[neuronic]

Solar is fusion and not fission [1]. If you can't even get that right, why should anyone take these weird pro-fission arguments seriously in 2020?

The solution is to keep using existing nuclear power and develop renewables for replacement. Nuclear fission plants take at the very least 10 years (!!) to go online from the day construction begins. And that leaves out years of planning and dealing with contracts.

It's too expensive, dangerous and redundant in the face of emerging renewable tech which is becoming cheaper and more efficient by the month.

[1] https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/fission-and-fusion-what-d...

[belorn]

Renewables are not a replacement for existing nuclear power unless you either add fossil fuels or batteries to the mix. Countries which currently are replacing nuclear power do so with a combination of renewables and fossil fuels, with fossil fuels burning when renewables are not producing.

Batteries, usually reverse hydro power, is an interesting future technology. Some argue it is significant more developed than fusion. The bigger question is if its economically competitive compared to fission. There is costs and energy loss in every single step of producing electricity from renewables, transmitting it to the battery, converting it into potential, recreate the electricity, and finnally transmitting it to the end users. With fission you go directly from the power plant to the end user. Reverse hydro power plants also take a long time to build and either use a lot of land or coast. If you build it on land it also release a lot of methane as top layer of the land decompose.

[cygx]

Countries which currently are replacing nuclear power do so with a combination of renewables and fossil fuels

Which countries? Germany for example isn't - yet. We're still in a place where we can reduce usage of both fossil fuels and nuclear, though that won't last unless we figure out effective means of energy storage.

[belorn]

As an example, Sweden. People will use fossil fueled energy when the choice is between people freezing in their home or burning fossil fuels. Sweden rely on a mix between hydro and nuclear, but it is not feasible to extend hydro beyond current capacity. The nuclear plants however is getting older, and politically people want to shut them down. Something has to produce the energy, and during the winter it is imported fossil fuels energy when the wind is not blowing.

Germany as an example illustrate the issue quite nice, as can be seen live at electricitymap.org. When the wind is blowing the country goes green with around 70% of energy being produced by wind. Very sunny days you get around 20% solar. Days like today that is a bit rainy and not very windy, and you have 60% fossil fuels. The constant is nuclear around 10%, so remove that and the above numbers will go up depending on weather conditions.

[renaudg]

German anti-nuclear activists like to tout the percentage figure of renewables in the country, but that's not the right metric to look at : the coal+gas baseline is so bad in terms of CO2 emissions, that even in ideal conditions when wind production is 70%, German electricity's carbon intensity is still way higher than in France, Sweden or Iceland (

Coal causes 35.000 premature deaths in Europe every year, and 7 of the 10 most polluting industry sites on the continent are German lignite power plants.

The hypocrisy and constant lecturing from Die Grüne needs to stop.

[cygx]

Sure. But that doesn't make Germany an example of replacing nuclear with fossil fuels. From 2002 to 2019, percentage wise, fossil fuels went down by 1/3 (from ~60% to ~40%) and nuclear by 1/2 (from ~30% to ~15%).

[belorn]

Since electricitymap gives current say 40% coal and 15% gas, to a total of 55%, I assume fossil fuels are not down to 40% all the time. What you are describing is the average.

Feel free to prove me wrong, but when the wind over Germany is still (<4ms) and its night, the amount of energy production using fossil fuels are higher than 70%, and thus at peak, fossil fueled energy production is higher now then before when nuclear stood for 30%.

[cygx]

and thus at peak, fossil fueled energy production is higher now then before when nuclear stood for 30%

But that's an irrelevant metric: What matters is the total CO2 released, ie the integrated value. So short-term, you replace coal plants by gas peakers, and transition to next-gen storage mechanisms long-term (better batteries, cryogenic storage, power-to-gas - the latter is especially interesting as Germany has pre-existing gas infrastructure than can store hundreds of TWh, and we use natural gas anyway for heating and industrial purposes).

[renaudg]

Germany absolutely is relying on coal and (Russian) gas to afford its ideological decision to prematurely sunset nuclear plants, at the worst possible time in history : just as climate change becomes an emergency.

The cold hard truth is that it's impossible to operate a grid with solar & wind energy alone, unless and until a hypothetical battery storage breakthrough lands in the next decades.

I've just checked the realtime figures and as I write this, German electricity is 5 times more carbon intensive than in France (72% nuclear) : https://www.electricitymap.org/

[Brometheus]

For nuclear you still need to have peaker plants. ALso nuclear is really expensive.

[renaudg]

Pretty sure it's actually cheapest per kWh

[Reason077]

New-build nuclear is far more expensive, per kWh, than renewables. In Europe, even off-shore wind - one of the most expensive renewables - is now coming in much cheaper than nuclear projects.

In the US, even many old nuclear plants are struggling to compete without subsidies against renewables and natural gas.

[pasttense01]

No. If it were cheapest companies would be building nuclear. Right now in the U.S. the cheapest are wind, natural gas and solar.

[Reason077]

> "Nuclear fission plants take at the very least 10 years (!!) to go online from the day construction begins."

Yes, but that's what the small modular reactors being proposed by Rolls-Royce, and others, intend to solve. If successful, they would greatly reduce the construction time, risk, and cost of nuclear projects.

[neuronic]

It's a great project for the technology alone but isn't the projected time frame too late? Where will we be 10 years from now with renewables?

Also, if Rolls-Royce projects 2029 it doesn't mean it's done by 2029 and most certainly not wide scale deployed/operable. So what kind of renewable infrastructure and tech will be deployed 15-20 years from now?

That's what you have to compare it with.

[Reason077]

> "It's a great project for the technology alone but isn't the projected time frame too late? Where will we be 10 years from now with renewables?"

It's not a question of nuclear or renewables - we absolutely need renewables, and right now renewables are much cheaper, and can be delivered faster, than nuclear.

But there are regions of the world that may struggle to decarbonise completely without nuclear in the mix. Especially if you consider additional demands in the future from electrification of transport, building heat, etc.

[renaudg]

> Where will we be 10 years from now with renewables?

If the electricity storage problem doesn't get solved (which is a pretty small "if", since it requires a very uncertain breakthrough in physics) : nowhere.

In 10 years the climate emergency will be even more salient, but one of coal/gas/nuclear/hydro will still be required in the mix.

Countries that can't have hydro for geography reasons, and have shut down nuclear early for political reasons will be a liability to the rest of the world.

[Accujack]

Most likely in that time frame we'll be trying to get by on a mix of renewables and non carbon neutral generation from coal or similar, and we'll also have implemented limits on carbon generation that will effectively be crippling various industries and increasing the cost of various necessities worldwide.

We won't have a choice... it'll be down to either everyone accepting reduced quality of life or nuclear... at which point nuclear starts to look very good.

[Accujack]

>Solar is fusion and not fission [1]. If you can't even get that right, why should anyone take these weird pro-fission arguments seriously in 2020?

To nitpick a bit, he didn't say the sun was powered by fusion, he said fissionable elements are present in the sun. Which is entirely true.

[aguyfromnb]

>It's too expensive, dangerous and redundant in the face of emerging renewable tech which is becoming cheaper and more efficient by the month.

Why are you comparing the state of nuclear energy today with the potential scientific breakthroughs of renewable energy in the future?

If you compare nuclear of today with renewables of today, then the winner is clear. If you compare the two accounting for potential scientific breakthroughs..who knows?