You need a lot of energy too to mine coal, gas, oil as well as rare earth metals required for manufacture of solar panels and wind turbines.
This is all quantified already - overall CO2 intensity of wind farm is 15 gCO2e/kWh, most of which is infrastructure, while nuclear is 5 gCOe/kWh *including* infrastructure, fuel and waste management.
@kravietz I have to admit that I'm not an export o this topic. But the graphs you showed are not really trustworthy for me. Esp. the second one might be from Vattenfall (and thus biased) as it is title "… Vattenfall …".
Also on could admirably argu about whether the "decommissioning" really uses that less C02 - given that you actually recommision and not only burry it in e.g. Asse.
If you are a firm believer in the evil of nuclear power as many people in Germany are, I'm afraid nothing can really change you mind. You will find any detail as an excuse not to accept the data and prefer Greens/Greenpeace convenient narrative.
The fact is however that the latter is not only extremely biased but simply unscientific. And is also the main reason why Germany is currently investing in coal and gas power rather than "wind and solar" unicorn.
@kravietz I'm not a "believer", as the risks of nuclear power are no religion.
Maybe nuclear power emits less CO2, this still does not make it into an option. If nuclear power is he only/best way to produce the ammout of power we consume, then we need to reduce our consume.
Anyway: What is the source of these graphs?
> risks of nuclear power are no religion
What about risks of rare earth mining for wind and solar? Or air transport? Or cars? Or gas and oil mining? Or hydro? Did you realize that a single hydro dam failure in China killed ~200k people back in 70's?
> this still does not make it into an option
This for sure sounds like a very rational and non-believer-like argument.
> What is the source
https://www.brightnewworld.org/s/BNW-EEcommittee-nuclear-submission_160919_FINAL.pdf
> then we need to reduce our consume
Yeah, sure:
@kirschwipfel As for decommissioning - yes, you *could* argue. But when arguing let's present *data* rather than baseless whataboutism.
@kravietz "Don't trust any statistic you did not forge yourself." Without deep knowledge about which decommission scenario has been evaluated, this it hard to take as granted. And if the figures are from Vattenfall: They are biased for sure.
@kirschwipfel So you are not an exper, don't know anything about costs of decomission but you already know nuclear is *not* an option. Sorry, but this is very much a religious approach.
You basically say: solar and wind are not options. This might be true - I'm not into this topic yet. You are into this, so I'll accept it for the sake of this discussion.
But due to its adherent risks, nuclear power is not an option either.
So we end up with either killing mankind by CO2 (coal, gas, solar, wind) or radioactive contamination (nuclear). Sound like choosing between pest and cholera, don't it?
> solar and wind are not options
No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying: 100% solar/wind are not an option.
> radioactive contamination
The photo shows nuclear waste storage in Switzerland. There's a man walking around in the middle. And there are ~200 nuclear reactors running in the world for the last half century without any contamination.
> killing mankind by CO2
If we don't limit CO2 emissions within a few decades yes, this will be true disaster.
@kravietz In contrast: This is "Schachtanlage Asse" in Germay. Lots of contamination already leaking in the underground water.
(I'm no 100% sure this picture is actually showing Asse, but it is matching was has been reported about Asse since many years.)
The contamination from Asse is minimal and at depths like -900 m that are never reaching any surface waters. Asse stores low- and medium-activity waste. For example, the largest leak found was 240 kBq/l which is roughly natural (!) radioactivity of a group of 60 people (from K-40 isotope).
One of the main causes for Asse problems was anti-nuclear lobbying, which hindered any attempts to properly develop and secure the storage and eventually led to its closure.
@kirschwipfel Back to the solar/wind: they are absolutely fantastic but they have two disadvantages.
First, they are intermittent - they don't always produce energy when we need it, and sometimes they produce too much when we don't. They need storage or intelligent grid.
Second, solar/wind have small energy density - you need to occupy 70 km2 for a 400 MW wind farm and it will only work at 40% on average, so you need 2x that really.
@kirschwipfel The latter is also reason why solar/wind are so expensive in terms of natural resources needed for construction. You need ~120 wind turbines with 100 m wings to replace one 400 MW power plant running nuclear, gas or coal. You need *a lot* of steel, concrete and rare earth metals for construction.
Current global rare earth metals production is 180 kt per year. To go 80% renewable we would need 5400 kt per year. Where do we take it from?
We need clean energy without CO2 *today*, because if not we will likely face extinction my mid-century.
There's a lot of stupid lobbying out there (e.g. in Poland for coal mining) but the root cause why solar/wind are not working *today* are science and engineering.
Just to give you some background: 20 years ago I was also very closely associated with Greens in Poland (who were influenced by German Greens). I shared all the arguments against nuclear, I personally experienced Chernobyl in 1986 etc.
However, with my background in chemistry some of their arguments sounded... a bit silly. So I started to double check in scientific sources. And gradually I became very much disillusioned in Greenpeace and the likes. They are scammers.
@kirschwipfel
And this is quite logical actually when you realize energy density of wind vs nuclear power:
Rampion wind farm in UK occupies area of 70 km2 (!), has 116 towers and has nominal power of just 400 MW out of which maybe 40% is really usable due to wind fluctuations.
Nearby Dungeness nuclear power plant has reactor with 615 MW nominal power usable in 95% and occupies maybe 1 km2 of land in total.
@kravietz This statement is telling the tale hat nuclar power is saving C02. But you need a lot of energy (which is from coal, oil and gas) to prepare the fule rods.