[osuairt]

I get very frustrated when I see posts on TikTok about nuclear being the magic bullet. They talk about Germany, and they refer to nuclear as the only alternative to fossil fuels. When you mention renewables, they talk to you like you are an idiot, that renewable technologies are just infeasible, are harmful to the environment or they are too expensive. The same people that would have said that electric cars are impossible, or that climate change is not real 7 years ago, are now environmentalists and are very concerned about lithium battery production. Just endless nonsense. You then have to go on to point out that 50% of Germany's energy mix is from renewables now. And as this article points out, the price of solar just keeps falling, because it can be mass produced and improved at a pace similar to semi-conductors.

I tire of what seems to be very opinionated right wing men, not putting together how things work, and after they are proven wrong, say that they have always said that, or that is obvious.

[starwatch]

If I don my tin foil hat [1]...

Nuclear is an ideal green solution for the fossil fuel industry. Why? Well, building a power station is super hard because: it's expensive, takes years and no one wants a power station in their backyard.

I can imagine fossil fuel execs recognising that the energy grid is going green despite all of their lobbying. So the game then becomes to delay the inevitable as long as you can, so that you can extract as much money as you can from fossil fuels.

[1]: I listened to a lot of the Drilled podcast by Amy Westervelt in the early days of the pandemic https://www.drilled.media/drilled-podcast/

[pyrale]

> Nuclear is an ideal green solution for the fossil fuel industry.

Nuclear proponents use the same claim against the renewable industry. There isn't much to learn about it, besides the fact that the fossil fuel industry is a bogeyman for both.

It's not a great point, especially when, rather than donning your tinfoil, you can just look at where funds go.

[Timon3]

> Nuclear proponents use the same claim against the renewable industry.

But the claim doesn't make sense against the renewable industry. Just because they make the same claim doesn't make it a good claim.

I, as an individual, can deploy solar power and thus produce my own power. I cannot deploy nuclear power and thus produce my own power.

[pyrale]

> But the claim doesn't make sense against the renewable industry.

Well, my point is that you just have to see what some major fossil energy producers say and do. You don't need to believe anyone on this.

[1]: https://www.shell.com/energy-and-innovation/new-energies.htm... [2]: https://www.chevron.com/operations/new-energies [3]: https://totalenergies.com/group/ambition/being-world-class-p... [4]: https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/what-we-do/gas-and-lo...

[piva00]

I don't follow your argumentation.

The fossil fuel industry could as well (tin foil hat on) be pushing the nuclear talking points to delay public opinion on the benefits of renewables until they are well aligned to take over the renewable industry. They are fighting to still be relevant as profit-making companies in a world where renewables take over, they are invested in renewables because they know the writing on the wall but they are late on their plans to be major players in the renewables industry and would definitely play public opinion to delay advancements in an area where they lack expertise, at least until they can build said expertise and take over the renewables market to keep being energy behemoths.

[pyrale]

> The fossil fuel industry could as well be pushing the nuclear talking points to delay public opinion on the benefits of renewables

> They are fighting to still be relevant as profit-making companies in a world where renewables take over

So basically, if the fossil industry promotes nuclear, it's to sabotage the only viable option in order to sell more oil, but if they promote renewable, it's because they know it's the only path forward and they want to save their skin. Your theory is not falsifiable, that's a problem.

[Timon3]

Sorry, I really don't follow. The claim by GP was:

> Nuclear is an ideal green solution for the fossil fuel industry. Why? Well, building a power station is super hard because: it's expensive, takes years and no one wants a power station in their backyard.

This is not the case for renewables. How does pointing to what fossil fuel companies are investing in change that? Shell investing in solar means that suddenly I can't cheaply install solar in my backyard?

[pyrale]

My point is that the fossil industry is pushing renewables as a solution, as evidenced by these examples, never nuclear. That kind of defeats the claim that nuclear is fossil industry's recommendation.

This has no relation to what you should or should not build in your backyard.

[fomine3]

AFAIK, ocean oil well platform developer is good at building something at sea, so they migrate their business to building ocean wind turbines.

[bryanlarsen]

You're both probably right.

20 years ago nuclear was the best, quickest & cheapest path to decarbonization, so the fossil fuel industry would be anti-nuclear.

Today renewables are the best, quickest & cheapest path to decarbonization, so the fossil fuel industry would be anti-renewable.

And in neither decade is hydrogen the best path, so the fossil fuel industry is pro-hydrogen. Especially since hydrogen uses many of the same techs as fossil fuels and you can ramp up hydrogen with fossil fuel derived "grey hydrogen".

[goodpoint]

In the last years plenty of online accounts started praising nuclear. Now that renewables are much cheaper and nuclear became more expensive.

Such pointless debate only benefits the fossil fuel industry.

Given how much of the conversation is manipulated by bots and paid influencers... this is really suspicious.

[_hypx]

Hydrogen is the best path regardless of whether you accept nuclear or renewable. In fact, it is the only path, as nothing else will delivery anything like zero emissions. People forget about industrial emissions entirely and how this fully requires green hydrogen production. And in the case of renewables, hydrogen is even more paramount because of the need for energy storage.

[rini17]

So, where do I buy a home hydrogen storage system to store excess solar energy for later use?

Right, I can't because hydrogen in any practical density is too dangerous or expensive. Despite decades of research. It might be made and used on the spot for an industrial process but that's it.

[_hypx]

You can buy this right now: https://www.h2networks.com.au/lavo-hydrogen-battery/

But of course, given the enormous anti-hydrogen campaign of the last decade, everything is currently at an immature level.

[ephbit]

You can buy it here: https://www.homepowersolutions.de/en/picea-plus/

Hydrogen can indeed be stored in standard steel gas cylinders.

[osuairt]

Agreed.

You want to have some form of manufactured scarcity.

If you have a single point of energy generation, that is expensive, and specialised, and relies on an element mined from the ground, it is great for the fossil fuel industry.

If you have a distributed form of energy generation, that is inexpensive, not specialised and is made from sand, it is not so great for the fossil fuel industry.

[pydry]

I'm pretty sure the PR campaign in the US comes from the nuclear military industrial complex (which relies on civilian nuclear power) combined with the nuclear industry itself.

They know the economics are horrendous. They need to manufacture consent from the public for lavish subsidies to compete with unsubsidized solar/wind/storage solutions.

Hence the "nuclear is the green jesus" tiktok videos and the disingenuous but endlessly repeated talking points, e.g.

* "what about when the sun isnt shining?"

* pumped storage geography is scarce

* lithium will run out soon

[pyrale]

I'd be curious to know how the points about pumped storage and more generally the lack of effort in solving grid-level storage issues are disingenuous.

To date, the rebuttal to these points has been weak, and there is little investment in solving them, compared to investment in renewable production.

> to compete with unsubsidized solar/wind/storage solutions.

In Europe, there is no electricity production that isn't subsidized. That's pretty justified, since energy is the lifeblood of a modern society, and energy sectors can't be allowed to fail. I don't know as much about the US, but it seems to be the same [1].

To claim that any actor in this sector is not subsidized just shows that you don't understand the way electricity is funded.

[1]: https://www.epa.gov/green-power-markets/policies-and-regulat...

[pydry]

>To date, the rebuttal to these points has been weak,

About once a week I have to post a link to the scientific study that demonstrated that the geography for pumped storage is very plentiful.

For some reason when people complain that it's not (which happens constantly), they "heard it somewhere" or cite what is essentially pro-nuke/carbon-lobby propaganda.

i.e. another anti environmentalist meme, a highbrow version of all the "global warming is a myth" stuff.

[stavros]

And you might as well frame the debate as "nuclear rules, renewables suck" while you're at it, for extra delay from infighting between environmentalists.

[Timon3]

> The same people that would have said that electric cars are impossible, or that climate change is not real 7 years ago, are now environmentalists and are very concerned about lithium battery production. Just endless nonsense.

It is incredibly frustrating, but the realization behind it is infuriatingly simple: they just want to be contrarian. They just want to be right, and to know better than everyone else. The more people have opposite beliefs the better, because it means they are smarter than all of them. This fundamental disposition makes them soak up all of the propaganda, which fossil fuel companies are more than happy to provide. You can challenge them on facts all you want, they will not budge from their positions.

This is also why you will never hear them say "honestly, I don't know".

[karmakurtisaani]

There is definitely a use case for nuclear, but the discussion absolutely should not be renewables vs. nuclear, but renewables and nuclear vs. fossile fuels. Nuclear advocates should celebrate every advance in renewables and vice versa.

[stavros]

I find it very suspicious that the debate has been framed as "renewables vs nuclear" while we keep burning fossil fuels.

[karmakurtisaani]

I wouldn't be surprised if the FF industry was driving this narrative, but I can also see it happening organically. A lot of the "green" people, especially in Germany are fanatically anti-nuclear. At the same time, the right-wing populists seem to have adopted the position that climate change can only be countered with nuclear power. I'm not sure why that is, probably because it's an easy answer and positions them against the green parties - after all, they cannot agree with their perceived enemies.

[starwatch]

I think the German "green" case (to a degree) comes from the Chernobyl meltdown happening relatively nearby. It is in living memory for those power so it's understandable that they shy away from it.

I should add that meaningful advances have been made in nuclear power station design. But unfortunately these advances can't withstand other problems e.g. Russia putting operational power stations at risk as they invade Ukraine.

[Gwypaas]

The problem is that renewables and nuclear are economically incompatible. They compete for the slice that is the cheapest and most inflexible, both requiring dispatchable power to fill the gaps. Renewables easily win this battle as the cost for new built renewables are in the same range as operations and maintenance for paid off nuclear plants.

For nuclear this inflexibility comes from pure economics. It is economic suicide to build a new plant and operate it at 100%, now try operating it at less than 50% on average.

[karmakurtisaani]

Yep, and that's what we are currently seeing unfold. However, there must be use cases for nuclear as base load or some kind of supplementary power with mini reactors. I only hope these options get considered as viable alternative, rather than being dismissed ideologically.

[Gwypaas]

The ideological perspective would not exist if nuclear was economic. It is simply an easy boogeyman to blame.

SMR are not looking that hot either, looks like the prevalent truth from the 70 years of nuclear construction: that bigger is better due to the large fixed costs, stays true even in 2023.

https://www.wired.com/story/the-dream-of-mini-nuclear-plants...

[KptMarchewa]

The nuclear solution is framed as non economic because of decades of ideologically-driven sabotage; when nuclear plants were build en masse they were cheap. Now every reactor is apparently it's own research project since practical expertise in this field became scarce.

EPR's debacle is good example here.

Meanwhile, Koreans have been steadily building new plants without giant cost overruns and delays.

[bryanlarsen]

Nuclear power plants were never cheap. Sometimes they appeared that way if you offloaded most of your costs onto the taxpayer, like decomissioining expenses.

And in the West they never enjoyed economies of scale either. France's nuclear plants kept getting more expensive, even in the heyday when they were building lots of them.

[Gwypaas]

They weren't.

> The costs of the French nuclear scale-up: A case of negative learning by doing

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...

Meanwhile in South Korea, is this the method you propose to get "cheap nuclear"?

> In November 2012 it was discovered that over 5,000 small components used in five reactors at Yeonggwang Nuclear Power Plant had not been properly certified; eight suppliers had faked 60 warranties for the parts. Two reactors were shut down for component replacement, which was likely to cause power shortages in South Korea during the winter.[25] Reuters reported this as South Korea's worst nuclear crisis, highlighting a lack of transparency on nuclear safety and the dual roles of South Korea's nuclear regulators on supervision and promotion.[26] This incident followed the prosecution of five senior engineers for the coverup of a serious loss of power and cooling incident at Kori Nuclear Power Plant, which was subsequently graded at INES level 2.[25][27]

> In 2013, there was a scandal involving the use of counterfeit parts in nuclear plants and faked quality assurance certificates. In June 2013 Kori 2 and Shin Wolsong 1 were shut down, and Kori 1 and Shin Wolsong 2 ordered to remain offline, until safety-related control cabling with forged safety certificates is replaced.[28] Control cabling in the first APR-1400s under construction had to be replaced delaying construction by up to a year.[29] In October 2013 about 100 people were indicted for falsifying safety documents, including a former chief executive of Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power and a vice-president of Korea Electric Power Corporation.[30]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_South_Korea#H...

[karmakurtisaani]

That sounds very reasonable. However, where I've seen this ideological aspect is for example in Finland where the permits for nuclear plants are very difficult to obtain. So once a permit is granted, they want to make as massive plants as possible, leading to big risks in construction (see Olkiluoto 3 for example, one of the most expensive constructions in history).

[pyrale]

> see Olkiluoto 3 for example, one of the most expensive constructions in history

Dimensioning of Olkiluoto 3 is unrelated to Finnish regulation, the reactor was designed by France and Germany based on economies of scales, not specifically for a local project.

[SanderNL]

> I get very frustrated when I see posts on TikTok

Well, there’s your problem.

[melling]

I hear you. I’ve been telling people we needed nuclear for over 2 decades.

Kyoto Climate Deal was 25 years ago.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol

The United States took a pass.

Instead we kicked the can down the road. China expanded its coal power capacity enormously. So did India. Now we are going to soon reach 1.5C.

https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2023/5/17/global-warming-...

We’ve basically failed our initial goals and will need many miracles to properly address climate change.

Hopefully, our first failure will compel us to come up with something workable before it gets a lot worse.

Good luck.

[resolutebat]

China is simultaneously the world's largest user of coal, solar and wind power, all at the same time.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-track-hit-new-...

Clean energy share continues to climb though, and they've also made huge strides in air quality.

India, on the other hand, seems to be going from bad to worse on both fronts.

[melling]

We need to quit telling ourselves stories, do the math, and find a workable solution that addresses the problem before we reach “too late”

At this point we need to address several problems at once. There’s no one solution and we need to be relatively quick.

Also, Coal is still the low hanging fruit because it produces 20% of emissions. It needs to go to zero as soon as possible.

https://blogs.worldbank.org/voices/its-critical-tackle-coal-...

Maybe gone by 2040?

[_hypx]

It's already "too late" for any such solution. We are already at the point where geoengineering is necessary. But of course, environmentalists oppose that too.

[hobbescotch]

I would check out some videos of the Kivu cobalt mines where children work to mine for our cobalt. There are north american mines that are shut in because we chose to instead use child labor in incredibly dangerous mines that frequently have landslides because it’s cheaper. It seems that many only care enough about climate change to greenwash and not think about anything else. There are hopefully new battery compounds on the way but it should be allowed to criticize elements on the energy transition if there are problems. How else do we get nice things without encouraging open discussion? Perhaps it’s an american thing to associate these views with certain labels but I don’t see how it’s related to any political affiliation or gender to have these concerns.

[Gwypaas]

Or just use LFP batteries, like Tesla does in the majority of their delivered cars.

[hobbescotch]

Yes 100%

[_hypx]

The solution is to switch to hydrogen cars and avoid all resource intensive materials. Not to mention that LFP comes with major compromises and most US Teslas do not use them.

[Gwypaas]

How is that working out for Toyota? Hydrogen, or synthetic fuels, has a place where energy density, chemical properties, or ease of storage are fundamental requirements. In other words use cases like: long distance shipping, aviation, fertilizer and seasonal energy storage.

For all other applications hydrogen is a lost cause pushed by the fossil industry.

See the "Hydrogen Ladder" for more information.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/clean-hydrogen-ladder-v40-mic...

[_hypx]

That's pure BEV propaganda. It is pure gibberish.

In reality, hydrogen is guaranteed to win this. BEVs are unsustainable and the whole conversation is based on the delusion of people who have invested too much on that side.

Imagine accepting that hydrogen is fundamental to aviation or shipping, but somehow believing that it is an elaborate conspiracy by the oil companies to push it in cars. That is beyond ludicrous. It is painfully obvious that BEV fans have gone off the deep end and are failing to realize that technology is moving beyond batteries.

[Gwypaas]

Meanwhile in reality: "Tesla Model Y overtakes Corolla to be world’s best-selling car in 2023"

https://thedriven.io/2023/05/26/tesla-model-y-overtakes-coro...

[pjc50]

Currently the vast majority of hydrogen produced for industrial purposes is from natural gas, and the resulting CO2 is emitted into the atmosphere. Until that changes it's not a "green" fuel.

[_hypx]

And the vast majority of electricity is made from fossil fuels too. And that figure was far higher when BEVs got started.

This is simply a lazy troll argument, and literally a repeat of old anti-BEV arguments.

[pjc50]

So where's the renewable hydrogen?

[KptMarchewa]

Renewables haven't solved storage in any way. You need to solve for worst case - December, with barely any sun and barely any increase of wind.

You can produce 300% or even 3000% of need in the middle of day in June or July and it still does not mean pure renewable fantasy is feasible.

Meanwhile France's overall CO2 per capita is small fraction of Germany one and was for decades.

[_hypx]

This problem can be solved by making hydrogen. So there is a way to power society with renewables if you are willing accept the need for baseload power. Of course, renewable energy fanatics do not accept this fact, and often are ideologically opposed to hydrogen. This is in spite of the fact that only hydrogen can save renewables from this problem.

[pjc50]

> This problem can be solved by making hydrogen

Again, nobody seems to be making hydrogen from renewable energy at scale yet despite there being a real industrial market for it. Including steel reduction, which would be a great use-case! But it's not happening because water cracking to hydrogen has a really high capital cost.

[_hypx]

Again, you are simply unaware of what is happening. It is very similar to how anti-solar analysts simply failed to recognize the widespread deployment of PV panels around a decade ago.

[AnimalMuppet]

A pointer to some documentation about what is happening would be useful - more useful than an analogy about something in history.

[_hypx]

The reference is literally google news search: https://www.google.com/search?q=green+hydrogen&tbm=nws&sa=X&...

You'll get hundreds if not thousands of references.

[bryanlarsen]

With a 20% overbuild, 4 hours of storage and good interconnections, an intelligent mix of wind & solar power can supply 97% of power requirements.

I hardly think that the last 3% being horribly expensive should hold up the first 97%.

[KptMarchewa]

Maybe in California, weather does not look uniform in the rest of the world. December is literally less than 30 hours of sun here, and wind is weak - we're literally smog capital of Europe due to it in the winter.

"good interconnections" on the other way sound like surrendering any energy security - good luck with that after russian invasion.

I'd be comfortable with that as long as we can have 3-10x overbuild and a week of storage.

[bryanlarsen]

If you can't rely on an interconnection with Spain then you have bigger problems than energy security.

[Projectiboga]

I'm not pro-nuclear, but Germany's electric generation carbon intensity has gotten very bad with their switch back to coal from Russian gas. It is so horrible the weapons guys pushed uranium fuel over what the Manhattan Project guys recommended in the 1950s, which was Thorium.

[audunw]

I think we should start talking about the possible climate impact of waste heat from nuclear thermal power plants too.

I'm definitely pro-nuclear, wherever it makes sense, in the short term. As long as it's never at the expensive of building renewables too. But many nuclear proponents talk as if nuclear is the end-goal for power generation. That we should just replace everything with nuclear. But if we do, it's going to get harder to bring the Earths climate back to equilibrium, since a world on 100% nuclear power would add a lot of heat to planet. Not as bad as greenhouse gases, but significant enough to make reversal harder.

Sabine Hossenfelder has a video covering the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vRtA7STvH4

I think focusing on solar and energy storage will always be a good bet. It will probably be the absolute dominant way to get energy in 100 years, along with geothermal in colder climates. We're just one generational improvement from that being inevitable, and those improvements are arguably already out of the lab and in trial production stage. Given how important solar+storage will be, the amount of R&D flowing into it will be staggering in the coming decades.

When we've completed the transition to sustainable solutions (which right now is requiring a lot of mining and energy intensive metal processing, which will mostly be recycled in the future) and the population growth flattens and then reverses, I'd hope that the amount of energy needed for industry will fall dramatically.

Edit: I'm also hoping Helions approach to fusion works out. If it's combined with panels that radiate the waste heat to space (there should be much less heat per MWh of electricity generated compared to fission, perhaps so little that radiate cooling is feasible), there should basically be zero downsides to their power plant.

[_hypx]

The problem ultimately isn't about renewables vs. nuclear, it is that countries like Germany tore down their nuclear power plants and replaced them with coal power plants.

If we had just old right-wing men as the opponents, then there wouldn't be much of a problem at all. The real issue is that young left-wing men are just as stupid, and this part is completely unacknowledged.

[Gwypaas]

Why does this lie about Germany keep being repeated? Explain where in this graph Germany replaced nuclear with coal:

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...

[ephbit]

I can literally see it in the linked graph.

Generation from coal has been decreasing continuously since 2013. Until 2020, since then it _increased_ while nuclear generation decreased.

Generation from coal might have just kept on decreasing past 2020, hadn't nuclear plants been shut down.

[pjc50]

.. in the context of Germany already having been swept over by one power plant failure, Chernobyl, and a second large scale one having just happened in Japan.

The risk of CO2 is high (almost a certainty) but over a long period.

The risk of nuclear is low, but if a "black swan" failure happens then it potentially wipes out agriculture in a large area for years.

(There's also the proliferation risk; is everyone OK with Iran building a lot of reactors to displace their oil usage?)

[_hypx]

Which are entirely troll arguments. Chernobyl is the worst case scenario imaginable and not possible with any Western designed reactor. Fukushima killed zero people for all practical purposes. Not to mention the lack of earthquakes in Germany. Adopting nuclear is an extremely safe solution for Germany.

[ben_w]

Not trolling, political reality.

Speaking personally, I'm fine with nuclear power near me as a part of a grid — even despite the high monetary cost — because I'm satisfied of the safety and I think supply diversity is worth paying more.

But nuclear is a boogieman, and that means the reactors are slow and expensive to build.

The geopolitical risks also mean other countries may look at your reactors as an existential threat — this is also a thing the governments need to care about no matter how sure they are that they're the goodies and everyone else is being silly when raising such concerns.

And while an earthquake was the ultimate cause of the Fukushima incident, it wasn't the proximal cause: Germany does get floods from time to time.

Of course, if I get to ignore politics then my favourite is a global power grid energised by PV — the maths says that would be great, though it would take a while to build.

[_hypx]

The political reality of Germany is still that of climate change denial. Worse, environmentalists are effectively part of that group.

Eventually, this will change. You cannot denial reality forever, and especially not of existential problems.

[ben_w]

> You cannot denial reality forever, and especially not of existential problems.

Oh yes you can.

Or at least, long enough for it to be terminal. Thinking you can't possibly fail is a common reason for failing.

The Titanic being [un]sinkable comes to mind, but it's hardly the only case of such hubris.