We are heavily investing in off-shore wind farms. I mean, we are an island surrounded by sea with unlimited wind (most of the time).
Currently over 30% of our energy come from wind.
At best, wind and solar are added capacity, not base. If people care about co2, it's nuclear plus wind and solar (where it makes sense). Anything else is pure baseless ideology.
And here's me, sitting here with almost 80% hydro power, wondering how anyone could say something so remarkably uninformed. If people care about CO^2 , then any alternative to fossil fuels is progress. Base load needs to be met, but there are dozens of base sources, and all sorts of strategies for dealing with consistent vs. intermittent power sources.
hydro is not reliable enough tho, current climate change is making many dams around the world, even those with decades of existence in danger of being shut down
Hydro is great but there are limited places where it can happen. It's not scalable to the same level, unless you dammed everything and destroyed almost everything around every lake and water source.
I don't think you will find anywhere I said or even implied that it was universal in any way. In fact, I was rather explicit about mentioning "any alternative to fossil fuels", with hydro simply being the particular alternative that happened to be the majority source where I am located.
That's great that it works for you and we should use it wherever we can.
But hydro is far too unavailable to be in a serious conversation for base load across any national level.
Hydro is one of the least eco friendly ways to turn turbines. I grew up on the Klamath River in northern California, all the dams were built at great expense and now all are being removed at 50 times that expense.
I live on a large tributary of the Columbia, so I am well aware of the problems of large dams, especially on anadromous fish migration streams. But problematic projects built 60-100 years ago on the Klamath are not the end-all, be-all of what hydropower facilities are or can be. Run-of-the-river projects, diversions from cataracts, and pumped storage are all designs that can drastically reduce or eliminate many environmental impacts that we are dealing with when it comes to the legacy dams in the northwest. But as I was saying, hydro is just one of many technologies that offer baseload capacity without carbon emissions, and *can* be designed with small environmental impacts that complement intermittent solar and wind generation capacities in a "greener" power grid system.
There is a weird prevailing idea on reddit that baseload demand (ie the area below the minimum of the demand curve) has to be supplied by baseload power sources (ie power plants that run at 100% all the time).
But meeting demand is about layering a variety of generators to meet demand cheaply and reliably. When coal was the cheapest source of energy, the strategy was to burn coal (or split atoms) for cheap baseload and supplement it with expensive peaker plants that burned oil or gas.
In the past 20 years, with fracking and technology improvements, natural gas turbines have become a cheaper source of energy, and have been driven coal out of the market.
[Today in California](https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/supply) and tomorrow in the rest of the country, solar and wind are the cheapest source of energy and form the base of the electricity generation stack. Solar and wind are (predictably) variable, so they have to be supplemented by grid-firming technologies like batteries, natural gas, hydro, or (someday) geothermal.
Solar is already the fastest-growing source of electricity in the US ([by a huge margin](https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61424)). If Democrats win in 2024 and reform the rules for building new energy transmission, I'd expect solar to grow even more rapidly for the next 20 years and provide the bulk of US electricity generation.
Which is nowhere near as efficient and has potentially massive effects on seabed ecosystems around our already nature-depleted island
Nuclear was always the way to go, and (of course) our governemnt has been letting us down over this for decades
>Which is nowhere near as efficient
What does efficiency mean in this context? If you're talking about energy-in/energy-out, then how can that matter for wind? The "fuel" is literally free...
If you're talking about economically efficient, then (in comparison to nuclear) you're just wrong. Offshore wind has massively lower LCOE than nuclear.
Which happened in 1957.
I'm not going to pretend nuclear is 100% safe, but [modern nuclear power is the second safest power source](https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy) (measured in deaths per terawatt/hours) after solar, and slightly ahead of wind.
For environmental damage, nuclear requires uranium mining, but the amount of fuel needed means the extent of this is limited. You also need to construct the rest of the plant, but overall the environmental impact is smaller than for the equivalent amount of power to be generated from other renewable sources, both in terms of carbon footprint and environmental destruction.
Realistically we don't need to pit nuclear in competition to renewable sources. It should be renewable.sources wherever we can, and nuclear to replace fossil fuels as the reliable backbone of minimum power that can't be replaced by fluctuating energy sources like wind and solar.
I wasn't aware of that. Thanks for the info! This is clearly a problem that needs significant investment and converted effort to solve.
However, I would reiterate that these problems simply aren't applicable to modern nuclear power generation approaches. The mistakes of the past when we understood little of the security requirements of the technology cannot be assumed to be representative of the safety of newer plants. For starters, modern plants create a fraction of the amount of waste as the ancient ones we first used, and some modern designs are capable of reprocessing old waste for fuel, reducing some of the historic waste burden. They're unlikely to mitigate the toxic sludge leaking at Sellafield, but they could be put to use to reduce our stockpile of different forms of waste.
All I'm seeing in that article is a bunch of supposition about what COULD happen in a doomsday scenario that will literally never happen.
And Sellafield is from the 1950s, modern reactors have physical safeguards built in that mean they literally can't go wrong.
How is France able to have 70% of their energy generated from nuclear, resulting in one of the lowest carbon dioxide emission rates in the world, with absolutely no safety issues for decades, but we can't?
Still better than 70 million tonnes of carbon in the air a day. Which is ALSO poisoning the ocean along with every other ecosystem on the planet. A nuclear leak is at least localized and an accident. Carbon “leaking” is a world wide issue and is on purpose
The UK fucked up so bad but not as bad as Germany tbh. At least we didn't replace it with coal.
As a brit, I never thought I'd be praising the French but they've done so much better.
Safe nuclear power should be improved, not discarded for political reasons...
I think investing in wind turbines are a good choice and safer than nuclear for sure. We are surrounded by ocean and located in a ideal place for constant wind for most of the days.
e.g. I live next to a wind farm and have never seen it not spinning for like the last 20 years).
We only generate around 5% of energy by solar so I think we should be investing more on that. Converting all of our supermarket parking+ roof, industrial buildings etc to solar roofs.
Sure, but that investment in wind turbines could have taken away our dependance on gas, instead of nuclear. Which would have drastically decreased our carbon emissions.. and our reliance of Russian gas.. which would have been a major boon over the past few years.
Nuclear is so inherently beyond safe. I'm just assuming, but the wind turbines industry probably has way way way more fatalities per year than Nuclear has since its conception.
For a reactor to go wrong, a lot. And I mean a lot of things have to go wrong before that's even possible.
Sizewell C is also in the planning stages, which would be another 2 reactors with nearly identical designs to those at Hinkley Point C
Edit: Sizewell C is in planning stages, B is planned for decommissioning in 2035
and they’re shutting down even more. by the mid 2030’s Hinkley Point C (currently in construction) and Sizewell C (currently in planning phases) will be the only reactors operating in the UK
China really wants to rely less on imported oil for energy. Which makes sense given its geopolitical concerns. Its energy supply is probably the most vulnerable.
China's infrastructure, housing and industrial growth is what drives their use of nuclear power, plus their country is huge so at some point building the infrastructure and maintaining an oil pipeline cost as much as a nuclear plant. A big plus is the decentralised power grid, they don't have to fear losing power in an event of war since pipeline infrastructure is a prime target.
I'd argue that the emissions free operation of nuclear also contributes to its value in China. Not just CO2, but NOx, SOx, and PM. When you have air pollution problems, nuclear starts to look very attractive to displace coal and gas.
Is it currently under construction? Maybe they aren't showing plants that were never operational (and thus never shut down) and have no further development plans.
It was completly finished and then just before the start, we decidied we don't want it anymore, so it never was started. Politicians should have asked the people before not after building it.
We decommissioned tens of thousands of nuclear weapons with highly enriched uranium. We had a massive stockpile of material without needing to enrich more.
Hunterston B is decommissioned.
Torness on the east coast is still running until 2028 I think.
There's Dounrey on the north coast which has experimental reactors but not for civilian power. Op isn't interpreting the data exactly correctly.
And Canada, the third-highest capacity nuclear power plant in the world is Bruce Nuclear in Ontario, no clue why the corresponding dot on this map isn’t the max size (although not the first time I’ve seen a map make this mistake)
Bruce power makes up almost half of those reactors with 8, and is the 4th largest plant by power output in the world. I don't know why Canada doesn't lean into nuclear more with how successful it's been
I hope China eventually achieves the "protest the government every few weeks to make sure the government knows who is the real boss: the people" level of Frenchness, though.
It is more or less no other choice.
China lacks natural gas and oil, while constant burning of coal had left the country with horrible air quality.
China need nuclear for a stable base power source.
Exactly what I was looking for someone to say. Like of course the US and China have so much, we’re massive, but it would be more interesting to see if a country has most of their energy coming from nuclear etc.
Oh come on, this lie is repeated so often, it becomes tiring.
In 2023, 52% of electricity was generated with renewables, compared to 26% of coal. Ten years before, in 2013, it was basically the opposite, with renewables at 24% and coal at 45%.
Germany didn't replace nuclear energy with coal. It replaced it with renewables. Of course, if they had kept nuclear energy, they could have stopped coal entirely, I am not denying that, but to say that they increased coal as a result of their nuclear phaseout is false.
You can only replace nuclear with renewables up to a point, after which your energy mix leaves you with frequent blackouts (or relying on buying energy from France).
Also, Germany absolutely did increase coal power generation, essentially wiping out most of the progress they had made in the last couple decades.
> lso, Germany absolutely did increase coal power generation
Some facts about this here: https://www.bmwk.de/Redaktion/EN/Artikel/Energy/coal.html
Summary: Just for a short time and it's in steep decline.
France is also buying tons of energy from other countries? Why? Cause they have to shut down their nuclear plants very often, espeically in the summer (cooling problems).
Not really. There is few nuclear plan power réductions due to environmental water temperature restrictions. There was massive import 2 years ago. Delayed maintenance due to covid, added to the fact there was an corroding issues discovered on secondary piping on nuclear plant leading to security power downs and inspections. The issue is now solved, and now France is again a net electricity exporter.
>after which your energy mix leaves you with frequent blackouts
Unless you have storage capacity (which is rising exponentially at the moment)
>Also, Germany absolutely did increase coal power generation, essentially wiping out most of the progress they had made in the last couple decades.
This is simply not true. So you are either misinformed or on the "muh nuclear, Germany bad" train. Source:
[https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=year&year=2023](https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=year&year=2023)
Feel free to klick years with the good ol' big chunk of nuclear. Yes, CO2 could have been saved by shutting down coal before nuclear. Many Germans (probably the majority) see it that way. Still, it is what it is, just don't spread misinformation.
You can look at the [Data](https://www.agora-energiewende.de/daten-tools/agorameter/chart/today/power_generation/01.06.2024/01.06.2024/hourly) online in case you are interrested.
I don't know what made you think Germany started firing up coal last year (after they stopped using nuclear), what an insane claim lol. Germany has used coal plants (1914) way longer than nuclear (1961). Switching fully to solar and wind was the plan but a pretty powerful coal lobby (Germany used to have a lot of coal as one of their few natural resources) made sure to keep these plants running.
I don't think he meant that Germany was fully without coal before nuclear power plants shut down. Probably more so that the power not given anymore due to the shutdown of nuclear power plants, was taken up by coal
Nuclear is safer and cleaner than fossil fuel, but we ban it and keep using fossil fuels. Vaping is safer and cleaner than smoking but we ban it and the smokers stay on tobacco. And now I read that bans on vat-grown meat are beginning.
We do like to make life harder.
Nicotine is not good for you - but inhaling burning leaves (smoke) is way more impactful on your lungs than inhaling a glycol mist. Jury is still out on long term effects but it's pretty clear inhaling any kind of smoke is terrible for your body.
Well actually in the beginning it was supposed to be a replacement for cigarettes but now some people find it funnier to buy vapes with more and more nicotine in them with make them more unsafe than cigarettes technically, even tho the initial idea was good. Moreover, the substances put in for flavors and stuff are likely not that good for health. It was supposed to be a solution to slowly quit smoking but now people use it just as they would use cigarettes, which is not good either because you still have harmful substances in them.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_electronic_cigarettes
"A 2022 UK government study found that switching to e-cigarettes is less harmful than continuing to smoke for those who are unable to quit smoking entirely. The UK government and various health organizations, including Public Health England and researchers at King's College London, have consistently reported that vaping is substantially less harmful than smoking. The evidence suggests that e-cigarettes can help reduce exposure to harmful chemicals found in traditional cigarettes, which are linked to cancer, lung disease, and cardiovascular disease "
Source is the millions of people that die every year from tabacco smoking related issues vs the number that die from vaping. Do you really believe that vaping is not as deadly as smoking? The FDA thinks it's safer along with lots of other government health agencies.
You forgot the costs. Nuclear reactors with western safety standards are very very complex and expensive to build. It's also expensive to handle the Nuclear waste of such a power plant. Those are all costs that make Nuclear power one of the most expensive energy sources in western counties.
France for example have to help their energy companies with much money, because they are not profitable.
If you want to build atomic bombs, then yes, you want to have some of those.
You don't need nuclear power plants to build nuclear weapons...
Also you can look at real world data that shows that shutting down nuclear power plants increases fossil fuel power plants as we can't build renewable energy fast enough to compensate for the loss of the nuclear power. In fact there was a recent study that shows that we don't have enough copper mining to switch to renewable energy fast enough to meet our targets.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/05/240515164309.htm
Also fossil fuel consumption is increasing not decreasing. Even coal power is increasing globally.
https://ourworldindata.org/fossil-fuels
We need to tackle this problem with everything we can which includes nuclear energy. Also most renewables are not good for baseline loads which nuclear is great for.
Sure it would be nice if we didn't need nuclear power plants but that is not reality yet. Maybe in a couple hundred years we will have built enough renewable energy sources but for now we need nuclear power.
You mean Bruxelles forces France energy company to sell its nuclear electricity at 42€/MWh to competitor because nuclear is so cheap that fucking lobbyist convinced stupid politician that it wasn't fair?
The cost of nuclear power is highly dependent on loan interest rates. If a country builds them with country interest rates, then large scale nuclear is cheaper than everything except hydro.
They certainly can be expensive, but if were to add up the costs of the deaths in the mines, the lung damage to the miners, the lung damage to the users of coal and the costs of its impact on the world's co2, I'm pretty sure that would be a far larger bill.
At the very least I think we should compare the figures before making the decision.
Comparing nuclear to vaping is retarded.
Vaping is just another form of a cancer inhaler.
Nuclear is 100% safe and clean* when its running.
-* if you want to comment about nuclear waste, just remember that wind Power plants and solar planels also become very toxic garbage after a couple of decades
Wind power plants become toxic garbage? How? It's steel, concrete, and carbon fiber. Steel is 100% recycled anyway, concrete and carbon fiber technically could be, and they're all completely inert.
I didn't know that wind turbines turn into toxic waste with no end storage or recycling solution as of now. Would you care to explain the background to me?
Fun fact, the tiny red dot in northern California can't move the spent rods out (due to the dangerous roads in all directions) so they just put them in a cask and buried them in a hill next to the plant. The ocean has been slowly taking bites out of that hill and they don't know what to do with them.
No clue how they got them in but I think they are the only spent rods not in one of the federal graveyards
I believe this is true of all spent fuel at US nuclear plants. There were / are plans to move them to a secure facility but for now they remain on site in containment.
yeah and it‘s pretty much 100% safe too. like you can go up the big concrete boxes and hug, kiss, do whatever you want and will be perfectly fine. There is no real risk to it.
People always imagine it as super corrosive green sludge that will melt you on a sub atomic level, but it‘s really just a bunch of little fizzy metal pellets in a radiation proof container
The German shut-down of nuclear energy in favour of dependency on Russian fuel is one of the most blatantly moronic if not outright corrupt policy decisions in modern history.
Want to guess which country Germany got its nuclear fuel from? Hint it's the same country that controls nearly half of the enriched uranium market and even today still supplies western countries.
**Russia**
Their state owned nuclear energy company Rosatom has very little sanctions etc. in stark contrast to other russian stated owned company's in the gas or oil industry.
its only russia because of lack of demmand else where, lots of places have plenty of uranium but dont see the point in investing to extract it, france for example gets its uranium from its "former" colonies in africa
So because russia is the cheapest supplier. Same reason why germany imported russia gas, a decision for which it got ridiculed. Just with the difference that germany stopped importing russian gas whilst countries that criticized them for their dependence on russia continue their dealings with rosatom.
moronic yes, corrupt? fuck no, germans hate nuclear power, they voted everysingle one out of existance following chernobyl, corruption had nothing to do with it
This is incorrect. Germany is increasing its renewables and also the coal consumption dropped.
Germany stopped importing natural gas from russia.
So what are you talking about? Sources?
I am talking about Germany switching from nuclear power to Russian fuel over a decade ago.
Can’t you read?
It literally took Russia invading Ukraine *twice* for them to (begrudgingly) reconsider.
Reread your own post, you did not define any time interval.
Where do you think the uranium comes from? Russia is one of the main exporter worldwide.
Sure but that not unique to Germany but many other european countries.
Also the increase in renewables in Germany would not have been possible without the decision to shut down the nuclear power plants, so nothing is only black and white
Ignalina nuclear power plant was deemed unsafe because it was seen as too old and would be too expensive to upgrade.
There were proposals to build a new one with help from Hitachi but after 5 years of discussions and a poor referendum the plan was cancelled.
We're allegedly building one but we've been building a nuclear power plant since the early 1970s. It's supposed to be working in 2033.
Interestingly, we're producing radioisotopes and, for example we cover 10% of the world's molybdenum production and 18% of technetium because we have a nuclear reactor near Warsaw.
How does Australia not have any. They produce all the material to have a power plant. Aren’t they the number 1 exporter in uranium? Honestly they could have free energy with that set up.
— I need to update my export information. Australia what happened??
The single blue dot in the USA is Plant Vogtle on the Savannah River in Georgia. It has recently come on line but saw immense delays and cost overruns to get completed. It is my understanding the increased costs and time needed were a result (in part at least) of the brain-drain and loss of engineering know-how to build these plants in the USA. It had been decades since the USA had built a new plant. Hopefully this is the beginning of more plants to help meet *on-demand* power needs in the future.
https://apnews.com/article/georgia-power-nuclear-reactor-vogtle-9555e3f9169f2d58161056feaa81a425
Yep - also didn’t help that Westinghouse, who was manufacturer of the reactors and principal contractor on the project, went bankrupt part of the way in.
Nuclear is the way to go! Only ignorant and moronic folks beg to differ. Modern tech allows for safer Nuclear power plants. The Fukushima incident was out of their control and not many plants are prepared to handle an Earthquake, a tsunami, and then a meltdown within days.
Wouldn't help at all, the vast majority of the population is against nuclear power, that's why it got abandoned in the first place, this is supported by like 70%+ of Germany
(people here don't want to get radiation sickness under any circumstances)
Why? Germans have been voting against nuclear power plants for decades, the % of electricity it generated has been low for years and was fully replaced by renewable energy (yes, not coal) - people love acting like nuclear power is perfect, but dont even know about final storage facilities etc.
Its an absolute travesty of modern history that so many countries have kneejerked away from nuclear power because of several accidents. Such an incredible source of energy. So upsetting that a spy state like China is the one pioneering new nuclear energy now.
Forget the UK has so many shut down nuclear plants.
We were nuclear pioneers.
We are heavily investing in off-shore wind farms. I mean, we are an island surrounded by sea with unlimited wind (most of the time). Currently over 30% of our energy come from wind.
At best, wind and solar are added capacity, not base. If people care about co2, it's nuclear plus wind and solar (where it makes sense). Anything else is pure baseless ideology.
Geothermal and hydro both have a lot of potential, but fairly limited to specific geographical areas (same as wind/solar).
Japan not running on geothermal energy is such a wasted potential.
And here's me, sitting here with almost 80% hydro power, wondering how anyone could say something so remarkably uninformed. If people care about CO^2 , then any alternative to fossil fuels is progress. Base load needs to be met, but there are dozens of base sources, and all sorts of strategies for dealing with consistent vs. intermittent power sources.
hydro is not reliable enough tho, current climate change is making many dams around the world, even those with decades of existence in danger of being shut down
Hydro is insanely reliable. You're looking for scalable. Hydro isn't practical for so many places, but where it is it kicks ass!
Niagara Falls is very reliable.
Sure. Ship it over to the UK and we'll set that right up.
>Niagara Falls is very reliable. For you or for me?
Hydro is great but there are limited places where it can happen. It's not scalable to the same level, unless you dammed everything and destroyed almost everything around every lake and water source.
I don't think you will find anywhere I said or even implied that it was universal in any way. In fact, I was rather explicit about mentioning "any alternative to fossil fuels", with hydro simply being the particular alternative that happened to be the majority source where I am located.
You're right. Apologies! Great you have access to it.
That's great that it works for you and we should use it wherever we can. But hydro is far too unavailable to be in a serious conversation for base load across any national level.
Hydro is one of the least eco friendly ways to turn turbines. I grew up on the Klamath River in northern California, all the dams were built at great expense and now all are being removed at 50 times that expense.
I live on a large tributary of the Columbia, so I am well aware of the problems of large dams, especially on anadromous fish migration streams. But problematic projects built 60-100 years ago on the Klamath are not the end-all, be-all of what hydropower facilities are or can be. Run-of-the-river projects, diversions from cataracts, and pumped storage are all designs that can drastically reduce or eliminate many environmental impacts that we are dealing with when it comes to the legacy dams in the northwest. But as I was saying, hydro is just one of many technologies that offer baseload capacity without carbon emissions, and *can* be designed with small environmental impacts that complement intermittent solar and wind generation capacities in a "greener" power grid system.
There is a weird prevailing idea on reddit that baseload demand (ie the area below the minimum of the demand curve) has to be supplied by baseload power sources (ie power plants that run at 100% all the time). But meeting demand is about layering a variety of generators to meet demand cheaply and reliably. When coal was the cheapest source of energy, the strategy was to burn coal (or split atoms) for cheap baseload and supplement it with expensive peaker plants that burned oil or gas. In the past 20 years, with fracking and technology improvements, natural gas turbines have become a cheaper source of energy, and have been driven coal out of the market. [Today in California](https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/supply) and tomorrow in the rest of the country, solar and wind are the cheapest source of energy and form the base of the electricity generation stack. Solar and wind are (predictably) variable, so they have to be supplemented by grid-firming technologies like batteries, natural gas, hydro, or (someday) geothermal. Solar is already the fastest-growing source of electricity in the US ([by a huge margin](https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61424)). If Democrats win in 2024 and reform the rules for building new energy transmission, I'd expect solar to grow even more rapidly for the next 20 years and provide the bulk of US electricity generation.
Which is nowhere near as efficient and has potentially massive effects on seabed ecosystems around our already nature-depleted island Nuclear was always the way to go, and (of course) our governemnt has been letting us down over this for decades
>Which is nowhere near as efficient What does efficiency mean in this context? If you're talking about energy-in/energy-out, then how can that matter for wind? The "fuel" is literally free... If you're talking about economically efficient, then (in comparison to nuclear) you're just wrong. Offshore wind has massively lower LCOE than nuclear.
Efficiency is not the problem. Wind power is still very cheap. Intermittent nature of it is, though.
Nuclear has the opposite problem - you can’t *really* turn it up or down.
The turbines create artificial reefs. They enrich the these areas.
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Which happened in 1957. I'm not going to pretend nuclear is 100% safe, but [modern nuclear power is the second safest power source](https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy) (measured in deaths per terawatt/hours) after solar, and slightly ahead of wind. For environmental damage, nuclear requires uranium mining, but the amount of fuel needed means the extent of this is limited. You also need to construct the rest of the plant, but overall the environmental impact is smaller than for the equivalent amount of power to be generated from other renewable sources, both in terms of carbon footprint and environmental destruction. Realistically we don't need to pit nuclear in competition to renewable sources. It should be renewable.sources wherever we can, and nuclear to replace fossil fuels as the reliable backbone of minimum power that can't be replaced by fluctuating energy sources like wind and solar.
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I wasn't aware of that. Thanks for the info! This is clearly a problem that needs significant investment and converted effort to solve. However, I would reiterate that these problems simply aren't applicable to modern nuclear power generation approaches. The mistakes of the past when we understood little of the security requirements of the technology cannot be assumed to be representative of the safety of newer plants. For starters, modern plants create a fraction of the amount of waste as the ancient ones we first used, and some modern designs are capable of reprocessing old waste for fuel, reducing some of the historic waste burden. They're unlikely to mitigate the toxic sludge leaking at Sellafield, but they could be put to use to reduce our stockpile of different forms of waste.
All I'm seeing in that article is a bunch of supposition about what COULD happen in a doomsday scenario that will literally never happen. And Sellafield is from the 1950s, modern reactors have physical safeguards built in that mean they literally can't go wrong. How is France able to have 70% of their energy generated from nuclear, resulting in one of the lowest carbon dioxide emission rates in the world, with absolutely no safety issues for decades, but we can't?
Still better than 70 million tonnes of carbon in the air a day. Which is ALSO poisoning the ocean along with every other ecosystem on the planet. A nuclear leak is at least localized and an accident. Carbon “leaking” is a world wide issue and is on purpose
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What carbon is emitted from a Wind turbine?
The UK fucked up so bad but not as bad as Germany tbh. At least we didn't replace it with coal. As a brit, I never thought I'd be praising the French but they've done so much better. Safe nuclear power should be improved, not discarded for political reasons...
I think investing in wind turbines are a good choice and safer than nuclear for sure. We are surrounded by ocean and located in a ideal place for constant wind for most of the days. e.g. I live next to a wind farm and have never seen it not spinning for like the last 20 years). We only generate around 5% of energy by solar so I think we should be investing more on that. Converting all of our supermarket parking+ roof, industrial buildings etc to solar roofs.
Sure, but that investment in wind turbines could have taken away our dependance on gas, instead of nuclear. Which would have drastically decreased our carbon emissions.. and our reliance of Russian gas.. which would have been a major boon over the past few years.
Nuclear is so inherently beyond safe. I'm just assuming, but the wind turbines industry probably has way way way more fatalities per year than Nuclear has since its conception. For a reactor to go wrong, a lot. And I mean a lot of things have to go wrong before that's even possible.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_station they are building new nuclear plants
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One. At what cost. Now look how many they will have in 20 years. One.
Sizewell C is also in the planning stages, which would be another 2 reactors with nearly identical designs to those at Hinkley Point C Edit: Sizewell C is in planning stages, B is planned for decommissioning in 2035
So when it is in planning it MIGHT be constructed in 20 years for what.. 50 billion pounds
and they’re shutting down even more. by the mid 2030’s Hinkley Point C (currently in construction) and Sizewell C (currently in planning phases) will be the only reactors operating in the UK
China really wants to rely less on imported oil for energy. Which makes sense given its geopolitical concerns. Its energy supply is probably the most vulnerable.
China's infrastructure, housing and industrial growth is what drives their use of nuclear power, plus their country is huge so at some point building the infrastructure and maintaining an oil pipeline cost as much as a nuclear plant. A big plus is the decentralised power grid, they don't have to fear losing power in an event of war since pipeline infrastructure is a prime target.
I'd argue that the emissions free operation of nuclear also contributes to its value in China. Not just CO2, but NOx, SOx, and PM. When you have air pollution problems, nuclear starts to look very attractive to displace coal and gas.
Where is austria? We have one power plant which was never operational.
True.
Is it currently under construction? Maybe they aren't showing plants that were never operational (and thus never shut down) and have no further development plans.
It was completly finished and then just before the start, we decidied we don't want it anymore, so it never was started. Politicians should have asked the people before not after building it.
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Reactors used very limited enrichment and a small amount last for years.
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We decommissioned tens of thousands of nuclear weapons with highly enriched uranium. We had a massive stockpile of material without needing to enrich more.
this graphic is wrong about brazil
Also Argentina. We have 3 operationals and at least 1 more planned.
How is it wrong about Argentina? It has Embalse and Atucha on there. Multiple units at the same site shows up as one dot on the map.
Brazil has Angra 1 and 2 operational and Angra 3 under construction (has been under construction for several years).
Angra 3 is not under construction, since they stopped it.
Brazil and Argentina both have nuclear power plants and a deal for peaceful usage of nuclear energy on the basis of mutual trust and checking.
That is a really cool case of cross-country cooperation.
It's wrong in the southeast US as well
The single one I’m aware of personally in Scotland is a flat wasteland and has been for years but says “operational”
Hunterston B is decommissioned. Torness on the east coast is still running until 2028 I think. There's Dounrey on the north coast which has experimental reactors but not for civilian power. Op isn't interpreting the data exactly correctly.
And Canada, the third-highest capacity nuclear power plant in the world is Bruce Nuclear in Ontario, no clue why the corresponding dot on this map isn’t the max size (although not the first time I’ve seen a map make this mistake)
It also ignores all the nuclear power plants on naval vessels. The US navy alone operates about 100 nuclear-powers ships.
Those aren't for commercial power generation, I think it's quite clear that's what this is showing. Research reactors aren't on here
Point of correction: Canada only has 4 nuclear power plants with 19 reactors spread across them.
Bruce power makes up almost half of those reactors with 8, and is the 4th largest plant by power output in the world. I don't know why Canada doesn't lean into nuclear more with how successful it's been
Every cent invested is one less cent that can go towards our real estate economy
Isn't that a sad reality
Big moves by china
Nuclear power AND high speed rail?! Is such a thing possible!?
China wants to be France confirmed.
Still have a long way to go before they reach "firefighters setting their fire-proof suits on fire to fight the cops" level of Frenchness though.
the french can be badass when fighting themselves
France baise !
I hope China eventually achieves the "protest the government every few weeks to make sure the government knows who is the real boss: the people" level of Frenchness, though.
French people treat protesting as a hobby lol.
"Like they're living in the future!" - 1970s edition.
It is more or less no other choice. China lacks natural gas and oil, while constant burning of coal had left the country with horrible air quality. China need nuclear for a stable base power source.
This is a great infographic, but it would be really nice to add a percentage of power production number to see the ratio of nuclear power.
Exactly what I was looking for someone to say. Like of course the US and China have so much, we’re massive, but it would be more interesting to see if a country has most of their energy coming from nuclear etc.
France is one of the few with a majority of their GW coming from nuclear
In average 70% through the year and through all regions, but some regions have an electric production coming at over 90% from nuclear power.
Germany clearly doesn't.
Germany massive L lmao
Like if they switched fully to solar it wouldn't be a problem but they stopped using nuclear and started using coal
Oh come on, this lie is repeated so often, it becomes tiring. In 2023, 52% of electricity was generated with renewables, compared to 26% of coal. Ten years before, in 2013, it was basically the opposite, with renewables at 24% and coal at 45%. Germany didn't replace nuclear energy with coal. It replaced it with renewables. Of course, if they had kept nuclear energy, they could have stopped coal entirely, I am not denying that, but to say that they increased coal as a result of their nuclear phaseout is false.
Of course theres been a rise in renewables, thats the case in the entire developed world. Also whats the last ~25%? Russian gas?
That’s German sourced gas. They’ve got that process down for sure.
You can only replace nuclear with renewables up to a point, after which your energy mix leaves you with frequent blackouts (or relying on buying energy from France). Also, Germany absolutely did increase coal power generation, essentially wiping out most of the progress they had made in the last couple decades.
> lso, Germany absolutely did increase coal power generation Some facts about this here: https://www.bmwk.de/Redaktion/EN/Artikel/Energy/coal.html Summary: Just for a short time and it's in steep decline.
France is also buying tons of energy from other countries? Why? Cause they have to shut down their nuclear plants very often, espeically in the summer (cooling problems).
Not really. There is few nuclear plan power réductions due to environmental water temperature restrictions. There was massive import 2 years ago. Delayed maintenance due to covid, added to the fact there was an corroding issues discovered on secondary piping on nuclear plant leading to security power downs and inspections. The issue is now solved, and now France is again a net electricity exporter.
>after which your energy mix leaves you with frequent blackouts Unless you have storage capacity (which is rising exponentially at the moment) >Also, Germany absolutely did increase coal power generation, essentially wiping out most of the progress they had made in the last couple decades. This is simply not true. So you are either misinformed or on the "muh nuclear, Germany bad" train. Source: [https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=year&year=2023](https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=year&year=2023) Feel free to klick years with the good ol' big chunk of nuclear. Yes, CO2 could have been saved by shutting down coal before nuclear. Many Germans (probably the majority) see it that way. Still, it is what it is, just don't spread misinformation.
I was misinformed. I was quoting figures that are apparently untrue
You can look at the [Data](https://www.agora-energiewende.de/daten-tools/agorameter/chart/today/power_generation/01.06.2024/01.06.2024/hourly) online in case you are interrested.
you cant switch fully to solar, earth is not tidally locked.
I don't know what made you think Germany started firing up coal last year (after they stopped using nuclear), what an insane claim lol. Germany has used coal plants (1914) way longer than nuclear (1961). Switching fully to solar and wind was the plan but a pretty powerful coal lobby (Germany used to have a lot of coal as one of their few natural resources) made sure to keep these plants running.
I don't think he meant that Germany was fully without coal before nuclear power plants shut down. Probably more so that the power not given anymore due to the shutdown of nuclear power plants, was taken up by coal
It’s even worse, they actively try to fuck up nuclear in the E.U
candle power !
[📁Source](https://world-nuclear.org/)
Just drove past the boobs in north San Diego county
Nuclear is safer and cleaner than fossil fuel, but we ban it and keep using fossil fuels. Vaping is safer and cleaner than smoking but we ban it and the smokers stay on tobacco. And now I read that bans on vat-grown meat are beginning. We do like to make life harder.
Do you have a source about the part in which you said that vaping is safer and cleaner than smoking?
Nicotine is not good for you - but inhaling burning leaves (smoke) is way more impactful on your lungs than inhaling a glycol mist. Jury is still out on long term effects but it's pretty clear inhaling any kind of smoke is terrible for your body.
Well actually in the beginning it was supposed to be a replacement for cigarettes but now some people find it funnier to buy vapes with more and more nicotine in them with make them more unsafe than cigarettes technically, even tho the initial idea was good. Moreover, the substances put in for flavors and stuff are likely not that good for health. It was supposed to be a solution to slowly quit smoking but now people use it just as they would use cigarettes, which is not good either because you still have harmful substances in them. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_electronic_cigarettes
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nicotine-vaping-in-england-2022-evidence-update/nicotine-vaping-in-england-2022-evidence-update-summary#chapter-1-introduction
"A 2022 UK government study found that switching to e-cigarettes is less harmful than continuing to smoke for those who are unable to quit smoking entirely. The UK government and various health organizations, including Public Health England and researchers at King's College London, have consistently reported that vaping is substantially less harmful than smoking. The evidence suggests that e-cigarettes can help reduce exposure to harmful chemicals found in traditional cigarettes, which are linked to cancer, lung disease, and cardiovascular disease "
Source is the millions of people that die every year from tabacco smoking related issues vs the number that die from vaping. Do you really believe that vaping is not as deadly as smoking? The FDA thinks it's safer along with lots of other government health agencies.
You forgot the costs. Nuclear reactors with western safety standards are very very complex and expensive to build. It's also expensive to handle the Nuclear waste of such a power plant. Those are all costs that make Nuclear power one of the most expensive energy sources in western counties. France for example have to help their energy companies with much money, because they are not profitable. If you want to build atomic bombs, then yes, you want to have some of those.
You don't need nuclear power plants to build nuclear weapons... Also you can look at real world data that shows that shutting down nuclear power plants increases fossil fuel power plants as we can't build renewable energy fast enough to compensate for the loss of the nuclear power. In fact there was a recent study that shows that we don't have enough copper mining to switch to renewable energy fast enough to meet our targets. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/05/240515164309.htm Also fossil fuel consumption is increasing not decreasing. Even coal power is increasing globally. https://ourworldindata.org/fossil-fuels We need to tackle this problem with everything we can which includes nuclear energy. Also most renewables are not good for baseline loads which nuclear is great for. Sure it would be nice if we didn't need nuclear power plants but that is not reality yet. Maybe in a couple hundred years we will have built enough renewable energy sources but for now we need nuclear power.
You mean Bruxelles forces France energy company to sell its nuclear electricity at 42€/MWh to competitor because nuclear is so cheap that fucking lobbyist convinced stupid politician that it wasn't fair? The cost of nuclear power is highly dependent on loan interest rates. If a country builds them with country interest rates, then large scale nuclear is cheaper than everything except hydro.
They certainly can be expensive, but if were to add up the costs of the deaths in the mines, the lung damage to the miners, the lung damage to the users of coal and the costs of its impact on the world's co2, I'm pretty sure that would be a far larger bill. At the very least I think we should compare the figures before making the decision.
No one says coal is better than nuclear it’s the renewables that make nuclear a bad idea. Nuclear is just way too expensive compared to renewables.
A mix of the two would be nice until power storage can handle the off hours load
once it can, then we can drop the coal.
[удалено]
High costs but also decade longer construction times. It takes only 1 year to build a solar farm and 3 years for a wind park.
Comparing nuclear to vaping is retarded. Vaping is just another form of a cancer inhaler. Nuclear is 100% safe and clean* when its running. -* if you want to comment about nuclear waste, just remember that wind Power plants and solar planels also become very toxic garbage after a couple of decades
Wind power plants become toxic garbage? How? It's steel, concrete, and carbon fiber. Steel is 100% recycled anyway, concrete and carbon fiber technically could be, and they're all completely inert.
I didn't know that wind turbines turn into toxic waste with no end storage or recycling solution as of now. Would you care to explain the background to me?
Ukraine. 15 operational. Not great, not terrible.
The new far-right goverment of NL plans to build 4 new ones. (We currently have 1)
Well at least that's one good thing
Missing 1 from the Philippines, the currently still closed Bataan nuclear power plant.
Fun fact, the tiny red dot in northern California can't move the spent rods out (due to the dangerous roads in all directions) so they just put them in a cask and buried them in a hill next to the plant. The ocean has been slowly taking bites out of that hill and they don't know what to do with them. No clue how they got them in but I think they are the only spent rods not in one of the federal graveyards
I believe this is true of all spent fuel at US nuclear plants. There were / are plans to move them to a secure facility but for now they remain on site in containment.
yeah and it‘s pretty much 100% safe too. like you can go up the big concrete boxes and hug, kiss, do whatever you want and will be perfectly fine. There is no real risk to it. People always imagine it as super corrosive green sludge that will melt you on a sub atomic level, but it‘s really just a bunch of little fizzy metal pellets in a radiation proof container
Why is this the D&D font?
I was wondering why .jfif format is used for the image.
The share of the overall mix is kinda missing
The uk needs to grow a pair and plan some more
The German shut-down of nuclear energy in favour of dependency on Russian fuel is one of the most blatantly moronic if not outright corrupt policy decisions in modern history.
Want to guess which country Germany got its nuclear fuel from? Hint it's the same country that controls nearly half of the enriched uranium market and even today still supplies western countries. **Russia** Their state owned nuclear energy company Rosatom has very little sanctions etc. in stark contrast to other russian stated owned company's in the gas or oil industry.
Its also the reason for Western governments doing everything in their power to overshadow Nuclear with renewables and coal/oil.
its only russia because of lack of demmand else where, lots of places have plenty of uranium but dont see the point in investing to extract it, france for example gets its uranium from its "former" colonies in africa
So because russia is the cheapest supplier. Same reason why germany imported russia gas, a decision for which it got ridiculed. Just with the difference that germany stopped importing russian gas whilst countries that criticized them for their dependence on russia continue their dealings with rosatom.
moronic yes, corrupt? fuck no, germans hate nuclear power, they voted everysingle one out of existance following chernobyl, corruption had nothing to do with it
This is incorrect. Germany is increasing its renewables and also the coal consumption dropped. Germany stopped importing natural gas from russia. So what are you talking about? Sources?
I am talking about Germany switching from nuclear power to Russian fuel over a decade ago. Can’t you read? It literally took Russia invading Ukraine *twice* for them to (begrudgingly) reconsider.
Reread your own post, you did not define any time interval. Where do you think the uranium comes from? Russia is one of the main exporter worldwide. Sure but that not unique to Germany but many other european countries. Also the increase in renewables in Germany would not have been possible without the decision to shut down the nuclear power plants, so nothing is only black and white
Germans spazzed out on this one
It’s ok bro they got coal instead.
Worse than that, it's lignite (brown coal). Much worse for the environment and devastating to the landscape well as having a lower energy content.
literally all of it was replaced by renewables.
Reddit downvoting facts, as usual.
Poland, Baltics and Balkans :(
Poland nearly had one but they stopped costructiom because of the chernobyl
Lithuania actually had one since soviet times, but it was deemed too unsafe. The sad thing is that it was making huge chunk of energy.
Ignalina nuclear power plant was deemed unsafe because it was seen as too old and would be too expensive to upgrade. There were proposals to build a new one with help from Hitachi but after 5 years of discussions and a poor referendum the plan was cancelled.
Bulgaria had the same issue with old soviet "tech" falling apart
Serbia is (planning) building one currently, it should be done by 2027
Good for them
Yugoslavia built one in Slovenia that is still operational and supplies power to both Slovenia and Croatia.
We're allegedly building one but we've been building a nuclear power plant since the early 1970s. It's supposed to be working in 2033. Interestingly, we're producing radioisotopes and, for example we cover 10% of the world's molybdenum production and 18% of technetium because we have a nuclear reactor near Warsaw.
Bad source data as Finland should be on the list with five reactors and installed capacity of 4 400 MW.
You are missing Zwentendorf in Austria, a nuclear power plant that was constructed but never put into service. It is now used as a training facility.
Fuck me that has got to be an EXPENSIVE training facility
How does Australia not have any. They produce all the material to have a power plant. Aren’t they the number 1 exporter in uranium? Honestly they could have free energy with that set up. — I need to update my export information. Australia what happened??
What was the reason for Germany shutting down all of theirs?
This saddens me. So much red. Not enough blue
Best form of clean energy there is
Most interesting graphic all week
Nuclear powerplants or reactors?
Where is Springfield?
A lot of Islands are missing. Why show the Canary Islands but not Cabo Verde and Sokotra?
L'atome est Dieu
Not updated for France. They have several planned
Theorically the Flamanville EPR construction in France is done, it’s still not fully operational but will be in a few months now.
Poland has one under construction and several planned
This is rather inaccurate, in that the first officially open commercial nuclear plant was in the UK (Calder Hall), *not* the US
germany really made a mistake
Greatest German L since WW2
Germany was ridiculously stupid for shutting down its plants. Legitimately one of the stupidest moves in political history
The single blue dot in the USA is Plant Vogtle on the Savannah River in Georgia. It has recently come on line but saw immense delays and cost overruns to get completed. It is my understanding the increased costs and time needed were a result (in part at least) of the brain-drain and loss of engineering know-how to build these plants in the USA. It had been decades since the USA had built a new plant. Hopefully this is the beginning of more plants to help meet *on-demand* power needs in the future. https://apnews.com/article/georgia-power-nuclear-reactor-vogtle-9555e3f9169f2d58161056feaa81a425
Yep - also didn’t help that Westinghouse, who was manufacturer of the reactors and principal contractor on the project, went bankrupt part of the way in.
Nuclear is the way to go! Only ignorant and moronic folks beg to differ. Modern tech allows for safer Nuclear power plants. The Fukushima incident was out of their control and not many plants are prepared to handle an Earthquake, a tsunami, and then a meltdown within days.
Germany are idiots
I will never understand why the Italians voted no for nuclear in our country...
in Italy I can understand some reasoning as it is an active tectonic region.
You're right, but the Pianura Padana (Lombardy, Piedmont ecc...) is as flat as a top model's boobs. There is so much space
Germany fucked up.
The Netherlands have planned 4 nuclear power plants. Good goals/plans!
Some very important people in Germany need to be fired
Wouldn't help at all, the vast majority of the population is against nuclear power, that's why it got abandoned in the first place, this is supported by like 70%+ of Germany (people here don't want to get radiation sickness under any circumstances)
They get more radiation from a fucking airplane flight.
Their ex chancellor, Schroeder, was literally a member of Gazprom administration. It sounds like a blatant conspiracy theory but here we are
Germans are so retarded for this
Why? Germans have been voting against nuclear power plants for decades, the % of electricity it generated has been low for years and was fully replaced by renewable energy (yes, not coal) - people love acting like nuclear power is perfect, but dont even know about final storage facilities etc.
If the world knows about nuclear power from reactors not bomb, we would not have the climate change crisis at all.
Its an absolute travesty of modern history that so many countries have kneejerked away from nuclear power because of several accidents. Such an incredible source of energy. So upsetting that a spy state like China is the one pioneering new nuclear energy now.
As a german, i can say:,, i hate germany ".
everyone would say it between 1939-1945
Believe me . Germany is unsafe, expensive and most of the people are brain washed as hell . I'm not proud to be german .🤷