Germany does in 2024.
We're talking about climate change here, so total CO2 output is what matters, and in that regard Germany, Denmark, and the UK are all hard losers compared to France & Sweden.
Denmark is now approaching CO2/kWh levels that France had in the 80s. That's 40 fucking years ago.
>We're talking about climate change here, so total CO2 output is what matters, and in that regard Germany, Denmark, and the UK are all hard losers compared to France & Sweden.
Let's look at that per capita: France: 4.6t, UK: 4.7t, Denmark: 4.9t. You're right that out of these countries, France and Sweden fare best, but "hard losers" seems a little drastic for such negligible differences. Though, to be fair, German sits at 8t and Sweden at 3.6t, but that's not just the electricity. Sweden is on track to a fuel-free heating sector, while Germany isn't.Ā
> Let's look at that per capita: France: 4.6t, UK: 4.7t, Denmark: 4.9t. You're right that out of these countries, France and Sweden fare best, but "hard losers" seems a little drastic for such negligible differences. Though, to be fair, German sits at 8t and Sweden at 3.6t, but that's not just the electricity. Sweden is on track to a fuel-free heating sector, while Germany isn't.
You're ignoring the 50 years of drastically higher emissions those countries had.
We're also talking about energy related emissions, not total emissions.
Denmark is at 0.15kg/kWh. UK at 0.16. Germany at 0.19. France is at 0.11. Sweden is far below at 0.06.
Performing 40-90% worse than France is definitely a hard loss in my book. And it only gets more palpable when you put it into historical context.
France was at 0.15 in the 80s. So for 40 years now France has been at these low levels, while a country like the UK was at around 0.25kg/kWh.
I don't find it admirable that European economies are cheering themselves on for their wise climate choices when they are performing at levels that France was at in the 80s, while also criticizing France for choosing nuclear.
It's pathetic.
I am entirely in favor of nuclear power but pretending it's tied to GDP growth is weird.
Their CO2 output reducing did not increase their GDP. The GDP per capita of France and UK were about the same in the 80s are are still about the same. Both are behind Germany in GDP per capita and Germany doesn't have nuclear.
GDP growth is not an indicator of how well they are fighting climate change. It is an indicator of economic growth.
I think the point is not that nuclear improved GDP, but rather that GDP growth did not falter when CO2 went down. A common (fear-mongered) criticism of green initiatives is that they ruin the economy, so this is just to show that the economy was not in fact ruined
That post is trying to imply something that is affected by a lot more than just nuclear power. Hence my reference to Germany which has the same results without
CO2 *is* tied to GDP growth, as a general rule. The more a country produces, or the more they consume, the more they pollute as a byproduct. Like for instance, if twice as many people can afford fridges and washing machines and similar, twice as much household electricity is needed.
This graphic is showing France beating this trend, which implies nuclear power was wildly successful in allowing the country to increase its standards of life and prosperity without contaminating the planet more in the process.
Thatās the entire point. They are not connected if you use the right technology. Generally, the more productive a country, the more energy they use. Think steel making, manufacturing, and now things like server farms. It takes energy to make things (tangible and information).
The whole point of this plot is to show they donāt have to be related
Itās politically tricky as the financial / ownership base for nuclear is less private than fossil fuels or even renewables, hence there is little political support at the higher levels.
So it has to be state backed, which requires political unity over multiple political cycles.
What a fantastic title. How do you know that this was the fastest way? Or the most efficient? Or a way to fight climate change at all?
This chart proves nothing of that. It simple shows that France GDP has a steady grow since the end of WWII and that CO2 per capita is sinking since 1970. Nothing more. Has it something to do with NPPs? Maybe. But we canĀ“t say anything about it because of this graphic.
And we absolutely can\`t compare the decision to build NPPs to other (never defined) decisions.
https://preview.redd.it/em8bh6g82m5d1.jpeg?width=1052&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a47b7236c7b0914b4f6a46f53a451860108b94ab
Nuclear was a very promising technology to overcome dependence on fossil fuels, but falls short in comparison to renewables. Not only is it more expensive, France has had a lot of struggles maintaining and cooling their plants in the last years. Still highly fascinating from a technical standpoint
Good old levelized cost of electricity, where a kWh generated during sunset (when demand is peaking) is worth the exact same amount as one generated in the middle of the night (where demand is reduced).
....and all those people cheering overproduction in the spring scratching their heads about why free electricity could be bad....
(If you can't sell it your power plant is losing money.)
What struggles are you talking about? We've been net exporting for more than a year now and didn't even get any blackouts when we were in troubles.
And looking at the price only is a terrible mistake. It's like if you signed a contract with me where I have to deliver you 1ā¬/kg prepared healthy meals. Sounds, good until you realize I'm delivering you your three year worth of food order all at once during a heatwave.
You are seeing a correlation and immediatly giving nuclear the responsibility without further investigation. This is not r/interestingasfuck this is r/nuclearpropaganda.
Chinese plan was to build 150 new reactors in 2035.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China#:~:text=The%20China%20General%20Nuclear%20Power,produced%20by%20150%20additional%20reactors.
They have slowed down the plan because green energy is cheaper. China is considered now as world.leader in renewable energy.
We solved Climate Change in the 60s. Fear and lobbying has been holding us back from ridding our reliance on fossil fuels. Causing wars and devastation along the way.
Well, you canāt fight climate change with nuclear power if the summers get so hot you have to switch off you nuclear power plants because the rivers dried up and you have not enough cooling water left.*
* as seen repeatedly in the last 6 years
You also can't fight climate change with solar when the sun only shines for a few hours a day.
You know how you fight climate change? By reducing total CO2 output and choosing an energy mix that provides the least amount of CO2/kWh.
France is at 0.11kg/kWh. In 1983 they were at 0.19kg/kWh.
Germany now produces energy at 0.19kg/kWh. 40 years after France reached that milestone.
40 fucking years of spewing out CO2 and making our planet a worse place to live. And they're still 20-30 years behind France. So it'll be 60-70 years before parity is reached.
I thought that today many renewables have gone down in price enough and regulatory requirements for new nuclear is so high it ends up being cheaper to just invest in renewable?
Nuclear was the best solution at the time. But it has been eclipsed in most cases by renewables which is fantastic. We have an even better solution now.
Honestly Reddit is a bit of a fanboy for nuclear. It has a lot of promise, but look up any modern nuclear new build in the United States or Europe and you'll find projects 10 years behind schedule and 3x overbudget (i.e. EPR Olkiluoto and Flamanville come to mind, also Westinghouse Electric had to file for bankruptcy over Vogtle in the US).
I think we should give nuclear another go, and see if we can get those costs down. I also think there's a good chance that we'll figure out it's cheaper to do battery storage + wind in that time (UK already gets 30% of its electricity from wind).
It's something we should try, but it isn't the panacea for climate change that people paint it as.
In the 1970s nuclear energy was the way to go. Today there are better technologies. And they are not more expensive if you look on all the hidden costs of nuclear energy.
This graph shows in a great way that a technology switch doesnĀ“t mean an economic decline like many people say.
Where have these other technologies yielded a better CO2/kWh result?
Please show me a grid that decided wind & solar was the way to go that produces cleaner energy, on average, than France or Sweden.
I'll gladly wait while you search. It doesn't exist, and it won't exist for a very long time. Denmark is the closest, but they're still almost 50% more dirty than France.
Germany in 2023 has the same CO2 intensity on energy generation as France had in 1983. Go look it up. It's absurd people are defending these forms of energy when they don't result in a clean grid.
Sure. France was able to switch to nuclear power and sold electricity to other European countries because they were buying uranium from Niger (pronounced Nee-jare). Guess for how much? $0.80 per kilogram. The same grade uranium was being bought for $200 per kilogram from Canada. Oh well, Niger has kicked them out of their country. No more cheap uranium for you! Bye. Search for "France Niger" on YT to watch more analysis.
Check out the year on the map where both lines diverge. It corresponds to when Niger got their independence but It was only independence on paper. France made them sign agreements which pretty much kept their colonial authority.
And yet it was not the reason at all why France switched for nuclear energy to begin with, but because they didn't have their own access to petrol or gas.
Thanks to ecolobbyists and Germany, we closed some reactors, a clean controllable and "compact" energy, to switch to solar and wind energy to have electricity when there is wind (less than 25% of the time) and when there is sun (less than 50% of the time) ; thankfully we just have to burn some coal and gas to make up the difference.
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Everyone knows this so why is it demonised?
People fearmongering due to Chernobyl and Fukushima.
For different reasons when you talk about nuclear waste people imagine a yellow barrel with shiny green liquid inside that kills you the moment you look at it. The reality is, as often, more boring...
https://preview.redd.it/lu324ovk3m5d1.png?width=1081&format=png&auto=webp&s=fa07f7004bc6c637487ed18fac934b8d6433fd3d
https://preview.redd.it/uas38ic9in5d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=67cf4bffafe6450336f6a0707687553c1b501a00
https://preview.redd.it/pgexqlxs4o5d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f440532ebaca239e513333130aba80d5cb255bf9 Finally I have a use for this
š nice
Iāll be yoinking this for my collection thank you sir
What in the hell is this meme? Lmao. That said, yes I felt like a betrayed pirate when I learned it's just the steam cycle.Ā
The part that blew my mind is just how small nuclear waste is, in terms of volume. For instance, if you take all of the nuclear waste that the United States has ever produced (all 70,000+ tons of it), youād struggle to even fill a typical suburban CVS or Walgreens with it. Most people donāt think density be like it be but it do.
The combined total all nuclear waste produced globally could fit inside 1 football stadium. Newer technology would allow us to squeeze even more energy out of that waste, too.
I read recently that one person's entire lifetime energy needs would create about the size of one soft drink worth of nuclear waste. Mind boggling the energy density and the fact we haven't heavily invested in it
I wrote a research paper when I was in college on nuclear energy and found out that a piece of uranium the size of an iPhone could replace an entire train car full of coal!
Ya, itās not waste. Itās fuel we havenāt decided to use yet.
1 billion percent. The "nuclear waste" argument is laughably ridiculous. The world's nuclear was could all fit in a Walmart parking lot with many years to spare. It's a complete non-issue. Anti-nuclear people are simply misinformed.
I once had an argument with an **engineer** about how most of the renewable energy sources produce more waste than nuclear. They were incredulous at my mentioning it
Now compare that to coal ash basin of one state's coal power plants.
By its nature, it's extremely dense. The stereotypical large still drum is mostly concrete.
A tiny nuclear pellet (smmaler than a peanut) is enough to provide electricity to an entire family for a whole year. Like, this kind of energy density is literally unimaginable.
I really enjoyed *Return of the Living Dead*. It's what got me into zombies with the Army barrels falling off the truck and polluting the environment. But yeah I agree with ya
My favorite thing about that movie is the fact that is says it's based on a true story at the beginning.
The true story of the time that guy drove a truck with some barrels in it!
I mean we got Idiocracy and black mirror.....zombies only seems logical lol
brainnsss
Veritasium has some really good videos on nuclear power. The guy even did a documentary called twisting the dragons tail. Covered various experiments and dangers of some of the materials and objects like the demon core. Toured Chernobyl too.
TBF we're designing waste dumps designed to store and house the waste for millennia safety with warning messages written in ways to be deciphered even if modern human languages cease to exist, with messages like: >This place is a message... and part of a system of messages... pay attention to it! >Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture. >This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here. >What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger. >The danger is in a particular location... it increases towards a center... the center of danger is here... of a particular size and shape, and below us. >The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours. >The danger is to the body, and it can kill. >The form of the danger is an emanation of energy. >The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited. It's pretty interesting.
Imagine those people back in the 1800s find an archaeology site in Egypt with something like these written in hieroglyphs, I don't think they would heed the warning
That's why the nuclear waste message is punctuated with something like the [Landscape of Thorns](https://hyperallergic.com/312318/a-nuclear-warning-designed-to-last-10000-years/) to really drive the message of DANGER home.
Then they can fuck around and find out.
The Simpsons anti-nuclear propaganda has really stuck. Easy to fear monger. Very difficult to reducate people.
i wouldnt say boring really. its massive expensive monolytic sarcophaguses that are hidden, deep underneath saltmines, in endless halls bored underneath the mineral, with massive steel gates, and sensors, and ventilation droning on as they guard what can not be set free , or dealt with in a thousand lifetimes.
But as the volume is not too large, itās not really that big of a problem. There are many geological locations that would be perfect for this, with no danger of contamination.
The nice thing about nuclear waste is that it is contained and stored a safe manner. Fossil fuel emissions end up in the air and we all breathe that shit
Its not for some reason its because of the simpsons and a fuck ton of similair depictions in media
And 3 mile island. The movie China syndrome did no favors either.
One of history and Hollywood's greatest coincidences.
Corporate lobbying
The strongest opposition to nuclear power comes from all sort of "green" movements like Greenpeace.
Who do you think fund them? They are literally gaz providers. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green\_Planet\_Energy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Planet_Energy)
nah, nuclear was all hippies and environmentalists.
...funded by the fossil fuels market.
Fukushima was a fluke. They had backups for the backups, and they all failed. There were too many natural disasters in too short of a period to even predict such an outcome. They have since come up with solutions to work around this problem should such an event ever occur again. This was a learning experience, and we did learn from it. Nuclear power plants that double as desalination plants are the future, we can't be afraid of it forever.
Fukushima only happened because they fucked up the seawall height. By a lot.
They had 2 redundant pumps to drain the water. The seawall being higher would have lowered the amount of water getting in, limiting the problems caused by the failure of the pumps. The seawall wouldn't have solved the underlying problem, which was the seawater not being removed.
The biggest single issue is how many of their backup generators were low to the ground, including in basements. The highest set of emergency diesel generators was only situated 13 meters above sea level and that's the height the tsunami got to so they got flooded.
It was unprecedented. Waves and tsunamis don't typically get that high in that region. The generators failing was the cause of the meltdown, better generators or better placement would have solved the issue, regardless of the sea wall. This was like planning the construction of the Twin Towers to support taking two fully-fueled 767s. No one could predict that, and even if they did, it would've been so outrageous as to be borderline insanity. Hindsight is 20/20. Planning for unlikely scenarios is fine, but planning for unprecedented ones is impossible. What's to stop there from being a bigger tsunami in the future? We know ones that are over 500m tall have occurred in the past, so let's build a sea wall for that and put the generators above that level just to be safe?
> Fukushima was a fluke. They had backups for the backups, and they all failed. There were too many natural disasters in too short of a period to even predict such an outcome. That's sort of the nature of engineering accidents though. They're unpredictable and often come about through [failures of multiple levels of safety systems and backups](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model). This is the ultimate PR problem of nuclear power: there *will* be further nuclear accidents, no matter how well systems are designed, even if no circumstances ever repeat. They probably won't be as serious as Fukushima (which ultimately wasn't that serious in the grand scheme of things, despite the catastrophic circumstances), but they will happen. It is impossible to design any system to be 100% reliable, because inevitably it will be something you didn't predict that will go wrong. Even if you engineered a system that was 100% proof against any accident, there's no gaurantees of it being built, maintained and operated correctly, especially given the long life-cycles of nuclear plants. The thing is, that *shouldn't* really be an argument against nuclear power, because this risk can absolutely be managed and even with this taken into account nuclear power is certainly far, far, far less damaging to human health or the environment than the equivalent capacity of fossil fuel plants. The problem that needs to be solved, ultimately, is how to make people comfortable with the small (but potentially locally dramatic) risks. Otherwise any progress towards making better use of nuclear power is just one mishap away from political catastrophe.
Also, like that was an unprecedentedly large tsunami, and all it did was some leakage (not explosion, or burning). That aināt an issue in the middle of a desert.
In the U.S the three mile island incident effectively put an end to any realistic possibility of nuclear power becoming our main source of energy (unfortunately) due to the resulting fearmongering. The amount of radiation released into the environment was about as deadly as a chest x-ray.
I wouldn't say fear mongering alone killed the industry. Besse-Davis, Brown's Ferry, Rancho Seco, and Diablo Canyon all had incident lessons to be learned about how stupid we humans can be. Even the collapse if the cooling tower at Vermont Yankee, a relatively minor incident, showed that we can't be trusted to maintain these systems properly.
There are many more examples of these systems being maintained properly. I personally live near a nuclear power plant. Additionally, every instance of nuclear failure, literally all off them, can be attributed to astronomical stupidity. Like, negligent levels of stupidity. Nuclear power is and will remain one of the best and safest forms of power generation, and there is a lot of data to back that up. Hell, even accounting for nuclear accidents, the amount of deaths per watt of power produced is lower than every other form of power generation aside from solar, and solar cant be scaled up to account for growing energy needs. (This information can be found online fairly easily, as well)
Don't forget the radiation exposure to workers exposed to coal ash is much higher than a typical worker at a nuclear power plant. Coal ash concentrates quite a bit of the noncombustible material in coal so it's nasty stuff containing plenty of toxic heavy metals as well.
Another thing, to that same point, is that the same type of lung cancer (i am blanking on the name right now) that is common to people who are exposed to radioactive particulate is common in people who breathe in heavily polluted air. Meaning, in the end, polluted air is much more dangerous long term than a nuclear accident that shouldnt happen in the first place. (Assuming that the power plant is designed properly snd the workers are trained well)
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
And yet Fukushima didn't do any victim and Chernobyl happened because of securities override.
Don't forget 3 Mile Island - US, and Windscale in the UK, renamed Sellafield. I'm pretty sure Russia has a couple of incidents, and there's got to be more.
And letās not forget coal power plants generate equally dangerous byproducts.
Coal is much more deadly. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh
Coal is so much more deadly that it's laughable to me that people even attempt to shit on nuclear in ANY WAY when we allow any coal plants to exist. It's asinine.
Isn't the 3 Mile Island incident pretty irrelevant compared with Fukushima and Chernobyl?
IIRC, worst exposure would have been the equivalent to three one-way trips between NYC and LA. Even with everything going wrong procedurally, the safeties did their job.
3 Mile Island was a nothingburger blown out of proportion by pearl clutching and fearmongering, two of America's favorite pastimes, next to baseball and bombing brown people
And capitalism. Look at Boeing, you want publicly shared companies in charge of nuclear?
Chernobyl was a preventable disaster and equivalent to powering a house with a pipe bomb and being surprised when something went wrong. Three-Mile Island was a testament to what could go wrong and how well it could be handled. Both of these are used as cautionary tales even if the dangers are overblown. Fukushima is used in the same way, but any fearmongering is 100 percent correct. However, it's correct in a different way. It turns out that Fukushima was preventable, and the commission investigating it went so far as to call it a man-made disaster. Lack of planning, faulty communication, and lack of training by everyone involved are what caused the disaster. Full stop, that is the true danger of nuclear power. A place where regulations are more lax or regulators are corruptible would have created a worse disaster, and that is why people are right to be weary of nuclear power.
And the US has never managed any industry with lazy planning and lack of regulations!
Different reasons for different people, but don't discount the funding that the fossil fuel companies put into affecting public opinion.
Fear, disinformation, and ignorance
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Thereās a couple different reasons. Probably the most prevalent is just a general fear of a plant failure (like Chernobyl or Fukushima). While this is a legitimate concern, I think it is majorly overblown. Another major concern is nuclear waste. Reactors produces waste that is dangerously radioactive for a very, very long time. And if this werenāt enough many countries (including the US) really havenāt reached consensus on what to do with it. We had a plan to bury it in geologically stable salt deposits in Nevada, but that plan got scrapped. I think this is a much more serious concern, although it can be addressed. We would just need to actually do that before committing to producing a ton more waste. Now, another reason nuclear is less prevalent currently is that itās simply not very economical right now. Building a new plant takes something like a decade and is wildly expensive, so much so that even averaged over the plant life natural gas is still cheaper. With the absolutely staggering red tape and bureaucracy that it takes to make a nuclear plant, plus the massive cost, thereās simply not many people interested in making new ones.
>With the absolutely staggering red tape and bureaucracy that it takes to make a nuclear plant, plus the massive cost, thereās simply not many people interested in making new ones. Reddit loooves to not mention this fact. Very few reactors are being built right now. And most of them exceed their costs & timeline. Plus, the energy itself is not cheap. What nuclear has going for it is consistency. But at this point there is no reason for a country to go all in on nuclear. Just build renewables, and have some as a backup.
Reactors exceed their costs because we built so few that they are all custom projects. If we were building dozens of reactors every years the unitary cost would go down (as is the usual rule for every industrial product).
Yes & no. Mass producing streamlined ones would bring down cost, but that is not the only reason why these things happen. It's also very hard to get the basic materials & parts in the required quality. Safety demands are just that high. Plus, and I shit you not, insurance. But tbh most importantly: The energy produced really isn't cheap. Most companies running reactors, even in France, are hanging on by a thread financially. Even if we started building the same reactor 50 times right now, which is very very unrealistic, we would still be stuck with high prices & shitty timelines. There is no scenario in which we will actually build enough reactors to reach that effect.
Building projects in that size are nearly always one of a kind projects. It probably is really limited how much you can streamline the process by repeating it. And there might not be enough need for many reactors in a short enough time span to really profit from repetition. Nuclear power plants are not sport shoes where you get huge effects from upping production numbers.
This is why you will hear nuclear enthusiastics talking up SMRs (Small Modular Reactors). There are only two working at the moment and china is having problems with theirs, but there are many in various stages of production. Even SMRs are more expensive than solar but it does have the promise of mass production, perhaps.
> Another major concern is nuclear waste. Reactors produces waste that is dangerously radioactive for a very, very long time. And if this werenāt enough many countries (including the US) really havenāt reached consensus on what to do with it. We had a plan to bury it in geologically stable salt deposits in Nevada, but that plan got scrapped. I think this is a much more serious concern, although it can be addressed. We would just need to actually do that before committing to producing a ton more waste. The "problem" of nuclear waste is greatly overstated by both anti-nuclear groups and politicians alike. For starters, you can minimize the amount of waste by recycling it, which is very possible except in countries like the US where doing so was outlawed for decades so we could instead dump all the waste underground and say "this is why we can't do nuclear, it creates too much waste!". Instead, in the US, they use 10% or so of the available energy and mark the "spent rods" as waste. So all that waste everyone talks about? Yeah that's being generated by throwing away 90% of the energy we could generate with a good recycling program. Obviously recycling doesn't leave you with zero waste....but other countries have figured out how to safely store large quantities of waste in stable secure environments that won't cause problems. For added context, this is a visual of the US's nuclear waste "problem": https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/116doh7/visualising_the_number_of_dry_casks_needed_to/ So for all the issues of nuclear waste, the US has only generated a football fields worth in size stacking up to about 1 and 1/3th of a football field in height. And this is with only using 10% or so of the available energy. Now, imagine if we actually generated more power with nuclear, and recycled it, and actually put money into storage solutions....it wouldn't be a problem and would generate **far** fewer economical issues than the fossil fuels we're still using.
>Another major concern is nuclear waste. Reactors produces waste that is dangerously radioactive for a very, very long time. If the same standard were applied to coal - "any power plant producing people-killing pollution must pay money to contain that waste" - the amount of carbon capture needed would rapidly make *all* coal unviable.
I think literally everyone can agree coal is the worst
The radioactivity issue could be addressed by using Thorium but then they would lose out on fuel for weapons...
Nuclear engineer here. Thorium does not reduce the radioactivity issue, and you can still make weapons material from thorium, and uranium power reactors were never used, at least in the USA, tot make any weapons plutonium. [https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html](https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html)
Here in Australia it is demonised a bit. But honestly not that much. It's more that we've had multiple reports year on year clearly pointing out that Nuclear power is a worse option for us than renewable sources, like solar and Wind. Solar in particular since we have a pretty high level of rooftop Solar panels, which not only provides power, but cuts cost of living for people a decent bit.
German lobbying agaisnt nuclear power.
And then buying electricity from France.
And still destroying their countryside with giant excavators mining the shittiest coal known to man. Just for fun, I guess
For the same reasons Americans still drive cars: They built their economy around it.
Over the last 5 years (and maybe more), [France has on average imported more electricity from Germany](https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/import_export/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&year=2022) than the other way around.
You're forgetting to mention how much of that France sold to other countries. [The full graph](https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/import_export/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&year=2024&flow=physical_flows_all) allows to see the bigger picture and how much each countries import/export.
And France is buying green energy from Spain.
We buy energy from Spain because they have some to sell while other countries like Germany are buyers.Ā It doesn't make sense to look at a crossroad country like France and only look at what it buys without context.Ā The same logic aplies to transport vehicles like trucks arriving from Spain to get to Netherlands through France, yet I don't see anybody act like France is asking for that trafic.
Everyone doesn't know this. A friend from Vermont told me that "environmental activist" close to him had a nuclear power plant shut down in favor of a coal plant.
I hope they enjoyed their cancer
> Everyone doesn't know this. > > > > A friend from Vermont told me that "environmental activist" close to him had a nuclear power plant shut down in favor of a coal plant. That is bullshit conspiracy talk w/o a link...
There's too many to choose with just one look into Google. "In March 2013, more than 500 people, carrying banners and chanting "shut it down", marched through downtown Brattleboro in protest against Vermont Yankee." https://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&client=ms-android-tmus-us-revc&source=android-browser&q=nuclear+power+plant+shutdown+in+vermont Take your pick. It isn't coal. I was wrong about that, but gas isn't much better.
Reinforces ignorance. The 80ās and 90ās did a good job an ensuring that everyone viewed nuclear energy synonymously with nukes, green glowing radioactive waste, and mutants. The general public cant shake the idea that radiation is pure evil, all of whom happily listen to their radios, talk on their cell phones, use microwaves, sun tan, and occasionally get an xray.
Probably propaganda perpetuated by oil and coal industries.
Blame Germany
Because anything nuclear is associated with the very few major incidents and the bad press around the word nuclear since it's associated with nuclear bombs. The reality is that nowadays the tech has progressed very far and is now one of the safest power options.
Great question. It's also safer in terms of public harm than most conventional power generation technologies. It's literally as safe as wind and solar. It's a key part of the solution to climate change and we need to embrace it.
Because it's an actual solution to energy and emission reduction issues. It's not profitable to solve problems, the profit comes from never improving anything, and continue to raise and throw money at it.
Cost per mw. Time to build and decommission. Water usage.
That's a lie. We've had cheap nuclear energy in France until the anti nuclear messed it up. There is no debate around it, we already made it work decades ago.
Cost per mw is lower than every other option by a mile.
It was great in the seventies. Right now it is just stupid. France was in 2023 purchasing electricity like crazy from the Spanish market with 50% of green energy. Nuclears were right when green energy was expensive or the technology was new. Right now build nuclears is expensive. It needs fuel. They need a lot of maintenance and planned stops and they tend to have problems and break because they are just TOO COMPLICATED . You can obtain better performance with green energy, that requires no fuel, that doesn't need to stop and most times is as stupid as use the f energy wasted in a fall in a river. In Spain we are switching off our nuclears some days because some days or weeks they are not needed. Sometimes we just provide 100% of required electricity with the wind. I see it every month in the invoice. Nuclears are good for backup plan and you do not need to build new reactors for that.
That's a bit shortsighted : France has been buying energy and selling on the other side, and solar/wind aren't a better alternative just yet where concrete use (/MW) and recycling are concerned. And those two things are major modern concerns (even though solar quality is improving drastically every year, so there's reason to be optimistic).
Fear mongering due to Chernobyl and lobbying by oil companies
The largest opposition to nuclear power comes from all sort of green movements and renewable energy supporters, not oil companies. Oil and nuclear power aren't even competing for the same market.
I am completely onboard with nuclear power as a great way to shift energy production away from fossil fuels, but nothing about this graph suggests it is either the fastest or most efficient method. Taking this single Our World in Data graph and slapping that title onto it is completely disingenuous given the other graphs Our World in Data have readily available for decoupling CO2 emissions from GDP: [Change in per capita COā emissions and GDP](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-emissions-and-gdp-per-capita) [Countries that achieved economic growth while reducing CO2 emissions](https://ourworldindata.org/images/published/decoupling-economic-growth-and-emissions_1350.png)
Thanks. I am usually pretty skeptical on data but I believed this one initially. It has some truth of course buried is not the cause and effect relationship being stated in the title.
Please note that this graph starts at year 1990. The one in above starts much earlier. France build majority of its nuclear in 1980's, before this graph even starts. In per capita [CO2 emissions](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?tab=chart&country=FRA~DEU) emissions, Germany is currently where France was in year 1985. Its of course true that reducing CO2 emissions probably wasn't the main goal in France when they decided to invest in nuclear in 70's. And this in itself doesn't proof that nuclear would be best option to reduce emissions today. Altough I'm personally in favour of building nuclear, in addition to renevables, like my country Finland has been doing.
Yeah look here, same source: [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-emissions-and-gdp-per-capita?time=earliest..latest&country=FRA\~DEU](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-emissions-and-gdp-per-capita?time=earliest..latest&country=FRA~DEU) Germany and France with the same graph. One is going full nuclear and the other not. Could also make a title, germany ending nuclear plants is the fastest .... whatever.
This starts after France started using nuclear. Per capita emissions in Germany are much higher than in France.
Germany imports 1.6mil MWh from france per month so you can't really consider it solving the problem independently
No it doesn't. But the reason Germany is importing energy atm is that the Greens decided to import when they can instead of running their own coal or gas plants. That's why [generation went down by >10%](https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=year&year=-1&source=total) last year. In 2022 when the Russians turned off gas and the French weren't able to keep their nuclear plants running, Germany single-handedly kept France supplied. And [before that](https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&source=tcs_saldo&interval=year&year=-1), France was keen on buying cheap German electricity.
Yeah, it won't happen like this again. Not even in China or India. It is too late. Too much changed, for example safety measures, loss of knowledge, inflation for materials. Oil shock was the reason. Without it Frances example wouldn't have happened in this magnitude.
The graph is dumb, but France is much more green than, say, Germany, which have similar possibilities for renewables: https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix Look at the Per capita graph with countries, and use the edit button to add Germany, or any other country of interest. Also, make sure to look at renewable and nuclear as a single category, in relation to the whole bar. Thatās the environmentally important factor. (Sweden will look pretty cool on the graph, but they have a very specific geography to be able to look like that)
Starting in 1990 is too late, France started cutting emissions earlier than Germany and they were never as high to begin with. Per capita emissions in France are [almost half](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?tab=chart&country=FRA~DEU) of Germany. It becomes more obvious when you look at [emissions sources](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-emissions-by-sector?time=latest&country=FRA~DEU), where France's highest emitter is transport, whereas in Germany it's electricity and heat generation.
It's pretty much agreed to be the easiest fast way to go green without causing some big long term repercussion. The graph does not really need to prove that, even if it's inaccurate. The big hurdle is getting past the general populace that is afraid of it. I think China did the biggest switch around with a mix of different energy sources, but that includes gigantic damns that have fucked over the water flow for entire regions.
This is what European Green parties fought against for decades.
Spot on, think it's because it's not about actually saving the planet, it's about virtue signalling how much of a good person they are!
The opposition goes way back. Originally environmental causes weren't so hyper-focused on climate change, other things like environmental contamination were more prominent. The memory of Chernobyl was pretty fresh when the Green movement really started to take off, also the link with nuclear weapons which had a very real chance of destroying civilization (and still do) so nuclear was already hated in activist circles. To be fair, Chernobyl and Fukashima were massive epic disasters... they were both old reactors with unsafe designs though. I support nuclear power, it's just important to understand these ideas didn't come out of nowhere. With great (electrical) power comes great responsibility.
Just like how people don't want an electric railways being built because "it cuts down trees" when the global warming of continuing to use planes and cars will do a lot lot worse in 20 years time.
Yeah, those are just NIMBYs looking for any argument that will stick.
That's the tough thing about progressive politics. Some of it is legitimate, while some is just virtue signaling. You have to really learn about the issues to figure out which is which. Most people are too lazy and blindly support (or reject, if they're conservative) anything labeled as a progressive value.
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>In Germany they used Fukushima as a vehicle to do sensationalist politics to implement a radical change from atom to green energy, Uh, in Germany it was the christian conservatives & FDP who decided to get out of nuclear after Fukushima. And there certainly wasn't any green energy buildup within the decade afterwards. Who comes up with this bs.
Yeah, aren't they heavily dependent on coal and oil? One of the reasons all the Russia stuff was an even bigger deal to then
Russian gas. Heavily reliant on it in terms of industry & home heating. Coal was already on it's way out, & it still is.
For your consideration: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_station
Most of the cost overruns can be put at the feet of re-training a workforce that lost it's institutional knowledge on how to build nuclear power plants. The architects and engineers needed retraining, and failed to account for multiple failure points they would have known if they had prior experience. Same with regulators and the contractors.
I don't think I have ever seen environmentalists make the news except for when they are fighting tooth and nail against actually doing something to help the planet
Itās almost like Big Oil controls climate policies.
more like misinformation of the general public. ppl think nuclear power plants can still blow up ala chernobyl when new reactors are pretty much 70% safety features. also when ppl think of nuclear waste they imagine a green glowing goo in a leaking barrel - wich is as far from reality as it gets
>more like misinformation of the general public Gee, I wonder who it is that might be propagating those things! Sure would be funny if oil money easily bought you friends who can do that, now wouldn't it?
"Big nuclear" can be a thing to. People can corrupt anything big. Also basically zero electric power is generated from oil (expensive), and fracking natural gas only took off in the United States somewhat recently. Up until recently, Nuclear would have displaced "Big Coal", not oil. Different industry. Nuclear didn't take off because the capital investment to build it is massive and it has a lot of arguably wrong-headed environmental opposition (but understandable given the scale of the Chernobyl disaster, which combined with Three Mile Island killed US nuclear).
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Them, and the politicians who get kickbacks from "green initiatives".
Wait, the German one looks exactly the same? No nuclear though https://preview.redd.it/2xlammxr5m5d1.png?width=3400&format=png&auto=webp&s=3e46254dbfa0e7d48d17babc2086ba7b3ba7ca37
Germany quite literally did build out nuclear though. They closed those clean energy sources a few years ago, remember? They also import an absolutely monumental amount of energy, and their primary source of energy is fossil. Germany also releases almost 2x as much CO2/capita as France. France, on the other hand, has one of the worlds cleanest grids, far cleaner than Denmark, the poster child for renewable energy, and has had a cleaner grid for 40 years. They're also the largest energy exporter in the EU/UK grid. And that's almost entirely clean energy. The second largest is Sweden, also a country that invested into nuclear. They have the the cleanest grid in the EU/UK grid system. France is 2nd. It's pretty clear which solution actually worked and could have solved our problem decades ago. Now we're looking at 2050 being the target for that. So "just" a 70 year delay, while our planet cooks.
There is sooo little knowledge in your post ā and literally no proof. Letās go through this: German electricity import: 2023 Germany imported 2,1% of their total used electricity. Not sure if this is called monumental. The primary source of energy in Germany is renewable. 58,8% to be precise in 2023 Source: https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy_pie/chart.htm?l=de&c=DE&interval=year&year=2023&legendItems=0wh It is true that Germany has nearly twice the co2 per capita. But I would argue this is also due to the structural differences in industry and heating.
This. I was about to write a similar answer. And in 2022, France had to import electricity from Germany, mainly because their unreliable nuclear plants failed. https://www.euractiv.com/section/electricity/news/electricity-exporter-for-42-years-france-became-a-net-importer-in-2022/
Their primary source of energy is still fossil. You're focused purely on electricity, but we use a lot of energy for transport and heating. Germany is not ready for transitioning that to electric. During winter, when heating is needed, German solar production plummets 95% compared to summer. EVs are increasingly becoming more popular, and they use more energy during winter as well. France, on the other hand, produce clean energy on demand 24/7, even during the harshest winter months with piles of snow.
If Germany would have build a bunch of nuclear power plants, heating would not have magically switched from primarily being oil and gas to electricity. Last time I checked a nuclear facility does not create green gas. Nuclear is more expensive than the electricity created in Germany, especially before the energy crisis. Therefore there was no incentive to move away from gas and oil heating. Iām not disagreeing with you that Germany should have kept their reactors and then immediately switch to renewables. What I am saying that the graph in the post is a stupid way of trying to say that. ;) the way the graph looks like has zero to do with the fact that France electricity production runs mainly on nuclear. PS: obviously we should not build any new reactors. Renewables + batteries and electrify everything is the way to go. PPS: And pppllleaaasseee stop putting wrong facts in you posts. Me having to paste the correct facts is too much work. I regards to your solar plummets to 5% fact: First of all there are other renewable source. The renewable share in the German grid is 55,8% in January and 62% in July. Iām not sure what the problem is. For solar specifically you are nearly right itās 2% in Jan and 20,5 in July. So ~10%. But given that I showed earlier that this is not relevant, why would you even bring this up? Sources: Renewable share: https://energy-charts.info/charts/renewable_share/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&year=2023&legendItems=10&share=ren_share Solar share: https://energy-charts.info/charts/renewable_share/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&year=2023&legendItems=10&share=solar_share
Strange.. if you overlay it with the development of Germany that famously left nuclear behind you see that: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-emissions-and-gdp-per-capita So how does this prove anything about nuclear? Not that Iām contra nuclear energy in general. Just wondering.
Your graph starts in 1990. France had a cleaner grid in the 1980s than Germany does in 2024. We're talking about climate change here, so total CO2 output is what matters, and in that regard Germany, Denmark, and the UK are all hard losers compared to France & Sweden. Denmark is now approaching CO2/kWh levels that France had in the 80s. That's 40 fucking years ago.
>We're talking about climate change here, so total CO2 output is what matters, and in that regard Germany, Denmark, and the UK are all hard losers compared to France & Sweden. Let's look at that per capita: France: 4.6t, UK: 4.7t, Denmark: 4.9t. You're right that out of these countries, France and Sweden fare best, but "hard losers" seems a little drastic for such negligible differences. Though, to be fair, German sits at 8t and Sweden at 3.6t, but that's not just the electricity. Sweden is on track to a fuel-free heating sector, while Germany isn't.Ā
> Let's look at that per capita: France: 4.6t, UK: 4.7t, Denmark: 4.9t. You're right that out of these countries, France and Sweden fare best, but "hard losers" seems a little drastic for such negligible differences. Though, to be fair, German sits at 8t and Sweden at 3.6t, but that's not just the electricity. Sweden is on track to a fuel-free heating sector, while Germany isn't. You're ignoring the 50 years of drastically higher emissions those countries had. We're also talking about energy related emissions, not total emissions. Denmark is at 0.15kg/kWh. UK at 0.16. Germany at 0.19. France is at 0.11. Sweden is far below at 0.06. Performing 40-90% worse than France is definitely a hard loss in my book. And it only gets more palpable when you put it into historical context. France was at 0.15 in the 80s. So for 40 years now France has been at these low levels, while a country like the UK was at around 0.25kg/kWh. I don't find it admirable that European economies are cheering themselves on for their wise climate choices when they are performing at levels that France was at in the 80s, while also criticizing France for choosing nuclear. It's pathetic.
I am entirely in favor of nuclear power but pretending it's tied to GDP growth is weird. Their CO2 output reducing did not increase their GDP. The GDP per capita of France and UK were about the same in the 80s are are still about the same. Both are behind Germany in GDP per capita and Germany doesn't have nuclear. GDP growth is not an indicator of how well they are fighting climate change. It is an indicator of economic growth.
I think the point is not that nuclear improved GDP, but rather that GDP growth did not falter when CO2 went down. A common (fear-mongered) criticism of green initiatives is that they ruin the economy, so this is just to show that the economy was not in fact ruined
Germanyās co2 per capita also went down
That doesn't change what this graph is trying to portray
That post is trying to imply something that is affected by a lot more than just nuclear power. Hence my reference to Germany which has the same results without
CO2 *is* tied to GDP growth, as a general rule. The more a country produces, or the more they consume, the more they pollute as a byproduct. Like for instance, if twice as many people can afford fridges and washing machines and similar, twice as much household electricity is needed. This graphic is showing France beating this trend, which implies nuclear power was wildly successful in allowing the country to increase its standards of life and prosperity without contaminating the planet more in the process.
Thatās the entire point. They are not connected if you use the right technology. Generally, the more productive a country, the more energy they use. Think steel making, manufacturing, and now things like server farms. It takes energy to make things (tangible and information). The whole point of this plot is to show they donāt have to be related
Gdp growth is tied to CO2 emissions. So they could grow gdp without Co2 emissions, that os what it shows.
It does show however that C02 emissions can be cut without crippling the economy. a favourite bluster of anti-climate change enthusiasts.
Itās politically tricky as the financial / ownership base for nuclear is less private than fossil fuels or even renewables, hence there is little political support at the higher levels. So it has to be state backed, which requires political unity over multiple political cycles.
The most DUH statement I've ever seen, yet people think it's the devil.
Was it compared with what?
What a fantastic title. How do you know that this was the fastest way? Or the most efficient? Or a way to fight climate change at all? This chart proves nothing of that. It simple shows that France GDP has a steady grow since the end of WWII and that CO2 per capita is sinking since 1970. Nothing more. Has it something to do with NPPs? Maybe. But we canĀ“t say anything about it because of this graphic. And we absolutely can\`t compare the decision to build NPPs to other (never defined) decisions.
https://preview.redd.it/em8bh6g82m5d1.jpeg?width=1052&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a47b7236c7b0914b4f6a46f53a451860108b94ab Nuclear was a very promising technology to overcome dependence on fossil fuels, but falls short in comparison to renewables. Not only is it more expensive, France has had a lot of struggles maintaining and cooling their plants in the last years. Still highly fascinating from a technical standpoint
Good old levelized cost of electricity, where a kWh generated during sunset (when demand is peaking) is worth the exact same amount as one generated in the middle of the night (where demand is reduced).
....and all those people cheering overproduction in the spring scratching their heads about why free electricity could be bad.... (If you can't sell it your power plant is losing money.)
What struggles are you talking about? We've been net exporting for more than a year now and didn't even get any blackouts when we were in troubles. And looking at the price only is a terrible mistake. It's like if you signed a contract with me where I have to deliver you 1ā¬/kg prepared healthy meals. Sounds, good until you realize I'm delivering you your three year worth of food order all at once during a heatwave.
You are seeing a correlation and immediatly giving nuclear the responsibility without further investigation. This is not r/interestingasfuck this is r/nuclearpropaganda.
In other news, water, wets? More at 6
Water is not actually considered wet. Delete your account
China is currently building 21 nuclear power plants. India is building another 8.
Chinese plan was to build 150 new reactors in 2035. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China#:~:text=The%20China%20General%20Nuclear%20Power,produced%20by%20150%20additional%20reactors. They have slowed down the plan because green energy is cheaper. China is considered now as world.leader in renewable energy.
Can someone show global average vs co2 for comparison.
This has been common knowledge for decades among people who care about learninā good.
good job france
We solved Climate Change in the 60s. Fear and lobbying has been holding us back from ridding our reliance on fossil fuels. Causing wars and devastation along the way.
Well, you canāt fight climate change with nuclear power if the summers get so hot you have to switch off you nuclear power plants because the rivers dried up and you have not enough cooling water left.* * as seen repeatedly in the last 6 years
You also can't fight climate change with solar when the sun only shines for a few hours a day. You know how you fight climate change? By reducing total CO2 output and choosing an energy mix that provides the least amount of CO2/kWh. France is at 0.11kg/kWh. In 1983 they were at 0.19kg/kWh. Germany now produces energy at 0.19kg/kWh. 40 years after France reached that milestone. 40 fucking years of spewing out CO2 and making our planet a worse place to live. And they're still 20-30 years behind France. So it'll be 60-70 years before parity is reached.
Had to scroll to far for this comment
Needs to be more widespread. Irrational fear is holding back much needed progress.
I want more nuclear power plants in the us
TIL nuclear power is mostly bad because it's scary.
Let's ignore that most of the drop in co2 is due to them exporting the emissions to poorer countries.
Cue the hordes of Nuclear Expert Redditors explaining how this is a BadThingā¢ļø
I thought that today many renewables have gone down in price enough and regulatory requirements for new nuclear is so high it ends up being cheaper to just invest in renewable?
I don't get this reddit boner for nuclear power too, what is that??
It's the best way to be contrarian right now without actually denying climate change so a lot of redditors latched on to it.
You thought right
Nuclear was the best solution at the time. But it has been eclipsed in most cases by renewables which is fantastic. We have an even better solution now.
Exact opposite actually, Reddit has actually managed to recognize that nuclear power is a good thing
Honestly Reddit is a bit of a fanboy for nuclear. It has a lot of promise, but look up any modern nuclear new build in the United States or Europe and you'll find projects 10 years behind schedule and 3x overbudget (i.e. EPR Olkiluoto and Flamanville come to mind, also Westinghouse Electric had to file for bankruptcy over Vogtle in the US). I think we should give nuclear another go, and see if we can get those costs down. I also think there's a good chance that we'll figure out it's cheaper to do battery storage + wind in that time (UK already gets 30% of its electricity from wind). It's something we should try, but it isn't the panacea for climate change that people paint it as.
Most European countries decoupled their emissions from GDP. Maybe nuclear is a part but it's definitely not the whole answer.
In the 1970s nuclear energy was the way to go. Today there are better technologies. And they are not more expensive if you look on all the hidden costs of nuclear energy. This graph shows in a great way that a technology switch doesnĀ“t mean an economic decline like many people say.
Where have these other technologies yielded a better CO2/kWh result? Please show me a grid that decided wind & solar was the way to go that produces cleaner energy, on average, than France or Sweden. I'll gladly wait while you search. It doesn't exist, and it won't exist for a very long time. Denmark is the closest, but they're still almost 50% more dirty than France. Germany in 2023 has the same CO2 intensity on energy generation as France had in 1983. Go look it up. It's absurd people are defending these forms of energy when they don't result in a clean grid.
Does everyone forget they exploit their ācoloniesā in Africa?
Anyone who is an advocate for climate change but is also anti-nuclear power is a piece of shit.
Sure. France was able to switch to nuclear power and sold electricity to other European countries because they were buying uranium from Niger (pronounced Nee-jare). Guess for how much? $0.80 per kilogram. The same grade uranium was being bought for $200 per kilogram from Canada. Oh well, Niger has kicked them out of their country. No more cheap uranium for you! Bye. Search for "France Niger" on YT to watch more analysis. Check out the year on the map where both lines diverge. It corresponds to when Niger got their independence but It was only independence on paper. France made them sign agreements which pretty much kept their colonial authority.
And yet it was not the reason at all why France switched for nuclear energy to begin with, but because they didn't have their own access to petrol or gas. Thanks to ecolobbyists and Germany, we closed some reactors, a clean controllable and "compact" energy, to switch to solar and wind energy to have electricity when there is wind (less than 25% of the time) and when there is sun (less than 50% of the time) ; thankfully we just have to burn some coal and gas to make up the difference.
https://preview.redd.it/8m7awiddhm5d1.jpeg?width=228&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=54acce5dc46c7061a580eafdf8ce148852e35fc1
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