"New nuclear capacity of 3.3 gigawatts (GW) in 2017 was outweighed by lost capacity of 4.6 GW. Over the past 20 years, there has been modest growth (12.6%, 44 GW) in global nuclear power capacity if reactors currently in long-term outage are included. However, including those reactors ... in the count of ‘operable’ or ‘operational’ or ‘operating’ reactors is, as former WNA executive Steve Kidd states, 'misleading' and 'clearly ridiculous'."
- #JimGreen, 2018
https://energypost.eu/nuclear-power-in-crisis-welcome-to-the-era-of-nuclear-decommissioning/
"Renewables (24.5% of global generation) generate more than twice as much electricity as nuclear power (<10.5%) and the gap is growing rapidly. The International Energy Agency predicts renewable energy capacity growth of 43% (920 GW) from 2017 to 2022. Overall, the share of renewables in power generation will reach 30% in 2022 according to the IEA. By then, nuclear’s share will be around 10% and renewables will be out-generating nuclear by a factor of three."
"Lobbyists engaged each other in heated arguments over possible solutions to nuclear power’s crisis ‒ in a nutshell, some favour industry consolidation while others think innovation is essential, all of them think that taxpayer subsidies need to be massively increased, and none of them are interested in the tedious work of building public support by strengthening nuclear safety and regulatory standards, strengthening the safeguards system, etc."
It's not "nuclear power" that is the crisis today - it's the climate change. And if you have a country shutting down zero-emission energy source, saying it will replace it by a 3x more CO2 intensive source (solar) and then replaces it with one that is 30x more intensive (fossil gas) then I say this makes the crisis worse.
Most of your talking points are based on the "for nuclear pick the oldest tech and worst-case scenarios, for RE pick the latest & best-case" fallacy.
This "hey we love nuclear but we just won't make it in time" is a perfect example.
Mmost nuclear plants are built in or under 5 years. This is the data. The two projects that anti-nuclear activists uses as flagship examples of delays - HPC and Flamanville - were delayed specifically by anti-nuclear activists by all means possible.
@kravietz I'm guessing that's only the construction phase, not including planning time before it starts, or testing and commissioning time after it finishes. But even if I accept this timeframe at face value, 5 years is a *long* time. Compare that to solar or wind that can be built in stages, with the first group of panels/ turbines coming onstream long before the full project is finished. Try that with nuclear (actually no, please don't ;)
> 5 years is a *long* time
It took 4 years to build Rampion off-shore wind farm in UK.
It took infinity to build DESERTEC solar farm in Sahara as it was started in 2010 and never completed. Another solar plant in USA was never completed and left territory contaminated with cadmium.
Same bias: you believe nuclear power plants are always delayed but renewable project are always completed in time, clean and lean.
This bias is the reason why Germany is running on gas and coal now.
@kravietz
> delayed specifically by anti-nuclear activists by all means possible.
So? Large-scale renewable plants get delayed by NIMBYism too. Getting through planning permission processes is just part of building stuff (especially big stuff that can explode) in democratic countries. China doesn't have to deal with that, but can still get large-scale renewables onstream *much* faster than nuclear plants.
> Large-scale renewable plants get delayed by NIMBYism too
Opponents of large-scale wind and solar farms have a valid point: they occupy thousands of hectars of land, impacting plants, which need to be removed (trees for wind, everything for solar) as well as animals and humans, who are scared away by noise. This is not NIMBYism.
Opponents of nuclear power are using extremely biased, manipulated arguments based on ancient technologies and raising risks which they happily ignore for renewables (like uranium mining vs rare earth metals mining).
I witnessed a few "public debates" on nuclear energy - as people are trying to actually talk, Greenpeace activists just shout to prevent any debate from happening.
In France you had Green activist actually shooting from RPG at a nuclear reactor to prove it's dangerous.
This is because everyone who had anything to do with science left Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth long time ago in protest against their fanatic policy against nuclear and genetic engineering. James Lovelock, Stewart Brand and many others were prominent environmentalists who parted from these organisations as they pushed away from science towards fanaticism and black-and-white PR.
@kravietz
> This is because everyone who had anything to do with science left Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth long time ago
That sounds like Pat Moore's core talking point. FYI that guy is a known climate change "skeptic" with a long history of shilling for polluters:
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Patrick_Moore
Anything he has to say about Greenpeace and other eco orgs is about as valid as anything retired petroleum geologists have to say about climate change activists.
And unfortunately this radically anti-scientific bias of both is clearly visible in their policies. In 2001 they liked biomass, in 2010 they liked DESERTEC, in 2018 they liked fossil gas, in 2020 they don't like biomass and declaratively don't like fossil gas but they're doing everything to increase its share in the energy mix because hey - at least it's not nuclear power!
They are consistently cherry-picking and misrepresenting scientific data, they're quoting IPCC on climate change but they skip the parts about nuclear power, they fabricate bullshit about GMO. They enthusiastically jump on any early prototype new tech appears out there and build a whole 2050 strategy on it without even knowing any side effects or scaling issues. And they change their "strategies" at least once per decade.
But whatever new delusional "strategy" they come up with, they direct 100% resources on aggressive lobbying crying "it has to be done NOW!!!", pouring paint or fake blood and doing all these PR stunts. And some countries do change their energy strategies, start to implement... but then another decade passes, and GP discovers new "wonder tech", dislikes some previous one, and writes a new "strategy" and the whole cycle repeats.
Germany is the textbook example of this: in 2010 they started the Energiewende and declared enormous investments in solar projects like DESERTEC, reduction of CO2 but most importantly - closure of nuclear power plants.
In 2020 the only thing that worked was the last one - CO2 emissions per capita are 2x more than France, energy emissions per kWh are 5x than France, on-shore wind farms have stalled, DESERTEC was abandoned.
In 2018 Greenpeace said we need more fossil gas...
This is precisely how ecomodernism was born - you'll find many of the names on the list of signatories
@kravietz This may be of interest. 'We Are All Degrowthers. We Are All Ecomodernists. Analysis of a Debate', by @KevinCarson1 :
https://c4ss.org/content/52500
This article/debate is indeed very interesting and thanks for this, but it's completely unrelated to the topic of Greenpeace. Any organisation who aggressively lobbies based on knowingly misrepresented or outright false data as they routinely do with GMO and nuclear power is a no go for me. In terms of actual policy outcomes, GP is no different from climate deniers.
@kravietz @strypey @KevinCarson1 @xair I've read this book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_Without_Growth
IMO the points/problems about "Growth" (as GDP, economic and so on) as metrics are very clearly stated.
@xair
> modern Greenpeace is pretty radical
Perhaps you're using a special definition of "radical". But by any of the definitions I'm aware of, #GreenPeace were much more radical in their early years. See the #documentary 'How To Change the World', which covers #PatrickMoore's failed takeover, and #PaulWatson splitting off to form the more radical #SeaShepherd. These days GP are practically corporate by comparison.
> and doesn't seem to accomplish much
This I largely agree with.
In the first place today's Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are anti-scientific. This was precisely reason why most if not all prominent people with scientific background left them back in 80's and Greenpeace ended up resorting to scientific frauds like Seralini - but they don't care as PR doesn't have to be scientifically valid, it just has to work.
To be honest I don't care about Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth internal dick contests. The only problem I'm concerned with is that both organisations - plus a bunch of others who openly live off petroleum subsidies - got a strong lobbying and media foothold and their actions are extremely harmful for the climate and environment.
@kravietz General criticism of activist tactics is like shooting fish in a barrel, it makes a lot of noise and feels satisfying, but it doesn't actually accomplish much. I note you haven't actually offered any counterarguments to the post you're replying to, so I'll assume you don't have any on this point.
> General criticism of activist tactics is like shooting fish in a barrel
Fine, then let's stop criticising climate denier activists. In the meantime the climate will continue to warm up thanks to the efforts of Greens and deniers to stick to fossil fuels forever.
> none of them are interested in the tedious work of building public support
I'm not offering any "counterargument" here as this is utter bullshit that is not even worth replying to. All 2010-2020 nuclear power plant delays were caused by sudden change of plans after Greens forced them to install fourth and fifth layer of protection "just in case we have a tsunami in the middle of France". Then they used the delays to claim the industry cannot build anything.
@strypey @kravietz >>> ...if nuclear plants were a safe, cost-effective and eco-friendly energy source (and they're none of these), there isn't enough being built to replace current plants, let alone displace fossil fueled plants. <<<
You are missing important details:
1) the so called "base load" in the electricity grid is in slight decline. Especially in the countries with better developed economies - so you don't need to build "more";
2) NPP (nuclear power plants) can't be used as a replacement of gas/coal power plants. The second ones have the property called "load following" and the NPP can't do that.;
3) The lifespan of a NPP is very long: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VVER#VVER-1200 - 60 years. The currently installed solar panels will loose around 20% of their peak capacity at 20 years age. At 25 years you will have to throw them away because it will not be economical to utilise them at large scales. Go and find out what happens currently with a decommissioned solar panel. It goes to a garbage dump where it starts to release poisons because of the heavy metals contents in the glass (lead, cadmium). The windturbines and their blades offer similar challenges - they are not easy for recycling and most of them are throw away;
4) Possibilities for modernisation. See again the VVR example. Most nuclear reactors can easily be upgraded to produce 5 to 10% more power. This covers a lot of years ahead for base load assurance.
@kravietz @strypey You are right. I've missed that. But it is used to protect the powergrid from the irregularities introduced from large amounts of solar and wind power.
https://www.oecd-nea.org/nea-news/2011/29-2/nea-news-29-2-load-following-e.pdf
I'm seeing here the examples for Germany and France. This ability must be incorporated in the design of the reactor. How it relates to the expected lifespan of the reactor?
I've read that load following was part of design of any plant built since 90's as intermittent sources were expected to be added to the grid. It was rarely used because it's most economically efficient to use NPP at 100% capacity and load following was much cheaper done plants that actually use fuel like gas or coal. But if there was no gas or coal, it could be done with NPP too.
@kravietz @strypey From the document above:
" Another example is the German Konvoi reactors that were designed for 15 000 cycles with daily power varia-tions from 100% Pr to 60% Pr, and 100 000 cycles with power variations from 100% Pr to 80% Pr (see Ludwig, H., et al., 2010)."
so you loose 75 000 cycles when going from 100-80% to 100-60% variation of the output power. This is very significant change.
@kravietz @strypey Also the abilities for load following are somewhat limited (3-5% change from current power lever per MINUTE, I've saw up to 10% per minute is the upper safety margin).
This seems OK for day-to-day operations but in major situations I don't think it is enough (sudden surge of consumed power, losing a big power producer). Example - given a lot of solar power and high density of the installation one cloud in the sky for 10 minutes could knock out more than 10% of the currently generated power. The situation is the same with gust of wind and a lot of wind power.
Here is an interesting read about this kind of situations in the electric power grids:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/the-smarter-grid/how-engineers-kept-power-india
In this particular case it is man-made but the problem remains.
@kravietz @strypey I've just find this resource:
https://www.nuclear-power.net/nuclear-power/reactor-physics/reactor-operation/normal-operation-reactor-control/load-following-power-plant/
IMO gives a good overview what's going on in a NPP. Also cover the stress of the materials used.
@kravietz @strypey Another information resource:
1) https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-power-reactors/advanced-nuclear-power-reactors.aspx - Gen3 nuclear reactors
2) https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-power-reactors/generation-iv-nuclear-reactors.aspx - Gen4 in development
This site has a lot of information and actual details on the topic:
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library.aspx
For example they cover these challenges that I haven't seen being discussed anywhere:
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-power-reactors/heavy-manufacturing-of-power-plants.aspx
For example the capacity for producing/forging the pressure vessels of the cores is very limited. It takes months to make one.
@kravietz Most of your talking points were covered by the author of the piece I linked in the OP. Whose point is that even if nuclear plants were a safe, cost-effective and eco-friendly energy source (and they're none of these), there isn't enough being built to replace current plants, let alone displace fossil fueled plants. So even if we embarked on a massive project of nuclear construction (funded by ?), it wouldn't come onstream soon enough to make any difference to climate change.